[395]

THE KNICKERBOCKER.

THOUGHTS ON IMMORTALITY.
BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

There are those who reject the idea of a future state; or, at least,
who deny that they ought to be convinced of its reality, because
reasoning, in the method of the sciences, does not appear to prove
it to them; although they acknowledge how natural it is for man to
anticipate a future existence. I have thought that such persons
might be included in a similitude like the following. Let us suppose
a young bee, just returning from his first excursion abroad,
bearing his load of honey. He has been in a labyrinth of various
directions, and far from his native home; winding among trees and
their branches, and stopping to sip from numerous flowers. He has
even been taken, by one bearing no good-will to the little community
of which he is a member, and carried onward, without being
permitted a sight of the objects which he passed, that he might
estimate aright his new direction. Notwithstanding, he is winging
his way with unerring precision to the place where his little load is
to be deposited. Not more exactly does the needle tend to the
pole, than the line he is drawing points toward his store-house. But
in this he is governed by no such considerations of distance and
direction as enable the skilful navigator so beautifully to select his
way along the pathless ocean. He has no data, by reasoning from
which, as the geometrician reasons, he may determine that his
course bears so many degrees to the right or so many to the left.
He has never been taught to mark the right ascension of hill-tops,
nor to estimate latitude and longitude from the trees. He is governed
in his progress by that indescribable and mysterious principle
of instinct alone, which, although developed in man, produces its
most surprising effects in the brute creation. But here, as he is
going onward thus swiftly and surely, by some creative power a
vast addition is made to his previous character. All at once he
becomes a reasoning being, possessed of all the faculties which are[396]
found in the philosopher. He is endowed with judgment, that he
may compare, and consciousness and reflection, to make him a metaphysician.
Nor is he slow to exercise these newly-acquired faculties.

Among other things, his consciousness tells him that he is
impressed with a deep presentiment of something greatly desirable
in the far distance toward which he supposes his course to be fast
and directly tending. Perhaps he has a memory of the place he
left, of the business there going on, and of the part which he is
taking in it. Probably his strong impression is, that he is fast
advancing toward that place; that he expects the greeting of his
friends of the swarm. Possibly he finds his bosom even now beginning
to swell in anticipation of the praise which shall be bestowed
on his early manifestation of industry and virtue. Perhaps his
recollections are more vague; and accordingly his consciousness
only tells him that he thinks of something requiring him to urge
onward in that particular direction, but of which he realizes no very
definite idea.

But here Reason interrupts him: ‘Why are you pursuing this
course so fast? I see nothing to attract your attention so strongly.’
‘I am going to a place lying this way,’ says the bee, ‘where I can
deposite my load in safety, which I am anxious to do quickly, that
I may return for another.’ ‘But,’ says Reason, ‘what evidence have
you that the place lies this way?’ Here Philosophy whispers:
‘You should not act without evidence; it becomes no reasonable
creature to do so;’ but Reason continues: ‘There are many points
in the horizon beside that you are making for; and I see not why
one of them is not as likely to be the place as another.’

This rather staggered the bee at first; for he had no recollection
of courses and distances taken, by a comparison of which he could
prove his true direction; but suddenly he said: ‘Why, I am so
strongly impressed that this is the course, that I cannot doubt it.’
‘But what signify your strong impressions,’ says Reason, ‘if they
are not founded on any evidence? Were you ever led to such a
place as you seek by the aid of impression alone?’ ‘I never was,’
said the bee; for in fact he had never before been out of sight of
the place where he was born. ‘Then again,’ says Reason, ‘I ask
what is your evidence?’ And Philosophy again, as a faithful monitor,
replies: ‘Bee, you must not act without evidence.’

The bee could hardly add any thing more. Had his experience
been greater, and his reflection deeper, he might have answered,
that there are principles in the mind pointing to certain conclusions,
and seeking to establish certain beliefs, of which those principles
are at once the evidence and the source; and that the impression
which now seemed so clearly to point out his course was one of this
class. But in the exercise of his young faculties he had not yet
arrived at that height of philosophy which could lead him to recur
to such principles. He had never come to distinguish between
those impressions which have taken possession of the mind by
chance, and those which Nature herself has prepared to aid the very[397]
weakness of reason. No wonder then, that thus sore pressed by
Reason, he seemed to find himself at fault.

Whether these mental conflicts were sufficient to suspend his
course entirely, or whether, like a prudent bee, he resolved to act as
if nature were right and reason were wrong until he knew nature
to be wrong and reason to be right, I am not able to say. But I
could not fail to reflect, that if he did finally arrive at the place
whither he had been directing his course, he would probably quarrel
with all the arrangements in the tree.

It would not occur to him, for instance, why such particular art
should be observed in constructing the cells of the comb as the bee
has ever been known to observe. Why must they always be made
with just six sides to them, and no more? Why could they not,
upon occasion, be constructed with three or four sides, or even round,
equally as well? Surely a curve is more beautiful than a combination
of straight lines, with angular points to disturb the mind; and
variety is undoubtedly essential to all harmony. But if six sides
are to be preferred, why not have the same number for the roof and
floor? and why should they be always constructed with one particular
inclination? These and other rules, which the bee has hitherto
followed with such admirable but unconscious wisdom, his uninstructed
reason would be slow to deduce from obvious first principles.
He would perhaps be no better a mathematician than man
himself, with whom centuries succeeded one another before he had
followed the discursive and mazy track to the point whence is seen
the just and convenient architecture of the bee.

We can hardly suppose that under such circumstances he would
not become a confirmed skeptic; rejecting all truths which his peculiar
reasonings would not demonstrate; and failing by reason to
demonstrate those truths which to him are of the greatest consequence.
All this would not be because he had reason, nor because
he exercised it, but because he exercised it imperfectly. And yet
he would seem to use it very much as some modern philosophers
recommend.

II.

When the merchant who trades abroad is about to launch upon
the ocean the ship which contains perhaps the whole of his fortune,
he is naturally anxious as to what may be its fate while entrusted
to the winds and waves, and is solicitous to provide, so far as he
can, against the possibility of ruin by its loss. His course is therefore
to go to the insurance office, inform the agent what he is about
to do, and ask for indemnity against risk.

The insurance office was established for the express purpose of
alleviating such disasters as his would be, should his fears be
realized, and his case is taken into immediate consideration. The
agent regards the route of the proposed voyage, and the seas over
which the ship is to pass; the season of the year in which she
sails, and the storms that are commonly incident thereto; he deliberates
on the propriety of insuring, and if the risk be not too great,
fixes the premium to be paid by the merchant. Upon the receipt of[398]
this sum, he gives him a writing, binding the company in case the
vessel does not arrive safely at the destined port, to pay to the merchant
the estimated value of the ship and cargo.

Now the sum which the company receives on this occasion is but
a small part of what they may be obliged to return, and which they
must pay to the merchant in case the ship insured does not arrive at
the end of her voyage. Yet by such transactions as these neither
the company is impoverished nor by his loss is he who adventures
undone. The company is not impoverished, because in the whole
extent of its transactions it receives from those who do not lose as
much as its funds are diminished by those who do. The loser himself
is not undone, because by contributing his share, and enabling
the company to carry on its mitigating operations, he becomes, upon
his loss, entitled to a full portion of relief. And indeed in this manner
it happens that loss falleth lightly upon many, rather than
heavily upon few; and those who, to the benefit of mankind, would
trust their all to be carried down to the sea in ships, are not deterred
therefrom by the fear of possible ruin.

When the astronomer, for the convenience of the navigator, in
enabling him to ascertain his place upon the trackless ocean, determines
what will take place at immense distances from our earth,
and calculates at what exact though distant periods of time the satellites
that revolve about Jupiter may with the telescope be ascertained
to pass through the planet’s shadow, his conclusions are all
founded on a knowledge of causes, and of their methods of operation.
The observations of Kepler and Herschel, and the sublime
reasonings of Newton and Laplace, founded on fact or on
axioms, and tending to pertinent conclusions, are all concerned in
these useful calculations. Not so in proceedings like those to which
we have referred. There parties act not more from their knowledge
of causes than their ignorance of them. Neither the insurer nor
the insured knows what favorable winds may waft the ship prosperously
on her voyage, nor what tempestuous seas may threaten her
with destruction. Did the one know that in the end she would be
lost, he would not insure. Did the other know that she would
arrive safely at the end of her voyage, he would not desire to be
insured. But while the one has hopes and the other fears, yet
both are ignorant. They are able, by the judicious exercise of the
faculties which God has given them, to adopt a course which, without
impairing the welfare of the one, shall tend to secure the safety
of the other.

The principle which in these cases determines the insurer whether
to insure, and if so at what premium, is a principle upon which the
pursuit of happiness very often requires us to act. This principle
is, that where a case is under consideration where particular causes
cannot be taken into account, we are most strongly to expect such
an event as has happened or as we know will happen, in the greatest
number of possible cases; unless some particular reason appears
which we are certain should make us expect a different result. The
principle has a deep foundation in the nature of the human mind;[399]
and nowhere is the mutual adaptation between the mind and the
external world more clearly seen. Properly applied, it teaches man
to look for an existence beyond the grave.

For, in the first place, we find it necessary that he should desire
immortality. The prospect of annihilation must always strike the
mind with horror. By nature it is capable of conceiving, of appreciating
and desiring, future as well as present happiness. Its ideas
and desires cannot be bounded by a day or a year, but extend
onward, without the possibility of arriving at a limit. Whenever
therefore the imagination is presented with a termination of enjoyment,
however distant in the field of duration it may be, the mind
at once starts back with a feeling of present unhappiness.

It is especially the case that this desire will not allow the mind to
be consoled for the supposed termination of its existence by the
possession of some other enjoyment. The object is something
which cannot be supplanted by any other. It is indeed the mind’s
susceptibility to be gratified by its connection with other objects,
which is the foundation of this desire. It desires continued existence
in proportion as it feels the loveliness by which it is surrounded,
and of the actions which it is invited to perform. It never so much
feels the vanity of any pleasure as when that pleasure is about to
terminate. Very far then must the possession of other enjoyments
be from compensating for the want of this! Nay, so much livelier
as is the joy which the present seems to offer, so much severer will
be the pang when the mind looks forward to futurity.

The hurry of novelty and the splendor of dazzling objects may
induce temporary forgetfulness, but forgetfulness is not consolation;
and of little worth must be that freedom from misery which is only
in proportion as the mind loses its activity. It is indeed in some
degree to run into the very evil we dread, to escape the consciousness
of knowing we must be subject to its consequences. Beside,
in spite of such means the mind will often be aroused to a more
painful remembrance of its mortality. The opiates which for a
time may lull, are yet preparing morbid sensibilities to be restless
under the oblivious influence, and to awaken at length to a more
acute feeling of the pain that has been suppressed. Yet who can
believe there is a single faculty in the mind which must ever desire,
without rational hope, and whose despair must be without solace?

Of most of the affections which are implanted in the heart of
man, we can discover the end and scope by an observation of them
in particular. And of these, where do we find one whose nature is
to fix itself on an object for whose attainment one cannot rationally
hope, and for whose denial he cannot be consoled? If not in possession,
the mind commonly cherishes an expectation of obtaining
it. If this seem impossible, the desire reverts to something else,
upon which it fixes itself while the mind as soon becomes indifferent
to the possession of the former. However long, however deeply,
any affection may have been fixed, and however well-founded the
hope, or well enjoyed the possession, in which it has been cherished,
yet the blow which severs it rarely inflicts a wound too deep to be[400]
healed. Time gradually soothes; other objects invite; till at length
the sigh called forth by Memory is ‘pleasant yet mournful to the
soul.’ Now by what application of these principles of probability
are we required to believe that the desire for immortality is an
exception to the universality of the rule we have been exhibiting?
All other affections, attachments, and desires we find to come within
it. Love, filial affection, fondness for glory or wealth, patriotism—all
tend to constitute a moral system which should be capable
of happiness. If there be an exception to the rule, it is the desire
for immortality. But if there be an exception, how does it happen
that we find such long-continued uniformity? We are ignorant of
any particular difference in the case, which should make it an exception.
How then can we doubt?

If desire be fixed on an object for a time unattainable, the faculty
of enjoyment is meanwhile increasing in power, and preparing the
mind for a livelier relish of what has been withheld. When it is
attained, there is also the influence of contrast to enhance the
consciousness of enjoyment. Even grief at severest loss, when
softened by time, adds a pleasing interest to contemplation. But
after what lapse of time shall the mind’s horror at annihilation be
softened into mournful complacency? What present pleasure, hope
being expelled, can be contrasted with former pain produced by the
prospect of annihilation, without renewing that pain in the mind?
And to what purpose would the power of enjoying the prospect of
immortality be increased, if the prospect itself be hid in the blackness
of darkness?

III.

If we might imagine the time when all mankind, proceeding on
the supposition of the total want of evidence that the soul is immortal,
had lost that glorious and animating hope, which is indeed the
ground of all others, to what state of despair must we not imagine
them to be reduced? What more total overthrow of every principle
of action could possibly be conceived? How many things are
there in this world which man was made to love? How many
actions, how much noble labor, invite men to their performance,
offering a full reward? How interesting to the virtuous mind to
behold their array! How exciting to its energies, to anticipate the
results to which it may attain! There are forests to be removed,
fields to be cultivated, marts to be established, cities to be built;
roads and artificial rivers are to be constructed, and fleets sent
forth upon every sea, to bring together the productions of every
handicraft, and the fruits of every clime. While this is going on,
the mind is also to be employed in bringing the great agent-power
to bear on the whole in the most efficient manner. Earth and air,
fire and water, are to be brought in subjection, and made to yield
their mighty assistance in the gigantic work which man has to do.
The force of gravity and of expansion is to be guided upon engines
of wood, of iron, and of polished brass, and these, with strokes and
evolutions of wheels, cylinders, and pistons, and with every strong,
every gentle, every delicate and complex movement, must be made[401]
to imitate the works of men’s hands; but with such prodigious force
and rapidity, and yet with such nice exactness, as shall infinitely
outvie them all. The mind of man itself is to be wrought up to a
higher state of perfection. Colleges and other seminaries of learning
are to be founded, and books are to be written; the secrets of
nature are to be laid open, and pictures of them to be presented to
every man’s view. The darkness of ignorance and barbarism is to
be chased away, and the light of science and virtue to be let in
upon the mind. Improvement is continually to be advanced, and
humanity is to be raised higher and higher toward that eminence of
perfection whose peaks rise one above another, over broader and
more extended regions.

This is some of the work which man has to do; and with what
delight in the employment of his faculties, and with what gratifying
prospects of the ends to be attained, does he address himself to the
task! In the glow of his ardor, he encounters difficulties, grapples
with burdens, and exults in the exercise of his powers, as he
advances in the accomplishment of the ‘prize of the high calling’
before him. And what is it which encourages him in all this? which
is the foundation of his exultation? Strike from his mind the belief
in its endless existence, and every thing becomes worthless. How
short is the time of action which this world affords, compared with
the endless future; how strong the desire to range through that
future; and oh! how deep the despair, if that great desire be without
hope! Tell me not there are those who disbelieve in any
future state of the soul, who yet preserve their cheerfulness and
equanimity; who interest themselves in the concerns of life, and
are as active as others in its pursuits. Can any experience convince
us that these have a source of enjoyment equal to that which
blesses his expectation who anticipates a triumph over death? Can
a part be equal to the whole, or the finite compared with the infinite?
If men have been able to fix their affections alone on that which
earth affords, it is not because the things of this world have swelled
to the full compass of the soul, but because she has been cast down
from her sphere, and her aspirations trampled in the dust.

To the infidel, Nature must wear a repulsive aspect; for why
should she create a phantom joy, which must soon vanish for ever?
The pleasantness of spring, the voice of early birds, these should
be to him the emblems of mourning, the music of a dirge. To him,
the sun and stars are but torches, to light him to regions of eternal
darkness and silence. God in His mercy preserve us from a belief
such as his!

THE ‘RICH POOR MAN:’ A FRAGMENT.

[402]

AN EVENING HYMN.

Boston, Mass.

H. J. W.

[403]

THE DOOMED SHIP.
BY ROBERT L. WADE.

There was much of bustle and activity, and hurrying to and fro,
in the streets of the usually quiet little town of Salem, on a fine
October morning, 1740. The sun had not yet risen, but the eastern
horizon, in token of its approach, was stained with a faint crimson
hue, and a few of the most brilliant gems that deck the firmament
were yet burning brightly in the broad expanse above. The morning
had long been looked forward to with anxiety. The colonies
were yet in their infancy, and every unusual circumstance had a
tendency to create excitement; but to us of later times it may
seem strange, and perchance cause many a one to smile, when he
reads, that all this busy stirring was occasioned by the expected
departure of a packet-ship.

This vessel, which was called the ‘Countess of Pembroke,’ after
the sister of the sweet bard of Arcadia, was one of two owned by a
company of London merchants, who regularly twice a year sent out
one to the colonies, freighted with such matters as were in demand
at the time, receiving in payment principally the produce of the
country; always by shrewd calculation and management succeeding
in getting the latter at very low rates, while their own goods
seldom failed of bringing high prices. No particular ports were
selected on this side of the Atlantic for the regular destination of
the packets of this company, for the proprietors preferred sending
them to whatever place promised the best market at the time; and
therefore it was a matter of uncertainty altogether with the colonists
where to look for the next arrival. The ‘Countess of Pembroke’
and her sister packet, however, had now put into Salem
harbor six consecutive times; and as this was a period when the
most perfect harmony existed between those of the mother country
and her bantlings, the New-Englanders took as much pride in the
shipping and naval matters of Britain as did their brethren under
the more immediate protection of the crown. The consequence
was, in this case, that the good people of Salem and its vicinity
had a strong liking for these two vessels, and had begun to consider
them as belonging particularly to their own community; and when
reports several times spread through the town, that Newport, New-York,
and Boston, and several other places, had held communications
with the company, with a view to having the voyages of the
sister crafts terminate at each of their respective ports, and that the
owners had suffered serious thoughts to creep into their minds to the
same effect, they were not slow or scrupulous in venting their indignation
at what they termed acts of meanness in the other towns, and
resolved, with jealous eyes, to guard against what they deemed an[404]
invasion of their rights and privileges. These feelings, however,
were forgotten in the all-absorbing interest created by the rapid
approach of the time set for the departure of the ship. For two or
three weeks it had been bruited throughout the adjacent country,
that on such a morning the ‘Countess of Pembroke’ would sail for
England, wind and weather permitting; and now when that day
had dawned, beautiful and bright, and with every prospect of a
happy commencement of the long voyage, (such voyages were
long then,) the streets of the town were filled with active people,
and all the wharves and house-tops, and in fact nearly every point
from which a good view of the harbor could be obtained, was covered
with interested spectators.

With the early morning tide the ship had hauled out some little
distance into the stream; and now, as the sun was just lifting itself
above the verge of the horizon, and pouring down its floods of
golden light, her yards were covered with seamen, busily employed
in loosing her sails and preparing for departure. At her peak the old
ensign of England was fluttering in the clear morning breeze, while
from her main top-gallant mast a long dandy red-and-white-streamer
was dancing gaily upon the air. Alongside, attached by the painter
to the rope-ladder which hung down from the bulwarks, a small
boat was rising and falling upon the slight swell of the waters;
and at the foot of the steps of the principal wharf floated another,
containing four oars-men, who were waiting with all possible
patience to take the captain off, who as yet had not made his
appearance.

An hour, two hours, rolled away; the ship still swung at single
anchor; the captain’s gig still remained at the wharf; but those in
it had now become quite uneasy at his protracted absence, and
manifested many signs of impatience, in addition to giving vent to
their feelings in their own peculiar way:

‘The cap’un’s on a lee-shore and going to pieces,’ said one; ‘I
heard as how there was a false beacon up to decoy him on.’ This
joke, which had reference to the ‘ladye-love’ of their commander,
was immediately understood by all, and received with a shout of
boisterous laughter, which had the effect to restore good humor for
the time being.

Upon the land the crowd had greatly augmented. As day
advanced, the numbers had increased upon the scene; and now in
every direction the eye encountered countless human faces, some
turned toward the water and the gallant craft that sat upon it like
a duck, and others partly back upon the town, to catch the first
glimpse of the tardy officer. It was a matter of wonder and much
speculation with the multitude, as to the cause of his non-appearance,
an hour after sunrise having been the time appointed for the
departure of the ship; and two full hours having passed beyond the
time, many began to fall into the belief, in spite of themselves, that
it boded no good for the anticipated voyage.

‘I don’t like this,’ muttered one to his neighbor, with an ominous
shake of his head; ‘I fear some ill may befall our pretty vessel,[405]
which Heaven avert! before she casts anchor in the Thames.
They should have been prompt, and started at the time set—at
the very minute. No good comes of tardiness. Why, friend Gibson,
I heard of a vessel once, that her owners intended to despatch
from Cork to Leghorn, and gave notice that she would sail on just
such a morning, at just such an hour. Well, the morning came, and
something was the matter; either the ship was not ready, or her
cargo not all aboard, or her passengers out of the way; at any rate,
she couldn’t go, and so they postponed the start for three days;
and when the time came, she didn’t sail for six hours after.’

‘Well, and what then?’ rejoined his hearer, with a careless and
unconcerned expression on his countenance, seeing that the croaker
had come to a stop in his story, and was looking at him out of one
corner of his eye, with a sort of mysteriousness that he could not
account for; ‘well, and what then?’

‘What then!’ repeated the other, in a loud tone, as though
astonished at this response; and then sinking his voice to a husky
whisper, added, ‘Why, she was never heard of after she left port.
What do you think of that?—eh?’

‘Why, that she was either wrecked, or burned, or captured by
pirates, or something of the kind,’ coolly replied the other.

‘Umph!’ rejoined the first speaker, not very well satisfied with
his success in the benevolent endeavor to excite the apprehensions
of his neighbor; ‘there was a ring round the moon last night; and
hark’ee, they say there was something seen off the harbor, too,
about midnight.’

‘Do they though?’ answered the other, with apparent interest;
‘and pray what was it?’

‘I don’t know exactly,’ was the reply; ‘I haven’t heard the
particulars; but my son Tom heard from the Boston wagoner, who
got it from the uncle of one of the fishermen who came up, that a
light, a bright light, was seen for more than an hour, away off upon
the water.’

‘Poh! nonsense, Jenkins! you’re a fool!’ impatiently exclaimed
the other; ‘you’ve got a silly, superstitious, old woman’s notion
into your head, that something or other is going to happen to the
ship, because the captain’s detained ashore, and she didn’t start at
just the moment she was expected to. As to the captain, I can tell
you where he is, and what the matter is with him. I heard the
messenger, who was sent down to the boat a little while ago, tell
one of the men, that he was at the counting-room of the agent,
fixing his papers. He sent word that he would be down by the
waterside at ten o’clock. And as to yonder brave craft, I haven’t
the least doubt that she will have a quick and safe run home, and
that we shall see her again in this harbor a great many times, unless
indeed some of those mean scamps down in Boston or off at New-York,
manage to get her bringing-up place altered. She is a good,
strong, staunch vessel; sails fast and don’t labor much; has got an
excellent crew, a first-rate captain, who will make her walk through
the water like a shark, and a jewel of a mate. I tell you what it is,[406]
friend Jenkins, away with all your gloomy fears and your ugly prognostications!
I wish with all my heart a safe and speedy run to the
‘Countess of Pembroke.”

‘That is all very well, neighbor Gibson,’ replied the other, not at
all disposed to look upon the brighter side of the picture; ‘I wish
as heartily as you, that the Countess may get home safe, and if
wishes would carry her there safe, she’d have no lack. But that
does not alter matters in the least. Good wishes, all the good
wishes in the world, won’t carry her home; and I’ll tell you what it
is, signs and things are against her. Look you there; see how it
is clouding up.’

The man who had been addressed as Gibson turned his gaze
upward as the other ceased speaking, and saw that it was indeed
as he said. A few straggling clouds had hung upon the distant
edge of the horizon nearly all the morning; and now, taking a start
from their stationary position, were moving along up the surface of
the sky, with huge dark banks of the same following close in their
wake. A few had already reached the bright luminary of day, and
spread a thin mantle of mist over its burning face; but these were
not sufficient to dim materially its glory, and the rays of light and
heat pierced through like sharp and glittering daggers. Yet it was
not so clearly evident that those huge dark masses, which were
now slowly and gradually rolling to the zenith, would become as
transparent when stretching before the dazzling orb as their pioneers;
and many were the eyes that were fixed anxiously upon the
sharp circle of the horizon, watching as they fondly hoped for the
last ominous platoon of mist.

At that moment a whisper run through the crowd, and the whole
of that vast forest of human forms was swayed to and fro like the
tall trees of the woods, when the strong wind bears down upon
their wide-spread ranks. A shout then rung upon the air; all stood
upon tip-toe, swinging themselves backward and forward to catch
the first glimpse of the commander of the ship, who was said to be
coming down to the wharf, in company with the agent.

He was soon in the midst of the crowd; and as it fell back on
either side as he advanced, to give him a clear passage through,
many hearty huzzas rung out upon the bracing air; many in kindly
tones bid him ‘God speed’ upon his voyage; all which awakened
the most grateful feelings of his heart, and in some instances,
where his eyes fell upon a familiar countenance, elicited a return of
hearty and sincere thanks; while all, from the very chambers of
their hearts, wished him a speedy and safe return. Arrived at the
steps, at the foot of which his boat still lay in waiting, he turned
and looked back upon the little town he was on the point of leaving,
perhaps forever, and upon the dense and almost countless
multitude, which had assembled for a last farewell; then raising
his hat from his head, he waved it once and replaced it, which
action was immediately followed by a startling cheer of hundreds of
voices. The agent of the London Company, who had accompanied
him thus far, now prepared to take leave of him, and giving him his[407]
hand, whispered, while shaking it for the last time, a few parting
instructions. This done, they separated; the agent falling back a
little and gaining a position where he could watch conveniently the
departure of the vessel, and the captain hastily descending the few
steps which led down to the water. As he set one foot upon the
gunwale, he halted a moment and raised his eyes toward the sky;
and as he watched the gathering clouds, and noted the position of
the wind, there was a slight knitting of the brows, a compression of
the lips closely together, and a sparkling of his dark eyes to be discerned,
which gave evidence that the appearance of matters were
not exactly as he could have desired. This, however, was but
momentary; for his face immediately resumed its usual calm
expression; and stepping down into the boat which rocked beneath
his heavy tread, he seated himself at the stern, giving command by
a nod to the men to shove off; and then the little craft made its first
leap forward, and the glassy surface of the water was broken by
the regular dip of oars.

A few long and steady pulls sufficed to carry the boat alongside
the ship, when she was suffered to float along under the counter,
until opposite the rope-ladder hanging down the side. Rising then
from his seat, he made two strides to the bows, and without awaiting
till the boat was as close in as the men intended to have had it,
he sprang off and caught the steadying rope in his hand. Unfortunately
his feet missed both of the rounds upon which he had
expected to alight; and such a heavy weight as his body falling
suddenly upon so small a rope as that which he held in his hand,
proved too much for it; one strand cracked and untwisted; another
and another; then, to the horror of all within sight—and every
eye upon the shore and aboard the ship and boat, was upon
him—it parted, and he fell heavily into the chilly element, breaking
the surface with a fearful sound, and the waters closed over him
as he sunk.

Such a cry now rang forth from the lips of every man, woman,
and child of that vast collection, that one would have thought it
sufficient to have roused the very monsters of the deep. Ashore,
everything was in confusion, and nearly all dismayed. There was
shouting from one to another, to do this and to do that; there was
running to and fro, from one point to another; some were calling
out to put off in boats, and others to throw off planks and casks, and
logs of wood, and every thing that would float; but all to no purpose;
all were giving orders and none obeying them. Some two
or three indeed there were, who with more presence of mind had
abstained from joining in the uproar, and had upon the first alarm
jumped into a little skiff that lay alongside the wharf, and were
now half way to the ship. Those aboard and in the boat, however,
being used to accidents and dangers incidental to a seaman’s life,
participated not in the least in the fears of their friends ashore.
They knew that their captain was an excellent swimmer, and that
he would rise in a moment or two, when they had no doubts or
apprehensions of his rescue from a watery grave. Those, therefore[408]
in the boat poised their oars, ready to strike off at the second
toward the spot, wherever it might be, in which he should appear.
The others aboard busied themselves in throwing out spars, casks,
and barrels, hen-coops, and every thing that they could lay their
hands upon, that would sustain his weight in the water, to assist
him in getting aboard.

In less time than I have occupied in its description, all this
occurred; yet short as it was, short as was the interval between his
sinking and reäppearance, it was a period of the most fearfully
anxious interest. Eyes were strained to catch the first glimpse of
his head; and there were conflicting feelings at work within each
bosom; feelings of doubt, and hope, and fear, and worse than all, a
suspense that was torture. At length, to their great joy, the
waters were parted a few yards from the spot where he sunk, and
once more they caught sight of the object of their interest.

Was that not a shout of heart-felt gladness that then startled
the echoes for miles around? Rising confidently upon the treacherous
waves, as though this was his own peculiar element, he
brushed the water from his face, and then struck out boldly for the
ship. At the same instant the men in the boat, with a hearty
cheer, simultaneously dipped their oars, and one strong pull sent the
little skiff nearly a third of the distance that intervened. On board,
too, more spars were thrown over, and no means were neglected to
ensure his safety. Just then one of the sailors of the ship, who
had thrown over every thing that he could get hold of that would
float, and who had gone down into the cabin in search of something
else, appeared at the bulwarks with a large heavy chair in his
arms. Disregarding the expostulations of his mates, and the cries
of those in the boat that enough had been thrown out, and without
taking the slightest notice of its probable course, he hurled it with
all his strength into the air.

‘God save him now!’ ejaculated many, while a half-suppressed
cry of terror escaped the lips of others, as they watched its rise, and
saw that the direction it was taking was such that it must inevitably
strike the struggling man, or the water very near him. Shouts
of warning, and cries of, ‘push away, quick!’ and the various
sounds that would naturally occur at such a moment, filled the air,
and drew his attention to the impending danger. He saw and comprehended
all in a second, and with desperate effort struggled to
move, though it were but a yard from the spot in which he then
was. Alas! his efforts were in vain. Steadily up into the air it
held its course, until it was directly over the swimmer, and the
force that hurled it was expended, when it seemed to hang for a
second or two, as though to give warning, and then fell with fearful
rapidity. Down, down it came! None could help him now!
With its full force it struck him on the head, and with a groan that
went to the hearts of all who heard it, he again disappeared.

It is impossible to find words adequately to describe the consternation
that prevailed at this melancholy accident. In contrast with
the previous manner of expression, it displayed itself not in noise[409]
and confusion, but all seemed suddenly petrified with horror, gazing
motionless and in silence at the point where the unfortunate man
was last seen. For ten long and dreary minutes, this fearful stillness
was unbroken by any sounds, save those of the waves leaping
gently over one another, and the rushing of the breeze. Weary
were the watchings for the rise of the commander of the gallant
ship. When they again saw his form, a few hours after, (rude
grappling-irons, constructed on the spur of the moment, having been
successfully used,) the seal of death was upon his brow.

Of the whole of that vast company, so interested were they all,
scarcely one had left the scene; and now, when the dripping corpse
of the unfortunate captain was carried on shore, and borne up to
the house of the agent of the ship, as they opened to the right and
left to give passage to those who carried him, many eyes were
filled, and cheeks were wet with genuine tears. One and another
now began to whisper among themselves, and wonder what would
be done with the vessel, now that she had lost her captain; whether
she would be detained long, or until another commander could be
obtained, or the first mate promoted to the office; what the agent’s
intentions were, and whether or not it was probable that he would
order her round to Boston, and try to make a more successful start
from that place. These, together with speculations upon the
weather, and the probability of a storm, for now the aspect overhead
was threatening, formed the staple of conversation of the assembled
townsfolk for another hour, when it was whispered through the
crowd, and afterward spoken loudly, that the agent had altered the
day of sailing to that day week, when she would sail for England,
under the charge of the first mate. Nobody, however, appeared to
possess authentic information relative to this matter; each one who
was questioned confessed that he was told so by a friend, who had
got it from another, who in his turn had received it from somebody
else.

But these rumors were speedily verified by a party who had constituted
themselves a committee to ascertain the truth or falsehood
of the reports, and had marched up in a body to the counting-room
of the agent. These now returned and announced that the counting-room
was locked up, the agent being probably up at his house
superintending the necessary arrangements for the reception of the
body of the captain; but upon the door was affixed a paper, on
which was written in his own hand-writing the sum and substance
of what they had heard. There being now no occasion for remaining
together, the crowd began to disperse, at first slowly; but at
the expiration of fifteen or twenty minutes a few stragglers, who
had stayed behind to take a long, last look, for the time being, of
the ship, were alone left of all the hundreds that had so lately filled
the place.

That night one of the most terrific storms that ever visited New-England
broke over Salem, and the surrounding country and towns,
for miles and miles around. Although it was late in the year, it
was accompanied by the most fearfully vivid lightning and appalling
thunder. Rain and hail poured down in torrents; and the winds, as[410]
though the effort to break their chains had but increased their anger,
united in sustaining such a conflict, that the effects of it were visible
for weeks after. The waters of the harbor were lashed into
perfect fury. Several small fishing craft were sunk at their moorings,
or parted their cables and drove ashore. Boats lying at the
wharves, or in the dock, were dashed in pieces against each other,
or carried up high and dry into the streets of the town. A small
brig which was anchored above the ‘Countess of Pembroke,’ loaded
and ready to sail for New-York, was struck by lightning and consumed
by fire in the sight of many whose fears would not suffer
them to attempt to sleep, and who spent a portion of the long and
dreary hours of the night in straining their eyes to catch glimpses
of the ship, when the lightning for a few seconds at a time rendered
it visible, without an effort being made to stay the progress of the
flames. The good ship herself suffered severely. Though her
anchors held her firmly, yet her spars and rigging were injured.
Her foretopmast was snapped early in the storm, as though it had
been a pipe-stem, and several of her upper spars were cracked. A
fishing schooner, which had arrived only an hour before dark, and
had not hauled up to the wharf, parted her cable, and in driving
toward the shore came in contact with the ship, running her bowsprit
up into her fore-rigging, and staving in the bulwarks of the
‘Countess of Pembroke,’ with the force of the concussion. The
town also suffered much. Several houses were blown down; chimneys
without number were shattered, to the imminent danger of
house-tops and whatever might be in the streets; roofs were
lifted up and carried away; and the spire of one of the churches
was struck by lightning. But fortunately the fire was extinguished
by the rain before it had acquired much headway. Nor did the
country escape the general devastation. Old trees, which had
braved the storms of a century or more, were torn up by their roots,
as though they had been but the saplings of a summer’s growth;
some were struck by lightning, and others whose prongs and roots
had struck too deeply into the earth to be severed from that relationship,
had their massy limbs and branches broken off, and otherwise
suffered severely. It was in fact a storm of fearful power. None
remembered ever to have witnessed such a night; and many and
many months, ay, and years too, elapsed ere its equal visited the
place.

Not to draw out this narrative to a tedious length, the time intervening
between the morning after the storm and that appointed for
a second attempt to carry the ship out may be passed over, with
merely the remark that the unfortunate captain was during that
period followed to his grave by a large concourse of friends; for his
many virtues had won esteem, and all who knew him felt that in
his untimely end a tie of tender relationship had been severed.
The morning came; not like the other, bright and beautiful, with a
clear, fresh breeze careering over the water, filling the sails, toying
with the numberless flags and streamers upon the little craft in the
harbor, and the different flag-staffs in the town, and gladdening the
hearts of the voyagers and their well-wishers with the prospect of[411]
getting well off the coast; but dark, gloomy, and ominous. The
whole of the broad blue canopy of heaven was shut in by one wide-spreading
cloud, immovable and impenetrable, indicating the close
proximity of snow. The ship had been put in complete order; but
her new commander, though naturally elated at his unexpected promotion,
yet felt a heavy responsibility weighing down his spirits,
and a presentiment that some evil was about to befall the idolized
‘Countess of Pembroke’ and her crew.

Upon the shore the crowd assembled to witness her departure
was if possible more dense than before; but not now, as then, rose
shoutings and cheerings and well-wishings. All, alas! felt that
silence was the most appropriate for the occasion; and every individual
preserved it.

At the appointed hour the signal of sailing was given. The
anchor was weighed, the sails filled with the chill north wind, and
slowly the gallant ship stood down the harbor. Soon cries from
many mouths announced that a new object of interest had been
discovered; a large crow was seen hovering over the ship, now
rising and now sinking, and flapping its black funeral wings over it.
In those days of superstition an incident like this was, in the
absence of every other sign, sufficient of itself to create consternation
and dismay. In this instance, when so many omens of evil
had occurred, it may well be supposed that the appearance of the
dark messenger did not tend to allay the fears and misgivings of the
town’s-people. The motions of the bird were watched by all with
intense interest. After hanging over the ship, or sweeping round
for ten or fifteen minutes, now flapping so far away as to create
hopes of its disappearance altogether, and then returning again to
crush those hopes in the very bud, it finally settled down slowly,
and alighted upon the main truck, where it remained until the ship
herself was lost to the sight of all, save those who had trusted
themselves to her strength, and that ‘Eye that never sleeps.’

Slowly the multitude dispersed, with many shakings of the head
and doubtful looks, with many whisperings among themselves, and
many misgivings of the heart, that they had taken their last look of
the gallant bark.

A month had rolled away since the departure of the ship, when
one night the inhabitants of Salem were aroused from their beds, to
behold a strange sight in the heavens. It was that of a large ship,
apparently under full sail, with every yard braced up, and every
square inch of canvass spread to its full extent; but from every
point, from deck to trucks and from stem to stern, wide lurid flames
of fire were streaming up, with fearful and appalling brilliancy.
For two more nights the same scene was witnessed, with this difference
on the third, that the ship was seen to go down very suddenly
below the horizon in the height of the conflagration, instead of fading
away gradually, as on the two previous nights. It ‘was an honest
ghost’ of The Doomed Ship. The ‘Countess of Pembroke’ was
never heard of more.

[412]

THE DEITY.
BY MISS MARY GARDINER, OF SHELTER-ISLAND, SUFFOLK COUNTY.

MIND OR INSTINCT.
AN INQUIRY CONCERNING THE MANIFESTATION OF MIND BY THE LOWER ORDERS OF ANIMALS.

Cowper.

The cultivation of the intellectual endowments of man has
raised him to such a degree above the other orders of animated
existence, that he claims the exclusive possession of the Thinking
Principle; forgetting, while he surveys the monuments of human
intelligence, that they are but the evidence of his advancement
from the savage state; and that while he remained in that primitive
condition he might be considered, in fact, as many degrees
below his present position in point of mental capacity, as above that
of the most sagacious animals;[A] forgetting also that had he continued
in a state of nature, like some of the tribes of Africa or
America, leaving others to judge of his intelligence from the rude
vestiges of his civilization exclusively, they could scarcely attribute
to him more intellect than they would to the beaver, or even to
the ant.

Animals, unlike men, do not improve materially in different generations,
because they generally require no artificial means to promote
their happiness; neither have they the gregarious principle
to the same extent as man; but some of those which have, exhibit
the extraordinary intelligence which will presently be cited.

The object of this inquiry is to ascertain, by the examination of
facts, whether the principle called Instinct manifests the same
intellectual qualities as Mind, without having any reference to its
moral attributes. It is not claimed that each one possesses that
rare combination of mental properties which distinguishes the human
species; but merely that there is a similitude in the intellectual
operation of memory, in men and in animals; the same of abstraction,[415]
of imagination, and of reason or judgment, though possessed
among all in different degrees, and under different modifications.

The word Instinct is employed to designate the exhibitions of
animal nature in their endless varieties. It is a principle which
performs the same office in regulating their conduct, that the mind
of man does in directing his. It is usually defined, an inward persuasion,
a spontaneous impulse, prompting animals to provide for
their safety, and administer to their wants; but in certain cases the
term has been ennobled by the substitution of sagacity, intelligence,
cunning, when the gleamings of intelligence have been too certain
to be misunderstood. The truth is, as of the human mind, we know
nothing of its essence, of its ultimate nature; and our investigations,
as in mind, must be limited to a knowledge of its properties
or qualities.

This inquiry, then, will be confined to the intellectual qualities of
Instinct; and if, from facts carefully examined, it can be deduced
that an animal remembers, we must from necessity concede to his
instinct the quality of memory; or if he exhibit an exact knowledge
of means and their end, by applying the means to effect the end, we
must attribute to his instinct the quality of judging; and the same
of other instinctive operations.

It is important for even a tolerable elucidation of this subject, to
present the utmost number of ways in which the manifestations of
instinct are analogous to the manifestations of mind, as exhibited
by the human race; and in doing this, no apology is deemed necessary
for the introduction of numerous instances from Natural History,
and from common observation.

I. OF THE MEMORY OF THE PRINCIPLE CALLED INSTINCT.

Illustrations.—In autumn, says Huber, honey has been placed in a window, where the
bees resorted to it in multitudes. It was removed, and the shutters closed during winter; but
when opened again on the return of Spring, the bees came back, though no honey remained;
undoubtedly they remembered it; therefore an interval of several weeks did not obliterate the
impression they had received.—Selections from Em. Nat’s, but entitled Buffon’s Nat. Hist., Vide V.,
137.

A sailor who had been strolling round Wombwell’s menagerie, loitering here and there to identify
some of the animals with those he had seen in far distant climes, was attracted by the strange
noise of a tiger, who seemed irritated beyond endurance. Jack sought the keeper, to inquire the
cause of so singular a display of feeling, which became more boisterous the nearer he approached
the animal. The keeper replied that the behavior of the tiger indicated either that he was vastly
pleased, or annoyed; upon this the sailor again approached the den, and after gazing at the animal
a few moments, during which he became frantic with seeming rage, discovered him to be the
same animal brought to England under the special care of the weather-beaten tar. Jack was now
as delighted as it appeared the tiger was in recognizing his old friend, and he desired to enter the
den, for the purpose as he said of ‘shaking a fist’ with the beautiful animal. The iron door was
opened, and Jack was permitted to enter. The affection of the animal was now shown by caressing
and licking the pleased sailor, whom he seemed to welcome with the heartiest satisfaction;
and when the honest tar left the den, the anguish of the creature appeared almost insupportable.—London
Journal. Buff., II., 88, a like case.

A dog one afternoon was passing through a field near Dartmouth, England, where a washerwoman
had hung her linen to dry. He stopped and surveyed one particular shirt with attention;
then seizing it, he dragged it away through the dirt to his master, whose shirt it proved to
be.—Buff., I., 290.

Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, having dismissed the keeper of one of his
elephants, the animal refused obedience to any other, and finally escaped to the wild herd. Ten
years afterward the old keeper of the elephant found him in a keddah, and he instantly submitted
himself to him.—Buff., N. H., II., 190.

We need seek no clearer evidence of memory in its purest sense,
than these instances afford. They are the strong arguments of fact,
and need but a momentary examination. Instances however can[416]
be found, in which the memory of instinct is even more powerful
and retentive than the memory of mind. The homeward flight of
the carrier-pigeon is a consecutive remembrance of places; and
who, unaided, could retrace his steps for hundreds of miles, after
one outward passage? Instances of local memory are familiar to
all. The fox remembers his burrow; the bird her nest; the bee its
hive; for, if they did not recall the fact of having occupied these
places before, they would be found as frequently in the burrow or
hive of another as their own; whereas common observation teaches
the contrary. The parrot also, and the jay, have been noted for their
memory. The cat and the pet sheep distinguish their favorite in
the family from day to day; while the dog welcomes the return of
his master with manifestations of remembrance as conclusive as the
remembrance of the child or the wife.

Our knowledge of the qualities of instinct is derived from actions
only; of mind, from words and actions. But these qualities can be
inferred as legitimately from the latter, under proper restrictions, as
from both; and if we should investigate the properties of mind from
the actions of men exclusively, we could not arrive at them with
any greater certainty than we can at the properties of instinct.

From the above illustrations, (if they were needed,) the conclusion
is irresistible, that Instinct remembers; and all the phenomena of
this memory are identical, both in analysis and synthesis, with the
phenomena of memory in the human mind. No shade of distinction
can be taken, except it be in the degree of strength; and on
these terms, while the mass of animals would fall below man, some
would rise above him.

II. OF THE PROCESS OF ABSTRACTION BY INSTINCT.

Illustrations.—The beavers begin to assemble in the month of June or July, in order to form
a society, which is to continue for the greatest part of the year. They arrive in numbers from
every side, and presently form a company of two or three hundred. The place of meeting is commonly
the place where they fix their abode, and this is always by the side of some lake or river;
if it be a running stream, which is subject to floods and falls, they then set about building a dam,
or pier that crosses the river, so as to form a dead water in that part which lies above and below.
This dam or pier is often four-score or an hundred feet long, and ten or twelve feet thick at the base:
the part of the river over which this dam is usually built, is where it is the most shallow, and
where some great tree is found growing by the side of the stream. This they pitch upon as proper
for making the principal part in their building; and though it is often thicker than a man’s body, they
yet instantly set about gnawing it down.—Buff., II., 24. Note.—This is fallen across the stream.
They then sharpen stakes, and fix them in the bed of the stream, the upper end resting against the
tree.

The fox usually digs his hole in the edge of a wood, or the side of a bank; and in the vicinity
of a farm-house. He chooses a dry and secluded spot, preferring a sandy soil.

The tigress, to oppose the daring invaders of her den, braves every danger. On such occasions
she pursues the spoiler with an enmity the most inveterate; and he, contented to lose a part in
order to save a part, is frequently obliged to drop one of her cubs. With this she immediately
returns to her den, and again pursues him; he then drops another; and by the time she has
returned with that, he generally escapes with the remainder.—Buff., II., 81.

By the process of abstraction, facts are separated from their original
relations, and some of them contemplated apart from the rest.
For example: a stream is considered with reference to its width,
depth, and rapidity, or rather each property in its turn. In the
familiar instance of the fox, we invariably find his burrow in a dry
and secluded place; and in a sandy or earthy soil, unless it be in
natural crevices. From these facts the inference necessarily results,[417]
that he had examined the location with reference to each of these
requisites separately; unless instinct can entertain two questions at
the same instant, which is above the power of mind; otherwise, his
habitation being destitute of one of these essentials, would be useless,
and the poor fox be doomed to toil in blind experiment, until
chance directed him to a place which combined these and numerous
other elements of convenience which the dainty creature might
desire, and of which we can have no knowledge.

The beaver, in selecting a site for his dam, furnishes a stronger
and more interesting specimen of the abstract reasoning of instinct.
The depth, width, and rapidity of the stream; banks sufficiently
high to prevent an overflow; the tree upon its edge; the vicinity
of food, and materials for their work; all these are to be considered
in turn; and if any of these requisites are deficient, a new place
must be sought. If instinct proceeded at random, the multitude of disadvantages
would preclude success; their labors might be cast away
upon a stream too deep and rapid, or too wide, or in a barren region.
But it is asserted that instinct spontaneously impels all animals to the
end they seek; than which nothing can be more irrational. It is
endowing them with a principle which leads unerringly to results
that man might fail to ascertain by the aid of science. It is in
effect endowing them with a principle higher than mind; partaking
something of Deity itself. When man’s attention has been
arrested by their ingenuity or intelligence, he has passed them over
as the workings of mysterious instinct; and indifference has led
him into such absurdities. We have seen, on the authority of
naturalists, that the beaver’s dam is always found at a place which
furnishes certain natural advantages. Let us now institute a comparison.
A student wishes to study Algebra; we next see him
with a slate, algebra, and pencil in hand. The three, with reference
to the end designed, make but one object or means; and the inference
is natural, that he had abstractly considered the office and
necessity of each. On the other hand, the beavers announce their
intention of building a dam, by assembling in June and forming a
company. We next see them cutting a tree to fall across the creek.
The tree, and the width, depth, and nature of the bed of the
stream, make but one object or means, as in the other case; and
the inference is equally natural and necessary, that they had
abstractly considered these elements of fitness, before they selected
this particular site, in preference to another.

Comparison is also involved in this selection of a place; and in
the execution of the work, reasoning upon the relations of things,
as distinguished from a consecutive consideration of their properties.
Figure, motion, rest, space, and number are abstract terms.
A case in number only has been referred to. It would be a singular
supposition, that the dam did not know the number of her offspring,
if the proof, from the well-known habits of the tigress, could not be
furnished.

Again: the eagle builds her nest on the most rugged cliff, and in
a region scarcely inhabited by man, her only formidable enemy.[418]
She might find a lofty cliff, with the plains below teeming with
population, or an uninhabited region without a cliff; neither of
which would answer; and to determine whether a given place
combined these requisites of safety, she must consider it with
reference to each of these properties separately; which would be
the simple process of abstraction. The arrangement of objects
into genera and species being a higher process, and the useful
result of abstraction, the inquiry might be extended to ascertain, if
possible, whether animals ever exhibit such classification in practice.

It is a matter of common observation, that the fox in his excursion
will run through a flock of sheep, among cattle, or swine, or
birds; but the human species, of whatever sex or age, and dogs, of
whatever size or variety, he never approaches; and if he suddenly
encounters either, he turns with alarm. By this it appears that he
attributes hostility of feeling to the human family; and a disposition
not very amiable to the canine species, his hereditary enemy.
But horses, sheep, and oxen he considers inoffensive, and trusts
himself freely among them.

Judging from actions, (to which we are confined,) the manifestations
of instinct in the cases cited, are exactly analogous to the
manifestations of mind, under similar circumstances; and had man
exhibited such conduct, we should without hesitation pronounce it
the consequence of abstract consideration. Now, since we know
nothing of the ultimate nature of mind, or of instinct, and hence
cannot establish a fundamental distinction between them; and
since the manifestations of both are alike, in view of similar premises;
it follows, that we can no more deny the quality of abstraction
to one than to the other.

III. OF THE IMAGINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE CALLED INSTINCT.

Imagination is regarded as one of the highest of the mental
faculties; but since it is manifested in thought rather than in
actions, an additional difficulty is presented of discovering the
exhibitions of this quality, by animals. It will therefore be a
doubtful undertaking, to furnish proof that instinct is endued with
this creative ability ‘to fabricate images of things that have no
existence;’ and an approximation only can be expected.

The young dog exhibits his native fierceness while shaking a
stick; does he not for the time raise an image of some other animal
with whose properties he invests it? The same of a cat, while in
the act of crouching and springing to seize a pebble. On a kindred
principle, the mere boy rides his willow pony, and the infant Miss
hushes her doll to sleep.

The proximate causes of playfulness in youth are the pictures
raised in the mind by the fancy or imagination. This faculty, says
Kaimes, ‘is the great instrument of recreation.’ The mind is
exhilarated by the cheerfulness with which surrounding objects
have been invested by its touch; and the sports of childhood,
together with the gayety of youth, are mainly referable to its
activity. It is not uncommon to discover the boy and his spaniel[419]
at play with a ball as a go-between. The beautiful animal, with
open mouth, pricked up ear, and eyes sparkling with vivacity, now
eagerly watches every motion of the ball, and of his play-mate,
and now seeks for either or both, in their hiding-place. It would
be difficult to determine from their actions, which exhibited the
quickest perception, the most ingenuity, or the most ardent relish
for the amusement. A similar playfulness is seen in most young
animals. The manifestations are alike in both; hence the causes
cannot be very diverse.

The birds of the air constantly change their habitations in the
same latitude, as well as migrate from South to North, and back
again. If they did not picture to themselves images of other
regions, more beautiful, more abundantly supplied with the means
of subsistence, and more agreeable in climate, where is the motive
to change? Hunger with them is a motive to exertion, and danger,
to flight; but they could have no conception of another place, unless
by imagination they might, from the scenes around them, picture
another, with more of such parts as were desirable, and less of such
as were not; and this would be an inducement to depart; but if
they could picture no such prospect, the principle of self-preservation
would prompt them to remain. To fabricate such a picture is
the exact office of Imagination, and is its best definition.

A bright and still summer morning fills the mind with pleasant
images, and the effect is cheerful looks and conduct. The matter-of-fact
man, however, with little imagination, would be indifferent;
while the poet would surrender himself to the inspiration of the
scene. The birds also ‘sing out their thankfulness,’ and express
enjoyment of the scene, by their merry notes. The very formation
of song seems to be an imaginative art. On the other hand, a dull
morning not only hushes the vocalist of the grove, but fills the mind
with unpleasant reflections. And as Imagination ‘bodies forth the
forms of things unknown,’ we are seized with uneasiness, and perhaps
with melancholy.

Animals are known to dream, from physical indications during
sleep, especially the dog. We see him agitated in every limb, and
uttering low, angry growls. He sees nothing in reality; but the
imagination must have created images in his instinct of real scenes,
probably of conflict, as his movements would lead us to infer. The
fact that some animals dream is as well understood as that the
phenomena of dreaming are treated in intellectual philosophy as
some of the singular results of our mental constitution.

We are forced to see the analogies between the manifestations of
mind and of instinct; and any candid observer will find it as difficult
to detect a distinction, (except in the degree of power,) as to
prove that these analogies do not exist. The strong and uninterrupted
current of analogies in animal life, also, which subsist
between man and the various species of animals, furnishes an
indirect support to the views hitherto advanced. They have the
senses, natural affections, and propensities, in common with man.
In some they excel. They are ‘hurt by the same weapons, and[420]
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer.’ They have
also bone, muscle, and nerve; the vital fluid, and the organs of
circulation, operating in such as possess them, on the same principles
as in man. They have the brain; and so situated with
reference to the organs of sense as to derive their knowledge of
external objects by the same physical agencies that he does. They
experience hunger and thirst, pleasure and pain; and some of them
exhibit courage and fear; pride, anger, envy, jealousy, and hatred:
others,

The existence of these functions, properties, appetites, and passions
is freely admitted; the proof being drawn from physiology on
the one part, and their actions on the other; and yet it is as evident,
and as easy to prove, that an animal remembers as that he hears;
that he exercises reason in given cases, as that he sees; and as
easy that he has imagination, as that a majority of the human race
possess it, seeking for the proof in their actions exclusively.

Let us now consider for a moment the manner in which a
knowledge of external objects is attained. The eye is directed, for
example, to a dangerous animal. Its image is imprinted upon the
retina of the eye; and this impression having been conveyed by
the optic nerve to the brain, which is the organ of the mind, the
mind has then a perception of the animal; upon this perception,
reflection ensues; of its power to destroy; its menacing attitude; the
necessity and means of escape. A dog likewise directs his eye to
the same animal; an image is formed upon the retina of his eye,
and this being conveyed by the optic nerve to the brain, which, by
parity of reason, is the organ of the principle called instinct;
instinct also has a perception of the animal. The modes thus far
are perfectly analogous; but here inquiry has rested; and man
absolutely denied that instinct could make a rational use of the
perception, which he could not deny it had obtained. He did not
or would not reflect, that if the Deity had bestowed upon animals
an eye of wonderful mechanism like his own; an optic nerve and
brain, and a principle to take knowledge of impressions conveyed
to it by the organs of vision; together with all the other senses
requisite for perception; some of them most delicate, others most
powerful; there was no reason why he should render them nugatory
by denying to this principle the ability to reflect upon such
perceptions and arrive at conclusions. He did not consider that the
dog discovered the object in question to be dangerous as quick as
he did; and exhibited this conclusion by fleeing as soon as he; but
insisted, in the face of unyielding facts, that a blind, unfathomable
impulse urged the creature to escape, while the man arrived at the
same determination by a most simple process of reasoning.

In another and concluding number, the reason or judgment of the
principle called Instinct will be considered at large.

[421]

OCTOBER.
BY H. W. ROCKWELL.

Bryant.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

[422]

THE INFLUENTIAL MAN.
A SKETCH OF TINNECUM.

The citizens of the little suburb of Quog pressing on to the
accomplishment of any town measure would remind you of the
sheep-flocks of their own extensive plains and pasture-grounds,
urged helter-skelter, yet all in one direction, and that too by the
agency of a single shepherd. Whoever threw himself in the way,
must either press onward with the throng, or be trampled down and
overcome. Yet plastic as they were in the hands of their own
chosen guides, the people of Quog were an unconquered Democracy,
and breathed the voluptuous air of freedom. Every man was
‘as good’ as his fellow, none better. Socially, morally, politically,
they considered themselves on one dead level, like the country
around them. Quog was the very grave of all distinctions; but
although its citizens submitted to no dictation, and would not be
‘druv,’ yet what amounted to the same thing, they could be impelled
in a pretty compact body, whether for good or for ill, by the seductive
gentleness of a force applied a tergo; that is, not so much to
their reasoning faculties, as to their baser propensities.

Uncle Billy Pine was beyond all question the great man of
Quog; the umpire, the last court of appeal in complex cases. ‘If
he says so, I guess it will have to be so,’ was a common saying,
should any one be so obdurate as to persist in an opinion of his own.
It was marvellous how two or three words from him would alter the
complexion of cases which had just before been flooded with light
by the eloquence of some confident orator. Arguments piled upon
arguments, until they got to be highly cumulative, were thrown
down in ruinous confusion, the moment his carbuncled nose appeared
in sight. The school-master succumbed to him, but the school-master
was seldom ‘abroad’ in Quog. The minority, which was
ridiculously small, (for there was a minority on all important questions,)
were forced to acknowledge, ‘He is an influential man—an
influential man.’ How he came to acquire so much respect, I know
not; it was a sentiment which sprang up, and gradually gained
strength, in the bosom of his townsmen; and which they explained
in no more philosophical way than this, that ‘there was something
about him.’ He possessed the common rudiments of education;
but although he always did take his regular potations, and always
would, by reason of which his face had become as ruddy as a lobster,
he claimed it as a positive virtue, on the strength of which he
expected to inherit heaven, that he was unflinchingly honest, that
he ‘never robbed nobody,’ and that so long as he was above ground,
or had any thing to say, he meant to see justice done between man
and man. He possessed what was esteemed a handsome property[423]
in land, which enabled him to smoke his pipe at the ale-house in a
very leisurely way; and here perhaps he laid the foundation of his
influence, by the fascination of his social powers, his practical
democracy, his cordial familiarity, and his uniform system of treating
all alike. He slurred over his ignorance very handsomely by being
fluent on all public topics, and by a display of what his fellow-citizens
denominated ‘good common sense.’ Such was the ‘Influential
Man.’

Quog was a maritime place, at least pretty near to the salt-meadows
on Long Island, and carried on a vigorous trade in clams,
eels, cockles, horse-feet, fish of various kinds, and wild duck. The
inhabitants were unlearned, and so were their ancestors before them,
down to the first settlement. There was no occasion for this; they
might have been highly educated to a man, had they desired learning,
and that too without money and without price. There was a
source of revenue among them, which could be instantly developed,
richer than could be derived from creeks, bays, and fishing-grounds
in a century. They might have varied the intervals of toil with the
delight of books, whereas in the existing state of things there was
not so much as a bible or an almanac to be found along the whole
shore. Some philanthropists in a remote part of the town undertook
to abate this ignorance, and to make the people of Quog wise.
These however resented this meddling impudence with great fury,
and raised up such a storm of prejudice and bad feeling as had
never been known to rage within the memory of the oldest inhabitant.
It was a very dangerous experiment on the part of the
minority; the ‘judicious Hookers’ among them were fain to acknowledge
that the attempt was ill-judged and premature. There were
town-lands belonging to the town of Quog to the amount of some
thousand acres, lying in their state of natural wildness, without
fence, but capable of producing good crops, and being richly cultured.
From so much waste ground but a small and partial benefit
fell to the share of each inhabitant. The imagination of the philanthropist
loved to picture those extensive plains, which now stretched
as far as the eye could reach, without tree or shrub, in one melancholy
extent of barrenness, converted into rich farms, covered with
waving harvests, and giving sustenance to men inured to the noblest
of all labor, the culture of the soil. There was now indeed one
pleasing, picturesque sight, of which the eye never wearied; multitudes
of cattle, dotting the plain in large companies, quietly grazing,
or standing in reflective attitudes, almost as if they were painted on
the canvass. Seen at a little distance, on the naked plain, and
relieved by no near object these variegated groups would cause the
eye which loves the beautiful or picturesque to dance with rapture.
The air of quietude and repose diffused over these dumb creatures,
recalls to the mind every picture of rural happiness, the fondest we
have conceived in dreams, or read of in the lucubrations of the
poets.

It was desirable to dispose of these lands for a moderate price,
and convert the revenue into a fund for the education of every child[424]
in the town of Quog. There were a few who had long anxiously
reflected on this subject, and brought every plausible argument to
bear upon the inhabitants. They should relinquish no privilege,
they should reap inconceivable advantages for themselves and their
posterity, and education should shed down its blessings upon all; in
short, nobody could foresee what a revolution would take place
among the people of Quog, if they would but sell the town-lands.
There was no use however of stirring up the matter. Uncle Billy
said it should not be done; no, never, never, while his head was
above ground; and ‘if he said so, it would have to be so.’

Years passed away, and still the light of education had never
dawned on that benighted people. They were yet addicted to their
old pursuits, spending most of the time in taking eels and clams,
and seemed not to have a single wish beyond satisfying their present
hunger. They sent their cows to pasture on the great plains; and
this was a heritage which their fathers enjoyed, and which, in spite
of all modern reform, they meant to transmit undiminished to their
children. Mr. William Pine grew fonder of the bottle as he grew
older, and was held in more affectionate respect. He threw out his
disjointed philosophy with a most unstudied air, during the interval
of his whiffs; and whether on general politics, or local measures, his
sentiments crept abroad, and formed a standard of opinion for the
whole town of Quog. So subtle a thing is influence. It is not
riches, it is not talent, it is not eloquence; it is the je ne sais quoi.

At last the reform party, who had kept quiet a good while, with a
forlorn hope of a better state of things, expecting moreover in the
course of nature that it would please divine Providence to remove
out of this mortal life their obdurate neighbor, began with a very
cautious foot to stir up the old project of selling the town-lands.
They talked very indefatigably, but in a gentle, subdued tone, with
all their neighbors, smoothing down their asperities of temper, and
presenting the subject in a great many plausible lights. Nor did
their labor seem wholly in vain. Those who listened urged nothing
in reply, and were even willing to acknowledge that what they had
stated ‘was all well enough.’ These good reformers persevered in
their peripatetic philosophy, and even flattered themselves that they
had obtained a good position, and had got a lever adjusted with
which they would move the mountain of old prejudice, and get rid
of that terrible stumbling-block in the way of all good measures,
that blind and ignorant, but influential old man!

The crisis had now come, when, according to their judgment, it
would be judicious to bring into play their new strength, and test
the whole matter by a public vote at the next meeting of the town.
In the mean time, they spared no pains to seek out the most violent
opposers, to reason with them emolliently; and to spread out, simplify,
and explain the subject to those of extreme stupidity. At last
a great many said that they were well enough satisfied, and ‘thought
it like enough that they would vote for the measure.’ The ‘friends
of education’ held a caucus, which was attended with great animation
and rubbing of hands. A committee, appointed for the purpose,[425]
presented the draught of a school-house on an improved plan.
Public opinion seemed to have become so leavened by these new
and enlightened views, as to leave scarcely a single doubt of the
most unqualified success. One could mention three or four who
were wavering; another a half a dozen who had made up their
minds; another a dozen who declared expressly that they would
vote for the measure. All this diffused encouraging smiles over the
faces of the members, and led many of them to declare boldly that
they could have carried their point some years ago, if they had only
thought so; that it only required tact, management, and perseverance;
and that they had vastly overrated the importance of the
Influential Man.

What had hitherto produced as much popular effect as any thing
at the town-meetings, was a patriotic song, composed by Uncle Billy
Pine, which will serve to show the literature of Quog, and which
was frequently sung with great zest, and an overpowering chorus:

The jingle of the above song, which consisted of a good many
verses, and which was thoroughly learned by all the population of
Quog, still sounded in the ears of the ‘friends of education,’ and
they sincerely hoped that by the time of the approaching contest it
would be forgotten.

The day at last arrived, the important day, and the townsmen, for
want of a better covering, were assembled to vote beneath the open
sky. The reform party were there in full force, and with an adequate
degree of spirits. When other business had been transacted,
the chairman said:

‘Gentlemen, it is proposed to sell the town-lands; those who are
in favor of this measure, will please signify it by holding up their
hands.’

Then it was that the orator of the above party, being loudly called
upon, spoke out. He was a thin-faced man, pale and agitated with
the importance of his message, which he desired to present in the
most translucent way; for he knew the benefits of education, having
come to that benighted region from the very heart of New-England,
where its blessings are as free as air. ‘My respected
friends,’ said he, ‘we want you all to be satisfied in your own minds.
It doos seem to be a pity that all this land should lie idle, when you
might just as well sell it for thousands of dollars, and have the
money in your own pockets; or what is a great deal better, edicate[426]
your children with it. Just këount up what it would come to, if
there’s any of you acquainted with arithmetic, and you’ll find
there’s plenty, kalkalating only the interest, for all purposes of eddication.
And what good do you gëit ëout of it nëow? Why every
man sends his këow to pastur’, and it’s mighty poor pastur’, that’s a
fact. (Cheers.) Wal, I s’pose some folks will say the poor man and
the rich man get served both alike, for when the mashes are mowed,
both have the same right. That isn’t so, my respected friends.
For the rich man can afford to send four times as many hands, and
carry off four times as much hay. (Cheers.) Now the time doos
seem to be come to remedy this evil, and to get a fair distribution of
the proceeds. We don’t want to ‘take your rights away,’ my christian
friends; we want to give every man his own rights. I’ve got
reason to think that many of you look at this matter in the right
light, sence it’s been set before you, and made all plain; and this
speaks much for that wonderful nat’ral-born intelligence which is
common to the people of Quog. (Cheers.) Nëow is the time to
decide this matter; that’s the only fault, that you’ve been a-thinkin’
about it too long; but my friends, you can make up for lost time;
put your shoulder to the wheel, and whatever you do, do it nëow!
nëow! NËOW!‘

This praiseworthy speech produced considerable sensation on the
ground. One said it was reasonable enough; another said he
couldn’t pick any flaw in what the speaker had set forth; another
declared he was a smart man. In short, a very general buzz of
approbation ran through the assembly; and the slow dawn of intelligence
beginning to break gradually over the faces of those present,
gave evidence that ‘the cause’ had never before made such a long
stride in the town of Quog. The question was now about to be
taken, when somebody requested the chairman to ‘hold on a minute;
it was well enough to hear all sides first; and may be Uncle Billy
had got a word to say.’ The reform party looked a little frightened,
as they had augured very favorably from not having discovered the
‘Influential Man’ upon the ground. He had only retired to the bar-room,
however, and held himself in readiness as soon as the proper
moment should arrive. He now edged his way up to the tribune,
with a smiling, rubicund face, and swinging his hat around, ‘Boys,’
said he, with a gay, familiar tone, ‘don’t you hold up your hands for
no such thing. Now you’ve got something to give to your children
when you die, and they can’t spend it, nor run away with it. Let
the aristocrats get hold of the money, and they’ll put it into their
pockets, and then see where you’ll be; the plains, mashes, money,
all gone. That aint all. The next thing they’ll do will be to sell
your fishing-privileges; (great excitement;) and when you go upon
the grounds you’ll be druv off. What’ll you do then? No clammin’,
no eelin’, and no pastur’ to feed your cow onto. That’s what it’ll
nat’rally lead to. Now you see, I’m an old man, and know how
these things work; but by ——! I won’t stand by, not while my
gray hairs is above ground, and see your rights taken away. So
hold on to your rights, boys! hold on to your rights!’

[427]

A shout arose, a triumphant shout, from the whole mass, the above
Doric eloquence having turned them completely about. Who would
have thought that the aspect of things could become so changed?
But this comes of having the last word. Pleasant smiles were diffused
over the face of Uncle Billy; and the meeting being now
ripe for the question, it was put, and the inhabitants, as it were with
one voice, decided that the town-lands should remain ‘just as they
were.’ The philanthropists departed from the ground wofully chapfallen,
amid the jeers and calumniations of the crowd; and the old
chorus met their ears from the tavern-doors and windows as they
passed:

It is a good maxim never to despair; and perseverance in a just
cause will at last accomplish its most difficult ends. For the present
generation it is to be feared that nothing can be done. Their case
is indeed peculiar. They never will sell the town-lands until they
get education, and they never will get education until they sell the
town-lands. Thus the matter stands; and it grieves me to say, in
conclusion, that never was the pall of ignorance more dark than that
which hangs at this moment over the benighted regions of Quog.

F. W. S.

THE BROKEN VOW.

J. T. F.

Boston, Oct., 1843.

[428]

CHRONICLES OF THE PAST.

NUMBER TWO.

The application of names to places is often a matter of mere
fancy, without a semblance of appropriateness. The belligerent
little State of Rhode-Island, for example, bears no more likeness to
the Isle of Rhodes, from which it takes its name, than does a West
Indian war-club to the queue of a Chinese mandarin. The Bay
State is no more the State possessing a bay, than are half the sea-board
States in the Union; nor has Connecticut any more claim to
the river which enriches her meadows, nor Vermont to the greensward
of her hills, than has Massachusetts to the one, or Western
Virginia to the other. Far more mal-apropos, however, than all we
have mentioned, is the application of palmetto to the chivalrous land
of nullification, since neither on upland nor lowland, rice field nor
cotton-field, saving only the dwarf specimens upon the sand-banks
of Sullivan’s Island, is that fantastic tree of the tropics to be found
any where within the State. In truth, as a general thing, there is
neither character nor cleverness in the application of names to
places; and he who should form his notions of the different sections
of our country from the appellations they have received, would be
much in the condition of Bossuet’s student of history, who had
taken for his text-books Gulliver’s Voyages and Rabelais’s Pantagruel.

There is, however, one notable exception to the general fact.
New-Hampshire is rightly and truly designated the Granite State.
Not only in the bare sides of her stupendous mountains, and the
broad bases of her rugged hills, does she partake largely of this firm
conglomerate, but in her people also she seems to have compounded
no small share of the hard material. Stern, unbending, indomitable,
with physical frames like the gnarled oak, and characters rough as
the huge boulders upon her soil, New-Hampshire may boast a race
of men unequalled for energy and endurance by any other in the
world. It would seem as if the old Saxon legend, which makes
Tor, the war-god, hew the first man, with hammer and chisel, out
of a block of stone, and give him life with a flash of lightning,
were fully verified in these hardy sons of the mountains; for they
are almost literally men of granite, with electric spirits. It has been
my fortune, in a not uneventful life, to have travelled over many portions
of the world’s surface, and to have seen much of human manners
and character; and I can truly say that I have always returned
to the barren soil of New-Hampshire with a higher respect and a
warmer love for the rude virtues of her sons; and it is now my firm
belief, should the day ever come, which may Heaven avert! when
dissensions will rend asunder that great charter of our freedom, the[429]
Constitution, that Liberty, like the bird we have chosen for her
emblem, scared from her resting-place in the capitol, would find her
last and secure home among the dwellers on the hill-sides of the
Granite State.

This is not equally true, however, of every portion of New-Hampshire.
Along the southern borders of her territory the spindle
and shuttle have introduced a race who are strangers to the simple
virtues of her husbandmen; so that even they, tempted by the lucre
of gain, have sadly fallen from the primitive plainness which was
once their most enviable characteristic. Neither upon the rich intervales
of the Connecticut, where wealth comes unattended by her
handmaid labor, will you find the true specimens of her stalwart
yeomanry. It is in the distant up-country only, among the townships
far removed from the bustle of the manufactory and the crowd
of the market-place, that the rough husbandmen of the hard soil,
the sterling democracy of our degenerate age, are to be sought and
known. There they dwell, the honest country-folk of by-gone days,
undisturbed by the changes which time brings over other portions
of the world, contented lords of the heritage of their fathers.

Whether it is to be attributed to some peculiarities of climate or
of soil, or to some one of those other thousand influences which are
ever operating upon the physical frame, it is certain that the maximum
of bodily size and human life, over a considerable portion of
the Granite State, is at a higher standard than in any other part of
our country. It is capable of being demonstrated by the student of
history, that more of pure, unadulterated Saxon blood runs in the
veins of the backwoodsmen of New-Hampshire, than in any other
class of our people; but whether this has any thing to do with the
fact we have stated, cannot of course be determined. That fact,
however, is established beyond a doubt; and he who would see a
peasantry of sturdier frames and greater age than is to be found
elsewhere in the whole world, may find them scattered over the
rough soil and along the narrow valleys of the White Mountains.
Six feet in height, and one hundred and sixty pounds in weight,
make elsewhere a man above the customary standard; but in New-Hampshire
scores of young men, from six feet two inches to six feet
five, and weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, never deem themselves
above the ordinary size. I have in my mind’s eye at this
moment ten young men, who would weigh two hundred pounds,
without a single ounce of surplus flesh, and I doubt not thousands
over the State could be found to match them in every way.

The portion of the State of which this is peculiarly true, lies north
of the Winnepisseogee lake. It is a country of all others most uninviting
to the farmer, and one wonders what could have tempted its
first settlers to have selected it as a home. Huge rocks, tumbled
from the mountains, lie thickly scattered over the tillage-ground and
pastures; ledges, bare or covered with dark green moss, run for
miles often through farms and homesteads; precipitous banks and
abrupt precipices swell and break over the whole landscape; and
the entire country is ploughed with deep ravines, and barren with a[430]
scanty soil, beyond what any description can convey. To the lover
of nature, indeed, it is a country full of beauty. Those old hills,
black with forests of Norway pine, lying like the sleeping guardians
of the beautiful lake by their side; and those rustic cottages,
scattered along the narrow valley which the retreating waters have
left between themselves and the mountains; and finer than all, the
numerous water-falls that leap and dash and gurgle onward over
scaur and precipice and wooded cliff toward the Winnepisseogee,
which seems waiting like some gentle mother to welcome her joyous
children to her bosom; are well worth the journey of many a
long mile to the scenery-loving tourist. But the people are poor.
Toiling from year to year with unceasing industry, they gain from
the hard soil a bare livelihood, from youth to old age. Happy indeed
in their poverty; contented, unaspiring, and satisfied if the last days
of December shall find them no poorer than they commenced the
year, and the produce of the farm has proved sufficient to pay the
tax of poll and parsonage, and yield a sufficiency for the winter’s
store.

The features of the country strike the eye accustomed to a more
dense population as singularly unique. One may travel those roads,
winding through the mountain passes and along the high palisades,
for days, and see neither village nor hamlet, nothing indeed but the
low, unpainted houses, sometimes prettily covered with jessamine
and ivy, but more often bare of all taste or adornment, saving the
solitary lilac-trees which stand in the corners of the court-yards, or
the old scented thorn-bushes by the side of the door. Looking
down sometimes from an elevation he has gained, they seem to the
traveller, those cottages, like martins’ nests, dotting the curving
shores of some beautiful bay; and again from some deep ravine,
they appear like fairy domicils, perched high on the cliffs and ramparts
of the mountains. Interspersed in every few miles are the
district school-houses and the parish churches, the one almost invariably
standing upon the fork of two or more roads, and the other
crowning the summit of the highest hill attainable by horse and
vehicle. And then the country tavern, whose long shed and sanded
hall give surety to the stranger and his beast of a comfortable noon-tide
baiting; or, in the more solitary townships, where the places of
entertainment are few and far between, the quiet nook by the forest
road-side, where the dipper hangs beside the overflowing water-trough,
and the guide-board measures out the long miles between
him and his evening resting-place; each and all objects of pleasant
recollection to the traveller, as he muses upon his journeyings in
after life.

The effect of a mountain atmosphere upon the health and spirits
of mankind has long been known to the medical faculty, and has
been treated of by its most distinguished writers. Its equal tendency
to the extension of human life, however, naturally as it seems
to follow from the other, has been entirely overlooked. And yet
this is as capable of satisfactory demonstration as any fact connected
with the animal economy. Nor is this the only fact of interest in[431]
regard to this subject, which presents itself to the attentive and
accurate observer. It is also capable of proof, that up to a certain
distance from the equator, the length of life increases in a steady
ratio with the degrees of latitude. In some recent statistics which
have been carefully taken, and which upon their completion will be
given to the world, it has been ascertained that the average length
of human life is thirteen per cent. greater in the mountain districts
of New-Hampshire than it is upon the sea-board country of Massachusetts
or Maine; fourteen per cent. greater than in New-York or
Pennsylvania; seventeen per cent. greater than in Virginia; and
twenty-two per cent. greater than in any State south of the parallel
of thirty-five degrees. There are indeed other causes to be taken
into the account, to which we cannot now refer, which are every
where recognized as having an important influence upon the physique,
if not indeed upon the morale, of the human race. But entirely
aside from these, the principle of an increasing age directly following
a diminishing temperature, can be most satisfactorily shown; so
that the rough mountaineer of New-Hampshire has as much right
to calculate upon the good old age of eighty-six, as has the lordly
planter of the Sea Islands to the premature decrepitude of three-score.

This extreme old age to which the agriculturalists of New-Hampshire
attain, is perceptible to the most casual observer. Over the
whole country we have described, evidences of the truth of this
force themselves upon his attention, wherever he goes. The old
man of seventy-five years still mows his swath in the summer, and
bends his sickle in the autumn, with the elastic vigor of the prime
of manhood. The barn rings with the heavy strokes of the flail,
swung in alternate succession by the veteran and his grandson.
The cozy couple, who could tell you stories of their own experience
in revolutionary days, ride each Sabbath morning side by side upon
the pillioned saddle to the house of God. The simple head-stones
in the church-yard also, though they may often record the premature
decay of some bright blossom of the social circle, more frequently
point out the resting-places of those who were gathered to their
graves like the shock of corn that cometh in in its season. In the
town of Moultonborough, for example, where the population scarcely
reaches to thirteen hundred souls, no less than forty-four persons
have died since 1833, whose average ages were ninety-eight years.
Of these forty-four, twenty-six had exceeded a century, and the
youngest of the band was cut off at the premature age of eighty-seven.
‘Think of that, Master Brook!’ But the oldest of the
group, he who was for many years the banner-veteran of our worthies,
and whose memory, we opine, will still be foremost for many
years to come; he, our hearty Scotchman, whose monument rises
by the church-yard gate, he, unshrinking, undismayed, stood erect
under the accumulated weight of six score and seven full-told years!

Brave old Donald McNaughton! thrice honored be thy memory!
Year after year didst thou live on in the very greenness of decrepitude;
and though old Time filched one by one the glories of thy[432]
manhood, it mattered little, so long as listeners would come to thy
long stories of the feats of daring at Louisburg and the Plains of
Abraham! Thou type of graceful covetousness, thou realization of
penurious modesty, it irks me to think that thou, at the last, malgré
thy unwearied care and long delay, shouldst have been forced to
pass the Lethean stream in leaky Stygian wherry! But Death
took thee unawares; and he whom thou hadst so long defied, impatient
of the delay, and distrusting perchance his skill to meet thee
in open day, stole upon thee in thy midnight slumbers, and carried
thee, a poor forked shape, unresisting because unconscious, to the
pale kingdom.

The history of Donald McNaughton’s life would be replete with
worldly wisdom. Commencing life a ‘puir bairn,’ to use his own
phrase, though at the time to which he alluded he must well-nigh
have completed his fiftieth year, by unremitted industry and careful
economy he amassed a fortune, remarkable in a new and unproductive
country. Up to his one hundredth year he labored daily in the
field, and his best workmen could seldom surpass him in the amount
of labor. Even at that age it was not the decrepitude of years but
of an accidental injury, which laid the old man by, and to the very
day of his confinement, which preceded his death but a single
week, he personally superintended all the business of his homestead.
At the distant market-town in the coldest winter weather;
at the polls on every day of election through the ‘sleety dribble’
and miry roads of earliest spring; at church and funeral, auction-sale
and country gathering, he was ever the foremost man. Indeed
in all matters, whether of state or church, public or private, he
prided himself upon his superior sagacity; and not without reason.
Shrewd, careful, far-sighted, firm in the tenacity with which he
held, and cool in the manner with which he expressed, his opinions,
he retained over three generations the undisputed sway of a superior
man.

The secret of the great age to which he attained was in contravention
of all the principles of dietetics. No man was ever more
imprudent in his diet, or in his exposure to the weather. He was,
however, habitually cheerful; a consequence rather than a cause of
his continued healthfulness; and no war-worn hero ever better
loved, by the fireside of the wintry night, or under the summer
shade of his broad roof-tree, ‘to count his scars, and tell what deeds
were done,’ than did old Scotch Donald. How well I remember
the lighting up of his bright hazle eye as he would commence in
his broad highland accent some tale of flood or field; and how
readily we boys would quit the game of cricket or marbles, to
listen to a story of the wars by old ‘Gran’fth McNaughton!’

Nor was it in narrative alone that the old man excelled. No
man better loved a ready joke, and no man better turned one, than
did he. I remember a pedler one day riding up to his door, the
poor beast he bestrode being ladened from shoulder to haunch with
the variety of wares which he had to dispose of. Greatly to our
surprise, old Donald met him at the door with a most cheerful greeting,[433]
for we well knew that pedlers were his utter abomination, and,
offering him a chair, inquired what he had to sell. ‘Oh, every
thing, Sir; every thing,’ replied he of the packs; ‘ribbons, silks,
calicoes, combs, thimbles, needles, scissors, gloves, belts, sewing-silk—every
thing, Sir, every thing! What will you have?’ ‘Got
any grind-stones?’ asked the old man. ‘Oh, no Sir, I came a
horse-back.’ ‘Ah, I thought you came a foot!‘ was the reply,
uttered in a tone and manner that sent the poor hawker out at the
door with a speed that no maledictions could have effected.

For many years Mr. McNaughton was the only justice of the
peace in the town where he resided; and a history of the cases
which came before him, and of his decisions thereupon, would
furnish a new chapter in civil jurisprudence amusing enough.
Whatever may have been the landmarks in law which influenced
those decisions, it is certain that they generally gave satisfaction,
and were considered by the parties in dispute as final beyond resort.
Nothing gave the old man more satisfaction in his judicial capacity
than to puzzle the lawyer, for we had but one in the county in
those days, by the decisions he pronounced, and his frequent reply
to the objections urged. ‘So ye dinna ken my reasons, ye say,
Mr. Bartlett, for the decision I mad’ to-day? Weel, weel, I ken
them mysel’, an’ that’s a’ sufficient in the law, nae doubt!’ became
almost proverbial in the mouths of the people. I remember two
men being brought before him upon a charge of stealing the poultry
of a poor widow, who lived in the outskirts of the parish, for whose
conviction, Esquire Bartlett, from some personal pique, had made
extraordinary efforts. The men had been taken the night previous
about ten o’clock, one in bed and asleep, the other sitting up by his
kitchen fire. There was but little evidence of their guilt, and the
advocate had to make the most of every circumstance, in order to
show a semblance of justice in binding the men over for appearance
at a higher tribunal. Of course the situation in which each
was found was strongly insisted upon as a proof of guilt; and while
one was awake at the dead of night, stung by remorse for his crimes
beyond the power of sleep to quiet, the other was shown to be even
more deep in iniquity, by the utter indifference he manifested in
going to sleep upon his pillow, after the perpetration of the horrible
deed. Without perceiving the inconsistency of the two parts of
his argument, the lawyer rested his case, and waited for the decision,
which the old justice was not slow in giving. Calling the two
culprits before his chair, he arose and said: ‘I dinna ken what
lawyer Bartlett would ha’e a mon do, at ten o’clock at night. Gin
he sits up by his fire, he is a rogue for sure; an’ gin he gang to bed,
he is nae honest mon! Here, you John Wilkins, you may gang
free this time, only never let me hear you sitting up ayont ten at
night again; and you, Sam Wilkins, you may gang free too, gin
you promise ne’er to shut your e’en till eleven o’clock, whenever
you rob a hen-roost!’

Although Donald McNaughton was the oldest man in the town,
yet there was not after all that visible contrast between him and his[434]
associates, which a stranger would have expected. At that day,
the minister who sat above him in the pulpit, and who, though he
did not preach, still deemed himself able to do so, and the deacon
who administered the sacramental ordinance, were both nearly a
century in age. Of the former, one of that staunch little band of
clergymen, who, from the time the constitution was accepted up to
the close of the administration of Jefferson, stood manfully on the
democratic side, and lived, and preached, and prayed for the
people’s rights, we have many anecdotes to relate at another time.
If any man ever deserved a record in the hearts of freemen, it was
he, the faithful pastor, the unswerving champion of the truth; and
though it is a long time since

yet it is fitting to call up from the past the spirits of those who won
for us the liberty we enjoy.

But the Deacon, good old Deacon Richardson, was in political
sentiment, as in every thing else, the very antipodes of the minister.
He too, however, was a veteran of the war of the Revolution;
and the stories he told, though not equal in interest to the old Scotchman’s,
were yet not without their merit. Of his years, the Deacon
was the most agile person I ever saw; and up to the age of ninety-four,
would mount his horse, and ride over hill and dale to church
or tavern, with the speed of a reckless plough-boy. Indeed he had
a physical frame which seemed never to feel the effects of old age;
one of those lean, tough, shrivelled bodies that wilt early, but decay
late, and which, however seared by increasing winters, still cling to
life, like the last leaf to the tree. At fifty years the good Deacon
looked as old, and felt as old, as he did forty years after. Through
Saratoga, and Monmouth, and Breed’s Hill encounters, he had
escaped unscathed; and but for the untoward fall of the last forest-tree
he ever chopped, there was no reason apparent why he might
not have lived through another century. Cheerful, merry, and
frolicksome as a lamb at midsummer, the dapper little centenarian
would frisk about among the matrons and spinsters at our country
parties, like the licensed beau of a boarding-school. But with all
his partialities for the sex, the Deacon was never married. Why
this was so, no one could ever tell, unless, from a habit of stuttering,
which nearly overcame him when he was embarrassed, he found it
difficult to get out words enough for a proposal. And yet there
were those among our lone damsels, who, one would have thought,
would have eked out the sentence when it was once fairly begun,
for the solitude of no man had ever more commiseration from the
gentler sex than did his.

Speaking of the Deacon’s stuttering habit of talking, reminds me
of a reply he made to some brethren of the church, who had been
deputed to converse with him upon his known disaffection to a new
clergyman, whom the parish were about to settle. The real objection
which he had to the minister was never known, but the avowed[435]
one was the inferior mental endowments which the sermons he had
preached showed him possessed of. This he urged upon the committee
from the church, and this they in turn combated and denied.
At last, finding the Deacon’s objections to be indomitable, beyond
the hope of removing, one of the brethren said: ‘Well, Deacon
Richardson, let us grant you all that you say, still I think you are
wrong. We must not expect a man of first-rate abilities in our
little congregation. We must be content with one of moderate
talents. You know the Bible says, that ‘one star differeth from
another star in glory.’

‘Humph!’ replied the Deacon, ‘I sh-sh-shouldn’t care if you
would give us a st-st-star, but we do-do-don’t want a lightning-bug!’
The minister was settled over the flock, however, and the old man
lived to overcome all his objections, despite his naturally obstinate
disposition.

Although Deacon Richardson was possessed of many excellent
traits of character, he was by nature rather inclined to an eager
grasping after wealth, a disposition which his solitary state greatly
confirmed and increased. For the last twenty years of his life the
attainment of wealth seemed to be his ruling passion, and he went
on, adding farm to farm, and mortgage to mortgage, until it began to
be feared that he would live to gain possession of all the property
in town. Apropos to this: I remember that a Methodist clergyman,
who had spent the night at my father’s house, addressed a little
boy, (who happened to be passing while he was performing his
ablutions at the ‘sink’ by the door,) and received his answers
somewhat in this wise, greatly to the amusement of all within
hearing:

Minister. Little boy, what is your name?

Boy. John, Sir.

Minister. John what?

Boy. John Berry, Sir.

Minister. Don’t you think it is time for you to be thinking
about your soul, my boy?

Boy. Sir?

Minister. Don’t you think it is best for you to be making
preparation for a future state? Is it not time for you to be thinking
about another world?

Boy. Yes, Sir; I think it is time, for father says Deacon Richardson’s
going to have all there is in this world!

But the Deacon has long gone to his last home, and far be it from
us to recall his foibles, ‘or draw his frailties from their dread abode.’
He did many a kindly act, and the blessing of the fatherless rested
upon his head.

But we have wandered from our subject, and it is too late to
resume it now. We believe there is much in that sterling democracy
of New-Hampshire, much of real gold, though it lack the
guinea’s stamp, which has never been revealed to the world. Not
only can all that we have claimed for the physique of those hardy
yeoman be incontestably proven, but it can be shown with equal[436]
clearness, that in intellectual endowments and moral qualities
they are seldom equalled and never surpassed. And if, in some
simple sketches of these people and their progenitors, we can illustrate
a page in our national history which is yet unwritten; if we
can impress upon our own age the worth of those who lived before
us, not for themselves alone, but to achieve our independence; if
we can show what they were who framed the charter of our freedom,
and what they would be now in the agitations of this hurrying
age, what they did and what they would have us do, our ‘chronicles’
will not have been written in vain.

SUNDAY AT PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS.
BY REV. WILLIAM B. TAPPAN.

[437]

THE TOP OF NEW-YORK.
BY S. W. MANSFIELD.

Three frosts in succession; and now, with extra flannels, a day
that was omitted last summer is dropped down here by mistake;
and nerves that were braced up to a fine tone collapse to a broken
fiddle. Men rush at the soda-shops, looking daggers at each other,
and women go careless of corsets, and showing their natural color.
Coal falls off again; ice-creams go up; Niblo has another ‘crack
night;’ the beggars are happy, and so am I.

Do you remember your first julep? The gradual mounting to
the brain, like the rush of joy to a sick heart that takes it doubtingly;
the quick grouping and glancing of thought from your
ideality; the uncorking of fancies bottled in your teens; and at
last a sudden ballooning of the whole head, that brings out the
stars, and the heavens opening, with angels passing to and fro,
(Broadway always, after a julep,) and you forget the dun of the
morning, and the girl that jilted you last night out of a week’s passion.
You forget her as such, but you remember, rather you repeat,
the heart-flutterings of the first night; the hand gently withdrawn
of the second; the delicious half-embrace (interrupted) of the
third; and the fourth, body, soul, and lips, all melting innocently
together, with pulses and Fahrenheit mounting the hundred! If
after that she gave you the kiss coyly at the door, with ears up like
an antelope’s, and said it was very naughty, you remember that her
dress was too airy to be disarranged; and ah! she’s only timing you
a little; and so God bless her forever!

Not that such things happen; never. But the julep makes you
think so. Well, do you remember the charming confusion of that
first julep; its beautiful bewilderment; (I premise, of course, that
it surprised an unbrandied stomach;) and would you like to repeat
the sensation, without breaking your late pledge? ‘Juleps be
hang’d!’ says you. Very well, you are in trouble to-day. Your
wife made you get up first, and the world rolls the wrong way with
you; the sun rose in the west, you say. Exactly so. It rose to
me, no’th-west and a point off, only yesterday. (Lobster salad for
supper; ten devils and a young one for bed-fellows, and the universe
knock’d into a cocked hat; saw it myself; every star went
past my window; took an observation in the morning: sun in the
north-west; the needle running round like a kitten after its tail, and
the earth bound to the north star! Fact! Nobody knew it but
me; but it’s all right now.) Well, the sun rose in the west; your
children teething, perhaps, and the nurse has a child of her own,
just arrived; and you think it probable that your wife has eloped
with her cousin, who urged you to marry her. Are any of these[438]
things so?—or, worst of all imaginings, have you breakfasted badly?
Then, Sir, Come up to the top of New-York!

If you have strained your eyes, looking up, half a life-time, take
the stair-case, the easiest way in the world of getting up in it, and
look down, or overlook, as you like. We have a cream left, and a
dash of curacoa that colors better than strawberries. Come up,
Sir, and open your lungs to the original element; quick! or you’ll
be carried away with the rush. A dam across Broadway for half an
hour would gather a Waterloo army.

Well, here you are; sit down, Sir, and don’t shout, or you will
have a park-full looking at you, and probably an alarm of fire. Let
the people pass. We have been through the play, and found that
the farce in real life is the only tragedy. Keep your heart fresh,
my young boy, and away from shilling seductions. Pass on, children;
we can’t ‘make believe’ sufficiently to-day, and will just
overlook you a little. Fix your eye, Sir, upon that baboon coming
out of a flue, till your nerves steady a little, and think what a sweep
of mind he must have after the confinement of a chimney. You
observe, the world is neither before us nor behind, for we are atop
of it. How the eye blunders about amid the sea of house-tops, and
what variety of chimney architecture not meant for the eye! Now
and then a spire points up, like the stray pines of a southern barren,
and outside are the tops of the shipping, hedging in the city
like bayonets. Farther on, the white sails dash about in all directions,
sweeping past each other with the untouched precision of a
street-walker, bowing gallantly with a touch of the beaver. The
steam-ferries cross with the straight-forward bearing of a militaire,
as though they took no pleasure whatever in the goings-on; and
here and there, with sails all out, top-gallantly, a tall ship moves
among the crowd, with the emphasis of royalty.

Rather airy, up here! The cream of those small seas in the
harbor has cooled the breeze for us, and the light over all, unless
the sun-spots have grown since, is the unmixed original of the first
day. The groaning of the streets comes up softened occasionally
with a shout, or merry laugh, like a mocking-bird’s in a menagerie;
and overhead, a few clouds float about, idle to all appearances, yet
each one is doing its errand of the morning, with a perfection far
beyond your particular range. Some are rolling over and over in
the sunshine; some just touching and parting, like women with
dresses too large to salute; and in the upper heavens, a few long
fellows, like ships upon the sea, are scudding in an entirely different
direction. Just as you are up or down in the world, Sir, will the
wind carry you.

Having looked about us, you may laugh or be sad, as you please.
I advise neither; but there below us is the material, from the smile
to the tear, and thousands of hearts now leaping to one or the
other. Some perhaps at this moment making their first exclamation
in the world, to large points of admiration from the just-made
mother; and some dropping a last broken word upon the bounds of
another world. Between these points are the variety of interjections,[439]
the oh! ah! pish! pah! hurra! and Hallelujah! that make
up human life.

There has been a lull for a while; and now New-York has dined,
and the soft pattering of feet tells us that beauty is thronging down
the pavé, to settle the dinner, and the pleasures of the evening.

Has your brain cooled? Take that glass, and tell me if the
archangel Gabriel has unsexed and fallen—into Broadway. How
elate that motion, as though she were walking on a mountain-top,
and as the whole world were beneath her, but not too far for her to
be a part, and the glory of it! Beauty and grace go with her, like
sunshine playing on a fountain. One who has just passed is sunning
his heart in the delusion that she looked at him. Poor fool!
Her thoughts are not promenading. Some things in this world are
rather riddlesome—rather. You would not say that sorrow had
touched her heart, and that passions are coiled there like serpents
sucking her very life-blood; some half-dead with gorging, and some
casting their coats for new life and vigor. Lost? As the star
that is falling, which nothing but the hand of God can stay! Follow
her home, and as the street-look is laid aside with her scarf,
how sad that face! Calm and still, with now and then a faint
smile flashing over it; but sheet-lightning, my dear Sir, for with
her the storm had passed. The flash shows the cloud, to be sure;
and to-morrow’s sun may nurse it into more thunder; but these are
unpleasant reflections. We should not have looked down.

There comes another, whose heaven is in another part of the
universe, separate entirely. She needs study, like an old painting;
but even with that, you never would know her, unless you were of
the same Heaven. Her sweet voice would be like any other, with
a difference that you would wonder at, but never understand.

And now the up-towns have gone up again, and night comes on,
with the stars out in the upper heavens, and the lights as stars
below. Between two heavens will not do, when either can be
reached.

‘Ride up—Broad-w-a-y!’ The boy has music in him. Good
night to the Top of New-York!

Julian.

THE BIRTH-DAY.

R. S. Chilton.

New-York, July, 1843.

[440]

THE EXILE’S SONG.

A. M.

THE ELEMENTS OF A RELIGIOUS CHARACTER.
‘BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM.’

What are the elements and traits of a religious character?
What combinations of virtue and excellence, of principle and
attainment, enter into and form a character which answers to our
conception of religion? We think we can recognize and judge of
such a character when it appears before us as the result of a process,
and therefore our first thought is, that it would be easy to
describe such a character. We know and can respect such a
character when we see it, and therefore we might say it could not
be difficult to tell how it is to be formed, and of what elements and
traits it must be composed.

But indeed it is not easy to describe a religious character, nor to
tell, on the moment, the combination and proportion of its virtues,
nor to analyze its parts. It is not easy, because character is of itself
a wonderful and a mysterious creation; its springs are hidden, its
processes are secret, its foundation and development do not admit
of close observation, and the power with which it impresses us is
rather realized than understood. And then the religious elements
of a character only increase the difficulty of exhibiting its construction[441]
and its power. And then again there has grown up such a
difference of estimate, such a variance in opinion among men, as to
what religion is, what it enjoins, what it allows, what it approves,
that we may indeed number it among the acknowledged impossibilities,
to portray the ideal of a religious character to the satisfaction
of any large number of persons. What different models are
held up for our imitation! As we trace back the burthened history
of two thousand years, we perceive that very different traits have
been insisted on, and various excellences required. Stress has
been laid upon one or another virtue; illustrious homage has been
offered in different generations to characters quite in contrast with
each other. Indeed, the civilized world now reveres alike some
departed worthies as joined in the communion of saints, who if on
earth together would have mutually denied each other’s claims to
any measure of regard.

Call up from their graves the departed worthies of their own day,
the robed and transfigured memorials of distant times; let the long
line of the revered dead pass in imagination before you, and as
they pass, read their titles. The difference between a smile and a
tear, between martyrdom and a triumph, between a smile of joy
and a pang of agony, between a feast and a fast, is not greater than
the difference in model and standard of character in those whom
we agree in calling religious men. The saint from the dreary
caverns of Africa leads the line. His bones start from his attenuated
skin; even the skin is worn away from his knees by frequent
prayer; his body is wasted by fasting, watching, and scourging: he
has been the companion of beasts, the prey of vermin; he has seen
it may be for half a century no human face or form. There was
the standard of a religious character for him, and for his age. Next
in the line is the monk; renouncing what is good, and commanding
what is wicked; possessing the virtues of a cloister, and the fancied
holiness which has made itself necessary to supply the place of real
holiness. And then the monk was accounted worthy. But with
his well-kept vows, and the well-worn record of his prayers, the
monk retires into shadow with the saint, and a saint of a different
aspect fills the eye. He comes as a dignitary of the church, bowed
down with gold and jewels; with armies at his command, and
holiness for his title. His garments are suffused with the odor of
incense; millions fall prostrate and do reverence even to his feet
with a kiss. He is anointed in life, and canonized at death. He
lived in a gorgeous palace, he sleeps in a costly shrine. But while
the pilgrim is on his way to that shrine, another ideal of the
religious character passes before the mind; and then there appears
before the eye one who is called a pious and godly man. He is the
Puritan of ancient days. He comes with sad and austere looks, yet
with a kind and tender heart, only we do not see the heart, because
he wishes to be known by the face, which his close-cut hair brings
into full view. A laugh to him is mockery; luxury is but a feasting
of the adversary of souls; amusement is impiety; outward ceremonial
is blasphemy. The offices of religion in one perpetual round,[442]
cases of conscience, large and little volumes of dry divinity, and
rigid family government, are the sacrifices which he offers to God.
He leaves his home that he may thus worship. He raises his
psalm of deliverance in the wilderness, and at death he rests
beside the roots of a forest-tree in a grave not without a memorial.
And he was the religious character of his day. And as the shades
of the departed fall back into mystery, we find ourselves surrounded
by groups of the living, who arrange themselves under the different
standards which they recognize for the religious character.

These standards might fitly be inscribed with the mottoes,
‘Morality, Ordinances, Faith;’ for from the one or the other of
these titles come the different models for the religious character.
Practical goodness, cheerful, kind and ready sympathy for the suffering,
uprightness in dealing, blamelessness in example, these
constitute the highest religious character for some. The observance
of seasons or rites, the literal fulfilment of the terms of ordinances,
is the great essential for the completeness of religious
character to others. Then justification by faith, an embrace of
doctrinal formularies, a fixed and constant and unresisting submission
to a covenant which suspends mercy, is the standard for others.
These are the prevailing standards of a religious character now.
Of course, if they exist, they are in some quarters insisted upon,
and the differences must constantly appear in the various estimates
formed by religious persons. These diverse standards have likewise
been chosen in the light of experience, of long experience,
and in full view of all those ancient models which we have contemplated.

Now from this survey of the strange contrasts presented to us,
as exhibiting the ideal of a religious character in different places
and generations, and among us now, we might at first judge that
there was in reality no true standard, but that it was all a matter of
fancy, combined somewhat with the aspects and emergencies of
society; that a religious character was no fixed, well-ascertained,
and established existence. Yet, after all, this standard has been by
no means so diverse as it would seem. For a deeper search proves
to us, that the same qualities of heart have been seeking for expression
by the most widely different manifestations. Change the skin
and drop the body with its worn knees, its sordid or its golden
robes, its rigid features, or its gay smiles, and the elements of
Christian excellence, if they exist, will appear the same in all,
divested of the local peculiarities of age and generation. Indeed,
true Christian goodness, excellence of character, is like the water,
the emblem of renewal and grace; water, as diffused over the
earth, differing every where by elevation and clime. Here it is
frozen into mountains of ice, there it issues as boiling vapor from
the earth; it is scanty and brackish in the desert, profuse and clear
in the green woods; here it is borne along in torrents; there it
trickles in dancing rills; here it is buried in deep wells, there it
oozes from full fountains; every where it is different, but every
where it is water, and every where it is the element of life. Such[443]
is goodness, true excellence of character every where, apart from
the peculiarities of age and clime.

Now by all this we are helped in discerning the elements of a
religious character. The common consent of men amounts to little
more than an allowance that a religious character must be formed
out of a common character by two processes; the one a process of
denial, the other a process of culture. And this indeed is the key
to our whole subject, the solution of the great question which we
have proposed, as to the standard of a religious character. There
is an element of denial, and an element of culture, in a religious
character; that is, a human character is made religious by renouncing
something, and by attaining something. A religious character
is to be formed out of a common character with some new materials;
it is to part with something of its earthly organization; something
of passion, weakness, and low desire, and to endue itself with
something of heavenly grace and essence; turned from darkness
unto light, from the power of Satan unto God.

Self-denial and culture, renunciation and attainment, are the two
great processes by which a religious character is to be formed, and
which, when applied, decide its elements. Yet there is a work
which precedes and accompanies these processes, and that work is
discipline; discipline, the agency which forms a religious character.
The first essential then in a religious character is, that it be the
subject of discipline; of discipline varying in the intensity of its
struggles; in the difficulty, the amount, the protraction of its efforts,
according to the natural differences of individuals, but always discipline;
self-knowledge and self-control, strong in its formed purpose,
resolute in pursuing it. A religious character was never of
spontaneous growth, nor acquired unconsciously. It is known to the
heart through all its stages. It is based upon spiritual convictions;
it crosses many natural wishes; it embraces prospects which lie
beyond the grave. These are elements of thought, of action, of
life, which never come by chance, or by mere good influences
around an individual. They vary in degree and strength in individuals,
but are conscious possessions to all who share them. Self-discipline
is a work which summons all our faculties, purposes,
knowledge, resolutions, and efforts; it has its weary hours; its
seasons for starting anew with quickened strength and zeal.

The prominent feature of a religious character is, that it has
been the subject of discipline; that it is itself the result of discipline;
has been wrought upon, formed, and established by discipline.
In such a character we expect that every element shall declare
effort and principle. The man or the woman, called religious, must
bear about them the proof that they are what they are, as the result
of an intention. We expect to see in a religious character distinctions
and differences which we do not look for in the common
standard of character. Nor only this; we expect also that these
differences should appear as the results of a good purpose well-endeavored;
a foundation, a life, a growth, consecrated by high
intentions to the highest uses and for the highest aims. This is a[444]
truth which cannot be too strongly urged or insisted upon. A religious
character ought to strike every one as the result of conscious
effort; a work begun and in progress; a diamond in the process of
being polished in the only way in which it may be polished, by
other diamonds. Discipline, visible in its intention and work, this
is the first of all essentials. This discipline will be strongly marked
by two processes, a process of self-denial, and a process of culture;
of renunciation and attainment. Of the fruits of these processes a
religious character must largely partake; yet it is scarcely possible
to describe in particulars the entire operation as it appears in the
result.

The long and almost uniform opinion of men is right in judging
that a religious character should present evidence of self-denial
and self-restraint; should have renounced something of pleasure
and desire; should have mortified some affections, and wrestled
with some infirmities. Of the measure of this denial, each honest
conscience must judge for itself. The great end of it, the sole
reason for its necessity in an individual character is, that the law of
the spiritual life may be obeyed, by the right exercise of the highest
faculties and aims of the human heart. All indulgence inconsistent
with this consecration is sin, and must be restrained. Yet who can
decide the measure of this indulgence or restraint for another? A
large ecclesiastical body has lately decided that dancing is inconsistent
with a religious character. Whether this opinion is true or
false, can be decided only by each individual for himself; by his
own knowledge whether this or that amusement makes him frivolous
and trifling, or whether it is only a momentary relaxation,
enjoyed and then forgotten.

Now it is evident that the Almighty does not need nor require at
our hands any self-denial or restraint of any kind, considered by
itself, independently of its uses. Self-denial is of value only
because of its influence on the character. So that we must ask
ourselves what is the reason for self-denial in any given case,
what is the nature of it, what the degree of it, what the result of it?
Then shall we learn that in a religious character there has been a
struggle between the lower and the higher nature, and that in all
the parts and stages of that struggle, passion and sense have been
denied; and denied for what? Not for a sour or morbid sanctimoniousness,
but for the sake of a calm and meditative rest of the
spirit, that unseen realities, and spiritual convictions, and noble purposes,
and heavenly hopes, may have power over the character.

And as to the second process, of which a religious character is to
show the visible results, the process of culture: this may appear in
many traits, and graces, and actions, so as to distinguish a religious
character from a common character. The elements of that culture
are affections and duties, motives and convictions. The same strife
between the higher and the lower nature which is begun in self-denial,
is pursued in spiritual culture. The heart searcheth after the
means of improvement and progress: and they are found near to
us; in the lowly duties of common life, in the opportunities of a[445]
day, in the necessity which our uniform experience presents, for
acting from principle if we would act aright. Self-culture, in all
its highest and most comprehensive processes, is the condition by
which Christian elements of character are to be acquired. Of
course, virtues and graces, tastes and affections, are to be valued
and preferred in proportion to their relative excellence. Piety and
love, which express the applications of the two great commandments,
are to be cherished, cultivated, and manifested. He who is
truly and earnestly pursuing these two processes of renunciation
and attainment, will acquire through his own experience a better
knowledge of the elements of a Christian character than any creed
or covenant can teach him. The opposing systems, the controverted
dogmas, the various usages and ceremonies of Christian sects, will
have but little importance for him; and he will feel that there are
two parties which he is to satisfy—God and his own soul.

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

Horace.

[446]

SKETCHES OF EAST-FLORIDA.

NUMBER TWO.

MY LAST NIGHT ON GUARD.

I was flat on my back, trying to count a small group of stars in
the zenith of that part of heaven which overhangs St. Augustine,
taking my observation by the camp-fire, from a pine board, with the
‘stub-shot’ for a pillow; the six feet of Bravo were disposed of
in the same manner; and Boag and a few Spaniards were radiating
in the zodiacal circle, of which the fire was the centre. The duties
of our profession had not been so severe that day as to forbid our
sitting up; but then it was much easier to lie down, at least so
thought the Spaniards, who take every thing the easiest way possible;
and Boag was deep in the invention of a new whirling contrivance
for the making of egg-nogg, and chose to give himself up
exclusively to the concentration of mind necessary for that purpose.
Some one had thrown out, rather lazily, that it was ‘very warm,’
and he reckoned ‘the alligators would stick their noses out to-night;’
and another had remarked, with considerable effort, that ‘alligators
or not, it was just right and couldn’t be better;’ and this seemed so
much the sense of the majority, that no one cared to heat himself
with any argument upon the subject; and each one wandered off
on his own private speculation.

It was that kind of night that seals up the lips like twilight.
Warm, perhaps to a fault, and yet a change of two degrees would
have drawn our cloaks over us, and we should have complained of
the cold. The fire was a mere companion, that could talk to us
without the effort of conversation; and in the absence of French
perfumery, the smell of the pitch kindling was quite passable, and
that of the orange-wood pretty much like any other. But the night
was not like any other; common enough there, but not within the
scope of any imagination that dates north of thirty-five degrees.
The air was nowhere in particular, unless you might suppose, from
the solemn tone of the pine woods, that the sea-breeze which went
out in the morning was on its way back; but a feather thrown up
would probably have wandered about for a while, and then balanced
itself upon my nose, and I should merely have seen a strange star
in the heavens; olden philosophers have done worse. But I didn’t
throw up a feather; too much trouble. Overhead, all was bright
and still; no shooting-stars, nor any thing of a quarrelsome nature;
and not a cloud to be seen, in a sky that has no clouds for mere
shading purposes; and though a stranger, standing on the sea-wall,
would have guessed a storm, from a flash seen occasionally in the
haze lying on the eastern horizon, there was no storm to be; merely
the playfulness of the Gulf Stream that is sometimes seen from
that coast.

[447]

In the lower part of the city, a dog was howling out some
unimaginable irritation, perhaps only to indicate that something
should be said upon such an occasion; or perhaps the hoot of a porpoise
disturbed him; or more likely, it was too still for him; he
couldn’t bear it. If I had fallen asleep, I should have dreamed of
being outside some ruined city, and the cry of that dog sounding up
through the narrow streets, like a man talking through a trumpet,
would have been the howl of a hyena or jackal; and with fallen
columns and moonlight, it would have sounded very well in a ‘letter
from our foreign correspondent.’ But in Augustine, it was only a
dog, and just like any other dog, that sometimes fancies itself very
unhappy, and howls out its inspired misery in baying the moon.
Beyond all doubt, dogs may be poetical. There are all varieties of
dog; and it would be strange if in such a mixed breed there were
not a poet-species, in a race that takes madness so easily. The dog
excepted, one would have called it very still at first thought, but on
listening, there was a great deal of varied music going on; one
voice after another coming to the ear from the innumerable land
and water fowl, making up a kind of opera, in which each one
appeared to speak very much at random; and that, I take it, is the
peculiar beauty of operas. Amid a great variety of short interjections,
queries and answers, some were talking entirely to themselves,
as it seemed, and others appeared to have a domestic, ‘keep away’
kind of expression in their remarks, arising probably from some
member of the family’s being too assiduous in his attentions; or
perhaps they had dined badly, and so got up a quarrel to improve
their digestion. No doubt there are unknown griefs, as well as
unwritten poetry, in all animal life. Whatever the cause, there was
an irritability and a nervous restlessness in the waters and salt-grass,
that larger animals of two legs, who dine when they please and as
they please, understand much better than I can tell.

Over all these inconsistences of a night so beautiful, swept like
a minute-gun the sound of the third wave breaking on Anastasia
Island; and on the other side, the forest, as aforesaid, which had
hundreds of miles of even tree-tops on which to get up its ‘voice
of the night,’ answered back in the same earnest and solemn manner.
No fingering, or tugging at the bellows, in all this organ-izing,
which was quite as good as could be made to order.

All this (and if any one wonders what it has to do with the incident
to follow, he has read novels in vain,) all this had ‘come and
gone’ through my mind, unconsciously, like a glass of congress-water
elsewhere; and I turned to the stars as usual, before shutting
up for the night. ‘Very tolerable,’ said I to myself, thinking of the
night, ‘and not to be sneezed at.’ (No taking cold in that climate.)
‘One, two, three; the sides of an equilateral triangle, and the square
of the hypothenuse bisected in the middle,’ and so forth. Q. e. d.;
there we are, the fourteenth; that is, the very ‘particular star.’ We
had agreed that she—that is, that we—would look at the same
star, and not to blunder upon different stars, which would be very
awkward, and, a thousand miles distant from each other, could not[448]
be connected without some waste of sentiment on the passage.
We had selected one in a group which had to be theorized geometrically
before the bright particular one could be identified. The idea
of her looking miscellaneously at the north pole and I at the south,
and each expecting the requisite titillation of sympathy! We were
not to be duped into any such latitudinal delusion!

I had found my star, and was looking very hard at it through the
tube of one hand, while the other was brushing off musquitoes,
when a gun reported itself about two miles distant; and directly
another, and another; after which the enemy appeared to be entirely
used up, and the engagement over.

The guard were asleep, and coming gradually to my elbow, I
intimated to Bravo that there was a disturbance at the North Post.
He gave the alarm to his comrades, who, one by one, came very
slowly to the consciousness of an Indian alarm. Then of a sudden
muskets glittered in the moon-light, belts were strapped, primings
looked to, and the sentries received orders to fire at any, the least
whisper, that was not perfectly intelligible and satisfactory. Bravo
started for the city; and now we began to hear the tramp of the
horse as they clattered up to the point of alarm. There were five
hundred Charleston volunteers in the city, ready for the first show
of fight or frolic; and in half an hour every man in town who had
a musket or rifle, was on his way to do battle against—nobody
knew what. There was much tramping, and shouting of ‘Where
are the rascals?’ ‘Which way?’ ‘Clear the track for the big gun!’
‘Down with the red devils!’ etc.; all which passed over, after a
little, and the people went back again, with a keen relish for hot
suppers, and a highly exhilarating sense of their increased importance.
It was not, however, so trifling a matter; and upon more
than one occasion during the war, the feeble and aged repaired to
the fort for security. Indians had been seen near the town only a
few days previous; several bold murders had been committed on
the Picolata road; and the tracks of parties almost daily seen by
the escort sent out between the two places. But this, if I remember
aright, was the first experience of the town in this new kind of
excitement.

After an hour or two Bravo returned with the fact, as he alleged,
that an Indian had been seen and fired at; and the sentry thought
he saw several more, but they wouldn’t wait for the people to come
and shoot them. The people had gone to bed again, assured that
no Indian would show himself there again; and as to the southern
post, it was only necessary to reflect that Corporal Bravo had command
there, and turn over to unwinking repose; ‘for gentlemen,’
said Bravo, ‘I have not thought proper to alarm the town with my
views upon this matter; though it is perfectly plain that an odd
Indian was sent to that post to attract attention that way, while the
main body of the enemy is undoubtedly in our neighborhood, and
we shall receive the first attack. Every man will sleep with one
eye open, and his hand on his musket.’ As the Indians might be
within hearing, the speech was received with silent applause; but[449]
there were quite a number of severe and very rapid gesticulatory
engagements, showing what would probably be done in the course
of the night. Boag and myself stood apart. We were out of favor.
Our exploit as ‘officer of the night’ had something to do with it;
and any one who likes the fag-ends of every thing will be glad to
learn that we arrived safe at our quarters under the protection of
the corporal, who had missed us from the camp. On retiring that
night, that is, laying myself out on a board, I went down, step by
step, into a very deep sleep; and although I was threatened with a
‘lock-up’ in the fort, and a court-martial trial, it was found impossible
to make me understand that I was wanted ‘on guard,’ and
another man was posted in my place. There was also an ‘incident
of travel’ that had soured the ‘complainants’ exceedingly.

In marching down from the fort, a day or two previous, the corporal
stopped at his house for a moment, and Boag and myself walked
on, turned the next corner, and went direct to the camp. The corporal
and guard, on resuming their march, missed us, and presuming
that we had deserted, went half a mile out of their way to the
house where they expected to find us. Some of my friends happened
to be lounging on the balcony when the guard came up, and
replied to their inquiry for us, that we were not there. Bravo
insisted that we were, and he would find us, and made one step to
that effect, when one of my friends, who has a very quiet and effective
manner for such occasions, stepped before the door-way and
remarked, in his ordinary tone, ‘You can’t come in, Sir.’ The corporal
stopped, with one foot up, lifted the pan of his musket, shook
up the powder, looked up and down the street in a speculating way,
and then stalked off with his men, having decided that the speculation
was a bad one. They found us at the camp, target-shooting,
but were too much chagrined to join us, and vented their spleen in
a noisy discharge of Spanish and Minorcan, in which both seemed
equally offensive.

My name was not on the sentry-list for to-night; but upon the
grounds now mentioned it was determined that I should be posted;
and accordingly at three o’clock I took my stand about a hundred
yards from the camp-fire, and soon beat a short path in the sand,
where I was to walk out the hours of the night. The night ought
to have been very dark and cloudy, with high winds, and a thunder-storm.
I should have liked it much better; but it was not. On the
contrary, the light of the moon in that latitude is sufficient to make
a common newspaper type quite readable, and I was in the full blaze
of it. But directly before me was the deep shade of the forest; so
near, that by lengthening my walk a little I could have stepped into
it, as from a lighted room into midnight darkness; and this gave
enough of the mystical for the most imaginative sentry. The ‘voices
of the night’ had died away one by one, leaving only the solemn
roar of the sea and the pine-tops, and the wash of the tide, as it
swept up occasionally into the long grass of the marsh. Once in a
while, perhaps at a great distance, there would be a sharp, snappish
cry, which I would stop a moment to analyze, and occasionally a[450]
splash, which might be an alligator crawling in from a night ramble;
but to all these noises I had been previously hardened. However
it may seem to the very romantic, it is not, after all, a very pleasant
thing to stand in a bright light, where an enemy can approach within
pistol-shot of you, or perhaps give you his first notice by a stab
direct. The matter-of-fact probability, the expectancy, in this case
is not so pleasant; and to one who has never been in just such a
position, it would be amusing, the first night or two, to observe the
increased circulation of blood, and the lively and exhilarated condition
of body; far beyond a salt-water bath, and with nothing of the
chill of it; on the contrary, very warm. Then the quick turn at the
end of the walk, not knowing what may have taken place since the
last facing; the Lot’s-wife look over the shoulder; and all the time
an acuteness of hearing that at last embraces a whole roar of small
noises, surging and dashing like so many breakers.

I had been out about an hour, and was in something of a glow in
this respect, when from the swamp side there came a sudden crashing.
I halted, brought my gun to a half-bearing, and looked; nothing
to be seen, but directly again, crash!—crash!—CRASH!

‘Halloo!’ said I, forgetting the militaire for a moment, and then
resuming it with a blush, (I know I must have blushed,) cried out
very boldly, ‘Who comes there?’ No answer, and nothing to be
seen. I took out a small opera-glass and swept over a range of half
a mile. Nothing moving, but the shade of the forest was so deep
that any thing short of a bonfire might have been there, and I should
never have seen it. All being still again, I resumed my walk, making
it much shorter than before; and with very peremptory turns, half
laughing to myself that any body should dare to approach a man
with such a musket, and such a step, when again came the crash!
crash! CRASH! and much nearer than before. ‘Fury!’ said I to
myself; and I gave out the challenge, calling the corporal of the
guard at the same time, with a rapidity that would have astonished
a Frenchman. But there was no answer, and the whole camp was
asleep.

This was a little too much. ‘Man or devil!’ I shouted, ‘if you
make one more step forward, I’ll blow you to atoms!’ and upon the
last word, as a kind of bravado, as it seemed, came two more heavy
crashes. Although considerably heated, I was at the same time
very cool, and aiming carefully at the noise, I blazed away; a double
charge of powder, a large musket-ball, and fifteen buck-shot. There
was a rustling, and something like a fall, and then all was still again.
I blew out the barrel, and with one eye on the marsh, was ramming
down cartridge for another shot, when Boag came down, shouting
like a madman: ‘Where are they?’ said he, looking all ways at
once. ‘There!’ said I, ramming away, ‘there; don’t you see
them?’ ‘Whoop!’ said he; ‘now I have ’em;’ and aiming miscellaneously,
he sent his ball almost any where in that direction, and
gave another whoop that might have been taken for ‘the real Indian.’
My second cartridge followed immediately, and another was ready,
when Bravo and his men marched down in battle array. ‘Halt!’[451]
with a voice of thunder; ‘make ready, take aim, fire!’ and a whole
volley was poured into the marsh. Boag was in raptures, and didn’t
wait for orders; but now, in charging for the next round, we discovered
for the first time that the enemy didn’t return the fire. Boag
suggested that they might have crept round to the left wing, and
proposed that we should fire in that direction; but that was considered
rather promiscuous for a military operation. We sent out
scouts, however, who went very short distances each way, but far
enough to discover that all Augustine was close by; the horsemen
taking the road, and those on foot coming cross-lots, crying out to us
to hold on, and not fire till they came up; and making in various
ways a vast display of courage, properly proportioned to the distance.
The horsemen came up first, and made a furious charge
upon the marsh, and all the people received orders not to fire in that
direction till the cavalry returned. The day was now breaking, and
the marsh was scoured for half a mile; but the enemy—had disappeared;
not an Indian was to be seen; but wandering about, in
a very distracted manner, was a young heifer, dangerously wounded,
and close by lay her aged mother. She had received a musket-ball,
and ‘expired without a groan.’

Boag would have it that he saw Indians, and swore that he
winged one of them, for he heard him yell, as did the guard, who
knew all about Indian yells, and myself, who did not; but in a free
country people will think as they like; and as they have dined, or
been called out of bed to the consultation, will be the difference of
opinion. Others in my position had been suddenly sick, and variously
afflicted, to avoid duty. I had not; but this last chef d’œuvre
did the thing effectually. From that day I was considered impracticable.

SEED OF CONTENTMENT.
FROM THE GERMAN.

W. F. P.

[452]

TO A FAYRE PERSONNE
UPON SHORT ACQUAINTANCE.
BY JOHN WATERS.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

[453]

THE QUOD CORRESPONDENCE.

Harry Harson.

CHAPTER SIXTEENTH.

Leaving Michael Rust buried in death-like slumber, the result of
intense mental anxiety that had denied his body that repose which
it required, we must turn to one destined to take an active part in
the succeeding events of this history; and who, on that same evening,
was employed in a manner directly the reverse of that of Rust.
That man was Harry Harson.

Seated at a table in his own room, with every feature puckered
up into a very hard knot, the combined result of thought, perplexity,
and anger, he was poring over a number of papers, occasionally pausing
to scratch his head, or breaking out into an exclamation of
displeasure, not unfrequently accompanied by a hard thump on the
table, as something met his eye which excited his indignation in a
peculiar degree.

It was past midnight; three good hours beyond the time, at which
he usually retired to rest. All indications of bustle and stir in the
streets had long since ceased, and not a sound was heard, except
the occasional tread of a belated straggler, hurrying to his home;
the sharp ticking of the clock, and the plethoric snoring of Spite,
who made it a rule never to go to bed before his master; and who,
being a methodical dog in habit, and an obstinate one in disposition,
could not be induced to depart from old usages. As each successive
hour was heralded by the voice of the clock just mentioned, Spite
rose, looked at the time-piece, then at his master, as if to say,
‘Halloo! old fellow, do you hear that?’ gaped; sauntered round the
table, and resumed his former position, each time lessening the
distance between himself and the fire, as its embers gradually
crumbled to ashes. Still, Harson continued his occupation; tossing
over, examining, and studying the papers and letters, in utter disregard
of hints and admonitions. Apparently, he became more
troubled as he advanced in his investigation. His brow contracted;
his breath came thick and fast; the color deepened in his cheek;
his eye kindled, and more than once he threw the papers impatiently
on the table, and rising up paced the room with rapid strides.
This occurred at intervals, during the whole evening, until finally,
he came to a letter which caused his anger to boil over. Starting
to his feet, and clasping his hands, he exclaimed: ‘Good God!
shall such things be? and wilt Thou not protect the innocent, and
punish the guilty?’

‘But why ask?’ added he, suddenly: ‘I know, that even now,[454]
through channels which were least dreamed of, justice is working
its way to the light. Confirm me, great God!’ added he, fervently,
‘in my purpose of seeing right done; and grant that I may never
swerve from my course, until that purpose is accomplished!’

Had the culprit against whom he uttered this invocation and
prayer heard the muttered threat which succeeded it, and witnessed
the kindling face and stern, determined eye of the person who had
uttered them, his heart, had he been a man of ordinary mould,
might have sunk; but as the culprit in this case was no other than
Michael Rust, who had no belief in an hereafter; who entertained
suspicion against all men, and who never yielded his point under
any circumstances; it is possible that it would have produced no
other result than increased watchfulness, increased determination,
and bitter hatred.

‘I have read of such schemes as these,’ muttered Harson; ‘but I
never expected to have anything to do with them myself—never.
Can there be no doubt that these came from Rust,’ said he, turning
them over in his hand? And is there no doubt that he is at the
bottom of all this villainy? The letters certainly bear a different
name from his; but such things are common; and Ned says
that he can produce proof of it. They can scarcely be forgeries,
vamped up to obtain money from me; for many of them were written
years ago; and bear post-office stamps, whose dates correspond
with the dates within.’

He stood at the table, thus talking to himself, and turning over
the letters, until his eye rested on one written in a delicate hand,
and indorsed, ‘Mary Colton to Henry Colton.’ Harson opened it,
mechanically, and ran his eye over it. It was very short, and
breathed a heart broken by some grief which was only alluded to,
but not mentioned. It ran thus:

‘My dear Henry: With all others, hope has darkened into despair; but I will not
give up yet; I cannot. It would kill me, if I did. Go on, my dearest Henry; make all
efforts. I feel that you have done all that can be done, and that all means have been
tried without success; but even yet, do not cease; and I will pray for you, and bless
you, for your disinterested kindness; and God will reward you.

‘Yours, affectionately,
Mary Colton.’

“Disinterested kindness!” muttered Harson; “God will reward
you!‘ Yes, ‘Henry Colton,’ God will reward you! Sooner or
later, the reward always comes; and you’ll get it. Yes, if I
live, ‘Henry Colton,’ it shall be my especial business to see that
you receive it!’ ‘But,’ said he, looking at the clock, ‘enough
of this. It would almost make a young man gray to wade
through the details of such villainy. An old man like me must
spare himself. I’ve had enough for one dose; so I’ll sleep on it,
and take the rest in the morning. Ha! Spite,’ said he, stooping
down, and patting the dog; ‘better be a good, honest dog, like thee,
my old cur, than a man with such a heart as some have. The
temper’s a trifle, Spite; so don’t be worried about your’s, for your
heart’s right, my old dog! There’s no double-dealing about you.[455]
I don’t know whether God blesses an honest dog, or not; but I
believe he does, in some way or other. Come pup, I’ll not keep
you up longer.’

Saying this, he gathered up the papers, and placed them in a
small box, which he locked, put under his arm, and followed by
Spite, left the room, for the story above. He paused, and listened
at a door at the head of the stairs; then turning the knob so as to
make no noise, he went in. It was a small room, having a thick
rag-carpet on the floor, and a dressing-table covered with white
muslin, standing between the windows, whose curtains were as
white as snow. In one corner was a bed. On a chair, at the side
of it, lay a child’s clothes; and in the bed itself was a girl, of about
five years of age, with her light hair streaming over the pillow like
a web of gold. There was little trace in her face of the outcast
whom he had taken from the streets but a few weeks before; for
the thin cheek had filled up, and the flush of health had succeeded
the paleness of suffering and illness. Her eyes were closed, and
their long lashes drooped over her cheek; but she did not sleep
soundly; for once or twice she muttered to herself, as Harson bent
over her: ‘Come, Charley; we’ve been looking for you a long
time. Come!’

‘She’s dreaming of the boy,’ thought he; ‘but be of good heart,
my poor child; we’ll find him yet.’

He leaned down, until his gray hair mingled with her bright
locks, pressed his lips to her forehead, and went quietly out into the
entry, where his presence was greeted with no little satisfaction by
Spite, who had been shut out, and was becoming somewhat testy
at being kept in the dark.

It was not long before Harson, with a thick counterpane up to
his very chin, was sleeping as soundly in his own bed as Spite was
under it.

What dreams hovered around the old man’s pillow, or whether
he had any, we cannot tell; but certain it is, that when the morning
sun broke through a small opening between the window-curtains,
flinging a long, thin streak of gold across the carpet, Harson
was still sound asleep; and it is quite uncertain how long he
might have continued so, had not the same ray of sunshine, in its
passage across the room, fallen directly across the centre of the
right eye of Spite, who had been drifting about the apartment since
day-break; and who now vented his disapprobation of the liberty
taken, in an irritable yelp.

Harry sat up in bed. ‘What ails thee, pup?’ said he, rubbing
his eyes.

Spite, however, was not in a communicative mood; but walked
to the door, and seating himself, surveyed the knob with great
attention. Harson rose; threw on a dressing-gown, and going to
the door, let him out, shutting it after him.

He then went to a basin, as portly and capacious as himself,
dashed nearly a pailful of water into it; bared head, neck, and
shoulders, and plunged them in. Out he came, very red in the[456]
face, with water dripping from nose, and chin, and eye-brows.
Then in again he went; and then followed such a rubbing, and
puffing, and blowing, and spouting, that he seemed like a young
whale at his gambols. This ceremony being repeated some half
dozen times, and the same number of towels having dried him, he
proceeded to dress himself.

It might have been observed, however, that during the whole
time, his thoughts were wandering; for he walked to the window,
with some article of apparel in his hand, and stood looking into the
street, in a state of deep abstraction; and then, drawing a long
breath, continued his dressing, as if it had struck him that he was
neglecting it. Then again he seated himself on the side of his
bed, and sat for some minutes, looking on the floor.

‘It’s terrible, terrible!’ said he, ‘but it’s not too late to remedy
it. Thank God for that!’

Putting on one thing after another, sometimes upside down,
sometimes getting his feet in his sleeves; then thrusting an arm in
the wrong side of his coat; tying and untying his huge white cravat
half a dozen times, and enveloping the half of his face in its ample
folds; doing every thing wrong, and rectifying his mistakes with
the greatest gravity, and without the slightest appearance of impatience,
Harson finally found himself fully established in coat and
jacket, with no other mistake than the trifling one of having buttoned
the lower button of the last article into the top button hole.
Having duly surveyed himself in the glass, to see that all was
right, without having detected his mistake, he went out.

He stopped at the door of the child’s room. His footsteps had
apparently been recognized, for it was ajar; and a pair of bright
eyes were peeping out to welcome him.

‘Annie, is that you? Ha! child, you’re a sad sleepy-head.
You’ll lose your breakfast. This won’t do—this won’t do. Spite
was up long ago.’ He shook his finger at the child, who laughed in
his face; and then, flinging the door open, showed herself fully
dressed.

‘Wrong, Harry; wrong, wrong again,’ said she, springing out, and
addressing him in the familiar manner that he always liked: ‘I am
dressed.’

The old man took her in his arms, kissed her cheek, and carried
her down stairs; and did not put her down until they were in the
room below.

‘Come, Harry, there’s breakfast; and there’s your seat; and
here’s mine,’ exclaimed she, leading him to the table. ‘Martha
has got here before us,’ said she, shaking her head at a demure-looking
woman of fifty, in a faded cap, with a rusty riband round it,
who was already seated at the table, preparing the coffee. ‘Here,
Spite—come here.’

Spite was not a dog given to the company of children. He was
by far too old, and sedate, and dignified for that; but there were
occasions on which he could unbend, and these fits of relaxation
generally came over him just at meal-times, when he permitted the[457]
child not only to pat him, but even to uncurl his tail. Doubtless
the sight of the creature-comforts which garnished Harry’s table
had its effect in producing this change, although it is possible the
knowledge that the child devoted fully half of her time to supplying
his wants, (a thing which his master sometimes neglected,) may
have had its weight. Obedient at any rate to the summons, Spite
hopped from a chair on which he had been seated, and placed himself
at her side, watching every mouthful she swallowed, and
licking his lips with great unction.

Harson’s breakfast-table was, as the neighbors said, (particularly
the poor ones, who now and then chanced to drop in at it,) enough
to awaken an appetite in a dead man; and if dead people are
peculiarly alive to hot coffee and mutton-chops, and hashed meats,
and warm cakes, and fresh rolls, like snow itself, and all these
things set off by crockery which shone and glittered till you could
see your face in it; and table-linen without a speck or wrinkle in it,
there is little doubt but that a vast number of departed individuals
must have found their mouths watering at exactly half past seven
each morning; that being the precise hour at which these articles
made their daily appearance on Harson’s table. But certain it is,
that whatever may have been its effect upon them, it had little
upon Harson; for he scarcely touched any thing, nor did he bestow
his usual attention on those about him, but sat sometimes with his
eyes fixed on the cloth, sometimes staring full in the face of the
old house-keeper, who looked at the ceiling, and on the floor, and
in her cup, and coughed, and hemmed, and fidgetted, and grew so
red, and confused, and embarrassed, that before Harson was even
aware that he was looking at her, to use her own expression, ‘she
thought she should have dropped.’ But this was only of a piece with
all the rest of his actions, during the morning; for to all remarks or
questions, his only answer was an emphatic ‘humph!’ a species of
reply to which he particularly devoted himself during the meal; and
it was not until he observed the others had finished their meal that
he hastily drank off his coffee at a draught, and rose from the table.

‘You need not remove the things now, Martha,’ said he, as the
rattling of the crockery announced that this process was commencing.
‘The noise disturbs me. I wish to be alone for a short time;
and after that you can do as you please.’

The house-keeper made no reply; but went out, taking the girl
with her, and leaving Harry to his meditations.

That these were neither pleasant nor composing, was quite evident;
for after walking up and down with his hands in his pockets,
and muttering to himself, he finally stopped short, and apparently
addressing Spite, for his eyes were fixed upon him, and Spite
returned the look, as if he supposed that he was being consulted,
he broke out with:

‘What am I to do? This matter on my hands; and Ned, poor
Ned, kicked adrift by the old man, and Kate breaking her little heart
about him; and her father quietly led by the nose to the devil.
There’s no doubt about it; that fellow Rust’s at the bottom of it[458]
all; and no one except me to unravel this knot. God bless me! it
bewilders my brain, and my old head spins. But Annie, Annie, my
poor little child! if I forsake thee, may I never prosper! How now,
Spite?’

This exclamation was caused by a somewhat singular proceeding
on the part of Spite, who, after looking at him as if deeply interested
in the tenor of his remarks, suddenly uttered a sharp bark,
and bolted from his chair as if shot from a gun. The cause of this
movement was soon shown in the person of a man dressed in a
very shabby suit of black, with a beard of several days’ growth,
who stood just inside the door, and who, after a familiar nod to
Harson, asked:

‘Is all the family deaf except the dog?’

‘When a man enters a stranger’s house, it is but proper to knock,’
said Harson, sharply.

‘Did you want your house battered about your ears?’ inquired the
stranger; ‘for I did knock, until I was afraid it might come to that.
Perhaps you’re deaf, old gentleman; if so, I’m sorry for you; but
as for your d—d dog, I wish he was dumb. I can scarcely hear
myself speak for him.’

This explanation cleared from Harson’s face every trace of anger;
and silencing the dog, he said: ‘I did not hear you; and yet I am
not deaf.’

‘Well, I made noise enough,’ said the other. ‘Is your name
Henry Harson?’

Harson answered in the affirmative.

The stranger took off his hat and stood it on a chair; after which,
he thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out a letter. ‘That’s
not it,’ said he, throwing it in his hat; ‘nor that,’ continued he,
drawing out a handkerchief, which he rolled in a very tight ball, and
transferred to another pocket.

‘I’ve got a letter somewhere, that I know. It must belong to the
mole family, for I put it uppermost, and it’s burrowed to the very
bottom; d—d if it hasn’t! Ah! here it is,’ said he, after a violent
struggle, bringing up both a letter and a snuff-box. The former, he
handed to Harson, and the latter he opened, and after applying
each nostril sideways to its contents, took a pinch between his
fingers, returned the box to his pocket, and seating himself snuffed
deliberately, all the while eyeing the breakfast-table, with a fixed,
steady, immovable stare.

The thread-bare, poverty-stricken look and hungry eye of his
visitor was not lost on Harson, who, before opening the letter,
glanced at the table and at the stranger, and then said: ‘It’s early;
perhaps you have not yet breakfasted, Mr., Mr., Mr ——’

‘Kornicker,’ said the stranger.

‘Kornicker, Mr. Kornicker. If so, make yourself at home and
help yourself while I look over this letter; no ceremony. I use
none with you. Use none with me.’

It was a tempting sight to poor Kornicker; for there stood the
coffee-pot steaming away at the spout; and the dishes, far from[459]
empty, and such rolls as he was not in the habit of meeting every
day; but mingled with all his defects of character, was a strong
feeling of pride which made him hesitate, and it is probable that
pride would have carried the day, had not Harson, divining something
of his feelings, added:

‘Perhaps it’s scarcely civil to ask you to the table, when I have
left it myself; but I should not stand on a trifle like that with you;
and I hope you’ll not with me. Those rolls are excellent; try
them.’

He said no more; but going to the window, broke the seal of the
letter and commenced reading.

Left to himself, Kornicker struggled manfully; but hunger got
the better of all other feelings; and at last, drawing his chair to the
table, he commenced a formidable attack upon its contents.

‘So you’re with Michael Rust,’ said Harson, after he had finished
reading the note, going to the table, and standing opposite Kornicker.

Kornicker’s teeth were just then engaged in a severe struggle
with a roll, and he could do nothing but nod an affirmative.

‘Who is he?’ inquired Harson; ‘what’s his profession?’

Kornicker swallowed his roll, and kept it down by half a cup of
coffee; and then said:

‘As to who he is; all I know is, he’s sometimes an old man;
sometimes he isn’t; sometimes he wears a red handkerchief on his
head, and sometimes he don’t; but who he is, or what he does, or
where he goes to, or where he comes from, or who he knows, or
who knows him, curse me if I know. That’s all I can tell you,
Sir. He’s a mystery, done up in the carcass of a little, dried-up
man, of a d—d uncertain age. May I trouble you for the milk?’

‘Humph!’ said Harson, in a very dissatisfied tone, at the same
time passing the milk; ‘and yet you are in his employ?’

Kornicker nodded.

‘It’s strange,’ muttered he, ‘quite strange.’

‘D—d strange,’ said Kornicker, burying his face in a huge coffee-cup,
‘but true,’ continued he, setting it down.

‘True,’ repeated Harson; ‘true that you are in his employ; are
in the habit of daily intercourse with him; attend to his concerns;
see him constantly, and yet do not know who he is?’

‘Partly correct, partly incorrect,’ quoth Mr. Kornicker, pushing his
cup away. ‘I’m in his employ—correct. I know nothing of him;
correct again. As to the rest—incorrect. Sometimes, I don’t see
him for weeks; sometimes I have something to do—often nothing.
I never know when he’s going, or when he’s coming back.’

Harson stood quiet for some time. ‘This is all very strange.
Don’t you know who are his acquaintances, or associates?’

Kornicker shook his head.

‘Who comes to see him?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Do you never hear him speak of any one?’

[460]

‘Never heard him name a soul, till the other day he named
Enoch Grosket, and to-day you.’

‘Do you know nothing of his mode of life, or intentions, or plans,
or whether he’s honest or dishonest, or how he lives, or where his
money comes from, or what his family is?’

‘Nothing,’ said Kornicker. ‘Indeed it never struck me till now
how much there was to know on the subject, and how little conversant
I was with it.’

‘Shall I tell you who he is?’ asked Harson.

Mr. Kornicker replied, that any information in his then unenlightened
state would be acceptable.

‘Well, then, he’s one of the veriest villains that ever disgraced
human nature. He’s ——’

‘Come! come! none of that! hold up, old gentleman!’ interrupted
Kornicker, sitting bolt upright; and grasping the handle of a
coffee-cup with a somewhat hostile tenacity. ‘I’ve just been
eating your bread, backed by not a little meat, and no small
quantity of coffee, and therefore am under obligations to you; and
of course, a quarrel with you would be greatly against my stomach.
But you must recollect, that Rust is my employer. What I eat,
and drink, and snuff, comes out of his pocket; and although he was
small in some matters, yet he helped me, when it required a good
deal of salt to save me; my fortunes were not only at an ebb, but
they’d got to dead low tide. I’m bound to stand up for him, and
I’ll do it. I’ve no doubt he’s the d—dest rascal going; but I’ll
not hear any one say so. If I do, damme. So no more of that.
Come, come,’ said he, after a somewhat hostile survey of Harson’s
person, ‘you don’t look like the man to make a fellow regret that
he’s broken your bread.’

Quizzical as was the look of Kornicker, and vagabond as he
seemed, there was something in the open, blunt manner in which
he defended even Rust, that found an answering note in the bosom
of Harry, and he said:

‘No, no, I am not. You’re an honest fellow; but I suppose
there’s no harm however in wishing you a better employer?’

‘No, not at all,’ said Kornicker, after a minute’s reflection; ‘I
often wish that myself; but,’ said he, with a philosophical shake of
the head, ‘some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth,
and I wasn’t one of them; mine must have been iron; and I’m
rather inclined to think that there must have been no bowl to it, for
it always held mighty little.’

There was a mixture of comicality and sadness in the tone in
which he spoke, which left Harson in doubt in what strain to
answer him. At last he drew a chair to the table; leaning his two
arms upon the back of it, and surveying his guest attentively, he
asked: ‘What’s your business, if I may be so bold?’

‘Law,’ replied Kornicker, leaning back. ‘I’m the champion of
the distressed; see widows and orphans righted, and all that sort of
thing. It’s a great business—devilish great business.’

‘And is Michael Rust a lawyer?’ inquired Harson.

[461]

‘No, I attend to that part of his concerns. He’s a mere child in
matters of that kind; but devilishly wide awake in others; but
come, old gentleman,’ said he, suddenly breaking off, ‘I’m to thank
you for a breakfast; now let’s have an answer to the letter. It’s
time to be off.’

Harson glanced at the letter, and then said:

‘Do you know the contents of this?’

‘Not a word of them,’ replied Kornicker.

‘Nor what it’s about?’

‘No. Rust is neither confidential, nor communicative,’ replied
Kornicker. ‘So, what you’ve got to say say in writing. I don’t
want the trouble of thinking about it, or trying to recollect it.’

‘Humph!’ said Harson. ‘There’s nothing here requiring a
great stretch of either. He wants me to meet him at his office, on
very particular business; a request somewhat singular, as I never
laid eyes on him in my life.’

‘Quite singular,’ ejaculated Kornicker.

‘But I know much about him; and that leaves me no desire to be
more intimate with him. What do you think of it?’

‘I think you’re in luck,’ replied the other; ‘you’re the first that
ever was asked inside the door since I’ve been there. Several
very nice, pleasant fellows of my acquaintance, have dropped in
occasionally, and although his office is nothing to brag of, d—n me
if he didn’t invite them to air themselves in the street, and not to
come back! It was quite mortifying, especially as I was there at
the time.’

‘What did you do?’ inquired Harson.

‘You’ve never seen Rust, you say?’ said Kornicker, in reply to
the previous question.

Harson answered in the negative.

‘Well, Sir, if you had, you wouldn’t ask that question. I looked
out of the window, and held my jaw—that’s what I did; and
that’s what I’d advise you to do in the same trying circumstances.
But come, Sir, give me the answer.’

Harson, after a moment’s thought, said: ‘It isn’t worth while to
write. Tell him I’ll come, or send some one. You can remember
that?’

Kornicker replied that he thought he could; and taking up his
hat, and shaking hands with Harson, and favoring Spite, who was
examining the quality of his pantaloons, with a sly kick, he sallied
out toward Rust’s office.

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.

‘Come, Spite,’ said Harson, when his visitor was gone, ‘we must
be up and doing. This is not a business that can be trifled with.
The longer we put it off, the tighter will the knot be drawn. Stop,
until I get the papers.’ Leaving the room for a moment, he returned
fully equipped for walking; with a huge handkerchief wrapped[462]
round his chin, and his broad-brimmed beaver pulled tightly down
over his forehead. ‘Now my cane, Spite, and we’ll see if we can’t
get to the bottom of this deviltry. We’re embarked in a good
cause, my old pup, and mustn’t give up. Now then! it’s a glorious
day; the air’s bracing, and will make your old bones quite young
again. Hey! what spirits you’re in!’ said he, as Spite, elated at
being associated in so important a matter, after wriggling his body
in a most convulsive manner, by way of expressing his satisfaction,
finally fell over on his back, in an abortive effort to perform a hilarious
pirouette on his hind legs. ‘Never mind, old fellow,’ said Harson,
‘pick yourself up; accidents will happen to the best of us. I
warrant me you’d have done it better ten years ago; don’t be down-hearted
about it. We’re going to see old Holmes; and when you
and I and old Holmes are thoroughly at work in sifting this matter,
why Rust had better look sharp. Hey, Spite?’

Thus talking to his dog, or whistling to himself, or exchanging a
cheery word with an acquaintance as he passed, the old man trudged
along, followed at a very staid pace by his dog, who since his late
unsuccessful effort, had fallen into a very serious mood, notwithstanding
all the efforts of his master to raise his spirits and to banish
the recollection of it from his mind.

The person whom Harson sought was a little antiquated man,
who had buried himself among his books, and spent his time in burrowing
in out-of-the-way corners of the law. He had wormed his
way into all its obsolete nooks, and haunted those regions of it
which had become deserted, and as it were grass-grown from long
disuse. By degrees he had slunk from a practice which had once
promised to be large; and a name which had once bid fair to shine
brightly in the annals of the law, gradually grew faint in memory,
as its owner was missed from those places where the constant rush
of the crowd soon wears out any impress made by those who are no
longer seen. But there were times when the old man looked out
from his den, and prowled among those who had crowded in his
place; and there were times, (but those were on rare occasions,
when some exciting case would be on the carpet,) when an old man
would steal into the court-room, with a bundle of papers under his
arm; and would take his seat at the table among the counsel
engaged in the case; sitting silent throughout the whole; speaking
to none; taking no notes; watching the witnesses with his dim
eyes; studying the faces of the jury; occasionally referred to by
the other counsel; but taking no part in any discussions until the
evidence was closed, and the cause was to be summed up; and then,
to the surprise of all, except the bench and a few of the oldest of the
bar, rising to address the jury; commencing in a low, feeble tone,
and apparently sinking with infirmity, until by degrees his dim eye
became like fire; his faint voice like the clear ringing of a bell; his
eloquence as burning as if flowing from the lips of manhood’s
prime; his sarcasm withering; his logic strong, clear, fervid, and
direct; no loitering; no circumlocution; no repetition: what he had
to say he said once, and only once. Those who missed it then[463]
waited in vain for something of the same nature to explain it; it
never came. His object was before him; and he hurried onward to
it, sweeping every thing before him and carrying all with him. And
when he had concluded, as he gathered his papers and left the
court, the elder members of the bar would say among themselves:
‘Old Holmes is himself again;’ and the younger ones wondered
who he was; and as they learned his name, remembered dimly of
having heard it as that of one who had lived in by-gone days.

His office was not in the business part of the town; but in a
quiet, shady street, which few frequented, rilled with huge trees,
and so quiet and out of the way that it seemed like a church-yard.
Thither Harson bent his steps; and it was not long before he found
himself in his office.

It was a large, dim room, with high shelves filled with volumes
and papers, reaching to the low ceiling. Long, dusty cobwebs hung
trailing from the walls: the very spiders who had formed them,
finding that they caught nothing, had abandoned them. The floor
was thickly carpeted; and a few chairs were scattered about, with
odd volumes lying upon them. Upon a table covered with a green
cloth, were piles of loose papers, ends of old pens, torn scraps of
paper, and straggling bits of red tape. Altogether, it was a sombre-looking
place, so still and gloomy, and with such a chilly, forbidding
air, that it seemed not unlike one of those mysterious chambers,
which once abounded in antiquated castles, and tumbling-down old
houses, with a ghost story hanging to their skirts; or which some
ill-natured fairy had doomed to be shut up for a hundred years; and
the little thin dried-up man who sat in the far corner of it with
every faculty buried in the large volume on his knees, looked as
though he might have dwelt there for the whole of that period.
Had it been so it would have been the same to him; for in that dim
room had he spent the most of his life, immersed in the musty volumes
about him; now and then coming to the surface, to see that
the world had not disappeared while he was busy; and then diving
again to follow out some dark under-current, which was to lead him,
God knows whither. What was the world to him? What cared
he for its schemes and dreams and turmoil? The law was every
thing to him; home, family, and friends. God help him! a poor
lone man, with kindly feelings, and a warm, open heart, which might
have made a fireside happy; but now without a soul to whom he
might claim kindred. Many respected him; some pitied him, and a
few, a very few, loved him. There he sat day after day, and often
until the day ran into night, delving, and diving, and pondering, and
thinking; a living machine, working like a slave for his clients;
alike for rich and poor, the powerful and the friendless; beyond a
bribe; too honest to fear or care for public opinion; strenuous in
asserting the rights of others, and never enforcing his own, lest he
might give pain to another. God help him! I say. He was not the
man for this striving, struggling world; and perhaps it was well for
him that in his murky pursuits he found that contentment which
many others wanted. Yet he never freed his mind from its trammels,[464]
and looked abroad upon the wide world, with its myriads of
throbbing hearts, but he found in it those whom he could love and
could help. God help him, did I say? Rather, God help those
who warp and twist the abilities, talents, and wealth which are
showered upon them, to unholy purposes; who make the former the
slaves to minister to deeds and passions at which human nature
might blush; and the last but the stepping-stone to selfish aggrandizement,
or the nucleus around which to gather greater store. Pity
them, but not him; for although but a pale, thin, sickly being, with
barely a hold upon life, with scarce the strength of a child, growing old,
and withered, and feeble without knowing it; yet was he all-powerful,
from the bright, bold spirit that animated him, and a soul stern
in its own integrity, which shrank from nothing except evil; and
blessed was he, far above all earthly blessings, with a heart ever
warm, ever open, and in which God had infused a noble share of
his own benevolence and love to mankind.

It is no wonder then that Harry Harson, when he stood in the
presence of one in heart so akin to himself, paused and gazed upon
him with a softened eye.

‘Holmes, Dick Holmes,’ said he, after a moment, ‘are you at
leisure?’

The old lawyer started, looked wistfully up, contracting his dim
eyes so as to distinguish the features of the person who addressed
him, and then doubling down the leaf of the book which he had
been reading, rose and advanced hesitatingly until he recognized
him.

‘Ah Harson!’ said he, extending his hand quietly; ‘honest old
Harry, as we used to call you,’ continued he, smiling; ‘I’m glad to
see you. Few save those who come on business cross my threshold;
so you are the more welcome. Sit down.’

He pushed a chair toward him, and drawing another close to it,
took a seat, and looked earnestly in his face. ‘Time doesn’t tell on
you, Harry; nor on me, much,’ said he, looking at his attenuated
fingers; ‘still it does tell. My flesh is not so firm and hard as it used
to be; and I’m getting thinner. I’ve thought for some months past
of relaxing a little, and of stealing off for a day to the country, and
of rambling in its woods and fields, and breathing its pure air. It
would quite build me up; perhaps you’ll go with me?’

‘That I will, with all my heart,’ said Harson; ‘that I will; and
right glad am I to hear you say so; for it’s enough to break down
a frame of iron to spend hour after hour in this stagnant room, poring
over these musty books.’

Holmes looked about the room, and at his volumes, and then said,
in a somewhat deprecating tone:

‘I’ve been very happy here. It does not seem gloomy to me; at
least not very gloomy. But come; I’ll walk out with you now. It
does me good sometimes to see what is going on out of doors; if I
can only find a person I care for, to keep me company.’

He half rose as he spoke; but Harson placed his hand on his
arm, and motioned to him to keep his seat.

[465]

‘You made a mistake this time,’ said he, in a good-natured tone,
and beginning to fumble in his pockets; ‘business brought me here
to-day; business, and a desire to follow the suggestions of a clearer
head than mine.’

As he spoke, he drew from his pocket the package of letters, and
placed it before the lawyer.

Before you examine these, I must tell you what they are about.
Perhaps you won’t believe me, but these letters will confirm every
word I say. You must hear my story, read them, and then tell me
frankly and fairly what to do; not only as a lawyer, but as a friend.
I shall need your advice as both.

‘You shall have it,’ said Holmes; ‘go on.’

The tale which Harson told was sufficient to arouse every feeling
of indignation in the lawyer. As Harson went on, Holmes became
excited, until, unable to control himself, he rose from his chair and
paced the room, with every honest and upright feeling in arms. He
forgot every thing but the deep wrongs which were recited. Debility
and age were trampled under foot; and his voice, clear and loud,
rang through the room, scorching in its denunciation of the wrongdoer,
and bitter in its threats of retribution. Then it was that the
spirit showed its mastery over the clay, and spurning the feeble
form which clogged it, shone forth, strong in its own might, a glorious
type of the lofty source from which it sprang. But suddenly
he sat down; and passing his hand across his face, said in a feeble
tone: ‘I am easily excited now-a-days, but I will command myself.
Go on; I will not interrupt you again.’

As he spoke he placed his arms on the table, and leaned his head
upon them; and this position he maintained without asking a question
or making a comment, until Harson had finished speaking; and
when he looked up, his face had assumed its usual quiet expression.

‘Do these letters prove what you say, beyond a doubt?’ he asked.

‘I think so.’

‘And why do you suppose them to be written by Rust? The
name, you say, is different.’

‘I had it from a person who would swear to it. By the way,’
added he, suddenly, ‘I have just received a letter from Rust. I’ll
compare the writing with those; that will prove it.’

He took the letter from his pocket, and placed it beside the
others; and his countenance fell. They were as unlike as possible.

Holmes shook his head. ‘You may have hit upon the wrong
man, or you may have been purposely put on a false scent. There
certainly is no resemblance between these,’ said he, carefully comparing
the two; ‘not even in the general character of the hand.’

Harson could not but admit the fact. It was too evident.

‘Look over the whole bundle,’ said he. ‘There are at least
twenty of them. If this is a disguised hand, it is possible that he
may have betrayed himself in some of the others.’

The lawyer went over the letters, one by one, carefully comparing
them; but still the character was the same. All of them were in
the free, flowing style of a good penman; while the letter which[466]
Harson had produced was written in a bold, but stiff and ungraceful
hand.

‘Where did you get this?’ said Holmes, pointing to the one which
Harson had received from Kornicker.

‘It was brought to me by a clerk of his this morning.’

‘Then you know him?’ said Holmes.

‘I never saw him in my life.’

‘Have you ever had any business with him through others?’

Harson shook his head. ‘Never.’

‘How do you know that the person who brought this letter was
from Rust?’ inquired he.

‘The letter proposes an interview. If it isn’t from him, the cheat
would be found out when I go.’

‘How long have you been ferreting out this matter?’

‘Several weeks.’

‘Have you worked in secret, or openly?’ inquired Holmes.

‘I kept the matter as quiet as I could,’ replied Harson, ‘because
I didn’t want him to get wind of it, and place obstacles in my way;
for I supposed that he was the man; but still, I was obliged to
employ several persons, of whom I know little.’

‘Then this Rust is the man, you may rely on it,’ said Holmes, in a
positive manner. ‘He has discovered that you are busy, and is
startled at it. Depend on it, this wish to see you has something to
do with your present movements.’

‘I thought so too,’ said Harson, ‘and shall go there this morning.’

‘I’ll go too,’ said Holmes; ‘and the sooner we start the better.’

‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Harson, stretching out his hand;
‘the very thing I wanted.’

The old lawyer said no more; but after fumbling about his room
for his hat and great-coat, and having succeeded, without any great
difficulty, in putting on the last, (for he had no idea how shrunken
and attenuated he was, and it was large enough for a man of double
his size,) and supported by Harry’s steady arm, they set out.

‘Stop a minute,’ said Harson; ‘we’ve shut Spite in. There’ll
be the deuce to pay if we leave him. Come, pup.’ He opened
the door; and Spite having leisurely obeyed his call, they resumed
their walk.

THIS TO THEE, LUCY.

[467]

NATURE’S MONITIONS.
AN EXTRACT.

GRAVE THOUGHTS ON PUNCH.

It was a nice remark of the distinguished French General
Moreau during his residence in this country, that the next thing in
the world to a shock of cavalry is the English word, What! There
exists in it an irresistible abruptness, that frequently puts to flight
at once the whole array of thoughts of the foreigner whose nerves
are assailed by it. ‘I can stand,’ said he, ‘any thing better than
your word, What! It is impossible to reason against it; I seem to
have nothing to do, when I hear it, but to submit!’

It certainly is one of those short words of power, one of those
words of pistol-shot energy, that characterize our grand tongue and
give it originality and force. It is a word to conjure with; and has
many a time raised Truth out of the depths of the heart of the
double-dealer: it is a word of defence—and not unfrequently has
it overturned or repulsed in one utterance the half-formed scheme
of some wheedling knave endeavoring to make a confederate, or
nefariously to win the heart of a pretty girl. May you and I, dear
Editor, never hear from lips we love, in the overwhelming accents of
astonishment and of disappointed hope, the English word, What!

The word at the head of my Essay, and which by the way I
mean to make the subject of it, is another of these short English
words of great strength and pith. This carries however no disfavour
with it; no discourtesy; nor does it raise up one association
that is otherwise than bland and attractive to the mind: and yet
how forcible is it, alike in sound and in effect! Let us listen
to it——Punch!——To the ear of my Imagination it is altogether
irresistible! How impossible to parry it! what a possession
it takes of the faculties, and how entirely it seems to get the better[468]
of one! Then how intrinsically, how essentially English it is in all
the strength and vigour of the tongue!—Punch! Turn the word
into the French, and behold how pitiable is the effect—ponche!

Now it is a curious fact in the Natural History of Liquids, that a
similar and not less remarkable result occurs in the noble beverage
which this short word is intended to designate! Try over the
whole continent of Europe and wheresoever else the English
language is not the vernacular, try I say to get Punch, and it invariably
comes out ponche or something still more despicable! I have
essayed it repeatedly and have always found the result the same;
and yet I am neither a young, nor an inexperienced, nor, if you will
allow me the word, an inextensive traveller!

On the other hand, the moment you recross the channel and ‘set
foot upon the sacred soil of Britain,’ or come home quietly to our
own unassuming United States and lay your hand upon the right
ingredients, out of the sound of any foreign language, the mixture
succeeds as a matter of course, and at once becomes virtually
and essentially, Punch—Punch proper; Punch itself; in short,
PUNCH!

The native merits and distinctive propriety of the word being
thus established; before I enter into any consideration of the drink
itself, I cannot refrain from chiming in with the general feeling of
the day on this side of the Atlantic so far as to observe, how incontestably
this proves the mutual interest and common origin of ‘the
two great nations;’ and should the dark day ever arrive, when letters
shall be obliterated; printing forgotten; and language lost; it
is still consolatory to reflect, that a mutual and inborn affinity
between the two last representatives of ‘the Mother and Daughter‘
might be satisfactorily shown and most agreeably demonstrated
by means of two lemons; four tumblers of Croton or filtered
spring water; one of double refined loaf sugar well cracked; and one
of old Rum!

Gentle Reader! hast thou carefully dwelt over this list of ingredients?
Are earth, air, fire, and water, more dissimilar in their elementary
properties than are Lemon, Sugar, Water, and Rum? and
has it ever before occurred to thee, to what supernal brightness of
original and fortuitous Genius thou must have been indebted for
this astonishing combination? Art thou alive to the grandeur of the
original conception? Alas! the name of the architect of the Temple
of Ephesus might as well at this epoch be sought for as that
of the author of this stupendous compound, but the irrefragable
word which is universally attempted to be attached to it indicates
beyond the shadow of a doubt the land that claims the honour of
his birth!

I am writing to thee from the attic of the house in which I have
my abode.——Canst thou tell me the name of the first artificer
who planned the building of a second story? who first contemplated
or imagined STAIRS? or changed the tent and the cabin into the[469]
fabrick of diversified flights? The scheme of this was taken from
the invention of the Beaver——But where throughout the
animal creation was the instinctive indicator to the man who first
conceived the thought of Punch?

Newton by the fall of an apple is said to have determined the
Theory of Gravitation: how vast and limitless in its application has
been the discovery! Yet is the whole but the elucidation of one
principle or element of knowledge——while four different and
antagonistic elements associate and are made to combine homogeneously
in the glorious beverage of Punch!

Davy, in his wonderful invention of the Safety Lamp, went
with it completed in his hand from the laboratory to the mine, and
found his reasoning true! Throughout the terraqueous globe his
achievement is cited as the conquest of abstract Science over
Physics. But vain is all abstract reasoning here; all distant experiment;
all knowledge of the gases; all study of the powers of
repulsion;—here four palpable and repulsive reasons are placed in
presence of the chemist and philosopher, and the irresistible argument
of all is—Punch.

These are hints for reflection to thee, Gentle Reader, in the quiet
and solitary concocting and brewing of thy Pitcher, during the two
hours that thou shalt diligently pour it from one glass receptacle
into the other. When all is finished, and thy star hath proved
benignant to thee; and thy beverage shall have become like the
harmony that steals away thy heart; gushing from four musical
instruments where the sound of neither predominates;—then drink
to the memory of the great original Genius who planned and
inspired thy joy; and forget not to favour, with a passing thought,
the verdant Spirit who would gladly be Thy Companion; and who
here subscribes himself, Thy Friend,

John Waters.

HER NAME.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF VICTOR HUGO.

M. E. H.

[470]

THE STORY OF ABUL CASSIM’S SHOES.
FROM THE ORIGINAL IN TURKISH.

It is related that there once resided in Bagdad a very wealthy
man named Abul Cassim, who was celebrated for his avarice and
parsimony. So strong was his ruling passion that he could not even
be prevailed upon to throw away his old shoes, but whenever it
became urgently necessary, he would have them stitched at a cobbler’s
stall, and continue to wear them for four or five years. So
finally, they became so heavy and large that it was proverbial in that
city to say that a thing was ‘as clumsy as Abul Cassim’s shoes.’

Now one day as this man was walking in the bazaars of Bagdad,
a friend of his, a broker, informed him that a merchant from Aleppo
was just arrived, bringing some bottles for sale. ‘Come,’ added he,
‘I will get them for you at a low price, and after keeping them a
month or so, you can sell them again for three times as much as you
gave, and so make a handsome profit.’ The matter was soon
arranged between them; Abul Cassim bought the bottles for sixty
dinars, and after employing several porters to carry them to his
house, he passed on. He had also another friend, a public crier,
whom he likewise happened to meet, and who told him that a merchant
from the town of Yezd had some rose-water for sale. ‘Come,’
said he, ‘I will get it for you now at a low rate, and dispose of it for
you some other time for double the amount’ So Abul Cassim was
prevailed upon to buy the rose-water also, and on reaching home he
filled the bottles with the water, and placed them on a shelf in one
of his apartments.

The day following, Abul Cassim went to a bath, and while undressing
himself, one of his friends going out saw his old shoes, and
jokingly said: ‘Oh! Cassim, do let me change your shoes, for these
have become very clumsy.’ Abul Cassim only replied, ‘Inshallah!
if God wishes;’ and continuing to undress himself, went into the
bath. Just then the Cadi, or judge of the city, came to the bath,
and undressed himself near to Abul Cassim. Some time afterward
Abul Cassim came out of the inner room of the bath, and when he
had dressed himself, looked for his shoes, which not finding, but seeing
a new pair in their place, he thought his friend had made the
change that he desired; so putting them on, he returned to his
house.

When the Cadi came out of the bath, and had put on his clothes,
he asked for his shoes, but lo! they could nowhere be found; and
seeing, close by, the old ones of Abul Cassim, he naturally concluded
this latter person had purloined his. So the Cadi was greatly
enraged; and ordering Abul Cassim to be brought before him, he
accused him of stealing shoes out of baths, imprisoned him two or
three days, and fined him.

[471]

Abul Cassim on his release said to himself: ‘These shoes have
dishonored me, and I have been severely punished for their sake;’
so with revengeful feelings he threw them into the Tigris. Two
days afterward some fishermen, on drawing their seines out of that
river, found a pair of old shoes in them, which they immediately
recognized as those of Abul Cassim. One of them remarked that
perhaps he had fallen into the river; and taking the shoes in his
hand, carried them to Abul Cassim’s house, and finding its door
closed, he threw them in at a window which was open. Unfortunately
the shoes fell on the shelf where the bottles of rose-water
were ranged, so that it was thrown down, the bottles broken, and
all the rose-water was lost.

When Cassim returned to his house, he opened the door and
beheld the loss he had sustained. He tore his hair and beard with
grief, wept aloud, and charged the shoes with being his ruin. To
be free from farther misfortune on their part, ‘I will bury them,’ said
he, ‘in a corner of my house, and then all will end.’ So the same
night he arose and commenced digging a hole in a corner of his
dwelling; but his neighbors hearing the noise, thought he was
undermining their house; and rising in affright, they complained to
the governor of the city, who sent and apprehended Cassim, and
threw him in prison, from which he was released only on the payment
of a fine.

After this Cassim returned to his house, overwhelmed with grief,
and taking his old shoes, he threw them into the sluice of a neighboring
caravansary. In the course of a few days, the sluice being
stopped, it overran its banks, and workmen having been called to
clean it out, lo! Cassim’s shoes were found to be the cause of the
inconvenience. So the governor again threw him in prison, and
fined him to a large amount.

Abul Cassim, now perfectly in despair, took his old shoes, and
after washing them clean, laid them on the terrace of his house,
with the intention, after they were well dried, to burn them, and so
put an end to all shame and misfortune on their account. But it
happened that while the shoes were drying, a neighbor’s dog passing
over the terrace saw them, and mistaking them for dried meat,
took one in his mouth, sprang from one terrace to the other, and in
doing so let it fall. The neighbor’s wife was enciente, and as she
happened to be sitting at the foot of the wall, the shoe fell upon
her, and in her alarm she was prematurely brought to bed. Her
husband, in great anger, complained to the governor, and Abul Cassim
was once more thrown into prison and made to pay a fine.

Abul Cassim now tore his hair and beard with grief, and accusing
the shoes of being the cause of all his misfortunes, he took them in
his hand, and going before the Cadi of Bagdad, related to him all that
had befallen him. ‘I beg you,’ added he, ‘to receive my declaration,
and I hope all these Mussulmans will bear witness that I now
break off all farther relation between me and these shoes, and have
no longer any thing to do with them. I ask also a certificate showing
that I am free from them, and they free from me; so that if[472]
henceforth there are any punishments or fines to be incurred, questions
to be asked or answers to be given, that they may take them
all upon themselves.

The Cadi, much amused with what he heard, gave the desired
certificate, and added a present to Abul Cassim. Behold in this
tale to what misfortunes the avaricious subject themselves!

TO A HUMMING-BIRD.
BY H. W. ROCKWELL.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

Utica, August, 1843.

[473]

LITERARY NOTICES.

The Politicians, a Comedy: in Five Acts. By Cornelius Mathews. pp. 118. New-York:
Printed for the Author.

Poems on Man, in his various Aspects under the American Republic. By Cornelius
Mathews. In one volume, pp. 112. New-York: Printed for the Author, and for sale at
Wiley and Putnam’s and other metropolitan Book-stores.

The Career of Puffer Hopkins. Published in the ‘serial form,’ from the office of the
‘Brother Jonathan.’

In a notice some four years since in these pages of the ‘Motley Book’[B] by the author of
the above-named productions, we expressed our conviction, and gave the grounds for our
belief, that Mr. Mathews had mistaken his vocation; that he exhibited a mind capacious
enough of vague dreams and dim similitudes of humor, but that there was no naturalness
in his descriptions, and no distinctness in his pictures; that his observation of men
and things was cursory and superficial, and that his style was of such a character that
the reader was often led to doubt whether he always affixed any very precise idea to the
language which he employed. We excepted from these remarks, we remember, a serious
sketch or two of the writer, ‘The Potters’-Field,’ and ‘The Unburied Bones,’ as
evincing a degree of spirit and pathos, which justified us in counselling him, if he must
needs write, to confine his literary efforts to that species of composition. Since the period
to which we have referred, Mr. Mathews has continued to write and print, with great
industry and perseverance, what he must have considered works of humor and satire;
but we are sorry to be compelled to add, without exhibiting the slightest improvement.
Like Michael Cassio, Mr. Mathews, when he sits down to pen, ink, and paper, ‘sees
a mass of objects, but nothing distinctly.’ He has a large grasp of small things, without
selection and without cohesion; his ideas, if they may be called ideas, are often diffuse,
pointless, and apparently aimless; and it is impossible for any intelligent reader to resist
the conclusion that his ‘wit’s diseased,’ in one sense, at least. Let us take, as an illustration
of the justice of our animadversions, the ‘Comedy’ whose title stands first at the
head of this notice. From the strutting boldness of the language in the preface, the
reader is led to conclude, evidently with the author, that an ‘American dramatist’ has at
last arisen, who is to present the proof that ‘America contains within itself material quite
adequate for any class of literary productions;’ that there is ‘no lack of materials for
comedy in our country and among ourselves;’ and that here we have a dramatic attempt
which is to furnish ‘countenance to the Cause of true National Literature.’ In consonance
with Mr. Mathews’s own opinions of his ‘Comedy,’ is his modest request that
nobody should ‘interfere with his privileges as its author, or prevent him from deriving
such emoluments from its representation as are equitably his due.’ Probability rather[474]
favors the conclusion, we think, that no person ever did! The writer adds, also, that he
‘would be greatly rejoiced’ if the play should be ‘the thing’ to awaken the National
Legislature to a ‘realizing sense’ of its duty in the matter of international copy-right!
Such is the character of the introduction to the public of the ‘Comedy’ before us. Now
for a taste of its quality.

The first act opens with a dialogue between a political candidate and his ‘chum’ touching
‘the use of a church-bell’ to bring out the voters, who are to be wrought upon by an
announcement of the fact that ‘the steeple is in the hands of their party,’ whose ticket is
to be ‘spread on the weather-cock.’ After a discussion of various modes of catching
voters, which we should be glad to have the reader see, but which we must ‘respectfully
decline’ to quote, we come to the annexed characteristic specimen of our author’s wit.
Stand aside, reader; for the text says: ‘Enter Botch:’

Botch. Have you heard this rumor, Sir?

Gudgeon. What rumor, for Heaven’s sake? They haven’t bought up all the large flags in
the ward?

Botch. No, Sir.

Gudgeon. Have they got in a new barrel of beer? or hired Blaster, the popular trumpeter? I
spoke to him myself last night. They haven’t engaged Murphy’s two starved horses, that always
operate so on the popular sympathies and bring up so many voters?

Botch. None of these, Sir!

Gudgeon. What then, Botch? Be quick—what then?

Botch. Why, Sir, the Brisk party is going to use the belfry of the church to distribute tickets
from, and they intend to employ the sexton to read prayers every morning of the election from the
small window in the steeple.

Gudgeon. This must be counteracted: it will have an overwhelming effect. We shall have
the whole religious community moving against us in platoons, pew by pew!

Botch. Something must be done, Sir; I see clearly something must be done. What shall it
be, Sir?

Gudgeon. Yes, something must be done.

Botch. Certainly; something must be done.

Gudgeon. What then, in the name of Heaven, shall it be? Couldn’t we get Glib to climb the
steeple above the window and deliver an harangue? It might do away with the evil influence of
the proceedings below, and give us a tremendous ascendency at once.

Botch. I doubt whether Mr. Glib would undertake it, even if he could snatch a notary’s commission
from the weathercock, as the chances of being made a martyr of by stoning would be
considerable.

In the fourth scene there is a new effect given to stage song-singing, by a Mr. Blanding,
one of the characters, which should neither be lost to dramatic writers, theatrical
persons, nor to ‘the world.’ A fragment will suffice, we suspect:

Blanding. (From within.) Fol-la—my heart—andino—has gently—sa—felt—allegro—allegro—sweet
Kate—piano—the sharp and sure revenge of fate—La-mi-fol-sa.

Crumb. The fit is coming upon him.

Blanding. Oh smile upon the gloomy wave

That bears me to a gloomier grave.

That goes badly in andante—so-fa-me-fi-so.

Blanding. And fly—too slow—and fly—allegro—allegro,

And fly with me. Prestissimo.

Crumb. (Breaking in.) Heigh-ho! how is this, Sir? Are you trying to set a runaway match
to music?

Blanding. I beg your pardon, Sir—but—

Crumb. You may well do that, and the pardon of the whole city council, if you please. Meditating
a rhymed elopement with Miss Brisk, daughter of John Brisk, candidate for alderman of
the ward! Why this is an audacious breach of ordinance.

Pass we now to the second act, wherein we find Mr. and Mrs. Gudgeon engaged in
a remarkably humorous colloquy. He informs her that a committee has been appointed
to ‘have his own portrait of his individual self, Robert Gudgeon‘ taken; whereupon,
among other things, Mrs. Gudgeon is led to remark, that now she has a presentiment
that his election is safe. To which, ‘thus then Gudgeon:’

Gudgeon. And so have I. Some great event is clearly at hand. We have had a meteor the
other night that whizzed round the sky, like a large Catharine-wheel; then there has been a[475]
school of sixty whale cast ashore off Barnegat; and the Rain-King, only last Week, caught a
storm on a lightning-rod, and held it there two days, notwithstanding the entreaties of the neighboring
county, that was suffering sorely under a drouth. What do these things mean? what do
they refer to? The approach of the comet foretold in the Farmer’s Almanac; or, it may be so,
(for I recollect the birth of my father’s five-legged calf, in Danbury, was brought on by an early
sun-rise,) the election of Robert Gudgeon as alderman.

Is not the wit of this undeniable? Does it not ‘fortify like a cordial?’ Yet it is not
more striking than the humor of many other portions of the ‘Comedy;’ not more so
indeed than several passages in the third act, especially in the dialogue between Crowder
and the committee-men, concerning the means by which the candidate is to recommend
himself to his constituents, though it were to ‘run a sewer through his pocket (!)
and drain it to the last cent.’ The committee do not ‘sit’ in their room at a tavern without
‘creature comforts.’ Observe: the landlord is called:

Landlord. (From without.) Coming!

Crowder. We want your bill. That will bring him up with it, short and quick.

Landlord. (From without.) It’s e’en a’most made out; only a few items to add.

Enter Landlord.

Crowder. Come, read it off, jolly Job Works, in a good clear half-price voice; by particulars,
and it’s cash on the nail. Begin!

Landlord. That I likes; ‘four sperm candle’; Nothing like the ready metal; ‘Two quarts
beer, with snuffers.’

Crowder. Well, he has a fine throat of his own; it smacks of the spigot.

Landlord. Room-hire, cigars, and two juleps, with benches.

Crowder. Well.

Landlord. A small pig with lemon.

Crowder. A pig with lemon!

Landlord. Two plates pickled beans, two rolls twisted bread, and beer extra.

Crowder. Beans, bread, and beer!

Landlord. Six lobster and two pound sage-cheese; likewise a splendid pork-pie made of
chops.

Crowder. A splendid pork-pie made of chops!

Landlord. And a suet pudding.

Crowder. Nothing else?

Landlord. Nothing else.

The landlord declares, in answer to a little grumbling, that ‘the things’ named in the
bill were ‘sent down for’ from the committee-room by way of the chimney, in a stone-bottle
‘as big-as my two-fist,’ which struck his cook, ‘poor hunch-back Jenny, in the
small, or rather I should say in the big of her back, as she was stooping over a dish of
prawns (?) for Tom Lug!’ Crowder pays, of course, in the usual way; but his rival
is not to be outdone by such liberality. He ‘bears a charmed life:’ for Mrs. Gudgeon
has ‘told him to buy fresh chick-weed and goose-grass to carry in his pocket, because
they say it draws voters!’

But enough. If our readers desire more of Mr. Mathews’ ‘Comedy,’ they must seek
it elsewhere. We have selected the liveliest passages we could find: for there is a calm
placidity of emptiness, diversified with a bustling inanity of thought, in other portions of
this performance, which we have small desire to illustrate by examples; since they would
not fail to produce at least twenty yawns to a page; a soporific that neither watchman
not sick-nurse could support.

We come next in order to the poems on ‘Man, in his Various Aspects under the American
Republic;’ a very comprehensive title to much incomprehensible rhyme with little
reason. As a poet, Mr. Mathews cannot reasonably expect to take the exalted order of
rank which he holds as a dramatist. That indeed were expecting quite too much! To
use the illustration of a nautical critic, his plan of writing-verse would seem to be, to
‘fire away with the high-soundingest words he can get, whereby his meaning looms
larger than it is, like a fishing-boat in a fog.’ Where there is such a ground-swell of language,
there can be no great depth of ideas. Yet there are good ideas in some of the
lines in these ten-score of pages, borne down though they be, and almost smothered,
with words. For the most part, however, the volume presents but a farrago of crude
expressions, ideas, and pictures, some poetical and others ‘quite the reverse,’ aggregated[476]
in a rude and undigested mass. The writer treats, under nineteen divisions, of Man as
child, father, teacher, citizen, farmer, mechanic, merchant, soldier, statesman, etc.; and
from some of these we propose to select a few examples of Mr. Mathews’s thoughts
and style poetical. The following stanza is taken from the advice given to ‘the father’
of an infant:

An ‘axled soul’ is good, as Polonius would say; but it is not much better than one or
two equally original expressions which ensue:

The writer counsels ‘the citizen’ not to ‘overstalk’ his brother, but to show in his
mien ‘each motion forthright, calm, and free;’ and he farther advises in the words following,
to wit:

In the annexed stanza there is an assortment of similes, the like of which one seldom
encounters in so brief a compass. The lines are addressed to ‘the farmer;’ and we are
acquainted with several excellent persons among that indispensable class of the community,
to whom we should like to hear Mr. Mathews read them! It would be a ‘rich
treat’ to hear their opinion of such pellucid poetry:

Cloud-like revolutions stopping on the highway to slake their chariot-wheels in a
mountain-brook! If that isn’t ‘original poetry’ we know not what is. Now the opening
of the piece from which the above stanza is taken we have no doubt is considered
by the writer quite inferior to it; but to our conception, the nature and simplicity which
it preserves for a moment are worth all the striking figures to which we have alluded.
‘The mechanic,’ whose business is to ‘shape and finish forth iron and wood,’ comes in
for his share of rythmical counsel:

Observe the felicitousness of the foregoing poetical terms. The ‘tinkling smith,’ and
the ‘big-voiced sledge’ roaring against an iron bar, and tearing out its entrails with angry
teeth! Could appropriateness and power of metaphor reach much beyond this? ‘Not
good,’ we suspect. We thought to have given our friends, ‘the merchants,’ a lift with
Mr. Mathews’s moral instruction; but we can only remind them, with his assistance,
that

[477]

‘Next comes the soldier,’ to whom Mr. Mathews thus addresses himself:

‘Marbled sea’ is good; as good as ‘the mobled queen.’ It might perhaps assist the
effect a little, if the reader knew what it meant. Possibly the writer knows; yet we
doubt it. The next stanza presents a cloudy vision of the sublime obscure:

‘The statesman’ is not less felicitously ‘touched off’ than the soldier:

‘Hold, enough!’ doubtless exclaims the reader. Yet could we go on to the end of the
volume with just such ‘poetry’ as this. We must ask the farther attention of ‘the curious’
to be directed to the work itself, while we proceed to glance for a moment at the
production last cited at the head of this notice.

The swelling prelude to ‘The Career of Puffer Hopkins‘ is kindred in assumption and
manner with the preface to the ‘Comedy,’ to which we have already adverted. ‘Cervantes,
Smollet, Fielding, and Scott, to say nothing of more recent examples,’ are
modestly invoked, to show that the author cannot justly be charged with caricaturing.
We yield the point, without the examples. A caricature always bears some resemblance
to an original; but Mr. Mathews’s characters have no originals. They are in
no respect vraisemblant. Take his whole catalogue of names, (in themselves so ‘funny!’)
his ‘Hobbleshank,’ ‘Piddleton Bloater,’ ‘Mr. Gallipot,’ ‘Mr. Blinker,’ ‘Mr. Fishblaat,’
‘Attorney Pudlin,’ ‘Mr. Fyler Close,’ ‘Alderman Punchwind,’ ‘Mr. Shirks,’ ‘Counsellor
Blast,’ ‘Dr. Mash,’ ‘Mr. Bust,’ ‘Mr. Flabby,’ etc.; analyze them, if possible, and tell us
if any one of them ever had any thing like a counterpart in ‘the heavens above, in the
earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth?’ Are they any more distinctive, internally,
than ‘the pie-faced man,’ or the man ‘with features like a dried codfish suddenly
animated,’ externally? ‘Not a jot, not a jot,’ will be the reply of every one who attentively
scans them. The death of ‘Fob’ partakes in a good degree of the pathetic, and
justifies the counsel which we gave the writer in our notice of ‘The Motley Book.’ It
is however as evidently suggested by kindred scenes in the writings of Dickens, as is
the writer’s raven and coffin-maker’s apprentice. We have not the space, had we either
the leisure or the inclination, to attempt a notice in detail of ‘Puffer Hopkins.’ We say
‘attempt,’ because it defies criticism. It has neither plot nor counterplot; neither head
nor tail. Memory, it has been well said, is the best of critics; but we doubt if there be
a scene or part of a scene, in the entire work, that could be segregated and recalled by
the recollection of the reader. Aimless grotesqueness; the most laborious yet futile
endeavors after wit; and a constant unsuccessful straining for effect; are its prominent
characteristics. Take up the book, reader, open it any where, and peruse two pages;
and if you do not acquit us entirely of undue depreciation in this verdict, place no faith
hereafter in our literary judgment. Let us open it at random for an illustrative passage
or two. In the following, Puffer (after receiving a lecture on political speech-making, in[478]
which among other things he is told, to ‘roll his eye-balls back under the lid, and smell of
the chandelier, though the odor isn’t pleasant!’) is thus further instructed:

‘It’s best to rise gradually with your hearers; and, if you can have a private understanding
with one of the waiters, to fix a chair conveniently, a wooden-bottomed Windsor, mind, and none
of your rushers; for it’s decidedly funny and destroys the effect, to hear a gentleman declaiming
about a sinking fund, or a penal code, or the abolition of imprisonment for debt, up to his belly in
a broken chair-frame. As the passion grows upon you, plant your right leg on one of the rounds,
then on the bottom, and finally, when you feel yourself at red-heat, spring into the chair, waive
your hat, and call upon the audience to die for their country, their families and their firesides; or
any other convenient reason. As Hobbleshank advanced in his discourse, he had illustrated its
various topics by actual accompaniments; mounting first on his legs, then the bench, and ended
by leaping upon the table, where he stood brandishing his broken hat, and shouting vociferously
for more oysters.’

There are other suggestions; such as having ‘immense telescopes constructed, and
planted where they could command the interior of every domicil in the ward, and tell
what was in every man’s pot for dinner six days in a week;’ together with a ‘great
ledger, with leaves to open like doors, on which should be a full-length likeness of each
voter, drawn and colored to the life,’ even ‘down to his vest-buttons, and a mote in
his eye!’ Who shall say that this isn’t ‘genuine humor?’ Here too is ‘a touch of
nature,’ such as Mr. Mathews delights in. An electioneerer or ‘scourer’ of the wards
visits a theatrical ‘lightning-maker,’ (a highly probable character,) at his laboratory, where
the following witty dialogue ensues:

‘This profession of yours,’ said Puffer—he dared not call it a trade, although the poor workman
was up to his eyes in vile yellow paste and charcoal-dust—’this profession, Sir, must give
you many patriotic feelings of a high cast, Sir.’

‘It does, Sir,’ answered the lightning-maker, slightly mistaking his meaning; ‘I’ve told the
manager more than fifty times that lightning such as mine is worth ninepence a bottle, but he never
would pay more than fourpence ha’penny: except in volcanoes; them’s always two-quarters.’

‘I mean, Sir,’ continued the scourer, ‘that when you see the vivid fires blazing on Lake Erie;
when Perry’s working his ship about like a velocipede, and the guns are bursting off, and the
enemy paddling away like ducks; is not your soul then stirred, Sir? Do you not feel impelled
to achieve some great, some glorious act? What do you do, what can you do, in such a moment
of intense, overwhelming excitement?’

‘I generally,’ answered the lightning-maker with an emphasis upon the personal pronoun, as
if some difference of practice might possibly prevail, ‘I generally takes a glass of beer, with the
froth on.’

‘But, Sir, when you see the dwelling-house roof, kindled by your bomb-shells, all a-blaze with
the midnight conflagration: the rafters melting away, I may say, with the intense heat, and the
engines working their pumps in vain; don’t you think then, Sir, of some peaceful family, living
in some secluded valley, broken in upon by the heartless incendiary with his demon-matches, and
burning down their cottage with all its outhouses?’

‘In such cases,’ answered the lightning-maker, ‘I thinks of my two babies at home, with their
poor lame mother; and I makes it a point, if my feelings is very much wrought up, as the prompter
says, to run home between the acts to see that all’s safe, and put a bucket of water by the hearth.
Isn’t that the thing?’

‘I think it is; and I’m glad to hear you talk so feelingly,’ answered Puffer Hopkins; ‘our next
mayor’s a very domestic-minded man; just such a man as you are; only I don’t believe he’d be
so prudent and active about the bucket on the hearth.’

‘At this, the lightning-maker smiled pleasantly to himself, and unconsciously thrust a large roll of
brimstone in his cheek.’

Oh, for modern schepen, to laugh himself to death at this fine ‘burst’ of nature and
of wit! Holding both his sides, how would he guffaw at that brimstone mistake! ‘How
can you make me laugh so, when I am so sick?’ Well, well; it is funny, certainly; but
wait until you read this fragment of ‘burning satire’ upon the political press:

‘An ‘Extra Puncheon,’ pretending to give late news from the Capitol, but containing, in reality,
Flabby’s long-expected reply. ‘Capital! capital!’ cried Mr. Fishblaat, as he hurried on; ‘Flabby
called Busts a drunken vagabond, in the Puncheon of Wednesday week; Busts called Flabby a
hoary reprobate, in Monday’s Bladder, and now Flabby calls Busts a keg of Geneva bitters; says
the bung’s knocked out and the staves well coopered. Capital! This alludes to a threshing, in
front of the Exchange in which Busts had his eye blacked and a couple of ribs beaten in.’

But we must draw our notice of Mr. Mathews’s ‘writings’ to a close. We cannot
do so, however, without again inviting the attention of our readers to the ‘works’ themselves,
if they are desirous to partake in a yet larger degree of the kindling effect of his
unique wit and humor, and to render full justice to ‘the American Boz!’

[479]

The Poets of Connecticut; with Biographical Sketches. Edited by Rev. Charles W.
Everest. In one volume, pp. 468. Hartford: Case, Tiffany, and Burnham. New-York:
Knickerbocker Publication Office.

Honor to Connecticut for the ‘bright names in song’ to which she has given birth;
and honor to Mr. Everest for the faithfulness and good judgment with which he has
discharged his editorial function, in the large and exceedingly beautiful volume before
us. Few of our readers can be aware of the number and high character of the poets of
America who first drew breath in the ‘Land of Steady Habits.’ The catalogue ‘deflours
us of our chiefest treasures’ in poetry; numbering as it does, Halleck, Brainard,
Percival, Pierpont, Prentice, Hillhouse, Hill, Sigourney, Rockwell, and
others scarcely less known to fame, and whose effusions are endenizen’d in the national
heart. The volume presents a brief historical account of the poetical literature of Connecticut,
from its commencement to the present period. The writers are arranged in the
order of birth, as being less invidious, and as better comporting with the design of the
editor. In the department of biography, the sketches have been made as complete as
possible, in the case of deceased writers, while in those of the living, the principal facts
of personal history are carefully preserved. The editor has judiciously confined his
critical duties to the mere pointing out of a few characteristic traits of each author’s
verse, refraining from especial eulogy or censure. The volume is in all respects a valuable
contribution to our national literature, and deserves, what we cannot doubt it will
receive, a circulation commensurate with its merits. It is beautifully printed, upon large,
clear types, and embellished with a fine vignette-engraving of the city of Hartford and
Connecticut river.

Abbottsford Edition of the Waverley Novels. Edinburgh: Robert Cadell. London:
Houlston and Stoneman. New-York: Wiley and Putnam.

We have already twice spoken of this most perfect edition of the works of the immortal
Scott; but as the numbers reach us in succession from abroad, and the fine taste
and profuse liberality of the publisher are more and more revealed, we are continually
tempted to descant upon merits and beauties which we could wish our readers throughout
the Union and the Canadas could personally appreciate. We have before us at this
moment the series complete to the thirty-second issue; and how many illustrations does
the reader suppose are included in these numbers? No less than five hundred and fifty;
varying, in each number, from sixteen and eighteen to twenty-four. These illustrations,
too, are in the very finest style of the art of engraving, whether on steel or wood. There
is nothing omitted that can be illustrated, in any of the great ‘Northern Magician’s’
works. The first painters in England are employed to paint from nature the originals of
all the principal scenes; these are transferred to steel by the most eminent engravers
in Europe; and the same faithfulness is apparent in all the principal portraits, which are
so numerous and authentic, as to leave nothing to be desired in this department of the
work. Add to this the fact, that every thing to which any especial interest attaches in
the novels is pictorially presented, with a kindred care and correctness; and that the
fine texture and dazzling whiteness of the paper and beauty of the printing are unsurpassed;
and the reader will have some idea of the comparative cheapness of a work like
this, when informed that each number costs but two shillings and sixpence sterling! The
edition will contain, when completed, more than two thousand engravings, on steel and
wood, and of the highest order of excellence. Indeed, the landscape engravings on steel
will of themselves form a splendid series of an hundred views, illustrative of the novels.

[480]

EDITOR’S TABLE.

The late William Abbott: his Autobiographical Journal.—In briefly
noticing, some months since, the decease of William Abbott, Esq., late of the Park
Theatre, we promised again to advert to his career in England and this country; and
the perusal with which we have recently been favored of an exceedingly entertaining
autobiography of this excellent actor and accomplished gentleman, has ‘whetted our
almost blunted purpose.’ We learn from a brief obituary in the London ‘Gentleman’s
Magazine,’ that Mr. Abbott was born at Bath, England, in 1788, and began his theatrical
career in that city, whence his varied talent caused his being transported to Covent-Garden
Theatre, at the age of twenty-four. He remained there twelve years, continuing
all the time to grow in reputation. In social life, his house at Knightsbridge, near London,
was long the scene of meetings in which good taste and refinement increased their
attraction, by being blended with less ceremonious pastimes, and the constant flow of
fanciful recreations. Thus he traversed a flowery time until 1824, when ambition tempted
him to become the lessee of the Dublin Theatre. He lost money by the speculation;
and his next move was to Paris, where with an English company he entertained the
Parisian public with éclat for two years. In the French capital his enjoyment of society
was of a very gratifying kind; and he spoke the language with so much purity as to
escape all the usual inconveniences attendant upon foreign disclosure. In 1828 he
returned to Covent-Garden to enable Miss Fanny Kemble to appear as Juliet with
an adequate Romeo. Subsequently, untoward events of a pecuniary nature, connected
with the management of one of the minor theatres of the metropolis, induced him to try
his fortunes in America. The professional and social qualities which had won for him reputation
and friends in his own country, gained him both in this, in an equal degree; while the
same experience as a manager attended him here that was ‘his destiny’ abroad. The
Charleston (S. C.) Theatre, the management of which he assumed, proved worse than
valueless to his interests; and at the time of his death he had resumed his place upon
the boards of the Park Theatre, where he had always given ample satisfaction to the
public. He was the author of several successful dramatic productions in England, and
was known on both sides of the Atlantic as a gentleman of fine literary taste and
acquirements. He was a person of the most gentleman-like manners, cheerful disposition,
ready wit in the play of conversation, and possessed a kindly and liberal heart.
Few men were more welcome to society, or more entertaining within its bounds. He
was full of anecdote; and the humorous stories of the stage found in him a most amusing
reciter. He had also the song, the jest, or the repartee, which never failed to add mirth
to the festive board. Above all, shone the unclouded cheerfulness of his nature, over
which even his own misfortunes apparently never suffered a shadow to pass; and that
good-will toward others which defied the taint of envy, (either in private life or in an
envious profession,) which was happy in contributing to happiness, and would not tread[481]
on a worm, or even injure an enemy. ‘Such,’ says our London contemporary, ‘was
William Abbott, who for many years was a popular favorite in the principal theatres
of London, and who performed the second class of characters better than any actor we
ever saw. His walk too was unconfined. In tragedy, not of the sterner sort, he was
graceful and impressive; in genteel comedy, equal to any of his contemporaries in that
line; in the more unlicensed exuberance of farce, a laughable and jocular actor; and in
all, he was ever perfect in his part.’

We proceed now to select a few passages, almost at random, from the delightful manuscript
volume to which we have referred; a work which we have no doubt will speedily
be in the hands of a publisher, since it cannot fail to prove one of the most various and
entertaining books of the season. We commence our extracts with the annexed sketch
of personal misadventure, which will remind the reader of the somewhat similar scene
in ‘The Antiquary’ of Scott. The locale is Tenby, in South Wales, opposite the
Devonshire coast:

‘What vivid recollections throng my mind, when I recall the perilous situation in which I was
once placed there! It was my constant custom, whenever I had a character of importance to study,
to wander on the ‘Sands’ in front of the town; not like Demosthenes, with a pebble in my mouth,
but seating myself on some jutting rock, listen to the roar of old Ocean in storms, or watch its
gentle undulations, like an infant rocking itself to sleep. On one occasion I pursued my path
greatly beyond all former wanderings; passed each inlet I encountered, and again emerged on
the broad Sands; and on turning, the town met my eye, and appeared, although three miles distant,
to be almost within my grasp. The waters kept at a respectful distance, while I reclined
upon an isolated rock, not unlike a rude arm-chair. Like another Canute, I wanted to see if the
waters would dare approach me. My mind was full of ‘meditation and the thoughts of love;’
and many a chateau en Espagne was peopled with delightful visions of air-born spirits, paying
homage to my towering theatrical genius! Casually turning round, to my utter confusion I saw
the water laving the base of a high projecting rock which intercepted my return. I felt that no
time was to be lost. I rushed back, and knee-deep, cleared the obstacle. Another, still more
formidable, stood before me. Beyond, the golden Sands, tinged by the beams of the setting sun,
gave life and hope; at my feet lay despair and death. Not a soul was in sight; and the opposing
obstacle that separated me from the path by which I could reach the town, was rising perpendicularly
from the deep. I was young in years; and in an instant all my previous life flashed upon
me, in one dreary perspective. No escape, no hope! Death himself stood before me! The very
rocks on which I had so often gazed with a romantic delight, now oppressed me with terror.
Grim visages with demoniac smiles started into life from the surrounding cliffs, to mock my helplessness.
The roaring waves, dashing upon the sharp rocks, uttered a voice of fearful warning.
Despair was almost at its height, when suddenly my nerves became iron. I rushed to the opposing
rock; I reached, and how I know not, a fearful height; I clung to some stunted brushwood,
which found a frail hold in the fissures of the rock. One point of safety was visible, but as I
attempted to reach it, loose particles crumbled and rolled beneath my feet, and I heard the crackling
of the branches. The yawning gulf was ready to receive me! One last effort, one convulsive
spring, enabled me to reach the desired refuge; and although in comparative safety, I sat
there shaking with terror, and watched the rapid approach of the waves, which, although fortunately
not violently agitated, covered me with the ‘salt sea-foam.’ The excitement prevented my
feeling the cold, though I was wet to the skin. The heavens were calm and blue above, and the
stars shone in all their splendor; but the restlessness of the waters, through the dim obscurity, kept
me in perpetual agitation. For hours I remained in this situation; at length the early morning
dawned upon me, and the receding tide lifted a weight from my heart.’

Many of our readers will remember sundry anecdotes, from theatrical persons and
works upon the drama of ‘Romeo Coates,’ of Bath, England. Mr. Abbott gives a
very amusing account of the manner in which this soubriquet, which attached to the subject
of it throughout his life, was obtained:

‘Though an unmitigated ass, he was the lion of the day. He came from one of the West-India
islands, was very wealthy, and on all occasions wore brilliants of the first water. In a
place like Bath, where ennui will step in occasionally, he was a godsend. He was followed,[482]
courted, fooled to the top of his bent. The sprigs of fashion ‘drew him in’ to give at the York
Hotel the most expensive entertainments; and at one party, when I was present, they insisted
upon his mounting a table covered with decanters and glasses, to give a specimen of his skill in
the small-sword exercise, and display his figure to the best advantage. One of the party, Bacchi
plenus, became his opponent, and the result was, the destruction of a most superb chandelier. His
face was like a baboon’s, and the twistings and distorted attitudes into which he threw himself
were alike indescribable and irresistible. One pleasant morning there appeared an announcement
in the theatre-bills which shook the city of Bath to its foundation. It was like the precursor
of a volcanic eruption: ‘Romeo, by an Amateur of Fashion!‘ The doors were beset at an early
hour in the afternoon by those who had failed to secure places at the box-office. Box-admittance
was paid by crowds of gentlemen, to enable them, by jumping over, to secure places in the pit.
Men of rank and distinction did not disdain to occupy seats in the gallery. The fever of excitement
was at its pitch, when the gentle Romeo appeared, dressed in the most fantastic and absurd
style, in consonance with the advice of his fashionable friends. He wore diamonds to the value
of thirty thousand pounds! I was one of his instructors, and entered into the joke with a keen
relish for the ridiculous. It was hardly to be expected that his acting would be tolerated by the
true judges of art, and I was obliged to be dressed for the character, in order to finish the part.
But no! The appetite of the audience grew by what it fed on; and when the dying scene came,
a tremendous burst of mock enthusiasm rang from all parts of the house, and he was universally
encored. He bowed most graciously, while Juliet (Miss Jamieson) was lying on the stage, not
dead, but literally ‘in convulsions’ of laughter. Oranges were thrown upon the stage, with a
request that the actor would not hurry, but refresh his energies before he recommenced his death.
He kissed his hand to the ladies in graceful acquiescence with their wishes, and deliberately proceeded
to suck two oranges! His second death was infinitely more extravagant than the first, and
drew down repeated and prolonged bravos, and a second encore, which however was not complied
with. Showers of bouquets now fell upon the stage, and ‘closed one of the most extraordinary
dramatic exhibitions I ever beheld in a regular theatre.’

A singular circumstance is mentioned by Mr. Abbott as having occurred to a professional
friend of his at Bath, named Sidly. It is authenticated beyond all peradventure.
‘Can such, things be, and overcome us like a summer-cloud, without our special wonder?’

‘He was quietly seated in his arm-chair, at his lodgings in Beaufort-square, after his return
from the theatre; his wife had retired to her bed-chamber, adjoining their drawing-room; while
he remained, for the purpose of reading over a character for the ensuing evening. His mother
resided a short distance from London, and so far as he knew, was at the time in perfect health.
His mind was not preöccupied with the thoughts of home, and an unusual calmness pervaded his
spirit. After reading a passage, and trying to see if he had mastered it, he raised his eyes, and on
a chair opposite sat his mother, smiling benignantly upon him. His agitation was extreme. He
hastily turned round, and saw that the door was closed. He struggled to speak, but his lips were
sealed; and with a beating heart and hair erect, he rushed to the bed-side of his wife, and in
broken sentences, and with thick-starting perspiration rolling down his face, he detailed what he
had seen. His wife endeavored to persuade him that it was all a dream; and to convince him,
quietly walked into the drawing-room, and found the apartment precisely as she had left it, the
fire burning and the candles lighted; but nothing could do away the illusion; and in two days
afterward poor Sidly received the intelligence of his mother’s death at the very hour of the occurrence
here narrated. He seldom referred to the circumstance, and never without deep and melancholy
emotion.’

Liston, the great comedian, as most readers are aware, was an inveterate wag. He
was never more happy than when successful in making a fellow-actor lose his ‘power of
face’ upon the stage. Mr. Abbott relates a pleasant anecdote of one of his efforts in
this kind:

‘In Newcastle, under the management of Stephen Kemble, (who played the part of Falstaff
without stuffing,) Liston on one occasion took the character of Pizarro. When he is lying on the
couch, Rolla enters, apostrophizes his defenceless situation, and then rouses and drags him in
front of the stage. Judge of the surprise of the actor, at finding one half of Liston’s face painted
in imitation of a clown! This portion of his features was of course studiously turned from the[483]
audience, who were indulged only with the simple profile. Rolla burst into a fit of laughter, and
rushed instantly from the stage, to the great scandal of the audience, who had not the slightest suspicion
of the cause of such ridiculous conduct.’

Our excellent friend John Wilson, that most mellow of vocalists, once gave us a
similar anecdote of Liston. In the play of ‘Guy Mannering,’ he is deputed to relieve
the suffering Lucy Bertram. He places a well-filled purse in her hand, which he clasps
cordially in his own, while she looks up in his face, her eyes brimming with tears of
gratitude at relief so unexpected. On the occasion alluded to, a remarkable change was
observed in Miss Bertram’s face, when the purse was handed to her. She shrank back,
and struggled, as if to liberate her hand from his grasp: and after looking imploringly at
his imperturbable face for a moment, she found relief in a sort of hysterical laughter,
which was very far from bespeaking the emotion of the character she represented.
Instead of a purse, Liston had placed in her hand a large raw oyster, as cold as ice, and
pressed her acceptance of it in a way that was irresistible! There ensues a comparison
between those different but equally matchless artistes, Mesdames Siddons and O’Neil,
which we have reason to believe expresses the general verdict of the time:

‘From all my recollections of Mrs. Siddons, it would be absurd to attempt to draw a parallel
between her performances and those of Miss O’Neil; the unapproachable grandeur and dignity
of the one and the feminine tenderness and endearment of the other exhibiting widely different
expressions, not formed by the same code. You approached Mrs. Siddons with a feeling of awe,
bordering on reverence. With Miss O’Neil, all your hopes and fears were excited, and certain
to meet with a response. Her bursts of agony and distress agitated every nerve, and would
plunge her audience in tears; while the power of Siddons would choke your very utterance, and
deny you all relief. What Miss O’Neil required in strong expression, she made up in exaggeration.
Every nerve was strained, and her whole frame convulsed; in short, her great fault was
exuberance; yet nothing could be more quietly (though distressingly) beautiful, than her performance
of ‘Mrs. Haller.’

The reader should have heard Mr. Abbott present the subjoined ‘limning from life,’
and seen him imitate the snuff-taking of the noble tragedian. The story loses much of its
force in being transferred to paper. The anecdote is of Harlowe, who painted the
celebrated trial-scene of ‘Henry the Eighth,’ in which the Kemble family figured so
conspicuously:

‘He had, by his ill conduct, lost the esteem of his great master, Sir Thomas Lawrence, who
was the intimate friend of John Kemble; and the latter had in consequence resolutely refused to
sit to him for his portrait as ‘Cardinal Wolsey’ in the picture alluded to. ‘Mrs. Siddons and
Charles and Stephen Kemble had sat to the artist, but the great tragedian was immovable.
At length a friend of the painter (Mr. Thomas Welsh, the celebrated singing-master,) who had
received many marks of attention and kindness from Mr. Kemble, and who had great confidence
in the force of his influence with him, waited upon Mr. Kemble at his residence in Great Russel-street.
He was shown into the library, and was most cordially received: ‘My dear Tom, to what
am I indebted for the favor of this visit?’ ‘My dear Sir, I come a humble suppliant to you, and
I really don’t know how to commence.’ ‘Well, well; make excuses for your modesty: and
then, my good friend, come to the point.’ The commencement was auspicious; but the first
plunge in a cold-bath is always hard to take. ‘I assure you, Mr. Kemble, I feel most grateful for
your kind reception; and if I could only hope the favor I am going to ask——’ ‘Pooh! pooh!
you know, Tom, I always told you, from a boy, there was nothing you could ask of me that I
would refuse you. Now say what it is you wish; consider it as done; and I really am very
much occupied; so, to the point, to the point, Tom.’ ‘Oh, Sir, you have made me the happiest
person in the world. Will you be kind enough to sit to Mr. Harlowe for your portrait?’ In an
instant a deep cloud passed over the noble countenance of the great actor; and deliberately
taking up his snuff-box, he applied a large pinch to his nose, and quickly replied: ‘My dear Tom
I’ll see you d—d first!’ Notwithstanding his denial, however, the Cardinal is one of the best
portraits, and was caught only by occasional glances from the orchestra, during Mr. Kemble’s
performance.’

[484]

At Edinburgh, Mr. Abbott would seem to have attained great popularity. He mingled
in the best circles of the Northern metropolis, and was for some days a guest of Sir
Walter Scott. He narrates many pleasant anecdotes connected with his engagements
in ‘Auld Reekie;’ and among them is the following, which is capital:

‘I had no personal knowledge of Stephen Kemble, but I cannot refrain from mentioning a
circumstance which happened when he was manager of the Edinburgh Theatre. The exiled
family of the Bourbons were residing at the Palace of Holyrood, and great respect and attention
were shown by the nobility in the neighborhood to the unfortunate descendants of a long line of
kings. Mr. Kemble thought the patronage of the Comte D’Artois, afterward Charles the
Tenth, would be a source of great attraction. Application was made at the palace, and with success.
His Royal Highness left the selection of the play to the manager, who fixed upon ‘Henry
the Fourth,’ for the purpose of exhibiting himself in his own popular character of Sir John Falstaff.
One can scarcely conceive a duller play for a Frenchman, almost ignorant of the English
language, and wholly unable to enter into the subtilties of such a being as the Fat Knight. The
great desideratum, however, was obtained. The house was crowded, and the manager was
satisfied. His Royal Highness bore the infliction in a most exemplary manner, and retired amidst
the respectful greetings of the audience. A week had hardly elapsed, when Kemble (probably
not from any selfish motive, but with the laudable view of affording some amusement to the illustrious
exile,) again presented himself at Holyrood, and suggested another visit to his theatre. The
Comte D’Artois received him most graciously; indeed, it was not in his nature to do otherwise,
for he was one of the most accomplished gentlemen in Europe. He declined the invitation, however,
in nearly the following words: ‘I am vara mosh oblige, Monsieur Kemble; it was vara
nice, indeed; I laugh mosh; bot von sosh fun, it ees enoff!’

This dubious compliment of the Count is not unlike the praise awarded by a polite
French officer to a battalion of rather inferior provincial volunteers in England. He was
pressed for his opinion, which he gave as follows: ‘Gentlemens, I ‘av seen de Garde-Royal
and de Garde-Napoleon; I ‘av seen de Russ and de Pruss; but by Gar! I ‘av
nevare see such troops as dese!—no, nevare!‘ With the two passages annexed, the one
describing an annoyance to which popular actors are not unfrequently exposed, and the
other the tricks of which they are sometimes made the subjects, we take our leave of
Mr. Abbott’s ‘experiences’ at Edinburgh:

‘In passing through the gallery at Holyrood, where the miserable daubs of the Scottish kings
are exhibited, I was accosted by a legitimate cockney, whom I discovered to be a traveller for
some furniture-maker’s establishment. He had not been long enough in his vocation to acquire
the shrewdness for which that class of persons are celebrated, but made up in unsophisticated
simplicity what they possess in assurance. He recognized me immediately, having, as he said,
‘frequently seen me at Covent-Garden Theatre;’ and without any extra ceremony he fastened
himself upon me. When he came to the portrait of Macbeth, he turned quickly round upon our
cicerone, and said: ‘Lord bless you! that’s not a bit like him; for I saw John Kemble do it, and
it isn’t so much like him as the moon is like a Cheshire cheese.’ But the climax of his sage
remarks occurred when the old woman came to the spot where David Rizzio was murdered,
and pointed out the stain of his blood, which still remains, and which neither time nor soap, she
said, would ever efface. Our cockney rubbed his hands with delight, and said: ‘Why, my good
woman, I’ll give you some stuff that will take it out in half an hour!’ * * * One morning I lounged
into the box-office, which was crowded with persons taking places; and on looking at the playbill
of the night’s performance, I saw the tragedy of Isabella announced, ‘Carlos by Mr. Abbott,
with his celebrated hornpipe in fetters, as performed by him at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden!’
This was one of the practical jokes of my friend Murray, (who married a sister of Thomas
Moore.) He had given the printer directions to strike off some half a dozen bills of this stamp,
for the purpose of raising a laugh against me!’

Soon after the retirement of John Kemble from the London stage, a great event, and
well described by Mr. Abbott, that great tragedian gave a memorable dinner to some
eighteen or twenty of the most distinguished members of the corps-dramatique of Covent-Garden[485]
Theatre. Among the guests, also, was Talma, of whom we have this graphic
account:

‘On this occasion we had a fine trait of the tragic powers of Talma; not a bombastic display of
French acting, but a grand and simple narrative of facts, connected with that frightful epoch, the
French Revolution. He himself was suspected, watched; and his profession alone saved him
from the blood-hounds who were on his track. During the most terrific period, he did not dare
to sleep at his hotel, but lived in the outskirts of the metropolis; and when called in town by
his professional avocations, he would steal like a culprit to the gate of his residence, and in an
under tone inquire of the old Swiss porter the bloody news of the day. On one occasion he was
told that some thirty or forty of his most intimate friends had that very morning perished by the
guillotine. Feeling that the crisis of his own fate had arrived, he went tremblingly to the theatre;
and during the performance the overwhelming anguish of his soul was relieved only by the tears
coursing down his cheeks; and the very expression of which feeling every moment endangered
his life. There was a cold, creeping chilliness about the hearts of all present as he spoke, which
was perfectly thrilling; and not a sound was heard till he had ceased.’

Here is a brace of anecdotes of an absent-minded brother-actor, which will perhaps
‘agitate the risible organs’ of some of our readers:

‘Henry,’ in ‘Speed the Plough,’ was a character in which he had gained some reputation. At
the closing scene of the play, he rushes into a wing of the castle, which is in flames, in quest of
papers likely to disclose the secret of his birth. He returns in fearful agitation, with his right hand
concealed in his bosom, and which in fact should contain the bloody dénouement of the plot, a
towel dipped in blood, alias rose-pink, and a knife, also properly stained for the occasion. The
climax of his speech ran thus: ‘In vain the angry flames flashed their vengeance around me!
Among many other evidences of blood and guilt, I found these!’—producing his fingers and hand!
He had entirely forgotten the essential accompaniments * * * His first appearance was before
Mr. Dimond had quitted the stage, and who enacted the part of ‘Belcour’ in ‘The West Indian.’
In the scene with his sister the debutant should say: ‘Are you assured that Mr. Belcour gave you
no diamonds?’ The question however was rendered thus: ‘Are you assured that Mr. Dimond
gave you no Belcours?’

Such errors, we believe, are not infrequent upon the stage. The reader will perhaps
remember the blunder of the Ghost in Hamlet, on one occasion; who, instead of saying
that the ‘knotted and combinéd locks’ of the young prince would ‘stand on end like
quills upon the fretful porcupine,’ reversed the terms in this ludicrous manner: ‘Your
twisted and combinéd locks shall stand up straight, like forks upon the fretful quillcopine!’
A single passage more must close our extracts from this delightful autobiography. It is
a short story, touching ‘the immortal Townsend, the first of Bow-street officers, the
favorite of Royalty, and the dread of all coachmen and flambeau’d footmen:’

‘I think I see him now, with his flaxen wig, his low-crowned hat, long gaiters, and half-Quaker
suit,’ discoursing most eloquent music.’ It was a source of great amusement to the young
sprigs of nobility to extract from him in conversation some of his most characteristic slang expressions;
nor did Royalty itself disdain to be amused at his expense. About the period of the connection
between the Duke of Clarence and Mrs. Jordan, public opinion was rife on the subject.
His Royal Highness was at the opera, surrounded by the world of fashion; and when he encountered
Townsend, who was on duty there, he said, in his brusque, off-hand manner: ‘Ah! Townsend,
Townsend, how d’ ye do, Townsend?’ ‘Why, your Royal Highness, pretty bobbish, I
thank you,’ replied the functionary. ‘Well, Townsend, what news, what news?’ ‘Why,
nothink, your Royal Highness, of any consequence.’ ‘Oh, nonsense! nonsense! The people
must have something to talk about.’ ‘Why then, if your Royal Highness pleases, the talk is principally
about you and Mrs. Jordan.’ The sailor-prince was here a little thrown ‘aback.’ ‘Never
mind, never mind; let them talk; I don’t care.’ Observe the simplicity of the answer: ‘Your
Royal Highness is a d—d fool if you do!’

The foregoing is the result of a merely casual dipping, here and there, into the teeming
pages of Mr. Abbott’s manuscript volume. Whoever the fortunate publisher of
the work may be, he may calculate with certainty upon its acquiring instant popularity.

[486]

‘The Dial‘ for the October quarter is a very excellent and lifeful number of that
greatly-improved journal. Among the articles which most attracted our attention and
admiration, are the ‘Youth of the Poet and Painter,’ ‘A Winter Walk,’ an essay on
‘The Comic,’ and the ‘Letter’ of the Editor to his correspondents. The first of these
papers is characterized by several thrusts of a trenchant satire. We should rather infer,
from the recorded ‘experiences’ of the writer, that when he first entered college, his
bump of reverence for collegiate institutions and men of learning could hardly have
been developed. Hear him, how he saith:

‘I saw that in reciting our lessons to the conceited tutors, who think College is the Universe,
and the President Jupiter, they had the impudence to give us marks for what we did, as if we,
paying them for so much aid in our lessons, were therefore to be rewarded by them with a couple
of pencil scratches. I found we were treated, not only as machines, but to be set up or down, at
the discretion of these tutors, who had merely to scratch down a mark, and thus decide our fates.
This foolery I felt I could not agree to.’ ‘I found here no scholars whatever. Some young men
deficient in grace, were wearing out the elbows of their coats, in getting by heart some set lessons
of some little text-books, and striving which should commit them the most perfectly to memory.
This perfection lay in the point of a tutor’s pencil, and was at last decided on by the votes of a
band of professors, who loved wine and puddings better than literature or art, and whose chief
merit lay in keeping their feet dry.’

Perhaps ‘these be truths.’ Certain it is, that the annexed passage partakes of the
veritable. It is a ‘picture in little’ of the morning routine of a briefless lawyer; and the
sitter has many a counterpart in this metropolis of Gotham:

‘In the morning, you enter your office at half-past eight, read the paper till nine, and then, if
you feel able, walk as far as the court-house. There you are provided with a seat by the sheriff,
and cold water by the deputy-sheriff. You next stare at the Court, consisting of one or more
judges, twelve jurymen, a criminal or civil case, four baize tables, and a lot of attorneys. You
next begin to make motions, which consists in getting a case put off, or put on, as you happen to
feel, and run your eye over the docket, which is kept at the clerk’s table, in a ledger, for the
accommodation of the county, and the clerk’s family. If it is your case which comes on, you
open your eyes wide, talk a great deal about nothing, and dine with the bar. Occasionally you
will feel sleepy after dinner, but awake yourself by smoking a cigar, or driving into the country.’

Here is an extract which will be appreciated for its graceful diction, the love and
observation of nature which it displays, and the pensive train of thought which its tone
engenders:

‘To-day has been pure golden sun-shine since morning; and how the day-god played with the
trunks of the trees, as if the forest were one great harp! In the morning, as I sat among golden-rods,
under the shade of a pine, where on every side these sunny flowers grew, it seemed as if
the sunlight had become so thickly knotted and intertwined with the roots and stems of the plants
and grasses, that it could not escape, but must remain and shine forever; yet the pine tree’s
shadow, at sunset and before, fell long across the place, and the gay light had fled, like the few
bright days of life, which fly so rapid by. The old tell us we are young, and can know nothing of
life; to me it seems I have lived centuries, out of which I can reckon on my fingers the days of
pleasure, when my heart beat high. I fancy there is a race of men born to know only the loss of
life by its joys; to live by single days, and to pass their time for the most part in shadowy vistas,
where there is neither darkness nor light, but perpetual mist. I am one of these; and though I
love nature; the river, the forest, the clouds, she is only a phantom, like myself, and passes slowly,
an unexplained mystery, like my own consciousness, which shows through a want of perfect
knowledge. I see myself, only as what I do not know, and others, as some reflection of this
ignorance, an iceberg among other icebergs, slowly drifting from the frozen pole of birth to the
frozen pole of death, through a sunny sea.’

Well pleased should we have been to accompany our observant and thoughtful essayist,
when he fetched his ‘Winter Walk.’ Mark his delicate appreciation of the little
accessories of the season. We thank him for awakening vivid glimpses of the past, that
go strait to the fresh scenes of boyhood:

‘There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold
can chill. It finally melts the great snow, and in January or July is only buried under a thicker
or thinner covering. In the coldest day it flows somewhere, and the snow melts around every
tree. This field of winter rye, which sprouted late in the fall, and now speedily dissolves the
snow, is where the fire is very thinly covered. We feel warmed by it. In the winter, warmth
stands for all virtue, and we resort in thought to a trickling rill, with its bare stones shining in the[487]
sun, and to warm springs in the woods, with as much eagerness as rabbits and robins. The
steam which rises from swamps and pools, is as dear and domestic as that of our own kettle.
What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter’s day, when the meadow mice come out by
the wall-sides, and the chicadee lisps in the defiles of the wood? The warmth comes directly
from the sun, and is not radiated from the earth, as in summer; and when we feel his beams on
our back as we are treading some snowy dell, we are grateful as for a special kindness, and bless
the sun which has followed us into that by-place. This subterranean fire has its altar in each
man’s breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveller cherishes a warmer fire
within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth. A healthy man, indeed, is the complement
of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.’ * * * ‘In winter we lead a more
inward life. Our hearts are warm and merry, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and
doors are half concealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends. The imprisoning
drifts increase the sense of comfort which the house affords, and in the coldest days we are
content to sit over the hearth and see the sky through the chimney top, enjoying the quiet and
serene life that may be had in a warm corner by the chimney side, or feeling our pulse by listening
to the low of cattle in the street, or the sound of the flail in distant barns all the long afternoon.
No doubt a skilful physician could determine our health by observing how these simple and natural
sounds affected us.’

We commend the following to those who seem to think that a thorough love of the
comic or the burlesque argues an ill-regulated mind or a perverted taste. That there are
such persons, the reader who has done us the honor to peruse our late confabulations
with correspondents, will not need to be informed:

‘A perception of the comic seems to be a balance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. It
appears to be an essential element in a fine character. Wherever the intellect is constructive, it
will be found. We feel the absence of it as a defect in the noblest and most oracular soul. It
insulates the man, cuts down all bridges between him and other men. The perception of the
comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, is a pledge of sanity, and is a protection from those
perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities into which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves.
A man alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little
for him.’

In the subjoined, which we take from the ‘Letter’ of the Editor, already alluded to,
may be seen one beneficial result of the ‘hard times,’ which, driving men out of cities
and trade, forced them to take off their coats and go to work on the land, which has
rewarded them not only with wheat, but with habits of labor:

‘Speculation is no succedaneum for life. What we would know, we must do. As if any
taste or imagination could take the place of fidelity! The old Duty is the old God. And we may
come to this by the rudest teaching. A friend of ours went five years ago to Illinois to buy a farm
for his son. Though there were crowds of emigrants in the roads, the country was open on both
sides, and long intervals between hamlets and houses. Now after five years he has just been to
visit the young farmer and see how he prospered, and reports that a miracle has been wrought.
From Massachusetts to Illinois, the land is fenced in and builded over, almost like New-England
itself, and the proofs of thrifty cultivation every where abound.’

There is much less of the new style of verbal affectations in the present than in preceding
numbers of ‘The Dial,’ and it is just in this proportion the more readable and
attractive. We see something indeed of ‘externality.’ ‘reäction inward,’ ‘unitive ideas;’
and certain compound terms, which are meant to be forcible, but are only foolish; such
as ‘flesh-meat’ for meat, ‘foot-tread’ for tread, and other the like words; but they are
scarcely worth mentioning; the infrequency of their occurrence being a sufficient proof
of the decadence into which they are already falling.

‘Memoirs of the Court of England.‘—We have in three handsome volumes, from the
press of Messrs. Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia, an accurate memoir of the Court of England,
from the Revolution in 1668 to the death of George the Second. The work proceeds from
the pen of John Henease Jesse, author of ‘Memoirs of the Court of England during the Reign
of the Stuarts.’ There are numerous and fruitful themes of instruction and warning in these
volumes; lessons which have not been lost upon the world, and which are of especial interest to
the citizens of a republic; aside from which, the details of the private history of some score of
eminent persons, who left their impress on the eras in which they flourished, must needs have
attraction for the general reader, who may only peruse them with an eye to lively entertainment.
We observe, by the journals of the day, that the work is heartily welcomed and duly appreciated
by the public.

[488]

THE DRAMA.

Park Theatre.—We congratulate the friends of the drama upon the bright auspices under
which this establishment has commenced the present season. Those who have long predicted the
downfall of things theatrical, and the utter extinction of the legitimate drama, find but little in the
present aspect of affairs at this house to flatter their spirit of prophecy. So long as we continue
upon the civilized side of barbarism, so long will a true taste for the drama remain with us. It is
the natural food of an intellectual society, and as such will be cherished wherever that society
exists; the vagaries of fashion on the one hand, and the railings of fanaticism on the other, to the
contrary notwithstanding.

Mr. Wallack.—The engagement fulfilled by this gentleman, after an absence of some years,
proved to his admirers that the vigor and vivacity of his acting have lost none of their former charms.
In those personations which he has long since made his own, he displayed the same excellence
which ever characterized his performance. To say that Mr. Wallack stands at the head of
melo-dramatic actors, is not awarding him full praise. He is immeasurably beyond all rivalry in
this branch of the art. Melo-dramatic performances by other artists bear about the same relation
to the chaste acting of tragedy that the art of scene-painting in water-colors does to that other art
which embraces alike the power of tracing upon canvass the most delicate as well as the most
magnificent works of nature, in the bold and imperishable figures of a Michael Angelo or a
Claude Lorraine. The outlines, the sketchy prominences, of the landscape are what the best
of the melo-dramatic actors have delineated; but Wallack has gone a distance beyond them,
and added a grace and a finish to the picture, of which his subjects were before thought incapable
of receiving. And yet Mr. Wallack is no tragedian. With the high regard which we entertain
for his talents, we have never seen them exerted in tragedy, without lamenting their sad misdirection.
In the enviable station which he occupies as the first melo-dramatic actor of the age, fearless
of rivalry, he should be satisfied, and consider the dignity of third-rate tragedian as entirely
beneath his ambition.

Mr. Macready.—Sixteen years ago the American public were first gratified by the performance
of this great tragedian—great even then; and those who remember the peculiar character of
his style at that time, have recognized it again with all its beauties improved by long study and
practice, and not entirely devoid of blemishes. Mr. Macready’s acting presents the effect of
great study; it shows the result of sound judgment, and bears witness to the absence of all feeling.
Great as was Edmund Kean, and great as is the subject of this notice, in the same department
of the drama, never were two artists, on or off the stage, more completely the antipodes of
each other. Kean, all soul; reckless of art, and apparently despising even the most common
and long-received rules and usages of the stage; rushed before his audience, embodying as he
advanced the very soul of the character which he had put on with his dress; warming with it,
feeling the sensations which he expressed; with

There was no study there; nothing farther than the mere committing to memory of the words of
his part. He identified himself with the character, and for the time was that character, to all
intents and purposes; entering into its sensations, and actually feeling its joys and its sorrows.
And what are the effects of such acting? Let those whose tears have flowed at his bidding,
answer! Kean did not create admiration; he awakened enthusiasm. Mr. Macready is
so chaste and perfect, so artistical, to use a cant term, that admiration is the usual feeling which
he creates. His acting is like a beautiful piece of mechanism, where every wheel and spring
performs its perfect work. There is no jarring, no clog, to mar the exquisite regularity of its
movements. But it is a piece of machinery, after all. It is man’s work, to say the best of it. The
power which Kean possessed was no more a merit to the man, as being the work of study, than
the genius of Byron was a creation of his own. Nature made him an actor—a thing of feeling;
and he could not shut within himself the rays of that divine influence. It could not be cribbed,
narrowed down, or fashioned by study, but it shone forth in all its native effulgence—dazzling
and unshaded. Therefore it is fairly maintained, that the high station which Mr. Macready
occupies as the first tragedian of his time is more to his honor than would be the same position, if[489]
gained for him by nature alone. The profession to which he belongs has reason to be proud of its
head. He has done more to elevate the drama to its true position than any of his contemporaries,
if John Kemble alone be excepted. We have observed during this engagement of Mr.
Macready’s many new and beautiful readings, many striking effects, and many bold points, which
together with the unusual care and fitness in the ‘dressing’ of the stage, will form the subject of
some future notice. We can foresee much benefit that is to grow out of his visit to the American
stage. We can already perceive the good effects produced both upon the actors and the stage-manager
by Mr. Macready’s first engagement at the Park; and we sincerely hope that any suggestions
which he may be induced to make, may be liberally and promptly acted upon.

C.

Apropos of the foregoing: Here is our friend the ‘Mail-Robber,’ with a most timely and
apposite paper, in his

FIFTH POETICAL EPISTLE.

TO J. VANDENUOFF, ESQUIRE, OF COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE, LONDON.

T. W. P.

Mr. Placide, the universal favorite, who requires not a word of praise from any one who has
ever seen him upon the stage, leaves us soon, we learn, for the South-west. As an actor and a gentleman,
we commend him to the especial regards of our play-going readers, and editorial and personal[492]
friends, in that meridian. Gentlemen, he is ‘a trump!’ Mr. Chippendale is cordially
welcomed back to the Park. In his rôle, by no means a limited one, he is not second to any of his
confréres. How admirably he personated the ‘Intendant’ in ‘Werner!’ It was a faultless performance,
by common consent of his gratified auditors. The same may be said, and was said,
indeed, and very unanimously, of his excellent representation of ‘Col. Damas‘ in the ‘Lady of
Lyons.’ Mr. Chippendale has been greatly missed, during his absence; and he ‘can’t be
spared’ again. We are glad of an opportunity to pay a deserved tribute to the talents of Mr.
Wheatley. ‘That first appeal which is to the eye‘ is most satisfactorily sustained by the manly
person and fine features of this gentleman; and we know of no one in the profession whose improvement
has been more marked. To our fancy, his performance of ‘Ulrick,’ in ‘Werner,’ was
a study. The last scene won the most applause, perhaps; but the previous conception and execution
of the actor, though less outwardly manifested, were certainly not less felicitous. As
‘Icilius,’ in ‘Virginius,’ also, Mr. Wheatley won golden opinions. Indeed, it seems quite certain,
that with continued study and attention to the minutiæ of his characters, this young gentleman
is destined to attain a high rank in his profession. Mr. Vache, the new Charleston acquisition,
seems a very self-possessed, correct, and gentleman-like performer. All that we have seen him
essay, has been well sustained. His success is no longer doubtful.

‘American Theatre,’ Bowery.—We have nothing but abundant success to chronicle of this
spacious establishment. It has been crowded nightly, we are informed, to its utmost capacity, by
admiring audiences, to witness the representation of Shakspeare’s heroes and heroines by Mr.
Hamblin, and that gifted actress, Mrs. Shaw. This fact sufficiently bespeaks the character of the
personations of these two popular performers.

Mitchell’s Olympic.—Full, every night, of wide-mouthed laughers, who go grinning homeward
‘by the light of the moon’ or the gas-lamps. What could we say more? The only thing
necessary to add is, ‘Go early, if you desire to enjoy with comfort the capital acting of Mitchell,
in the amusing travestie of ‘Macbeth,’ the charming voice of Miss Taylor, or the clever personations
of Walcott.’

The Chatham.—’E’yah! yah! yah!—e’look-o’-‘ere!’ James Crow, Esquire, has recently
delighted his ‘friends and fellow-citizens’ at this commodious and well-appointed establishment,
which has partaken, during the month, of the general prosperity of theatricals in the metropolis.
Mr. Burton, a low comedian, formerly of Philadelphia, followed him in his round of characters,
with satisfaction to his admirers; and ‘at this present writing,’ Yankee Hill is amusing crowded
audiences with his unique representations of ‘down-east’ life and manners.

Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.—It is many years since we first perused the
thoughtful ‘Vision of Mirza.’ We have been pondering it again this wailing autumn evening; and
as we read, we remembered how many companions, who went hand-in-hand with us through the
valley of youth, had entered upon the bridge which spans the stream of time, and one after another
disappeared in the ever-flowing tide below. Amidst the beating of the ‘sorrowing rains’ against
the window-panes, and the fitful sighing of the night-wind, we thought of One who held with
Nature an affectionate fellowship, and who loved this melancholy season as a poet only could love
it; of one who stepped upon that bridge at the same moment with ourselves, but who, while yet in
the first stages of his journey, growing weary and faint with the toil and strife, reached with
gradually-faltering pace one of the concealed pit-falls, and was ‘lost for ever to time;’ leaving
his companion alone, to press on toward the dark cloud which ever broods over the onward distance.
Strange power of memory!

Something there is in the autumn season which reaches back into those recesses of the spirit,
where lie the sources whence well out the bitter or the sweet waters; recollections of the hopes,
the fears, the sorrows and the happinesses, of our incomprehensible being! Enter with us,[493]
reader, upon Mirza’s Bridge, and listen to the teachings of this matchless allegory of the mysterious
shepherd:

‘Cast thy eyes eastward,’ said he, ‘and tell me what thou seest.’ ‘I see,’ said I, ‘a huge valley, and a prodigious
tide of water rolling through it.’ ‘The valley that thou seest,’ said he, ‘is the Vale of Misery, and
the tide of water that thou seest is part of the great tide of Eternity.’ ‘What is the reason,’ said I, ‘that the
tide and sea rise out of a thick mist at one end, and again lose themselves in a thick mist at the other?’ ‘What
thou seest,’ said he, ‘is that portion of eternity which is called time, measured out by the sun, and reaching
from the beginning of the world to its consummation. Examine now,’ said he, ‘this sea that is thus bounded
with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it.’ ‘I see a bridge,’ said I, ‘standing in the
midst of the tide.’ ‘The bridge thou seest,’ said he, ‘is Human Life; consider it attentively.’ Upon a more
leisurely survey of it, I found that it consisted of three-score and ten arches, which, added to those that were
entire, made up the number about an hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this
bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches, but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in
the ruinous condition I now beheld it. ‘But tell me farther,’ said he, ‘what discoverest thou on it?’ ‘I see
multitudes of people passing over it,’ said I, ‘and a black cloud hanging on each end of it.’ As I looked more
attentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed underneath
it; and upon farther examination, I perceived that there were innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed
in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon but they fell through them into the tide, and
immediately disappeared. These hidden pit-falls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that
throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner
toward the middle, but multiplied and lay close together toward the end of the arches that were entire.
There were indeed some persons, but then their number was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling
march on the broken arches, but fell through, one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a
walk.

‘I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects which
it presented. My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst
of mirth and jollity, and catching at every thing that stood by, to save themselves. Some were looking toward
the heavens, in a thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes
were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes, and danced before them, but often,
when they thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed, and down they sank. In this
confusion of objects I observed some with cimetars in their hands, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting
several persons on trap-doors which did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have escaped,
had they not been thus forced upon them.’

The misty expanse which was spanned by this bridge opened at length, it will be remembered,
at the farther end; where, thronging the Islands of the Blessed, that were covered with fruits and
flowers, and ‘interwoven with shining seas that ran among them,’ were seen ‘innumerous persons,
dressed in glorious habits, with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying
down by the sides of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers;’ and there was a confused harmony
of singing-birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. ‘Gladness,’
exclaims the rapt dreamer, ‘grew in me, upon the discovery of so delightful a scene! I longed
for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats!’ But there was no passage
to them, except through the gates of death, that were opening every moment upon the bridge.
Happy are they who can say, in the fullness of faith and hope, ‘Come the hour of reünion with
the loved and lost on earth! and the passionate yearnings of affection shall bear us to that blessed
land! Come death to this body!—this burthened, tempted, frail, failing, dying body!—and to the
soul, come freedom, light, and joy unceasing!—come the immortal life!’ * * * The ‘Tale‘ of our
Zanesville (Ohio) friend is too long for our pages. It is well written, however; and especially
the third chapter, which describes the progress of a Yankee pedler through the ‘Buckeye State,’
thirty-five years ago. But for the injunction of the writer, we should have ventured to appropriate
this chapter entire. The ”cute trick’ upon the honest farmer was capital, and a fair quid pro quo.
It was not better, however, than the following, which is equally authentic. A gentleman from
New-York, who had been in Boston for the purpose of collecting some moneys due him in that
city, was about returning, when he found that one bill of a hundred dollars had been overlooked.
His landlord, who knew the debtor, thought it ‘a doubtful case;’ but added, that if it was collectable
at all, a tall raw-boned Yankee, then dunning a lodger in another part of the room, would ‘annoy
it out of the man.’ Calling him up, therefore, he introduced him to the creditor, who showed him
the account. ‘Wal, ‘Squire, ‘tan’t much use tryin’, I guess. I know that critter. You might as
well try to squeeze ile out o’ Bunker-Hill monument, as to c’lect a debt o’ him. But any how,
‘Squire, what’ll you give, s’posin’ I do try?’ ‘Well, Sir, the bill is one hundred dollars. I’ll
give you—yes, I’ll give you half, if you can collect it.’ ”Greed!’ replied the collector; ‘there’s
no harm in tryin’, any way.’ Some weeks after, the creditor chanced to be in Boston, and in
walking up Tremont-street, encountered his enterprising friend: ‘Look o’ here!’ said he,[494]
”Squire, I had considerable luck with that bill o’ your’n. You see, I stuck to him like a dog to a
root, but for the first week or so ‘t wan’t no use—not a bit. If he was home, he was ‘short;’ if
he wasn’t home, I couldn’t get no satisfaction. By and by, says I, after goin’ sixteen times, ‘I’ll
fix you!’ says I; so I sot down on the door-step and sot all day, and part o’ the evenin’; and I
begun airly next day; but about ten o’clock, he g’in in. He paid me my half, an’ I ‘gin him up the
note!‘ * * * We invite the attention of our readers to the following spirited lines. We shall be
glad to hear again from the writer, when he returns to his ‘several places of abode.’ He tells us
that his physician, ‘after giving him a little of every thing in his shop, and doubly jeopardizing his
life by a consultation, has advised a change of air.’ We shall less regret his temporary indisposition,
if we can be made the recipient of his pleasant letters from the Southern Springs. In the
stanzas annexed, not unmixed with one or two infelicities, are several fine pictures. The chant
pealing from the choir of the North Winds; the fierce armies of the pole issuing from their battlements
of snow to ravage the fair fields of the temperate regions; the hail-stones beating the march
of Winter on the hollow trees; the snow falling silently in the garden of the dead; all these are
poetical conceptions, graphically expressed:

WINTER.
BY THE SHEPHERD OF SHARONDALE, VALLEY OF VIRGINIA.

The ‘Tribune‘ daily journal finds the October number of the Knickerbocker ‘well filled with
readable and pleasant papers, upon a gratifying variety of topics;’ its ‘Literary Notices extended
and interesting;’ and ‘its Editor’s Table admirably filled, as usual, with whatever is light, graceful,
and pleasing.’ We hold ourselves bound to be duly grateful for praise so much beyond our
deserts; but we cannot permit the young associate-editor of that print, howsoever prompted, to
misrepresent us, as he has done, in the notice from which we derive the encomiastic tributes we
have quoted. We are accused of ‘going out of our way’ to attack the writings and the fame
(Heaven save the mark!) of the author of ‘Puffer Hopkins;’ and of being actuated in this by a
spirit of malevolence and personal pique. We choose, for the nonce, to occupy space which we
could much better employ, in opposing a point-blank denial to this charge. Such a course is not[495]
the wont of the Knickerbocker; a fact no better known to our readers themselves than to the
absent senior editor of the ‘Tribune,’ with whom for ten years and upward we have walked
hand-in-hand in the support and encouragement of such native literature as was worthy of the
name. Were this Magazine accustomed to be swayed in its judgments by private pique, its
adverse opinions would need no corrective; its ‘sneers’ would be impotent; its ‘satire’ unavailing.
No; our sin consists in exposing, without fear, favor, or hope of reward, the literary pretensions
of one who has no claim to be regarded as an ‘American author;’ who has foisted upon the
community such works as we have elsewhere considered; and whose efforts to establish a literary
reputation are of a kind to heighten rather than to lessen the effect of his uniform failures. We
are gravely told, that this writer has ‘just conceptions of what an American literature ought to be;
of the mission of the American writer,’ and so forth. We have had and have nothing to say of his
‘conceptions’ of what our literature should be, nor of his ideas of literary ‘missions;’ but we
have had something to say of his performances, and of the manner in which they have been presented
to and received by the public; and for this reason, and this alone, are we accused of being
actuated by private prejudice. But so it has always been. ‘Tell these small-beer littérateurs,’
says Christopher North, ‘that they are calves, and sucking calves too, and they low against
you with voices corroborative of the truth they deny.’ We should like to know whether all who
hold our own opinions touching ‘Puffer Hopkins’ and the other ‘writings’ of its author are also
actuated by ‘personal pique.’ If so, there is a goodly number of us! ”Fore Heaven,’ as Dogberry
says, ‘we are all in a case;’ for we can truly say, that we never heard an individual
speak of these productions, who did not agree with us entirely in the estimate we had formed of
them. ‘Personal pique!’ Was it this which led the kindly ‘Boston Post’ to pronounce ‘Puffer
Hopkins’ ‘about as flat an affair as it ever tried to wade through?’ and the ‘Poem on Man’ a
‘mere pile of words,’ in which even poetical thoughts were ‘completely spoiled by verbiage?’
Was it this which prompted our own lively ‘Mercury’ to say that Mr. Mathews had ‘no more
humor than a crying crocodile,’ and that his short-lived Arcturus ‘died of a lingering ‘Puffer Hopkins?”
Was it this which caused a monthly metropolitan contemporary to declare, that his writings
were ‘characterized by an air of pretension, and an eternal succession of futile attempts at
humor, which at once disposed the reader to dislike him and his works?’ Was it ‘malevolence’
which prompted the publishers of ‘Behemoth,’ (over whom the writer had ‘come the evil eye,’)
when they saw his proposals for a ‘new edition,’ to advertise their’s—’four years old and complete’—at
half the money? Was it ‘personal pique’ which caused the house whose name
appears as publishers on the title-page of his last work, to complain that it had previously been
used by him without their consent, and to object to its being again employed?—on the ground,
too, that they did not desire their names to appear upon any of his productions? Was it ‘malevolence’
which suggested a new title-page, at the publisher’s expense, from which their names
might be omitted? As well might ‘the disaffected’ upon whom a humorous ‘work’ of the author
had been inflicted abroad, be accused of acting from ‘personal pique’ in deciding that for them at
least ‘one such fun, it was enough!’ Æsop is dead, but his frog is still extant; and if we were
not at the end of our tether, we could ‘illustrate this position’ to the satisfaction of every body
save Mr. Mathews himself. As it is, we take our leave of him, with no fear that he will write
less creditably, and no hope that he will print less frequently, than heretofore; for such is his
cacoëthes scribendi, that we verily believe he would be an author, if he were the only reader in
the world. Indeed, we even hear of another edition of his writings, ‘at the risk of the owner,’
to be sent forth from his stereotype-plates, by our friends the Harpers! We had intended a
word or two touching Mr. Mathews’s position in the ‘Copy-right Club’—for we hear there
are two sides to that matter—but we wish well to a cause of which this Magazine was the
earliest, and has been a constant advocate, and to Mr. Mathews’s efforts in it; and if he is
to prepare an address to the public, we earnestly hope that it may be clear, simple, and direct,
as becomes the plain truths it should present; and that ‘giants, elephants, ‘tiger-mothers,’ and
curricles, angels, frigates, baronial castles, and fish-ponds,’ will be carefully excluded from its
arguments and its expostulations. By the by: this reminds us that we have an error to correct,
alike unintentional and immaterial. It was at the Society Library, not the Tabernacle, that Mr.
Mathews’s great lecture on copy-right was delivered. On this point, the following passage from
an editorial paragraph in the ‘New World’ may be deemed pertinent by many readers, and impertinent,
perhaps, by one or two: ‘The ‘Tribune’ accuses the Knickerbocker of mistaking the
Tabernacle for the Society Library, as the place where Mr. Mathews delivered his lecture on
copy-right to a beggarly account of empty benches, last winter, after placarding the town with the
fact that ‘the author of ‘Puffer Hopkins‘ was to be heard and seen at that place. But is the fact[496]
altered by this trifling error? Was there not a ‘capacious edifice’ almost empty, and tickets numbered
as high as twelve hundred, and not fifty persons in the room?—and half of those ‘dead
heads?’—as dead as the lecturer’s? If this is denied, it can easily be proved.’ * * * We are
obliged for the kind wishes and intentions of our friend and correspondent ‘F.;’ but he must
allow us to say, that his ‘Sketch of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell‘ embodies many anecdotes of that
learned and eccentric person, which are already familiar to the public. The story of the semi-black
man is ‘as old as the hills.’ The following, however, which we segregate, is quite new, at
least to us: ‘Jarvis, celebrated no less as an artist than as a pleasant social companion, walking
one sultry summer morning with a friend down Murray-street, encountered the Doctor, with a
pound of fresh butter upon a cabbage-leaf. ‘I’ll lay you a small wager,’ said he to his companion,
‘that I’ll cross over on the sunny side, and engage the doctor in conversation, until his butter has
melted completely away!’ No sooner said than done. Jarvis entertained him with inquiries
upon abstruse themes, which Dr. Mitchell took great delight in answering in detail, as well as
the objections which Jarvis occasionally urged against the correctness of his conclusions. Meanwhile,
the butter dripped slowly away upon the walk, until it was utterly wasted. The waggish
painter then took leave of the Doctor, who now for the first time glanced at his cabbage-leaf,
exclaiming: ‘You’ve almost made me forget my errand, Jarvis; I started to get some fresh butter
from Washington-market!’ * * * We shall venture to hope that in declining the ‘Stanzas to
my Boy in Heaven‘ we shall give no pain to the bereaved author. The feeling of the lines is itself
eloquent poetry; but their execution is in certain portions marked by deficiences in rythm and
melody. Will the writer permit another to express for her the very emotions which she evidently
depicts with her ‘heart swelling continually to her eyes?’