VI. THE SKIPPER'S STORY (part 1 of 3)

VI. THE SKIPPER'S STORY (part 1 of 3)

"WELL, what's the news below?" asked the Doctor of his housekeeper, as she came home from a gossiping visit to the landing one afternoon. "What new piece of scandal is afloat now?"

"Nothing, except what concerns yourself," answered Widow Matson, tartly. "Mrs. Nugeon says that you've been to see her neighbor Wait's girl--she that 's sick with the measles--half a dozen times, and never so much as left a spoonful of medicine; and she should like to know what a doctor's good for without physic. Besides, she says Lieutenant Brown would have got well if you'd minded her, and let him have plenty of thoroughwort tea, and put a split fowl at the pit of his stomach."

"A split stick on her own tongue would be better," said the Doctor, with a wicked grimace.

"The Jezebel! Let her look out for herself the next time she gets the rheumatism; I'll blister her from head to heel. But what else is going?"

"The schooner Polly Pike is at the landing."

"What, from Labrador? The one Tom Osborne went in?"

"I suppose so; I met Tom down street."

"Good!" said the Doctor, with emphasis. "Poor Widow Osborne's prayers are answered, and she will see her son before she dies."

"And precious little good will it do her," said the housekeeper. "There's not a more drunken, swearing rakeshame in town than Tom Osborne."

"It's too true," responded the Doctor. "But he's her only son; and you know, Mrs. Matson, the heart of a mother."

The widow's hard face softened; a tender shadow passed over it; the memory of some old bereavement melted her; and as she passed into the house I saw her put her checked apron to her eyes.

By this time Skipper Evans, who had been slowly working his way up street for some minutes, had reached the gate.

"Look here!" said he. "Here's a letter that I've got by the Polly Pike from one of your old patients that you gave over for a dead man long ago."

"From the other world, of course," said the Doctor.

"No, not exactly, though it's from Labrador, which is about the last place the Lord made, I reckon."

"What, from Dick Wilson?"

"Sartin," said the Skipper.

"And how is he?"

"Alive and hearty. I tell you what, Doctor, physicking and blistering are all well enough, may be; but if you want to set a fellow up when he's kinder run down, there's nothing like a fishing trip to Labrador, 'specially if he's been bothering himself with studying, and writing, and such like. There's nothing like fish chowders, hard bunks, and sea fog to take that nonsense out of him. Now, this chap," (the Skipper here gave me a thrust in the ribs by way of designation,) "if I could have him down with me beyond sunset for two or three months, would come back as hearty as a Bay o' Fundy porpoise."

Assuring him that I would like to try the experiment, with him as skipper, I begged to know the history of the case he had spoken of.

The old fisherman smiled complacently, hitched up his pantaloons, took a seat beside us, and, after extracting a jack-knife from one pocket, and a hand of tobacco from the other, and deliberately supplying himself with a fresh quid, he mentioned, apologetically, that he supposed the Doctor had heard it all before.

"Yes, twenty times," said the Doctor; "but never mind; it's a good story yet. Go ahead, Skipper."

"Well, you see," said the Skipper, "this young Wilson comes down here from Hanover College, in the spring, as lean as a shad in dog-days. He had studied himself half blind, and all his blood had got into brains. So the Doctor tried to help him with his poticary stuff, and the women with their herbs; but all did no good. At last somebody advised him to try a fishing cruise down East; and so he persuaded me to take him aboard my schooner. I knew he'd be right in the way, and poor company at the best, for all his Greek and Latin; for, as a general thing, I've noticed that your college chaps swop away their common sense for their larning, and make a mighty poor bargain of it. Well, he brought his books with him, and stuck to them so close that I was afraid we should have to slide him off the plank before we got half way to Labrador. So I just told him plainly that it would n't do, and that if he 'd a mind to kill himself ashore I 'd no objection, but he should n't do it aboard my schooner. 'I'm e'en just a mind,' says I, 'to pitch your books overboard. A fishing vessel's no place for 'em; they'll spoil all our luck. Don't go to making a Jonah of yourself down here in your bunk, but get upon deck, and let your books alone, and go to watching the sea, and the clouds, and the islands, and the fog-banks, and the fishes, and the birds; for Natur,' says I, don't lie nor give hearsays, but is always as true as the Gospels.'

"But 't was no use talking. There he'd lay in his bunk with his books about him, and I had e'en a'most to drag him on deck to snuff the sea- air. Howsomever, one day,--it was the hottest of the whole season,-- after we left the Magdalenes, and were running down the Gut of Canso, we hove in sight of the Gannet Rocks. Thinks I to myself, I'll show him something now that he can't find in his books. So I goes right down after him; and when we got on deck he looked towards the northeast, and if ever I saw a chap wonder-struck, he was. Right ahead of us was a bold, rocky island, with what looked like a great snow bank on its southern slope; while the air was full overhead, and all about, of what seemed a heavy fall of snow. The day was blazing hot, and there was n't a cloud to be seen.

"'What in the world, Skipper, does this mean?' says he. 'We're sailing right into a snow-storm in dog-days and in a clear sky.'

"By this time we had got near enough to hear a great rushing noise in the air, every moment growing louder and louder.

"'It's only a storm of gannets,' says I.

"'Sure enough!' says he; 'but I wouldn't have believed it possible.'

"When we got fairly off against the island I fired a gun at it: and such a fluttering and screaming you can't imagine. The great snow-banks shook, trembled, loosened, and became all alive, whirling away into the air like drifts in a nor'wester. Millions of birds went up, wheeling and zigzagging about, their white bodies and blacktipped wings crossing and recrossing and mixing together into a thick grayish-white haze above us.

"'You're right, Skipper,' says Wilson to me;

Nature is better than books.'

"And from that time he was on deck as much as his health would allow of, and took a deal of notice of everything new and uncommon. But, for all that, the poor fellow was so sick, and pale, and peaking, that we all thought we should have to heave him overboard some day or bury him in Labrador moss."

"But he did n't die after all, did he?" said I.

"Die? No!" cried the Skipper; "not he!"

"And so your fishing voyage really cured him?"

"I can't say as it did, exactly," returned the Skipper, shifting his quid from one cheek to the other, with a sly wink at the Doctor. "The fact is, after the doctors and the old herb-women had given him up at home, he got cured by a little black-eyed French girl on the Labrador coast."

"A very agreeable prescription, no doubt," quoth the Doctor, turning to me. "How do you think it would suit your case?"

"It does n't become the patient to choose his own nostrums," said I, laughing. "But I wonder, Doctor, that you have n't long ago tested the value of this by an experiment upon yourself."

"Physicians are proverbially shy of their own medicines," said he.

"Well, you see," continued the Skipper, "we had a rough run down the Labrador shore; rainstorms and fogs so thick you could cut 'em up into junks with your jack-knife. At last we reached a small fishing station away down where the sun does n't sleep in summer, but just takes a bit of a nap at midnight. Here Wilson went ashore, more dead than alive, and found comfortable lodgings with a little, dingy French oil merchant, who had a snug, warm house, and a garden patch, where he raised a few potatoes and turnips in the short summers, and a tolerable field of grass, which kept his two cows alive through the winter. The country all about was dismal enough; as far as you could see there was nothing but moss, and rocks, and bare hills, and ponds of shallow water, with now and then a patch of stunted firs. But it doubtless looked pleasant to our poor sick passenger, who for some days had been longing for land. The Frenchman gave him a neat little room looking out on the harbor, all alive with fishermen and Indians hunting seals; and to my notion no place is very dull where you can see the salt-water and the ships at anchor on it, or scudding over it with sails set in a stiff breeze, and where you can watch its changes of lights and colors in fair and foul weather, morning and night. The family was made up of the Frenchman, his wife, and his daughter,--a little witch of a girl, with bright black eyes lighting up her brown, good-natured face like lamps in a binnacle. They all took a mighty liking to young Wilson, and were ready to do anything for him. He was soon able to walk about; and we used to see him with the Frenchman's daughter strolling along the shore and among the mosses, talking with her in her own language. Many and many a time, as we sat in our boats under the rocks, we could hear her merry laugh ringing down to us.

"We stayed at the station about three weeks; and when we got ready to sail I called at the Frenchman's to let Wilson know when to come aboard. He really seemed sorry to leave; for the two old people urged him to remain with them, and poor little Lucille would n't hear a word of his going. She said he would be sick and die on board the vessel, but that if he stayed with them he would soon be well and strong; that they should have plenty of milk and eggs for him in the winter; and he should ride in the dog-sledge with her, and she would take care of him as if he was her brother. She hid his cap and great-coat; and what with crying, and scolding, and coaxing, she fairly carried her point.

"'You see I 'm a prisoner,' says he; 'they won't let me go.'

"'Well,' says I, 'you don't seem to be troubled about it. I tell you what, young man,' says I, 'it's mighty pretty now to stroll round here, and pick mosses, and hunt birds' eggs with that gal; but wait till November comes, and everything freezes up stiff and dead except white bears And Ingens, and there's no daylight left to speak of, and you 'll be sick enough of your choice. You won't live the winter out; and it 's an awful place to die in, where the ground freezes so hard that they can't bury you.'

"'Lucille says,' says he, 'that God is as near us in the winter as in the summer. The fact is, Skipper, I've no nearer relative left in the States than a married brother, who thinks more of his family and business than of me; and if it is God's will that I shall die, I may as well wait His call here as anywhere. I have found kind friends here; they will do all they can for me; and for the rest I trust Providence.'

"Lucille begged that I would let him stay; for she said God would hear her prayers, and he would get well. I told her I would n't urge him any more; for if I was as young as he was, and had such a pretty nurse to take care of me, I should be willing to winter at the North Pole. Wilson gave me a letter for his brother; and we shook hands, and I left him. When we were getting under way he and Lucille stood on the landing-place, and I hailed him for the last time, and made signs of sending the boat for him. The little French girl understood me; she shook her head, and pointed to her father's house; and then they both turned back, now and then stopping to wave their handkerchiefs to us. I felt sorry to leave him there; but for the life of me I could n't blame him."

"I'm sure I don't," said the Doctor.

"Well, next year I was at Nitisquam Harbor; and, although I was doing pretty well in the way of fishing, I could n't feel easy without running away north to 'Brador to see what had become of my sick passenger. It was rather early in the season, and there was ice still in the harbor; but we managed to work in at last; when who should I see on shore but young Wilson, so stout and hearty that I should scarcely have known, him. He took me up to his lodgings and told me that he had never spent a happier winter; that he was well and strong, and could fish and hunt like a native; that he was now a partner with the Frenchman in trade, and only waited the coming of the priest from the Magdalenes, on his yearly visit to the settlements, to marry his daughter. Lucille was as pretty, merry, and happy as ever; and the old Frenchman and his wife seemed to love Wilson as if he was their son. I've never seen him since; but he now writes me that he is married, and has prospered in health and property, and thinks Labrador would be the finest country in the world if it only had heavy timber-trees."

"One cannot but admire," said the Doctor, "that wise and beneficent ordination of Providence whereby the spirit of man asserts its power over circumstances, moulding the rough forms of matter to its fine ideal, bringing harmony out of discord,--coloring, warming, and lighting up everything within the circle of its horizon. A loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rocks and mosses. Wherever love goes, there springs the true heart's-ease, rooting itself even in the polar ices. To the young invalid of the Skipper's story, the dreary waste of what Moore calls, as you remember,

'the dismal shore Of cold and pitiless Labrador,'

looked beautiful and inviting; for he saw it softened and irradiated in an atmosphere of love. Its bare hills, bleak rocks, and misty sky were but the setting and background of the sweetest picture in the gallery of life. Apart from this, however, in Labrador, as in every conceivable locality, the evils of soil and climate have their compensations and alleviations. The long nights of winter are brilliant with moonlight, and the changing colors of the northern lights are reflected on the snow. The summer of Labrador has a beauty of its own, far unlike that of more genial climates, but which its inhabitants would not forego for the warm life and lavish luxuriance of tropical landscapes. The dwarf fir-trees throw from the ends of their branches yellow tufts of stamina, like small lamps decorating green pyramids for the festival of spring; and if green grass is in a great measure wanting, its place is supplied by delicate mosses of the most brilliant colors. The truth is, every season and climate has its peculiar beauties and comforts; the footprints of the good and merciful God are found everywhere; and we should be willing thankfully to own that 'He has made all things beautiful in their time' if we were not a race of envious, selfish, ungrateful grumblers."

"Doctor! Doctor!" cried a ragged, dirty-faced boy, running breathless into the yard.

"What's the matter, my lad?" said the Doctor.

"Mother wants you to come right over to our house. Father's tumbled off the hay-cart; and when they got him up he didn't know nothing; but they gin him some rum, and that kinder brought him to."

"No doubt, no doubt," said the Doctor, rising to go. "Similia similibus curantur. Nothing like hair of the dog that bites you."

"The Doctor talks well," said the Skipper, who had listened rather dubiously to his friend's commentaries on his story; "but he carries too much sail for me sometimes, and I can't exactly keep alongside of him. I told Elder. Staples once that I did n't see but that the Doctor could beat him at preaching. 'Very likely,' says the Elder, says he; 'for you know, Skipper, I must stick to my text; but the Doctor's Bible is all creation.'"

"Yes," said the Elder, who had joined us a few moments before, "the Doctor takes a wide range, or, as the farmers say, carries a wide swath, and has some notions of things which in my view have as little foundation in true philosophy as they have warrant in Scripture; but, if he sometimes speculates falsely, he lives truly, which is by far the most important matter. The mere dead letter of a creed, however carefully preserved and reverently cherished, may be of no more spiritual or moral efficacy than an African fetish or an Indian medicine-bag. What we want is, orthodoxy in practice,--the dry bones clothed with warm, generous, holy life. It is one thing to hold fast the robust faith of our fathers,--the creed of the freedom-loving Puritan and Huguenot,--and quite another to set up the five points of Calvinism, like so many thunder-rods, over a bad life, in the insane hope of averting the Divine displeasure from sin."

THE LITTLE IRON SOLDIER

OR, WHAT AMINADAB IVISON DREAMED ABOUT.

AMINADAB IVISON started up in his bed. The great clock at the head of the staircase, an old and respected heirloom of the family, struck one.

"Ah," said he, heaving up a great sigh from the depths of his inner man, "I've had a tried time of it."

"And so have I," said the wife. "Thee's been kicking and threshing about all night. I do wonder what ails thee."

And well she might; for her husband, a well-to-do, portly, middle-aged gentleman, being blessed with an easy conscience, a genial temper, and a comfortable digestion, was able to bear a great deal of sleep, and seldom varied a note in the gamut of his snore from one year's end to another.

"A very remarkable exercise," soliloquized Aminadab; "very."

"Dear me! what was it?" inquired his wife.

"It must have been a dream," said Aminadab.

"Oh, is that all?" returned the good woman. "I'm glad it's nothing worse. But what has thee been dreaming about?"

"It's the strangest thing, Hannah, that thee ever heard of," said Aminadab, settling himself slowly back into his bed. Thee recollects Jones sent me yesterday a sample of castings from the foundry. Well, I thought I opened the box and found in it a little iron man, in regimentals; with his sword by his side and a cocked hat on, looking very much like the picture in the transparency over neighbor O'Neal's oyster-cellar across the way. I thought it rather out of place for Jones to furnish me with such a sample, as I should not feel easy to show it to my customers, on account of its warlike appearance. However, as the work was well done, I took the little image and set him up on the table, against the wall; and, sitting down opposite, I began to think over my business concerns, calculating how much they would increase in profit in case a tariff man should be chosen our ruler for the next four years. Thee knows I am not in favor of choosing men of blood and strife to bear rule in the land: but it nevertheless seems proper to consider all the circumstances in this case, and, as one or the other of the candidates of the two great parties must be chosen, to take the least of two evils. All at once I heard a smart, quick tapping on the table; and, looking up, there stood the little iron man close at my elbow, winking and chuckling. 'That's right, Aminadab!' said he, clapping his little metal hands together till he rang over like a bell, 'take the least of two evils.' His voice had a sharp, clear, jingling sound, like that of silver dollars falling into a till. It startled me so that I woke up, but finding it only a dream presently fell asleep again. Then I thought I was down in the Exchange, talking with neighbor Simkins about the election and the tariff. 'I want a change in the administration, but I can't vote for a military chieftain,' said neighbor Simkins, 'as I look upon it unbecoming a Christian people to elect men of blood for their rulers.' 'I don't know,' said I, 'what objection thee can have to a fighting man; for thee 's no Friend, and has n't any conscientious scruples against military matters. For my own part, I do not take much interest in politics, and never attended a caucus in my life, believing it best to keep very much in the quiet, and avoid, as far as possible, all letting and hindering things; but there may be cases where a military man may be voted for as a choice of evils, and as a means of promoting the prosperity of the country in business matters.' 'What!' said neighbor Simkins, 'are you going to vote for a man whose whole life has been spent in killing people?' This vexed me a little, and I told him there was such a thing as carrying a good principle too far, and that he night live to be sorry that he had thrown away his vote, instead of using it discreetly. 'Why, there's the iron business,' said I; but just then I heard a clatter beside me, and, looking round, there was the little iron soldier clapping his hands in great glee. 'That's it, Aminadab!' said he; 'business first, conscience afterwards! Keep up the price of iron with peace if you can, but keep it up at any rate.' This waked me again in a good deal of trouble; but, remembering that it is said that 'dreams come of the multitude of business,' I once more composed myself to sleep."

"Well, what happened next?" asked his wife.

"Why, I thought I was in the meeting-house, sitting on the facing-seat as usual. I tried hard to settle my mind down into a quiet and humble state; but somehow the cares of the world got uppermost, and, before I was well aware of it, I was far gone in a calculation of the chances of the election, and the probable rise in the price of iron in the event of the choice of a President favorable to a high tariff. Rap, tap, went something on the floor. I opened my eyes, and there was the little image, red-hot, as if just out of the furnace, dancing, and chuckling, and clapping his hands. 'That's right, Aminadab!' said he; 'go on as you have begun; take care of yourself in this world, and I'll promise you you'll be taken care of in the next. Peace and poverty, or war and money. It's a choice of evils at best; and here's Scripture to decide the matter: "Be not righteous overmuch."' Then the wicked-looking little image twisted his hot lips, and leered at me with his blazing eyes, and chuckled and laughed with a noise exactly as if a bag of dollars had been poured out upon the meeting-house floor. This waked me just now in such a fright. I wish thee would tell me, Hannah, what thee can make of these three dreams?"

"It don't need a Daniel to interpret them," answered Hannah. "Thee 's been thinking of voting for a wicked old soldier, because thee cares more for thy iron business than for thy testimony against wars and fightings. I don't a bit wonder at thy seeing the iron soldier thee tells of; and if thee votes to-morrow for a man of blood, it wouldn't be strange if he should haunt thee all thy life."

Aminadab Ivison was silent, for his conscience spoke in the words of his wife. He slept no more that night, and rose up in the morning a wiser and better man.

When he went forth to his place of business he saw the crowds hurrying to and fro; there were banners flying across the streets, huge placards were on the walls, and he heard all about him the bustle of the great election.

"Friend Ivison," said a red-faced lawyer, almost breathless with his hurry, "more money is needed in the second ward; our committees are doing a great work there. What shall I put you down for? Fifty dollars? If we carry the election, your property will rise twenty per cent. Let me see; you are in the iron business, I think?"

Aminadab thought of the little iron soldier of his dream, and excused himself. Presently a bank director came tearing into his office.

"Have you voted yet, Mr. Ivison? It 's time to get your vote in. I wonder you should be in your office now. No business has so much at stake in this election as yours."

"I don't think I should feel entirely easy to vote for the candidate," said Aminadab.

"Mr. Ivison," said the bank director, "I always took you to be a shrewd, sensible man, taking men and things as they are. The candidate may not be all you could wish for; but when the question is between him and a worse man, the best you can do is to choose the least of the two evils."

"Just so the little iron man said," thought Aminadab. "'Get thee behind me, Satan!' No, neighbor Discount," said he, "I've made up my mind. I see no warrant for choosing evil at all. I can't vote for that man."

"Very well," said the director, starting to leave the room; "you can do as you please; but if we are defeated through the ill-timed scruples of yourself and others, and your business pinches in consequence, you need n't expect us to help men who won't help themselves. Good day, sir."

Aminadab sighed heavily, and his heart sank within him; but he thought of his dream, and remained steadfast. Presently he heard heavy steps and the tapping of a cane on the stairs; and as the door opened he saw the drab surtout of the worthy and much-esteemed friend who sat beside him at the head of the meeting.

"How's thee do, Aminadab?" said he. "Thee's voted, I suppose?"

"No, Jacob," said he; "I don't like the candidate. I can't see my way clear to vote for a warrior."

"Well, but thee does n't vote for him because he is a warrior, Aminadab," argued the other; "thee votes for him as a tariff man and an encourager of home industry. I don't like his wars and fightings better than thee does; but I'm told he's an honest man, and that he disapproves of war in the abstract, although he has been brought up to the business. If thee feels tender about the matter, I don't like to urge thee; but it really seems to me thee had better vote. Times have been rather hard, thou knows; and if by voting at this election we can make business matters easier, I don't see how we can justify ourselves in staying at home. Thou knows we have a command to be diligent in business as well as fervent in spirit, and that the Apostle accounted him who provided not for his own household worse than an infidel. I think it important to maintain on all proper occasions our Gospel testimony against wars and fightings; but there is such a thing as going to extremes, thou knows, and becoming over-scrupulous, as I think thou art in this case. It is said, thou knows, in Ecclesiastes, 'Be not righteous overmuch: why shouldst thou destroy thyself?'"

"Ah," said Aminadab to himself, "that's what the little iron soldier said in meeting." So he was strengthened in his resolution, and the persuasions of his friend were lost upon him.

At night Aminadab sat by his parlor fire, comfortable alike in his inner and his outer man. "Well, Hannah," said he, "I've taken thy advice. I did n't vote for the great fighter to-day."

"I'm glad of it," said the good woman, "and I dare say thee feels the better for it."

Aminadab Ivison slept soundly that night, and saw no more of the little iron soldier.

PASSACONAWAY. (1833.)

I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in thy heart, But I feel that I love thee, whatever thou art. Moor.

THE township of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, contained, in the autumn of 1641, the second year of its settlement, but six dwelling-houses, situated near each other, on the site of the present village. They were hastily constructed of rude logs, small and inconvenient, but one remove from the habitations of the native dwellers of the wilderness. Around each a small opening had been made through the thick forest, down to the margin of the river, where, amidst the charred and frequent stumps and fragments of fallen trees, the first attempts at cultivation had been made. A few small patches of Indian corn, which had now nearly reached maturity, exhibited their thick ears and tasselled stalks, bleached by the frost and sunshine; and, here and there a spot of yellow stubble, still lingering among the rough incumbrances of the soil, told where a scanty crop of common English grain had been recently gathered. Traces of some of the earlier vegetables were perceptible, the melon, the pea, and the bean. The pumpkin lay ripening on its frosted vines, its sunny side already changed to a bright golden color; and the turnip spread out its green mat of leaves in defiance of the season. Everything around realized the vivid picture of Bryant's Emigrant, who:

"Hewed the dark old woods away, And gave the virgin fields to the day And the pea and the bean beside the door Bloomed where such flowers ne'er bloomed before; And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky."

Beyond, extended the great forest, vast, limitless, unexplored, whose venerable trees had hitherto bowed only to the presence of the storm, the beaver's tooth, and the axe of Time, working in the melancholy silence of natural decay. Before the dwellings of the white adventurers, the broad Merrimac rolled quietly onward the piled-up foliage of its shores, rich with the hues of a New England autumn. The first sharp frosts, the avant couriers of approaching winter, had fallen, and the whole wilderness was in blossom. It was like some vivid picture of Claude Lorraine, crowded with his sunsets and rainbows, a natural kaleidoscope of a thousand colors. The oak upon the hillside stood robed in summer's greenness, in strong contrast with the topaz- colored walnut. The hemlock brooded gloomily in the lowlands, forming, with its unbroken mass of shadow, a dark background for the light maple beside it, bright with its peculiar beauty. The solemn shadows of the pine rose high in the hazy atmosphere, checkered, here and there, with the pale yellow of the birch.

"Truly, Alice, this is one of God's great marvels in the wilderness," said John Ward, the minister, and the original projector of the settlement, to his young wife, as they stood in the door of their humble dwelling. "This would be a rare sight for our friends in old Haverhill. The wood all about us hath, to my sight, the hues of the rainbow, when, in the words of the wise man, it compasseth the heavens as with a circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it. Very beautifully hath He indeed garnished the excellent works of His wisdom."

"Yea, John," answered Alice, in her soft womanly tone; "the Lord is, indeed, no respecter of persons. He hath given the wild savages a more goodly show than any in Old England. Yet, John, I am sometimes very sorrowful, when I think of our old home, of the little parlor where you and I used to sit of a Sunday evening. The Lord hath been very bountiful to this land, and it may be said of us, as it was said of Israel of old, 'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel!' But the people sit in darkness, and the Gentiles know not the God of our fathers."

"Nay," answered her husband, "the heathen may be visited and redeemed, the spirit of the Lord may turn unto the Gentiles; but a more sure evil hath arisen among us. I tell thee, Alice, it shall be more tolerable in the day of the Lord, for the Tyre and Sidon, the Sodom and Gomorrah of the heathen, than for the schemers, the ranters, the Familists, and the Quakers, who, like Satan of old, are coming among the sons of God."

"I thought," said Alice, "that our godly governor had banished these out of the colony."

"Truly he hath," answered Mr. Ward, "but the evil seed they have sown here continues to spring up and multiply. The Quakers have, indeed, nearly ceased to molest us; but another set of fanatics, headed by Samuel Gorton, have of late been very troublesome. Their family has been broken up, and the ring-leaders have been sentenced to be kept at hard labor for the colony's benefit; one being allotted to each of the old towns, where they are forbidden to speak on matters of religion. But there are said to be many still at large, who, under the encouragement of the arch-heretic, Williams, of the Providence plantation, are even now zealously doing the evil work of their master. But, Alice," he continued, as he saw his few neighbors gathering around a venerable oak which had been spared in the centre of the clearing, "it is now near our time of worship. Let us join our friends."

And the minister and his wife entered into the little circle of their neighbors. No house of worship, with spire and tower, and decorated pulpit, had as yet been reared on the banks of the Merrimac. The stern settlers came together under the open heavens, or beneath the shadow of the old trees, to kneel before that God, whose works and manifestations were around them.

The exercises of the Sabhath commenced. A psalm of the old and homely version was sung, with true feeling, if not with a perfect regard to musical effect and harmony. The brief but fervent prayer was offered, and the good man had just announced the text for his sermon, when a sudden tramp of feet, and a confused murmur of human voices, fell on the ears of the assembly.

The minister closed his Bible; and the whole group crowded closer together. "It is surely a war party of the heathen," said Mr. Ward, as he listened intently to the approaching sound. "God grant they mean us no evil!"

The sounds drew nearer. The swarthy figure of an Indian came gliding through the brush-wood into the clearing, followed closely by several Englishmen. In answer to the eager inquiries of Mr. Ward, Captain Eaton, the leader of the party, stated that he had left Boston at the command of Governor Winthrop, to secure and disarm the sachem, Passaconaway, who was suspected of hostile intentions towards the whites. They had missed of the old chief, but had captured his son, and were taking him to the governor as a hostage for the good faith of his father. He then proceeded to inform Mr. Ward, that letters had been received from the governor of the settlements of Good Hoop and Piquag, in Connecticut, giving timely warning of a most diabolical plot of the Indians to cut off their white neighbors, root and branch. He pointed out to the notice of the minister a member of his party as one of the messengers who had brought this alarming intelligence.

He was a tall, lean man, with straight, lank, sandy hair, cut evenly all around his narrow forehead, and hanging down so as to remind one of Smollett's apt similitude of "a pound of candles."

"What news do you bring us of the savages?" inquired Mr. Ward.

"The people have sinned, and the heathen are the instruments whereby the Lord hath willed to chastise them," said the messenger, with that peculiar nasal inflection of voice, so characteristic of the "unco' guid." "The great sachem, Miantonimo, chief of the Narragansetts, hath plotted to cut off the Lord's people, just after the time of harvest, to slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children."

"How have ye known this?" asked the minister.

"Even as Paul knew of those who had bound themselves together with a grievous oath to destroy him. The Lord hath done it. One of the bloody heathens was dreadfully gored by the oxen of our people, and, being in great bodily pain and tribulation thereat, he sent for Governor Haines, and told him that the Englishman's god was angry with him for concealing the plot to kill his people, and had sent the Englishman's cow to kill him."

"Truly a marvellous providence," said Mr. Ward; "but what has been done in your settlements in consequence of it?"

"We have fasted many days," returned the other, in a tone of great solemnity, "and our godly men have besought the Lord that he might now, as of old, rebuke Satan. They have, moreover, diligently and earnestly inquired, Whence cometh this evil? Who is the Achan in the camp of our Israel? It hath been greatly feared that the Quakers and the Papists have been sowing tares in the garden of the true worship. We have therefore banished these on pain of death; and have made it highly penal for any man to furnish either food or lodging to any of these heretics and idolaters. We have ordered a more strict observance of the Sabbath of the Lord, no, one being permitted to walk or run on that day, except to and from public worship, and then, only in a reverent and becoming manner; and no one is allowed to cook food, sweep the house, shave or pare the nails, or kiss a child, on the day which is to be kept holy. We have also framed many wholesome laws, against the vanity and licentiousness of the age, in respect to apparel and deportment, and have forbidden any young man to kiss a maid during the time of courtship, as, to their shame be it said, is the manner of many in the old lands."

"Ye have, indeed, done well for the spiritual," said Mr. Ward; "what have you done for your temporal defence?"

"We have our garrisons and our captains, and a goodly store of carnal weapons," answered the other. "And, besides, we have the good chief Uncas, of the Mohegans, to help us against the bloody Narragansetts."

"But, my friend," said the minister, addressing Captain Eaton, "there must be surely some mistake about Passaconaway. I verily believe him to be the friend of the white men. And this is his son Wonolanset? I saw him last year, and remember that he was the pride of the old savage, his father. I will speak to him, for I know something of his barbarous tongue."

"Wonolanset!"

The young savage started suddenly at the word, and rolled his keen bright eye upon the speaker.

"Why is the son of the great chief bound by my brothers?"

The Indian looked one instant upon the cords which confined his arms, and then glanced fiercely upon his conductors.

"Has the great chief forgotten his white friends? Will he send his young men to take their scalps when the Narragansett bids him?"

The growl of the young bear when roused from his hiding-place is not more fierce and threatening than were the harsh tones of Wonolanset as he uttered through his clenched teeth:--

"Nummus quantum."

"Nay, nay," said Mr. Ward, turning away from the savage, "his heart is full of bitterness; he says he is angry, and, verily, I like not his bearing. I fear me there is evil on foot. But ye have travelled far, and must needs be weary rest yourselves awhile, and haply, while ye refresh your bodies, I may also refresh your spirits with wholesome and comfortable doctrines."

The party having acquiesced in this proposal, their captive was secured by fastening one end of his rope to a projecting branch of the tree. The minister again named his text, but had only proceeded to the minuter divisions of his sermon, when he was again interrupted by a loud, clear whistle from the river, and a sudden exclamation of surprise from those around him. A single glance sufficed to show him the Indian, disengaged from his rope, and in full retreat.

Eaton raised his rifle to his eye, and called out to the young sachem, in his own language, to stop, or he would fire upon him. The Indian evidently understood the full extent of his danger. He turned suddenly about, and, pointing, up the river towards the dwelling of his father, pronounced with a threatening gesture:--

"Nosh, Passaconaway!"

"Hold!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, grasping the arm of Eaton. "He threatens us with his father's vengeance. For God's sake keep your fire!" It was too late. The report of the rifle broke sharply upon the Sabbath stillness. It was answered by a shout from the river, and a small canoe, rowed by an Indian and a white man, was seen darting along the shore. Wonolanset bounded on unharmed, and, plunging into the river, he soon reached the canoe, which was hastily paddled to the opposite bank. Captain Eaton and his party finding it impossible to retake their prisoner, after listening to the sermon of Mr. Ward, and partaking of some bodily refreshment, took their leave of the settlers of Pentucket, and departed for Boston.

The evening, which followed the day whose events we have narrated, was one of those peculiar seasons of beauty when the climate of New England seems preferable to that of Italy. The sun went down in the soft haze of the horizon, while the full moon was rising at the same time in the east. Its mellow silver mingled with the deep gold of the sunset. The south-west wind, as warm as that of summer, but softer, was heard, at long intervals, faintly harping amidst the pines, and blending its low sighing with the lulling murmurs of the river. The inhabitants of Pentucket had taken the precaution, as night came on, to load their muskets carefully, and place them in readiness for instant use, in the event of an attack from the savages. Such an occurrence, was, indeed, not unlikely, after the rude treatment which the son of old Passaconaway had received at the settlement. It was well known that the old chief was able, at a word, to send every warrior from Pennacook to Naumkeag upon the war-path of Miantonimo; the vengeful character of the Indians was also understood; and, in the event of an out-breaking of their resentment, the settlement of Pentucket was, of all others, the most exposed to danger.

"Don't go to neighbor Clements's to-night, Mary," said Alice Ward to her young, unmarried sister; "I'm afraid some of the tawny Indians may be lurking hereabout. Mr. Ward says he thinks they will be dangerous neighbors for us."

Mary had thrown her shawl over her head, and was just stepping out. "It is but a step, as it were, and I promised good-wife Clements that I would certainly come. I am not afraid of the Indians. There's none of them about here except Red Sam, who wanted to buy me of Mr. Ward for his squaw; and I shall not be afraid of my old spark."

The girl tripped lightly from the threshold towards the dwelling of her neighbor. She had passed nearly half the distance when the pathway, before open to the moonlight, began to wind along the margin of the river, overhung with young sycamores and hemlocks. With a beating heart and a quickened step she was stealing through the shadow, when the boughs on the river-side were suddenly parted, and a tall man sprang into the path before her. Shrinking back with terror, she uttered a faint scream.

"Mary Edmands!" said the stranger, "do not fear me."

A thousand thoughts wildly chased each other through the mind of the astonished girl. That familiar voice--that knowledge of her name--that tall and well-remembered form! She leaned eagerly forward, and looked into the stranger's face. A straggling gleam of moonshine fell across its dark features of manly beauty.

"Richard Martin! can it be possible!"

"Yea, Mary," answered the other, "I have followed thee to the new world, in that love which neither sea nor land can abate. For many weary months I have waited earnestly for such a meeting as this, and, in that time, I have been in many and grievous perils by the flood and the wilderness, and by the heathen Indians and more heathen persecutors among my own people. But I may not tarry, nor delay to tell my errand. Mary, thou knowest my love; wilt thou be my wife?"

Mary hesitated.

"I ask thee again, if thou wilt share the fortunes of one who hath loved thee ever since thou wast but a child, playing under the cottage trees in old Haverhill, and who hath sacrificed his worldly estate, and perilled his soul's salvation for thy sake. Mary, dear Mary, for of a truth thou art very dear to me; wilt thou go with me and be my wife?"

The tones of Richard Martin, usually harsh and forbidding, now fell soft and musical on the ear of Mary. He was her first love, her only one. What marvel that she consented?

"Let us hasten to depart," said Martin, "this is no place for me. We will go to the Providence plantations. Passaconaway will assist us in our journey."

The bright flush of hope and joy faded from the face of the young girl. She started back from the embrace of her lover.

"What mean you, Richard? What was 't you said about our going to that sink of wickedness at Providence? Why don't you go back with me to sister Ward's?"

"Mary Edmands!" said Martin, in a tone of solemn sternness, "it is fitting that I should tell thee all. I have renounced the evil doctrines of thy brother-in-law, and his brethren in false prophecy. It was a hard struggle, Mary; the spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh was weak, exceeding weak, for I thought of thee, Mary, and of thy friends. But I had a measure of strength given me, whereby I have been enabled to do the work which was appointed me."

"Oh, Richard!" said Mary, bursting into tears, "I'm afraid you have become a Williamsite, one of them, who, Mr. Ward says, have nothing to hope for in this world or in that to come."

"The Lord rebuke him!" said Martin, with a loud voice. "Woe to such as speak evil of the witnesses of the truth. I have seen the utter nakedness of the land of carnal professors, and I have obeyed the call to come out from among them and be separate. I belong to that persecuted family whom the proud priests and rulers of this colony have driven from their borders. I was brought, with many others, before the wicked magistrates of Boston, and sentenced to labor, without hire, for the ungodly. But I have escaped from my bonds; and the Lord has raised up a friend for his servant, even the Indian Passaconaway, whose son I assisted, but a little time ago, to escape from his captors."

"Can it be?" sobbed Mary, "can it be? Richard, our own Richard, following the tribe of Gorton, the Familist! Oh, Richard, if you love me, if you love God's people and his true worship, do come away from those wicked fanatics."

"Thou art in the very gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity," answered Martin. "Listen, Mary Edmands, to the creed of those whom thou callest fanatics. We believe in Christ, but not in man-worship. The Christ we reverence is the shadow or image of God in man; he was crucified in Adam of old, and hath been crucified in all men since; his birth, his passion, and his death, were but manifestations or figures of his sufferings in Adam and his descendants. Faith and Christ are the same, the spiritual image of God in the heart. We acknowledge no rule but this Christ, this faith within us, either in temporal or spiritual things. And the Lord hath blessed us, and will bless us, and truth shall be magnified and exalted in us; and the children of the heathen shall be brought to know and partake of this great redemption whereof we testify. But woe to the false teachers, and to them who prophesy for hire and make gain of their soothsaying. Their churches are the devices of Satan, the pride and vanity of the natural Adam. Their baptism is blasphemy; and their sacrament is an abomination, yea, an incantation and a spell. Woe to them who take the shadow for the substance, that bow down to the altars of human device and cunning workmanship, that make idols of their ceremonies! Woe to the high priests and the Pharisees, and the captains and the rulers; woe to them who love the wages of unrighteousness!"

The Familist paused from utter exhaustion, so vehemently had he poured forth the abundance of his zeal. Mary Edmands, overwhelmed by his eloquence, but still unconvinced, could only urge the disgrace and danger attending his adherence to such pernicious doctrines. She concluded by telling him, in a voice choked by tears, that she could never marry him while a follower of Gorton.

"Stay then," said Martin, fiercely dashing her hand from his, "stay and partake of the curse of the ungodly, even of the curse of Meroz, who come not up to the help of the Lord, against the mighty Stay, till the Lord hath made a threshing instrument of the heathen, whereby the pride of the rulers, and the chief priests, and the captains of this land shall be humbled. Stay, till the vials of His wrath are poured out upon ye, and the blood of the strong man, and the maid, and the little child is mingled together!"

The wild language, the fierce tones and gestures of her lover, terrified the unhappy girl. She looked wildly around her, all was dark and shadowy, an undefined fear of violence came over her; and, bursting into tears, she turned to fly. "Stay yet a moment," said Martin, in a hoarse and subdued voice. He caught hold of her arm. She shrieked as if in mortal jeopardy.

"Let go the gal, let her go!" said old Job Clements, thrusting the long barrel of his gun through the bushes within a few feet of the head of the Familist. "A white man, as sure as I live! I thought, sartin, 't was a tarnal In-in." Martin relinquished his hold, and, the next instant, found himself surrounded by the settlers.

After a brief explanation had taken place between Mr. Ward and his sister-in-law, the former came forward and accosted the Familist. "Richard Martin!" he said, "I little thought to see thee so soon in the new world, still less to see thee such as thou art. I am exceeding sorry that I cannot greet thee here as a brother, either in a temporal or a spiritual nature. My sister tells me that you are a follower of that servant of Satan, Samuel Gorton, and that you have sought to entice her away with you to the colony of fanatics at Rhode Island, which may be fitly compared to that city which Philip of Macedonia peopled with rogues and vagabonds, and the offscouring of the whole earth."

"John Ward, I know thee," said the unshrinking Familist; "I know thee for a man wise above what is written, a man vain, uncharitable, and given to evil speaking. I value neither thy taunts nor thy wit; for the one hath its rise in the bitterness, and the other in the vanity, of the natural Adam. Those who walk in the true light, and who have given over crucifying Christ in their hearts, heed not a jot of the reproaches and despiteful doings of the high and mighty in iniquity. For of us it hath been written: 'I have given them thy word and the world hath hated them because they are not of the world. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If they have hated me they will hate you also; if they have persecuted me they will persecute you.' And, of the scoffers and the scorners, the wise ones of this world, whose wisdom and knowledge have perverted them, and who have said in their hearts, There is none beside them, it hath been written, yea, and will be fulfilled: The day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be brought low; and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man shall be brought low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day; and the idols shall he utterly abolish.' Of thee, John Ward, and of thy priestly brotherhood, I ask nothing; and for the much evil I have received, and may yet receive at your hands, may ye be rewarded like Alexander the coppersmith, every man according to his works."

"Such damnable heresy," said Mr. Ward, addressing his neighbors, "must not be permitted to spread among the people. My friends, we must send this man to the magistrates."

The Familist placed his hands to his month, and gave a whistle, similar to that which was heard in the morning, and which preceded the escape of Wonolanset. It was answered by a shout from the river; and a score of Indians came struggling up through the brush-wood.

"Vile heretic!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, snatching a musket from the hands of his neighbor, and levelling it full at the head of Martin; "you have betrayed us into this jeopardy."

"Wagh! down um gun," said a powerful Indian, as he laid his rough hand on the shoulder of the minister. "You catch Wonolanset, tie um, shoot um, scare squaw. Old sachem come now, me tie white man, shoot um, roast um;" and the old savage smiled grimly and fiercely in the indistinct moonlight, as he witnessed the alarm and terror of his prisoner.

"Hold, Passaconaway!" said Martin, in the Indian tongue. "Will the great chief forget his promise?"

The sachem dropped his hold on Mr. Ward's arm. "My brother is good," he said; "me no kill um, me make um walk woods like Wonolanset." Martin spoke a few words in the chief's ear. The countenance of the old warrior for an instant seemed to express dissatisfaction; but, yielding to the powerful influence which the Familist had acquired over him, he said, with some reluctance, "My brother is wise, me do so."

"John Ward," said the Familist, approaching the minister, "thou hast devised evil against one who hath never injured thee. But I seek not carnal revenge. I have even now restrained the anger of this heathen chief whom thou and thine have wronged deeply. Let us part in peace, for we may never more meet in this world." And he extended his hand and shook that of the minister.

"For thee, Mary," he said, "I had hoped to pluck thee from the evil which is to come, even as a brand from the burning. I had hoped to lead thee to the manna of true righteousness, but thou last chosen the flesh- pots of Egypt. I had hoped to cherish thee always, but thou hast forgotten me and my love, which brought me over the great waters for thy sake. I will go among the Gentiles, and if it be the Lord's will, peradventure I may turn away their wrath from my people. When my wearisome pilgrimage is ended, none shall know the grave of Richard Martin; and none but the heathen shall mourn for him. Mary! I forgive thee; may the God of all mercies bless thee! I shall never see thee more."

Hot and fast fell the tears of that stern man upon the hand of Mary. The eyes of the young woman glanced hurriedly over the faces of her neighbors, and fixed tearfully upon that of her lover. A thousand recollections of young affection, of vows and meetings in another land, came vividly before her. Her sister's home, her brother's instructions, her own strong faith, and her bitter hatred of her lover's heresy were all forgotten.

"Richard, dear Richard, I am your Mary as much as ever I was. I'll go with you to the ends of the earth. Your God shall be my God, and where you are buried there will I be also."

Silent in the ecstasy of joyful surprise, the Familist pressed her to his bosom. Passaconaway, who had hitherto been an unmoved spectator of the scene, relaxed the Indian gravity of his features, and murmured, in an undertone, "Good, good."

"Will my brother go?" he inquired, touching Martin's shoulder; "my squaws have fine mat, big wigwam, soft samp, for his young woman."

"Mary," said Martin, "the sachem is impatient; and we must needs go with him." Mary did not answer, but her head was reclined upon his bosom, and the Familist knew that she resigned herself wholly to his direction. He folded the shawl more carefully around her, and supported her down the precipitous and ragged bank of the river, followed closely by Passaconaway and his companions.

"Come back, Mary Edmands!" shouted Mr. Ward. "In God's name come back."

Half a dozen canoes shot out into the clear moonlight from the shadow of the shore. "It is too late!" said the minister, as he struggled down to the water's edge. "Satan hath laid his hands upon her; but I will contend for her, even as did Michael of old for the body of Moses. Mary, sister Mary, for the love of Christ, answer me."

No sound came back from the canoes, which glided like phantoms, noiselessly and swiftly, through the still waters of the river. "The enemy hath prevailed," said Mr. Ward; "two women were grinding at my mill, the one is taken and the other is left. Let us go home, my friends, and wrestle in prayer against the Tempter."

The heretic and his orthodox bride departed into the thick wilderness, under the guidance of Passaconaway, and in a few days reached the Eldorado of the heretic and the persecuted, the colony of Roger Williams. Passaconaway, ever after, remained friendly to the white men. As civilization advanced he retired before it, to Pennacook, now Concord, on the Merrimac, where the tribes of the Naumkeags, Piscataquas, Accomentas, and Agawams acknowledged his authority.

THE OPIUM EATER. (1833.)

Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! Here was a panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages: happiness might be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket.--DEQUINCEY's "Confessions of an Opium Eater."

HE was a tall, thin personage, with a marked brow and a sunken eye.

He stepped towards a closet of his apartment, and poured out a few drops of a dark liquid. His hand shook, as he raised the glass which contained them to his lips; and with a strange shuddering, a nervous tremor, as if all the delicate chords of his system were unloosed and trembling, he turned away from his fearful draught.

He saw that my eye was upon him; and I could perceive that his mind struggled desperately with the infirmity of his nature, as if ashamed of the utter weakness of its tabernacle. He passed hastily up and down the room. "You seem somewhat ill," I said, in the undecided tone of partial interrogatory.

He paused, and passed his long thin fingers over his forehead. "I am indeed ill," he said, slowly, and with that quavering, deep-drawn breathing, which is so indicative of anguish, mental and physical. "I am weak as a child, weak alike in mind and body, even when I am under the immediate influence of yonder drug." And he pointed, as he spoke, to a phial, labelled "Laudanum," upon a table in the corner of the room.

"My dear sir," said I, "for God's sake abandon your desperate practice: I know not, indeed, the nature of your afflictions, but I feel assured that you have yet the power to be happy. You have, at least, warm friends to sympathize with you. But forego, if possible, your pernicious stimulant of laudanum. It is hurrying you to your grave."

"It may be so," he replied, while another shudder ran along his nerves; "but why should I fear it? I, who have become worthless to myself and annoying to my friends; exquisitely sensible of my true condition, yet wanting the power to change it; cursed with a lively apprehension of all that I ought now to be, yet totally incapable of even making an effort to be so! My dear sir, I feel deeply the kindness of your motives, but it is too late for me to hope to profit by your advice."

I was shocked at his answer. "But can it be possible," said I, "that the influence of such an excessive use of opium can produce any alleviation of mental suffering? any real relief to the harassed mind? Is it not rather an aggravation?"

"I know not," he said, seating himself with considerable calmness,--"I know not. If it has not removed the evil, it has at least changed its character. It has diverted my mind from its original grief; and has broken up and rendered divergent the concentrated agony which oppressed me. It has, in a measure, substituted imaginary afflictions for real ones. I cannot but confess, however, that the relief which it has afforded has been produced by the counteraction of one pain by another; very much like that of the Russian criminal, who gnaws his own flesh while undergoing the punishment of the knout.'"

"For Heaven's sake," said I, "try to dispossess your mind of such horrid images. There are many, very many resources yet left you. Try the effect of society; and let it call into exercise those fine talents which all admit are so well calculated to be its ornament and pride. At least, leave this hypochondriacal atmosphere, and look out more frequently upon nature. Your opium, if it be an alleviator, is, by your own confession, a most melancholy one. It exorcises one demon to give place to a dozen others.

'With other ministrations, thou, O Nature! Healest thy wandering and distempered child.'"

He smiled bitterly; it was a heartless, melancholy relaxation of features, a mere muscular movement, with which the eye had no sympathy; for its wild and dreamy expression, the preternatural lustre, without transparency, remained unaltered, as if rebuking, with its cold, strange glare, the mockery around it. He sat before me like a statue, whose eye alone retained its stony and stolid rigidity, while the other features were moved by some secret machinery into "a ghastly smile."

"I am not desirous, even were it practicable," he said, "to defend the use of opium, or rather the abuse of it. I can only say, that the substitutes you propose are not suited to my condition. The world has now no enticements for me; society no charms. Love, fame, wealth, honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all shadows; and why should I grasp at them? In the solitude of my own thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full gauge of their hollow vanities. No, leave me to myself, or rather to that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to which my daily opiate invites me. In society I am alone, fearfully solitary; for my mind broods gloomily over its besetting sorrow, and I make myself doubly miserable by contrasting my own darkness with the light and joy of all about me; nay, you cannot imagine what a very hard thing it is, at such times, to overcome some savage feelings of misanthropy which will present themselves. But when I am alone, and under the influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable to its natural one. It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct existences, enjoyed by the same intellectual being.

"My first use of opium was the consequence of an early and very bitter disappointment. I dislike to think of it, much more to speak of it. I recollect, on a former occasion, you expressed some curiosity concerning it. I then repelled that curiosity, for my mind was not in a situation to gratify it. But now, since I have been talking of myself, I think I can go on with my story with a very decent composure. In complying with your request, I cannot say that my own experience warrants, in any degree, the old and commonly received idea that sorrow loses half its poignancy by its revelation to others. It was a humorous opinion of Sterne, that a blessing which ties up the tongue, and a mishap which unlooses it, are to be considered equal; and, indeed, I have known some people happy under all the changes of fortune, when they could find patient auditors. Tully wept over his dead daughter, but when he chanced to think of the excellent things he could say on the subject, he considered it, on the whole, a happy circumstance. But, for my own part, I cannot say with the Mariner in Coleridge's ballad, that

"'At an uncertain hour My agony returns;

And, till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.'"

He paused a moment, and rested his head upon his hand. "You have seen Mrs. H------, of -------?" he inquired, somewhat abruptly. I replied in the affirmative.

"Do you not think her a fine woman?"

"Yes, certainly, a fine woman. She was once, I am told, very beautiful."

"Once? is she not so now?" he asked. "Well, I have heard the same before. I sometimes think I should like to see her now, now that the mildew of years and perhaps of accusing recollections are upon her; and see her toss her gray curls as she used to do her dark ones, and act over again her old stratagem of smiles upon a face of wrinkles. Just Heavens! were I revengeful to the full extent of my wrongs, I could wish her no worse punishment.

"They told you truly, my dear sir,--she was beautiful, nay, externally, faultless. Her figure was that of womanhood, just touching upon the meridian of perfection, from which nothing could be taken, and to which nothing could be added. There was a very witchery in her smile, trembling, as it did, over her fine Grecian features, like the play of moonlight upon a shifting and beautiful cloud.

"Her voice was music, low, sweet, bewildering. I have heard it a thousand times in my dreams. It floated around me, like the tones of some rare instrument, unseen by the hearer; for, beautiful as she was, you could not think of her, or of her loveliness, while she was speaking; it was that sweetly wonderful voice, seemingly abstracted from herself, pouring forth the soft current of its exquisite cadence, which alone absorbed the attention. Like that one of Coleridge's heroines, you could half feel, half fancy, that it had a separate being of its own, a spiritual presence manifested to but one of the senses; a living something, whose mode of existence was for the ear alone.--(See Memoirs of Maria Eleonora Schoning.)

"But what shall I say of the mind? What of the spirit, the resident divinity of so fair a temple? Vanity, vanity, all was vanity; a miserable, personal vanity, too, unrelieved by one noble aspiration, one generous feeling; the whited sepulchre spoken of of old, beautiful without, but dark and unseemly within.

"I look back with wonder and astonishment to that period of my life, when such a being claimed and received the entire devotion of my heart. Her idea blended with or predominated over all others. It was the common centre in my mind from which all the radii of thought had their direction; the nucleus around which I had gathered all that my ardent imagination could conceive, or a memory stored with all the delicious dreams of poetry and romances could embody, of female excellence and purity and constancy.

"It is idle to talk of the superior attractions of intellectual beauty, when compared with mere external loveliness. The mind, invisible and complicated and indefinite, does not address itself directly to the senses. It is comprehended only by its similitude in others. It reveals itself, even then, but slowly and imperfectly. But the beauty of form and color, the grace of motion, the harmony of tone, are seen and felt and appreciated at once. The image of substantial and material loveliness once seen leaves an impression as distinct and perfect upon the retina of memory as upon that of the eyes. It does not rise before us in detached and disconnected proportions, like that of spiritual loveliness, but in crowds, and in solitude, and in all the throngful varieties of thought and feeling and action, the symmetrical whole, the beautiful perfection comes up in the vision of memory, and stands, like a bright angel, between us and all other impressions of outward or immaterial beauty.

"I saw her, and could not forget her; I sought her society, and was gratified with it. It is true, I sometimes (in the first stages of my attachment) had my misgivings in relation to her character. I sometimes feared that her ideas were too much limited to the perishing beauty of her person. But to look upon her graceful figure yielding to the dance, or reclining in its indolent symmetry; to watch the beautiful play of coloring upon her cheek, and the moonlight transit of her smile; to study her faultless features in their delicate and even thoughtful repose, or when lighted up into conversational vivacity, was to forget everything, save the exceeding and bewildering fascination before me. Like the silver veil of Khorassan it shut out from my view the mental deformity beneath it. I could not reason with myself about her; I had no power of ratiocination which could overcome the blinding dazzle of her beauty. The master-passion, which had wrestled down all others, gave to every sentiment of the mind something of its own peculiar character.

"I will not trouble you with a connected history of my first love, my boyish love, you may perhaps call it. Suffice it to say, that on the revelation of that love, it was answered by its object warmly and sympathizingly. I had hardly dared to hope for her favor; for I had magnified her into something far beyond mortal desert; and to hear from her own lips an avowal of affection seemed more like the condescension of a pitying angel than the sympathy of a creature of passion and frailty like myself. I was miserably self-deceived; and self-deception is of a nature most repugnant to the healthy operation of truth. We suspect others, but seldom ourselves. The deception becomes a part of our self-love; we hold back the error even when Reason would pluck it away from us.

"Our whole life may be considered as made up of earnest yearnings after objects whose value increases with the difficulties of obtaining them, and which seem greater and more desirable, from our imperfect knowledge of their nature, just as the objects of the outward vision are magnified and exalted when seen through a natural telescope of mist. Imagination fills up and supplies the picture, of which we can only catch the outlines, with colors brighter, and forms more perfect, than those of reality. Yet, you may perhaps wonder why, after my earnest desire had been gratified, after my love had found sympathy in its object, I did not analyze more closely the inherent and actual qualities of her heart and intellect. But living, as I did, at a considerable distance from her, and seeing her only under circumstances calculated to confirm previous impressions, I had few advantages, even had I desired to do so, of studying her true character. The world had not yet taught me its ungenerous lesson. I had not yet learned to apply the rack of philosophical analysis to the objects around me, and test, by a cold process of reasoning, deduced from jealous observation, the reality of all which wore the outward semblance of innocence and beauty. And it may be, too, that the belief, nay, the assurance, from her own lips, and from the thousand voiceless but eloquent signs which marked our interviews, that I was beloved, made me anxious to deceive even myself, by investing her with those gifts of the intellect and the heart, without which her very love would have degraded its object. It is not in human nature, at least it was not in mine, to embitter the delicious aliment which is offered to our vanity, by admitting any uncomfortable doubts of the source from which it is derived.

"And thus it was that I came on, careless and secure, dreaming over and over the same bright dream; without any doubt, without fear, and in the perfect confidence of an unlimited trust, until the mask fell off, all at once; without giving me time for preparation, without warning or interlude; and the features of cold, heartless, systematic treachery glared full upon me.

"I saw her wedded to another. It was a beautiful morning; and never had the sun shone down on a gayer assemblage than that which gathered together at the village church. I witnessed the imposing ceremony which united the only one being I had ever truly loved to a happy and favored, because more wealthy, rival. As the grayhaired man pronounced the inquiring challenge, 'If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else forever after hold his peace,' I struggled forward, and would have cried out, but the words died away in my throat. And the ceremony went on, and the death- like trance into which I had fallen was broken by the voice of the priest: 'I require and charge ye both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured, that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God's word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful.' As the solemn tones of the old man died away in the church aisles, I almost expected to hear a supernatural voice calling upon him to forbear. But there was no sound. For an instant my eyes met those of the bride; the blood boiled rapidly to her forehead, and then sank back, and she was as pale as if death had been in the glance I had given her. And I could see the folds of her rich dress tremble, and her beautiful lips quiver; and she turned away her eyes, and the solemn rites were concluded.

"I returned to my lodgings. I heeded not the gay smiles and free merriment of those around me. I hurried along like one who wanders abroad in a dark dream; for I could hardly think of the events of the morning as things of reality. But, when I spurred my horse aside, as the carriage which contained the newly married swept by me, the terrible truth came upon me like a tangible substance, and one black and evil thought passed over my mind, like the whispered suggestion of Satan. It was a feeling of blood, a sensation like that of grasping the strangling throat of an enemy. I started from it with horror. For the first time a thought of murder had risen up in my bosom; and I quenched it with the natural abhorrence of a nature prone to mildness and peace.

"I reached my chamber, and, exhausted alike in mind and body, I threw myself upon my bed, but not to sleep. A sense of my utter desolation and loneliness came over me, blended with a feeling of bitter and unmerited wrong. I recollected the many manifestations of affection which I had received from her who had that day given herself, in the presence of Heaven, to another; and I called to mind the thousand sacrifices I had made to her lightest caprices, to every shade and variation of her temper; and then came the maddening consciousness of the black ingratitude which had requited such tenderness. Then, too, came the thought, bitter to a pride like mine, that the cold world had a knowledge of my misfortunes; that I should be pointed out as a disappointed man, a subject for the pity of some, and the scorn and jestings of others. Rage and shame mingled with the keen agony of outraged feeling. 'I will not endure it,' I said, mentally, springing from my bed and crossing the chamber with a flushed brow and a strong step; 'never!' And I ground my teeth upon each other, while a fierce light seemed to break in upon my brain; it was the light of the Tempter's smile, and I almost laughed aloud as the horrible thought of suicide started before me. I felt that I might escape the ordeal of public scorn and pity; that I might bid the world and its falsehood defiance, and end, by one manly effort, the agony of an existence whose every breath was torment.

"My resolution was fixed. 'I will never see another morrow!' I said, sternly, but with a calmness which almost astonished me. Indeed, I seemed gifted with a supernatural firmness, as I made my arrangements for the last day of suffering which I was to endure. A few friends had been invited to dine with me, and I prepared to meet them. They came at the hour appointed with smiling faces and warm and friendly greetings; and I received them as if nothing had happened, with even a more enthusiastic welcome than was my wont.

"Oh! it is terrible to smile when the heart is breaking! to talk lightly and freely and mirthfully, when every feeling of the mind is wrung with unutterable agony; to mingle in the laugh and in the gay volleys of convivial fellowship,

'With the difficult utterance of one Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down.'

"Yet all this I endured, hour after hour, until my friends departed and I had pressed their hands as at a common parting, while my heart whispered an everlasting farewell!

"It was late when they left me. I walked out to look for the last time upon Nature in her exceeding beauty. I hardly acknowledged to myself that such was my purpose; but yet I did feel that it was so; and that I was taking an everlasting farewell of the beautiful things around me. The sun was just setting; and the hills, that rose like pillars of the blue horizon, were glowing with a light which was fast deserting the valleys. It was an evening of summer; everything was still; not a leaf stirred in the dark, overshadowing foliage; but, silent and beautiful as a picture, the wide scenery of rock and hill and woodland, stretched away before me; and, beautiful as it was, it seemed to possess a newness and depth of beauty beyond its ordinary appearance, as if to aggravate the pangs of the last, long farewell.

"They do not err who believe that man has a sympathy with even inanimate Nature, deduced from a common origin; a chain of co-existence and affinity connecting the outward forms of natural objects with his own fearful and wonderful machinery; something, in short, manifested in his love of flowing waters, and soft green shadows, and pleasant blowing flowers, and in his admiration of the mountain, stretching away into heaven, sublimed and awful in its cloudy distance; the heave and swell of the infinite ocean; the thunder of the leaping cataract; and the onward rush of mighty rivers, which tells of its original source, and bears evidence of its kindred affinities. Nor was the dream of the ancient Chaldean 'all a dream.' The stars of heaven, the beauty and the glory above us, have their influences and their power, not evil and malignant and partial and irrevocable, but holy and tranquillizing and benignant, a moral influence, by which all may profit if they will do so. And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an overruling Intelligence. I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by man and the works of man. But there is something in the harmony and quiet of the natural world which presents a reproving antagonism to the fiercer passions of the human heart; an eye of solemn reprehension looks out from the still places of Nature, as if the Great Soul of the Universe had chosen the mute creations of his power to be the witnesses of the deeds done in the body, the researchers of the bosoms of men.

"And then, even at that awful moment, I could feel the bland and gentle ministrations of Nature; I could feel the fever of my heart cooling, and a softer haze of melancholy stealing over the blackness of my despair; and the fierce passions which had distracted me giving place to the calm of a settled anguish, a profound sorrow, the quiet gloom of an overshadowing woe, in which love and hatred and wrong were swallowed up and lost. I no longer hated the world; but I felt that it had nothing for me; that I was no longer a part and portion of its harmonious elements; affliction had shut me out forever from the pale of human happiness and sympathy, and hope pointed only to the resting-place of the grave!

"I stood steadily gazing at the setting sun. It touched and sat upon the hill-top like a great circle of fire. I had never before fully comprehended the feeling of the amiable but misguided Rousseau, who at his death-hour desired to be brought into the open air, that the last glance of his failing eye might drink in the glory of the sunset heavens, and the light of his great intellect and that of Nature go out together. For surely never did the Mexican idolater mark with deeper emotion the God of his worship, for the last time veiling his awful countenance, than did I, untainted by superstition, yet full of perfect love for the works of Infinite Wisdom, watch over the departure of the most glorious of them all. I felt, even to agony, the truth of these exquisite lines of the Milesian poet:

'Blest power of sunshine, genial day! What joy, what life is in thy ray! To feel thee is such real bliss, That, had the world no joy but this, To sit in sunshine, calm and sweet, It were a world too exquisite For man to leave it for the gloom, The dull, cold shadow of the tomb!'

"Never shall I forget my sensations when the sun went down utterly from my sight. It was like receiving the last look of a dying friend. To others he might bring life and health and joy, on the morrow; but tome he would never rise. As this thought came over me, I felt a stifling sensation in my throat, tears started in my eyes, and my heart almost wavered from its purpose. But the bent bow had only relaxed for a single instant; it returned again to its strong and abiding tension.

"I was alone in my chamber once more. A single lamp burned gloomily before me; and on the table at my side stood a glass of laudanum. I had prepared everything. I had written my last letter, and had now only to drink the fatal draught, and lie down to my last sleep. I heard the old village clock strike eleven. 'I may as well do it now as ever,' I said mentally, and my hand moved towards the glass. But my courage failed me; my hand shook, and some moments elapsed before I could sufficiently quiet my nerves to lift the glass containing the fatal liquid. The blood ran cold upon my heart, and my brain reeled, as again and again I lifted the poison to my closed lips. 'It must be done,' thought I, 'I must drink it.' With a desperate effort I unlocked my clenched teeth and the deed was done!

"'O God, have mercy upon me!' I murmured, as the empty glass fell from my hand. I threw myself upon the bed, and awaited the awful termination. An age of unutterable misery seemed crowded into a brief moment. All the events of my past life, a life, as it then seemed to me, made up of folly and crime, rose distinct before me, like accusing witnesses, as if the recording angel had unrolled to my view the full and black catalogue of my unnumbered sins:--

'O'er the soul Winters of memory seemed to roll, And gather, in that drop of time, A life of pain, an age of crime.'

"I felt that what I had done was beyond recall; and the Phantom of Death, as it drew nearer, wore an aspect darker and more terrible. I thought of the coffin, the shroud, and the still and narrow grave, into whose dumb and frozen solitude none but the gnawing worm intrudes. And then my thoughts wandered away into the vagueness and mystery of eternity, I was rushing uncalled for into the presence of a just and pure God, with a spirit unrepenting, unannealed! And I tried to pray and could not; for a heaviness, a dull strange torpor crept over me. Consciousness went out slowly. 'This is death,' thought I; yet I felt no pain, nothing save a weary drowsiness, against which I struggled in vain.

"My next sensations were those of calmness, deep, ineffable, an unearthly quiet; a suspension or rather oblivion of every mental affliction; a condition of the mind betwixt the thoughts of wakefulness and the dreams of sleep. It seemed to me that the gulf between mind and matter had been passed over, and that I had entered upon a new existence. I had no memory, no hope, no sorrow; nothing but a dim consciousness of a pleasurable and tranquil being. Gradually, however, the delusion vanished. I was sensible of still wearing the fetters of the flesh, yet they galled no longer; the burden was lifted from my heart, it beat happily and calmly, as in childhood. As the stronger influences of my opiate (for I had really swallowed nothing more, as the druggist, suspecting from the incoherence of my language, that I was meditating some fearful purpose, furnished me with a harmless, though not ineffective draught) passed off, the events of the past came back to me. It was like the slow lifting of a curtain from a picture of which I was a mere spectator, about which I could reason calmly, and trace dispassionately its light and shadow. Having satisfied myself that I had been deceived in the quantity of opium I had taken, I became also convinced that I had at last discovered the great antidote for which philosophy had exhausted its resources, the fabled Lethe, the oblivion of human sorrow. The strong necessity of suicide had passed away; life, even for me, might be rendered tolerable by the sovereign panacea of opium, the only true minister to a mind diseased, the sought 'kalon' found.

"From that day I have been habitually an opium eater. I am perfectly sensible that the constant use of the pernicious drug has impaired my health; but I cannot relinquish it. Some time since I formed a resolution to abandon it, totally and at once; but had not strength enough to carry it into practice. The very attempt to do so nearly drove me to madness. The great load of mental agony which had been lifted up and held aloof by the daily applied power of opium sank back upon my heart like a crushing weight. Then, too, my physical sufferings were extreme; an indescribable irritation, a general uneasiness tormented me incessantly. I can only think of it as a total disarrangement of the whole nervous system, the jarring of all the thousand chords of sensitiveness, each nerve having its own particular pain.--( Essay on the Effects of Opium, London, 1763.)

"De Quincey, in his wild, metaphysical, and eloquent, yet, in many respects, fancy sketch, considers the great evil resulting from the use of opium to be the effect produced upon the mind during the hours of sleep, the fearful inquietude of unnatural dreams. My own dreams have been certainly of a different order from those which haunted me previous to my experience in opium eating. But I cannot easily believe that opium necessarily introduces a greater change in the mind's sleeping operations, than in those of its wakefulness.

"At one period, indeed, while suffering under a general, nervous debility, from which I am even now but partially relieved, my troubled and broken sleep was overshadowed by what I can only express as 'a horror of thick darkness.' There was nothing distinct or certain in my visions, all was clouded, vague, hideous; sounds faint and awful, yet unknown; the sweep of heavy wings, the hollow sound of innumerable footsteps, the glimpse of countless apparitions, and darkness falling like a great cloud from heaven.

"I can scarcely give you an adequate idea of my situation in these dreams, without comparing it with that of the ancient Egyptians while suffering under the plague of darkness. I never read the awful description of this curse, without associating many of its horrors with those of my own experience.

"'But they, sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevitable hell,

"'Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted; for a sudden fear and not looked for, came upon them.'

"'For neither might the corner which held them keep them from fear; but noises, as of waters falling down, sounded about them, and sad visions appeared unto them, with heavy countenances.

"'Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious voice of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently;

"'Or, a terrible sound of stones cast down, or, a running that could not be seen, of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains: these things made them to swoon for fear.'--(Wisdom of Solomon, chapter xvii.)

"That creative faculty of the eye, upon which Mr. De Quincey dwells so strongly, I have myself experienced. Indeed, it has been the principal cause of suffering which has connected itself with my habit of opium eating. It developed itself at first in a recurrence of the childish faculty of painting upon the darkness whatever suggested itself to the mind; anon, those figures which had before been called up only at will became the cause, instead of the effect, of the mind's employment; in other words, they came before me in the night-time, like real images, and independent of any previous volition of thought. I have often, after retiring to my bed, seen, looking through the thick wall of darkness round about me, the faces of those whom I had not known for years, nay, since childhood; faces, too, of the dead, called up, as it were, from the church-yard and the wilderness and the deep waters, and betraying nothing of the grave's terrible secrets. And in the same way, some of the more important personages I had read of, in history and romance, glided often before me, like an assembly of apparitions, each preserving, amidst the multitudinous combinations of my visions, his own individuality and peculiar characteristics.--(Vide Emanuel Count Swedenborg, Nicolai of Berlin's Account of Spectral Illusion, Edinburgh Phrenological Journal.)

"These images were, as you may suppose, sufficiently annoying, yet they came and went without exciting any emotions of terror. But a change at length came over them, an awful distinctness and a semblance of reality, which, operating upon nerves weakened and diseased, shook the very depths of my spirit with a superstitious awe, and against which reason and philosophy, for a time, struggled in vain.

"My mind had for some days been dwelling with considerable solicitude upon an intimate friend, residing in a distant city. I had heard that he was extremely ill, indeed, that his life was despaired of; and I may mention that at this period all my mind's operations were dilatory; there were no sudden emotions; passion seemed exhausted; and when once any new train of thought had been suggested, it gradually incorporated itself with those which had preceded it, until it finally became sole and predominant, just as certain plants of the tropical islands wind about and blend with and finally take the place of those of another species. And perhaps to this peculiarity of the mental economy, the gradual concentring of the mind in a channel, narrowing to that point of condensation where thought becomes sensible to sight as well as feeling, may be mainly attributed the vision I am about to describe.

"I was lying in my bed, listless and inert; it was broad day, for the easterly light fell in strongly through the parted curtains. I felt, all at once, a strong curiosity, blended with an unaccountable dread, to look upon a small table which stood near the bedside. I felt certain of seeing something fearful, and yet I knew not what; there was an awe and a fascination upon me, more dreadful from their very vagueness. I lay for some time hesitating and actually trembling, until the agony of suspense became too strong for endurance. I opened my eyes and fixed them upon the dreaded object. Upon the table lay what seemed to me a corpse, wrapped about in the wintry habiliments of the grave, the corpse of my friend.

(William Hone, celebrated for his antiquarian researches, has given a distinct and highly interesting account of spectral illusion, in his own experience, in his Every Day Book. The artist Cellini has made a similar statement.)

"For a moment, the circumstances of time and place were forgotten; and the spectre seemed to me a natural reality, at which I might sorrow, but not wonder. The utter fallacy of this idea was speedily detected; and then I endeavored to consider the present vision, like those which had preceded it, a mere delusion, a part of the phenomena of opium eating. I accordingly closed my eyes for an instant, and then looked again in full expectation that the frightful object would no longer be visible. It was still there; the body lay upon its side; the countenance turned full towards me,--calm, quiet, even beautiful, but certainly that of death:

'Ere yet Decay's effacing fingers Had swept the lines where Beauty lingers'

and the white brow, and its light shadowy hair, and the cold, still familiar features lay evident and manifest to the influx of the strengthening twilight. A cold agony crept over me; I buried my head in the bed-clothes, in a child-like fear, and when I again ventured to look up, the spectre had vanished. The event made a strong impression on my mind; and I can scarcely express the feeling of relief which was afforded, a few days after, by a letter from the identical friend in question, informing me of his recovery of health.

"It would be a weary task, and one which you would no doubt thank me for declining, to detail the circumstances of a hundred similar visitations, most of which were, in fact, but different combinations of the same illusion. One striking exception I will mention, as it relates to some passages of my early history which you have already heard.

"I have never seen Mrs. H since her marriage. Time, and the continued action of opium, deadening the old sensibilities of the heart and awakening new ones, have effected a wonderful change in my feelings towards her. Little as the confession may argue in favor of my early passion, I seldom think of her, save with a feeling very closely allied to indifference. Yet I have often seen her in my spectral illusions, young and beautiful as ever, but always under circumstances which formed a wide contrast between her spectral appearance and all my recollections of the real person. The spectral face, which I often saw looking in upon me, in my study, when the door was ajar, and visible only in the uncertain lamplight, or peering over me in the moonlight solitude of my bed-chamber, when I was just waking from sleep, was uniformly subject to, and expressive of, some terrible hate, or yet more terrible anguish. Its first appearance was startling in the extreme. It was the face of one of the fabled furies: the demon glared in the eye, the nostril was dilated, the pale lip compressed, and the brow bent and darkened; yet above all, and mingled with all, the supremacy of human beauty was manifest, as if the dream of Eastern superstition had been realized, and a fierce and foul spirit had sought out and animated into a fiendish existence some beautiful sleeper of the grave. The other expression of the countenance of the apparition, that of agony, I accounted for on rational principles. Some years ago I saw, and was deeply affected by, a series of paintings representing the tortures of a Jew in the Holy Inquisition; and the expression of pain in the countenance of the victim I at once recognized in that of the apparition, rendered yet more distressing by the feminine and beautiful features upon which it rested.

"I am not naturally superstitious; but, shaken and clouded as my mind had been by the use of opium, I could not wholly divest it of fear when these phantoms beset me. Yet, on all other occasions, save that of their immediate presence, I found no difficulty in assigning their existence to a diseased state of the bodily organs, and a corresponding sympathy of the mind, rendering it capable of receiving and reflecting the false, fantastic, and unnatural images presented to it.

(One of our most celebrated medical writers considers spectral illusion a disease, in which false perceptions take place in some of the senses; thus, when the excitement of motion is produced in a particular organ, that organ does not vibrate with the impression made upon it, but communicates it to another part on which a similar impression was formerly made. Nicolai states that he made his illusion a source of philosophical amusement. The spectres which haunted him came in the day time as well as the night, and frequently when he was surrounded by his friends; the ideal images mingling with the real ones, and visible only to himself. Bernard Barton, the celebrated Quaker poet, describes an illusion of this nature in a manner peculiarly striking:--

"I only knew thee as thou wert, A being not of earth! "I marvelled much they could not see Thou comest from above And often to myself I said, 'How can they thus approach the dead?'

"But though all these, with fondness warm, Said welcome o'er and o'er, Still that expressive shade or form Was silent, as before! And yet its stillness never brought To them one hesitating thought."

"I recollected that the mode of exorcism which was successfully adopted by Nicolai of Berlin, when haunted by similar fantasies, was a resort to the simple process of blood-letting. I accordingly made trial of it, but without the desired effect. Fearful, from the representations of my physicians, and from some of my own sensations, that the almost daily recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most essential change in my condition. A state of comparative health, mental and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs of vision, succeeded. I have made many attempts at a further reduction, but have been uniformly unsuccessful, owing to the extreme and almost unendurable agony occasioned thereby.

"The peculiar creative faculty of the eye, the fearful gift of a diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of its former terrors. My mind has recovered in some degree its shaken and suspended faculties. But happiness, the buoyant and elastic happiness of earlier days, has departed forever. Although, apparently, a practical disciple of Behmen, I am no believer in his visionary creed. Quiet is not happiness; nor can the absence of all strong and painful emotion compensate for the weary heaviness of inert existence, passionless, dreamless, changeless. The mind requires the excitement of active and changeful thought; the intellectual fountain, like the pool of Bethesda, has a more healthful influence when its deep waters are troubled. There may, indeed, be happiness in those occasional 'sabbaths of the soul,' when calmness, like a canopy, overshadows it, and the mind, for a brief season, eddies quietly round and round, instead of sweeping onward; but none can exist in the long and weary stagnation of feeling, the silent, the monotonous, neverending calm, broken by neither hope nor fear."

THE PROSELYTES. (1833)

THE student sat at his books. All the day he had been poring over an old and time-worn volume; and the evening found him still absorbed in its contents. It was one of that interminable series of controversial volumes, containing the theological speculations of the ancient fathers of the Church. With the patient perseverance so characteristic of his countrymen, he was endeavoring to detect truth amidst the numberless inconsistencies of heated controversy; to reconcile jarring propositions; to search out the thread of scholastic argument amidst the rant of prejudice and the sallies of passion, and the coarse vituperations of a spirit of personal bitterness, but little in accordance with the awful gravity of the question at issue.

Wearied and baffled in his researches, he at length closed the volume, and rested his care-worn forehead upon his hand. "What avail," he said, "these long and painful endeavors, these midnight vigils, these weary studies, before which heart and flesh are failing? What have I gained? I have pushed my researches wide and far; my life has been one long and weary lesson; I have shut out from me the busy and beautiful world; I have chastened every youthful impulse; and at an age when the heart should be lightest and the pulse the freest, I am grave and silent and sorrowful,' and the frost of a premature age is gathering around my heart. Amidst these ponderous tomes, surrounded by the venerable receptacles of old wisdom, breathing, instead of the free air of heaven, the sepulchral dust of antiquity, I have become assimilated to the objects around me; my very nature has undergone a metamorphosis of which Pythagoras never dreamed. I am no longer a reasoning creature, looking at everything within the circle of human investigation with a clear and self-sustained vision, but the cheated follower of metaphysical absurdities, a mere echo of scholastic subtilty. God knows that my aim has been a lofty and pure one, that I have buried myself in this living tomb, and counted the health of this His feeble and outward image as nothing in comparison with that of the immortal and inward representation and shadow of His own Infinite Mind; that I have toiled through what the world calls wisdom, the lore of the old fathers and time-honored philosophy, not for the dream of power and gratified ambition, not for the alchemist's gold or life-giving elixir, but with an eye single to that which I conceived to be the most fitting object of a godlike spirit, the discovery of Truth,--truth perfect and unclouded, truth in its severe and perfect beauty, truth as it sits in awe and holiness in the presence of its Original and Source!

"Was my aim too lofty? It cannot be; for my Creator has given me a spirit which would spurn a meaner one. I have studied to act in accordance with His will; yet have I felt all along like one walking in blindness. I have listened to the living champions of the Church; I have pored over the remains of the dead; but doubt and heavy darkness still rest upon my pathway. I find contradiction where I had looked for harmony; ambiguity where I had expected clearness; zeal taking the place of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness, interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth, for which I have been seeking, lies still beyond, or seen, if at all, only by transient and unsatisfying glimpses, obscured and darkened by miserable subtilties and cabalistic mysteries."

He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant with a letter. The student broke its well-known seal, and read, in a delicate chirography, the following words:--

"DEAR ERNEST,--A stranger from the English Kingdom, of gentle birth and education, hath visited me at the request of the good Princess Elizabeth of the Palatine. He is a preacher of the new faith, a zealous and earnest believer in the gifts of the Spirit, but not like John de Labadie or the lady Schurmans.

(J. de Labadie, Anna Maria Schurmans, and others, dissenters from the French Protestants, established themselves in Holland, 1670.)

"He speaks like one sent on a message from heaven, a message of wisdom and salvation. Come, Ernest, and see him; for he hath but a brief hour to tarry with us. Who knoweth but that this stranger may be commissioned to lead us to that which we have so long and anxiously sought for,--the truth as it is in God. "LEONORA."

"Now may Heaven bless the sweet enthusiast for this interruption of my bitter reflections!" said the student, in the earnest tenderness of impassioned feeling. "She knows how gladly I shall obey her summons; she knows how readily I shall forsake the dogmas of our wisest schoolmen, to obey the slightest wishes of a heart pure and generous as hers."

He passed hastily through one of the principal streets of the city to the dwelling of the lady, Eleonora.

In a large and gorgeous apartment sat the Englishman, his plain and simple garb contrasting strongly with the richness and luxury around him. He was apparently quite young, and of a tall and commanding figure. His countenance was calm and benevolent; it bore no traces of passion; care had not marked it; there was a holy serenity in its expression, which seemed a token of that inward "peace which passeth all understanding."

"And this is thy friend, Eleonora?" said the stranger, as he offered his hand to Ernest. "I hear," he said, addressing the latter, "thou hast been a hard student and a lover of philosophy."

"I am but a humble inquirer after Truth," replied Ernest.

"From whence hast thou sought it?"

"From the sacred volume, from the lore of the old fathers, from the fountains of philosophy, and from my own brief experience of human life."

"And hast thou attained thy object?"

"Alas, no!" replied the student; "I have thus far toiled in vain."

"Ah! thus must the children of this world ever toil, wearily, wearily, but in vain. We grasp at shadows, we grapple with the fashionless air, we walk in the blindness of our own vain imaginations, we compass heaven and earth for our objects, and marvel that we find them not. The truth which is of God, the crown of wisdom, the pearl of exceeding price, demands not this vain-glorious research; easily to be entreated, it lieth within the reach of all. The eye of the humblest spirit may discern it. For He who respecteth not the persons of His children hath not set it afar off, unapproachable save to the proud and lofty; but hath made its refreshing fountains to murmur, as it were, at the very door of our hearts. But in the encumbering hurry of the world we perceive it not; in the noise of our daily vanities we hear not the waters of Siloah which go softly. We look widely abroad; we lose ourselves in vain speculation; we wander in the crooked paths of those who have gone before us; yea, in the language of one of the old fathers, we ask the earth and it replieth not, we question the sea and its inhabitants, we turn to the sun, and the moon, and the stars of heaven, and they may not satisfy us; we ask our eyes, and they cannot see, and our ears, and they cannot hear; we turn to books, and they delude us; we seek philosophy, and no response cometh from its dead and silent learning.

(August. Soliloq. Cap. XXXI. "Interrogavi Terram," etc.)

"It is not in the sky above, nor in the air around, nor in the earth beneath; it is in our own spirits, it lives within us; and if we would find it, like the lost silver of the woman of the parable, we must look at home, to the inward temple, which the inward eye discovereth, and wherein the spirit of all truth is manifested. The voice of that spirit is still and small, and the light about it shineth in darkness. But truth is there; and if we seek it in low humility, in a patient waiting upon its author, with a giving up of our natural pride of knowledge, a seducing of self, a quiet from all outward endeavor, it will assuredly be revealed and fully made known. For as the angel rose of old from the altar of Manoah even so shall truth arise from the humbling sacrifice of self-knowledge and human vanity, in all its eternal and ineffable beauty.

"Seekest thou, like Pilate, after truth? Look thou within. The holy principle is there; that in whose light the pure hearts of all time have rejoiced. It is 'the great light of ages' of which Pythagoras speaks, the 'good spirit' of Socrates; the 'divine mind' of Anaxagoras; the 'perfect principle' of Plato; the 'infallible and immortal law, and divine power of reason' of Philo. It is the 'unbegotten principle and source of all light,' whereof Timmus testifieth; the 'interior guide of the soul and everlasting foundation of virtue,' spoken of by Plutarch. Yea, it was the hope and guide of those virtuous Gentiles, who, doing by nature the things contained in the law, became a law unto themselves.

"Look to thyself. Turn thine eye inward. Heed not the opinion of the world. Lean not upon the broken reed of thy philosophy, thy verbal orthodoxy, thy skill in tongues, thy knowledge of the Fathers. Remember that truth was seen by the humble fishermen of Galilee, and overlooked by the High Priest of the Temple, by the Rabbi and the Pharisee. Thou canst not hope to reach it by the metaphysics of Fathers, Councils, Schoolmen, and Universities. It lies not in the high places of human learning; it is in the silent sanctuary of thy own heart; for He, who gave thee an immortal soul, hath filled it with a portion of that truth which is the image of His own unapproachable light. The voice of that truth is within thee; heed thou its whisper. A light is kindled in thy soul, which, if thou carefully heedest it, shall shine more and more even unto the perfect day."

The stranger paused, and the student melted into tears. "Stranger!" he said, "thou hast taken a weary weight from my heart, and a heavy veil from my eyes. I feel that thou hast revealed a wisdom which is not of this world."

"Nay, I am but a humble instrument in the hand of Him who is the fountain of all truth, and the beginning and the end of all wisdom. May the message which I have borne thee be sanctified to thy well-being."

"Oh, heed him, Ernest!" said the lady. "It is the holy truth which has been spoken. Let us rejoice in this truth, and, forgetting the world, live only for it."

"Oh, may He who watcheth over all His children keep thee in faith of thy resolution!" said the Preacher, fervently. "Humble yourselves to receive instruction, and it shall be given you. Turn away now in your youth from the corrupting pleasures of the world, heed not its hollow vanities, and that peace which is not such as the world giveth, the peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall be yours. Yet, let not yours be the world's righteousness, the world's peace, which shuts itself up in solitude. Encloister not the body, but rather shut up the soul from sin. Live in the world, but overcome it: lead a life of purity in the face of its allurements: learn, from the holy principle of truth within you, to do justly in the sight of its Author, to meet reproach without anger, to live without offence, to love those that offend you, to visit the widow and the fatherless, and keep yourselves unspotted from the world."

"Eleonora!" said the humbled student, "truth is plain before us; can we follow its teachings? Alas! canst thou, the daughter of a noble house, forget the glory of thy birth, and, in the beauty of thy years, tread in that lowly path, which the wisdom of the world accounteth foolishness?"

"Yes, Ernest, rejoicingly can I do it!" said the lady; and the bright glow of a lofty purpose gave a spiritual expression to her majestic beauty. "Glory to God in the highest, that He hath visited us in mercy!"

"Lady!" said the Preacher, "the day-star of truth has arisen in thy heart; follow thou its light even unto salvation. Live an harmonious life to the curious make and frame of thy creation; and let the beauty of thy person teach thee to beautify thy mind with holiness, the ornament of the beloved of God. Remember that the King of Zion's daughter is all-glorious within; and if thy soul excel, thy body will only set off the lustre of thy mind. Let not the spirit of this world, its cares and its many vanities, its fashions and discourse, prevail over the civility of thy nature. Remember that sin brought the first coat, and thou wilt have little reason to be proud of dress or the adorning of thy body. Seek rather the enduring ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, the beauty and the purity of the altar of God's temple, rather than the decoration of its outward walls. For, as the Spartan monarch said of old to his daughter, when he restrained her from wearing the rich dresses of Sicily, 'Thou wilt seem more lovely to me without them,' so shalt thou seem, in thy lowliness and humility, more lovely in the sight of Heaven and in the eyes of the pure of earth. Oh, preserve in their freshness thy present feelings, wait in humble resignation and in patience, even if it be all thy days, for the manifestations of Him who as a father careth for all His children."

"I will endeavor, I will endeavor!" said the lady, humbled in spirit, and in tears.

The stranger took the hand of each. "Farewell!" he said, "I must needs depart, for I have much work before me. God's peace be with you; and that love be around you, which has been to me as the green pasture and the still water, the shadow in a weary land."

And the stranger went his way; but the lady and her lover, in all their after life, and amidst the trials and persecutions which they were called to suffer in the cause of truth, remembered with joy and gratitude the instructions of the pure-hearted and eloquent William Penn.

DAVID MATSON.

Published originally in Our Young Folks, 1865.

WHO of my young friends have read the sorrowful story of "Enoch Arden," so sweetly and simply told by the great English poet? It is the story of a man who went to sea, leaving behind a sweet young wife and little daughter. He was cast away on a desert island, where he remained several years, when he was discovered and taken off by a passing vessel. Coming back to his native town, he found his wife married to an old playmate, a good man, rich and honored, and with whom she was living happily. The poor man, unwilling to cause her pain and perplexity, resolved not to make himself known to her, and lived and died alone. The poem has reminded me of a very similar story of my own New England neighborhood, which I have often heard, and which I will try to tell, not in poetry, like Alfred Tennyson's, but in my own poor prose. I can assure my readers that in its main particulars it is a true tale.

One bright summer morning, not more than fourscore years ago, David Matson, with his young wife and his two healthy, barefooted boys, stood on the bank of the river near their dwelling. They were waiting for Pelatiah Curtis to come round the point with his wherry, and take the husband and father to the port, a few miles below. The Lively Turtle was about to sail on a voyage to Spain, and David was to go in her as mate. They stood there in the level morning sunshine talking cheerfully; but had you been near enough, you could have seen tears in Anna Matson's blue eyes, for she loved her husband and knew there was always danger on the sea. And David's bluff, cheery voice trembled a little now and then, for the honest sailor loved his snug home on the Merrimac, with the dear wife and her pretty boys. But presently the wherry came alongside, and David was just stepping into it, when he turned back to kiss his wife and children once more.

"In with you, man," said Pelatiah Curtis. "There is no time for kissing and such fooleries when the tide serves."

And so they parted. Anna and the boys went back to their home, and David to the Port, whence he sailed off in the Lively Turtle. And months passed, autumn followed summer, and winter the autumn, and then spring came, and anon it was summer on the river-side, and he did not come back. And another year passed, and then the old sailors and fishermen shook their heads solemnly, and, said that the Lively Turtle was a lost ship, and would never come back to port. And poor Anna had her bombazine gown dyed black, and her straw bonnet trimmed in mourning ribbons, and thenceforth she was known only as the Widow Matson.

And how was it all this time with David himself?

Now you must know that the Mohammedan people of Algiers and Tripoli, and Mogadore and Sallee, on the Barbary coast, had been for a long time in the habit of fitting out galleys and armed boats to seize upon the merchant vessels of Christian nations, and make slaves of their crews and passengers, just as men calling themselves Christians in America were sending vessels to Africa to catch black slaves for their plantations. The Lively Turtle fell into the hands of one of these sea- robbers, and the crew were taken to Algiers, and sold in the market place as slaves, poor David Matson among the rest.

When a boy he had learned the trade of ship-carpenter with his father on the Merrimac; and now he was set to work in the dock-yards. His master, who was naturally a kind man, did not overwork him. He had daily his three loaves of bread, and when his clothing was worn out, its place was supplied by the coarse cloth of wool and camel's hair woven by the Berber women. Three hours before sunset he was released from work, and Friday, which is the Mohammedan Sabhath, was a day of entire rest. Once a year, at the season called Ramadan, he was left at leisure for a whole week. So time went on,--days, weeks, months, and years. His dark hair became gray. He still dreamed of his old home on the Merrimac, and of his good Anna and the boys. He wondered whether they yet lived, what they thought of him, and what they were doing. The hope of ever seeing them again grew fainter and fainter, and at last nearly died out; and he resigned himself to his fate as a slave for life.

But one day a handsome middle-aged gentleman, in the dress of one of his own countrymen, attended by a great officer of the Dey, entered the ship-yard, and called up before him the American captives. The stranger was none other than Joel Barlow, Commissioner of the United States to procure the liberation of slaves belonging to that government. He took the men by the hand as they came up, and told them that they were free. As you might expect, the poor fellows were very grateful; some laughed, some wept for joy, some shouted and sang, and threw up their caps, while others, with David Matson among them, knelt down on the chips, and thanked God for the great deliverance.

"This is a very affecting scene," said the commissioner, wiping his eyes. "I must keep the impression of it for my 'Columbiad';" and drawing out his tablet, he proceeded to write on the spot an apostrophe to Freedom, which afterwards found a place in his great epic.

David Matson had saved a little money during his captivity by odd jobs and work on holidays. He got a passage to Malaga, where he bought a nice shawl for his wife and a watch for each of his boys. He then went to the quay, where an American ship was lying just ready to sail for Boston.

Almost the first man he saw on board was Pelatiah Curtis, who had rowed him down to the port seven years before. He found that his old neighbor did not know him, so changed was he with his long beard and Moorish dress, whereupon, without telling his name, he began to put questions about his old home, and finally asked him if he knew a Mrs. Matson.

"I rather think I do," said Pelatiah; "she's my wife."

"Your wife!" cried the other. "She is mine before God and man. I am David Matson, and she is the mother of my children."

"And mine too!" said Pelatiah. "I left her with a baby in her arms. If you are David Matson, your right to her is outlawed; at any rate she is mine, and I am not the man to give her up."

"God is great!" said poor David Matson, unconsciously repeating the familiar words of Moslem submission. "His will be done. I loved her, but I shall never see her again. Give these, with my blessing, to the good woman and the boys," and he handed over, with a sigh, the little bundle containing the gifts for his wife and children.

He shook hands with his rival. "Pelatiah," he said, looking back as he left the ship, "be kind to Anna and my boys."

"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the sailor in a careless tone. He watched the poor man passing slowly up the narrow street until out of sight. "It's a hard case for old David," he said, helping himself to a fresh quid of tobacco, "but I 'm glad I 've seen the last of him."

When Pelatiah Curtis reached home he told Anna the story of her husband and laid his gifts in her lap. She did not shriek nor faint, for she was a healthy woman with strong nerves; but she stole away by herself and wept bitterly. She lived many years after, but could never be persuaded to wear the pretty shawl which the husband of her youth had sent as his farewell gift. There is, however, a tradition that, in accordance with her dying wish, it was wrapped about her poor old shoulders in the coffin, and buried with her.

The little old bull's-eye watch, which is still in the possession of one of her grandchildren, is now all that remains to tell of David Matson,-- the lost man.

THE FISH I DID N'T CATCH.

Published originally in The Little Pilgrim, Philadelphia, 1843.

OUR old homestead (the house was very old for a new country, having been built about the time that the Prince of, Orange drove out James the Second) nestled under a long range of hills which stretched off to the west. It was surrounded by woods in all directions save to the southeast, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland. Through these, a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled, and laughed down its rocky falls by our gardenside, wound, silently and scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook in its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, the clack of which we could hear in still days across the intervening woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the river took it up and bore it down to the great sea.

I have not much reason for speaking well of these meadows, or rather bogs, for they were wet most of the year; but in the early days they were highly prized by the settlers, as they furnished natural mowing before the uplands could be cleared of wood and stones and laid down to grass. There is a tradition that the hay-harvesters of two adjoining towns quarrelled about a boundary question, and fought a hard battle one summer morning in that old time, not altogether bloodless, but by no means as fatal as the fight between the rival Highland clans, described by Scott in "The Fair Maid of Perth." I used to wonder at their folly, when I was stumbling over the rough hassocks, and sinking knee-deep in the black mire, raking the sharp sickle-edged grass which we used to feed out to the young cattle in midwinter when the bitter cold gave them appetite for even such fodder. I had an almost Irish hatred of snakes, and these meadows were full of them,--striped, green, dingy water- snakes, and now and then an ugly spotted adder by no means pleasant to touch with bare feet. There were great black snakes, too, in the ledges of the neighboring knolls; and on one occasion in early spring I found myself in the midst of a score at least of them,--holding their wicked meeting of a Sabbath morning on the margin of a deep spring in the meadows. One glimpse at their fierce shining beads in the sunshine, as they roused themselves at my approach, was sufficient to send me at full speed towards the nearest upland. The snakes, equally scared, fled in the same direction; and, looking back, I saw the dark monsters following close at my heels, terrible as the Black Horse rebel regiment at Bull Run. I had, happily, sense enough left to step aside and let the ugly troop glide into the bushes.

Nevertheless, the meadows had their redeeming points. In spring mornings the blackbirds and bobolinks made them musical with songs; and in the evenings great bullfrogs croaked and clamored; and on summer nights we loved to watch the white wreaths of fog rising and drifting in the moonlight like troops of ghosts, with the fireflies throwing up ever and anon signals of their coming. But the Brook was far more attractive, for it had sheltered bathing-places, clear and white sanded, and weedy stretches, where the shy pickerel loved to linger, and deep pools, where the stupid sucker stirred the black mud with his fins. I had followed it all the way from its birthplace among the pleasant New Hampshire hills, through the sunshine of broad, open meadows, and under the shadow of thick woods. It was, for the most part, a sober, quiet little river; but at intervals it broke into a low, rippling laugh over rocks and trunks of fallen trees. There had, so tradition said, once been a witch-meeting on its banks, of six little old women in short, sky-blue cloaks; and if a drunken teamster could be credited, a ghost was once seen bobbing for eels under Country Bridge. It ground our corn and rye for us, at its two grist-mills; and we drove our sheep to it for their spring washing, an anniversary which was looked forward to with intense delight, for it was always rare fun for the youngsters. Macaulay has sung,--

"That year young lads in Umbro Shall plunge the struggling sheep;"

and his picture of the Roman sheep-washing recalled, when we read it, similar scenes in the Country Brook. On its banks we could always find the earliest and the latest wild flowers, from the pale blue, three- lobed hepatica, and small, delicate wood-anemone, to the yellow bloom of the witch-hazel burning in the leafless October woods.

Yet, after all, I think the chief attraction of the Brook to my brother and myself was the fine fishing it afforded us. Our bachelor uncle who lived with us (there has always been one of that unfortunate class in every generation of our family) was a quiet, genial man, much given to hunting and fishing; and it was one of the great pleasures of our young life to accompany him on his expeditions to Great Hill, Brandy-brow Woods, the Pond, and, best of all, to the Country Brook. We were quite willing to work hard in the cornfield or the haying-lot to finish the necessary day's labor in season for an afternoon stroll through the woods and along the brookside. I remember my first fishing excursion as if it were but yesterday. I have been happy many times in my life, but never more intensely so than when I received that first fishing-pole from my uncle's hand, and trudged off with him through the woods and meadows. It was a still sweet day of early summer; the long afternoon shadows of the trees lay cool across our path; the leaves seemed greener, the flowers brighter, the birds merrier, than ever before. My uncle, who knew by long experience where were the best haunts of pickerel, considerately placed me at the most favorable point. I threw out my line as I had so often seen others, and waited anxiously for a bite, moving the bait in rapid jerks on the surface of the water in imitation of the leap of a frog. Nothing came of it. "Try again," said my uncle. Suddenly the bait sank out of sight. "Now for it," thought I; "here is a fish at last." I made a strong pull, and brought up a tangle of weeds. Again and again I cast out my line with aching arms, and drew it back empty. I looked to my uncle appealingly. "Try once more," he said. "We fishermen must have patience."

Suddenly something tugged at my line and swept off with it into deep water. Jerking it up, I saw a fine pickerel wriggling in the sun. "Uncle!" I cried, looking back in uncontrollable excitement, "I've got a fish!" "Not yet," said my uncle. As he spoke there was a plash in the water; I caught the arrowy gleam of a scared fish shooting into the middle of the stream; my hook hung empty from the line. I had lost my prize.

We are apt to speak of the sorrows of childhood as trifles in comparison with those of grown-up people; but we may depend upon it the young folks don't agree with us. Our griefs, modified and restrained by reason, experience, and self-respect, keep the proprieties, and, if possible, avoid a scene; but the sorrow of childhood, unreasoning and all- absorbing, is a complete abandonment to the passion. The doll's nose is broken, and the world breaks up with it; the marble rolls out of sight, and the solid globe rolls off with the marble.

So, overcome by my great and bitter disappointment, I sat down on the nearest hassock, and for a time refused to be comforted, even by my uncle's assurance that there were more fish in the brook. He refitted my bait, and, putting the pole again in my hands, told me to try my luck once more.

"But remember, boy," he said, with his shrewd smile, "never brag of catching a fish until he is on dry ground. I've seen older folks doing that in more ways than one, and so making fools of themselves. It 's no use to boast of anything until it 's done, nor then either, for it speaks for itself."

How often since I have been reminded of the fish that I did not catch! When I hear people boasting of a work as yet undone, and trying to anticipate the credit which belongs only to actual achievement, I call to mind that scene by the brookside, and the wise caution of my uncle in that particular instance takes the form of a proverb of universal application: "Never brag of your fish before you catch him."

YANKEE GYPSIES.

"Here's to budgets, packs, and wallets; Here's to all the wandering train." BURNS.

I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences." I profess no indifference to the movements of that capricious old gentleman known as the clerk of the weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on the church spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the thermometer go to zero if it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and unable to flap their stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air, clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasined feet on glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her yashmac; schoolboys coasting down street like mad Greenlanders; the cold brilliance of oblique sunbeams flashing back from wide surfaces of glittering snow or blazing upon ice jewelry of tree and roof. There is nothing in all this to complain of. A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,--its slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties, --sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath and above; reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz administers his hydropathic torment,--

"A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench,-- The land it soaks is putrid;"

or rather, as everything animate and inanimate is seething in warm mist, suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old and rheumatic, is trying the efficacy of a Thompsonian steam-box on a grand scale; no sounds save the heavy plash of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous melancholy drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of waterducts, swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a dim, leaden-colored horizon of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down about one, beyond which nothing is visible save in faint line or dark projection; the ghost of a church spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot. He who can extract pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a trick of alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted.

Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing by attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather. They come in at the keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves through the crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney astride of the rain-drops.

I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-jointed figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-browned and wind-dried; small, quick-winking black eyes. There he stands, the water dripping from his pulpy hat and ragged elbows.

I speak to him, but he returns no answer. With a dumb show of misery, quite touching, he hands me a soiled piece of parchment, whereon I read what purports to be a melancholy account of shipwreck and disaster, to the particular detriment, loss, and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni, who is, in consequence, sorely in want of the alms of all charitable Christian persons, and who is, in short, the bearer of this veracious document, duly certified and indorsed by an Italian consul in one of our Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to Yankee organs unpronounceable name.

Here commences a struggle. Every man, the Mohammedans tell us, has two attendant angels,--the good one on his right shoulder, the bad on his left. "Give," says Benevolence, as with some difficulty I fish up a small coin from the depths of my pocket. "Not a cent," says selfish Prudence; and I drop it from my fingers. "Think," says the good angel, "of the poor stranger in a strange land, just escaped from the terrors of the sea-storm, in which his little property has perished, thrown half-naked and helpless on our shores, ignorant of our language, and unable to find employment suited to his capacity." "A vile impostor!" replies the lefthand sentinel. "His paper, purchased from one of those ready-writers in New York who manufacture beggar-credentials at the low price of one dollar per copy, with earthquakes, fires, or shipwrecks, to suit customers."

Amidst this confusion of tongues I take another survey of my visitant. Ha! a light dawns upon me. That shrewd old face, with its sharp, winking eyes, is no stranger to me. Pietro Frugoni, I have seen thee before. Si, signor, that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty white neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn downwards, and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious gravity, while thou wast offering to a crowd of halfgrown boys an extemporaneous exhortation in the capacity of a travelling preacher. Have I not seen it peering out from under a blanket, as that of a poor Penobscot Indian, who had lost the use of his hands while trapping on the Madawaska? Is it not the face of the forlorn father of six small children, whom the "marcury doctors" had "pisened" and crippled? Did it not belong to that down- East unfortunate who had been out to the "Genesee country" and got the "fevern-nager," and whose hand shook so pitifully when held out to receive my poor gift? The same, under all disguises,--Stephen Leathers, of Barrington,--him, and none other! Let me conjure him into his own likeness:--

"Well, Stephen, what news from old Barrington?"

"Oh, well, I thought I knew ye," he answers, not the least disconcerted. "How do you do? and how's your folks? All well, I hope. I took this 'ere paper, you see, to help a poor furriner, who couldn't make himself understood any more than a wild goose. I thought I 'd just start him for'ard a little. It seemed a marcy to do it."

Well and shiftily answered, thou ragged Proteus. One cannot be angry with such a fellow. I will just inquire into the present state of his Gospel mission and about the condition of his tribe on the Penobscot; and it may be not amiss to congratulate him on the success of the steam- doctors in sweating the "pisen" of the regular faculty out of him. But he evidently has no'wish to enter into idle conversation. Intent upon his benevolent errand, he is already clattering down stairs. Involuntarily I glance out of the window just in season to catch a single glimpse of him ere he is swallowed up in the mist.

He has gone; and, knave as he is, I can hardly help exclaiming, "Luck go with him!" He has broken in upon the sombre train of my thoughts and called up before me pleasant and grateful recollections. The old farm- house nestling in its valley; hills stretching off to the south and green meadows to the east; the small stream which came noisily down its ravine, washing the old garden-wall and softly lapping on fallen stones and mossy roots of beeches and hemlocks; the tall sentinel poplars at the gateway; the oak-forest, sweeping unbroken to the northern horizon; the grass-grown carriage-path, with its rude and crazy bridge,--the dear old landscape of my boyhood lies outstretched before me like a daguerreotype from that picture within which I have borne with me in all my wanderings. I am a boy again, once more conscious of the feeling, half terror, half exultation, with which I used to announce the approach of this very vagabond and his "kindred after the flesh."

The advent of wandering beggars, or "old stragglers," as we were wont to call them, was an event of no ordinary interest in the generally monotonous quietude of our farm-life. Many of them were well known; they had their periodical revolutions and transits; we could calculate them like eclipses or new moons. Some were sturdy knaves, fat and saucy; and, whenever they ascertained that the "men folks" were absent, would order provisions and cider like men who expected to pay for them, seating themselves at the hearth or table with the air of Falstaff,-- "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Others, poor, pale, patient, like Sterne's monk, came creeping up to the door, hat in hand, standing there in their gray wretchedness with a look of heartbreak and forlornness which was never without its effect on our juvenile sensibilities. At times, however, we experienced a slight revulsion of feeling when even these humblest children of sorrow somewhat petulantly rejected our proffered bread and cheese, and demanded instead a glass of cider. Whatever the temperance society might in such cases have done, it was not in our hearts to refuse the poor creatures a draught of their favorite beverage; and was n't it a satisfaction to see their sad, melancholy faces light up as we handed them the full pitcher, and, on receiving it back empty from their brown, wrinkled hands, to hear them, half breathless from their long, delicious draught, thanking us for the favor, as "dear, good children!" Not unfrequently these wandering tests of our benevolence made their appearance in interesting groups of man, woman, and child, picturesque in their squalidness, and manifesting a maudlin affection which would have done honor to the revellers at Poosie-Nansie's, immortal in the cantata of Burns. I remember some who were evidently the victims of monomania,--haunted and hunted by some dark thought,--possessed by a fixed idea. One, a black-eyed, wild- haired woman, with a whole tragedy of sin, shame, and suffering written in her countenance, used often to visit us, warm herself by our winter fire, and supply herself with a stock of cakes and cold meat; but was never known to answer a question or to ask one. She never smiled; the cold, stony look of her eye never changed; a silent, impassive face, frozen rigid by some great wrong or sin. We used to look with awe upon the "still woman," and think of the demoniac of Scripture who had a "dumb spirit."

One--I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and ghastly, working his slow way up to our door--used to gather herbs by the wayside and call himself doctor. He was bearded like a he goat and used to counterfeit lameness, yet, when he supposed himself alone, would travel on lustily as if walking for a wager. At length, as if in punishment of his deceit, he met with an accident in his rambles and became lame in earnest, hobbling ever after with difficulty on his gnarled crutches. Another used to go stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim, under a pack made of an old bed- sacking, stuffed out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair of small, meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from under his burden like a big-bodied spider. That "man with the pack" always inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost sublime, in its tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never opened, what might there not be within it? With what flesh-creeping curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a mysterious life, or that some evil monster would leap out of it, like robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the Trojan horse!

There was another class of peripatetic philosophers--half pedler, half mendicant--who were in the habit of visiting us. One we recollect, a lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving rather as a walking staff than as a protection from the rain. He told us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill-luck would have it, the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him for life, on the brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of Lemnos. As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about it." "Did she die?" we inquired anxiously. There was a cun-ing twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded, "Well, no, she did n't. She got married."

Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored with a call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, pedler and poet, physician and parson,--a Yankee troubadour,--first and last minstrel of the valley of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes, with the very nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins, needles, tape, and cotton-thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for my father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely printed and illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation of the younger branches of the family. No lovesick youth could drown himself, no deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, without fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers, and shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence, furnishing the raw material of song and ballad. Welcome to us in our country seclusion as Autolycus to the clown in Winter's Tale, we listened with infinite satisfaction to his readings of his own verses, or to his ready improvisation upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by his auditors. When once fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a new subject, his rhymes flowed freely, "as if he had eaten ballads and all men's ears grew to his tunes." His productions answered, as nearly as I can remember, to Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad,--"doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme sung lamentably." He was scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined to theological disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. He was thoroughly independent; flattered nobody, cared for nobody, trusted nobody. When invited to sit down at our dinner-table, he invariably took the precaution to place his basket of valuables between his legs for safe keeping. "Never mind thy basket, Jonathan," said my father; "we sha'n't steal thy verses."--"I'm not sure of that," returned the suspicious guest. "It is written, 'Trust ye not in any brother.'"

Thou too, O Parson B------, with thy pale student's brow and rubicund nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white flowing locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when even a shirt to thy back was problematical,--art by no means to be overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the entree of our farm-house. Well do we remember with what grave and dignified courtesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its inmates with the same air of gracious condescension and patronage with which in better days he had delighted the hearts of his parishioners. Poor old man! He had once been the admired and almost worshipped minister of the largest church in the town where he afterwards found support in the winter season as a pauper. He had early fallen into intemperate habits; and at the age of threescore and ten, when I remember him, he was only sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise. Drunk or sober, however, he never altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession; he was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil of the learned and astute Emmons, and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar dogmas of his school. The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting in our district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and travelling companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was doubtless the same which endeared Tam O'Shanter to the souter:--

"They had been fou for weeks thegither."

He took for his text the first seven verses of the concluding chapter of Ecclesiastes, furnishing in himself its fitting illustration. The evil days had come; the keepers of the house trembled; the windows of life were darkened. A few months later the silver cord was loosened, the golden bowl was broken, and between the poor old man and the temptations which beset him fell the thick curtains of the grave.

One day we had a call from a "pawky auld carle" of a wandering Scotchman. To him I owe my first introduction to the songs of Burns. After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne. He had a rich, full voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics. I have since listened to the same melodies from the lips of Dempster, than whom the Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer interpreter; but the skilful performance of the artist lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's singing in the old farmhouse kitchen. Another wanderer made us acquainted with the humorous old ballad of "Our gude man cam hame at e'en." He applied for supper and lodging, and the next morning was set at work splitting stones in the pasture. While thus engaged the village doctor came riding along the highway on his fine, spirited horse, and stopped to talk with my father. The fellow eyed the animal attentively, as if familiar with all his good points, and hummed over a stanza of the old poem:--

"Our gude man cam hame at e'en, And hame cam be; And there he saw a saddle horse Where nae horse should be. 'How cam this horse here? How can it be? How cam this horse here Without the leave of me?' 'A horse?' quo she. 'Ay, a horse,' quo he. 'Ye auld fool, ye blind fool,-- And blinder might ye be,-- 'T is naething but a milking cow My mamma sent to me.' A milch cow?' quo he. 'Ay, a milch cow,' quo she. 'Weel, far hae I ridden, And muckle hae I seen; But milking cows wi' saddles on Saw I never nane.'"

That very night the rascal decamped, taking with him the doctor's horse, and was never after heard of.

Often, in the gray of the morning, we used to see one or more "gaberlunzie men," pack on shoulder and staff in hand, emerging from the barn or other outbuildings where they had passed the night. I was once sent to the barn to fodder the cattle late in the evening, and, climbing into the mow to pitch down hay for that purpose, I was startled by the sudden apparition of a man rising up before me, just discernible in the dim moonlight streaming through the seams of the boards. I made a rapid retreat down the ladder; and was only reassured by hearing the object of my terror calling after me, and recognizing his voice as that of a harmless old pilgrim whom I had known before. Our farm-house was situated in a lonely valley, half surrounded with woods, with no neighbors in sight. One dark, cloudy night, when our parents chanced to be absent, we were sitting with our aged grandmother in the fading light of the kitchen-fire, working ourselves into a very satisfactory state of excitement and terror by recounting to each other all the dismal stories we could remember of ghosts, witches, haunted houses and robbers, when we were suddenly startled by a loud rap at the door. A stripling of fourteen, I was very naturally regarded as the head of the household; so,--with many misgivings, I advanced to the door, which I slowly opened, holding the candle tremulously above my head and peering out into the darkness. The feeble glimmer played upon the apparition of a gigantic horseman, mounted on a steed of a size worthy of such a rider-- colossal, motionless, like images cut out of the solid night. The strange visitant gruffly saluted me; and, after making several ineffectual efforts to urge his horse in at the door, dismounted and followed me into the room, evidently enjoying the terror which his huge presence excited. Announcing himself as the great Indian doctor, he drew himself up before the fire, stretched his arms, clenched his fists, struck his broad chest, and invited our attention to what he called his "mortal frame." He demanded in succession all kinds of intoxicating liquors; and, on being assured that we had none to give him, he grew angry, threatened to swallow my younger brother alive, and, seizing me by the hair of my head as the angel did the prophet at Babylon, led me about from room to room. After an ineffectual search, in the course of which he mistook a jug of oil for one of brandy, and, contrary to my explanations and remonstrances, insisted upon swallowing a portion of its contents, he released me, fell to crying and sobbing, and confessed that he was so drunk already that his horse was ashamed of him. After bemoaning and pitying himself to his satisfaction he wiped his eyes, and sat down by the side of my grandmother, giving her to understand that he was very much pleased with her appearance; adding, that if agreeable to her, he should like the privilege of paying his addresses to her. While vainly endeavoring to make the excellent old lady comprehend his very flattering proposition, he was interrupted by the return of my father, who, at once understanding the matter, turned him out of doors without ceremony.

On one occasion, a few years ago, on my return from the field at evening, I was told that a foreigner had asked for lodgings during the night, but that, influenced by his dark, repulsive appearance, my mother had very reluctantly refused his request. I found her by no means satisfied with her decision. "What if a son of mine was in a strange land?" she inquired, self-reproachfully. Greatly to her relief, I volunteered to go in pursuit of the wanderer, and, taking a cross-path over the fields, soon overtook him. He had just been rejected at the house of our nearest neighbor, and was standing in a state of dubious perplexity in the street. His looks quite justified my mother's suspicions. He was an olive-complexioned, black-bearded Italian, with an eye like a live coal, such a face as perchance looks out on the traveller in the passes of the Abruzzi,--one of those bandit visages which Salvator has painted. With some difficulty I gave him to understand my errand, when he overwhelmed me with thanks, and joyfully followed me back. He took his seat with us at the supper-table; and, when we were all gathered around the hearth that cold autumnal evening, he told us, partly by words and, partly by gestures, the story of his life and misfortunes, amused us with descriptions of the grape- gatherings and festivals of his sunny clime, edified my mother with a recipe for making bread of chestnuts; and in the morning, when, after breakfast, his dark, sullen face lighted up and his fierce eye moistened with grateful emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan accent he poured out his thanks, we marvelled at the fears which had so nearly closed our door against him; and, as he departed, we all felt that he had left with us the blessing of the poor.

It was not often that, as in the above instance, my mother's prudence got the better of her charity. The regular "old stragglers" regarded her as an unfailing friend; and the sight of her plain cap was to them an assurance of forthcoming creature-comforts. There was indeed a tribe of lazy strollers, having their place of rendezvous in the town of Barrington, New Hampshire, whose low vices had placed them beyond even the pale of her benevolence. They were not unconscious of their evil reputation; and experience had taught them the necessity of concealing, under well-contrived disguises, their true character. They came to us in all shapes and with all appearances save the true one, with most miserable stories of mishap and sickness and all "the ills which flesh is heir to." It was particularly vexatious to discover, when too late, that our sympathies and charities had been expended upon such graceless vagabonds as the "Barrington beggars." An old withered hag, known by the appellation of Hopping Pat,--the wise woman of her tribe,--was in the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had "a gift for preaching" as well as for many other things not exactly compatible with holy orders. He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd, knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk like Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could "do nothin' at exhortin' without a white handkercher on his neck and money in his pocket,"--a fact going far to confirm the opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the Puseyites generally, that there can be no priest without tithes and surplice.

These people have for several generations lived distinct from the great mass of the community, like the gypsies of Europe, whom in many respects they closely resemble. They have the same settled aversion to labor and the same disposition to avail themselves of the fruits of the industry of others. They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing songs, tell fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred of "missionaries and cold water." It has been said--I know not upon what grounds--that their ancestors were indeed a veritable importation of English gypsyhood; but if so, they have undoubtedly lost a good deal of the picturesque charm of its unhoused and free condition. I very much fear that my friend Mary Russell Mitford,--sweetest of England's rural painters,--who has a poet's eye for the fine points in gypsy character, would scarcely allow their claims to fraternity with her own vagrant friends, whose camp- fires welcomed her to her new home at Swallowfield.

"The proper study of mankind is man," and, according to my view, no phase of our common humanity is altogether unworthy of investigation. Acting upon this belief two or three summers ago, when making, in company with my sister, a little excursion into the hill-country of New Hampshire, I turned my horse's head towards Barrington for the purpose of seeing these semi-civilized strollers in their own home, and returning, once for all, their numerous visits. Taking leave of our hospitable cousins in old Lee with about as much solemnity as we may suppose Major Laing parted with his friends when he set out in search of desert-girdled Timbuctoo, we drove several miles over a rough road, passed the Devil's Den unmolested, crossed a fretful little streamlet noisily working its way into a valley, where it turned a lonely, half- ruinous mill, and climbing a steep hill beyond, saw before us a wide sandy level, skirted on the west and north by low, scraggy hills, and dotted here and there with dwarf pitch-pines. In the centre of this desolate region were some twenty or thirty small dwellings, grouped together as irregularly as a Hottentot kraal. Unfenced, unguarded, open to all comers and goers, stood that city of the beggars,--no wall or paling between the ragged cabins to remind one of the jealous distinctions of property. The great idea of its founders seemed visible in its unappropriated freedom. Was not the whole round world their own? and should they haggle about boundaries and title-deeds? For them, on distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for them, in far-off workshops, busy hands were toiling; for them, if they had but the grace to note it, the broad earth put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That comfortable philosophy which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth--that poetic agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all--is the real life of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might be not unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:--

"Other hands may grasp the field or forest, Proud proprietors in pomp may shine; Thou art wealthier,--all the world is thine."

But look! the clouds are breaking. "Fair weather cometh out of the north." The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard, blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the storm. In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed. Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may I not lack a good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of a Barrington beggar.

THE TRAINING.

"Send for the milingtary." NOAH CLAYPOLE in Oliver Twist.

WHAT'S now in the wind? Sounds of distant music float in at my window on this still October air. Hurrying drum-beat, shrill fife-tones, wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of accompaniment, hurrahs from the urchins on the crowded sidewalks. Here come the citizen-soldiers, each martial foot beating up the mud of yesterday's storm with the slow, regular, up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned churn-dasher. Keeping time with the feet below, some threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly beneath me. Slant sunshine glitters on polished gun-barrels and tinselled uniform. Gravely and soberly they pass on, as if duly impressed with a sense of the deep responsibility of their position as self-constituted defenders of the world's last hope,--the United States of America, and possibly Texas. They look out with honest, citizen faces under their leathern visors (their ferocity being mostly the work of the tailor and tinker), and, I doubt not, are at this moment as innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder worthy tiller of the Tewksbury Hills, who sits quietly in his wagon dispensing apples and turnips without so much as giving a glance at the procession. Probably there is not one of them who would hesitate to divide his last tobacco-quid with his worst enemy. Social, kind-hearted, psalm-singing, sermon-hearing, Sabhath-keeping Christians; and yet, if we look at the fact of the matter, these very men have been out the whole afternoon of this beautiful day, under God's holy sunshine, as busily at work as Satan himself could wish in learning how to butcher their fellow-creatures and acquire the true scientific method of impaling a forlorn Mexican on a bayonet, or of sinking a leaden missile in the brain of some unfortunate Briton, urged within its range by the double incentive of sixpence per day in his pocket and the cat-o'-nine-tails on his back!

Without intending any disparagement of my peaceable ancestry for many generations, I have still strong suspicions that somewhat of the old Norman blood, something of the grins Berserker spirit, has been bequeathed to me. How else can I account for the intense childish eagerness with which I listened to the stories of old campaigners who sometimes fought their battles over again in my hearing? Why did I, in my young fancy, go up with Jonathan, the son of Saul, to smite the garrisoned Philistines of Michmash, or with the fierce son of Nun against the cities of Canaan? Why was Mr. Greatheart, in Pilgrim's Progress, my favorite character? What gave such fascination to the narrative of the grand Homeric encounter between Christian and Apollyon in the valley? Why did I follow Ossian over Morven's battle-fields, exulting in the vulture-screams of the blind scald over his fallen enemies? Still later, why did the newspapers furnish me with subjects for hero-worship in the half-demented Sir Gregor McGregor, and Ypsilanti at the head of his knavish Greeks? I can account for it only in the supposition that the mischief was inhered,--an heirloom from the old sea-kings of the ninth century.

Education and reflection have, indeed, since wrought a change in my feelings. The trumpet of the Cid, or Ziska's drum even, could not now waken that old martial spirit. The bull-dog ferocity of a half- intoxicated Anglo-Saxon, pushing his blind way against the converging cannon-fire from the shattered walls of Ciudad Rodrigo, commends itself neither to my reason nor my fancy. I now regard the accounts of the bloody passage of the Bridge of Lodi, and of French cuirassiers madly transfixing themselves upon the bayonets of Wellington's squares, with very much the same feeling of horror and loathing which is excited by a detail of the exploits of an Indian Thug, or those of a mad Malay running a-muck, creese in hand, through the streets of Pulo Penang. Your Waterloo, and battles of the Nile and Baltic,--what are they, in sober fact, but gladiatorial murder-games on a great scale,--human imitations of bull-fights, at which Satan sits as grand alguazil and master of ceremonies? It is only when a great thought incarnates itself in action, desperately striving to find utterance even in sabre-clash and gun-fire, or when Truth and Freedom, in their mistaken zeal and distrustful of their own powers, put on battle-harness, that I can feel any sympathy with merely physical daring. The brawny butcher-work of men whose wits, like those of Ajax, lie in their sinews, and who are "yoked like draught-oxen and made to plough up the wars," is no realization of my ideal of true courage.

Yet I am not conscious of having lost in any degree my early admiration of heroic achievement. The feeling remains; but it has found new and better objects. I have learned to appreciate what Milton calls the martyr's "unresistible might of meekness,"--the calm, uncomplaining endurance of those who can bear up against persecution uncheered by sympathy or applause, and, with a full and keen appreciation of the value of all which they are called to sacrifice, confront danger and death in unselfish devotion to duty. Fox, preaching through his prison- gates or rebuking Oliver Cromwell in the midst of his soldier-court Henry Vane beneath the axe of the headsman; Mary Dyer on the scaffold at Boston; Luther closing his speech at Worms with the sublime emphasis of his "Here stand I; I cannot otherwise; God help me;" William Penn defending the rights of Englishmen from the baledock of the Fleet prison; Clarkson climbing the decks of Liverpool slaveships; Howard penetrating to infected dungeons; meek Sisters of Charity breathing contagion in thronged hospitals,--all these, and such as these, now help me to form the loftier ideal of Christian heroism.

Blind Milton approaches nearly to my conception of a true hero. What a picture have we of that sublime old man, as sick, poor, blind, and abandoned of friends, he still held fast his heroic integrity, rebuking with his unbending republicanism the treachery, cowardice, and servility of his old associates! He had outlived the hopes and beatific visions of his youth; he had seen the loudmouthed advocates of liberty throwing down a nation's freedom at the feet of the shameless, debauched, and perjured Charles II., crouching to the harlot-thronged court of the tyrant, and forswearing at once their religion and their republicanism. The executioner's axe had been busy among his friends. Vane and Hampden slept in their bloody graves. Cromwell's ashes had been dragged from their resting-place; for even in death the effeminate monarch hated and feared the conquerer of Naseby and Marston Moor. He was left alone, in age, and penury, and blindness, oppressed with the knowledge that all which his free soul abhorred had returned upon his beloved country. Yet the spirit of the stern old republican remained to the last unbroken, realizing the truth of the language of his own Samson Agonistes:--

"But patience is more oft the exercise Of saints, the trial of their fortitude, Making them each his own deliverer And victor over all That tyranny or fortune can inflict."

The curse of religious and political apostasy lay heavy on the land. Harlotry and atheism sat in the high places; and the "caresses of wantons and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to persecute." But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change, no self-reproach mingled with his sorrow. To the last he had striven against the oppressor; and when confined to his narrow alley, a prisoner in his own mean dwelling, like another Prometheus on his rock, he still turned upon him an eye of unsubdued defiance. Who, that has read his powerful appeal to his countrymen when they were on the eve of welcoming back the tyranny and misrule which, at the expense of so much blood and treasure had been thrown off, can ever forget it? How nobly does Liberty speak through him! "If," said he, "ye welcome back a monarchy, it will be the triumph of all tyrants hereafter over any people who shall resist oppression; and their song shall then be to others, 'How sped the rebellious English?' but to our posterity, 'How sped the rebels, your fathers?'" How solemn and awful is his closing paragraph! "What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss 'the good old cause.' If it seem strange to any, it will not, I hope, seem more strange than convincing to backsliders. This much I should have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but with the prophet, 'O earth, earth, earth!' to tell the very soil itself what its perverse inhabitants are deaf to; nay, though what I have spoken should prove (which Thou suffer not, who didst make mankind free; nor Thou next, who didst redeem us from being servants of sin) to be the last words of our expiring liberties."

THE CITY OF A DAY.

The writer, when residing in Lowell, in 1843 contributed this and the companion pieces to 'The Stranger' in Lowell.

This, then, is Lowell,--a city springing up, like the enchanted palaces of the Arabian tales, as it were in a single night, stretching far and wide its chaos of brick masonry and painted shingles, filling the angle of the confluence of the Concord and the Merrimac with the sights and sounds of trade and industry. Marvellously here have art and labor wrought their modern miracles. I can scarcely realize the fact that a few years ago these rivers, now tamed and subdued to the purposes of man and charmed into slavish subjection to the wizard of mechanism, rolled unchecked towards the ocean the waters of the Winnipesaukee and the rock-rimmed springs of the White Mountains, and rippled down their falls in the wild freedom of Nature. A stranger, in view of all this wonderful change, feels himself, as it were, thrust forward into a new century; he seems treading on the outer circle of the millennium of steam engines and cotton mills. Work is here the patron saint. Everything bears his image and superscription. Here is no place for that respectable class of citizens called gentlemen, and their much vilified brethren, familiarly known as loafers. Over the gateways of this new world Manchester glares the inscription, "Work, or die". Here

"Every worm beneath the moon Draws different threads, and late or soon Spins, toiling out his own cocoon."

The founders of this city probably never dreamed of the theory of Charles Lamb in respect to the origin of labor:--

"Who first invented work, and thereby bound The holiday rejoicing spirit down To the never-ceasing importunity Of business in the green fields and the town?

"Sabbathless Satan,--he who his unglad Task ever plies midst rotatory burnings For wrath divine has made him like a wheel In that red realm from whence are no returnings."

Rather, of course, would they adopt Carlyle's apostrophe of "Divine labor, noble, ever fruitful,--the grand, sole miracle of man;" for this is indeed a city consecrated to thrift,--dedicated, every square rod of it, to the divinity of work; the gospel of industry preached daily and hourly from some thirty temples, each huger than the Milan Cathedral or the Temple of Jeddo, the Mosque of St. Sophia or the Chinese pagoda of a hundred bells; its mighty sermons uttered by steam and water-power; its music the everlasting jar of mechanism and the organ-swell of many waters; scattering the cotton and woollen leaves of its evangel from the wings of steamboats and rail-cars throughout the land; its thousand priests and its thousands of priestesses ministering around their spinning-jenny and powerloom altars, or thronging the long, unshaded streets in the level light of sunset. After all, it may well be questioned whether this gospel, according to Poor Richard's Almanac, is precisely calculated for the redemption of humanity. Labor, graduated to man's simple wants, necessities, and unperverted tastes, is doubtless well; but all beyond this is weariness to flesh and spirit. Every web which falls from these restless looms has a history more or less connected with sin and suffering, beginning with slavery and ending with overwork and premature death.

A few years ago, while travelling in Pennsylvania, I encountered a small, dusky-browed German of the name of Etzler. He was possessed by a belief that the world was to be restored to its paradisiacal state by the sole agency of mechanics, and that he had himself discovered the means of bringing about this very desirable consummation. His whole mental atmosphere was thronged with spectral enginery; wheel within wheel; plans of hugest mechanism; Brobdignagian steam-engines; Niagaras of water-power; wind-mills with "sail-broad vans," like those of Satan in chaos, by the proper application of which every valley was to be exalted and every hill laid low; old forests seized by their shaggy tops and uprooted; old morasses drained; the tropics made cool; the eternal ices melted around the poles; the ocean itself covered with artificial islands, blossoming gardens of the blessed, rocking gently on the bosom of the deep. Give him "three hundred thousand dollars and ten years' time," and he would undertake to do the work.

Wrong, pain, and sin, being in his view but the results of our physical necessities, ill-gratified desires, and natural yearnings for a better state, were to vanish before the millennium of mechanism. "It would be," said he, "as ridiculous then to dispute and quarrel about the means of life as it would be now about water to drink by the side of mighty rivers, or about permission to breathe the common air." To his mind the great forces of Nature took the shape of mighty and benignant spirits, sent hitherward to be the servants of man in restoring to him his lost paradise; waiting only for his word of command to apply their giant energies to the task, but as yet struggling blindly and aimlessly, giving ever and anon gentle hints, in the way of earthquake, fire, and flood, that they are weary of idleness, and would fain be set at work. Looking down, as I now do, upon these huge brick workshops, I have thought of poor Etzler, and wondered whether he would admit, were he with me, that his mechanical forces have here found their proper employment of millennium making. Grinding on, each in his iron harness, invisible, yet shaking, by his regulated and repressed power, his huge prison-house from basement to capstone, is it true that the genii of mechanism are really at work here, raising us, by wheel and pulley, steam and waterpower, slowly up that inclined plane from whose top stretches the broad table-land of promise?

Many of the streets of Lowell present a lively and neat aspect, and are adorned with handsome public and private buildings; but they lack one pleasant feature of older towns,--broad, spreading shade-trees. One feels disposed to quarrel with the characteristic utilitarianism of the first settlers, which swept so entirely away the green beauty of Nature. For the last few days it has been as hot here as Nebuchadnezzar's furnace or Monsieur Chabert's oven, the sun glaring down from a copper sky upon these naked, treeless streets, in traversing which one is tempted to adopt the language of a warm-weather poet:

"The lean, like walking skeletons, go stalking pale and gloomy; The fat, like red-hot warming-pans, send hotter fancies through me; I wake from dreams of polar ice, on which I've been a slider, Like fishes dreaming of the sea and waking in the spider."

How unlike the elm-lined avenues of New Haven, upon whose cool and graceful panorama the stranger looks down upon the Judge's Cave, or the vine-hung pinnacles of West Rock, its tall spires rising white and clear above the level greenness! or the breezy leafiness of Portland, with its wooded islands in the distance, and itself overhung with verdant beauty, rippling and waving in the same cool breeze which stirs the waters of the beautiful Bay of Casco! But time will remedy all this; and, when Lowell shall have numbered half the years of her sister cities, her newly planted elms and maples, which now only cause us to contrast their shadeless stems with the leafy glory of their parents of the forest, will stretch out to the future visitor arms of welcome and repose.

There is one beautiful grove in Lowell,--that on Chapel Hill,--where a cluster of fine old oaks lift their sturdy stems and green branches, in close proximity to the crowded city, blending the cool rustle of their leaves with the din of machinery. As I look at them in this gray twilight they seem lonely and isolated, as if wondering what has become of their old forest companions, and vainly endeavoring to recognize in the thronged and dusty streets before them those old, graceful colonnades of maple and thick-shaded oaken vistas, stretching from river to river, carpeted with the flowers and grasses of spring, or ankle deep with leaves of autumn, through whose leafy canopy the sunlight melted in upon wild birds, shy deer, and red Indians. Long may these oaks remain to remind us that, if there be utility in the new, there was beauty in the old, leafy Puseyites of Nature, calling us back to the past, but, like their Oxford brethren, calling in vain; for neither in polemics nor in art can we go backward in an age whose motto is ever "Onward."

The population of Lowell is constituted mainly of New Englanders; but there are representatives here of almost every part of the civilized world. The good-humored face of the Milesian meets one at almost every turn; the shrewdly solemn Scotchman, the transatlantic Yankee, blending the crafty thrift of Bryce Snailsfoot with the stern religious heroism of Cameron; the blue-eyed, fair-haired German from the towered hills which overlook the Rhine,--slow, heavy, and unpromising in his exterior, yet of the same mould and mettle of the men who rallied for "fatherland" at the Tyrtean call of Korner and beat back the chivalry of France from the banks of the Katzback,--the countrymen of Richter, and Goethe, and our own Follen. Here, too, are pedlers from Hamburg, and Bavaria, and Poland, with their sharp Jewish faces, and black, keen eyes. At this moment, beneath my window are two sturdy, sunbrowned Swiss maidens grinding music for a livelihood, rehearsing in a strange Yankee land the simple songs of their old mountain home, reminding me, by their foreign garb and language, of

"Lauterbrunnen's peasant girl."

Poor wanderers, I cannot say that I love their music; but now, as the notes die away, and, to use the words of Dr. Holmes, "silence comes like a poultice to heal the wounded ear," I feel grateful for their visitation. Away from crowded thoroughfares, from brick walls and dusty avenues, at the sight of these poor peasants I have gone in thought to the vale of Chamouny, and seen, with Coleridge, the morning star pausing on the "bald, awful head of sovereign Blanc," and the sun rise and set upon snowy-crested mountains, down in whose valleys the night still lingers; and, following in the track of Byron and Rousseau, have watched the lengthening shadows of the hills on the beautiful waters of the Genevan lake. Blessings, then, upon these young wayfarers, for they have "blessed me unawares." In an hour of sickness and lassitude they have wrought for me the miracle of Loretto's Chapel, and, borne me away from the scenes around me and the sense of personal suffering to that wonderful land where Nature seems still uttering, from lake and valley, and from mountains whose eternal snows lean on the hard, blue heaven, the echoes of that mighty hymn of a new-created world, when "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

But of all classes of foreigners the Irish are by far the most numerous. Light-hearted, wrongheaded, impulsive, uncalculating, with an Oriental love of hyperbole, and too often a common dislike of cold water and of that gem which the fable tells us rests at the bottom of the well, the Celtic elements of their character do not readily accommodate themselves to those of the hard, cool, self-relying Anglo-Saxon. I am free to confess to a very thorough dislike of their religious intolerance and bigotry, but am content to wait for the change that time and the attrition of new circumstances and ideas must necessarily make in this respect. Meanwhile I would strive to reverence man as man, irrespective of his birthplace. A stranger in a strange land is always to me an object of sympathy and interest. Amidst all his apparent gayety of heart and national drollery and wit, the poor Irish emigrant has sad thoughts of the "ould mother of him," sitting lonely in her solitary cabin by the bog-side; recollections of a father's blessing and a sister's farewell are haunting him; a grave mound in a distant churchyard far beyond the "wide wathers" has an eternal greenness in his memory; for there, perhaps, lies a "darlint child" or a "swate crather" who once loved him. The new world is forgotten for the moment; blue Killarney and the Liffey sparkle before him, and Glendalough stretches beneath him its dark, still mirror; he sees the same evening sunshine rest upon and hallow alike with Nature's blessing the ruins of the Seven Churches of Ireland's apostolic age, the broken mound of the Druids, and the round towers of the Phoenician sun-worshippers; pleasant and mournful recollections of his home waken within him; and the rough and seemingly careless and light-hearted laborer melts into tears. It is no light thing to abandon one's own country and household gods. Touching and beautiful was the injunction of the prophet of the Hebrews:

"Ye shall not oppress the stranger; for ye know the heart of the stranger, seeing that ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."

PATUCKET FALLS.

MANY years ago I read, in some old chronicle of the early history of New England, a paragraph which has ever since haunted my memory, calling up romantic associations of wild Nature and wilder man:--

"The Sachem Wonolanset, who lived by the Groat Falls of Patucket, on the Merrimac."

It was with this passage in my mind that I visited for the first time the Rapids of the Merrimac, above Lowell.

Passing up the street by the Hospital, a large and elegant mansion surrounded by trees and shrubbery and climbing vines, I found myself, after walking a few rods farther, in full view of the Merrimac. A deep and rocky channel stretched between me and the Dracut shore, along which rushed the shallow water,--a feeble, broken, and tortuous current, winding its way among splintered rocks, rising sharp and jagged in all directions. Drained above the falls by the canal, it resembled some mountain streamlet of old Spain, or some Arabian wady, exhausted by a year's drought. Higher up, the arches of the bridge spanned the quick, troubled water; and, higher still, the dam, so irregular in its outline as to seem less a work of Art than of Nature, crossed the bed of the river, a lakelike placidity above contrasting with the foam and murmur of the falls below. And this was all which modern improvements had left of "the great Patucket Falls" of the olden time. The wild river had been tamed; the spirit of the falls, whose hoarse voice the Indian once heard in the dashing of the great water down the rocks, had become the slave of the arch conjurer, Art; and, like a shorn and blinded giant, was grinding in the prison-house of his taskmaster.

One would like to know how this spot must have seemed to the "twenty goodlie persons from Concord and Woburn" who first visited it in 1652, as, worn with fatigue, and wet from the passage of the sluggish Concord, "where ford there was none," they wound their slow way through the forest, following the growing murmur of the falls, until at length the broad, swift river stretched before them, its white spray flashing in the sun. What cared these sturdy old Puritans for the wild beauty of the landscape thus revealed before them? I think I see them standing there in the golden light of a closing October day, with their sombre brown doublets and slouched hats, and their heavy matchlocks,--such men as Ireton fronted death with on the battle-field of Naseby, or those who stalked with Cromwell over the broken wall of Drogheda, smiting, "in the name of the Lord," old and young, "both maid, and little children." Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and glowing with the tints of autumn,--a mighty flower-garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, Frost; the rushing river, with its graceful water-curves and white foam; and a steady murmur, low, deep voices of water, the softest, sweetest sound of Nature, blends with the sigh of the south wind in the pine-tops. But these hard-featured saints of the New Canaan "care for none of these things." The stout hearts which beat under their leathern doublets are proof against the sweet influences of Nature. They see only "a great and howling wilderness, where be many Indians, but where fish may be taken, and where be meadows for ye subsistence of cattle," and which, on the whole, "is a comfortable place to accommodate a company of God's people upon, who may, with God's blessing, do good in that place for both church and state." (Vide petition to the General Court, 1653.)

In reading the journals and narratives of the early settlers of New England nothing is more remarkable than the entire silence of the worthy writers in respect to the natural beauty or grandeur of the scenery amid which their lot was cast. They designated the grand and glorious forest, broken by lakes and crossed by great rivers, intersected by a thousand streams more beautiful than those which the Old World has given to song and romance, as "a desert and frightful wilderness." The wildly picturesque Indian, darting his birch canoe down the Falls of the Amoskeag or gliding in the deer-track of the forest, was, in their view, nothing but a "dirty tawnie," a "salvage heathen," and "devil's imp." Many of them were well educated,--men of varied and profound erudition, and familiar with the best specimens of Greek and Roman literature; yet they seem to have been utterly devoid of that poetic feeling or fancy whose subtle alchemy detects the beautiful in the familiar. Their very hymns and spiritual songs seem to have been expressly calculated, like "the music-grinders" of Holmes,--

"To pluck the eyes of sentiment, And dock the tail of rhyme, To crack the voice of melody, And break the legs of time."

They were sworn enemies of the Muses; haters of stage-play literature, profane songs, and wanton sonnets; of everything, in brief, which reminded them of the days of the roistering cavaliers and bedizened beauties of the court of "the man Charles," whose head had fallen beneath the sword of Puritan justice. Hard, harsh, unlovely, yet with many virtues and noble points of character, they were fitted, doubtless, for their work of pioneers in the wilderness. Sternly faithful to duty, in peril, and suffering, and self-denial, they wrought out the noblest of historical epics on the rough soil of New England. They lived a truer poetry than Homer or Virgil wrote.

The Patuckets, once a powerful native tribe, had their principal settlements around the falls at the time of the visit of the white men of Concord and Woburn in 1652. Gookin, the Indian historian, states that this tribe was almost wholly destroyed by the great pestilence of 1612. In 1674 they had but two hundred and fifty males in the whole tribe. Their chief sachem lived opposite the falls; and it was in his wigwam that the historian, in company with John Eliot, the Indian missionary, held a "meeting for worshippe on ye 5th of May, 1676," where Mr. Eliot preached from "ye twenty-second of Matthew."

The white visitants from Concord and Woburn, pleased with the appearance of the place and the prospect it afforded for planting and fishing, petitioned the General Court for a grant of the entire tract of land now embraced in the limits of Lowell and Chelmsford. They made no account whatever of the rights of the poor Patuckets; but, considering it "a comfortable place to accommodate God's people upon," were doubtless prepared to deal with the heathen inhabitants as Joshua the son of Nun did with the Jebusites and Perizzites, the Hivites and the Hittites, of old. The Indians, however, found a friend in the apostle Eliot, who presented a petition in their behalf that the lands lying around the Patucket and Wamesit Falls should be appropriated exclusively for their benefit and use. The Court granted the petition of the whites, with the exception of the tract in the angle of the two rivers on which the Patuckets were settled. The Indian title to this tract was not finally extinguished until 1726, when the beautiful name of Wamesit was lost in that of Chelmsford, and the last of the Patuckets turned his back upon the graves of his fathers and sought a new home among the strange Indians of the North.

But what has all this to do with the falls? When the rail-cars came thundering through his lake country, Wordsworth attempted to exorcise them by a sonnet; and, were I not a very decided Yankee, I might possibly follow his example, and utter in this connection my protest against the desecration of Patucket Falls, and battle with objurgatory stanzas these dams and mills, as Balmawapple shot off his horse-pistol at Stirling Castle. Rocks and trees, rapids, cascades, and other water- works are doubtless all very well; but on the whole, considering our seven months of frost, are not cotton shirts and woollen coats still better? As for the spirits of the river, the Merrimac Naiads, or whatever may be their name in Indian vocabulary, they have no good reason for complaint; inasmuch as Nature, in marking and scooping out the channel of their stream, seems to have had an eye to the useful rather than the picturesque. After a few preliminary antics and youthful vagaries up among the White Hills, the Merrimac comes down to the seaboard, a clear, cheerful, hard-working Yankee river. Its numerous falls and rapids are such as seem to invite the engineer's level rather than the pencil of the tourist; and the mason who piles up the huge brick fabrics at their feet is seldom, I suspect, troubled with sentimental remorse or poetical misgivings. Staid and matter of fact as the Merrimac is, it has, nevertheless, certain capricious and eccentric tributaries; the Powow, for instance, with its eighty feet fall in a few rods, and that wild, Indian-haunted Spicket, taking its wellnigh perpendicular leap of thirty feet, within sight of the village meeting- house, kicking up its Pagan heels, Sundays and all, in sheer contempt of Puritan tithing-men. This latter waterfall is now somewhat modified by the hand of Art, but is still, as Professor Hitchcock's "Scenographical Geology" says of it, "an object of no little interest." My friend T., favorably known as the translator of "Undine" and as a writer of fine and delicate imagination, visited Spicket Falls before the sound of a hammer or the click of a trowel had been heard beside them. His journal of "A Day on the Merrimac" gives a pleasing and vivid description of their original appearance as viewed through the telescope of a poetic fancy. The readers of "Undine" will thank me for a passage or two from this sketch:--

"The sound of the waters swells more deeply. Something supernatural in their confused murmur; it makes me better understand and sympathize with the writer of the Apocalypse when he speaks of the voice of many waters, heaping image upon image, to impart the vigor of his conception.

"Through yonder elm-branches I catch a few snowy glimpses of foam in the air. See that spray and vapor rolling up the evergreen on my left The two side precipices, one hundred feet apart and excluding objects of inferior moment, darken and concentrate the view. The waters between pour over the right-hand and left-hand summit, rushing down and uniting among the craggiest and abruptest of rocks. Oh for a whole mountain- side of that living foam! The sun impresses a faint prismatic hue. These falls, compared with those of the Missouri, are nothing,--nothing but the merest miniature; and yet they assist me in forming some conception of that glorious expanse.

"A fragment of an oak, struck off by lightning, struggles with the current midway down; while the shattered trunk frowns above the desolation, majestic in ruin. This is near the southern cliff. Farther north a crag rises out of the stream, its upper surface covered with green clover of the most vivid freshness. Not only all night, but all day, has the dew lain upon its purity. With my eye attaining the uppermost margin, where the waters shoot over, I look away into the western sky, and discern there (what you least expect) a cow chewing her cud with admirable composure, and higher up several sheep and lambs browsing celestial buds. They stand on the eminence that forms the background of my present view. The illusion is extremely picturesque,-- such as Allston himself would despair of producing. 'Who can paint like Nature'?"

To a population like that of Lowell, the weekly respite from monotonous in-door toil afforded by the first day of the week is particularly grateful. Sabbath comes to the weary and overworked operative emphatically as a day of rest. It opens upon him somewhat as it did upon George Herbert, as he describes it in his exquisite little poem:--

"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky!"

Apart from its soothing religious associations, it brings with it the assurance of physical comfort and freedom. It is something to be able to doze out the morning from daybreak to breakfast in that luxurious state between sleeping and waking in which the mind eddies slowly and peacefully round and round instead of rushing onward,--the future a blank, the past annihilated, the present but a dim consciousness of pleasurable existence. Then, too, the satisfaction is by no means inconsiderable of throwing aside the worn and soiled habiliments of labor and appearing in neat and comfortable attire. The moral influence of dress has not been overrated even by Carlyle's Professor in his Sartor Resartus. William Penn says that cleanliness is akin to godliness. A well-dressed man, all other things being equal, is not half as likely to compromise his character as one who approximates to shabbiness. Lawrence Sterne used to say that when he felt himself giving way to low spirits and a sense of depression and worthlessness,-- a sort of predisposition for all sorts of little meannesses,--he forthwith shaved himself, brushed his wig, donned his best dress and his gold rings, and thus put to flight the azure demons of his unfortunate temperament. There is somehow a close affinity between moral purity and clean linen; and the sprites of our daily temptation, who seem to find easy access to us through a broken hat or a rent in the elbow, are manifestly baffled by the "complete mail" of a clean and decent dress. I recollect on one occasion hearing my mother tell our family physician that a woman in the neighborhood, not remarkable for her tidiness, had become a church-member. "Humph!" said the doctor, in his quick, sarcastic way, "What of that? Don't you know that no unclean thing can enter the kingdom of heaven?"

"If you would see" Lowell "aright," as Walter Scott says of Melrose Abbey, one must be here of a pleasant First day at the close of what is called the "afternoon service." The streets are then blossoming like a peripatetic flower-garden; as if the tulips and lilies and roses of my friend W.'s nursery, in the vale of Nonantum, should take it into their heads to promenade for exercise. Thousands swarm forth who during week- days are confined to the mills. Gay colors alternate with snowy whiteness; extremest fashion elbows the plain demureness of old- fashioned Methodism.

Fair pale faces catch a warmer tint from the free sunshine and fresh air. The languid step becomes elastic with that "springy motion of the gait" which Charles Lamb admired. Yet the general appearance of the city is that of quietude; the youthful multitude passes on calmly, its voices subdued to a lower and softened tone, as if fearful of breaking the repose of the day of rest. A stranger fresh from the gayly spent Sabbaths of the continent of Europe would be undoubtedly amazed at the decorum and sobriety of these crowded streets.

I am not over-precise in outward observances; but I nevertheless welcome with joy unfeigned this first day of the week,--sweetest pause in our hard life-march, greenest resting-place in the hot desert we are treading. The errors of those who mistake its benignant rest for the iron rule of the Jewish Sabbath, and who consequently hedge it about with penalties and bow down before it in slavish terror, should not render us less grateful for the real blessing it brings us. As a day wrested in some degree from the god of this world, as an opportunity afforded for thoughtful self-communing, let us receive it as a good gift of our heavenly Parent in love rather than fear.

In passing along Central Street this morning my attention was directed by the friend who accompanied me to a group of laborers, with coats off and sleeves rolled up, heaving at levers, smiting with sledge-hammers, in full view of the street, on the margin of the canal, just above Central Street Bridge. I rubbed my eyes, half expecting that I was the subject of mere optical illusion; but a second look only confirmed the first. Around me were solemn, go-to-meeting faces,--smileless and awful; and close at hand were the delving, toiling, mud-begrimed laborers. Nobody seemed surprised at it; nobody noticed it as a thing out of the common course of events. And this, too, in a city where the Sabbath proprieties are sternly insisted upon; where some twenty pulpits deal out anathemas upon all who "desecrate the Lord's day;" where simple notices of meetings for moral purposes even can scarcely be read; where many count it wrong to speak on that day for the slave, who knows no Sabbath of rest, or for the drunkard, who, imbruted by his appetites, cannot enjoy it. Verily there are strange contradictions in our conventional morality. Eyes which, looking across the Atlantic on the gay Sabbath dances of French peasants are turned upward with horror, are somehow blind to matters close at home. What would be sin past repentance in an individual becomes quite proper in a corporation. True, the Sabbath is holy; but the canals must be repaired. Everybody ought to go to meeting; but the dividends must not be diminished. Church indulgences are not, after all, confined to Rome.

To a close observer of human nature there is nothing surprising in the fact that a class of persons, who wink at this sacrifice of Sabhath sanctities to the demon of gain, look at the same time with stern disapprobation upon everything partaking of the character of amusement, however innocent and healthful, on this day. But for myself, looking down through the light of a golden evening upon these quietly passing groups, I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them for seeking on this their sole day of leisure the needful influences of social enjoyment, unrestrained exercise, and fresh air. I cannot think any essential service to religion or humanity would result from the conversion of their day of rest into a Jewish Sabbath, and their consequent confinement, like so many pining prisoners, in close and crowded boarding-houses. Is not cheerfulness a duty, a better expression of our gratitude for God's blessings than mere words? And even under the old law of rituals, what answer had the Pharisees to the question, "Is it not lawful to do good on the Sabbath day?"

I am naturally of a sober temperament, and am, besides, a member of that sect which Dr. More has called, mistakenly indeed, "the most melancholy of all;" but I confess a special dislike of disfigured faces, ostentatious displays of piety, pride aping humility. Asceticism, moroseness, self-torture, ingratitude in view of down-showering blessings, and painful restraint of the better feelings of our nature may befit a Hindoo fakir, or a Mandan medicine man with buffalo skulls strung to his lacerated muscles; but they look to me sadly out of place in a believer of the glad evangel of the New Testament. The life of the divine Teacher affords no countenance to this sullen and gloomy saintliness, shutting up the heart against the sweet influences of human sympathy and the blessed ministrations of Nature. To the horror and clothes-rending astonishment of blind Pharisees He uttered the significant truth, that "the Sabhath was made for man, and not man for the Sabhath." From the close air of crowded cities, from thronged temples and synagogues,--where priest and Levite kept up a show of worship, drumming upon hollow ceremonials the more loudly for their emptiness of life, as the husk rustles the more when the grain is gone, --He led His disciples out into the country stillness, under clear Eastern heavens, on the breezy tops of mountains, in the shade of fruit- trees, by the side of fountains, and through yellow harvest-fields, enforcing the lessons of His divine morality by comparisons and parables suggested by the objects around Him or the cheerful incidents of social humanity,--the vineyard, the field-lily, the sparrow in the air, the sower in the seed-field, the feast and the marriage. Thus gently, thus sweetly kind and cheerful, fell from His lips the gospel of humanity; love the fulfilling of every law; our love for one another measuring and manifesting our love of Him. The baptism wherewith He was baptized was that of divine fulness in the wants of our humanity; the deep waters of our sorrows went over Him; ineffable purity sounding for our sakes the dark abysm of sin; yet how like a river of light runs that serene and beautiful life through the narratives of the evangelists! He broke bread with the poor despised publican; He sat down with the fishermen by the Sea of Galilee; He spoke compassionate words to sin-sick Magdalen; He sanctified by His presence the social enjoyments of home and friendship in the family of Bethany; He laid His hand of blessing on the sunny brows of children; He had regard even to the merely animal wants of the multitude in the wilderness; He frowned upon none of life's simple and natural pleasures. The burden of His Gospel was love; and in life and word He taught evermore the divided and scattered children of one great family that only as they drew near each other could they approach Him who was their common centre; and that while no ostentation of prayer nor rigid observance of ceremonies could elevate man to heaven, the simple exercise of love, in thought and action, could bring heaven down to man. To weary and restless spirits He taught the great truth, that happiness consists in making others happy. No cloister for idle genuflections and bead counting, no hair-cloth for the loins nor scourge for the limbs, but works of love and usefulness under the cheerful sunshine, making the waste places of humanity glad and causing the heart's desert to blossom. Why, then, should we go searching after the cast-off sackcloth of the Pharisee? Are we Jews, or Christians? Must even our gratitude for "glad tidings of great joy" be desponding? Must the hymn of our thanksgiving for countless mercies and the unspeakable gift of His life have evermore an undertone of funeral wailing? What! shall we go murmuring and lamenting, looking coldly on one another, seeing no beauty, nor light, nor gladness in this good world, wherein we have the glorious privilege of laboring in God's harvest-field, with angels for our task companions, blessing and being blessed?

To him who, neglecting the revelations of immediate duty, looks regretfully behind and fearfully before him, life may well seem a solemn mystery, for, whichever way he turns, a wall of darkness rises before him; but down upon the present, as through a skylight between the shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams from an eye of blessing; and, within the circle of that divine illumination, beauty and goodness, truth and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal colors into the clear harmony of light. The author of Proverbial Philosophy has a passage not unworthy of note in this connection, when he speaks of the train which attends the just in heaven:--

"Also in the lengthening troop see I some clad in robes of triumph, Whose fair and sunny faces I have known and loved on earth. Welcome, ye glorified Loves, Graces, Sciences, and Muses, That, like Sisters of Charity, tended in this world's hospital; Welcome, for verily I knew ye could not but be children of the light; Welcome, chiefly welcome, for I find I have friends in heaven, And some I have scarcely looked for; as thou, light-hearted Mirth; Thou, also, star-robed Urania; and thou with the curious glass, That rejoicest in tracking beauty where the eye was too dull to note it. And art thou, too, among the blessed, mild, much-injured Poetry? That quickenest with light and beauty the leaden face of matter, That not unheard, though silent, fillest earth's gardens with music, And not unseen, though a spirit, dost look down upon us from the stars."

THE LIGHTING UP.

"He spak to the spynnsters to spynnen it oute." PIERS PLOUGHMAN.

THIS evening, the 20th of the ninth month, is the time fixed upon for lighting the mills for night-labor; and I have just returned from witnessing for the first time the effect of the new illumination.

Passing over the bridge, nearly to the Dracut shore, I had a fine view of the long line of mills, the city beyond, and the broad sweep of the river from the falls. The light of a tranquil and gorgeous sunset was slowly fading from river and sky, and the shadows of the trees on the Dracut slopes were blending in dusky indistinctness with the great shadow of night. Suddenly gleams of light broke from the black masses of masonry on the Lowell bank, at first feeble and scattered, flitting from window to window, appearing and disappearing, like will-o'-wisps in a forest or fireflies in a summer's night. Anon tier after tier of windows became radiant, until the whole vast wall, stretching far up the river, from basement to roof, became checkered with light reflected with the starbeams from the still water beneath. With a little effort of fancy, one could readily transform the huge mills, thus illuminated, into palaces lighted up for festival occasions, and the figures of the workers, passing to and fro before the windows, into forms of beauty and fashion, moving in graceful dances.

Alas! this music of the shuttle and the daylong dance to it are not altogether of the kind which Milton speaks of when he invokes the "soft Lydian airs" of voluptuous leisure. From this time henceforward for half a weary year, from the bell-call of morning twilight to half-past seven in the evening, with brief intermissions for two hasty meals, the operatives will be confined to their tasks. The proverbial facility of the Yankees in despatching their dinners in the least possible time seems to have been taken advantage of and reduced to a system on the Lowell corporations. Strange as it may seem to the uninitiated, the working-men and women here contrive to repair to their lodgings, make the necessary preliminary ablutions, devour their beef and pudding, and hurry back to their looms and jacks in the brief space of half an hour. In this way the working-day in Lowell is eked out to an average throughout the year of twelve and a half hours. This is a serious evil, demanding the earnest consideration of the humane and philanthropic. Both classes--the employer and the employed--would in the end be greatly benefited by the general adoption of the "ten-hour system," although the one might suffer a slight diminution in daily wages and the other in yearly profits. Yet it is difficult to see how this most desirable change is to be effected. The stronger and healthier portion of the operatives might themselves object to it as strenuously as the distant stockholder who looks only to his semi-annual dividends. Health is too often a matter of secondary consideration. Gain is the great, all-absorbing object. Very few, comparatively, regard Lowell as their "continuing city." They look longingly back to green valleys of Vermont, to quiet farm-houses on the head-waters of the Connecticut and Merrimac, and to old familiar homes along the breezy seaboard of New England, whence they have been urged by the knowledge that here they can earn a larger amount of money in a given time than in any other place or employment. They come here for gain, not for pleasure; for high wages, not for the comforts that cluster about home. Here are poor widows toiling to educate their children; daughters hoarding their wages to redeem mortgaged paternal homesteads or to defray the expenses of sick and infirm parents; young betrothed girls, about to add their savings to those of their country lovers. Others there are, of maturer age, lonely and poor, impelled hither by a proud unwillingness to test to its extent the charity of friends and relatives, and a strong yearning for the "glorious privilege of being independent." All honor to them! Whatever may have closed against them the gates of matrimony, whether their own obduracy or the faithlessness or indifference of others, instead of shutting themselves up in a nunnery or taxing the good nature of their friends by perpetual demands for sympathy and support, like weak vines, putting out their feelers in every direction for something to twine upon, is it not better and wiser for them to go quietly at work, to show that woman has a self-sustaining power; that she is something in and of herself; that she, too, has a part to bear in life, and, in common with the self-elected "lords of creation," has a direct relation to absolute being? To such the factory presents the opportunity of taking the first and essential step of securing, within a reasonable space of time, a comfortable competency.

There are undoubtedly many evils connected with the working of these mills; yet they are partly compensated by the fact that here, more than in any other mechanical employment, the labor of woman is placed essentially upon an equality with that of man. Here, at least, one of the many social disabilities under which woman as a distinct individual, unconnected with the other sex, has labored in all time is removed; the work of her hands is adequately rewarded; and she goes to her daily task with the consciousness that she is not "spending her strength for naught."

'The Lowell Offering', which has been for the last four years published monthly in this city, consisting entirely of articles written by females employed in the mills, has attracted much attention and obtained a wide circulation. This may be in part owing to the novel circumstances of its publication; but it is something more and better than a mere novelty. In its volumes may be found sprightly delineations of home scenes and characters, highly wrought imaginative pieces, tales of genuine pathos and humor, and pleasing fairy stories and fables. 'The Offering' originated in a reading society of the mill girls, which, under the name of the 'Improvement Circle' was convened once in a month. At its meetings, pieces written by its members and dropped secretly into a sort of "lion's mouth," provided for the purpose of insuring the authors from detection, were read for the amusement and criticism of the company. This circle is still in existence; and I owe to my introduction to it some of the most pleasant hours I have passed in Lowell.

The manner in which the 'Offering' has been generally noticed in this country has not, to my thinking, been altogether in accordance with good taste or self-respect. It is hardly excusable for men, who, whatever may be their present position, have, in common with all of us, brothers, sisters, or other relations busy in workshop and dairy, and who have scarcely washed from their own professional hands the soil of labor, to make very marked demonstrations of astonishment at the appearance of a magazine whose papers are written by factory girls. As if the compatibility of mental cultivation with bodily labor and the equality and brotherhood of the human family were still open questions, depending for their decision very much on the production of positive proof that essays may be written and carpets woven by the same set of fingers!

The truth is, our democracy lacks calmness and solidity, the repose and self-reliance which come of long habitude and settled conviction. We have not yet learned to wear its simple truths with the graceful ease and quiet air of unsolicitous assurance with which the titled European does his social fictions. As a people, we do not feel and live out our great Declaration. We lack faith in man,--confidence in simple humanity, apart from its environments.

"The age shows, to my thinking, more infidels to Adam, Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God."

Elizabeth B. Browning.

TAKING COMFORT.

For the last few days the fine weather has lured me away from books and papers and the close air of dwellings into the open fields, and under the soft, warm sunshine, and the softer light of a full moon. The loveliest season of the whole year--that transient but delightful interval between the storms of the "wild equinox, with all their wet," and the dark, short, dismal days which precede the rigor of winter--is now with us. The sun rises through a soft and hazy atmosphere; the light mist-clouds melt gradually away before him; and his noontide light rests warm and clear on still woods, tranquil waters, and grasses green with the late autumnal rains. The rough-wooded slopes of Dracut, overlooking the falls of the river; Fort Hill, across the Concord, where the red man made his last stand, and where may still be seen the trench which he dug around his rude fortress; the beautiful woodlands on the Lowell and Tewksbury shores of the Concord; the cemetery; the Patucket Falls,--all within the reach of a moderate walk,--offer at this season their latest and loveliest attractions.

One fine morning, not long ago, I strolled down the Merrimac, on the Tewksbury shore. I know of no walk in the vicinity of Lowell so inviting as that along the margin of the river for nearly a mile from the village of Belvidere. The path winds, green and flower-skirted, among beeches and oaks, through whose boughs you catch glimpses of waters sparkling and dashing below. Rocks, huge and picturesque, jut out into the stream, affording beautiful views of the river and the distant city.

Half fatigued with my walk, I threw myself down upon the rocky slope of the bank, where the panorama of earth, sky, and water lay clear and distinct about me. Far above, silent and dim as a picture, was the city, with its huge mill-masonry, confused chimney-tops, and church- spires; nearer rose the height of Belvidere, with its deserted burial- place and neglected gravestones sharply defined on its bleak, bare summit against the sky; before me the river went dashing down its rugged channel, sending up its everlasting murmur; above me the birch-tree hung its tassels; and the last wild flowers of autumn profusely fringed the rocky rim of the water. Right opposite, the Dracut woods stretched upwards from the shore, beautiful with the hues of frost, glowing with tints richer and deeper than those which Claude or Poussin mingled, as if the rainbows of a summer shower had fallen among them. At a little distance to the right a group of cattle stood mid-leg deep in the river; and a troop of children, bright-eyed and mirthful, were casting pebbles at them from a projecting shelf of rock. Over all a warm but softened sunshine melted down from a slumberous autumnal sky.

My revery was disagreeably broken. A low, grunting sound, half bestial, half human, attracted my attention. I was not alone. Close beside me, half hidden by a tuft of bushes, lay a human being, stretched out at full length, with his face literally rooted into the gravel. A little boy, five or six years of age, clean and healthful, with his fair brown locks and blue eyes, stood on the bank above, gazing down upon him with an expression of childhood's simple and unaffected pity.

"What ails you?" asked the boy at length. "What makes you lie there?"

The prostrate groveller struggled half-way up, exhibiting the bloated and filthy countenance of a drunkard. He made two or three efforts to get upon his feet, lost his balance, and tumbled forward upon his face.

"What are you doing there?" inquired the boy.

"I'm taking comfort," he muttered, with his mouth in the dirt.

Taking his comfort! There he lay,--squalid and loathsome under the bright heaven,--an imbruted man. The holy harmonies of Nature, the sounds of gushing waters, the rustle of the leaves above him, the wild flowers, the frost-bloom of the woods,--what were they to him? Insensible, deaf, and blind, in the stupor of a living death, he lay there, literally realizing that most bitterly significant Eastern malediction, "May you eat dirt!"

In contrasting the exceeding beauty and harmony of inanimate Nature with the human degradation and deformity before me, I felt, as I confess I had never done before, the truth of a remark of a rare thinker, that "Nature is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because, it has no citizen. The beauty of Nature must ever be universal and mocking until the landscape has human figures as good as itself. Man is fallen; Nature is erect."--(Emerson.) As I turned once more to the calm blue sky, the hazy autumnal hills, and the slumberous water, dream-tinted by the foliage of its shores, it seemed as if a shadow of shame and sorrow fell over the pleasant picture; and even the west wind which stirred the tree-tops above me had a mournful murmur, as if Nature felt the desecration of her sanctities and the discord of sin and folly which marred her sweet harmonies.

God bless the temperance movement! And He will bless it; for it is His work. It is one of the great miracles of our times. Not Father Mathew in Ireland, nor Hawkins and his little band in Baltimore, but He whose care is over all the works of His hand, and who in His divine love and compassion "turneth the hearts of men as the rivers of waters are turned," hath done it. To Him be all the glory.

CHARMS AND FAIRY FAITH

"Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We dare n't go a-hunting For fear of little men. Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, Gray cock's feather." ALLINGHAM.

IT was from a profound knowledge of human nature that Lord Bacon, in discoursing upon truth, remarked that a mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. "Doth any man doubt," he asks, "that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, and imaginations, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor, shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?" This admitted tendency of our nature, this love of the pleasing intoxication of unveracity, exaggeration, and imagination, may perhaps account for the high relish which children and nations yet in the childhood of civilization find in fabulous legends and tales of wonder. The Arab at the present day listens with eager interest to the same tales of genii and afrits, sorcerers and enchanted princesses, which delighted his ancestors in the times of Haroun al Raschid. The gentle, church-going Icelander of our time beguiles the long night of his winter with the very sagas and runes which thrilled with not unpleasing horror the hearts of the old Norse sea-robbers. What child, although Anglo-Saxon born, escapes a temporary sojourn in fairy-land? Who of us does not remember the intense satisfaction of throwing aside primer and spelling-book for stolen ethnographical studies of dwarfs, and giants? Even in our own country and time old superstitions and credulities still cling to life with feline tenacity. Here and there, oftenest in our fixed, valley-sheltered, inland villages,--slumberous Rip Van Winkles, unprogressive and seldom visited,--may be found the same old beliefs in omens, warnings, witchcraft, and supernatural charms which our ancestors brought with them two centuries ago from Europe.

The practice of charms, or what is popularly called "trying projects," is still, to some extent, continued in New England. The inimitable description which Burns gives of similar practices in his Halloween may not in all respects apply to these domestic conjurations; but the following needs only the substitution of apple-seeds for nuts:--

"The auld gude wife's wheel-hoordet nits Are round an' round divided; An' mony lads and lassies' fates Are there that night decided. Some kindle couthie side by side An' burn thegither trimly; Some start awa wi' saucy pride And jump out owre the chimlie."

One of the most common of these "projects" is as follows: A young woman goes down into the cellar, or into a dark room, with a mirror in her hand, and looking in it, sees the face of her future husband peering at her through the darkness,--the mirror being, for the time, as potent as the famous Cambuscan glass of which Chaucer discourses. A neighbor of mine, in speaking of this conjuration, adduces a case in point. One of her schoolmates made the experiment and saw the face of a strange man in the glass; and many years afterwards she saw the very man pass her father's door. He proved to be an English emigrant just landed, and in due time became her husband. Burns alludes to something like the spell above described:--

"Wee Jenny to her grannie says, 'will ye go wi' me, grannie, To eat an apple at the glass I got from Uncle Johnnie?' She fuff't her pipe wi' sic a lunt, In wrath she was so vaporin', She noticed na an' azle brunt Her bran new worset apron.

"Ye little skelpan-limmer's face, How dare ye try sic sportin', An' seek the foul thief ony place For him to try your fortune? Nae doubt but ye may get a sight; Great cause ye hae to fear it; For mony a one has gotten a fright, An' lived and died delecrit."

It is not to be denied, and for truth's sake not to be regretted, that this amusing juvenile glammary has seen its best days in New England. The schoolmaster has been abroad to some purpose. Not without results have our lyceum lecturers and travels of Peter Parley brought everything in heaven above and in the earth below to the level of childhood's capacities. In our cities and large towns children nowadays pass through the opening acts of life's marvellous drama with as little manifestation of wonder and surprise as the Indian does through the streets of a civilized city which he has entered for the first time. Yet Nature, sooner or later, vindicates her mysteries; voices from the unseen penetrate the din of civilization. The child philosopher and materialist often becomes the visionary of riper years, running into illuminism, magnetism, and transcendentalism, with its inspired priests and priestesses, its revelations and oracular responses.

But in many a green valley of rural New England there are children yet; boys and girls are still to be found not quite overtaken by the march of mind. There, too, are huskings, and apple-bees, and quilting parties, and huge old-fashioned fireplaces piled with crackling walnut, flinging its rosy light over happy countenances of youth and scarcely less happy age. If it be true that, according to Cornelius Agrippa, "a wood fire doth drive away dark spirits," it is, nevertheless, also true that around it the simple superstitions of our ancestors still love to linger; and there the half-sportful, half-serious charms of which I have spoken are oftenest resorted to. It would be altogether out of place to think of them by our black, unsightly stoves, or in the dull and dark monotony of our furnace-heated rooms. Within the circle of the light of the open fire safely might the young conjurers question destiny; for none but kindly and gentle messengers from wonderland could venture among them. And who of us, looking back to those long autumnal evenings of childhood when the glow of the kitchen-fire rested on the beloved faces of home, does not feel that there is truth and beauty in what the quaint old author just quoted affirms? "As the spirits of darkness grow stronger in the dark, so good spirits, which are angels of light, are multiplied and strengthened, not only by the divine light of the sun and stars, but also by the light of our common wood-fires." Even Lord Bacon, in condemning the superstitious beliefs of his day, admits that they might serve for winter talk around the fireside.

Fairy faith is, we may safely say, now dead everywhere,--buried, indeed,--for the mad painter Blake saw the funeral of the last of the little people, and an irreverent English bishop has sung their requiem. It never had much hold upon the Yankee mind, our superstitions being mostly of a sterner and less poetical kind. The Irish Presbyterians who settled in New Hampshire about the year 1720 brought indeed with them, among other strange matters, potatoes and fairies; but while the former took root and flourished among us, the latter died out, after lingering a few years in a very melancholy and disconsolate way, looking regretfully back to their green turf dances, moonlight revels, and cheerful nestling around the shealing fires of Ireland. The last that has been heard of them was some forty or fifty years ago in a tavern house in S-------, New Hampshire. The landlord was a spiteful little man, whose sour, pinched look was a standing libel upon the state of his larder. He made his house so uncomfortable by his moroseness that travellers even at nightfall pushed by his door and drove to the next town. Teamsters and drovers, who in those days were apt to be very thirsty, learned, even before temperance societies were thought of, to practice total abstinence on that road, and cracked their whips and goaded on their teams in full view of a most tempting array of bottles and glasses, from behind which the surly little landlord glared out upon them with a look which seemed expressive of all sorts of evil wishes, broken legs, overturned carriages, spavined horses, sprained oxen, unsavory poultry, damaged butter, and bad markets. And if, as a matter of necessity, to "keep the cold out of his stomach," occasionally a wayfarer stopped his team and ventured to call for "somethin' warmin'," the testy publican stirred up the beverage in such a spiteful way, that, on receiving it foaming from his hand, the poor customer was half afraid to open his mouth, lest the red-hot flip iron should be plunged down his gullet.

As a matter of course, poverty came upon the house and its tenants like an armed man. Loose clapboards rattled in the wind; rags fluttered from the broken windows; within doors were tattered children and scanty fare. The landlord's wife was a stout, buxom woman, of Irish lineage, and, what with scolding her husband and liberally patronizing his bar in his absence, managed to keep, as she said, her "own heart whole," although the same could scarcely be said of her children's trousers and her own frock of homespun. She confidently predicted that "a betther day was coming," being, in fact, the only thing hopeful about the premises. And it did come, sure enough. Not only all the regular travellers on the road made a point of stopping at the tavern, but guests from all the adjacent towns filled its long-deserted rooms,--the secret of which was, that it had somehow got abroad that a company of fairies had taken up their abode in the hostelry and daily held conversation with each other in the capacious parlor. I have heard those who at the time visited the tavern say that it was literally thronged for several weeks. Small, squeaking voices spoke in a sort of Yankee-Irish dialect, in the haunted room, to the astonishment and admiration of hundreds. The inn, of course, was blessed by this fairy visitation; the clapboards ceased their racket, clear panes took the place of rags in the sashes, and the little till under the bar grew daily heavy with coin. The magical influence extended even farther; for it was observable that the landlord wore a good-natured face, and that the landlady's visits to the gin- bottle were less and less frequent. But the thing could not, in the nature of the case, continue long. It was too late in the day and on the wrong side of the water. As the novelty wore off, people began to doubt and reason about it. Had the place been traversed by a ghost or disturbed by a witch they could have acquiesced in it very quietly; but this outlandish belief in fairies was altogether an overtask for Yankee credulity. As might have been expected, the little strangers, unable to breathe in an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion, soon took their leave, shaking off the dust of their elfin feet as a testimony against an unbelieving generation. It was, indeed, said that certain rude fellows from the Bay State pulled away a board from the ceiling and disclosed to view the fairies in the shape of the landlady's three slatternly daughters. But the reader who has any degree of that charity which thinks no evil will rather credit the statement of the fairies themselves, as reported by the mistress of the house, "that they were tired of the new country, and had no pace of their lives among the Yankees, and were going back to Ould Ireland."

It is a curious fact that the Indians had some notion of a race of beings corresponding in many respects to the English fairies. Schoolcraft describes them as small creatures in human shape, inhabiting rocks, crags, and romantic dells, and delighting especially in points of land jutting into lakes and rivers and which were covered with pinetrees. They were called Puckweedjinees,--little vanishers.

In a poetical point of view it is to be regretted that our ancestors did not think it worth their while to hand down to us more of the simple and beautiful traditions and beliefs of the "heathen round about" them. Some hints of them we glean from the writings of the missionary Mayhew and the curious little book of Roger Williams. Especially would one like to know more of that domestic demon, Wetuomanit, who presided over household affairs, assisted the young squaw in her first essay at wigwam-keeping, gave timely note of danger, and kept evil spirits at a distance,--a kind of new-world brownie, gentle and useful.

Very suggestive, too, is the story of Pumoolah,--a mighty spirit, whose home is on the great Katahdin Mountain, sitting there with his earthly bride (a beautiful daughter of the Penobscots transformed into an immortal by her love), in serenest sunshine, above the storm which crouches and growls at his feet. None but the perfectly pure and good can reach his abode. Many have from time to time attempted it in vain; some, after almost reaching the summit, have been driven back by thunderbolts or sleety whirlwinds.

Not far from my place of residence are the ruins of a mill, in a narrow ravine fringed with trees. Some forty years ago the mill was supposed to be haunted; and horse-shoes, in consequence, were nailed over its doors. One worthy man, whose business lay beyond the mill, was afraid to pass it alone; and his wife, who was less fearful of supernatural annoyance, used to accompany him. The little old white-coated miller, who there ground corn and wheat for his neighbors, whenever he made a particularly early visit to his mill, used to hear it in full operation,--the water-wheel dashing bravely, and the old rickety building clattering to the jar of the stones. Yet the moment his hand touched the latch or his foot the threshold all was hushed save the melancholy drip of water from the dam or the low gurgle of the small stream eddying amidst willow roots and mossy stones in the ravine below.

This haunted mill has always reminded me of that most beautiful of Scottish ballads, the Song of the Elfin Miller, in which fairies are represented as grinding the poor man's grist without toil:--

"Full merrily rings the mill-stone round; Full merrily rings the wheel; Full merrily gushes out the grist; Come, taste my fragrant meal. The miller he's a warldly man, And maun hae double fee; So draw the sluice in the churl's dam And let the stream gae free!"

Brainerd, who truly deserves the name of an American poet, has left behind him a ballad on the Indian legend of the black fox which haunted Salmon River, a tributary of the Connecticut. Its wild and picturesque beauty causes us to regret that more of the still lingering traditions of the red men have not been made the themes of his verse:--

THE BLACK FOX.

"How cold, how beautiful, how bright The cloudless heaven above us shines! But 't is a howling winter's night; 'T would freeze the very forest pines.

"The winds are up while mortals sleep; The stars look forth while eyes are shut; The bolted snow lies drifted deep Around our poor and lonely hut.

"With silent step and listening ear, With bow and arrow, dog and gun, We'll mark his track,--his prowl we hear: Now is our time! Come on! come on!

"O'er many a fence, through many a wood, Following the dog's bewildered scent, In anxious haste and earnest mood, The white man and the Indian went.

"The gun is cocked; the bow is bent; The dog stands with uplifted paw; And ball and arrow both are sent, Aimed at the prowler's very jaw.

"The ball to kill that fox is run Not in a mould by mortals made; The arrow which that fox should shun Was never shaped from earthly reed.

"The Indian Druids of the wood Know where the fatal arrows grow; They spring not by the summer flood; They pierce not through the winter's snow.

"Why cowers the dog, whose snuffing nose Was never once deceived till now? And why amidst the chilling snows Does either hunter wipe his brow?

"For once they see his fearful den; 'T is a dark cloud that slowly moves By night around the homes of men, By day along the stream it loves.

"Again the dog is on the track, The hunters chase o'er dale and hill; They may not, though they would, look back; They must go forward, forward still.

"Onward they go, and never turn, Amidst a night which knows no day; For nevermore shall morning sun Light them upon their endless way.

"The hut is desolate; and there The famished dog alone returns; On the cold steps he makes his lair; By the shut door he lays his bones.

"Now the tired sportsman leans his gun Against the ruins on its site, And ponders on the hunting done By the lost wanderers of the night.

"And there the little country girls Will stop to whisper, listen, and look, And tell, while dressing their sunny curls, Of the Black Fox of Salmon Brook."

The same writer has happily versified a pleasant superstition of the valley of the Connecticut. It is supposed that shad are led from the Gulf of Mexico to the Connecticut by a kind of Yankee bogle in the shape of a bird.

THE SHAD SPIRIT.

"Now drop the bolt, and securely nail The horse-shoe over the door; 'T is a wise precaution; and, if it should fail, It never failed before.

"Know ye the shepherd that gathers his flock Where the gales of the equinox blow From each unknown reef and sunken rock In the Gulf of Mexico,--

"While the monsoons growl, and the trade-winds bark, And the watch-dogs of the surge Pursue through the wild waves the ravenous shark That prowls around their charge?

"To fair Connecticut's northernmost source, O'er sand-bars, rapids, and falls, The Shad Spirit holds his onward course With the flocks which his whistle calls.

"Oh, how shall he know where he went before? Will he wander around forever? The last year's shad heads shall shine on the shore, To light him up the river.

"And well can he tell the very time To undertake his task When the pork-barrel's low he sits on the chine And drums on the empty cask.

"The wind is light, and the wave is white With the fleece of the flock that's near; Like the breath of the breeze he comes over the seas And faithfully leads them here.

"And now he 's passed the bolted door Where the rusted horse-shoe clings; So carry the nets to the nearest shore, And take what the Shad Spirit brings."

The comparatively innocent nature and simple poetic beauty of this class of superstitions have doubtless often induced the moralist to hesitate in exposing their absurdity, and, like Burns in view of his national thistle, to:

"Turn the weeding hook aside And spare the symbol dear."

But the age has fairly outgrown them, and they are falling away by a natural process of exfoliation. The wonderland of childhood must henceforth be sought within the domains of truth. The strange facts of natural history, and the sweet mysteries of flowers and forests, and hills and waters, will profitably take the place of the fairy lore of the past, and poetry and romance still hold their accustomed seats in the circle of home, without bringing with them the evil spirits of credulity and untruth. Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the lovemaking of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.

MAGICIANS AND WITCH FOLK.

FASCINATION, saith Henry Cornelius Agrippa, in the fiftieth chapter of his first book on Occult Philosophy, "is a binding which comes of the spirit of the witch through the eyes of him that is bewitched, entering to his heart; for the eye being opened and intent upon any one, with a strong imagination doth dart its beams, which are the vehiculum of the spirit, into the eyes of him that is opposite to her; which tender spirit strikes his eyes, stirs up and wounds his heart, and infects his spirit. Whence Apuleius saith, 'Thy eyes, sliding down through my eyes into my inmost heart, stirreth up a most vehement burning.' And when eyes are reciprocally intent upon each other, and when rays are joined to rays, and lights to lights, then the spirit of the one is joined to that of the other; so are strong ligations made and vehement loves inflamed." Taking this definition of witchcraft, we sadly fear it is still practised to a very great extent among us. The best we can say of it is, that the business seems latterly to have fallen into younger hands; its victims do not appear to regard themselves as especial objects of compassion; and neither church nor state seems inclined to interfere with it.

As might be expected in a shrewd community like ours, attempts are not unfrequently made to speculate in the supernatural,--to "make gain of sooth-saying." In the autumn of last year a "wise woman" dreamed, or somnambulized, that a large sum of money, in gold and silver coin, lay buried in the centre of the great swamp in Poplin, New Hampshire; whereupon an immediate search was made for the precious metal. Under the bleak sky of November, in biting frost and sleet rain, some twenty or more grown men, graduates of our common schools, and liable, every mother's son of them, to be made deacons, squires, and general court members, and such other drill officers as may be requisite in the march of mind, might be seen delving in grim earnest, breaking the frozen earth, uprooting swamp-maples and hemlocks, and waking, with sledge and crowbar, unwonted echoes in a solitude which had heretofore only answered to the woodman's axe or the scream of the wild fowl. The snows of December put an end to their labors; but the yawning excavation still remains, a silent but somewhat expressive commentary upon the age of progress.

Still later, in one of our Atlantic cities, an attempt was made, partially at least, successful, to form a company for the purpose of digging for money in one of the desolate sand-keys of the West Indies. It appears that some mesmerized "subject," in the course of one of those somnambulic voyages of discovery in which the traveller, like Satan in chaos,--

"O'er bog, o'er steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies,"--

while peering curiously into the earth's mysteries, chanced to have his eyes gladdened by the sight of a huge chest packed with Spanish coins, the spoil, doubtless, of some rich-freighted argosy, or Carthagena galleon, in the rare days of Queen Elizabeth's Christian buccaneers.

During the last quarter of a century, a colored woman in one of the villages on the southern border of New Hampshire has been consulted by hundreds of anxious inquirers into the future. Long experience in her profession has given her something of that ready estimate of character, that quick and keen appreciation of the capacity, habits, and wishes of her visitors, which so remarkably distinguished the late famous Madame Le Normand, of Paris; and if that old squalid sorceress, in her cramped Parisian attic, redolent of garlic and bestrewn with the greasy implements of sorry housewifery, was, as has been affirmed, consulted by such personages as the fair Josephine Beauharnois, and the "man of destiny," Napoleon himself, is it strange that the desire to lift the veil of the great mystery before us should overcome in some degree our peculiar and most republican prejudice against color, and reconcile us to the disagreeable necessity of looking at futurity through a black medium?

Some forty years ago, on the banks of the pleasant little creek separating Berwick, in Maine, from Somersworth, in New Hampshire, within sight of my mother's home, dwelt a plain, sedate member of the society of Friends, named Bantum. He passed throughout a circle of several miles as a conjurer and skilful adept in the art of magic. To him resorted farmers who had lost their cattle, matrons whose household gear, silver spoons, and table-linen had been stolen, or young maidens whose lovers were absent; and the quiet, meek-spirited old man received them all kindly, put on his huge iron-rimmed spectacles, opened his "conjuring book," which my mother describes as a large clasped volume in strange language and black-letter type, and after due reflection and consideration gave the required answers without money and without price. The curious old volume is still in the possession of the conjurer's family. Apparently inconsistent as was this practice of the black art with the simplicity and truthfulness of his religious profession, I have not been able to learn that he was ever subjected to censure on account of it. It may be that our modern conjurer defended himself on grounds similar to those assumed by the celebrated knight of Nettesheim, in the preface to his first Book of Magic: "Some," says he, "may crie oute that I teach forbidden arts, sow the seed of heresies, offend pious ears, and scandalize excellent wits; that I am a sorcerer, superstitious and devilish, who indeed am a magician. To whom I answer, that a magician doth not among learned men signifie a sorcerer or one that is superstitious or devilish, but a wise man, a priest, a prophet, and that the sibyls prophesied most clearly of Christ; that magicians, as wise men, by the wonderful secrets of the world, knew Christ to be born, and came to worship him, first of all; and that the name of magicke is received by philosophers, commended by divines, and not unacceptable to the Gospel."

The study of astrology and occult philosophy, to which many of the finest minds of the Middle Ages devoted themselves without molestation from the Church, was never practised with impunity after the Reformation. The Puritans and Presbyterians, taking the Bible for their rule, "suffered not a witch to live;" and, not content with burning the books of those who "used curious arts" after the manner of the Ephesians, they sacrificed the students themselves on the same pile. Hence we hear little of learned and scientific wizards in New England. One remarkable character of this kind seems, however, to have escaped the vigilance of our modern Doctors of the Mosaic Law. Dr. Robert Child came to this country about the year 1644, and took up his residence in the Massachusetts colony. He was a man of wealth, and owned plantations at Nashaway, now Lancaster, and at Saco, in Maine. He was skilful in mineralogy and metallurgy, and seems to have spent a good deal of money in searching for mines. He is well known as the author of the first decided movement for liberty of conscience in Massachusetts, his name standing at the head of the famous petition of 1646 for a modification of the laws in respect to religious worship, and complaining in strong terms of the disfranchisement of persons not members of the Church. A tremendous excitement was produced by this remonstrance; clergy and magistrates joined in denouncing it; Dr. Child and his associates were arrested, tried for contempt of government, and heavily fined. The Court, in passing sentence, assured the Doctor that his crime was only equalled by that of Korah and his troop, who rebelled against Moses and Aaron. He resolved to appeal to the Parliament of England, and made arrangements for his departure, but was arrested, and ordered to be kept a prisoner in his own house until the vessel in which he was to sail had left Boston. He was afterwards imprisoned for a considerable length of time, and on his release found means to return to England. The Doctor's trunks were searched by the Puritan authorities while he was in prison; but it does not appear that they detected the occult studies to which lie was addicted, to which lucky circumstance it is doubtless owing that the first champion of religious liberty in the New World was not hung for a wizard.

Dr. Child was a graduate of the renowned University of Padua, and had travelled extensively in the Old World. Probably, like Michael Scott, he had:

"Learned the art of glammarye In Padua, beyond the sea;"

for I find in the dedication of an English translation of a Continental work on astrology and magic, printed in 1651 "at the sign of the Three Bibles," that his "sublime hermeticall and theomagicall lore" is compared to that of Hermes and Agrippa. He is complimented as a master of the mysteries of Rome and Germany, and as one who had pursued his investigations among the philosophers of the Old World and the Indians of the New, "leaving no stone unturned, the turning whereof might conduce to the discovery of what is occult."

There was still another member of the Friends' society in Vermont, of the name of Austin, who, in answer, as he supposed, to prayer and a long-cherished desire to benefit his afflicted fellow-creatures, received, as he believed, a special gift of healing. For several years applicants from nearly all parts of New England visited him with the story of their sufferings and praying for a relief, which, it is averred, was in many instances really obtained. Letters from the sick who were unable to visit him, describing their diseases, were sent him; and many are yet living who believe that they were restored miraculously at the precise period of time when Austin was engaged in reading their letters. One of my uncles was commissioned to convey to him a large number of letters from sick persons in his neighborhood. He found the old man sitting in his plain parlor in the simplest garb of his sect,-- grave, thoughtful, venerable,--a drab-coated Prince Hohenlohe. He received the letters in silence, read them slowly, casting them one after another upon a large pile of similar epistles in a corner of the apartment.

Half a century ago nearly every neighborhood in New England was favored with one or more reputed dealers in magic. Twenty years later there were two poor old sisters who used to frighten school urchins and "children of a larger growth" as they rode down from New Hampshire on their gaunt skeleton horses, strung over with baskets for the Newburyport market. They were aware of the popular notion concerning them, and not unfrequently took advantage of it to levy a sort of black mail upon their credulous neighbors. An attendant at the funeral of one of these sisters, who when living was about as unsubstantial as Ossian's ghost, through which the stars were visible, told me that her coffin was so heavy that four stout men could barely lift it.

One, of my earliest recollections is that of an old woman, residing about two miles from the place of my nativity, who for many years had borne the unenviable reputation of a witch. She certainly had the look of one,--a combination of form, voice, and features which would have made the fortune of an English witch finder in the days of Matthew Paris or the Sir John Podgers of Dickens, and insured her speedy conviction in King James's High Court of Justiciary. She was accused of divers ill- doings,--such as preventing the cream in her neighbor's churn from becoming butter, and snuffing out candles at huskings and quilting- parties.

"She roamed the country far and near, Bewitched the children of the peasants, Dried up the cows, and lamed the deer, And sucked the eggs, and killed the pheasants."

The poor old woman was at length so sadly annoyed by her unfortunate reputation that she took the trouble to go before a justice of the peace, and made solemn oath that she was a Christian woman, and no witch.

Not many years since a sad-visaged, middle-aged man might be seen in the streets of one of our seaboard towns at times suddenly arrested in the midst of a brisk walk and fixed motionless for some minutes in the busy thoroughfare. No effort could induce him to stir until, in his opinion, the spell was removed and his invisible tormentor suffered him to proceed. He explained his singular detention as the act of a whole family of witches whom he had unfortunately offended during a visit down East. It was rumored that the offence consisted in breaking off a matrimonial engagement with the youngest member of the family,--a sorceress, perhaps, in more than one sense of the word, like that "winsome wench and walie" in Tam O'Shanter's witch-dance at Kirk Alloway. His only hope was that he should outlive his persecutors; and it is said that at the very hour in which the event took place he exultingly assured his friends that the spell was forever broken, and that the last of the family of his tormentors was no more.

When a boy, I occasionally met, at the house of a relative in an adjoining town, a stout, red-nosed old farmer of the neighborhood. A fine tableau he made of a winter's evening, in the red light of a birch-log fire, as he sat for hours watching its progress, with sleepy, half-shut eyes, changing his position only to reach the cider-mug on the shelf near him. Although he seldom opened his lips save to assent to some remark of his host or to answer a direct question, yet at times, when the cider-mug got the better of his taciturnity, he would amuse us with interesting details of his early experiences in "the Ohio country."

There was, however, one chapter in these experiences which he usually held in reserve, and with which "the stranger intermeddled not." He was not willing to run the risk of hearing that which to him was a frightful reality turned into ridicule by scoffers and unbelievers. The substance of it, as I received it from one of his neighbors, forms as clever a tale of witchcraft as modern times have produced.

It seems that when quite a young man he left the homestead, and, strolling westward, worked his way from place to place until he found himself in one of the old French settlements on the Ohio River. Here he procured employment on the farm of a widow; and being a smart, active fellow, and proving highly serviceable in his department, he rapidly gained favor in the eyes of his employer. Ere long, contrary to the advice of the neighbors, and in spite of somewhat discouraging hints touching certain matrimonial infelicities experienced by the late husband, he resolutely stepped into the dead man's shoes: the mistress became the wife, and the servant was legally promoted to the head of the household.--

For a time matters went on cosily and comfortably enough. He was now lord of the soil; and, as he laid in his crops of corn and potatoes, salted down his pork, and piled up his wood for winter's use, he naturally enough congratulated himself upon his good fortune and laughed at the sinister forebodings of his neighbors. But with the long winter months came a change over his "love's young dream." An evil and mysterious influence seemed to be at work in his affairs. Whatever he did after consulting his wife or at her suggestion resulted favorably enough; but all his own schemes and projects were unaccountably marred and defeated. If he bought a horse, it was sure to prove spavined or wind-broken. His cows either refused to give down their milk, or, giving it, perversely kicked it over. A fine sow which he had bargained for repaid his partiality by devouring, like Saturn, her own children. By degrees a dark thought forced its way into his mind. Comparing his repeated mischances with the ante-nuptial warnings of his neighbors, he at last came to the melancholy conclusion that his wife was a witch. The victim in Motherwell's ballad of the Demon Lady, or the poor fellow in the Arabian tale who discovered that he had married a ghoul in the guise of a young and blooming princess, was scarcely in a more sorrowful predicament. He grew nervous and fretful. Old dismal nursery stories and all the witch lore of boyhood came back to his memory; and he crept to his bed like a criminal to the gallows, half afraid to fall asleep lest his mysterious companion should take a fancy to transform him into a horse, get him shod at the smithy, and ride him to a witch-meeting. And, as if to make the matter worse, his wife's affection seemed to increase just in proportion as his troubles thickened upon him. She aggravated him with all manner of caresses and endearments. This was the drop too much. The poor husband recoiled from her as from a waking nightmare. His thoughts turned to New England; he longed to see once more the old homestead, with its tall well-sweep and butternut-trees by the roadside; and he sighed amidst the rich bottom-lands of his new home for his father's rocky pasture, with its crop of stinted mulleins. So one cold November day, finding himself out of sight and hearing of his wife, he summoned courage to attempt an escape, and, resolutely turning his back on the West, plunged into the wilderness towards the sunrise. After a long and hard journey he reached his birthplace, and was kindly welcomed by his old friends. Keeping a close mouth with respect to his unlucky adventure in Ohio, he soon after married one of his schoolmates, and, by dint of persevering industry and economy, in a few years found himself in possession of a comfortable home.

But his evil star still lingered above the horizon. One summer evening, on returning from the hayfield, who should meet him but his witch wife from Ohio! She came riding up the street on her old white horse, with a pillion behind the saddle. Accosting him in a kindly tone, yet not without something of gentle reproach for his unhandsome desertion of her, she informed him that she had come all the way from Ohio to take him back again.

It was in vain that he pleaded his later engagements; it was in vain that his new wife raised her shrillest remonstrances, not unmingled with expressions of vehement indignation at the revelation of her husband's real position; the witch wife was inexorable; go he must, and that speedily. Fully impressed with a belief in her supernatural power of compelling obedience, and perhaps dreading more than witchcraft itself the effects of the unlucky disclosure on the temper of his New England helpmate, he made a virtue of the necessity of the case, bade farewell to the latter amidst a perfect hurricane of reproaches, and mounted the white horse, with his old wife on the pillion behind him.

Of that ride Burger might have written a counterpart to his ballad:--

"Tramp, tramp, along the shore they ride, Splash, splash, along the sea."

Two or three years had passed away, bringing no tidings of the unfortunate husband, when he once more made his appearance in his native village. He was not disposed to be very communicative; but for one thing, at least, he seemed willing to express his gratitude. His Ohio wife, having no spell against intermittent fever, had paid the debt of nature, and had left him free; in view of which, his surviving wife, after manifesting a due degree of resentment, consented to take him back to her bed and board; and I could never learn that she had cause to regret her clemency.

THE BEAUTIFUL

"A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts." EMERSON'S Essays, Second Series, iv., p. 162.

A FEW days since I was walking with a friend, who, unfortunately for himself, seldom meets with anything in the world of realities worthy of comparison with the ideal of his fancy, which, like the bird in the Arabian tale, glides perpetually before him, always near yet never overtaken. He was half humorously, half seriously, complaining of the lack of beauty in the faces and forms that passed us on the crowded sidewalk. Some defect was noticeable in all: one was too heavy, another too angular; here a nose was at fault, there a mouth put a set of otherwise fine features out of countenance; the fair complexions had red hair, and glossy black locks were wasted upon dingy ones. In one way or another all fell below his impossible standard.

The beauty which my friend seemed in search of was that of proportion and coloring; mechanical exactness; a due combination of soft curves and obtuse angles, of warm carnation and marble purity. Such a man, for aught I can see, might love a graven image, like the girl of Florence who pined into a shadow for the Apollo Belvidere, looking coldly on her with stony eyes from his niche in the Vatican. One thing is certain,-- he will never find his faultless piece of artistical perfection by searching for it amidst flesh-and-blood realities. Nature does not, as far as I can perceive, work with square and compass, or lay on her colors by the rules of royal artists or the dunces of the academies. She eschews regular outlines. She does not shape her forms by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all respects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of Nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty. Look at her primitive woods; scattered trees, with moist sward and bright mosses at their roots; great clumps of green shadow, where limb intwists with limb and the rustle of one leaf stirs a hundred others,--stretching up steep hillsides, flooding with green beauty the valleys, or arching over with leaves the sharp ravines, every tree and shrub unlike its neighbor in size and proportion,--the old and storm- broken leaning on the young and vigorous,--intricate and confused, without order or method. Who would exchange this for artificial French gardens, where every tree stands stiff and regular, clipped and trimmed into unvarying conformity, like so many grenadiers under review? Who wants eternal sunshine or shadow? Who would fix forever the loveliest cloudwork of an autumn sunset, or hang over him an everlasting moonlight? If the stream had no quiet eddying place, could we so admire its cascade over the rocks? Were there no clouds, could we so hail the sky shining through them in its still, calm purity? Who shall venture to ask our kind Mother Nature to remove from our sight any one of her forms or colors? Who shall decide which is beautiful, or otherwise, in itself considered?

There are too many, like my fastidious friend, who go through the world "from Dan to Beersheba, finding all barren,"--who have always some fault or other to find with Nature and Providence, seeming to consider themselves especially ill used because the one does not always coincide with their taste, nor the other with their narrow notions of personal convenience. In one of his early poems, Coleridge has well expressed a truth, which is not the less important because it is not generally admitted. The idea is briefly this: that the mind gives to all things their coloring, their gloom, or gladness; that the pleasure we derive from external nature is primarily from ourselves:--

"from the mind itself must issue forth A light, a glory, a fair luminous mist, Enveloping the earth."

The real difficulty of these lifelong hunters after the beautiful exists in their own spirits. They set up certain models of perfection in their imaginations, and then go about the world in the vain expectation of finding them actually wrought out according to pattern; very unreasonably calculating that Nature will suspend her everlasting laws for the purpose of creating faultless prodigies for their especial gratification.

The authors of Gayeties and Gravities give it as their opinion that no object of sight is regarded by us as a simple disconnected form, but that--an instantaneous reflection as to its history, purpose, or associations converts it into a concrete one,--a process, they shrewdly remark, which no thinking being can prevent, and which can only be avoided by the unmeaning and stolid stare of "a goose on the common or a cow on the green." The senses and the faculties of the understanding are so blended with and dependent upon each other that not one of them can exercise its office alone and without the modification of some extrinsic interference or suggestion. Grateful or unpleasant associations cluster around all which sense takes cognizance of; the beauty which we discern in an external object is often but the reflection of our own minds.

What is beauty, after all? Ask the lover who kneels in homage to one who has no attractions for others. The cold onlooker wonders that he can call that unclassic combination of features and that awkward form beautiful. Yet so it is. He sees, like Desdemona, her "visage in her mind," or her affections. A light from within shines through the external uncomeliness,--softens, irradiates, and glorifies it. That which to others seems commonplace and unworthy of note is to him, in the words of Spenser,--

"A sweet, attractive kind of grace; A full assurance given by looks; Continual comfort in a face; The lineaments of Gospel books."

"Handsome is that handsome does,--hold up your heads, girls!" was the language of Primrose in the play when addressing her daughters. The worthy matron was right. Would that all my female readers who are sorrowing foolishly because they are not in all respects like Dubufe's Eve, or that statue of the Venus "which enchants the world," could be persuaded to listen to her. What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,--generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration. Loving and pleasant associations will gather about you. Never mind the ugly reflection which your glass may give you. That mirror has no heart. But quite another picture is yours on the retina of human sympathy. There the beauty of holiness, of purity, of that inward grace which passeth show, rests over it, softening and mellowing its features just as the full calm moonlight melts those of a rough landscape into harmonious loveliness. "Hold up your heads, girls!" I repeat after Primrose. Why should you not? Every mother's daughter of you can be beautiful. You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smokestained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words of compassion. Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white stranger, who had "no mother to bring him milk and no wife to grind him corn." Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marble or wrought out on canvas, speculate as we may upon its colors and outlines, what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind; looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness.

This was well understood by the old painters. In their pictures of Mary, the virgin mother, the beauty which melts and subdues the gazer is that of the soul and the affections, uniting the awe and mystery of that mother's miraculous allotment with the irrepressible love, the unutterable tenderness, of young maternity,--Heaven's crowning miracle with Nature's holiest and sweetest instinct. And their pale Magdalens, holy with the look of sins forgiven,--how the divine beauty of their penitence sinks into the heart! Do we not feel that the only real deformity is sin, and that goodness evermore hallows and sanctifies its dwelling-place? When the soul is at rest, when the passions and desires are all attuned to the divine harmony,--

"Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-ordered law," The Haunted Palace, by Edgar A. Poe.

do we not read the placid significance thereof in the human countenance? "I have seen," said Charles Lamb, "faces upon which the dove of peace sat brooding." In that simple and beautiful record of a holy life, the Journal of John Woolman, there is a passage of which I have been more than once reminded in my intercourse with my fellow-beings: "Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance."

Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world calls beautiful. Through its "silver veil" the evil and ungentle passions looked out hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the multitude at the first glance pronounce homely, unattractive, and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill; not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories; they are beautiful through their associations; nor are they any the less welcome that with my admiration of them "the stranger intermeddleth not."

THE WORLD'S END.

"Our Father Time is weak and gray, Awaiting for the better day; See how idiot-like he stands, Fumbling his old palsied hands!" SHELLEY's Masque of Anarchy.

"STAGE ready, gentlemen! Stage for campground, Derry! Second Advent camp-meeting!"

Accustomed as I begin to feel to the ordinary sights and sounds of this busy city, I was, I confess, somewhat startled by this business-like annunciation from the driver of a stage, who stood beside his horses swinging his whip with some degree of impatience: "Seventy-five cents to the Second Advent camp-ground!"

The stage was soon filled; the driver cracked his whip and went rattling down the street.

The Second Advent,--the coming of our Lord in person upon this earth, with signs, and wonders, and terrible judgments,--the heavens robing together as a scroll, the elements melting with fervent heat! The mighty consummation of all things at hand, with its destruction and its triumphs, sad wailings of the lost and rejoicing songs of the glorified! From this overswarming hive of industry,--from these crowded treadmills of gain,--here were men and women going out in solemn earnestness to prepare for the dread moment which they verily suppose is only a few months distant,--to lift up their warning voices in the midst of scoffers and doubters, and to cry aloud to blind priests and careless churches, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh!"

It was one of the most lovely mornings of this loveliest season of the year; a warm, soft atmosphere; clear sunshine falling on the city spires and roofs; the hills of Dracut quiet and green in the distance, with their white farm-houses and scattered trees; around me the continual tread of footsteps hurrying to the toils of the day; merchants spreading out their wares for the eyes of purchasers; sounds of hammers, the sharp clink of trowels, the murmur of the great manufactories subdued by distance. How was it possible, in the midst of so much life, in that sunrise light, and in view of all abounding beauty, that the idea of the death of Nature--the baptism of the world in fire--could take such a practical shape as this? Yet here were sober, intelligent men, gentle and pious women, who, verily believing the end to be close at hand, had left their counting-rooms, and workshops, and household cares to publish the great tidings, and to startle, if possible, a careless and unbelieving generation into preparation for the day of the Lord and for that blessed millennium,--the restored paradise,--when, renovated and renewed by its fire-purgation, the earth shall become as of old the garden of the Lord, and the saints alone shall inherit it.

Very serious and impressive is the fact that this idea of a radical change in our planet is not only predicted in the Scriptures, but that the Earth herself, in her primitive rocks and varying formations, on which are lithographed the history of successive convulsions, darkly prophesies of others to come. The old poet prophets, all the world over, have sung of a renovated world. A vision of it haunted the contemplations of Plato. It is seen in the half-inspired speculations of the old Indian mystics. The Cumaean sibyl saw it in her trances. The apostles and martyrs of our faith looked for it anxiously and hopefully. Gray anchorites in the deserts, worn pilgrims to the holy places of Jewish and Christian tradition, prayed for its coming. It inspired the gorgeous visions of the early fathers. In every age since the Christian era, from the caves, and forests, and secluded "upper chambers" of the times of the first missionaries of the cross, from the Gothic temples of the Middle Ages, from the bleak mountain gorges of the Alps, where the hunted heretics put up their expostulation, "How long, O Lord, how long?" down to the present time, and from this Derry campground, have been uttered the prophecy and the prayer for its fulfilment.

How this great idea manifests itself in the lives of the enthusiasts of the days of Cromwell! Think of Sir Henry Vane, cool, sagacious statesman as he was, waiting with eagerness for the foreshadowings of the millennium, and listening, even in the very council hall, for the blast of the last trumpet! Think of the Fifth Monarchy Men, weary with waiting for the long-desired consummation, rushing out with drawn swords and loaded matchlocks into the streets of London to establish at once the rule of King Jesus! Think of the wild enthusiasts at Munster, verily imagining that the millennial reign had commenced in their mad city! Still later, think of Granville Sharpe, diligently laboring in his vocation of philanthropy, laying plans for the slow but beneficent amelioration of the condition of his country and the world, and at the same time maintaining, with the zeal of Father Miller himself, that the earth was just on the point of combustion, and that the millennium would render all his benevolent schemes of no sort of consequence!

And, after all, is the idea itself a vain one? Shall to-morrow be as to-day? Shall the antagonism of good and evil continue as heretofore forever? Is there no hope that this world-wide prophecy of the human soul, uttered in all climes, in all times, shall yet be fulfilled? Who shall say it may not be true? Nay, is not its truth proved by its universality? The hope of all earnest souls must be realized. That which, through a distorted and doubtful medium, shone even upon the martyr enthusiasts of the French revolution,--soft gleams of heaven's light rising over the hell of man's passions and crimes,--the glorious ideal of Shelley, who, atheist as he was through early prejudice and defective education, saw the horizon of the world's future kindling with the light of a better day,--that hope and that faith which constitute, as it were, the world's life, and without which it would be dark and dead, cannot be in vain.

I do not, I confess, sympathize with my Second Advent friends in their lamentable depreciation of Mother Earth even in her present state. I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how it is that this goodly, green, sunlit home of ours is resting under a curse. It really does not seem to me to be altogether like the roll which the angel bore in the prophet's vision, "written within and without with mourning, lamentation, and woe." September sunsets, changing forests, moonrise and cloud, sun and rain,--I for one am contented with them. They fill my heart with a sense of beauty. I see in them the perfect work of infinite love as well as wisdom. It may be that our Advent friends, however, coincide with the opinions of an old writer on the prophecies, who considered the hills and valleys of the earth's surface and its changes of seasons as so many visible manifestations of God's curse, and that in the millennium, as in the days of Adam's innocence, all these picturesque inequalities would be levelled nicely away, and the flat surface laid handsomely down to grass.

As might be expected, the effect of this belief in the speedy destruction of the world and the personal coming of the Messiah, acting upon a class of uncultivated, and, in some cases, gross minds, is not always in keeping with the enlightened Christian's ideal of the better day. One is shocked in reading some of the "hymns" of these believers. Sensual images,--semi-Mahometan descriptions of the condition of the "saints,"--exultations over the destruction of the "sinners,"--mingle with the beautiful and soothing promises of the prophets. There are indeed occasionally to be found among the believers men of refined and exalted spiritualism, who in their lives and conversation remind one of Tennyson's Christian knight-errant in his yearning towards the hope set before him:

"to me is given Such hope I may not fear; I long to breathe the airs of heaven, Which sometimes meet me here.

"I muse on joys that cannot cease, Pure spaces filled with living beams, White lilies of eternal peace, Whose odors haunt my dreams."

One of the most ludicrous examples of the sensual phase of Millerism, the incongruous blending of the sublime with the ridiculous, was mentioned to me not long since. A fashionable young woman in the western part of this State became an enthusiastic believer in the doctrine. On the day which had been designated as the closing one of time she packed all her fine dresses and toilet valuables in a large trunk, with long straps attached to it, and, seating herself upon it, buckled the straps over her shoulders, patiently awaiting the crisis,-- shrewdly calculating that, as she must herself go upwards, her goods and chattels would of necessity follow.

Three or four years ago, on my way eastward, I spent an hour or two at a camp-ground of the Second Advent in East Kingston. The spot was well chosen. A tall growth of pine and hemlock threw its melancholy shadow over the multitude, who were arranged upon rough seats of boards and logs. Several hundred--perhaps a thousand people--were present, and more were rapidly coming. Drawn about in a circle, forming a background of snowy whiteness to the dark masses of men and foliage, were the white tents, and back of them the provision-stalls and cook-shops. When I reached the ground, a hymn, the words of which I could not distinguish, was pealing through the dim aisles of the forest. I could readily perceive that it had its effect upon the multitude before me, kindling to higher intensity their already excited enthusiasm. The preachers were placed in a rude pulpit of rough boards, carpeted only by the dead forest-leaves and flowers, and tasselled, not with silk and velvet, but with the green boughs of the sombre hemlocks around it. One of them followed the music in an earnest exhortation on the duty of preparing for the great event. Occasionally he was really eloquent, and his description of the last day had the ghastly distinctness of Anelli's painting of the End of the World.

Suspended from the front of the rude pulpit were two broad sheets of canvas, upon one of which was the figure of a man, the head of gold, the breast and arms of silver, the belly of brass, the legs of iron, and feet of clay,--the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. On the other were depicted the wonders of the Apocalyptic vision,--the beasts, the dragons, the scarlet woman seen by the seer of Patmos, Oriental types, figures, and mystic symbols, translated into staring Yankee realities, and exhibited like the beasts of a travelling menagerie. One horrible image, with its hideous heads and scaly caudal extremity, reminded me of the tremendous line of Milton, who, in speaking of the same evil dragon, describes him as

"Swinging the scaly horrors of his folded tail."

To an imaginative mind the scene was full of novel interest. The white circle of tents; the dim wood arches; the upturned, earnest faces; the loud voices of the speakers, burdened with the awful symbolic language of the Bible; the smoke from the fires, rising like incense,--carried me back to those days of primitive worship which tradition faintly whispers of, when on hill-tops and in the shade of old woods Religion had her first altars, with every man for her priest and the whole universe for her temple.

Wisely and truthfully has Dr. Channing spoken of this doctrine of the Second Advent in his memorable discourse in Berkshire a little before his death:--

"There are some among us at the present moment who are waiting for the speedy coming of Christ. They expect, before another year closes, to see Him in the clouds, to hear His voice, to stand before His judgment- seat. These illusions spring from misinterpretation of Scripture language. Christ, in the New Testament, is said to come whenever His religion breaks out in new glory or gains new triumphs. He came in the Holy Spirit in the day of Pentecost. He came in the destruction of Jerusalem, which, by subverting the old ritual law and breaking the power of the worst enemies of His religion, insured to it new victories. He came in the reformation of the Church. He came on this day four years ago, when, through His religion, eight hundred thousand men were raised from the lowest degradation to the rights, and dignity, and fellowship of men. Christ's outward appearance is of little moment compared with the brighter manifestation of His spirit. The Christian, whose inward eyes and ears are touched by God, discerns the coming of Christ, hears the sound of His chariot-wheels and the voice of His trumpet, when no other perceives them. He discerns the Saviour's advent in the dawning of higher truth on the world, in new aspirations of the Church after perfection, in the prostration of prejudice and error, in brighter expressions of Christian love, in more enlightened and intense consecration of the Christian to the cause of humanity, freedom, and religion. Christ comes in the conversion, the regeneration, the emancipation, of the world."

THE HEROINE OF LONG POINT. (1869.)

LOOKING at the Government Chart of Lake Erie, one sees the outlines of a long, narrow island, stretching along the shore of Canada West, opposite the point where Loudon District pushes its low, wooded wedge into the lake. This is Long Point Island, known and dreaded by the navigators of the inland sea which batters its yielding shores, and tosses into fantastic shapes its sandheaps. The eastern end is some twenty miles from the Canada shore, while on the west it is only separated from the mainland by a narrow strait known as "The Cut." It is a sandy, desolate region, broken by small ponds, with dreary tracts of fenland, its ridges covered with a low growth of pine, oak, beech, and birch, in the midst of which, in its season, the dogwood puts out its white blossoms. Wild grapes trail over the sand-dunes and festoon the dwarf trees. Here and there are almost impenetrable swamps, thick-set with white cedars, intertwisted and contorted by the lake winds, and broken by the weight of snow and ice in winter. Swans and wild geese paddle in the shallow, reedy bayous; raccoons and even deer traverse the sparsely wooded ridges. The shores of its creeks and fens are tenanted by minks and muskrats. The tall tower of a light-house rises at the eastern extremity of the island, the keeper of which is now its solitary inhabitant.

Fourteen years ago, another individual shared the proprietorship of Long Point. This was John Becker, who dwelt on the south side of the island, near its westerly termination, in a miserable board shanty nestled between naked sand-hills. He managed to make a poor living by trapping and spearing muskrats, the skins of which he sold to such boatmen and small-craft skippers as chanced to land on his forlorn territory. His wife, a large, mild-eyed, patient young woman of some twenty-six years, kept her hut and children as tidy as circumstances admitted, assisted her husband in preparing the skins, and sometimes accompanied him on his trapping excursions.

On that lonely coast, seldom visited in summer, and wholly cut off from human communication in winter, they might have lived and died with as little recognition from the world as the minks and wildfowl with whom they were tenants in common, but for a circumstance which called into exercise unsuspected qualities of generous courage and heroic self- sacrifice.

The dark, stormy close of November, 1854, found many vessels on Lake Erie, but the fortunes of one alone have special interest for us. About that time the schooner Conductor, owned by John McLeod, of the Provincial Parliament, a resident of Amherstburg, at the mouth of the Detroit River, entered the lake from that river, bound for Port Dalhousie, at the mouth of the Welland Canal.

She was heavily loaded with grain. Her crew consisted of Captain Hackett, a Highlander by birth, and a skilful and experienced navigator, and six sailors. At nightfall, shortly after leaving the head of the lake, one of those terrific storms, with which the late autumnal navigators of that "Sea of the Woods" are all too familiar, overtook them. The weather was intensely cold for the season; the air was filled with snow and sleet; the chilled water made ice rapidly, encumbering the schooner, and loading down her decks and rigging. As the gale increased, the tops of the waves were shorn off by the fierce blasts, clouding the whole atmosphere with frozen spray, or what the sailors call "spoondrift," rendering it impossible to see any object a few rods distant. Driving helplessly before the wind, yet in the direction of her place of destination, the schooner sped through the darkness. At last, near midnight, running closer than her crew supposed to the Canadian shore, she struck on the outer bar off Long Point Island, beat heavily across it, and sunk in the deeper water between it and the inner bar. The hull was entirely submerged, the waves rolling in heavily, and dashing over the rigging, to which the crew betook themselves. Lashed there, numb with cold, drenched by the pitiless waves, and scourged by the showers of sleet driven before the wind, they waited for morning. The slow, dreadful hours wore away, and at length the dubious and doubtful gray of a morning of tempest succeeded to the utter darkness of night.

Abigail Becker chanced at that time to be in her hut with none but her young children. Her husband was absent on the Canada shore, and she was left the sole adult occupant of the island, save the light-keeper, at its lower end, some fifteen miles off. Looking out at daylight on the beach in front of her door, she saw the shattered boat of the Conductor, east up by the waves. Her experience of storm and disaster on that dangerous coast needed nothing more to convince her that somewhere in her neighborhood human life had been, or still was, in peril. She followed the southwesterly trend of the island for a little distance, and, peering through the gloom of the stormy morning, discerned the spars of the sunken schooner, with what seemed to be human forms clinging to the rigging. The heart of the strong woman sunk within her, as she gazed upon those helpless fellow-creatures, so near, yet so unapproachable. She had no boat, and none could have lived on that wild water. After a moment's reflection she went back to her dwelling, put the smaller children in charge of the eldest, took with her an iron kettle, tin teapot, and matches, and returned to the beach, at the nearest point to the vessel; and, gathering up the logs and drift-wood always abundant, on the coast, kindled a great fire, and, constantly walking back and forth between it and the water, strove to intimate to the sufferers that they were at least not beyond human sympathy. As the wrecked sailors looked shoreward, and saw, through the thick haze of snow and sleet, the red light of the fire and the tall figure of the woman passing to and fro before it, a faint hope took the place of the utter despair which had prompted them to let go their hold and drop into the seething waters, that opened and closed about them like the jaws of death. But the day wore on, bringing no abatement of the storm that tore through the frail spars, and clutched at and tossed them as it passed, and drenched them with ice-cold spray,--a pitiless, unrelenting horror of sight, sound, and touch! At last the deepening gloom told them that night was approaching, and night under such circumstances was death.

All day long Abigail Becker had fed her fire, and sought to induce the sailors by signals--for even her strong voice could not reach them--to throw themselves into the surf, and trust to Providence and her for succor. In anticipation of this, she had her kettle boiling over the drift-wood, and her tea ready made for restoring warmth and life to the half-frozen survivors. But either they did not understand her, or the chance of rescue seemed too small to induce them to abandon the temporary safety of the wreck. They clung to it with the desperate instinct of life brought face to face with death. Just at nightfall there was a slight break in the west; a red light glared across the thick air, as if for one instant the eye of the storm looked out upon the ruin it had wrought, and closed again under lids of cloud. Taking advantage of this, the solitary watcher ashore made one more effort. She waded out into the water, every drop of which, as it struck the beach, became a particle of ice, and stretching out and drawing in her arms, invited, by her gestures, the sailors to throw themselves into the waves, and strive to reach her. Captain Hackett understood her. He called to his mate in the rigging of the other mast: "It is our last chance. I will try! If I live, follow me; if I drown, stay where you are!" With a great effort he got off his stiffly frozen overcoat, paused for one moment in silent commendation of his soul to God, and, throwing himself into the waves, struck out for the shore. Abigail Becker, breast-deep in the surf, awaited him. He was almost within her reach, when the undertow swept him back. By a mighty exertion she caught hold of him, bore him in her strong arms out of the water, and, laying him down by her fire, warmed his chilled blood with copious draughts of hot tea. The mate, who had watched the rescue, now followed, and the captain, partially restored, insisted upon aiding him. As the former neared the shore, the recoiling water baffled him. Captain Hackett caught hold of him, but the undertow swept them both away, locked in each other's arms. The brave woman plunged after them, and, with the strength of a giantess, bore them, clinging to each other, to the shore, and up to her fire. The five sailors followed in succession, and were all rescued in the same way.

A few days after, Captain Hackett and his crew were taken off Long Point by a passing vessel; and Abigail Becker resumed her simple daily duties without dreaming that she had done anything extraordinary enough to win for her the world's notice. In her struggle every day for food and warmth for her children, she had no leisure for the indulgence of self- congratulation. Like the woman of Scripture, she had only "done what she could," in the terrible exigency that had broken the dreary monotony of her life.

It so chanced, however, that a gentleman from Buffalo, E. P. Dorr, who had, in his early days, commanded a vessel on the lake, found himself, shortly after, at a small port on the Canada shore, not far from Long Point Island. Here he met an old shipmate, Captain Davis, whose vessel had gone ashore at a more favorable point, and who related to him the circumstances of the wreck of the Conductor. Struck by the account, Captain Dorr procured a sleigh and drove across the frozen bay to the shanty of Abigail Becker. He found her with her six children, all thinly clad and barefooted in the bitter cold. She stood there six feet or more of substantial womanhood,--not in her stockings, for she had none,--a veritable daughter of Anak, broad-bosomed, large-limbed, with great, patient blue eyes, whose very smile had a certain pathos, as if one saw in it her hard and weary life-experience. She might have passed for any amiable giantess, or one of those much--developed maids of honor who tossed Gulliver from hand to hand in the court of Brobdingnag. The thing that most surprised her visitor was the childlike simplicity of the woman, her utter unconsciousness of deserving anything for an action that seemed to her merely a matter of course. When he expressed his admiration with all the warmth of a generous nature, she only opened her wide blue eyes still wider with astonishment.

"Well, I don't know," she said, slowly, as if pondering the matter for the first time,--"I don't know as I did more 'n I'd ought to, nor more'n I'd do again."

Before Captain Dorr left, he took the measure of her own and her children's feet, and on his return to Buffalo sent her a box containing shoes, stockings, and such other comfortable articles of clothing as they most needed. He published a brief account of his visit to the heroine of Long Point, which attracted the attention of some members of the Provincial Parliament, and through their exertions a grant of one hundred acres of land, on the Canada shore, near Port Rowan, was made to her. Soon after she was invited to Buffalo, where she naturally excited much interest. A generous contribution of one thousand dollars, to stock her farm, was made by the merchants, ship-owners and masters of the city, and she returned to her family a grateful and, in her own view, a rich woman.

When the story of her adventure reached New York, the Life-Saving Benevolent Association sent her a gold medal with an appropriate inscription, and a request that she would send back a receipt in her own name. As she did not know how to write, Captain Dorr hit upon the expedient of having her photograph taken with the medal in her hand, and sent that in lieu of her autograph.

In a recent letter dictated at Walsingham, where Abigail Becker now lives,--a widow, cultivating with her own hands her little farm in the wilderness,--she speaks gratefully of the past and hopefully of the future. She mentions a message received from Captain Hackett, who she feared had almost forgotten her, that he was about to make her a visit, adding with a touch of shrewdness: "After his second shipwreck last summer, I think likely that I must have recurred very fresh to him."

The strong lake winds now blow unchecked over the sand-hills where once stood the board shanty of Abigail Becker. But the summer tourist of the great lakes, who remembers her story, will not fail to give her a place in his imagination with Perry's battle-line and the Indian heroines of Cooper and Longfellow. Through her the desolate island of Long Point is richly dowered with the interest which a brave and generous action gives to its locality.

VOLUME VI. OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES, plus PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES and HISTORICAL PAPERS

CONTENTS

OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES. JOHN BUNYAN THOMAS ELLWOOD JAMES NAYLER ANDREW MARVELL JOHN ROBERTS SAMUEL HOPKINS RICHARD BAXTER WILLIAM LEGGETT NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS ROBERT DINSMORE PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET

PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES. THE FUNERAL OF TORREY EDWARD EVERETT LEWIS TAPPAN BAYARD TAYLOR WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD LYDIA MARIA CHILD

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES LONGFELLOW OLD NEWBURY SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE

HISTORICAL PAPERS. DANIEL O'CONNELL ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II. THE BORDER WAR OF 1708 THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT THE BOY CAPTIVES THE BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 1812 THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH GOVERNOR ENDICOTT JOHN WINTHROP

OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES

Inscribed as follows, when first collected in book-form:-- To Dr. G. BAILEY, of the National Era, Washington, D. C., these sketches, many of which originally appeared in the columns of the paper under his editorial supervision, are, in their present form, offered as a token of the esteem and confidence which years of political and literary communion have justified and confirmed, on the part of his friend and associate, THE AUTHOR.

JOHN BUNYAN.

"Wouldst see A man I' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?"

Who has not read Pilgrim's Progress? Who has not, in childhood, followed the wandering Christian on his way to the Celestial City? Who has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the walls of darkness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and Vanity Fair, the sunny Delectable Mountains and the Shepherds, the Black River and the wonderful glory beyond it; and at last fallen asleep, to dream over the strange story, to hear the sweet welcomings of the sisters at the House Beautiful, and the song of birds from the window of that "upper chamber which opened towards the sunrising?" And who, looking back to the green spots in his childish experiences, does not bless the good Tinker of Elstow?

And who, that has reperused the story of the Pilgrim at a maturer age, and felt the plummet of its truth sounding in the deep places of the soul, has not reason to bless the author for some timely warning or grateful encouragement? Where is the scholar, the poet, the man of taste and feeling, who does not, with Cowper,

"Even in transitory life's late day, Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road, And guides the Progress of the soul to God!"

We have just been reading, with no slight degree of interest, that simple but wonderful piece of autobiography, entitled Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, from the pen of the author of Pilgrim's Progress. It is the record of a journey more terrible than that of the ideal Pilgrim; "truth stranger than fiction;" the painful upward struggling of a spirit from the blackness of despair and blasphemy, into the high, pure air of Hope and Faith. More earnest words were never written. It is the entire unveiling of a human heart; the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of its sin. The voice which speaks to us from these old pages seems not so much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to self-gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only desirous to convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of his inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and dangers; and to give glory to Him who had mercifully led him through all, and enabled him, like his own Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the snares of the Enchanted Ground, and the terrors of Doubting Castle, and to reach the land of Beulah, where the air was sweet and pleasant, and the birds sang and the flowers sprang up around him, and the Shining Ones walked in the brightness of the not distant Heaven. In the introductory pages he says "he could have dipped into a style higher than this in which I have discoursed, and could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do; but I dared not. God did not play in tempting me; neither did I play when I sunk, as it were, into a bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell took hold on me; wherefore, I may not play in relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was."

This book, as well as Pilgrim's Progress, was written in Bedford prison, and was designed especially for the comfort and edification of his "children, whom God had counted him worthy to beget in faith by his ministry." In his introduction he tells them, that, although taken from them, and tied up, "sticking, as it were, between the teeth of the lions of the wilderness," he once again, as before, from the top of Shemer and Hermon, so now, from the lion's den and the mountain of leopards, would look after then with fatherly care and desires for their everlasting welfare. "If," said he, "you have sinned against light; if you are tempted to blaspheme; if you are drowned in despair; if you think God fights against you; or if Heaven is hidden from your eyes, remember it was so with your father. But out of all the Lord delivered me."

He gives no dates; he affords scarcely a clue to his localities; of the man, as he worked, and ate, and drank, and lodged, of his neighbors and contemporaries, of all he saw and heard of the world about him, we have only an occasional glimpse, here and there, in his narrative. It is the story of his inward life only that he relates. What had time and place to do with one who trembled always with the awful consciousness of an immortal nature, and about whom fell alternately the shadows of hell and the splendors of heaven? We gather, indeed, from his record, that he was not an idle on-looker in the time of England's great struggle for freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament, in his young years, among the praying sworders and psalm-singing pikemen, the Greathearts and Holdfasts whom he has immortalized in his allegory; but the only allusion which he makes to this portion of his experience is by way of illustration of the goodness of God in preserving him on occasions of peril.

He was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in 1628; and, to use his own words, his "father's house was of that rank which is the meanest and most despised of all the families of the land." His father was a tinker, and the son followed the same calling, which necessarily brought him into association with the lowest and most depraved classes of English society. The estimation in which the tinker and his occupation were held, in the seventeenth century, may be learned from the quaint and humorous description of Sir Thomas Overbury. "The tinker," saith he, "is a movable, for he hath no abiding in one place; he seems to be devout, for his life is a continual pilgrimage, and sometimes, in humility, goes barefoot, therein making necessity a virtue; he is a gallant, for he carries all his wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he bears all his substance with him. He is always furnished with a song, to which his hammer, keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder of the kettle- drum; where the best ale is, there stands his music most upon crotchets. The companion of his travel is some foul, sun-burnt quean, that, since the terrible statute, has recanted gypsyism, and is turned pedlaress. So marches he all over England, with his bag and baggage; his conversation is irreprovable, for he is always mending. He observes truly the statutes, and therefore had rather steal than beg. He is so strong an enemy of idleness, that in mending one hole he would rather make three than want work; and when he hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults behind him. His tongue is very voluble, which, with canting, proves him a linguist. He is entertained in every place, yet enters no farther than the door, to avoid suspicion. To conclude, if he escape Tyburn and Banbury, he dies a beggar."

Truly, but a poor beginning for a pious life was the youth of John Bunyan. As might have been expected, he was a wild, reckless, swearing boy, as his father doubtless was before him. "It was my delight," says he, "to be taken captive by the Devil. I had few equals, both for cursing and swearing, lying and blaspheming." Yet, in his ignorance and darkness, his powerful imagination early lent terror to the reproaches of conscience. He was scared, even in childhood, with dreams of hell and apparitions of devils. Troubled with fears of eternal fire, and the malignant demons who fed it in the regions of despair, he says that he often wished either that there was no hell, or that he had been born a devil himself, that he might be a tormentor rather than one of the tormented.

At an early age he appears to have married. His wife was as poor as himself, for he tells us that they had not so much as a dish or spoon between them; but she brought with her two books on religious subjects, the reading of which seems to have had no slight degree of influence on his mind. He went to church regularly, adored the priest and all things pertaining to his office, being, as he says, "overrun with superstition." On one occasion, a sermon was preached against the breach of the Sabbath by sports or labor, which struck him at the moment as especially designed for himself; but by the time he had finished his dinner he was prepared to "shake it out of his mind, and return to his sports and gaming."

"But the same day," he continues, "as I was in the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it a second time, a voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' At this, I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to Heaven, and it was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus look down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for those and other ungodly practices.

"I had no sooner thus conceived in my mind, but suddenly this conclusion fastened on my spirit, (for the former hint did set my sins again before my face,) that I had been a great and grievous sinner, and that it was now too late for me to look after Heaven; for Christ would not forgive me nor pardon my transgressions. Then, while I was thinking of it, and fearing lest it should be so, I felt my heart sink in despair, concluding it was too late; and therefore I resolved in my mind to go on in sin; for, thought I, if the case be thus, my state is surely miserable; miserable if I leave my sins, and but miserable if I follow them; I can but be damned; and if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins as be damned for few."

The reader of Pilgrim's Progress cannot fail here to call to mind the wicked suggestions of the Giant to Christian, in the dungeon of Doubting Castle.

"I returned," he says, "desperately to my sport again; and I well remember, that presently this kind of despair did so possess my soul, that I was persuaded I could never attain to other comfort than what I should get in sin; for Heaven was gone already, so that on that I must not think; wherefore, I found within me great desire to take my fill of sin, that I might taste the sweetness of it; and I made as much haste as I could to fill my belly with its delicates, lest I should die before I had my desires; for that I feared greatly. In these things, I protest before God, I lie not, neither do I frame this sort of speech; these were really, strongly, and with all my heart, my desires; the good Lord, whose mercy is unsearchable, forgive my transgressions."

One day, while standing in the street, cursing and blaspheming, he met with a reproof which startled him. The woman of the house in front of which the wicked young tinker was standing, herself, as he remarks, "a very loose, ungodly wretch," protested that his horrible profanity made her tremble; that he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing she had ever heard, and able to spoil all the youth of the town who came in his company. Struck by this wholly unexpected rebuke, he at once abandoned the practice of swearing; although previously he tells us that "he had never known how to speak, unless he put an oath before and another behind."

The good name which he gained by this change was now a temptation to him. "My neighbors," he says, "were amazed at my great conversion from prodigious profaneness to something like a moral life and sober man. Now, therefore, they began to praise, to commend, and to speak well of me, both to my face and behind my back. Now I was, as they said, become godly; now I was become a right honest man. But oh! when I understood those were their words and opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well; for though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly. I was proud of my godliness, and, indeed, I did all I did either to be seen of or well spoken of by men; and thus I continued for about a twelvemonth or more."

The tyranny of his imagination at this period is seen in the following relation of his abandonment of one of his favorite sports.

"Now, you must know, that before this I had taken much delight in ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such practice was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my mind hankered; wherefore, I would go to the steeple-house and look on, though I durst not ring; but I thought this did not become religion neither; yet I forced myself, and would look on still. But quickly after, I began to think, 'How if one of the bells should fall?' Then I chose to stand under a main beam, that lay overthwart the steeple, from side to side, thinking here I might stand sure; but then I thought again, should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then, rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made me stand in the steeple door; and now, thought I, I am safe enough; for if a bell should then fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be preserved notwithstanding.

"So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would not go any farther than the steeple-door. But then it came in my head, 'How if the steeple itself should fall?' And this thought (it may, for aught I know, when I stood and looked on) did continually so shake my mind, that I durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee, for fear the steeple should fall upon my head."

About this time, while wandering through Bedford in pursuit of employment, he chanced to see three or four poor old women sitting at a door, in the evening sun, and, drawing near them, heard them converse upon the things of God; of His work in their hearts; of their natural depravity; of the temptations of the Adversary; and of the joy of believing, and of the peace of reconciliation. The words of the aged women found a response in the soul of the listener. "He felt his heart shake," to use his own words; he saw that he lacked the true tokens of a Christian. He now forsook the company of the profane and licentious, and sought that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety, but, to his grief, he found him "a devilish ranter, given up to all manner of uncleanness; he would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety, and deny that there was a God, an angel, or a spirit."

"Neither," he continues, "was this man only a temptation to me, but, my calling lying in the country, I happened to come into several people's company, who, though strict in religion formerly, yet were also drawn away by these ranters. These would also talk with me of their ways, and condemn me as illegal and dark; pretending that they only had attained to perfection, that they could do what they would, and not sin. Oh! these temptations were suitable to my flesh, I being but a young man, and my nature in its prime; but God, who had, as I hope, designed me for better things, kept me in the fear of His name, and did not suffer me to accept such cursed principles."

At this time he was sadly troubled to ascertain whether or not he had that faith which the Scriptures spake of. Travelling one day from Elstow to Bedford, after a recent rain, which had left pools of water in the path, he felt a strong desire to settle the question, by commanding the pools to become dry, and the dry places to become pools. Going under the hedge, to pray for ability to work the miracle, he was struck with the thought that if he failed he should know, indeed, that he was a castaway, and give himself up to despair. He dared not attempt the experiment, and went on his way, to use his own forcible language, "tossed up and down between the Devil and his own ignorance."

Soon after, he had one of those visions which foreshadowed the wonderful dream of his Pilgrim's Progress. He saw some holy people of Bedford on the sunny side of an high mountain, refreshing themselves in the pleasant air and sunlight, while he was shivering in cold and darkness, amidst snows and never-melting ices, like the victims of the Scandinavian hell. A wall compassed the mountain, separating him from the blessed, with one small gap or doorway, through which, with great pain and effort, he was at last enabled to work his way into the sunshine, and sit down with the saints, in the light and warmth thereof.

But now a new trouble assailed him. Like Milton's metaphysical spirits, who sat apart,

"And reasoned of foreknowledge, will, and fate," he grappled with one of those great questions which have always perplexed and baffled human inquiry, and upon which much has been written to little purpose. He was tortured with anxiety to know whether, according to the Westminster formula, he was elected to salvation or damnation. His old adversary vexed his soul with evil suggestions, and even quoted Scripture to enforce them. "It may be you are not elected," said the Tempter; and the poor tinker thought the supposition altogether too probable. "Why, then," said Satan, "you had as good leave off, and strive no farther; for if, indeed, you should not be elected and chosen of God, there is no hope of your being saved; for it is neither in him that willeth nor in him that runneth, but in God who showeth mercy." At length, when, as he says, he was about giving up the ghost of all his hopes, this passage fell with weight upon his spirit: "Look at the generations of old, and see; did ever any trust in God, and were confounded?" Comforted by these words, he opened his Bible took note them, but the most diligent search and inquiry of his neighbors failed to discover them. At length his eye fell upon them in the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus. This, he says, somewhat doubted him at first, as the book was not canonical; but in the end he took courage and comfort from the passage. "I bless God," he says, "for that word; it was good for me. That word doth still oftentimes shine before my face."

A long and weary struggle was now before him. "I cannot," he says, "express with what longings and breathings of my soul I cried unto Christ to call me. Gold! could it have been gotten by gold, what would I have given for it. Had I a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times over for this, that my soul might have been in a converted state. How lovely now was every one in my eyes, that I thought to be converted men and women. They shone, they walked like a people who carried the broad seal of Heaven with them."

With what force and intensity of language does he portray in the following passage the reality and earnestness of his agonizing experience:--

"While I was thus afflicted with the fears of my own damnation, there were two things would make me wonder: the one was, when I saw old people hunting after the things of this life, as if they should live here always; the other was, when I found professors much distressed and cast down, when they met with outward losses; as of husband, wife, or child. Lord, thought I, what seeking after carnal things by some, and what grief in others for the loss of them! If they so much labor after and shed so many tears for the things of this present life, how am I to be bemoaned, pitied, and prayed for! My soul is dying, my soul is damning. Were my soul but in a good condition, and were I but sure of it, ah I how rich should I esteem myself, though blessed but with bread and water! I should count these but small afflictions, and should bear them as little burdens. 'A wounded spirit who can bear!'"

He looked with envy, as he wandered through the country, upon the birds in the trees, the hares in the preserves, and the fishes in the streams. They were happy in their brief existence, and their death was but a sleep. He felt himself alienated from God, a discord in the harmonies of the universe. The very rooks which fluttered around the old church spire seemed more worthy of the Creator's love and care than himself. A vision of the infernal fire, like that glimpse of hell which was afforded to Christian by the Shepherds, was continually before him, with its "rumbling noise, and the cry of some tormented, and the scent of brimstone." Whithersoever he went, the glare of it scorched him, and its dreadful sound was in his ears. His vivid but disturbed imagination lent new terrors to the awful figures by which the sacred writers conveyed the idea of future retribution to the Oriental mind. Bunyan's World of Woe, if it lacked the colossal architecture and solemn vastness of Milton's Pandemonium, was more clearly defined; its agonies were within the pale of human comprehension; its victims were men and women, with the same keen sense of corporeal suffering which they possessed in life; and who, to use his own terrible description, had "all the loathed variety of hell to grapple with; fire unquenchable, a lake of choking brimstone, eternal chains, darkness more black than night, the everlasting gnawing of the worm, the sight of devils, and the yells and outcries of the damned."

His mind at this period was evidently shaken in some degree from its balance. He was troubled with strange, wicked thoughts, confused by doubts and blasphemous suggestions, for which he could only account by supposing himself possessed of the Devil. He wanted to curse and swear, and had to clap his hands on his mouth to prevent it. In prayer, he felt, as he supposed, Satan behind him, pulling his clothes, and telling him to have done, and break off; suggesting that he had better pray to him, and calling up before his mind's eye the figures of a bull, a tree, or some other object, instead of the awful idea of God.

He notes here, as cause of thankfulness, that, even in this dark and clouded state, he was enabled to see the "vile and abominable things fomented by the Quakers," to be errors. Gradually, the shadow wherein he had so long

"Walked beneath the day's broad glare, A darkened man,"

passed from him, and for a season he was afforded an "evidence of his salvation from Heaven, with many golden seals thereon hanging in his sight." But, ere long, other temptations assailed him. A strange suggestion haunted him, to sell or part with his Saviour. His own account of this hallucination is too painfully vivid to awaken any other feeling than that of sympathy and sadness.

"I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast mine eye to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come, Sell Christ for this, or sell Christ for that; sell him, sell him.

"Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so little as a hundred times together, Sell him, sell him; against which, I may say, for whole hours together, I have been forced to stand as continually leaning and forcing my spirit against it, lest haply, before I were aware, some wicked thought might arise in my heart, that might consent thereto; and sometimes the tempter would make me believe I had consented to it; but then I should be as tortured upon a rack, for whole days together.

"This temptation did put me to such scares, lest I should at sometimes, I say, consent thereto, and be overcome therewith, that, by the very force of my mind, my very body would be put into action or motion, by way of pushing or thrusting with my hands or elbows; still answering, as fast as the destroyer said, Sell him, I will not, I will not, I will not; no, not for thousands, thousands, thousands of worlds; thus reckoning, lest I should set too low a value on him, even until I scarce well knew where I was, or how to be composed again.

"But to be brief: one morning, as I did lie in my bed, I was, as at other times, most fiercely assaulted with this temptation, to sell and part with Christ; the wicked suggestion still running in my mind, Sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, as fast as a man could speak; against which, also, in my mind, as at other times, I answered, No, no, not for thousands, thousands, thousands, at least twenty times together; but at last, after much striving, I felt this thought pass through my heart, Let him go if he will; and I thought also, that I felt my heart freely consent thereto. Oh, the diligence of Satan! Oh, the desperateness of man's heart!

"Now was the battle won, and down fell I, as a bird that is shot from the top of a tree, into great guilt, and fearful despair. Thus getting out of my bed, I went moping into the field; but God knows with as heavy a heart as mortal man, I think, could bear; where, for the space of two hours, I was like a man bereft of life; and, as now, past all recovery, and bound over to eternal punishment.

"And withal, that Scripture did seize upon my soul: 'Or profane person, as Esau, who, for one morsel of meat, sold his birthright; for ye know, how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."

For two years and a half, as he informs us, that awful scripture sounded in his ears like the knell of a lost soul. He believed that he had committed they unpardonable sin. His mental anguish 'was united with bodily illness and suffering. His nervous system became fearfully deranged; his limbs trembled; and he supposed this visible tremulousness and agitation to be the mark of Cain. 'Troubled with pain and distressing sensations in his chest, he began to fear that his breast- bone would split open, and that he should perish like Judas Iscariot. He feared that the tiles of the houses would fall upon him as he walked in the streets. He was like his own Man in the Cage at the House of the Interpreter, shut out from the promises, and looking forward to certain judgment. "Methought," he says, "the very sun that shineth in heaven did grudge to give me light." And still the dreadful words, "He found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears," sounded in the depths of his soul. They were, he says, like fetters of brass to his legs, and their continual clanking followed him for months. Regarding himself elected and predestined for damnation, he thought that all things worked for his damage and eternal overthrow, while all things wrought for the best and to do good to the elect and called of God unto salvation. God and all His universe had, he thought, conspired against him; the green earth, the bright waters, the sky itself, were written over with His irrevocable curse.

Well was it said by Bunyan's contemporary, the excellent Cudworth, in his eloquent sermon before the Long Parliament, that "We are nowhere commanded to pry into the secrets of God, but the wholesome advice given us is this: 'To make our calling and election sure.' We have no warrant from Scripture to peep into the hidden rolls of eternity, to spell out our names among the stars." "Must we say that God sometimes, to exercise His uncontrollable dominion, delights rather in plunging wretched souls down into infernal night and everlasting darkness? What, then, shall we make the God of the whole world? Nothing but a cruel and dreadful Erinnys, with curled fiery snakes about His head, and firebrands in His hand; thus governing the world! Surely, this will make us either secretly think there is no God in the world, if He must needs be such, or else to wish heartily there were none." It was thus at times with Bunyan. He was tempted, in this season of despair, to believe that there was no resurrection and no judgment.

One day, he tells us, a sudden rushing sound, as of wind or the wings of angels, came to him through the window, wonderfully sweet and pleasant; and it was as if a voice spoke to him from heaven words of encouragement and hope, which, to use his language, commanded, for the time, "a silence in his heart to all those tumultuous thoughts that did use, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise within him." About this time, also, some comforting passages of Scripture were called to mind; but he remarks, that whenever he strove to apply them to his case, Satan would thrust the curse of Esau in his face, and wrest the good word from him. The blessed promise "Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out" was the chief instrumentality in restoring his lost peace. He says of it: "If ever Satan and I did strive for any word of God in all my life, it was for this good word of Christ; he at one end, and I at the other. Oh, what work we made! It was for this in John, I say, that we did so tug and strive; he pulled, and I pulled, but, God be praised! I overcame him; I got sweetness from it. Oh, many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for this blessed sixth chapter of John!" Who does not here call to mind the struggle between Christian and Apollyon in the valley!

That was no fancy sketch; it was the narrative of the author's own grapple with the Spirit of Evil. Like his ideal Christian, he "conquered through Him that loved him." Love wrought the victory the Scripture of Forgiveness overcame that of Hatred.

He never afterwards relapsed into that state of religious melancholy from which he so hardly escaped. He speaks of his deliverance as the waking out of a troublesome dream. His painful experience was not lost upon him; for it gave him, ever after, a tender sympathy for the weak, the sinful, the ignorant, and desponding. In some measure, he had been "touched with the feeling of their infirmities." He could feel for those in the bonds of sin and despair, as bound with them. Hence his power as a preacher; hence the wonderful adaptation of his great allegory to all the variety of spiritual conditions. Like Fearing, he had lain a month in the Slough of Despond, and had played, like him, the long melancholy bass of spiritual heaviness. With Feeble-mind, he had fallen into the hands of Slay-good, of the nature of Man-eaters: and had limped along his difficult way upon the crutches of Ready-to-halt. Who better than himself could describe the condition of Despondency, and his daughter Much-afraid, in the dungeon of Doubting Castle? Had he not also fallen among thieves, like Little-faith?

His account of his entering upon the solemn duties of a preacher of the Gospel is at once curious and instructive. He deals honestly with himself, exposing all his various moods, weaknesses, doubts, and temptations. "I preached," he says, "what I felt; for the terrors of the law and the guilt of transgression lay heavy on my conscience. I have been as one sent to them from the dead. I went, myself in chains, to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my conscience which I persuaded them to beware of." At times, when he stood up to preach, blasphemies and evil doubts rushed into his mind, and he felt a strong desire to utter them aloud to his congregation; and at other seasons, when he was about to apply to the sinner some searching and fearful text of Scripture, he was tempted to withhold it, on the ground that it condemned himself also; but, withstanding the suggestion of the Tempter, to use his own simile, he bowed himself like Samson to condemn sin wherever he found it, though he brought guilt and condemnation upon himself thereby, choosing rather to die with the Philistines than to deny the truth.

Foreseeing the consequences of exposing himself to the operation of the penal laws by holding conventicles and preaching, he was deeply afflicted at the thought of the suffering and destitution to which his wife and children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment. Nothing can be more touching than his simple and earnest words on this point. They show how warm and deep were him human affections, and what a tender and loving heart he laid as a sacrifice on the altar of duty.

"I found myself a man compassed with infirmities; the parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling the flesh from the bones; and also it brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants, that my poor family was like to meet with, should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all beside. Oh, the thoughts of the hardships I thought my poor blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces.

"Poor child! thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee. But yet, thought I, I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you: oh! I saw I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the heads of his wife and children; yet I thought on those 'two milch kine that were to carry the ark of God into another country, and to leave their calves behind them.'

"But that which helped me in this temptation was divers considerations: the first was, the consideration of those two Scriptures, 'Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me;' and again, 'The Lord said, verily it shall go well with thy remnant; verily I will cause the enemy to entreat them well in the time of evil.'"

He was arrested in 1660, charged with "devilishly and perniciously abstaining from church," and of being "a common upholder of conventicles." At the Quarter Sessions, where his trial seems to have been conducted somewhat like that of Faithful at Vanity Fair, he was sentenced to perpetual banishment. This sentence, however, was never executed, but he was remanded to Bedford jail, where he lay a prisoner for twelve years.

Here, shut out from the world, with no other books than the Bible and Fox's Martyrs, he penned that great work which has attained a wider and more stable popularity than any other book in the English tongue. It is alike the favorite of the nursery and the study. Many experienced Christians hold it only second to the Bible; the infidel himself would not willingly let it die. Men of all sects read it with delight, as in the main a truthful representation of the 'Christian pilgrimage, without indeed assenting to all the doctrines which the author puts in the month of his fighting sermonizer, Great-heart, or which may be deduced from some other portions of his allegory. A recollection of his fearful sufferings, from misapprehension of a single text in the Scriptures, relative to the question of election, we may suppose gave a milder tone to the theology of his Pilgrim than was altogether consistent with the Calvinism of the seventeenth century. "Religion," says Macaulay, "has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in Bunyan's allegory." In composing it, he seems never to have altogether lost sight of the fact, that, in his life-and-death struggle with Satan for the blessed promise recorded by the Apostle of Love, the adversary was generally found on the Genevan side of the argument. Little did the short-sighted persecutors of Bunyan dream, when they closed upon him the door of Bedford jail, that God would overrule their poor spite and envy to His own glory and the worldwide renown of their victim. In the solitude of his prison, the ideal forms of beauty and sublimity, which had long flitted before him vaguely, like the vision of the Temanite, took shape and coloring; and he was endowed with power to reduce them to order, and arrange them in harmonious groupings. His powerful imagination, no longer self-tormenting, but under the direction of reason and grace, expanded his narrow cell into a vast theatre, lighted up for the display of its wonders. To this creative faculty of his mind might have been aptly applied the language which George Wither, a contemporary prisoner, addressed to his Muse:--

"The dull loneness, the black shade Which these hanging vaults have made, The rude portals that give light More to terror than delight; This my chamber of neglect, Walled about with disrespect,-- From all these, and this dull air, A fit object for despair, She hath taught me by her might, To draw comfort and delight."

That stony cell of his was to him like the rock of Padan-aram to the wandering Patriarch. He saw angels ascending and descending. The House Beautiful rose up before him, and its holy sisterhood welcomed him. He looked, with his Pilgrim, from the Chamber of Peace. The Valley of Humiliation lay stretched out beneath his eye, and he heard "the curious, melodious note of the country birds, who sing all the day long in the spring time, when the flowers appear, and the sun shines warm, and make the woods and groves and solitary places glad." Side by side with the good Christiana and the loving Mercy, he walked through the green and lowly valley, "fruitful as any the crow flies over," through "meadows beautiful with lilies;" the song of the poor but fresh-faced shepherd- boy, who lived a merry life, and wore the herb heartsease in his bosom, sounded through his cell:--

"He that is down need fear no fall; He that is low no pride."

The broad and pleasant "river of the Water of Life" glided peacefully before him, fringed "on either side with green trees, with all manner of fruit," and leaves of healing, with "meadows beautified with lilies, and green all the year long;" he saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with sunshine, overhung with gardens and orchards and vineyards; and beyond all, the Land of Beulah, with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds, its music of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and groves through which walked the Shining Ones, silver-winged and beautiful.

What were bars and bolts and prison-walls to him, whose eyes were anointed to see, and whose ears opened to hear, the glory and the rejoicing of the City of God, when the pilgrims were conducted to its golden gates, from the black and bitter river, with the sounding trumpeters, the transfigured harpers with their crowns of gold, the sweet voices of angels, the welcoming peal of bells in the holy city, and the songs of the redeemed ones? In reading the concluding pages of the first part of Pilgrim's Progress, we feel as if the mysterious glory of the Beatific Vision was unveiled before us. We are dazzled with the excess of light. We are entranced with the mighty melody; overwhelmed by the great anthem of rejoicing spirits. It can only be adequately described in the language of Milton in respect to the Apocalypse, as "a seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."

Few who read Bunyan nowadays think of him as one of the brave old English confessors, whose steady and firm endurance of persecution baffled and in the end overcame the tyranny of the Established Church in the reign of Charles II. What Milton and Penn and Locke wrote in defence of Liberty, Bunyan lived out and acted. He made no concessions to worldly rank. Dissolute lords and proud bishops he counted less than the humblest and poorest of his disciples at Bedford. When first arrested and thrown into prison, he supposed he should be called to suffer death for his faithful testimony to the truth; and his great fear was, that he should not meet his fate with the requisite firmness, and so dishonor the cause of his Master. And when dark clouds came over him, and he sought in vain for a sufficient evidence that in the event of his death it would be well with him, he girded up his soul with the reflection, that, as he suffered for the word and way of God, he was engaged not to shrink one hair's breadth from it. "I will leap," he says, "off the ladder blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell. Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I will venture in thy name!"

The English revolution of the seventeenth century, while it humbled the false and oppressive aristocracy of rank and title, was prodigal in the development of the real nobility of the mind and heart. Its history is bright with the footprints of men whose very names still stir the hearts of freemen, the world over, like a trumpet peal. Say what we may of its fanaticism, laugh as we may at its extravagant enjoyment of newly acquired religious and civil liberty, who shall now venture to deny that it was the golden age of England? Who that regards freedom above slavery, will now sympathize with the outcry and lamentation of those interested in the continuance of the old order of things, against the prevalence of sects and schism, but who, at the same time, as Milton shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves than the rending of the Church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with the Defence of Unlicensed Printing before him? Who scoff at Quakerism over the Journal of George Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers, after rising from the perusal of Pilgrim's Progress? "There were giants in those days." And foremost amidst that band of liberty-loving and God- fearing men,

"The slandered Calvinists of Charles's time, Who fought, and won it, Freedom's holy fight,"

stands the subject of our sketch, the Tinker of Elstow. Of his high merit as an author there is no longer any question. The Edinburgh Review expressed the common sentiment of the literary world, when it declared that the two great creative minds of the seventeenth century were those which produced Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Progress.

THOMAS ELLWOOD.

Commend us to autobiographies! Give us the veritable notchings of Robinson Crusoe on his stick, the indubitable records of a life long since swallowed up in the blackness of darkness, traced by a hand the very dust of which has become undistinguishable. The foolishest egotist who ever chronicled his daily experiences, his hopes and fears, poor plans and vain reachings after happiness, speaking to us out of the Past, and thereby giving us to understand that it was quite as real as our Present, is in no mean sort our benefactor, and commands our attention, in spite of his folly. We are thankful for the very vanity which prompted him to bottle up his poor records, and cast them into the great sea of Time, for future voyagers to pick up. We note, with the deepest interest, that in him too was enacted that miracle of a conscious existence, the reproduction of which in ourselves awes and perplexes us. He, too, had a mother; he hated and loved; the light from old-quenched hearths shone over him; he walked in the sunshine over the dust of those who had gone before him, just as we are now walking over his. These records of him remain, the footmarks of a long-extinct life, not of mere animal organism, but of a being like ourselves, enabling us, by studying their hieroglyphic significance, to decipher and see clearly into the mystery of existence centuries ago. The dead generations live again in these old self-biographies. Incidentally, unintentionally, yet in the simplest and most natural manner, they make us familiar with all the phenomena of life in the bygone ages. We are brought in contact with actual flesh-and-blood men and women, not the ghostly outline figures which pass for such, in what is called History. The horn lantern of the biographer, by the aid of which, with painful minuteness, he chronicled, from day to day, his own outgoings and incomings, making visible to us his pitiful wants, labors, trials, and tribulations of the stomach and of the conscience, sheds, at times, a strong clear light upon contemporaneous activities; what seemed before half fabulous, rises up in distinct and full proportions; we look at statesmen, philosophers, and poets, with the eyes of those who lived perchance their next-door neighbors, and sold them beer, and mutton, and household stuffs, had access to their kitchens, and took note of the fashion of their wigs and the color of their breeches. Without some such light, all history would be just about as unintelligible and unreal as a dimly remembered dream.

The journals of the early Friends or Quakers are in this respect invaluable. Little, it is true, can be said, as a general thing, of their literary merits. Their authors were plain, earnest men and women, chiefly intent upon the substance of things, and having withal a strong testimony to bear against carnal wit and outside show and ornament. Yet, even the scholar may well admire the power of certain portions of George Fox's Journal, where a strong spirit clothes its utterance in simple, downright Saxon words; the quiet and beautiful enthusiasm of Pennington; the torrent energy of Edward Burrough; the serene wisdom of Penn; the logical acuteness of Barclay; the honest truthfulness of Sewell; the wit and humor of John Roberts, (for even Quakerism had its apostolic jokers and drab-coated Robert Halls;) and last, not least, the simple beauty of Woolman's Journal, the modest record of a life of good works and love.

Let us look at the Life of Thomas Ellwood. The book before us is a hardly used Philadelphia reprint, bearing date of 1775. The original was published some sixty years before. It is not a book to be found in fashionable libraries, or noticed in fashionable reviews, but is none the less deserving of attention.

Ellwood was born in 1639, in the little town of Crowell, in Oxfordshire. Old Walter, his father, was of "gentlemanly lineage," and held a commission of the peace under Charles I. One of his most intimate friends was Isaac Pennington, a gentleman of estate and good reputation, whose wife, the widow of Sir John Springette, was a lady of superior endowments. Her only daughter, Gulielma, was the playmate and companion of Thomas. On making this family a visit, in 1658, in company with his father, he was surprised to find that they had united with the Quakers, a sect then little known, and everywhere spoken against. Passing through the vista of nearly two centuries, let us cross the threshold, and look with the eyes of young Ellwood upon this Quaker family. It will doubtless give us a good idea of the earnest and solemn spirit of that age of religious awakening.

"So great a change from a free, debonair, and courtly sort of behavior, which we had formerly found there, into so strict a gravity as they now received us with, did not a little amuse us, and disappointed our expectations of such a pleasant visit as we had promised ourselves.

"For my part, I sought, and at length found, means to cast myself into the company of the daughter, whom I found gathering flowers in the garden, attended by her maid, also a Quaker. But when I addressed her after my accustomed manner, with intention to engage her in discourse on the foot of our former acquaintance, though she treated me with a courteous mien, yet, as young as she was, the gravity of her looks and behavior struck such an awe upon me, that I found myself not so much master of myself as to pursue any further converse with her.

"We staid dinner, which was very handsome, and lacked nothing to recommend it to me but the want of mirth and pleasant discourse, which we could neither have with them, nor, by reason of them, with one another; the weightiness which was upon their spirits and countenances keeping down the lightness that would have been up in ours."

Not long after, they made a second visit to their sober friends, spending several days, during which they attended a meeting, in a neighboring farmhouse, where we are introduced by Ellwood to two remarkable personages, Edward Burrough, the friend and fearless reprover of Cromwell, and by far the most eloquent preacher of his sect and James Nayler, whose melancholy after-history of fanaticism, cruel sufferings, and beautiful repentance, is so well known to the readers of English history under the Protectorate. Under the preaching of these men, and the influence of the Pennington family, young Ellwood was brought into fellowship with the Quakers. Of the old Justice's sorrow and indignation at this sudden blasting of his hopes and wishes in respect to his son, and of the trials and difficulties of the latter in his new vocation, it is now scarcely worth while to speak. Let us step forward a few years, to 1662, considering meantime how matters, political and spiritual, are changed in that brief period. Cromwell, the Maccabeus of Puritanism, is no longer among men; Charles the Second sits in his place; profane and licentious cavaliers have thrust aside the sleek-haired, painful-faced Independents, who used to groan approval to the Scriptural illustrations of Harrison and Fleetwood; men easy of virtue, without sincerity, either in religion or politics, occupying the places made honorable by the Miltons, Whitlocks, and Vanes of the Commonwealth. Having this change in view, the light which the farthing candle of Ellwood sheds upon one of these illustrious names will not be unwelcome. In his intercourse with Penn, and other learned Quakers, he had reason to lament his own deficiencies in scholarship, and his friend Pennington undertook to put him in a way of remedying the defect.

"He had," says Ellwood, "an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a physician of note in London, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of great note for learning throughout the learned world, for the accurate pieces he had written on various subjects and occasions.

"This person, having filled a public station in the former times, lived a private and retired life in London, and, having lost his sight, kept always a man to read for him, which usually was the son of some gentleman of his acquaintance, whom, in kindness, he took to improve in his learning.

"Thus, by the mediation of my friend Isaac Pennington with Dr. Paget, and through him with John Milton, was I admitted to come to him, not as a servant to him, nor to be in the house with him, but only to have the liberty of coming to his house at certain hours when I would, and read to him what books he should appoint, which was all the favor I desired.

"He received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr. Paget, who introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington, who recommended me, to both of whom he bore a good respect. And, having inquired divers things of me, with respect to my former progression in learning, he dismissed me, to provide myself with such accommodations as might be most suitable to my studies.

"I went, therefore, and took lodgings as near to his house (which was then in Jewen Street) as I conveniently could, and from thenceforward went every day in the afternoon, except on the first day of the week, and, sitting by him in his dining-room, read to him such books in the Latin tongue as he pleased to have me read.

"He perceiving with what earnest desire I had pursued learning, gave me not only all the encouragement, but all the help he could. For, having a curious ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and when I did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages to me."

Thanks, worthy Thomas, for this glimpse into John Milton's dining-room!

He had been with "Master Milton," as he calls him, only a few weeks, when, being one "first day morning," at the Bull and Mouth meeting, Aldersgate, the train-bands of the city, "with great noise and clamor," headed by Major Rosewell, fell upon him and his friends. The immediate cause of this onslaught upon quiet worshippers was the famous plot of the Fifth Monarchy men, grim old fanatics, who (like the Millerites of the present day) had been waiting long for the personal reign of Christ and the saints upon earth, and in their zeal to hasten such a consummation had sallied into London streets with drawn swords and loaded matchlocks. The government took strong measures for suppressing dissenters' meetings or "conventicles;" and the poor Quakers, although not at all implicated in the disturbance, suffered more severely than any others. Let us look at the "freedom of conscience and worship" in England under that irreverent Defender of the Faith, Charles II. Ellwood says: "He that commanded the party gave us first a general charge to come out of the room. But we, who came thither at God's requiring to worship Him, (like that good man of old, who said, we ought to obey God rather than man,) stirred not, but kept our places. Whereupon, he sent some of his soldiers among us, with command to drag or drive us out, which they did roughly enough." Think of it: grave men and women, and modest maidens, sitting there with calm, impassive countenances, motionless as death, the pikes of the soldiery closing about them in a circle of bristling steel! Brave and true ones! Not in vain did ye thus oppose God's silence to the Devil's uproar; Christian endurance and calm persistence in the exercise of your rights as Englishmen and men to the hot fury of impatient tyranny! From your day down to this, the world has been the better for your faithfulness.

Ellwood and some thirty of his friends were marched off to prison in Old Bridewell, which, as well as nearly all the other prisons, was already crowded with Quaker prisoners. One of the rooms of the prison was used as a torture chamber. "I was almost affrighted," says Ellwood, "by the dismalness of the place; for, besides that the walls were all laid over with black, from top to bottom, there stood in the middle a great whipping-post.

"The manner of whipping there is, to strip the party to the skin, from the waist upward, and, having fastened him to the whipping-post, (so that he can neither resist nor shun the strokes,) to lash his naked body with long, slender twigs of holly, which will bend almost like thongs around the body; and these, having little knots upon them, tear the skin and flesh, and give extreme pain."

To this terrible punishment aged men and delicately nurtured young females were often subjected, during this season of hot persecution.

From the Bridewell, Ellwood was at length removed to Newgate, and thrust in, with other "Friends," amidst the common felons. He speaks of this prison, with its thieves, murderers, and prostitutes, its over-crowded apartments and loathsome cells, as "a hell upon earth." In a closet, adjoining the room where he was lodged, lay for several days the quartered bodies of Phillips, Tongue, and Gibbs, the leaders of the Fifth Monarchy rising, frightful and loathsome, as they came from the bloody hands of the executioners! These ghastly remains were at length obtained by the friends of the dead, and buried. The heads were ordered to be prepared for setting up in different parts of the city. Read this grim passage of description:--

"I saw the heads when they were brought to be boiled. The hangman fetched them in a dirty basket, out of some by-place, and, setting them down among the felons, he and they made sport of them. They took them by the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then giving them some ill names, boxed them on their ears and cheeks; which done, the hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with bay-salt and cummin-seed: that to keep them from putrefaction, and this to keep off the fowls from seizing upon them. The whole sight, as well that of the bloody quarters first as this of the heads afterwards, was both frightful and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature."

At the next session of the municipal court at the Old Bailey, Ellwood obtained his discharge. After paying a visit to "my Master Milton," he made his way to Chalfont, the home of his friends the Penningtons, where he was soon after engaged as a Latin teacher. Here he seems to have had his trials and temptations. Gulielma Springette, the daughter of Pennington's wife, his old playmate, had now grown to be "a fair woman of marriageable age," and, as he informs us, "very desirable, whether regard was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to make her completely comely, or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way extraordinary, or to her outward fortune, which was fair." From all which, we are not surprised to learn that "she was secretly and openly sought for by many of almost every rank and condition." "To whom," continues Thomas, "in their respective turns, (till he at length came for whom she was reserved,) she carried herself with so much evenness of temper, such courteous freedom, guarded by the strictest modesty, that as it gave encouragement or ground of hope to none, so neither did it administer any matter of offence or just cause of complaint to any."

Beautiful and noble maiden! How the imagination fills up this outline limning by her friend, and, if truth must be told, admirer! Serene, courteous, healthful; a ray of tenderest and blandest light, shining steadily in the sober gloom of that old household! Confirmed Quaker as she is, shrinking from none of the responsibilities and dangers of her profession, and therefore liable at any time to the penalties of prison and whipping-post, under that plain garb and in spite of that "certain gravity of look and behavior,"--which, as we have seen, on one occasion awed young Ellwood into silence,--youth, beauty, and refinement assert their prerogatives; love knows no creed; the gay, and titled, and wealthy crowd around her, suing in vain for her favor.

"Followed, like the tided moon, She moves as calmly on,"

"until he at length comes for whom she was reserved," and her name is united with that of one worthy even of her, the world-renowned William Penn.

Meantime, one cannot but feel a good degree of sympathy with young Ellwood, her old schoolmate and playmate, placed, as he was, in the same family with her, enjoying her familiar conversation and unreserved confidence, and, as he says, the "advantageous opportunities of riding and walking abroad with her, by night as well as by day, without any other company than her maid; for so great, indeed, was the confidence that her mother had in me, that she thought her daughter safe, if I was with her, even from the plots and designs of others upon her." So near, and yet, alas! in truth, so distant! The serene and gentle light which shone upon him, in the sweet solitudes of Chalfont, was that of a star, itself unapproachable.

As he himself meekly intimates, she was reserved for another. He seems to have fully understood his own position in respect to her; although, to use his own words, "others, measuring him by the propensity of their own inclinations, concluded he would steal her, run away with her, and marry her." Little did these jealous surmisers know of the true and really heroic spirit of the young Latin master. His own apology and defence of his conduct, under circumstances of temptation which St. Anthony himself could have scarcely better resisted, will not be amiss.

"I was not ignorant of the various fears which filled the jealous heads of some concerning me, neither was I so stupid nor so divested of all humanity as not to be sensible of the real and innate worth and virtue which adorned that excellent dame, and attracted the eyes and hearts of so many, with the greatest importunity, to seek and solicit her; nor was I so devoid of natural heat as not to feel some sparklings of desire, as well as others; but the force of truth and sense of honor suppressed whatever would have risen beyond the bounds of fair and virtuous friendship. For I easily foresaw that, if I should have attempted any thing in a dishonorable way, by fraud or force, upon her, I should have thereby brought a wound upon mine own soul, a foul scandal upon my religious profession, and an infamous stain upon mine honor, which was far more dear unto me than my life. Wherefore, having observed how some others had befooled themselves, by misconstruing her common kindness (expressed in an innocent, open, free, and familiar conversation, springing from the abundant affability, courtesy, and sweetness of her natural temper) to be the effect of a singular regard and peculiar affection to them, I resolved to shun the rock whereon they split; and, remembering the saying of the poet

'Felix quem faciunt aliena Pericula cantum,'

I governed myself in a free yet respectful carriage towards her, thereby preserving a fair reputation with my friends, and enjoying as much of her favor and kindness, in a virtuous and firm friendship, as was fit for her to show or for me to seek."

Well and worthily said, poor Thomas! Whatever might be said of others, thou, at least, wast no coxcomb. Thy distant and involuntary admiration of "the fair Guli" needs, however, no excuse. Poor human nature, guard it as one may, with strictest discipline and painfully cramping environment, will sometimes act out itself; and, in thy case, not even George Fox himself, knowing thy beautiful young friend, (and doubtless admiring her too, for he was one of the first to appreciate and honor the worth and dignity or woman,) could have found it in his heart to censure thee!

At this period, as was indeed most natural, our young teacher solaced himself with occasional appeals to what he calls "the Muses." There is reason to believe, however, that the Pagan sisterhood whom he ventured to invoke seldom graced his study with their personal attendance. In these rhyming efforts, scattered up and down his Journal, there are occasional sparkles of genuine wit, and passages of keen sarcasm, tersely and fitly expressed. Others breathe a warm, devotional feeling; in the following brief prayer, for instance, the wants of the humble Christian are condensed in a manner worthy of Quarles or Herbert:--

"Oh! that mine eye might closed be To what concerns me not to see; That deafness might possess mine ear To what concerns me not to hear; That Truth my tongue might always tie From ever speaking foolishly; That no vain thought might ever rest Or be conceived in my breast; That by each word and deed and thought Glory may to my God be brought! But what are wishes? Lord, mine eye On Thee is fixed, to Thee I cry Wash, Lord, and purify my heart, And make it clean in every part; And when 't is clean, Lord, keep it too, For that is more than I can do."

The thought in the following extracts from a poem written on the death of his friend Pennington's son is trite, but not inaptly or inelegantly expressed:--

"What ground, alas, has any man To set his heart on things below, Which, when they seem most like to stand, Fly like the arrow from the bow! Who's now atop erelong shall feel The circling motion of the wheel!

"The world cannot afford a thing Which to a well-composed mind Can any lasting pleasure bring, But in itself its grave will find. All things unto their centre tend What had beginning must have end!

"No disappointment can befall Us, having Him who's all in all! What can of pleasure him prevent Who lath the Fountain of Content?"

In the year 1663 a severe law was enacted against the "sect called Quakers," prohibiting their meetings, with the penalty of banishment for the third offence! The burden of the prosecution which followed fell upon the Quakers of the metropolis, large numbers of whom were heavily fined, imprisoned, and sentenced to be banished from their native land. Yet, in time, our worthy friend Ellwood came in for his own share of trouble, in consequence of attending the funeral of one of his friends. An evil-disposed justice of the county obtained information of the Quaker gathering; and, while the body of the dead was "borne on Friends' shoulders through the street, in order to be carried to the burying- ground, which was at the town's end," says Ellwood, "he rushed out upon us with the constables and a rabble of rude fellows whom he had gathered together, and, having his drawn sword in his hand, struck one of the foremost of the bearers with it, commanding them to set down the coffin. But the Friend who was so stricken, being more concerned for the safety of the dead body than for his own, lest it should fall, and any indecency thereupon follow, held the coffin fast; which the justice observing, and being enraged that his word was not forthwith obeyed, set his hand to the coffin, and with a forcible thrust threw it off from the bearers' shoulders, so, that it fell to the ground in the middle of the street, and there we were forced to leave it; for the constables and rabble fell upon us, and drew some and drove others into the inn. Of those thus taken," continues Ellwood, "I was one. They picked out ten of us, and sent us to Aylesbury jail.

"They caused the body to lie in the open street and cartway, so that all travellers that passed, whether horsemen, coaches, carts, or wagons, were fain to break out of the way to go by it, until it was almost night. And then, having caused a grave to be made in the unconsecrated part of what is called the Churchyard, they forcibly took the body from the widow, and buried it there."

He remained a prisoner only about two months, during which period he comforted himself by such verse-making as follows, reminding us of similar enigmas in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress:

"Lo! a Riddle for the wise, In the which a Mystery lies.

RIDDLE. "Some men are free whilst they in prison lie; Others who ne'er saw prison captives die.

CAUTION. "He that can receive it may, He that cannot, let him stay, Not be hasty, but suspend Judgment till he sees the end.

SOLUTION. "He's only free, indeed, who's free from sin, And he is fastest bound that's bound therein."

In the mean time, where is our "Master Milton"? We, left him deprived of his young companion and reader, sitting lonely in his small dining-room, in Jewen Street. It is now the year 1665; is not the pestilence in London? A sinful and godless city, with its bloated bishops fawning around the Nell Gwyns of a licentious and profane Defender of the Faith; its swaggering and drunken cavaliers; its ribald jesters; its obscene ballad-singers; its loathsome prisons, crowded with Godfearing men and women: is not the measure of its iniquity already filled up? Three years only have passed since the terrible prayer of Vane went upward from the scaffold on Tower Hill: "When my blood is shed upon the block, let it, O God, have a voice afterward!" Audible to thy ear, O bosom friend of the martyr! has that blood cried from earth; and now, how fearfully is it answered! Like the ashes which the Seer of the Hebrews cast towards Heaven, it has returned in boils and blains upon the proud and oppressive city. John Milton, sitting blind in Jewen Street, has heard the toll of the death-bells, and the nightlong rumble of the burial-carts, and the terrible summons, "Bring out your dead!" The Angel of the Plague, in yellow mantle, purple-spotted, walks the streets. Why should he tarry in a doomed city, forsaken of God! Is not the command, even to him, "Arise and flee, for thy life"? In some green nook of the quiet country, he may finish the great work which his hands have found to do. He bethinks him of his old friends, the Penningtons, and his young Quaker companion, the patient and gentle Ellwood. "Wherefore," says the latter, "some little time before I went to Aylesbury jail, I was desired by my quondam Master Milton to take an house for him in the neighborhood where I dwelt, that he might go out of the city for the safety of himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended to have waited on him and seen him well settled, but was prevented by that imprisonment. But now being released and returned home, I soon made a visit to him, to welcome him into the country. After some common discourse had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his, which, having brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me and read it at my leisure, and when I had so done return it to him, with my judgment thereupon."

Now, what does the reader think young Ellwood carried in his gray coat pocket across the dikes and hedges and through the green lanes of Giles Chalfont that autumn day? Let us look farther "When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he entitled Paradise Lost. After I had, with the best attention, read it through, I made him another visit; and, returning his book with due acknowledgment of the favor he had done me in communicating it to me, he asked me how I liked it and what I thought of it, which I modestly but freely told him; and, after some farther discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, 'Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?' He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another subject."

"I modestly but freely told him what I thought" of Paradise Lost! What he told him remains a mystery. One would like to know more precisely what the first critical reader of that song "of Man's first disobedience" thought of it. Fancy the young Quaker and blind Milton sitting, some pleasant afternoon of the autumn of that old year, in "the pretty box" at Chalfont, the soft wind through the open window lifting the thin hair of the glorious old Poet! Back-slidden England, plague-smitten, and accursed with her faithless Church and libertine King, knows little of poor "Master Milton," and takes small note of his Puritanic verse-making. Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem which, he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark and strange to the author, "would not willingly let die." The suggestion in respect to Paradise Found, to which, as we have seen, "he made no answer, but sat some time in a muse," seems not to have been lost; for, "after the sickness was over," continues Ellwood, "and the city well cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when afterwards I waited on him there, which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions drew me to London, he showed me his second poem, called Paradise Gained; and, in a pleasant tone, said to me, 'This is owing to you, for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I had not thought of.'"

Golden days were these for the young Latin reader, even if it be true, as we suspect, that he was himself very far from appreciating the glorious privilege which he enjoyed, of the familiar friendship and confidence of Milton. But they could not last. His amiable host, Isaac Pennington, a blameless and quiet country gentleman, was dragged from his house by a military force, and lodged in Aylesbury jail; his wife and family forcibly ejected from their pleasant home, which was seized upon by the government as security for the fines imposed upon its owner. The plague was in the village of Aylesbury, and in the very prison itself; but the noble-hearted Mary Pennington followed her husband, sharing with him the dark peril. Poor Ellwood, while attending a monthly meeting at Hedgerly, with six others, (among them one Morgan Watkins, a poor old Welshman, who, painfully endeavoring to utter his testimony in his own dialect, was suspected by the Dogberry of a justice of being a Jesuit trolling over his Latin,) was arrested, and committed to Wiccomb House of Correction.

This was a time of severe trial for the sect with which Ellwood had connected himself. In the very midst of the pestilence, when thousands perished weekly in London, fifty-four Quakers were marched through the almost deserted streets, and placed on board a ship, for the purpose of being conveyed, according to their sentence of banishment, to the West Indies. The ship lay for a long time, with many others similarly situated, a helpless prey to the pestilence. Through that terrible autumn, the prisoners sat waiting for the summons of the ghastly Destroyer; and, from their floating dungeon.

"Heard the groan Of agonizing ships from shore to shore; Heard nightly plunged beneath the sullen wave The frequent corse."

When the vessel at length set sail, of the fifty-four who went on board, twenty-seven only were living. A Dutch privateer captured her, when two days out, and carried the prisoners to North Holland, where they were set at liberty. The condition of the jails in the city, where were large numbers of Quakers, was dreadful in the extreme. Ill ventilated, crowded, and loathsome with the accumulated filth of centuries, they invited the disease which daily decimated their cells. "Go on!" says Pennington, writing to the King and bishops from his plague-infected cell in the Aylesbury prison: "try it out with the Spirit of the Lord! Come forth with your laws, and prisons, and spoiling of goods, and banishment, and death, if the Lord please, and see if ye can carry it! Whom the Lord loveth He can save at His pleasure. Hath He begun to break our bonds and deliver us, and shall we now distrust Him? Are we in a worse condition than Israel was when the sea was before them, the mountains on either side, and the Egyptians behind, pursuing them?"

Brave men and faithful! It is not necessary that the present generation, how quietly reaping the fruit of your heroic endurance, should see eye to eye with you in respect to all your testimonies and beliefs, in order to recognize your claim to gratitude and admiration. For, in an age of hypocritical hollowness and mean self-seeking, when, with noble exceptions, the very Puritans of Cromwell's Reign of the Saints were taking profane lessons from their old enemies, and putting on an outside show of conformity, for the sake of place or pardon, ye maintained the austere dignity of virtue, and, with King and Church and Parliament arrayed against you, vindicated the Rights of Conscience, at the cost of home, fortune, and life. English liberty owes more to your unyielding firmness than to the blows stricken for her at Worcester and Naseby.

In 1667, we find the Latin teacher in attendance at a great meeting of Friends, in London, convened at the suggestion of George Fox, for the purpose of settling a little difficulty which had arisen among the Friends, even under the pressure of the severest persecution, relative to the very important matter of "wearing the hat." George Fox, in his love of truth and sincerity in word and action, had discountenanced the fashionable doffing of the hat, and other flattering obeisances towards men holding stations in Church or State, as savoring of man-worship, giving to the creature the reverence only due to the Creator, as undignified and wanting in due self-respect, and tending to support unnatural and oppressive distinctions among those equal in the sight of God. But some of his disciples evidently made much more of this "hat testimony" than their teacher. One John Perrott, who had just returned from an unsuccessful attempt to convert the Pope, at Rome, (where that dignitary, after listening to his exhortations, and finding him in no condition to be benefited by the spiritual physicians of the Inquisition, had quietly turned him over to the temporal ones of the Insane Hospital,) had broached the doctrine that, in public or private worship, the hat was not to be taken off, without an immediate revelation or call to do so! Ellwood himself seems to have been on the point of yielding to this notion, which appears to have been the occasion of a good deal of dissension and scandal. Under these circumstances, to save truth from reproach, and an important testimony to the essential equality of mankind from running into sheer fanaticism, Fox summoned his tried and faithful friends together, from all parts of the United Kingdom, and, as it appears, with the happiest result. Hat-revelations were discountenanced, good order and harmony reestablished, and John Perrott's beaver and the crazy head under it were from thenceforth powerless for evil. Let those who are disposed to laugh at this notable "Ecumenical Council of the Hat" consider that ecclesiastical history has brought down to us the records of many larger and more imposing convocations, wherein grave bishops and learned fathers took each other by the beard upon matters of far less practical importance.

In 1669, we find Ellwood engaged in escorting his fair friend, Gulielma, to her uncle's residence in Sussex. Passing through London, and taking the Tunbridge road, they stopped at Seven Oak to dine. The Duke of York was on the road, with his guards and hangers-on, and the inn was filled with a rude company. "Hastening," says Ellwood, "from a place where we found nothing but rudeness, the roysterers who swarmed there, besides the damning oaths they belched out against each other, looked very sourly upon us, as if they grudged us the horses which we rode and the clothes we wore." They had proceeded but a little distance, when they were overtaken by some half dozen drunken rough-riding cavaliers, of the Wildrake stamp, in full pursuit after the beautiful Quakeress. One of them impudently attempted to pull her upon his horse before him, but was held at bay by Ellwood, who seems, on this occasion, to have relied somewhat upon his "stick," in defending his fair charge. Calling up Gulielma's servant, he bade him ride on one side of his mistress, while he guarded her on the other. "But he," says Ellwood, "not thinking it perhaps decent to ride so near his mistress, left room enough for another to ride between." In dashed the drunken retainer, and Gulielma was once more in peril. It was clearly no time for exhortations and expostulations; "so," says Ellwood, "I chopped in upon him, by a nimble turn, and kept him at bay. I told him I had hitherto spared him, but wished him not to provoke me further. This I spoke in such a tone as bespoke an high resentment of the abuse put upon us, and withal pressed him so hard with my horse that I suffered him not to come up again to Guli." By this time, it became evident to the companions of the ruffianly assailant that the young Quaker was in earnest, and they hastened to interfere. "For they," says Ellwood, "seeing the contest rise so high, and probably fearing it would rise higher, not knowing where it might stop, came in to part us; which they did by taking him away."

Escaping from these sons of Belial, Ellwood and his fair companion rode on through Tunbridge Wells, "the street thronged with men, who looked very earnestly at them, but offered them no affront," and arrived, late at night, in a driving rain, at the mansion-house of Herbert Springette. The fiery old gentleman was so indignant at the insult offered to his niece, that he was with difficulty dissuaded from demanding satisfaction at the hands of the Duke of York.

This seems to have been his last ride with Gulielma. She was soon after married to William Penn, and took up her abode at Worminghurst, in Sussex. How blessed and beautiful was that union may be understood from the following paragraph of a letter, written by her husband, on the eve of his departure for America to lay the foundations of a Christian colony:--

"My dear wife! remember thou wast the love of my youth, and much the joy of my life, the most beloved as well as the most worthy of all my earthly comforts; and the reason of that love was more thy inward than thy outward excellences, which yet were many. God knows, and thou knowest it, I can say it was a match of Providence's making; and God's image in us both was the first thing and the most amiable and engaging ornament in our eyes."

About this time our friend Thomas, seeing that his old playmate at Chalfont was destined for another, turned his attention towards a "young Friend, named Mary Ellis." He had been for several years acquainted with her, but now he "found his heart secretly drawn and inclining towards her." "At length," he tells us, "as I was sitting all alone, waiting upon the Lord for counsel and guidance in this, in itself and to me, important affair, I felt a word sweetly arise in me, as if I had heard a Voice which said, Go, and prevail! and faith springing in my heart at the word, I immediately rose and went, nothing doubting." On arriving at her residence, he states that he "solemnly opened his mind to her, which was a great surprisal to her, for she had taken in an apprehension, as others had also done," that his eye had been fixed elsewhere and nearer home. "I used not many words to her," he continues, "but I felt a Divine Power went along with the words, and fixed the matter expressed by them so fast in her breast, that, as she afterwards acknowledged to me, she could not shut it out."

"I continued," he says, "my visits to my best-beloved Friend until we married, which was on the 28th day of the eighth month, 1669. We took each other in a select meeting of the ancient and grave Friends of that country. A very solemn meeting it was, and in a weighty frame of spirit we were." His wife seems to have had some estate; and Ellwood, with that nice sense of justice which marked all his actions, immediately made his will, securing to her, in case of his decease, all her own goods and moneys, as well as all that he had himself acquired before marriage. "Which," he tells, "was indeed but little, yet, by all that little, more than I had ever given her ground to expect with me." His father, who was yet unreconciled to the son's religious views, found fault with his marriage, on the ground that it was unlawful and unsanctioned by priest or liturgy, and consequently refused to render him any pecuniary assistance. Yet, in spite of this and other trials, he seems to have preserved his serenity of spirit. After an unpleasant interview with his father, on one occasion, he wrote, at his lodgings in an inn, in London, what he calls A Song of Praise. An extract from it will serve to show the spirit of the good man in affliction:--

"Unto the Glory of Thy Holy Name, Eternal God! whom I both love and fear, I hereby do declare, I never came Before Thy throne, and found Thee loath to hear, But always ready with an open ear; And, though sometimes Thou seem'st Thy face to hide, As one that had withdrawn his love from me, 'T is that my faith may to the full, be tried, And that I thereby may the better see How weak I am when not upheld by Thee!"

The next year, 1670, an act of Parliament, in relation to "Conventicles," provided that any person who should be present at any meeting, under color or pretence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England, "should be liable to fines of from five to ten shillings; and any person preaching at or giving his house for the meeting, to a fine of twenty pounds: one third of the fines being received by the informer or informers." As a natural consequence of such a law, the vilest scoundrels in the land set up the trade of informers and heresy-hunters. Wherever a dissenting meeting or burial took place, there was sure to be a mercenary spy, ready to bring a complaint against all in attendance. The Independents and Baptists ceased, in a great measure, to hold public meetings, yet even they did not escape prosecution. Bunyan, for instance, in these days, was dreaming, like another Jacob, of angels ascending and descending, in Bedford prison. But upon the poor Quakers fell, as usual, the great force of the unjust enactment. Some of these spies or informers, men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant tempers, and skill in dissimulation, took the guise of Quakers, Independents, or Baptists, as occasion required, thrusting themselves into the meetings of the proscribed sects, ascertaining the number who attended, their rank and condition, and then informing against them. Ellwood, in his Journal for 1670, describes several of these emissaries of evil. One of them came to a Friend's house, in Bucks, professing to be a brother in the faith, but, overdoing his counterfeit Quakerism, was detected and dismissed by his host. Betaking himself to the inn, he appeared in his true character, drank and swore roundly, and confessed over his cups that he had been sent forth on his mission by the Rev. Dr. Mew, Vice- Chancellor of Oxford. Finding little success in counterfeiting Quakerism, he turned to the Baptists, where, for a time, he met with better success. Ellwood, at this time, rendered good service to his friends, by exposing the true character of these wretches, and bringing them to justice for theft, perjury, and other misdemeanors.

While this storm of persecution lasted, (a period of two or three years,) the different dissenting sects felt, in some measure, a common sympathy, and, while guarding themselves against their common foe, had little leisure for controversy with each other; but, as was natural, the abatement of their mutual suffering and danger was the signal for renewing their suspended quarrels. The Baptists fell upon the Quakers, with pamphlet and sermon; the latter replied in the same way. One of the most conspicuous of the Baptist disputants was the famous Jeremy Ives, with whom our friend Ellwood seems to have had a good deal of trouble. "His name," says Ellwood, "was up for a topping Disputant. He was well, read in the fallacies of logic, and was ready in framing syllogisms. His chief art lay in tickling the humor of rude, unlearned, and injudicious hearers."

The following piece of Ellwood's, entitled "An Epitaph for Jeremy Ives," will serve to show that wit and drollery were sometimes found even among the proverbially sober Quakers of the seventeenth century:--

"Beneath this stone, depressed, doth lie The Mirror of Hypocrisy-- Ives, whose mercenary tongue Like a Weathercock was hung, And did this or that way play, As Advantage led the way. If well hired, he would dispute, Otherwise he would be mute. But he'd bawl for half a day, If he knew and liked his pay.

"For his person, let it pass; Only note his face was brass. His heart was like a pumice-stone, And for Conscience he had none. Of Earth and Air he was composed, With Water round about enclosed. Earth in him had greatest share, Questionless, his life lay there; Thence his cankered Envy sprung, Poisoning both his heart and tongue.

"Air made him frothy, light, and vain, And puffed him with a proud disdain. Into the Water oft he went, And through the Water many sent That was, ye know, his element! The greatest odds that did appear Was this, for aught that I can hear, That he in cold did others dip, But did himself hot water sip.

"And his cause he'd never doubt, If well soak'd o'er night in Stout; But, meanwhile, he must not lack Brandy and a draught of Sack. One dispute would shrink a bottle Of three pints, if not a pottle. One would think he fetched from thence All his dreamy eloquence.

"Let us now bring back the Sot To his Aqua Vita pot, And observe, with some content, How he framed his argument. That his whistle he might wet, The bottle to his mouth he set, And, being Master of that Art, Thence he drew the Major part, But left the Minor still behind; Good reason why, he wanted wind; If his breath would have held out, He had Conclusion drawn, no doubt."

The residue of Ellwood's life seems to have glided on in serenity and peace. He wrote, at intervals, many pamphlets in defence of his Society, and in favor of Liberty of Conscience. At his hospitable residence, the leading spirits of the sect were warmly welcomed. George Fox and William Penn seem to have been frequent guests. We find that, in 1683, he was arrested for seditious publications, when on the eve of hastening to his early friend, Gulielma, who, in the absence of her husband, Governor Penn, had fallen dangerously ill. On coming before the judge, "I told him," says Ellwood, "that I had that morning received an express out of Sussex, that William Penn's wife (with whom I had an intimate acquaintance and strict friendship, ab ipsis fere incunabilis, at least, a teneris unguiculis) lay now ill, not without great danger, and that she had expressed her desire that I would come to her as soon as I could." The judge said "he was very sorry for Madam Penn's illness," of whose virtues he spoke very highly, but not more than was her due. Then he told me, "that, for her sake, he would do what he could to further my visit to her." Escaping from the hands of the law, he visited his friend, who was by this time in a way of recovery, and, on his return, learned that the prosecution had been abandoned.

At about this date his narrative ceases. We learn, from other sources, that he continued to write and print in defence of his religious views up to the year of his death, which took place in 1713. One of his productions, a poetical version of the Life of David, may be still met with, in the old Quaker libraries. On the score of poetical merit, it is about on a level with Michael Drayton's verses on the same subject. As the history of one of the firm confessors of the old struggle for religious freedom, of a genial-hearted and pleasant scholar, the friend of Penn and Milton, and the suggester of Paradise Regained, we trust our hurried sketch has not been altogether without interest; and that, whatever may be the religious views of our readers, they have not failed to recognize a good and true man in Thomas Ellwood.

JAMES NAYLER.

"You will here read the true story of that much injured, ridiculed man, James Nayler; what dreadful sufferings, with what patience he endured, even to the boring of the tongue with hot irons, without a murmur; and with what strength of mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, which they stigmatized as blasphemy, had given place to clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error in a strain of the beautifullest humility."--Essays of Elia.

"Would that Carlyle could now try his hand at the English Revolution!" was our exclamation, on laying down the last volume of his remarkable History of the French Revolution with its brilliant and startling word- pictures still flashing before us. To some extent this wish has been realized in the Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Yet we confess that the perusal of these volumes has disappointed us. Instead of giving himself free scope, as in his French Revolution, and transferring to his canvas all the wild and ludicrous, the terrible and beautiful phases of that moral phenomenon, he has here concentrated all his artistic skill upon a single figure, whom he seems to have regarded as the embodiment and hero of the great event. All else on his canvas is subordinated to the grim image of the colossal Puritan. Intent upon presenting him as the fitting object of that "hero-worship," which, in its blind admiration and adoration of mere abstract Power, seems to us at times nothing less than devil-worship, he dwarfs, casts into the shadow, nay, in some instances caricatures and distorts, the figures which surround him. To excuse Cromwell in his usurpation, Henry Vane, one of those exalted and noble characters, upon whose features the lights held by historical friends or foes detect no blemish, is dismissed with a sneer and an utterly unfounded imputation of dishonesty. To reconcile, in some degree, the discrepancy between the declarations of Cromwell, in behalf of freedom of conscience, and that mean and cruel persecution which the Quakers suffered under the Protectorate, the generally harmless fanaticism of a few individuals bearing that name is gravely urged. Nay, the fact that some weak-brained enthusiasts undertook to bring about the millennium, by associating together, cultivating the earth, and "dibbling beans" for the New Jerusalem market, is regarded by our author as the "germ of Quakerism;" and furnishes an occasion for sneering at "my poor friend Dryasdust, lamentably tearing his hair over the intolerance of that old time to Quakerism and such like."

The readers of this (with all its faults) powerfully written Biography cannot fail to have been impressed with the intensely graphic description (Part I., vol. ii., pp. 184, 185) of the entry of the poor fanatic, James Nayler, and his forlorn and draggled companions into Bristol. Sadly ludicrous is it; affecting us like the actual sight of tragic insanity enacting its involuntary comedy, and making us smile through our tears.

In another portion of the work, a brief account is given of the trial and sentence of Nayler, also in the serio-comic view; and the poor man is dismissed with the simple intimation, that after his punishment he "repented, and confessed himself mad." It was no part of the author's business, we are well aware, to waste time and words upon the history of such a man as Nayler; he was of no importance to him, otherwise than as one of the disturbing influences in the government of the Lord Protector. But in our mind the story of James Nayler has always been one of interest; and in the belief that it will prove so to others, who, like Charles Lamb, can appreciate the beautiful humility of a forgiven spirit, we have taken some pains to collect and embody the facts of it.

James Nayler was born in the parish of Ardesley, in Yorkshire, 1616. His father was a substantial farmer, of good repute and competent estate and be, in consequence, received a good education: At the age of twenty-two, he married and removed to Wakefield parish, which has since been made classic ground by the pen of Goldsmith. Here, an honest, God-fearing farmer, he tilled his soil, and alternated between cattle-markets and Independent conventicles. In 1641, he obeyed the summons of "my Lord Fairfax" and the Parliament, and joined a troop of horse composed of sturdy Independents, doing such signal service against "the man of Belial, Charles Stuart," that he was promoted to the rank of quartermaster, in which capacity he served under General Lambert, in his Scottish campaign. Disabled at length by sickness, he was honorably dismissed from the service, and returned to his family in 1649.

For three or four years, he continued to attend the meetings of the Independents, as a zealous and devout member. But it so fell out, that in the winter of 1651, George Fox, who had just been released from a cruel imprisonment in Derby jail, felt a call to set his face towards Yorkshire. "So travelling," says Fox, in his Journal, "through the countries, to several places, preaching Repentance and the Word of Life, I came into the parts about Wakefield, where James Navler lived." The worn and weary soldier, covered with the scars of outward battle, received, as he believed, in the cause of God and his people, against Antichrist and oppression, welcomed with thankfulness the veteran of another warfare; who, in conflict with a principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places, had made his name a familiar one in every English hamlet. "He and Thomas Goodyear," says Fox, "came to me, and were both convinced, and received the truth." He soon after joined the Society of Friends. In the spring of the next year he was in his field following his plough, and meditating, as he was wont, on the great questions of life and duty, when he seemed to hear a voice bidding him go out from his kindred and his father's house, with an assurance that the Lord would be with him, while laboring in his service. Deeply impressed, he left his employment, and, returning to his house, made immediate preparations for a journey. But hesitation and doubt followed; he became sick from anxiety of mind, and his recovery, for a time, was exceedingly doubtful. On his restoration to bodily health, he obeyed what he regarded as a clear intimation of duty, and went forth a preacher of the doctrines he had embraced. The Independent minister of the society to which he had formerly belonged sent after him the story that he was the victim of sorcery; that George Fox carried with him a bottle, out of which he made people drink; and that the draught had the power to change a Presbyterian or Independent into a Quaker at once; that, in short, the Arch-Quaker, Fox, was a wizard, and could be seen at the same moment of time riding on the same black horse, in two places widely separated. He had scarcely commenced his exhortations, before the mob, excited by such stories, assailed him. In the early summer of the year we hear of him in Appleby jail. On his release, he fell in company with George Fox. At Walney Island, he was furiously assaulted, and beaten with clubs and stones; the poor priest-led fishermen being fully persuaded that they were dealing with a wizard. The spirit of the man, under these circumstances, may be seen in the following extract from a letter to his friends, dated at "Killet, in Lancashire, the 30th of 8th Month, 1652:"--

"Dear friends! Dwell in patience, and wait upon the Lord, who will do his own work. Look not at man who is in the work, nor at any man opposing it; but rest in the will of the Lord, that so ye may be furnished with patience, both to do and to suffer what ye shall be called unto, that your end in all things may be His praise. Meet often together; take heed of what exalteth itself above its brother; but keep low, and serve one another in love."

Laboring thus, interrupted only by persecution, stripes, and imprisonment, he finally came to London, and spoke with great power and eloquence in the meetings of Friends in that city. Here he for the first time found himself surrounded by admiring and sympathizing friends. He saw and rejoiced in the fruits of his ministry. Profane and drunken cavaliers, intolerant Presbyters, and blind Papists, owned the truths which he uttered, and counted themselves his disciples. Women, too, in their deep trustfulness and admiring reverence, sat at the feet of the eloquent stranger. Devout believers in the doctrine of the inward light and manifestation of God in the heart of man, these latter, at length, thought they saw such unmistakable evidences of the true life in James Nayler, that they felt constrained to declare that Christ was, in an especial manner, within him, and to call upon all to recognize in reverent adoration this new incarnation of the divine and heavenly. The wild enthusiasm of his disciples had its effect on the teacher. Weak in body, worn with sickness, fasting, stripes, and prison-penance, and naturally credulous and imaginative, is it strange that in some measure he yielded to this miserable delusion? Let those who would harshly judge him, or ascribe his fall to the peculiar doctrines of his sect, think of Luther, engaged in personal combat with the Devil, or conversing with him on points of theology in his bed-chamber; or of Bunyan at actual fisticuffs with the adversary; or of Fleetwood and Vane and Harrison millennium-mad, and making preparations for an earthly reign of King Jesus. It was an age of intense religious excitement. Fanaticism had become epidemic. Cromwell swayed his Parliaments by "revelations" and Scripture phrases in the painted chamber; stout generals and sea-captains exterminated the Irish, and swept Dutch navies from the ocean, with old Jewish war-cries, and hymns of Deborah and Miriam; country justices charged juries in Hebraisms, and cited the laws of Palestine oftener than those of England. Poor Nayler found himself in the very midst of this seething and confused moral maelstrom. He struggled against it for a time, but human nature was weak; he became, to use his own words, "bewildered and darkened," and the floods went over him.

Leaving London with some of his more zealous followers, not without solemn admonition and rebuke from Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough, who at that period were regarded as the most eminent and gifted of the Society's ministers, he bent his steps towards Exeter. Here, in consequence of the extravagance of his language and that of his disciples, he was arrested and thrown into prison. Several infatuated women surrounded the jail, declaring that "Christ was in prison," and on being admitted to see him, knelt down and kissed his feet, exclaiming, "Thy name shall be no more called James Nayler, but Jesus!" Let us pity him and them. They, full of grateful and extravagant affection for the man whose voice had called them away from worldly vanities to what they regarded as eternal realities, whose hand they imagined had for them swung back the pearl gates of the celestial city, and flooded their atmosphere with light from heaven; he, receiving their homage (not as offered to a poor, weak, sinful Yorkshire trooper, but rather to the hidden man of the heart, the "Christ within" him) with that self- deceiving humility which is but another name for spiritual pride. Mournful, yet natural; such as is still in greater or less degree manifested between the Catholic enthusiast and her confessor; such as the careful observer may at times take note of in our Protestant revivals and camp meetings.

How Nayler was released from Exeter jail does not appear, but the next we hear of him is at Bristol, in the fall of the year. His entrance into that city shows the progress which he and his followers had made in the interval. Let us look at Carlyle's description of it: "A procession of eight persons one, a man on horseback riding single, the others, men and women partly riding double, partly on foot, in the muddiest highway in the wettest weather; singing, all but the single rider, at whose bridle walk and splash two women, 'Hosannah! Holy, holy! Lord God of Sabaoth,' and other things, 'in a buzzing tone,' which the impartial hearer could not make out. The single rider is a raw-boned male figure, 'with lank hair reaching below his cheeks,' hat drawn close over his brows, 'nose rising slightly in the middle,' of abstruse 'down look,' and large dangerous jaws strictly closed: he sings not, sits there covered, and is sung to by the others bare. Amid pouring deluges and mud knee-deep, 'so that the rain ran in at their necks and vented it at their hose and breeches: 'a spectacle to the West of England and posterity! Singing as above; answering no question except in song. From Bedminster to Ratcliffgate, along the streets to the High Cross of Bristol: at the High Cross they are laid hold of by the authorities: turn out to be James Nayler and Company."

Truly, a more pitiful example of "hero-worship" is not well to be conceived of. Instead of taking the rational view of it, however, and mercifully shutting up the actors in a mad-house, the authorities of that day, conceiving it to be a stupendous blasphemy, and themselves God's avengers in the matter, sent Nayler under strong guard up to London, to be examined before the Parliament. After long and tedious examinations and cross-questionings, and still more tedious debates, some portion of which, not uninstructive to the reader, may still be found in Burton's Diary, the following horrible resolution was agreed upon:--

"That James Nayler be set in the pillory, with his head in the pillory in the Palace Yard, Westminster, during the space of two hours on Thursday next; and be whipped by the hangman through the streets from Westminster to the Old Exchange, and there, likewise, be set in the pillory, with his head in the pillory for the space of two hours, between eleven and one, on Saturday next, in each place wearing a paper containing a description of his crimes; and that at the Old Exchange his tongue be bored through with a hot iron, and that he be there stigmatized on the forehead with the letter 'B;' and that he be afterwards sent to Bristol, to be conveyed into and through the said city on horseback with his face backward, and there, also, publicly whipped the next market-day after he comes thither; that from thence he be committed to prison in Bridewell, London, and there restrained from the society of people, and there to labor hard until he shall be released by Parliament; and during that time be debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper, and have no relief except what he earns by his daily labor."

Such, neither more nor less, was, in the opinion of Parliament, required on their part to appease the divine vengeance. The sentence was pronounced on the 17th of the twelfth month; the entire time of the Parliament for the two months previous having been occupied with the case. The Presbyterians in that body were ready enough to make the most of an offence committed by one who had been an Independent; the Independents, to escape the stigma of extenuating the crimes of one of their quondam brethren, vied with their antagonists in shrieking over the atrocity of Nayler's blasphemy, and in urging its severe punishment. Here and there among both classes were men disposed to leniency, and more than one earnest plea was made for merciful dealing with a man whose reason was evidently unsettled, and who was, therefore, a fitting object of compassion; whose crime, if it could indeed be called one, was evidently the result of a clouded intellect, and not of wilful intention of evil. On the other hand, many were in favor of putting him to death as a sort of peace-offering to the clergy, who, as a matter of course, were greatly scandalized by Nayler's blasphemy, and still more by the refusal of his sect to pay tithes, or recognize their divine commission.

Nayler was called into the Parliament-house to receive his sentence. "I do not know mine offence," he said mildly. "You shall know it," said Sir Thomas Widrington, "by your sentence." When the sentence was read, he attempted to speak, but was silenced. "I pray God," said Nayler, "that he may not lay this to your charge."

The next day, the 18th of the twelfth month, he stood in the pillory two hours, in the chill winter air, and was then stripped and scourged by the hangman at the tail of a cart through the streets. Three hundred and ten stripes were inflicted; his back and arms were horribly cut and mangled, and his feet crushed and bruised by the feet of horses treading on him in the crowd. He bore all with uncomplaining patience; but was so far exhausted by his sufferings, that it was found necessary to postpone the execution of the residue of the sentence for one week. The terrible severity of his sentence, and his meek endurance of it, had in the mean time powerfully affected many of the humane and generous of all classes in the city; and a petition for the remission of the remaining part of the penalty was numerously signed and presented to Parliament. A debate ensued upon it, but its prayer was rejected. Application was then made to Cromwell, who addressed a letter to the Speaker of the House, inquiring into the affair, protesting an "abhorrence and detestation of giving or occasioning the least countenance to such opinions and practices" as were imputed to Nayler; "yet we, being intrusted in the present government on behalf of the people of these nations, and not knowing how far such proceeding entered into wholly without us may extend in the consequence of it, do hereby desire the House may let us know the grounds and reasons whereon they have proceeded." From this, it is not unlikely that the Protector might have been disposed to clemency, and to look with a degree of charity upon the weakness and errors of one of his old and tried soldiers who had striven like a brave man, as he was, for the rights and liberties of Englishmen; but the clergy here interposed, and vehemently, in the name of God and His Church, demanded that the executioner should finish his work. Five of the most eminent of them, names well known in the Protectorate, Caryl, Manton, Nye, Griffith, and Reynolds, were deputed by Parliament to visit the mangled prisoner. A reasonable request was made, that some impartial person might be present, that justice might be done Nayler in the report of his answers. This was refused. It was, however, agreed that the conversation should be written down and a copy of it left with the jailer. He was asked if he was sorry for his blasphemies. He said he did not know to what blasphemies they alluded; that he did believe in Jesus Christ; that He had taken up His dwelling in his own heart, and for the testimony of Him he now suffered. "I believe," said one of the ministers, "in a Christ who was never in any man's heart." "I know no such Christ," rejoined the prisoner; "the Christ I witness to fills Heaven and Earth, and dwells in the hearts of all true believers." On being asked why he allowed the women to adore and worship him, he said he "denied bowing to the creature; but if they beheld the power of Christ, wherever it was, and bowed to it, he could not resist it, or say aught against it."

After some further parley, the reverend visitors grew angry, threw the written record of the conversation in the fire, and left the prison, to report the prisoner incorrigible.

On the 27th of the month, he was again led out of his cell and placed upon the pillory. Thousands of citizens were gathered around, many of them earnestly protesting against the extreme cruelty of his punishment. Robert Rich, an influential and honorable merchant, followed him up to the pillory with expressions of great sympathy, and held him by the hand while the red-hot iron was pressed through his tongue and the brand was placed on his forehead. He was next sent to Bristol, and publicly whipped through the principal streets of that city; and again brought back to the Bridewell prison, where he remained about two years, shut out from all intercourse with his fellow-beings. At the expiration of this period, he was released by order of Parliament. In the solitude of his cell, the angel of patience had been with him.

Through the cloud which had so long rested over him, the clear light of truth shone in upon his spirit; the weltering chaos of a disordered intellect settled into the calm peace of a reconciliation with God and man. His first act on leaving prison was to visit Bristol, the scene of his melancholy fall. There he publicly confessed his errors, in the eloquent earnestness of a contrite spirit, humbled in view of the past, yet full of thanksgiving and praise for the great boon of forgiveness. A writer who was present says, the "assembly was tendered, and broken into tears; there were few dry eyes, and many were bowed in their minds."

In a paper which he published soon after, he acknowledges his lamentable delusion. "Condemned forever," he says, "be all those false worships with which any have idolized my person in that Night of my Temptation, when the Power of Darkness was above rue; all that did in any way tend to dishonor the Lord, or draw the minds of any from the measure of Christ Jesus in themselves, to look at flesh, which is as grass, or to ascribe that to the visible which belongs to Him. Darkness came over me through want of watchfulness and obedience to the pure Eye of God. I was taken captive from the true light; I was walking in the Night, as a wandering bird fit for a prey. And if the Lord of all my mercies had not rescued me, I had perished; for I was as one appointed to death and destruction, and there was none to deliver me."

"It is in my heart to confess to God, and before men, my folly and offence in that day; yet there were many things formed against me in that day, to take away my life and bring scandal upon the truth, of which I was not guilty at all." "The provocation of that Time of Temptation was exceeding great against the Lord, yet He left me not; for when Darkness was above, and the Adversary so prevailed that all things were turned and perverted against my right seeing, hearing, or understanding, only a secret hope and faith I had in my God, whom I had served, that He would bring me through it and to the end of it, and that I should again see the day of my redemption from under it all,--this quieted my soul in its greatest tribulation." He concludes his confession with these words: "He who hath saved my soul from death, who hath lifted my feet up out of the pit, even to Him be glory forever; and let every troubled soul trust in Him, for his mercy endureth forever!"

Among his papers, written soon after his release, is a remarkable prayer, or rather thanksgiving. The limit I have prescribed to myself will only allow me to copy an extract:--

"It is in my heart to praise Thee, O my God! Let me never forget Thee, what Thou hast been to me in the night, by Thy presence in my hour of trial, when I was beset in darkness, when I was cast out as a wandering bird; when I was assaulted with strong temptations, then Thy presence, in secret, did preserve me, and in a low state I felt Thee near me; when my way was through the sea, when I passed under the mountains, there wast Thou present with me; when the weight of the hills was upon me, Thou upheldest me. Thou didst fight, on my part, when I wrestled with death; when darkness would have shut me up, Thy light shone about me; when my work was in the furnace, and I passed through the fire, by Thee I was not consumed; when I beheld the dreadful visions, and was among the fiery spirits, Thy faith staid me, else through fear I had fallen. I saw Thee, and believed, so that the enemy could not prevail." After speaking of his humiliation and sufferings, which Divine Mercy had overruled for his spiritual good, he thus concludes: "Thou didst lift me out from the pit, and set me forth in the sight of my enemies; Thou proclaimedst liberty to the captive; Thou calledst my acquaintances near me; they to whom I had been a wonder looked upon me; and in Thy love I obtained favor with those who had deserted me. Then did gladness swallow up sorrow, and I forsook my troubles; and I said, How good is it that man be proved in the night, that he may know his folly, that every mouth may become silent, until Thou makest man known unto himself, and has slain the boaster, and shown him the vanity which vexeth Thy spirit."

All honor to the Quakers of that day, that, at the risk of misrepresentation and calumny, they received back to their communion their greatly erring, but deeply repentant, brother. His life, ever after, was one of self-denial and jealous watchfulness over himself,-- blameless and beautiful in its humility and lowly charity.

Thomas Ellwood, in his autobiography for the year 1659, mentions Nayler, whom he met in company with Edward Burrough at the house of Milton's friend, Pennington. Ellwood's father held a discourse with the two Quakers on their doctrine of free and universal grace. "James Nailer," says Ellwood, "handled the subject with so much perspicuity and clear demonstration, that his reasoning seemed to be irresistible. As for Edward Burrough, he was a brisk young Man, of a ready Tongue, and might have been for aught I then knew, a Scholar, which made me less admire his Way of Reasoning. But what dropt from James Nailer had the greater Force upon me, because he lookt like a simple Countryman, having the appearance of an Husbandman or Shepherd."

In the latter part of the eighth month, 1660, he left London on foot, to visit his wife and children in Wakefield. As he journeyed on, the sense of a solemn change about to take place seemed with him; the shadow of the eternal world fell over him. As he passed through Huntingdon, a friend who saw him describes him as "in an awful and weighty frame of mind, as if he had been redeemed from earth, and a stranger on it, seeking a better home and inheritance." A few miles beyond the town, he was found, in the dusk of the evening, very ill, and was taken to the house of a friend, who lived not far distant. He died shortly after, expressing his gratitude for the kindness of his attendants, and invoking blessings upon them. About two hours before his death, he spoke to the friend at his bedside these remarkable words, solemn as eternity, and beautiful as the love which fills it:--

"There is a spirit which I feel which delights to do no evil, nor to avenge any wrong; but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end; its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exultation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations; as it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other: if it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercy and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness; its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty, and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth with none to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings, for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained resurrection and eternal Holy Life."

So died James Nayler. He was buried in "Thomas Parnell's burying-ground, at King's Rippon," in a green nook of rural England. Wrong and violence, and temptation and sorrow, and evil-speaking, could reach him no more. And in taking leave of him, let us say, with old Joseph Wyeth, where he touches upon this case in his Anguis Flagellatus: "Let none insult, but take heed lest they also, in the hour of their temptation, do fall away."

ANDREW MARVELL

"They who with a good conscience and an upright heart do their civil duties in the sight of God, and in their several places, to resist tyranny and the violence of superstition banded both against them, will never seek to be forgiven that which may justly be attributed to their immortal praise."--Answer to Eikon Basilike.

Among, the great names which adorned the Protectorate,--that period of intense mental activity, when political and religious rights and duties were thoroughly discussed by strong and earnest statesmen and theologians,--that of Andrew Marvell, the friend of Milton, and Latin Secretary of Cromwell, deserves honorable mention. The magnificent prose of Milton, long neglected, is now perhaps as frequently read as his great epic; but the writings of his friend and fellow secretary, devoted like his own to the cause of freedom and the rights of the people, are scarcely known to the present generation. It is true that Marvell's political pamphlets were less elaborate and profound than those of the author of the glorious Defence of Unlicensed Printing. He was light, playful, witty, and sarcastic; he lacked the stern dignity, the terrible invective, the bitter scorn, the crushing, annihilating retort, the grand and solemn eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the controversial works of Milton. But he, too, has left his foot-prints on his age; he, too, has written for posterity that which they "will not willingly let die." As one of the inflexible defenders of English liberty, sowers of the seed, the fruits of which we are now reaping, he has a higher claim on the kind regards of this generation than his merits as a poet, by no means inconsiderable, would warrant.

Andrew Marvell was born in Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1620. At the age of eighteen he entered Trinity College, whence he was enticed by the Jesuits, then actively seeking proselytes. After remaining with them a short time, his father found him, and brought him back to his studies. On leaving college, he travelled on the Continent. At Rome he wrote his first satire, a humorous critique upon Richard Flecknoe, an English Jesuit and verse writer, whose lines on Silence Charles Lamb quotes in one of his Essays. It is supposed that he made his first acquaintance with Milton in Italy.

At Paris he made the Abbot de Manihan the subject of another satire. The Abbot pretended to skill in the arts of magic, and used to prognosticate the fortunes of people from the character of their handwriting. At what period he returned from his travels we are not aware. It is stated, by some of his biographers, that he was sent as secretary of a Turkish mission. In 1653, he was appointed the tutor of Cromwell's nephew; and, four years after, doubtless through the instrumentality of his friend Milton, he received the honorable appointment of Latin Secretary of the Commonwealth. In 1658, he was selected by his townsmen of Hull to represent them in Parliament. In this service he continued until 1663, when, notwithstanding his sturdy republican principles, he was appointed secretary to the Russian embassy. On his return, in 1665, he was again elected to Parliament, and continued in the public service until the prorogation of the Parliament of 1675.

The boldness, the uncompromising integrity and irreproachable consistency of Marvell, as a statesman, have secured for him the honorable appellation of "the British Aristides." Unlike too many of his old associates under the Protectorate, he did not change with the times. He was a republican in Cromwell's day, and neither threats of assassination, nor flatteries, nor proffered bribes, could make him anything else in that of Charles II. He advocated the rights of the people at a time when patriotism was regarded as ridiculous folly; when a general corruption, spreading downwards from a lewd and abominable Court, had made legislation a mere scramble for place and emolument. English history presents no period so disgraceful as the Restoration. To use the words of Macaulay, it was "a day of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean." It is the peculiar merit of Milton and Marvell, that in such an age they held fast their integrity, standing up in glorious contrast with clerical apostates and traitors to the cause of England's liberty.

In the discharge of his duties as a statesman Marvell was as punctual and conscientious as our own venerable Apostle of Freedom, John Quincy Adams. He corresponded every post with his constituents, keeping them fully apprised of all that transpired at Court or in Parliament. He spoke but seldom, but his great personal influence was exerted privately upon the members of the Commons as well as upon the Peers. His wit, accomplished manners, and literary eminence made him a favorite at the Court itself. The voluptuous and careless monarch laughed over the biting satire of the republican poet, and heartily enjoyed his lively conversation. It is said that numerous advances were made to him by the courtiers of Charles II., but he was found to be incorruptible. The personal compliments of the King, the encomiums of Rochester, the smiles and flatteries of the frail but fair and high-born ladies of the Court; nay, even the golden offers of the King's treasurer, who, climbing with difficulty to his obscure retreat on an upper floor of a court in the Strand, laid a tempting bribe of L1,000 before him, on the very day when he had been compelled to borrow a guinea, were all lost upon the inflexible patriot. He stood up manfully, in an age of persecution, for religious liberty, opposed the oppressive excise, and demanded frequent Parliaments and a fair representation of the people.

In 1672, Marvell engaged in a controversy with the famous High-Churchman, Dr. Parker, who had taken the lead in urging the persecution of Non- conformists. In one of the works of this arrogant divine, he says that "it is absolutely necessary to the peace and government of the world that the supreme magistrate should be vested with power to govern and conduct the consciences of subjects in affairs of religion. Princes may with less hazard give liberty to men's vices and debaucheries than to their consciences." And, speaking of the various sects of Non-conformists, he counsels princes and legislators that "tenderness and indulgence to such men is to nourish vipers in their own bowels, and the most sottish neglect of our quiet and security." Marvell replied to him in a severely satirical pamphlet, which provoked a reply from the Doctor. Marvell rejoined, with a rare combination of wit and argument. The effect of his sarcasm on the Doctor and his supporters may be inferred from an anonymous note sent him, in which the writer threatens by the eternal God to cut his throat, if he uttered any more libels upon Dr. Parker. Bishop Burnet remarks that "Marvell writ in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and so entertaining a conduct 'that from the King down to the tradesman his books were read with great pleasure, and not only humbled Parker, but his whole party, for Marvell had all the wits on his side.'" The Bishop further remarks that Marvell's satire "gave occasion to the only piece of modesty with which Dr. Parker was ever charged, namely, of withdrawing from town, and not importuning the press for some years, since even a face of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his has been."

Dean Swift, in commenting upon the usual fate of controversial pamphlets, which seldom live beyond their generation, says: "There is indeed an exception, when a great genius undertakes to expose a foolish piece; so we still read Marvell's answer to Parker with pleasure, though the book it answers be sunk long ago."

Perhaps, in the entire compass of our language, there is not to be found a finer piece of satirical writing than Marvell's famous parody of the speeches of Charles II., in which the private vices and public inconsistencies of the King, and his gross violations of his pledges on coming to the throne, are exposed with the keenest wit and the most laugh-provoking irony. Charles himself, although doubtless annoyed by it, could not refrain from joining in the mirth which it excited at his expense.

The friendship between Marvell and Milton remained firm and unbroken to the last. The former exerted himself to save his illustrious friend from persecution, and omitted no opportunity to defend him as a politician and to eulogize him as a poet. In 1654 he presented to Cromwell Milton's noble tract in Defence of the People of England, and, in writing to the author, says of the work, "When I consider how equally it teems and rises with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding ascent we see embossed the several monuments of your learned victories." He was one of the first to appreciate Paradise Lost, and to commend it in some admirable lines. One couplet is exceedingly beautiful, in its reference to the author's blindness:--

"Just Heaven, thee like Tiresias to requite, Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight."

His poems, written in the "snatched leisure" of an active political life, bear marks of haste, and are very unequal. In the midst of passages of pastoral description worthy of Milton himself, feeble lines and hackneyed phrases occur. His Nymph lamenting the Death of her Fawn is a finished and elaborate piece, full of grace and tenderness. Thoughts in a Garden will be remembered by the quotations of that exquisite critic, Charles Lamb. How pleasant is this picture!

"What wondrous life is this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

"Here at this fountain's sliding foot, Or at the fruit-tree's mossy root, Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide. There like a bird it sits and sings, And whets and claps its silver wings; And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.

"How well the skilful gard'ner drew Of flowers and herbs this dial true! Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes his time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!"

One of his longer poems, Appleton House, contains passages of admirable description, and many not unpleasing conceits. Witness the following:--

"Thus I, an easy philosopher, Among the birds and trees confer, And little now to make me wants, Or of the fowl or of the plants. Give me but wings, as they, and I Straight floating on the air shall fly; Or turn me but, and you shall see I am but an inverted tree. Already I begin to call In their most learned original; And, where I language want, my signs The bird upon the bough divines. No leaf does tremble in the wind, Which I returning cannot find. Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves, Strange prophecies my fancy weaves: What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said, I in this light Mosaic read. Under this antic cope I move, Like some great prelate of the grove; Then, languishing at ease, I toss On pallets thick with velvet moss; While the wind, cooling through the boughs, Flatters with air my panting brows. Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks! And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks! Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed, And winnow from the chaff my head. How safe, methinks, and strong behind These trees have I encamped my mind!"

Here is a picture of a piscatorial idler and his trout stream, worthy of the pencil of Izaak Walton:--

"See in what wanton harmless folds It everywhere the meadow holds: Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt If they be in it or without; And for this shade, which therein shines Narcissus-like, the sun too pines. Oh! what a pleasure 't is to hedge My temples here in heavy sedge; Abandoning my lazy side, Stretched as a bank unto the tide; Or, to suspend my sliding foot On the osier's undermining root, And in its branches tough to hang, While at my lines the fishes twang."

A little poem of Marvell's, which he calls Eyes and Tears, has the following passages:--

"How wisely Nature did agree With the same eyes to weep and see! That having viewed the object vain, They might be ready to complain. And, since the self-deluding sight In a false angle takes each height, These tears, which better measure all, Like watery lines and plummets fall."

"Happy are they whom grief doth bless, That weep the more, and see the less; And, to preserve their sight more true, Bathe still their eyes in their own dew; So Magdalen, in tears more wise, Dissolved those captivating eyes, Whose liquid chains could, flowing, meet To fetter her Redeemer's feet. The sparkling glance, that shoots desire, Drenched in those tears, does lose its fire; Yea, oft the Thunderer pity takes, And there his hissing lightning slakes. The incense is to Heaven dear, Not as a perfume, but a tear; And stars shine lovely in the night, But as they seem the tears of light. Ope, then, mine eyes, your double sluice, And practise so your noblest use; For others, too, can see or sleep, But only human eyes can weep."

The Bermuda Emigrants has some happy lines, as the following:--

"He hangs in shade the orange bright, Like golden lamps in a green night."

Or this, which doubtless suggested a couplet in Moore's Canadian Boat Song:--

"And all the way, to guide the chime, With falling oars they kept the time."

His facetious and burlesque poetry was much admired in his day; but a great portion of it referred to persons and events no longer of general interest. The satire on Holland is an exception. There is nothing in its way superior to it in our language. Many of his best pieces were originally written in Latin, and afterwards translated by himself. There is a splendid Ode to Cromwell--a worthy companion of Milton's glorious sonnet--which is not generally known, and which we transfer entire to our pages. Its simple dignity and the melodious flow of its versification commend themselves more to our feelings than its eulogy of war. It is energetic and impassioned, and probably affords a better idea of the author, as an actor in the stirring drama of his time, than the "soft Lydian airs" of the poems that we have quoted.

AN HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL'S RETURN FROM IRELAND.

The forward youth that would appear Must now forsake his Muses dear; Nor in the shadows sing His numbers languishing.

'T is time to leave the books in dust, And oil the unused armor's rust; Removing from the wall The corslet of the hall.

So restless Cromwell could not cease In the inglorious arts of peace, But through adventurous war Urged his active star.

And, like the three-forked lightning, first Breaking the clouds wherein it nurst, Did thorough his own side His fiery way divide.

For 't is all one to courage high, The emulous, or enemy; And with such to enclose Is more than to oppose.

Then burning through the air he went, And palaces and temples rent; And Caesar's head at last Did through his laurels blast.

'T is madness to resist or blame The face of angry Heaven's flame; And, if we would speak true, Much to the man is due,

Who, from his private gardens, where He lived reserved and austere, (As if his highest plot To plant the bergamot,)

Could by industrious valor climb To ruin the great work of time, And cast the kingdoms old Into another mould!

Though justice against fate complain, And plead the ancient rights in vain,-- But those do hold or break, As men are strong or weak.

Nature, that hateth emptiness, Allows of penetration less, And therefore must make room Where greater spirits come.

What field of all the civil war, Where his were not the deepest scar? And Hampton shows what part He had of wiser art;

Where, twining subtle fears with hope, He wove a net of such a scope, That Charles himself might chase To Carisbrook's narrow case;

That hence the royal actor borne, The tragic scaffold might adorn, While round the armed bands Did clap their bloody hands.

HE nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try

Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite, To vindicate his helpless right! But bowed his comely head, Down, as upon a bed.

This was that memorable hour, Which first assured the forced power; So when they did design The Capitol's first line,

A bleeding head, where they begun, Did fright the architects to run; And yet in that the state Foresaw its happy fate.

And now the Irish are ashamed To see themselves in one year tamed; So much one man can do, That does best act and know.

They can affirm his praises best, And have, though overcome, confest How good he is, how just, And fit for highest trust.

Nor yet grown stiffer by command, But still in the Republic's hand, How fit he is to sway That can so well obey.

He to the Commons' feet presents A kingdom for his first year's rents, And, what he may, forbears His fame to make it theirs.

And has his sword and spoils ungirt, To lay them at the public's skirt; So when the falcon high Falls heavy from the sky,

She, having killed, no more does search, But on the next green bough to perch, Where, when he first does lure, The falconer has her sure.

What may not, then, our isle presume, While Victory his crest does plume? What may not others fear,

If thus he crowns each year?

As Caesar, he, erelong, to Gaul; To Italy as Hannibal, And to all states not free Shall climacteric be.

The Pict no shelter now shall find Within his parti-contoured mind; But from his valor sad Shrink underneath the plaid,

Happy if in the tufted brake The English hunter him mistake, Nor lay his hands a near The Caledonian deer.

But thou, the war's and fortune's son, March indefatigably on; And, for the last effect, Still keep the sword erect.

Besides the force, it has to fright The spirits of the shady night The same arts that did gain A power, must it maintain.

Marvell was never married. The modern critic, who affirms that bachelors have done the most to exalt women into a divinity, might have quoted his extravagant panegyric of Maria Fairfax as an apt illustration:--

"'T is she that to these gardens gave The wondrous beauty which they have; She straitness on the woods bestows, To her the meadow sweetness owes; Nothing could make the river be So crystal pure but only she,-- She, yet more pure, sweet, strait, and fair, Than gardens, woods, meals, rivers are Therefore, what first she on them spent They gratefully again present: The meadow carpets where to tread, The garden flowers to crown her head, And for a glass the limpid brook Where she may all her beauties look; But, since she would not have them seen, The wood about her draws a screen; For she, to higher beauty raised, Disdains to be for lesser praised; She counts her beauty to converse In all the languages as hers, Nor yet in those herself employs, But for the wisdom, not the noise, Nor yet that wisdom could affect, But as 't is Heaven's dialect."

It has been the fashion of a class of shallow Church and State defenders to ridicule the great men of the Commonwealth, the sturdy republicans of England, as sour-featured, hard-hearted ascetics, enemies of the fine arts and polite literature. The works of Milton and Marvell, the prose- poem of Harrington, and the admirable discourses of Algernon Sydney are a sufficient answer to this accusation. To none has it less application than to the subject of our sketch. He was a genial, warmhearted man, an elegant scholar, a finished gentleman at home, and the life of every circle which he entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles II., amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, or that of the republican philosophers who assembled at Miles's Coffee House, where he discussed plans of a free representative government with the author of Oceana, and Cyriack Skinner, that friend of Milton, whom the bard has immortalized in the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, alludes to his own blindness. Men of all parties enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation. His personal appearance was altogether in his favor. A clear, dark, Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty blackness falling in graceful wreaths to his shoulders, dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a finely chiselled chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptuousness scarcely gave token of the steady purpose and firm will of the inflexible statesman: these, added to the prestige of his genius, and the respect which a lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism extorts even from those who would fain corrupt and bribe it, gave him a ready passport to the fashionable society of the metropolis. He was one of the few who mingled in that society, and escaped its contamination, and who,

"Amidst the wavering days of sin, Kept himself icy chaste and pure."

The tone and temper of his mind may be most fitly expressed in his own paraphrase of Horace:--

"Climb at Court for me that will, Tottering Favor's pinnacle; All I seek is to lie still! Settled in some secret nest, In calm leisure let me rest; And, far off the public stage, Pass away my silent age. Thus, when, without noise, unknown, I have lived out all my span, I shall die without a groan, An old, honest countryman. Who, exposed to other's eyes, Into his own heart ne'er pries, Death's to him a strange surprise."

He died suddenly in 1678, while in attendance at a popular meeting of his old constituents at Hull. His health had previously been remarkably good; and it was supposed by many that he was poisoned by some of his political or clerical enemies. His monument, erected by his grateful constituency, bears the following inscription:--

"Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esq., a man so endowed by Nature, so improved by Education, Study, and Travel, so consummated by Experience, that, joining the peculiar graces of Wit and Learning, with a singular penetration and strength of judgment; and exercising all these in the whole course of his life, with an unutterable steadiness in the ways of Virtue, he became the ornament and example of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired by all, though imitated by few; and scarce paralleled by any. But a Tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is Marble necessary to transmit it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this generation, and will be always legible in his inimitable writings, nevertheless. He having served twenty years successfully in Parliament, and that with such Wisdom, Dexterity, and Courage, as becomes a true Patriot, the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence he was deputed to that Assembly, lamenting in his death the public loss, have erected this Monument of their Grief and their Gratitude, 1688."

Thus lived and died Andrew Marvell. His memory is the inheritance of Americans as well as Englishmen. His example commends itself in an especial manner to the legislators of our Republic. Integrity and fidelity to principle are as greatly needed at this time in our halls of Congress as in the Parliaments of the Restoration; men are required who can feel, with Milton, that "it is high honor done them from God, and a special mark of His favor, to have been selected to stand upright and steadfast in His cause, dignified with the defence of Truth and public liberty."

JOHN ROBERTS.

Thomas Carlyle, in his history of the stout and sagacious Monk of St. Edmunds, has given us a fine picture of the actual life of Englishmen in the middle centuries. The dim cell-lamp of the somewhat apocryphal Jocelin of Brakelond becomes in his hands a huge Drummond-light, shining over the Dark Ages like the naphtha-fed cressets over Pandemonium, proving, as he says in his own quaint way, that "England in the year 1200 was no dreamland, but a green, solid place, which grew corn and several other things; the sun shone on it; the vicissitudes of seasons and human fortunes were there; cloth was woven, ditches dug, fallow fields ploughed, and houses built." And if, as the writer just quoted insists, it is a matter of no small importance to make it credible to the present generation that the Past is not a confused dream of thrones and battle- fields, creeds and constitutions, but a reality, substantial as hearth and home, harvest-field and smith-shop, merry-making and death, could make it, we shall not wholly waste our time and that of our readers in inviting them to look with us at the rural life of England two centuries ago, through the eyes of John Roberts and his worthy son, Daniel, yeomen, of Siddington, near Cirencester.

The Memoirs of John Roberts, alias Haywood, by his son, Daniel Roberts, (the second edition, printed verbatim from the original one, with its picturesque array of italics and capital letters,) is to be found only in a few of our old Quaker libraries. It opens with some account of the family. The father of the elder Roberts "lived reputably, on a little estate of his own," and it is mentioned as noteworthy that he married a sister of a gentleman in the Commission of the Peace. Coming of age about the beginning of the civil wars, John and one of his young neighbors enlisted in the service of Parliament. Hearing that Cirencester had been taken by the King's forces, they obtained leave of absence to visit their friends, for whose safety they naturally felt solicitous. The following account of the reception they met with from the drunken and ferocious troopers of Charles I., the "bravos of Alsatia and the pages of Whitehall," throws a ghastly light upon the horrors of civil war:--

"As they were passing by Cirencester, they were discovered, and pursued by two soldiers of the King's party, then in possession of the town. Seeing themselves pursued, they quitted their horses, and took to their heels; but, by reason of their accoutrements, could make little speed. They came up with my father first; and, though he begged for quarter, none they would give him, but laid on him with their swords, cutting and slashing his hands and arms, which he held up to save his head; as the marks upon them did long after testify. At length it pleased the Almighty to put it into his mind to fall down on his face; which he did. Hereupon the soldiers, being on horseback, cried to each other, Alight, and cut his throat! but neither of them did; yet continued to strike and prick him about the jaws, till they thought him dead. Then they left him, and pursued his neighbor, whom they presently overtook and killed. Soon after they had left my father, it was said in his heart, Rise, and flee for thy life! which call he obeyed; and, starting upon his feet, his enemies espied him in motion, and pursued him again. He ran down a steep hill, and through a river which ran at the bottom of it; though with exceeding difficulty, his boots filling with water, and his wounds bleeding very much. They followed him to the top of the hill; but, seeing he had got over, pursued him no farther."

The surgeon who attended him was a Royalist, and bluntly told his bleeding patient that if he had met him in the street he would have killed him himself, but now he was willing to cure him. On his recovery, young Roberts again entered the army, and continued in it until the overthrow, of the Monarchy. On his return, he married "Lydia Tindall, of the denomination of Puritans." A majestic figure rises before us, on reading the statement that Sir Matthew Hale, afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England, the irreproachable jurist and judicial saint, was "his wife's kinsman, and drew her marriage settlement."

No stronger testimony to the high-toned morality and austere virtue of the Puritan yeomanry of England can be adduced than the fact that, of the fifty thousand soldiers who were discharged on the accession of Charles II., and left to shift for themselves, comparatively few, if any, became chargeable to their parishes, although at that very time one out of six of the English population were unable to support themselves. They carried into their farm-fields and workshops the strict habits of Cromwell's discipline; and, in toiling to repair their wasted fortunes, they manifested the same heroic fortitude and self-denial which in war had made them such formidable and efficient "Soldiers of the Lord." With few exceptions, they remained steadfast in their uncompromising non- conformity, abhorring Prelacy and Popery, and entertaining no very orthodox notions with respect to the divine right of Kings. From them the Quakers drew their most zealous champions; men who, in renouncing the "carnal weapons" of their old service, found employment for habitual combativeness in hot and wordy sectarian warfare. To this day the vocabulary of Quakerism abounds in the military phrases and figures which were in use in the Commonwealth's time. Their old force and significance are now in a great measure lost; but one can well imagine that, in the assemblies of the primitive Quakers, such stirring battle-cries and warlike tropes, even when employed in enforcing or illustrating the doctrines of peace, must have made many a stout heart' to beat quicker, tinder its drab coloring, with recollections of Naseby and Preston; transporting many a listener from the benches of his place of worship to the ranks of Ireton and Lambert, and causing him to hear, in the place of the solemn and nasal tones of the preacher, the blast of Rupert's bugles, and the answering shout of Cromwell's pikemen: "Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered!"

Of this class was John Roberts. He threw off his knapsack, and went back to his small homestead, contented with the privilege of supporting himself and family by daily toil, and grumbling in concert with his old campaign brothers at the new order of things in Church and State. To his apprehension, the Golden Days of England ended with the parade on Blackheath to receive the restored King. He manifested no reverence for Bishops and Lords, for he felt none. For the Presbyterians he had no good will; they had brought in the King, and they denied the liberty of prophesying. John Milton has expressed the feeling of the Independents and Anabaptists towards this latter class, in that famous line in which he defines Presbyter as "old priest writ large." Roberts was by no means a gloomy fanatic; he had a great deal of shrewdness and humor, loved a quiet joke; and every gambling priest and swearing magistrate in the neighborhood stood in fear of his sharp wit. It was quite in course for such a man to fall in with the Quakers, and he appears to have done so at the first opportunity.

In the year 1665, "it pleased the Lord to send two women Friends out of the North to Cirencester," who, inquiring after such as feared God, were directed to the house of John Roberts. He received them kindly, and, inviting in some of his neighbors, sat down with them, whereupon "the Friends spake a few words, which had a good effect." After the meeting was over, he was induced to visit a "Friend" then confined in Banbury jail, whom he found preaching through the grates of his cell to the people in the street. On seeing Roberts he called to mind the story of Zaccheus, and declared that the word was now to all who were seeking Christ by climbing the tree of knowledge, "Come down, come down; for that which is to be known of God is manifested within." Returning home, he went soon after to the parish meeting-house, and, entering with his hat on, the priest noticed him, and, stopping short in his discourse, declared that he could not go on while one of the congregation wore his hat. He was thereupon led out of the house, and a rude fellow, stealing up behind, struck him on the back with a heavy stone. "Take that for God's sake," said the ruffian. "So I do," answered Roberts, without looking back to see his assailant, who the next day came and asked his forgiveness for the injury, as he could not sleep in consequence of it.

We next find him attending the Quarter Sessions, where three "Friends" were arraigned for entering Cirencester Church with their hats on. Venturing to utter a word of remonstrance against the summary proceedings of the Court, Justice Stephens demanded his name, and, on being told, exclaimed, in the very tone and temper of Jeffreys:

"I 've heard of you. I'm glad I have you here. You deserve a stone doublet. There's many an honester man than you hanged."

"It may be so," said Roberts, "but what becomes of such as hang honest men?"

The Justice snatched a ball of wax and hurled it at the quiet questioner. "I 'll send you to prison," said he; "and if any insurrection or tumult occurs, I 'll come and cut your throat with my own sword." A warrant was made out, and he was forthwith sent to the jail. In the evening, Justice Sollis, his uncle, released him, on condition of his promise to appear at the next Sessions. He returned to his home, but in the night following he was impressed with a belief that it was his duty to visit Justice Stephens. Early in the morning, with a heavy heart, without eating or drinking, he mounted his horse and rode towards the residence of his enemy. When he came in sight of the house, he felt strong misgivings that his uncle, Justice Sollis, who had so kindly released him, and his neighbors generally, would condemn him for voluntarily running into danger, and drawing down trouble upon himself and family. He alighted from his horse, and sat on the ground in great doubt and sorrow, when a voice seemed to speak within him, "Go, and I will go with thee." The Justice met him at the door. "I am come," said Roberts, "in the fear and dread of Heaven, to warn thee to repent of thy wickedness with speed, lest the Lord send thee to the pit that is bottomless!" This terrible summons awed the Justice; he made Roberts sit down on his couch beside him, declaring that he received the message from God, and asked forgiveness for the wrong he had done him.

The parish vicar of Siddington at this time was George Bull, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, whom Macaulay speaks of as the only rural parish priest who, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, was noted as a theologian, or Who possessed a respectable library. Roberts refused to pay the vicar his tithes, and the vicar sent him to prison. It was the priest's "Short Method with Dissenters." While the sturdy Non- conformist lay in prison, he was visited by the great woman of the neighborhood, Lady Dunch, of Down Amney. "What do you lie in jail for?" inquired the lady. Roberts replied that it was because he could not put bread into the mouth of a hireling priest. The lady suggested that he might let somebody else satisfy the demands of the priest; and that she had a mind to do this herself, as she wished to talk with him on religious subjects. To this Roberts objected; there were poor people who needed her charities, which would be wasted on such devourers as the priests, who, like Pharaoh's lean kine, were eating up the fat and the goodly, without looking a whit the better. But the lady, who seems to have been pleased and amused by the obstinate prisoner, paid the tithe and the jail fees, and set him at liberty, making him fix a day when he would visit her. At the time appointed he went to Down Amney, and was overtaken on the way by the priest of Cirencester, who had been sent for to meet the Quaker. They found the lady ill in bed; but she had them brought to her chamber, being determined not to lose the amusement of hearing a theological discussion, to which she at once urged them, declaring that it would divert her and do her good. The parson began by accusing the Quakers of holding Popish doctrines. The Quaker retorted by telling him that if he would prove the Quakers like the Papists in one thing, by the help of God, he would prove him like them in ten. After a brief and sharp dispute, the priest, finding his adversary's wit too keen for his comfort, hastily took his leave.

The next we hear of Roberts he is in Gloucester Castle, subjected to the brutal usage of a jailer, who took a malicious satisfaction in thrusting decent and respectable Dissenters, imprisoned for matters of conscience, among felons and thieves. A poor vagabond tinker was hired to play at night on his hautboy, and prevent their sleeping; but Roberts spoke to him in such a manner that the instrument fell from his hand; and he told the jailer that he would play no more, though he should hang him up at the door for it.

How he was released from jail does not appear; but the narrative tells us that some time after an apparitor came to cite him to the Bishop's Court at Gloucester. When he was brought before the Court, Bishop Nicholson, a kind-hearted and easy-natured prelate, asked him the number of his children, and how many of them had been bishoped?

"None, that I know of," said Roberts.

"What reason," asked the Bishop, "do you give for this?"

"A very good one," said the Quaker: "most of my children were born in Oliver's days, when Bishops were out of fashion."

The Bishop and the Court laughed at this sally, and proceeded to question him touching his views of baptism. Roberts admitted that John had a Divine commission to baptize with water, but that he never heard of anybody else that had. The Bishop reminded him that Christ's disciples baptized. "What 's that to me?" responded Roberts. "Paul says he was not sent to baptize, but to preach the Gospel. And if he was not sent, who required it at his hands? Perhaps he had as little thanks for his labor as thou hast for thine; and I would willingly know who sent thee to baptize?"

The Bishop evaded this home question, and told him he was there to answer for not coming to church. Roberts denied the charge; sometimes he went to church, and sometimes it came to him. "I don't call that a church which you do, which is made of wood and stone."

"What do you call it?" asked the Bishop.

"It might be properly called a mass-house," was the reply; "for it was built for that purpose." The Bishop here told him he might go for the present; he would take another opportunity to convince him of his errors.

The next person called was a Baptist minister, who, seeing that Roberts refused to put off his hat, kept on his also. The Bishop sternly reminded him that he stood before the King's Court, and the representative of the majesty of England; and that, while some regard might be had to the scruples of men who made a conscience of putting off the hat, such contempt could not be tolerated on the part of one who could put it off to every mechanic be met. The Baptist pulled off his hat, and apologized, on the ground of illness.

We find Roberts next following George Fox on a visit to Bristol. On his return, reaching his house late in the evening, he saw a man standing in the moonlight at his door, and knew him to be a bailiff.

"Hast thou anything against me?" asked Roberts.

"No," said the bailiff, "I've wronged you enough, God forgive me! Those who lie in wait for you are my Lord Bishop's bailiffs; they are merciless rogues. Ever, my master, while you live, please a knave, for an honest man won't hurt you."

The next morning, having, as he thought, been warned by a dream to do so, he went to the Bishop's house at Cleave, near Gloucester. Confronting the Bishop in his own hall, he told him that he had come to know why he was hunting after him with his bailiffs, and why he was his adversary. "The King is your adversary," said the Bishop; "you have broken the King's law." Roberts ventured to deny the justice of the law. "What!" cried the Bishop, "do such men as you find fault with the laws?" "Yes," replied the other, stoutly; "and I tell thee plainly to thy face, it is high time wiser men were chosen, to make better laws."

The discourse turning upon the Book of Common Prayer, Roberts asked the Bishop if the sin of idolatry did not consist in worshipping the work of men's hands. The Bishop admitted it, as in the case of Nebuchadnezzar's image.

"Then," said Roberts, "whose hands made your Prayer Book? It could not make itself."

"Do you compare our Prayer Book to Nebuchadnezzar's image?" cried the Bishop.

"Yes," returned Roberts, "that was his image; this is thine. I no more dare bow to thy Common-Prayer Book than the Three Children to Nebuchadnezzar's image."

"Yours is a strange upstart religion," said the Bishop.

Roberts told him it was older than his by several hundred years. At this claim of antiquity the prelate was greatly amused, and told Roberts that if he would make out his case, he should speed the better for it.

"Let me ask thee," said Roberts, "where thy religion was in Oliver's days, when thy Common-Prayer Book was as little regarded as an old almanac, and your priests, with a few honest exceptions, turned with the tide, and if Oliver had put mass in their mouths would have conformed to it for the sake of their bellies."

"What would you have us do?" asked the Bishop. "Would you have had Oliver cut our throats?"

"No," said Roberts; "but what sort of religion was that which you were afraid to venture your throats for?"

The Bishop interrupted him to say, that in Oliver's days he had never owned any other religion than his own, although he did not dare to openly maintain it as he then did.

"Well," continued Roberts, "if thou didst not think thy religion worth venturing thy throat for then, I desire thee to consider that it is not worth the cutting of other men's throats now for not conforming to it."

"You are right," responded the frank Bishop. "I hope we shall have a care how we cut men's throats."

The following colloquy throws some light on the condition and character of the rural clergy at this period, and goes far to confirm the statements of Macaulay, which many have supposed exaggerated. Baxter's early religious teachers were more exceptionable than even the maudlin mummer whom Roberts speaks of, one of them being "the excellentest stage- player in all the country, and a good gamester and goodfellow, who, having received Holy Orders, forged the like for a neighbor's son, who on the strength of that title officiated at the desk and altar; and after him came an attorney's clerk, who had tippled himself into so great poverty that he had no other way to live than to preach."

J. ROBERTS. I was bred up under a Common-Prayer Priest; and a poor drunken old Man he was. Sometimes he was so drunk he could not say his Prayers, and at best he could but say them; though I think he was by far a better Man than he that is Priest there now.

BISHOP. Who is your Minister now?

J. ROBERTS. My Minister is Christ Jesus, the Minister of the everlasting Covenant; but the present Priest of the Parish is George Bull.

BISHOP. Do you say that drunken old Man was better than Mr. Bull? I tell you, I account Mr. Bull as sound, able, and orthodox a Divine as any we have among us.

J. ROBERT. I am sorry for that; for if he be one of the best of you, I believe the Lord will not suffer you long; for he is a proud, ambitious, ungodly Man: he hath often sued me at Law, and brought his Servants to swear against me wrongfully. His Servants themselves have confessed to my Servants, that I might have their Ears; for their Master made them drunk, and then told them they were set down in the List as Witnesses against me, and they must swear to it: And so they did, and brought treble Damages. They likewise owned they took Tithes from my Servants, threshed them out, and sold them for their Master. They have also several Times took my Cattle out of my Grounds, drove them to Fairs and Markets, and sold them, without giving me any Account.

BISHOP. I do assure you I will inform Mr. Bull of what you say.

J. ROBERTS. Very well. And if thou pleasest to send for me to face him, I shall make much more appear to his Face than I'll say behind his Back.

After much more discourse, Roberts told the Bishop that if it would do him any good to have him in jail, he would voluntarily go and deliver himself up to the keeper of Gloucester Castle. The good-natured prelate relented at this, and said he should not be molested or injured, and further manifested his good will by ordering refreshments. One of the Bishop's friends who was present was highly offended by the freedom of Roberts with his Lordship, and undertook to rebuke him, but was so readily answered that he flew into a rage. "If all the Quakers in England," said he, "are not hanged in a month's time, I 'll be hanged for them." "Prithee, friend," quoth Roberts, "remember and be as good as thy word!"

Good old Bishop Nicholson, it would seem, really liked his incorrigible Quaker neighbor, and could enjoy heartily his wit and humor, even when exercised at the expense of his own ecclesiastical dignity. He admired his blunt honesty and courage. Surrounded by flatterers and self- seekers, he found satisfaction in the company and conversation of one who, setting aside all conventionalisms, saw only in my Lord Bishop a poor fellow-probationer, and addressed him on terms of conscious equality. The indulgence which he extended to him naturally enough provoked many of the inferior clergy, who had been sorely annoyed by the sturdy Dissenter's irreverent witticisms and unsparing ridicule. Vicar Bull, of Siddington, and Priest Careless, of Cirencester, in particular, urged the Bishop to deal sharply with him. The former accused him of dealing in the Black Art, and filled the Bishop's ear with certain marvellous stories of his preternatural sagacity and discernment in discovering cattle which were lost. The Bishop took occasion to inquire into these stories; and was told by Roberts that, except in a single instance, the discoveries were the result of his acquaintance with the habits of animals and his knowledge of the localities where they were lost. The circumstance alluded to, as an exception, will be best related in his own words.

"I had a poor Neighbor, who had a Wife and six Children, and whom the chief men about us permitted to keep six or seven Cows upon the Waste, which were the principal Support of the Family, and preserved them from becoming chargeable to the Parish. One very stormy night the Cattle were left in the Yard as usual, but could not be found in the morning. The Man and his Sons had sought them to no purpose; and, after they had been lost four days, his Wife came to me, and, in a great deal of grief, cried, 'O Lord! Master Hayward, we are undone! My Husband and I must go a begging in our old age! We have lost all our Cows. My Husband and the Boys have been round the country, and can hear nothing of them. I'll down on my bare knees, if you'll stand our Friend!' I desired she would not be in such an agony, and told her she should not down on her knees to me; but I would gladly help them in what I could. 'I know,' said she, 'you are a good Man, and God will hear your Prayers.' I desire thee, said I, to be still and quiet in thy mind; perhaps thy Husband or Sons may hear of them to-day; if not, let thy Husband get a horse, and come to me to-morrow morning as soon as he will; and I think, if it please God, to go with him to seek then. The Woman seemed transported with joy, crying, 'Then we shall have our Cows again.' Her Faith being so strong, brought the greater Exercise on me, with strong cries to the Lord, that he would be pleased to make me instrumental in his Hand, for the help of the poor Family. In the Morning early comes the old Man. In the Name of God, says he, which way shall we go to seek them? I, being deeply concerned in my Mind, did not answer him till he had thrice repeated it; and then I answered, In the Name of God, I would go to seek them; and said (before I was well aware) we will go to Malmsbury, and at the Horse- Fair we shall find them. When I had spoken the Words, I was much troubled lest they should not prove true. It was very early, and the first Man we saw, I asked him if he had seen any stray Milch Cows thereabouts. What manner of Cattle are they? said he. And the old Man describing their Mark and Number, he told us there were some stood chewing their Cuds in the Horse-Fair; but thinking they belonged to some in the Neighborhood, he did not take particular Notice of them. When we came to the Place, the old Man found them to be his; but suffered his Transports of Joy to rise so high, that I was ashamed of his behavior; for he fell a hallooing, and threw up his Montier Cap in the Air several times, till he raised the Neighbors out of their Beds to see what was the Matter. 'O!' said he, 'I had lost my Cows four or five days ago, and thought I should never see them again; and this honest Neighbor of mine told me this Morning, by his own Fire's Side, nine Miles off, that here I should find them, and here I have them!' Then up goes his Cap again. I begged of the poor Man to be quiet, and take his Cows home, and be thankful; as indeed I was, being reverently bowed in my Spirit before the Lord, in that he was pleased to put the words of Truth into my mouth. And the Man drove his Cattle home, to the great Joy of his Family."

Not long after the interview with the Bishop at his own palace, which has been related, that dignitary, with the Lord Chancellor, in their coaches, and about twenty clergymen on horseback, made a call at the humble dwelling of Roberts, on their way to Tedbury, where the Bishop was to hold a Visitation. "I could not go out of the country without seeing you," said the prelate, as the farmer came to his coach door and pressed him to alight.

"John," asked Priest Evans, the Bishop's kinsman, "is your house free to entertain such men as we are?"

"Yes, George," said Roberts; "I entertain honest men, and sometimes others."

"My Lord," said Evans, turning to the Bishop, "John's friends are the honest men, and we are the others."

The Bishop told Roberts that they could not then alight, but would gladly drink with him; whereupon the good wife brought out her best beer. "I commend you, John," quoth the Bishop, as he paused from his hearty draught; "you keep a cup of good beer in your house. I have not drank any that has pleased me better since I left home." The cup passed next to the Chancellor, and finally came to Priest Bull, who thrust it aside, declaring that it was full of hops and heresy. As to hops, Roberts replied, he could not say, but as for heresy, he bade the priest take note that the Lord Bishop had drank of it, and had found no heresy in the cup.

The Bishop leaned over his coach door and whispered: "John, I advise you to take care you don't offend against the higher Powers. I have heard great complaints against you, that you are the Ringleader of the Quakers in this Country; and that, if you are not suppressed, all will signify nothing. Therefore, pray, John, take care, for the future, you don't offend any more."

"I like thy Counsel very well," answered Roberts, "and intend to take it. But thou knowest God is the higher Power; and you mortal Men, however advanced in this World, are but the lower Power; and it is only because I endeavor to be obedient to the will of the higher Powers, that the lower Powers are angry with me. But I hope, with the assistance of God, to take thy Counsel, and be subject to the higher Powers, let the lower Powers do with me as it may please God to suffer them."

The Bishop then said he would like to talk with him further, and requested him to meet him at Tedbury the next day. At the time appointed, Roberts went to the inn where the Bishop lodged, and was invited to dine with him. After dinner was over, the prelate told him that he must go to church, and leave off holding conventicles at his house, of which great complaint was made. This he flatly refused to do; and the Bishop, losing patience, ordered the constable to be sent for. Roberts told him that if, after coming to his house under the guise of friendship, he should betray him and send him to prison, he, who had hitherto commended him for his moderation, would put his name in print, and cause it to stink before all sober people. It was the priests, he told him, who set him on; but, instead of hearkening to them, he should commend them to some honest vocation, and not suffer them to rob their honest neighbors, and feed on the fruits of other men's toil, like caterpillars.

"Whom do you call caterpillars?" cried Priest Rich, of North Surrey.

"We farmers," said Roberts, "call those so who live on other men's fields, and by the sweat of other men's brows; and if thou dost so, thou mayst be one of them."

This reply so enraged the Bishop's attendants that they could only be appeased by an order for the constable to take him to jail. In fact, there was some ground for complaint of a lack of courtesy on the part of the blunt farmer; and the Christian virtue of forbearance, even in Bishops, has its limits.

The constable, obeying the summons, came to the inn, at the door of which the landlady met him. "What do you here!" cried the good woman, "when honest John is going to be sent to prison? Here, come along with me." The constable, nothing loath, followed her into a private room, where she concealed him. Word was sent to the Bishop, that the constable was not to be found; and the prelate, telling Roberts he could send him to jail in the afternoon, dismissed him until evening. At the hour appointed, the latter waited upon the Bishop, and found with him only one priest and a lay gentleman. The priest begged the Bishop to be allowed to discourse with the prisoner; and, leave being granted, he began by telling Roberts that the knowledge of the Scriptures had made him mad, and that it was a great pity he had ever seen them.

"Thou art an unworthy man," said the Quaker, "and I 'll not dispute with thee. If the knowledge of the Scriptures has made me mad, the knowledge of the sack-pot hath almost made thee mad; and if we two madmen should dispute about religion, we should make mad work of it."

"An 't please you, my Lord," said the scandalized priest, "he says I 'm drunk."

The Bishop asked Roberts to repeat his words; and, instead of reprimanding him, as the priest expected, was so much amused that he held up his hands and laughed; whereupon the offended inferior took a hasty leave. The Bishop, who was evidently glad to be rid of him, now turned to Roberts, and complained that he had dealt hardly with him, in telling him, before so many gentlemen, that he had sought to betray him by professions of friendship, in order to send him to prison; and that, if he had not done as he did, people would have reported him as an encourager of the Quakers. "But now, John," said the good prelate, "I'll burn the warrant against you before your face." "You know, Mr. Burnet," he continued, addressing his attendant, "that a Ring of Bells may be made of excellent metal, but they may be out of tune; so we may say of John: he is a man of as good metal as I ever met with, but quite out of tune."

"Thou mayst well say so," quoth Roberts, "for I can't tune after thy pipe."

The inferior clergy were by no means so lenient as the Bishop. They regarded Roberts as the ringleader of Dissent, an impracticable, obstinate, contumacious heretic, not only refusing to pay them tithes himself, but encouraging others to the same course. Hence, they thought it necessary to visit upon him the full rigor of the law. His crops were taken from his field, and his cattle from his yard. He was often committed to the jail, where, on one occasion, he was kept, with many others, for a long time, through the malice of the jailer, who refused to put the names of his prisoners in the Calendar, that they might have a hearing. But the spirit of the old Commonwealth's man remained steadfast. When Justice George, at the Ram in Cirencester, told him he must conform, and go to church, or suffer the penalty of the law, he replied that he had heard indeed that some were formerly whipped out of the Temple, but he had never heard of any being whipped in. The Justice, pointing, through the open window of the inn, at the church tower, asked him what that was. "Thou mayst call it a daw-house," answered the incorrigible Quaker. "Dost thou not see how the jackdaws flock about it?"

Sometimes it happened that the clergyman was also a magistrate, and united in his own person the authority of the State and the zeal of the Church. Justice Parsons, of Gloucester, was a functionary of this sort. He wielded the sword of the Spirit on the Sabbath against Dissenters, and on week days belabored them with the arm of flesh and the constable's staff. At one time he had between forty and fifty of them locked up in Gloucester Castle, among them Roberts and his sons, on the charge of attending conventicles. But the troublesome prisoners baffled his vigilance, and turned their prison into a meeting-house, and held their conventicles in defiance of him. The Reverend Justice pounced upon them on one occasion, with his attendants. An old, gray-haired man, formerly a strolling fencing-master, was preaching when he came in. The Justice laid hold of him by his white locks, and strove to pull him down, but the tall fencing-raster stood firm and spoke on; he then tried to gag him, but failed in that also. He demanded the names of the prisoners, but no one answered him. A voice (we fancy it was that of our old friend Roberts) called out: "The Devil must be hard put to it to have his drudgery done, when the Priests must leave their pulpits to turn informers against poor prisoners." The Justice obtained a list of the names of the prisoners, made out on their commitment, and, taking it for granted that all were still present, issued warrants for the collection of fines by levies upon their estates. Among the names was that of a poor widow, who had been discharged, and was living, at the time the clerical magistrate swore she was at the meeting, twenty miles distant from the prison.

Soon after this event, our old friend fell sick. He had been discharged from prison, but his sons were still confined. The eldest had leave, however, to attend him in his illness, and he bears his testimony that the Lord was pleased to favor his father with His living presence in his last moments. In keeping with the sturdy Non-conformist's life, he was interred at the foot of his own orchard, in Siddington, a spot he had selected for a burial-ground long before, where neither the foot of a priest nor the shadow of a steeple-house could rest upon his grave.

In closing our notice of this pleasant old narrative, we may remark that the light it sheds upon the antagonistic religious parties of the time is calculated to dissipate prejudices and correct misapprehensions, common alike to Churchmen and Dissenters. The genial humor, sound sense, and sterling virtues of the Quaker farmer should teach the one class that poor James Nayler, in his craziness and folly, was not a fair representative of his sect; while the kind nature, the hearty appreciation of goodness, and the generosity and candor of Bishop Nicholson should convince the other class that a prelate is not necessarily, and by virtue of his mitre, a Laud or a Bonner. The Dissenters of the seventeenth century may well be forgiven for the asperity of their language; men whose ears had been cropped because they would not recognize Charles I. as a blessed martyr, and his scandalous son as the head of the Church, could scarcely be expected to make discriminations, or suggest palliating circumstances, favorable to any class of their adversaries. To use the homely but apt simile of McFingal,

"The will's confirmed by treatment horrid, As hides grow harder when they're curried."

They were wronged, and they told the world of it. Unlike Shakespeare's cardinal, they did not die without a sign. They branded, by their fierce epithets, the foreheads of their persecutors more deeply than the sheriff's hot iron did their own. If they lost their ears, they enjoyed the satisfaction of making those of their oppressors tingle. Knowing their persecutors to be in the wrong, they did not always inquire whether they themselves had been entirely right, and had done no unrequired works of supererogation by the way of "testimony" against their neighbors' mode cf worship. And so from pillory and whipping-post, from prison and scaffold, they sent forth their wail and execration, their miserere and anathema, and the sound thereof has reached down to our day. May it never wholly die away until, the world over, the forcing of conscience is regarded as a crime against humanity and a usurpation of God's prerogative. But abhorring, as we must, persecution under whatever pretext it is employed, we are not, therefore, to conclude that all persecutors were bad and unfeeling men. Many of their severities, upon which we now look back with horror, were, beyond a question, the result of an intense anxiety for the well-being of immortal souls, endangered by the poison which, in their view, heresy was casting into the waters of life. Coleridge, in one of the moods of a mind which traversed in imagination the vast circle of human experience, reaches this point in his Table-Talk. "It would require," says he, "stronger arguments than any I have seen to convince me that men in authority have not a right, involved in an imperative duty, to deter those under their control from teaching or countenancing doctrines which they believe to be damnable, and even to punish with death those who violate such prohibition." It would not be very difficult for us to imagine a tender-hearted Inquisitor of this stamp, stifling his weak compassion for the shrieking wretch under bodily torment by his strong pity for souls in danger of perdition from the sufferer's heresy. We all know with what satisfaction the gentle-spirited Melanethon heard of the burning of Servetus, and with what zeal he defended it. The truth is, the notion that an intellectual recognition of certain dogmas is the essential condition of salvation lies at the bottom of all intolerance in matters of religion. Under this impression, men are too apt to forget that the great end of Christianity is love, and that charity is its crowning virtue; they overlook the beautiful significance of the parable of the heretic Samaritan and the orthodox Pharisee: and thus, by suffering their speculative opinions of the next world to make them uncharitable and cruel in this, they are really the worse for them, even admitting them to be true.

SAMUEL HOPKINS.

Three quarters of a century ago, the name of Samuel Hopkins was as familiar as a household word throughout New England. It was a spell wherewith to raise at once a storm of theological controversy. The venerable minister who bore it had his thousands of ardent young disciples, as well as defenders and followers of mature age and acknowledged talent; a hundred pulpits propagated the dogmas which he had engrafted on the stock of Calvinism. Nor did he lack numerous and powerful antagonists. The sledge ecclesiastic, with more or less effect, was unceasingly plied upon the strong-linked chain of argument which he slowly and painfully elaborated in the seclusion of his parish. The press groaned under large volumes of theological, metaphysical, and psychological disquisition, the very thought of which is now "a weariness to the flesh;" in rapid succession pamphlet encountered pamphlet, horned, beaked, and sharp of talon, grappling with each other in mid-air, like Milton's angels. That loud controversy, the sound whereof went over Christendom, awakening responses from beyond the Atlantic, has now died away; its watchwords no longer stir the blood of belligerent sermonizers; its very terms and definitions have well-nigh become obsolete and unintelligible. The hands which wrote and the tongues which spoke in that day are now all cold and silent; even Emmons, the brave old intellectual athlete of Franklin, now sleeps with his fathers,--the last of the giants. Their fame is still in all the churches; effeminate clerical dandyism still affects to do homage to their memories; the earnest young theologian, exploring with awe the mountainous debris of their controversial lore, ponders over the colossal thoughts entombed therein, as he would over the gigantic fossils of an early creation, and endeavors in vain to recall to the skeleton abstractions before him the warm and vigorous life wherewith they were once clothed; but Hopkinsianism, as a distinct and living school of philosophy, theology, and metaphysics, no longer exists. It has no living oracles left; and its memory survives only in the doctrinal treatises of the elder and younger Edwards, Hopkins, Bellamy, and Emmons.

It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the merits of the system in question. Indeed, looking at the great controversy which divided New England Calvinism in the eighteenth century, from a point of view which secures our impartiality and freedom from prejudice, we find it exceedingly difficult to get a precise idea of what was actually at issue. To our poor comprehension, much of the dispute hinges upon names rather than things; on the manner of reaching conclusions quite as much as upon the conclusions themselves. Its origin may be traced to the great religious awakening of the middle of the past century, when the dogmas of the Calvinistic faith were subjected to the inquiry of acute and earnest minds, roused up from the incurious ease and passive indifference of nominal orthodoxy. Without intending it, it broke down some of the barriers which separated Arminianism and Calvinism; its product, Hopkinsianism, while it pushed the doctrine of the Genevan reformer on the subject of the Divine decrees and agency to that extreme point where it well-nigh loses itself in Pantheism, held at the same time that guilt could not be hereditary; that man, being responsible for his sinful acts, and not for his sinful nature, can only be justified by a personal holiness, consisting not so much in legal obedience as in that disinterested benevolence which prefers the glory of God and the welfare of universal being above the happiness of self. It had the merit, whatever it may be, of reducing the doctrines of the Reformation to an ingenious and scholastic form of theology; of bringing them boldly to the test of reason and philosophy. Its leading advocates were not mere heartless reasoners and closet speculators. They taught that sin was selfishness, and holiness self-denying benevolence, and they endeavored to practise accordingly. Their lives recommended their doctrines. They were bold and faithful in the discharge of what they regarded as duty. In the midst of slave-holders, and in an age of comparative darkness on the subject of human rights, Hopkins and the younger Edwards lifted up their voices for the slave. And twelve years ago, when Abolitionism was everywhere spoken against, and the whole land was convulsed with mobs to suppress it, the venerable Emmons, burdened with the weight of ninety years, made a journey to New York, to attend a meeting of the Anti- Slavery Society. Let those who condemn the creed of these men see to it that they do not fall behind them in practical righteousness and faithfulness to the convictions of duty.

Samuel Hopkins, who gave his name to the religious system in question, was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1721. In his fifteenth year he was placed under the care of a neighboring clergyman, preparatory for college, which he entered about a year after. In 1740, the celebrated Whitefield visited New Haven, and awakened there, as elsewhere, serious inquiry on religious subjects. He was followed the succeeding spring by Gilbert Tennent, the New Jersey revivalist, a stirring and powerful preacher. A great change took place in the college. All the phenomena which President Edwards has described in his account of the Northampton awakening were reproduced among the students. The excellent David Brainard, then a member of the college, visited Hopkins in his apartment, and, by a few plain and earnest words, convinced him that he was a stranger to vital Christianity. In his autobiographical sketch, he describes in simple and affecting language the dark and desolate state of his mind at this period, and the particular exercise which finally afforded him some degree of relief, and which he afterwards appears to have regarded as his conversion from spiritual death to life. When he first heard Tennent, regarding him as the greatest as well as the best of men, he made up his mind to study theology with him; but just before the commencement at which he was to take his degree, the elder Edwards preached at New Haven. Struck by the power of the great theologian, he at once resolved to make him his spiritual father. In the winter following, he left his father's house on horseback, on a journey of eighty miles to Northampton. Arriving at the house of President Edwards, he was disappointed by hearing that he was absent on a preaching tour. But he was kindly received by the gifted and accomplished lady of the mansion, and encouraged to remain during the winter. Still doubtful in respect to his own spiritual state, he was, he says, "very gloomy, and retired most of the time in his chamber." The kind heart of his amiable hostess was touched by his evident affliction. After some days she came to his chamber, and, with the gentleness and delicacy of a true woman, inquired into the cause of his unhappiness. The young student disclosed to her, without reserve, the state of his feelings and the extent of his fears. "She told me," says the Doctor, "that she had had peculiar exercises respecting me since I had been in the family; that she trusted I should receive light and comfort, and doubted not that God intended yet to do great things by me."

After pursuing his studies for some months with the Puritan philosopher, young Hopkins commenced preaching, and, in 1743, was ordained at Sheffield, (now Great Barrington') in the western part of Massachusetts. There were at the time only about thirty families in the town. He says it was a matter of great regret to him to be obliged to settle so far from his spiritual guide and tutor but seven years after he was relieved and gratified by the removal of Edwards to Stockbridge, as the Indian missionary at that station, seven miles only from his own residence; and for several years the great metaphysician and his favorite pupil enjoyed the privilege of familiar intercourse with each other. The removal of the former in 1758 to Princeton, New Jersey, and his death, which soon followed, are mentioned in the diary of Hopkins as sore trials and afflictive dispensations.

Obtaining a dismissal from his society in Great Barrington in 1769, he was installed at Newport the next year, as minister of the first Congregational church in that place. Newport, at this period, was, in size, wealth, and commercial importance, the second town in New England. It was the great slave mart of the North. Vessels loaded with stolen men and women and children, consigned to its merchant princes, lay at its wharves; immortal beings were sold daily in its market, like cattle at a fair. The soul of Hopkins was moved by the appalling spectacle. A strong conviction of the great wrong of slavery, and of its utter incompatibility with the Christian profession, seized upon his mind. While at Great Barrington, he had himself owned a slave, whom he had sold on leaving the place, without compunction or suspicion in regard to the rightfulness of the transaction. He now saw the origin of the system in its true light; he heard the seamen engaged in the African trade tell of the horrible scenes of fire and blood which they had witnessed, and in which they had been actors; he saw the half-suffocated wretches brought up from their noisome and narrow prison, their squalid countenances and skeleton forms bearing fearful evidence of the suffering attendant upon the transportation from their native homes. The demoralizing effects of slaveholding everywhere forced themselves upon his attention, for the evil had struck its roots deeply in the community, and there were few families into which it had not penetrated. The right to deal in slaves, and use them as articles of property, was questioned by no one; men of all professions, clergymen and church-members, consulted only their interest and convenience as to their purchase or sale. The magnitude of the evil at first appalled him; he felt it to be his duty to condemn it, but for a time even his strong spirit faltered and turned pale in contemplation of the consequences to be apprehended from an attack upon it. Slavery and slave-trading were at that time the principal source of wealth to the island; his own church and congregation were personally interested in the traffic; all were implicated in its guilt. He stood alone, as it were, in its condemnation; with here and there an exception, all Christendom maintained the rightfulness of slavery. No movement had yet been made in England against the slave-trade; the decision of Granville Sharp's Somerset case had not yet taken place. The Quakers, even, had not at that time redeemed themselves from the opprobrium. Under these circumstances, after a thorough examination of the subject, he resolved, in the strength of the Lord, to take his stand openly and decidedly on the side of humanity. He prepared a sermon for the purpose, and for the first time from a pulpit of New England was heard an emphatic testimony against the sin of slavery. In contrast with the unselfish and disinterested benevolence which formed in his mind the essential element of Christian holiness, he held up the act of reducing human beings to the condition of brutes, to minister to the convenience, the luxury, and lusts of the owner. He had expected bitter complaint and opposition from his hearers, but was agreeably surprised to find that in most cases his sermon only excited astonishment in their minds that they themselves had never before looked at the subject in the light in which he presented it. Steadily and faithfully pursuing the matter, he had the satisfaction to carry with him his church, and obtain from it, in the midst of a slaveholding and slavetrading community, a resolution every way worthy of note in this day of cowardly compromise with the evil on the part of our leading ecclesiastical bodies:--

"Resolved, That the slave-trade and the slavery of the Africans, as it has existed among us, is a gross violation of the righteousness and benevolence which are so much inculcated in the Gospel, and therefore we will not tolerate it in this church."

There are few instances on record of moral heroism superior to that of Samuel Hopkins, in thus rebuking slavery in the time and place of its power. Honor to the true man ever, who takes his life in his hands, and, at all hazards, speaks the word which is given him to utter, whether men will hear or forbear, whether the end thereof is to be praise or censure, gratitude or hatred. It well may be doubted whether on that Sabbath day the angels of God, in their wide survey of His universe, looked upon a nobler spectacle than that of the minister of Newport, rising up before his slaveholding congregation, and demanding, in the name of the Highest, the "deliverance of the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them that were bound."

Dr. Hopkins did not confine his attention solely to slaveholding in his own church and congregation. He entered into correspondence with the early Abolitionists of Europe as well as his own country. He labored with his brethren in the ministry to bring then to his own view of the great wrong of holding men as slaves. In a visit to his early friend, Dr. Bellamy, at Bethlehem, who was the owner of a slave, he pressed the subject kindly but earnestly upon his attention. Dr. Bellamy urged the usual arguments in favor of slavery. Dr. Hopkins refuted them in the most successful manner, and called upon his friend to do an act of simple justice, in giving immediate freedom to his slave. Dr. Bellamy, thus hardly pressed, said that the slave was a most judicious and faithful fellow; that, in the management of his farm, he could trust everything to his discretion; that he treated him well, and he was so happy in his service that he would refuse his freedom if it were offered him.

"Will you," said Hopkins, "consent to his liberation, if he really desires it?"

"Yes, certainly," said Dr. Bellamy.

"Then let us try him," said his guest.

The slave was at work in an adjoining field, and at the call of his master came promptly to receive his commands.

"Have you a good master?" inquired Hopkins.

"O yes; massa, he berry good."

"But are you happy in your present condition?" queried the Doctor.

"O yes, massa; berry happy."

Dr. Bellamy here could scarcely suppress his exultation at what he supposed was a complete triumph over his anti-slavery brother. But the pertinacious guest continued his queries.

"Would you not be more happy if you were free?"

"O yes, massa," exclaimed the negro, his dark face glowing with new life; "berry much more happy!"

To the honor of Dr. Bellamy, he did not hesitate.

"You have your wish," he said to his servant. "From this moment you are free."

Dr. Hopkins was a poor man, but one of his first acts, after becoming convinced of the wrongfulness of slavery, was to appropriate the very sum which, in the days of his ignorance, he had obtained as the price of his slave to the benevolent purpose of educating some pious colored men in the town of Newport, who were desirous of returning to their native country as missionaries. In one instance he borrowed, on his own responsibility, the sum requisite to secure the freedom of a slave in whom he became interested. One of his theological pupils was Newport Gardner, who, twenty years after the death of his kind patron, left Boston as a missionary to Africa. He was a native African, and was held by Captain Gardner, of Newport, who allowed him to labor for his own benefit, whenever by extra diligence he could gain a little time for that purpose. The poor fellow was in the habit of laying up his small earnings on these occasions, in the faint hope of one day obtaining thereby the freedom of himself and his family. But time passed on, and the hoard of purchase-money still looked sadly small. He concluded to try the efficacy of praying. Having gained a day for himself, by severe labor, and communicating his plan only to Dr. Hopkins and two or three other Christian friends, he shut himself up in his humble dwelling, and spent the time in prayer for freedom. Towards the close of the day, his master sent for him. He was told that this was his gained time, and that he was engaged for himself. "No matter," returned the master, "I must see him." Poor Newport reluctantly abandoned his supplications, and came at his master's bidding, when, to his astonishment, instead of a reprimand, he received a paper, signed by his master, declaring him and his family from thenceforth free. He justly attributed this signal blessing to the all-wise Disposer, who turns the hearts of men as the rivers of water are turned; but it cannot be doubted that the labors and arguments of Dr. Hopkins with his master were the human instrumentality in effecting it.

In the year 1773, in connection with Dr. Ezra Stiles, he issued an appeal to the Christian community in behalf of a society which he had been instrumental in forming, for the purpose of educating missionaries for Africa. In the desolate and benighted condition of that unhappy continent he had become painfully interested, by conversing with the slaves brought into Newport. Another appeal was made on the subject in 1776.

The war of the Revolution interrupted, for a time, the philanthropic plans of Dr. Hopkins. The beautiful island on which he lived was at an early period exposed to the exactions and devastations of the enemy. All who could do so left it for the mainland. Its wharves were no longer thronged with merchandise; its principal dwellings stood empty; the very meeting houses were in a great measure abandoned. Dr. Hopkins, who had taken the precaution, at the commencement of hostilities, to remove his family to Great Barrington, remained himself until the year 1776, when the British took possession of the island. During the period of its occupation, he was employed in preaching to destitute congregations. He spent the summer of 1777 at Newburyport, where his memory is still cherished by the few of his hearers who survive. In the spring of 1780, he returned to Newport. Everything had undergone a melancholy change. The garden of New England lay desolate. His once prosperous and wealthy church and congregation were now poor, dispirited, and, worst of all, demoralized. His meeting-house had been used as a barrack for soldiers; pulpit and pews had been destroyed; the very bell had been stolen. Refusing, with his characteristic denial of self, a call to settle in a more advantageous position, he sat himself down once more in the midst of his reduced and impoverished parishioners, and, with no regular salary, dependent entirely on such free-will offerings as from time to time were made him, he remained with them until his death.

In 1776, Dr. Hopkins published his celebrated "Dialogue concerning the Slavery of the Africans; showing it to be the Duty and Interest of the American States to Emancipate all their Slaves." This he dedicated to the Continental Congress, the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. It was republished in 1785, by the New York Abolition Society, and was widely circulated. A few years after, on coming unexpectedly into possession of a few hundred dollars, he devoted immediately one hundred of it to the society for ameliorating the condition of the Africans.

He continued to preach until he had reached his eighty-third year. His last sermon was delivered on the 16th of the tenth month, 1803, and his death took place in the twelfth month following. He died calmly, in the steady faith of one who had long trusted all things in the hand of God. "The language of my heart is," said he, "let God be glorified by all things, and the best interest of His kingdom promoted, whatever becomes of me or my interest." To a young friend, who visited him three days before his death, he said, "I am feeble and cannot say much. I have said all I can say. With my last words, I tell you, religion is the one thing needful." "And now," he continued, affectionately pressing the hand of his friend, "I am going to die, and I am glad of it." Many years before, an agreement had been made between Dr. Hopkins and his old and tried friend, Dr. Hart, of Connecticut, that when either was called home, the survivor should preach the funeral sermon of the deceased. The venerable Dr. Hart accordingly came, true to his promise, preaching at the funeral from the words of Elisha, "My father, my father; the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." In the burial-ground adjoining his meeting- house lies all that was mortal of Samuel Hopkins.

One of Dr. Hopkins's habitual hearers, and who has borne grateful testimony to the beauty and holiness of his life and conversation, was William Ellery Channing. Widely as he afterwards diverged from the creed of his early teacher, it contained at least one doctrine to the influence of which the philanthropic devotion of his own life to the welfare of man bears witness. He says, himself, that there always seemed to him something very noble in the doctrine of disinterested benevolence, the casting of self aside, and doing good, irrespective of personal consequences, in this world or another, upon which Dr. Hopkins so strongly insisted, as the all-essential condition of holiness.

How widely apart, as mere theologians, stood Hopkins and Channing! Yet how harmonious their lives and practice! Both could forget the poor interests of self, in view of eternal right and universal humanity. Both could appreciate the saving truth, that love to God and His creation is the fulfilling of the divine law. The idea of unselfish benevolence, which they held in common, clothed with sweetness and beauty the stern and repulsive features of the theology of Hopkins, and infused a sublime spirit of self-sacrifice and a glowing humanity into the indecisive and less robust faith of Charming. What is the lesson of this but that Christianity consists rather in the affections than in the intellect; that it is a life rather than a creed; and that they who diverge the widest from each other in speculation upon its doctrines may, after all, be found working side by side on the common ground of its practice.

We have chosen to speak of Dr. Hopkins as a philanthropist rather than as a theologian. Let those who prefer to contemplate the narrow sectarian rather than the universal man dwell upon his controversial works, and extol the ingenuity and logical acumen with which he defended his own dogmas and assailed those of others. We honor him, not as the founder of a new sect, but as the friend of all mankind,--the generous defender of the poor and oppressed. Great as unquestionably were his powers of argument, his learning, and skill in the use of the weapons of theologic warfare, these by no means constitute his highest title to respect and reverence. As the product of an honest and earnest mind, his doctrinal dissertations have at least the merit of sincerity. They were put forth in behalf of what he regarded as truth; and the success which they met with, while it called into exercise his profoundest gratitude, only served to deepen the humility and self-abasement of their author. As the utterance of what a good man believed and felt, as a part of the history of a life remarkable for its consecration to apprehended duty, these writings cannot be without interest even to those who dissent from their arguments and deny their assumptions; but in the time now, we trust, near at hand, when distracted and divided Christendom shall unite in a new Evangelical union, in which orthodoxy in life and practice shall be estimated above orthodoxy in theory, he will be honored as a good man, rather than as a successful creed-maker; as a friend of the oppressed and the fearless rebuker of popular sin rather than as the champion of a protracted sectarian war. Even now his writings, so popular in their day, are little known. The time may come when no pilgrim of sectarianism shall visit his grave. But his memory shall live in the hearts of the good and generous; the emancipated slave shall kneel over his ashes, and bless God for the gift to humanity of a life so devoted to its welfare. To him may be applied the language of one who, on the spot where he labored and lay down to rest, while rejecting the doctrinal views of the theologian, still cherishes the philanthropic spirit of the man:--

"He is not lost,--he hath not passed away Clouds, earths, may pass, but stars shine calmly on; And he who doth the will of God, for aye Abideth, when the earth and heaven are gone.

"Alas that such a heart is in the grave!' Thanks for the life that now shall never end! Weep, and rejoice, thou terror-hunted slave, That hast both lost and found so great a friend!"

RICHARD BAXTER.

The picture drawn by a late English historian of the infamous Jeffreys in his judicial robes, sitting in judgment upon the venerable Richard Baxter, brought before him to answer to an indictment, setting; forth that the said "Richardus Baxter, persona seditiosa et factiosa pravae mentis, impiae, inquietae, turbulent disposition et conversation; falso illicte, injuste nequit factiose seditiose, et irreligiose, fecit, composuit, scripsit quendam falsum, seditiosum, libellosum, factiosum et irreligiosum librum," is so remarkable that the attention of the most careless reader is at once arrested. Who was that old man, wasted with disease and ghastly with the pallor of imprisonment, upon whom the foul- mouthed buffoon in ermine exhausted his vocabulary of abuse and ridicule? Who was Richardus Baxter?

The author of works so elaborate and profound as to frighten by their very titles and ponderous folios the modern ecclesiastical student from their perusal, his hold upon the present generation is limited to a few practical treatises, which, from their very nature, can never become obsolete. The Call to the Unconverted and the Saints' Everlasting Rest belong to no time or sect. They speak the universal language of the wants and desires of the human soul. They take hold of the awful verities of life and death, righteousness and judgment to come. Through them the suffering and hunted minister of Kidderminster has spoken in warning, entreaty, and rebuke, or in tones of tenderest love and pity, to the hearts of the generations which have succeeded him. His controversial works, his confessions of faith, his learned disputations, and his profound doctrinal treatises are no longer read. Their author himself, towards the close of his life, anticipated, in respect to these favorite productions, the children of his early zeal, labor, and suffering, the judgment of posterity. "I perceive," he says, "that most of the doctrinal controversies among Protestants are far more about equivocal words than matter. Experience since the year 1643 to this year 1675 hath loudly called me to repent of my own prejudices, sidings, and censurings of causes and persons not understood, and of all the miscarriages of my ministry and life which have been thereby caused; and to make it my chief work to call men that are within my bearing to more peaceable thoughts, affections, and practices."

Richard Baxter was born at the village of Eton Constantine, in 1615. He received from officiating curates of the little church such literary instruction as could be given by men who had left the farmer's flail, the tailor's thimble, and the service of strolling stage-players, to perform church drudgery under the parish incumbent, who was old and well-nigh blind. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to a school at Wroxeter, where he spent three years, to little purpose, so far as a scientific education was concerned. His teacher left him to himself mainly, and following the bent of his mind, even at that early period, he abandoned the exact sciences for the perusal of such controversial and metaphysical writings of the schoolmen as his master's library afforded. The smattering of Latin which he acquired only served in after years to deform his treatises with barbarous, ill-adapted, and erroneous citations. "As to myself," said he, in his letter written in old age to Anthony Wood, who had inquired whether he was an Oxonian graduate, "my faults are no disgrace to a university, for I was of none; I have but little but what I had out of books and inconsiderable help of country divines. Weakness and pain helped me to study how to die; that set me a-studying how to live; and that on studying the doctrine from which I must fetch my motives and comforts; beginning with necessities, I proceeded by degrees, and am now going to see that for which I have lived and studied."

Of the first essays of the young theologian as a preacher of the Established Church, his early sufferings from that complication of diseases with which his whole life was tormented, of the still keener afflictions of a mind whose entire outlook upon life and nature was discolored and darkened by its disordered bodily medium, and of the struggles between his Puritan temperament and his reverence for Episcopal formulas, much might be profitably said, did the limits we have assigned ourselves admit. Nor can we do more than briefly allude to the religious doubts and difficulties which darkened and troubled his mind at an early period.

He tells us at length in his Life how he struggled with these spiritual infirmities and temptations. The future life, the immortality of the soul, and the truth of the Scriptures were by turns questioned. "I never," says he in a letter to Dr. More, inserted in the Sadducisimus Triumphatus, "had so much ado to overcome a temptation as that to the opinion of Averroes, that, as extinguished candles go all out in an illuminated air, so separated souls go all into one common anima mundi, and lose their individuation." With these and similar "temptations" Baxter struggled long, earnestly, and in the end triumphantly. His faith, when once established, remained unshaken to the last; and although always solemn, reverential, and deeply serious, he was never the subject of religious melancholy, or of that mournful depression of soul which arises from despair of an interest in the mercy and paternal love of our common Father.

The Great Revolution found him settled as a minister in Kidderminster, under the sanction of a drunken vicar, who, yielding to the clamor of his more sober parishioners, and his fear of their appeal to the Long Parliament, then busy in its task of abating church nuisances, had agreed to give him sixty pounds per year, in the place of a poor tippling curate, notorious as a common railer and pothouse encumbrance.

As might have been expected, the sharp contrast which the earnest, devotional spirit and painful strictness of Baxter presented to the irreverent license and careless good humor of his predecessor by no means commended him to the favor of a large class of his parishioners. Sabbath merry-makers missed the rubicund face and maudlin jollity of their old vicar; the ignorant and vicious disliked the new preacher's rigid morality; the better informed revolted at his harsh doctrines, austere life, and grave manner. Intense earnestness characterized all his efforts. Contrasting human nature with the Infinite Purity and Holiness, he was oppressed with the sense of the loathsomeness and deformity of sin, and afflicted by the misery of his fellow-creatures separated from the divine harmony. He tells us that at this period he preached the terrors of the Law and the necessity of repentance, rather than the joys and consolations of the Gospel, upon which he so loved to dwell in his last years. He seems to have felt a necessity laid upon him to startle men from false hope and security, and to call for holiness of life and conformity to the divine will as the only ground of safety. Powerful and impressive as are the appeals and expostulations contained in his written works, they probably convey but a faint idea of the force and earnestness of those which he poured forth from his pulpit. As he advanced in years, these appeals were less frequently addressed to the fears of his auditors, for he had learned to value a calm and consistent life of practical goodness beyond any passionate exhibition of terrors, fervors, and transports. Having witnessed, in an age of remarkable enthusiasm and spiritual awakening, the ill effects of passional excitements and religious melancholy, he endeavored to present cheerful views of Christian life and duty, and made it a special object to repress morbid imaginations and heal diseased consciences. Thus it came to pass that no man of his day was more often applied to for counsel and relief by persons laboring under mental depression than himself. He has left behind him a very curious and not uninstructive discourse, which he entitled The Cure of Melancholy, by Faith and Physick, in which he shows a great degree of skill in his morbid mental anatomy. He had studied medicine to some extent for the benefit of the poor of his parish, and knew something of the intimate relations and sympathy of the body and mind; he therefore did not hesitate to ascribe many of the spiritual complaints of his applicants to disordered bodily functions, nor to prescribe pills and powders in the place of Scripture texts. More than thirty years after the commencement of his labors at Kidderminster he thus writes: "I was troubled this year with multitudes of melancholy persons from several places of the land; some of high quality, some of low, some exquisitely learned, and some unlearned. I know not how it came to pass, but if men fell melancholy I must hear from them or see them, more than any physician I knew." He cautions against ascribing melancholy phantasms and passions to the Holy Spirit, warns the young against licentious imaginations and excitements, and ends by advising all to take heed how they make of religion a matter of "fears, tears, and scruples." "True religion," he remarks, "doth principally consist in obedience, love, and joy."

At this early period of his ministry, however, he had all of Whitefield's intensity and fervor, added to reasoning powers greatly transcending those of the revivalist of the next century. Young in years, he was even then old in bodily infirmity and mental experience. Believing himself the victim of a mortal disease, he lived and preached in the constant prospect of death. His memento mori was in his bed-chamber, and sat by him at his frugal meal. The glory of the world was stained to his vision. He was blind to the beauty of all its "pleasant pictures." No monk of Mount Athos or silent Chartreuse, no anchorite of Indian superstition, ever more completely mortified the flesh, or turned his back more decidedly upon the "good things" of this life. A solemn and funeral atmosphere surrounded him. He walked in the shadows of the cypress, and literally "dwelt among the tombs." Tortured by incessant pain, he wrestled against its attendant languor and debility, as a sinful wasting of inestimable time; goaded himself to constant toil and devotional exercise, and, to use his own words, "stirred up his sluggish soul to speak to sinners with compassion, as a dying man to dying men."

Such entire consecration could not long be without its effect, even upon the "vicious rabble," as Baxter calls them. His extraordinary earnestness, self-forgetting concern for the spiritual welfare of others, his rigid life of denial and sacrifice, if they failed of bringing men to his feet as penitents, could not but awaken a feeling of reverence and awe. In Kidderminster, as in most other parishes of the kingdom, there were at this period pious, sober, prayerful people, diligent readers of the Scriptures, who were derided by their neighbors as Puritans, precisians, and hypocrites. These were naturally drawn towards the new preacher, and he as naturally recognized them as "honest seekers of the word and way of God." Intercourse with such men, and the perusal of the writings of certain eminent Non-conformists, had the effect to abate, in some degree, his strong attachment to the Episcopal formula and polity. He began to doubt the rightfulness of making the sign of the cross in baptism, and to hesitate about administering the sacrament to profane swearers and tipplers.

But while Baxter, in the seclusion of his parish, was painfully weighing the arguments for and against the wearing of surplices, the use of marriage rings, and the prescribed gestures and genuflections of his order, tithing with more or less scruple of conscience the mint and anise and cummin of pulpit ceremonials, the weightier matters of the law, freedom, justice, and truth were claiming the attention of Pym and Hampden, Brook and Vane, in the Parliament House. The controversy between King and Commons had reached the point where it could only be decided by the dread arbitrament of battle. The somewhat equivocal position of the Kidderminster preacher exposed him to the suspicion of the adherents of the King and Bishops. The rabble, at that period sympathizing with the party of license in morals and strictness in ceremonials, insulted and mocked him, and finally drove him from his parish.

On the memorable 23d of tenth month, 1642, he was invited to occupy a friend's pulpit at Alcester.

While preaching, a low, dull, jarring roll, as of continuous thunder, sounded in his ears. It was the cannon-fire of Edgehill, the prelude to the stern battle-piece of revolution. On the morrow, Baxter hurried to the scene of action. "I was desirous," he says, "to see the field. I found the Earl of Essex keeping the ground, and the King's army facing them on a hill about a mile off. There were about a thousand dead bodies in the field between them." Turning from this ghastly survey, the preacher mingled with the Parliamentary army, when, finding the surgeons busy with the wounded, he very naturally sought occasion for the exercise of his own vocation as a spiritual practitioner. He attached himself to the army. So far as we can gather from his own memoirs and the testimony of his contemporaries, he was not influenced to this step by any of the political motives which actuated the Parliamentary leaders. He was no revolutionist. He was as blind and unquestioning in his reverence for the King's person and divine right, and as hearty in his hatred of religious toleration and civil equality, as any of his clerical brethren who officiated in a similar capacity in the ranks of Goring and Prince Rupert. He seems only to have looked upon the soldiers as a new set of parishioners, whom Providence had thrown in his way. The circumstances of his situation left him little choice in the matter. "I had," he says, "neither money nor friends. I knew not who would receive me in a place of safety, nor had I anything to satisfy them for diet and entertainment." He accepted an offer to live in the Governor's house at Coventry, and preach to the soldiers of the garrison. Here his skill in polemics was called into requisition, in an encounter with two New England Antinomians, and a certain Anabaptist tailor who was making more rents in the garrison's orthodoxy than he mended in their doublets and breeches. Coventry seems at this time to have been the rendezvous of a large body of clergymen, who, as Baxter says, were "for King and Parliament,"--men who, in their desire for a more spiritual worship, most unwillingly found themselves classed with the sentries whom they regarded as troublers and heretics, not to be tolerated; who thought the King had fallen into the hands of the Papists, and that Essex and Cromwell were fighting to restore him; and who followed the Parliamentary forces to see to it that they were kept sound in faith, and free from the heresy of which the Court News-Book accused them. Of doing anything to overturn the order of Church and State, or of promoting any radical change in the social and political condition of the people, they had no intention whatever. They looked at the events of the time, and upon their duties in respect to them, not as politicians or reformers, but simply as ecclesiastics and spiritual teachers, responsible to God for the religious beliefs and practices of the people, rather than for their temporal welfare and happiness. They were not the men who struck down the solemn and imposing prelacy of England, and vindicated the divine right of men to freedom by tossing the head of an anointed tyrant from the scaffold at Whitehall. It was the so-called schismatics, ranters, and levellers, the disputatious corporals and Anabaptist musketeers, the dread and abhorrence alike of prelate and presbyter, who, under the lead of Cromwell,

"Ruined the great work of time, And cast the kingdoms old Into another mould."

The Commonwealth was the work of the laity, the sturdy yeomanry and God- fearing commoners of England.

The news of the fight of Naseby reaching Coventry, Baxter, who had friends in the Parliamentary forces, wishing, as he says, to be assured of their safety, passed over to the stricken field, and spent a night with them. He was afflicted and confounded by the information which they gave him, that the victorious army was full of hot-headed schemers and levellers, who were against King and Church, prelacy and ritual, and who were for a free Commonwealth and freedom of religious belief and worship. He was appalled to find that the heresies of the Antinomians, Arminians, and Anabaptists had made sadder breaches in the ranks of Cromwell than the pikes of Jacob Astley, or the daggers of the roysterers who followed the mad charge of Rupert. Hastening back to Coventry, he called together his clerical brethren, and told them "the sad news of the corruption of the army." After much painful consideration of the matter, it was deemed best for Baxter to enter Cromwell's army, nominally as its chaplain, but really as the special representative of orthodoxy in politics and religion, against the democratic weavers and prophesying tailors who troubled it. He joined Whalley's regiment, and followed it through many a hot skirmish and siege. Personal fear was by no means one of Baxter's characteristics, and he bore himself through all with the coolness of an old campaigner. Intent upon his single object, he sat unmoved under the hail of cannon-shot from the walls of Bristol, confronted the well-plied culverins of Sherburne, charged side by side with Harrison upon Goring's musketeers at Langford, and heard the exulting thanksgiving of that grim enthusiast, when "with a loud voice he broke forth in praises of God, as one in rapture;" and marched, Bible in hand, with Cromwell himself, to the storming of Basing-House, so desperately defended by the Marquis of Winchester. In truth, these storms of outward conflict were to him of small moment. He was engaged in a sterner battle with spiritual principalities and powers, struggling with Satan himself in the guise of political levellers and Antinomian sowers of heresy. No antagonist was too high and none too low for him. Distrusting Cromwell, he sought to engage him in a discussion of certain points of abstract theology, wherein his soundness seemed questionable; but the wary chief baffled off the young disputant by tedious, unanswerable discourses about free grace, which Baxter admits were not unsavory to others, although the speaker himself had little understanding of the matter. At other times, he repelled his sad-visaged chaplain with unwelcome jests and rough, soldierly merriment; for he had "a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity as another man hath when he hath taken a cup too much." Baxter says of him, complainingly, "he would not dispute with me at all." But, in the midst of such an army, he could not lack abundant opportunity for the exercise of his peculiar powers of argumentation. At Amersham, he had a sort of pitched battle with the contumacious soldiers. "When the public talking day came," says he, "I took the reading-pew, and Pitchford's cornet and troopers took the gallery. There did the leader of the Chesham men begin, and afterwards Pitchford's soldiers set in; and I alone disputed with them from morning until almost night; for I knew their trick, that if I had gone out first, they would have prated what boasting words they listed, and made the people believe that they had baffled me, or got the best; therefore I stayed it out till they first rose and went away." As usual in such cases, both parties claimed the victory. Baxter got thanks only from the King's adherents; "Pitchford's troops and the leader of the Chesham men" retired from their hard day's work, to enjoy the countenance and favor of Cromwell, as men after his own heart, faithful to the Houses and the Word, against kingcraft and prelacy.

Laughed at and held at arm's length by Cromwell, shunned by Harrison and Berry and other chief officers, opposed on all points by shrewd, earnest men, as ready for polemic controversy as for battle with the King's malignants, and who set off against his theological and metaphysical distinctions their own personal experiences and spiritual exercises, he had little to encourage him in his arduous labors. Alone in such a multitude, flushed with victory and glowing with religious enthusiasm, he earnestly begged his brother ministers to come to his aid. "If the army," said he, "had only ministers enough, who could have done such little as I did, all their plot might have been broken, and King, Parliament, and Religion might have been preserved." But no one volunteered to assist him, and the "plot" of revolution went on.

After Worcester fight he returned to Coventry, to make his report to the ministers assembled there. He told them of his labors and trials, of the growth of heresy and levelling principles in the army, and of the evident design of its leaders to pull down Church, King, and Ministers. He assured them that the day was at hand when all who were true to the King, Parliament, and Religion should come forth to oppose these leaders, and draw away their soldiers from them. For himself, he was willing to go back to the army, and labor there until the crisis of which he spoke had arrived. "Whereupon," says he, "they all voted me to go yet longer."

Fortunately for the cause of civil and religious freedom, the great body of the ministers, who disapproved of the ultraism of the victorious army, and sympathized with the defeated King, lacked the courage and devotedness of Baxter. Had they promptly seconded his efforts, although the restoration of the King might have been impossible at that late period, the horrors of civil war must have been greatly protracted. As it was, they preferred to remain at home, and let Baxter have the benefit of their prayers and good wishes. He returned to the army with the settled purpose, of causing its defection from Cromwell; but, by one of those dispensations which the latter used to call "births of Providence," he was stricken down with severe sickness. Baxter's own comments upon this passage in his life are not without interest. He says, God prevented his purposes in his last and chiefest opposition to the army; that he intended to take off or seduce from their officers the regiment with which he was connected, and then to have tried his persuasion upon the others. He says he afterwards found that his sickness was a mercy to himself, "for they were so strong and active, and I had been likely to have had small success in the attempt, and to have lost my life among them in their fury." He was right in this last conjecture; Oliver Cromwell would have had no scruples in making an example of a plotting priest; and "Pitchford's soldiers" might have been called upon to silence, with their muskets, the tough disputant who was proof against their tongues.

After a long and dubious illness, Baxter was so far restored as to be able to go back to his old parish at Kidderminster. Here, under the Protectorate of Cromwell, he remained in the full enjoyment of that religious liberty which he still stoutly condemned in its application to others.

He afterwards candidly admits, that, under the "Usurper," as he styles Cromwell, "he had such liberty and advantage to preach the Gospel with success, as he could not have under a King, to whom he had sworn and performed true subjection and obedience." Yet this did not prevent him from preaching and printing, "seasonably and moderately," against the Protector. "I declared," said he, "Cromwell and his adherents to be guilty of treason and rebellion, aggravated by perfidiousness and hypocrisy. But yet I did not think it my duty to rave against him in the pulpit, or to do this so unseasonably and imprudently as might irritate him to mischief. And the rather, because, as he kept up his approbation of a godly life in general, and of all that was good, except that which the interest of his sinful cause engaged him to be against. So I perceived that it was his design to do good in the main, and to promote the Gospel and the interests of godliness more than any had done before him."

Cromwell, if he heard of his diatribes against him, appears to have cared little for them. Lords Warwick and Broghill, on one occasion, brought him to preach before the Lord Protector. He seized the occasion to preach against the sentries, to condemn all who countenanced them, and to advocate the unity of the Church. Soon after, he was sent for by Cromwell, who made "a long and tedious speech" in the presence of three of his chief men, (one of whom, General Lambert, fell asleep the while,) asserting that God had owned his government in a signal manner. Baxter boldly replied to him, that he and his friends regarded the ancient monarchy as a blessing, and not an evil, and begged to know how that blessing was forfeited to England, and to whom that forfeiture was made. Cromwell, with some heat, made answer that it was no forfeiture, but that God had made the change. They afterwards held a long conference with respect to freedom of conscience, Cromwell defending his liberal policy, and Baxter opposing it. No one can read Baxter's own account of these interviews, without being deeply impressed with the generous and magnanimous spirit of the Lord Protector in tolerating the utmost freedom of speech on the part of one who openly denounced him as a traitor and usurper. Real greatness of mind could alone have risen above personal resentment under such circumstances of peculiar aggravation.

In the death of the Protector, the treachery of Monk, and the restoration of the King, Baxter and his Presbyterian friends believed that they saw the hand of a merciful Providence preparing the way for the best good of England and the Church. Always royalists, they had acted with the party opposed to the King from necessity rather than choice. Considering all that followed, one can scarcely avoid smiling over the extravagant jubilations of the Presbyterian divines, on the return of the royal debauchee to Whitehall. They hurried up to London with congratulations of formidable length and papers of solemn advice and counsel, to all which the careless monarch listened, with what patience he was master of. Baxter was one of the first to present himself at Court, and it is creditable to his heart rather than his judgment and discrimination that he seized the occasion to offer a long address to the King, expressive of his expectation that his Majesty would discountenance all sin and promote godliness, support the true exercise of Church discipline and cherish and hold up the hands of the faithful ministers of the Church. To all which Charles II. "made as gracious an answer as we could expect," says Baxter, "insomuch that old Mr. Ash burst out into tears of joy." Who doubts that the profligate King avenged himself as soon as the backs of his unwelcome visitors were fairly turned, by coarse jests and ribaldry, directed against a class of men whom he despised and hated, but towards whom reasons of policy dictated a show of civility and kindness?

There is reason to believe that Charles II., had he been able to effect his purpose, would have gone beyond Cromwell himself in the matter of religious toleration; in other words, he would have taken, in the outset of his reign, the very steps which cost his successor his crown, and procured the toleration of Catholics by a declaration of universal freedom in religion. But he was not in a situation to brave the opposition alike of Prelacy and Presbyterianism, and foiled in a scheme to which he was prompted by that vague, superstitious predilection for the Roman Catholic religion which at times struggled with his habitual scepticism, his next object was to rid himself of the importunities of sentries and the trouble of religious controversies by reestablishing the liturgy, and bribing or enforcing conformity to it on the part of the Presbyterians. The history of the successful execution of this purpose is familiar to all the readers of the plausible pages of Clarendon on the one side, or the complaining treatises of Neal and Calamy on the other.

Charles and his advisers triumphed, not so much through their own art, dissimulation, and bad faith as through the blind bigotry, divided counsels, and self-seeking of the Nonconformists. Seduction on one hand and threats on the other, the bribe of bishoprics, hatred of Independents and Quakers, and the terror of penal laws, broke the strength of Presbyterianism.

Baxter's whole conduct, on this occasion, bears testimony to his honesty and sincerity, while it shows him to have been too intolerant to secure his own religious freedom at the price of toleration for Catholics, Quakers, and Anabaptists; and too blind in his loyalty to perceive that pure and undefiled Christianity had nothing to hope for from a scandalous and depraved King, surrounded by scoffing, licentious courtiers and a haughty, revengeful prelacy. To secure his influence, the Court offered him the bishopric of Hereford. Superior to personal considerations, he declined the honor; but somewhat inconsistently, in his zeal for the interests of his party, he urged the elevation of at least three of his Presbyterian friends to the Episcopal bench, to enforce that very liturgy which they condemned. He was the chief speaker for the Presbyterians at the famous Savoy Conference, summoned to advise and consult upon the Book of Common Prayer. His antagonist was Dr. Gunning, ready, fluent, and impassioned. "They spent," as Gilbert Burnet says, "several days in logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who looked upon them as a couple of fencers, engaged in a discussion which could not be brought to an end." In themselves considered, many of the points at issue seem altogether too trivial for the zeal with which Baxter contested them,-- the form of a surplice, the wording of a prayer, kneeling at sacrament, the sign of the cross, etc. With him, however, they were of momentous interest and importance, as things unlawful in the worship of God. He struggled desperately, but unavailingly. Presbyterianism, in its eagerness for peace and union and a due share of State support, had already made fatal concessions, and it was too late to stand upon non- essentials. Baxter retired from the conference baffled and defeated, amidst murmurs and jests. "If you had only been as fat as Dr. Manton," said Clarendon to him, "you would have done well."

The Act of Conformity, in which Charles II. and his counsellors gave the lie to the liberal declarations of Breda and Whitehall, drove Baxter from his sorrowing parishioners of Kidderminster, and added the evils of poverty and persecution to the painful bodily infirmities under which he was already bowed down. Yet his cup was not one of unalloyed bitterness, and loving lips were prepared to drink it with him.

Among Baxter's old parishioners of Kidderminster was a widowed lady of gentle birth, named Charlton, who, with her daughter Margaret, occupied a house in his neighborhood. The daughter was a brilliant girl, of "strangely vivid wit," and "in early youth," he tells us, "pride, and romances, and company suitable thereunto, did take her up." But erelong, Baxter, who acted in the double capacity of spiritual and temporal physician, was sent for to visit her, on an occasion of sickness. He ministered to her bodily and mental sufferings, and thus secured her gratitude and confidence. On her recovery, under the influence of his warnings and admonitions, the gay young girl became thoughtful and serious, abandoned her light books and companions, and devoted herself to the duties of a Christian profession. Baxter was her counsellor and confidant. She disclosed to him all her doubts, trials, and temptations, and he, in return, wrote her long letters of sympathy, consolation, and encouragement. He began to feel such an unwonted interest in the moral and spiritual growth of his young disciple, that, in his daily walks among his parishioners, he found himself inevitably drawn towards her mother's dwelling. In her presence, the habitual austerity of his manner was softened; his cold, close heart warmed and expanded. He began to repay her confidence with his own, disclosing to her all his plans of benevolence, soliciting her services, and waiting, with deference, for her judgment upon them. A change came over his habits of thought and his literary tastes; the harsh, rude disputant, the tough, dry logician, found himself addressing to his young friend epistles in verse on doctrinal points and matters of casuistry; Westminster Catechism in rhyme; the Solemn League and Covenant set to music. A miracle alone could have made Baxter a poet; the cold, clear light of reason "paled the ineffectual fires" of his imagination; all things presented themselves to his vision "with hard outlines, colorless, and with no surrounding atmosphere." That he did, nevertheless, write verses, so creditable as to justify a judicious modern critic in their citation and approval, can perhaps be accounted for only as one of the phenomena of that subtle and transforming influence to which even his stern nature was unconsciously yielding. Baxter was in love.

Never did the blind god try his archery on a more unpromising subject. Baxter was nearly fifty years of age, and looked still older. His life had been one long fast and penance. Even in youth he had never known a schoolboy's love for cousin or playmate. He had resolutely closed up his heart against emotions which he regarded as the allurements of time and sense. He had made a merit of celibacy, and written and published against the entanglement of godly ministers in matrimonial engagements and family cares. It is questionable whether he now understood his own case, or attributed to its right cause the peculiar interest which he felt in Margaret Charlton. Left to himself, it is more than probable that he might never have discovered the true nature of that interest, or conjectured that anything whatever of earthly passion or sublunary emotion had mingled with his spiritual Platonism. Commissioned and set apart to preach repentance to dying men, penniless and homeless, worn with bodily pain and mental toil, and treading, as he believed, on the very margin of his grave, what had he to do with love? What power had he to inspire that tender sentiment, the appropriate offspring only of youth, and health, and beauty?

"Could any Beatrice see A lover in such anchorite!"

But in the mean time a reciprocal feeling was gaining strength in the heart of Margaret. To her grateful appreciation of the condescension of a great and good man--grave, learned, and renowned--to her youth and weakness, and to her enthusiastic admiration of his intellectual powers, devoted to the highest and holiest objects, succeeded naturally enough the tenderly suggestive pity of her woman's heart, as she thought of his lonely home, his unshared sorrows, his lack of those sympathies and kindnesses which make tolerable the hard journey of life. Did she not owe to him, under God, the salvation of body and mind? Was he not her truest and most faithful friend, entering with lively interest into all her joys and sorrows? Had she not seen the cloud of his habitual sadness broken by gleams of sunny warmth and cheerfulness, as they conversed together? Could she do better than devote herself to the pleasing task of making his life happier, of comforting him in seasons of pain and weariness, encouraging him in his vast labors, and throwing over the cold and hard austerities of his nature the warmth and light of domestic affection? Pity, reverence, gratitude, and womanly tenderness, her fervid imagination and the sympathies of a deeply religious nature, combined to influence her decision. Disparity of age and condition rendered it improbable that Baxter would ever venture to address her in any other capacity than that of a friend and teacher; and it was left to herself to give the first intimation of the possibility of a more intimate relation.

It is easy to imagine with what mixed feelings of joy, surprise, and perplexity Baxter must have received the delicate avowal. There was much in the circumstances of the case to justify doubt, misgiving, and close searchings of heart. He must have felt the painful contrast which that fair girl in the bloom of her youth presented to the worn man of middle years, whose very breath was suffering, and over whom death seemed always impending. Keenly conscious of his infirmities of temper, he must have feared for the happiness of a loving, gentle being, daily exposed to their manifestations. From his well-known habit of consulting what he regarded as the divine will in every important step of his life, there can be no doubt that his decision was the result quite as much of a prayerful and patient consideration of duty as of the promptings of his heart. Richard Baxter was no impassioned Abelard; his pupil in the school of his severe and self-denying piety was no Heloise; but what their union lacked in romantic interest was compensated by its purity and disinterestedness, and its sanction by all that can hallow human passion, and harmonize the love of the created with the love and service of the Creator.

Although summoned by a power which it would have been folly to resist, the tough theologian did not surrender at discretion. "From the first thoughts yet many changes and stoppages intervened, and long delays," he tells us. The terms upon which he finally capitulated are perfectly in keeping with his character. "She consented," he says, "to three conditions of our marriage. 1st. That I should have nothing that before our marriage was hers; that I, who wanted no earthly supplies, might not seem to marry her from selfishness. 2d. That she would so alter her affairs that I might be entangled in no lawsuits. 3d. That she should expect none of my time which my ministerial work should require."

As was natural, the wits of the Court had their jokes upon this singular marriage; and many of his best friends regretted it, when they called to mind what he had written in favor of ministerial celibacy, at a time when, as he says, "he thought to live and die a bachelor." But Baxter had no reason to regret the inconsistency of his precept and example. How much of the happiness of the next twenty years of his life resulted from his union with a kind and affectionate woman he has himself testified, in his simple and touching Breviate of the Life of the late Mrs. Baxter. Her affections were so ardent that her husband confesses his fear that he was unable to make an adequate return, and that she must have been disappointed in him in consequence. He extols her pleasant conversation, her active benevolence, her disposition to aid him in all his labors, and her noble forgetfulness of self, in ministering to his comfort, in sickness and imprisonment. "She was the meetest helper I could have had in the world," is his language. "If I spoke harshly or sharply, it offended her. If I carried it (as I am apt) with too much negligence of ceremony or humble compliment to any, she would modestly tell me of it. If my looks seemed not pleasant, she would have me amend them (which my weak, pained state of body indisposed me to do)." He admits she had her failings, but, taken as a whole, the Breviate is an exalted eulogy.

His history from this time is marked by few incidents of a public character. During that most disgraceful period in the annals of England, the reign of the second Charles, his peculiar position exposed him to the persecutions of prelacy and the taunts and abuse of the sentries, standing as he did between these extremes, and pleading for a moderate Episcopacy. He was between the upper millstone of High Church and the nether one of Dissent. To use his own simile, he was like one who seeks to fill with his hand a cleft in a log, and feels both sides close upon him with pain. All parties and sects had, as they thought, grounds of complaint against him. There was in him an almost childish simplicity of purpose, a headlong earnestness and eagerness, which did not allow him to consider how far a present act or opinion harmonized with what he had already done or written. His greatest admirers admit his lack of judgment, his inaptitude for the management of practical matters. His utter incapacity to comprehend rightly the public men and measures of his day is abundantly apparent; and the inconsistencies of his conduct and his writings are too marked to need comment. He suffered persecution for not conforming to some trifling matters of Church usage, while he advocated the doctrine of passive obedience to the King or ruling power, and the right of that power to enforce conformity. He wrote against conformity while himself conforming; seceded from the Church, and yet held stated communion with it; begged for the curacy of Kidderminster, and declined the bishopric of Hereford. His writings were many of them directly calculated to make Dissenters from the Establishment, but he was invariably offended to find others practically influenced by them, and quarrelled with his own converts to Dissent. The High Churchmen of Oxford burned his Holy Commonwealth as seditious and revolutionary; while Harrington and the republican club of Miles's Coffee House condemned it for its hostility to democracy and its servile doctrine of obedience to kings. He made noble pleas for liberty of conscience and bitterly complained of his own suffering from Church courts, yet maintained the necessity of enforcing conformity, and stoutly opposed the tolerant doctrines of Penn and Milton. Never did a great and good man so entangle himself with contradictions and inconsistencies. The witty and wicked Sir Roger L'Estrange compiled from the irreconcilable portions of his works a laughable Dialogue between Richard and Baxter. The Antinomians found him guilty of Socinianism; and one noted controversialist undertook to show, not without some degree of plausibility, that he was by turns a Quaker and a Papist!

Although able to suspend his judgment and carefully weigh evidence, upon matters which he regarded as proper subjects of debate and scrutiny, he possessed the power to shut out and banish at will all doubt and misgiving in respect to whatever tended to prove, illustrate, or enforce his settled opinions and cherished doctrines. His credulity at times seems boundless. Hating the Quakers, and prepared to believe all manner of evil of them, he readily came to the conclusion that their leaders were disguised Papists. He maintained that Lauderdale was a good and pious man, in spite of atrocities in Scotland which entitle him to a place with Claverhouse; and indorsed the character of the infamous Dangerfield, the inventor of the Meal-tub Plot, as a worthy convert from popish errors. To prove the existence of devils and spirits, he collected the most absurd stories and old-wives' fables, of soldiers scared from their posts at night by headless bears, of a young witch pulling the hooks out of Mr. Emlen's breeches and swallowing them, of Mr. Beacham's locomotive tobacco-pipe, and the Rev. Mr. Munn's jumping Bible, and of a drunken man punished for his intemperance by being lifted off his legs by an invisible hand! Cotton Mather's marvellous account of his witch experiments in New England delighted him. He had it republished, declaring that "he must be an obstinate Sadducee who doubted it."

The married life of Baxter, as might be inferred from the state of the times, was an unsettled one. He first took a house at Moorfields, then removed to Acton, where he enjoyed the conversation of his neighbor, Sir Matthew Hale; from thence he found refuge in Rickmansworth, and after that in divers other places. "The women have most of this trouble," he remarks, "but my wife easily bore it all." When unable to preach, his rapid pen was always busy. Huge folios of controversial and doctrinal lore followed each other in quick succession. He assailed Popery and the Establishment, Anabaptists, ultra Calvinists, Antinomians, Fifth Monarchy men, and Quakers. His hatred of the latter was only modified by his contempt. He railed rather than argued against the "miserable creatures," as he styled them. They in turn answered him in like manner. "The Quakers," he says, "in their shops, when I go along London streets, say, 'Alas' poor man, thou art yet in darkness.' They have oft come to the congregation, when I had liberty to preach Christ's Gospel, and cried out against me as a deceiver of the people. They have followed me home, crying out in the streets, 'The day of the Lord is coming, and thou shalt perish as a deceiver.' They have stood in the market-place, and under my window, year after year, crying to the people, 'Take heed of your priests, they deceive your souls;' and if any one wore a lace or neat clothing, they cried out to me, 'These are the fruits of your ministry.'"

At Rickmansworth, he found himself a neighbor of William Penn, whom he calls "the captain of the Quakers." Ever ready for battle, Baxter encountered him in a public discussion, with such fierceness and bitterness as to force from that mild and amiable civilian the remark, that he would rather be Socrates at the final judgment than Richard Baxter. Both lived to know each other better, and to entertain sentiments of mutual esteem. Baxter himself admits that the Quakers, by their perseverance in holding their religious meetings in defiance of penal laws, took upon themselves the burden of persecution which would otherwise have fallen upon himself and his friends; and makes special mention of the noble and successful plea of Penn before the Recorder's Court in London, based on the fundamental liberties of Englishmen and the rights of the Great Charter.

The intolerance of Baxter towards the Separatists was turned against him whenever he appealed to the King and Parliament against the proscription of himself and his friends. "They gathered," he complains, "out of mine and other men's books all that we had said against liberty for Popery and Quakers railing against ministers in open congregation, and applied it as against the toleration of ourselves." It was in vain that he explained that he was only in favor of a gentle coercion of dissent, a moderate enforcement of conformity. His plan for dealing with sentries reminds one of old Isaak Walton's direction to his piscatorial readers, to impale the frog on the hook as gently as if they loved him.

While at Acton, he was complained of by Dr. Ryves, the rector, one of the King's chaplains in ordinary, for holding religious services in his family with more than five strangers present. He was cast into Clerkenwell jail, whither his faithful wife followed him. On his discharge, he sought refuge in the hamlet of Totteridge, where he wrote and published that Paraphrase on the New Testament which was made the ground of his prosecution and trial before Jeffreys.

On the 14th of the sixth month, 1681, he was called to endure the greatest affliction of his life. His wife died on that day, after a brief illness. She who had been his faithful friend, companion, and nurse for twenty years was called away from him in the time of his greatest need of her ministrations. He found consolation in dwelling on her virtues and excellences in the Breviate of her life; "a paper monument," he says, "erected by one who is following her even at the door in some passion indeed of love and grief." In the preface to his poetical pieces he alludes to her in terms of touching simplicity and tenderness: "As these pieces were mostly written in various passions, so passion hath now thrust them out into the world. God having taken away the dear companion of the last nineteen years of my life, as her sorrows and sufferings long ago gave being to some of these poems, for reasons, which the world is not concerned to know; so my grief for her removal, and the revival of the sense of former things, have prevailed upon me to be passionate in the sight of all."

The circumstances of his trial before the judicial monster, Jeffreys, are too well known to justify their detail in this sketch. He was sentenced to pay a fine of five hundred marks. Seventy years of age, and reduced to poverty by former persecutions, he was conveyed to the King's Bench prison. Here for two years he lay a victim to intense bodily suffering. When, through the influence of his old antagonist, Penn, he was restored to freedom, he was already a dying man. But he came forth from prison as he entered it, unsubdued in spirit.

Urged to sign a declaration of thanks to James II., his soul put on the athletic habits of youth, and he stoutly refused to commend an act of toleration which had given freedom not to himself alone, but to Papists and sentries. Shaking off the dust of the Court from his feet, he retired to a dwelling in Charter-House Square, near his friend Sylvester's, and patiently awaited his deliverance. His death was quiet and peaceful. "I have pain," he said to his friend Mather; "there is no arguing against sense; but I have peace. I have peace." On being asked how he did, he answered, in memorable words, "Almost well!"

He was buried in Christ Church, where the remains of his wife and her mother had been placed. An immense concourse attended his funeral, of all ranks and parties. Conformist and Non-conformist forgot the bitterness of the controversialist, and remembered only the virtues and the piety of the man. Looking back on his life of self-denial and faithfulness to apprehended duty, the men who had persecuted him while living wept over his grave. During the last few years of his life, the severity of his controversial tone had been greatly softened; he lamented his former lack of charity, the circle of his sympathies widened, his social affections grew stronger with age, and love for his fellow-men universally, and irrespective of religious differences, increased within him. In his Narrative, written in the long, cool shadows of the evening of life, he acknowledges with extraordinary candor this change in his views and feelings. He confesses his imperfections as a writer and public teacher.

"I wish," he says, "all over-sharp passages were expunged from my writings, and I ask forgiveness of God and man." He tells us that mankind appear more equal to him; the good are not so good as he once thought, nor the bad so evil; and that in all there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to testify for God and holiness, than he once believed. "I less admire," he continues, "gifts of utterance, and the bare profession of religion, than I once did, and have now much more charity for those who, by want of gifts, do make an obscurer profession."

He laments the effects of his constitutional irritability and impatience upon his social intercourse and his domestic relations, and that his bodily infirmities did not allow him a free expression of the tenderness and love of his heart. Who does not feel the pathos and inconsolable regret which dictated the following paragraph?

"When God forgiveth me, I cannot forgive myself, especially for my rash words and deeds by which I have seemed injurious and less tender and kind than I should have been to my near and dear relations, whose love abundantly obliged me. When such are dead, though we never differed in point of interest or any other matter, every sour or cross or provoking word which I gave them maketh me almost irreconcilable to myself, and tells me how repentance brought some of old to pray to the dead whom they had wronged to forgive them, in the hurry of their passion."

His pride as a logician and skilful disputant abated in the latter and better portion of his life he had more deference to the judgment of others, and more distrust of his own. "You admire," said he to a correspondent who had lauded his character, "one you do not know; knowledge will cure your error." In his Narrative he writes: "I am much more sensible than heretofore of the breadth and length and depth of the radical, universal, odious sin of selfishness, and therefore have written so much against it; and of the excellency and necessity of self-denial and of a public mind, and of loving our neighbors as ourselves." Against many difficulties and discouragements, both within himself and in his outward circumstances, he strove to make his life and conversation an expression of that Christian love whose root, as he has said with equal truth and beauty, "is set

In humble self-denial, undertrod, While flower and fruit are growing up to God."

Of the great mass of his writings, more voluminous than those of any author of his time, it would ill become us to speak with confidence. We are familiar only with some of the best of his practical works, and our estimate of the vast and appalling series of his doctrinal, metaphysical and controversial publications would be entitled to small weight, as the result of very cursory examination. Many of them relate to obsolete questions and issues, monumental of controversies long dead, and of disputatious doctors otherwise forgotten. Yet, in respect to even these, we feel justified in assenting to the opinion of one abundantly capable of appreciating the character of Baxter as a writer. "What works of Mr. Baxter shall I read?" asked Boswell of Dr. Johnson. "Read any of them," was the answer, "for they are all good." He has left upon all the impress of his genius. Many of them contain sentiments which happily find favor with few in our time: philosophical and psychological disquisitions, which look oddly enough in the light of the intellectual progress of nearly two centuries; dissertations upon evil spirits, ghosts, and witches, which provoke smiles at the good man's credulity; but everywhere we find unmistakable evidences of his sincerity and earnest love of truth. He wrote under a solemn impression of duty, allowing neither pain, nor weakness, nor the claims of friendship, nor the social enjoyments of domestic affection, to interfere with his sleepless intensity of purpose. He stipulated with his wife, before marriage, that she should not expect him to relax, even for her society, the severity of his labors. He could ill brook interruption, and disliked the importunity of visitors. "We are afraid, sir, we break in upon your time," said some of his callers to him upon one occasion. "To be sure you do," was his answer. His seriousness seldom forsook him; there is scarce a gleam of gayety in all his one hundred and sixty-eight volumes. He seems to have relished, however, the wit of others, especially when directed against what he looked upon as error. Marvell's inimitable reply to the High-Church pretensions of Parker fairly overcame his habitual gravity, and he several times alludes to it with marked satisfaction; but, for himself, he had no heart for pleasentry. His writings, like his sermons, were the earnest expostulations of a dying man with dying men. He tells us of no other amusement or relaxation than the singing of psalms. "Harmony and melody," said he, "are the pleasure and elevation of my soul. It was not the least comfort that I had in the converse of my late dear wife, that our first act in the morning and last in bed at night was a psalm of praise."

It has been fashionable to speak of Baxter as a champion of civil and religious freedom. He has little claim to such a reputation. He was the stanch advocate of monarchy, and of the right and duty of the State to enforce conformity to what he regarded as the essentials of religious belief and practice. No one regards the prelates who went to the Tower, under James II., on the ground of conscientious scruples against reading the King's declaration of toleration to Dissenters, as martyrs in the cause of universal religious freedom. Nor can Baxter, although he wrote much against the coercion and silencing of godly ministers, and suffered imprisonment himself for the sake of a good conscience, be looked upon in the light of an intelligent and consistent confessor of liberty. He did not deny the abstract right of ecclesiastical coercion, but complained of its exercise upon himself and his friends as unwarranted and unjust.

One of the warmest admirers and ablest commentators of Baxter designates the leading and peculiar trait of his character as unearthliness. In our view, this was its radical defect. He had too little of humanity, he felt too little of the attraction of this world, and lived too exclusively in the spiritual and the unearthly, for a full and healthful development of his nature as a man, or of the graces, charities, and loves of the Christian. He undervalued the common blessings and joys of life, and closed his eyes and ears against the beauty and harmony of outward nature. Humanity, in itself considered, seemed of small moment to him; "passing away" was written alike on its wrongs and its rights, its pleasures and its pains; death would soon level all distinctions; and the sorrows or the joys, the poverty or the riches, the slavery or the liberty, of the brief day of its probation seemed of too little consequence to engage his attention and sympathies. Hence, while he was always ready to minister to temporal suffering wherever it came to his notice, he made no efforts to remove its political or social causes. In this respect he differed widely from some of his illustrious contemporaries. Penn, while preaching up and down the land, and writing theological folios and pamphlets, could yet urge the political rights of Englishmen, mount the hustings for Algernon Sydney, and plead for unlimited religious liberty; and Vane, while dreaming of a coming millennium and reign of the saints, and busily occupied in defending his Antinomian doctrines, could at the same time vindicate, with tongue and pen, the cause of civil and religious freedom. But Baxter overlooked the evils and oppressions which were around him, and forgot the necessities and duties of the world of time and sense in his earnest aspirations towards the world of spirits. It is by no means an uninstructive fact, that with the lapse of years his zeal for proselytism, doctrinal disputations, and the preaching of threats and terrors visibly declined, while love for his fellow-men and catholic charity greatly increased, and he was blessed with a clearer perception of the truth that God is best served through His suffering children, and that love and reverence for visible humanity is an indispensable condition of the appropriate worship of the Unseen God.

But, in taking leave of Richard Baxter, our last words must not be those of censure. Admiration and reverence become us rather. He was an honest man. So far as we can judge, his motives were the highest and best which can influence human action. He had faults and weaknesses, and committed grave errors, but we are constrained to believe that the prayer with which he closes his Saints' Rest and which we have chosen as the fitting termination of our article, was the earnest aspiration of his life:--

"O merciful Father of Spirits! suffer not the soul of thy unworthy servant to be a stranger to the joys which he describes to others, but keep me while I remain on earth in daily breathing after thee, and in a believing affectionate walking with thee! Let those who shall read these pages not merely read the fruits of my studies, but the breathing of my active hope and love; that if my heart were open to their view, they might there read thy love most deeply engraven upon it with a beam from the face of the Son of God; and not find vanity or lust or pride within where the words of life appear without, that so these lines may not witness against me, but, proceeding from the heart of the writer, be effectual through thy grace upon the heart of the reader, and so be the savor of life to both."

WILLIAM LEGGETT

"O Freedom! thou art not, as poets dream, A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs, And wavy tresses, gushing from the cap With which the Roman master crowned his slave, When he took off the gyves. A bearded man, Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow, Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee; They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven." BRYANT.

WHEN the noblest woman in all France stood on the scaffold, just before her execution, she is said to have turned towards the statue of Liberty, --which, strangely enough, had been placed near the guillotine, as its patron saint,--with the exclamation, "O Liberty! what crimes have been committed in thy name!" It is with a feeling akin to that which prompted this memorable exclamation of Madame Roland that the sincere lover of human freedom and progress is often compelled to regard American democracy.

For democracy, pure and impartial,--the self-government of the whole; equal rights and privileges, irrespective of birth or complexion; the morality of the Gospel of Christ applied to legislation; Christianity reduced to practice, and showering the blessings of its impartial love and equal protection upon all, like the rain and dews of heaven,--we have the sincerest love and reverence. So far as our own government approaches this standard--and, with all its faults, we believe it does so more nearly than any other--it has our hearty and steadfast allegiance. We complain of and protest against it only where, in its original framework or actual administration, it departs from the democratic principle. Holding, with Novalis, that the Christian religion is the root of all democracy and the highest fact in the rights of man, we regard the New Testament as the true political text-book; and believe that, just in proportion as mankind receive its doctrines and precepts, not merely as matters of faith and relating to another state of being, but as practical rules, designed for the regulation of the present life as well as the future, their institutions, social arrangements, and forms of government will approximate to the democratic model. We believe in the ultimate complete accomplishment of the mission of Him who came "to preach deliverance to the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them that are bound." We look forward to the universal dominion of His benign humanity; and, turning from the strife and blood, the slavery, and social and political wrongs of the past and present, anticipate the realization in the distant future of that state when the song of the angels at His advent shall be no longer a prophecy, but the jubilant expression of a glorious reality,--"Glory to God in the highest! Peace on earth, and good will to man!"

For the party in this country which has assumed the name of Democracy, as a party, we have had, we confess, for some years past, very little respect. It has advocated many salutary measures, tending to equalize the advantages of trade and remove the evils of special legislation. But if it has occasionally lopped some of the branches of the evil tree of oppression, so far from striking at its root, it has suffered itself to be made the instrument of nourishing and protecting it. It has allowed itself to be called, by its Southern flatterers, "the natural ally of slavery." It has spurned the petitions of the people in behalf of freedom under its feet, in Congress and State legislatures. Nominally the advocate of universal suffrage, it has wrested from the colored citizens of Pennsylvania that right of citizenship which they had enjoyed under a Constitution framed by Franklin and Rush. Perhaps the most shameful exhibition of its spirit was made in the late Rhode Island struggle, when the free suffrage convention, solemnly calling heaven and earth to witness its readiness to encounter all the horrors of civil war, in defence of the holy principle of equal and universal suffrage, deliberately excluded colored Rhode Islanders from the privilege of voting. In the Constitutional Conventions of Michigan and Iowa, the same party declared all men equal, and then provided an exception to this rule in the case of the colored inhabitants. Its course on the question of excluding slavery from Texas is a matter of history, known and read of all.

After such exhibitions of its practice, its professions have lost their power. The cant of democracy upon the lips of men who are living down its principles is, to an earnest mind, well nigh insufferable. Pertinent were the queries of Eliphaz the Temanite, "Shall a man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east wind? Shall he reason with unprofitable talk, or with speeches wherewith he can do no good?" Enough of wearisome talk we have had about "progress," the rights of "the masses," the "dignity of labor," and "extending the area of freedom"! "Clear your mind of cant, sir," said Johnson to Boswell; and no better advice could be now given to a class of our democratic politicians. Work out your democracy; translate your words into deeds; away with your sentimental generalizations, and come down to the practical details of your duty as men and Christians. What avail your abstract theories, your hopeless virginity of democracy, sacred from the violence of meanings? A democracy which professes to hold, as by divine right, the doctrine of human equality in its special keeping, and which at the same time gives its direct countenance and support to the vilest system of oppression on which the sun of heaven looks, has no better title to the name it disgraces than the apostate Son of the Morning has to his old place in heaven. We are using strong language, for we feel strongly on this subject. Let those whose hypocrisy we condemn, and whose sins against humanity we expose, remember that they are the publishers of their own shame, and that they have gloried in their apostasy. There is a cutting severity in the answer which Sophocles puts in the mouth of Electra, in justification of her indignant rebuke of her wicked mother:--

"'Tis you that say it, not I You do the unholy deeds which find rue words."

Yet in that party calling itself democratic we rejoice to recognize true, generous, and thoroughly sincere men,--lovers of the word of democracy, and doers of it also, honest and hearty in their worship of liberty, who are still hoping that the antagonism which slavery presents to democracy will be perceived by the people, in spite of the sophistry and appeals to prejudice by which interested partisans have hitherto succeeded in deceiving them. We believe with such that the mass of the democratic voters of the free States are in reality friends of freedom, and hate slavery in all its forms; and that, with a full understanding of the matter, they could never consent to be sold to presidential aspirants, by political speculators, in lots to suit purchasers, and warranted to be useful in putting down free discussion, perpetuating oppression, and strengthening the hands of modern feudalism. They are beginning already to see that, under the process whereby men of easy virtue obtain offices from the general government, as the reward of treachery to free principles, the strength and vitality of the party are rapidly declining. To them, at least, democracy means something more than collectorships, consulates, and governmental contracts. For the sake of securing a monopoly of these to a few selfish and heartless party managers, they are not prepared to give up the distinctive principles of democracy, and substitute in their place the doctrines of the Satanic school of politics. They will not much longer consent to stand before the world as the slavery party of the United States, especially when policy and expediency, as well as principle, unite in recommending a position more congenial to the purposes of their organization, the principles of the fathers of their political faith, the spirit of the age, and the obligations of Christianity.

The death-blow of slavery in this country will be given by the very power upon which it has hitherto relied with so much confidence. Abused and insulted Democracy will, erelong, shake off the loathsome burden under which it is now staggering. In the language of the late Theodore Sedgwiek, of Massachusetts, a consistent democrat of the old school: "Slavery, in all its forms, is anti-democratic,--an old poison left in the veins, fostering the worst principles of aristocracy, pride, and aversion to labor; the natural enemy of the poor man, the laboring man, the oppressed man. The question is, whether absolute dominion over any creature in the image of man be a wholesome power in a free country; whether this is a school in which to train the young republican mind; whether slave blood and free blood can course healthily together in the same body politic. Whatever may be present appearances, and by whatever name party may choose to call things, this question must finally be settled by the democracy of the country."

This prediction was made eight years ago, at a time when all the facts in the case seemed against the probability of its truth, and when only here and there the voice of an indignant freeman protested against the exulting claims of the slave power upon the democracy as its "natural ally." The signs of the times now warrant the hope of its fulfilment. Over the hills of the East, and over the broad territory of the Empire State, a new spirit is moving. Democracy, like Balaam upon Zophim, has felt the divine afflatus, and is blessing that which it was summoned to curse.

The present hopeful state of things is owing, in no slight degree, to the self-sacrificing exertions of a few faithful and clear-sighted men, foremost among whom was the late William Leggett; than whom no one has labored more perseveringly, or, in the end, more successfully, to bring the practice of American democracy into conformity with its professions.

William Leggett! Let our right hand forget its cunning, when that name shall fail to awaken generous emotions and aspirations for a higher and worthier manhood! True man and true democrat; faithful always to Liberty, following wherever she led, whether the storm beat in his face or on his back; unhesitatingly counting her enemies his own, whether in the guise of Whig monopoly and selfish expediency, or democratic servility north of Mason and Dixon's line towards democratic slaveholding south of it; poor, yet incorruptible; dependent upon party favor, as a party editor, yet risking all in condemnation of that party, when in the wrong; a man of the people, yet never stooping to flatter the people's prejudices,--he is the politician, of all others, whom we would hold up to the admiration and imitation of the young men of our country. What Fletcher of Saltoun is to Scotland, and the brave spirits of the old Commonwealth time--

"Hands that penned And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none The later Sydney, Marvell, Harrington, Young Vane, and others, who called Milton friend--"

are to England, should Leggett be to America. His character was formed on these sturdy democratic models. Had he lived in their day, he would have scraped with old Andrew Marvell the bare blade-bone of poverty, or even laid his head on the block with Vane, rather than forego his independent thought and speech.

Of the early life of William Leggett we have no very definite knowledge. Born in moderate circumstances; at first a woodsman in the Western wilderness, then a midshipman in the navy, then a denizen of New York; exposed to sore hardships and perilous temptations, he worked his way by the force of his genius to the honorable position of associate editor of the Evening Post, the leading democratic journal of our great commercial metropolis. Here he became early distinguished for his ultraism in democracy. His whole soul revolted against oppression. He was for liberty everywhere and in all things, in thought, in speech, in vote, in religion, in government, and in trade; he was for throwing off all restraints upon the right of suffrage; regarding all men as brethren, he looked with disapprobation upon attempts to exclude foreigners from the rights of citizenship; he was for entire freedom of commerce; he denounced a national bank; he took the lead in opposition to the monopoly of incorporated banks; he argued in favor of direct taxation, and advocated a free post-office, or a system by which letters should be transported, as goods and passengers now are, by private enterprise. In all this he was thoroughly in earnest. That he often erred through passion and prejudice cannot be doubted; but in no instance was he found turning aside from the path which he believed to be the true one, from merely selfish considerations. He was honest alike to himself and the public. Every question which was thrown up before him by the waves of political or moral agitation he measured by his standard of right and truth, and condemned or advocated it in utter disregard of prevailing opinions, of its effect upon his pecuniary interest, or of his standing with his party. The vehemence of his passions sometimes betrayed him into violence of language and injustice to his opponents; but he had that rare and manly trait which enables its possessor, whenever he becomes convinced of error, to make a prompt acknowledgment of the conviction.

In the summer of 1834, a series of mobs, directed against the Abolitionists, who had organized a national society, with the city of New York as its central point, followed each other in rapid succession. The houses of the leading men in the society were sacked and pillaged; meeting-houses broken into and defaced; and the unoffending colored inhabitants of the city treated with the grossest indignity, and subjected, in some instances, to shameful personal outrage. It was emphatically a "Reign of Terror." The press of both political parties and of the leading religious sects, by appeals to prejudice and passion, and by studied misrepresentation of the designs and measures of the Abolitionists, fanned the flame of excitement, until the fury of demons possessed the misguided populace. To advocate emancipation, or defend those who did so, in New York, at that period, was like preaching democracy in Constantinople or religious toleration in Paris on the eve of St. Bartholomew. Law was prostrated in the dust; to be suspected of abolitionism was to incur a liability to an indefinite degree of insult and indignity; and the few and hunted friends of the slave who in those nights of terror laid their heads upon the pillow did so with the prayer of the Psalmist on their lips, "Defend me from them that rise up against me; save me from bloody men."

At this period the New York Evening Post spoke out strongly in condemnation of the mob. William Leggett was not then an Abolitionist; he had known nothing of the proscribed class, save through the cruel misrepresentations of their enemies; but, true to his democratic faith, he maintained the right to discuss the question of slavery. The infection of cowardly fear, which at that time sealed the lips of multitudes who deplored the excesses of the mob and sympathized with its victims, never reached him. Boldly, indignantly, he demanded that the mob should be put down at once by the civil authorities. He declared the Abolitionists, even if guilty of all that had been charged upon them, fully entitled to the privileges and immunities of American citizens. He sternly reprimanded the board of aldermen of the city for rejecting with contempt the memorial of the Abolitionists to that body, explanatory of their principles and the measures by which they had sought to disseminate them. Referring to the determination, expressed by the memorialists in the rejected document, not to recant or relinquish any principle which they had adopted, but to live and die by their faith, he said: "In this, however mistaken, however mad, we may consider their opinions in relation to the blacks, what honest, independent mind can blame them? Where is the man so poor of soul, so white-livered, so base, that he would do less in relation to any important doctrine in which he religiously believed? Where is the man who would have his tenets drubbed into him by the clubs of ruffians, or hold his conscience at the dictation of a mob?"

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