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Edition: 10
Language: English
VOLUME I.
NARRATIVE AND LEGENDARY
POEMS
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT
The portraits prefixed to the several volumes have been chosen with a
view to illustrating successive periods in the poet's life. The
original sources and dates are indicated in each case.
CONTENTS:
BARCLAY OF URY
THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA
THE LEGEND OF ST MARK
KATHLEEN
THE WELL OF LOCH MAREE
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS
TAULER
THE HERMIT OF THE THEBAID
THE GARRISON OF CAPE ANN
THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS
SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE
THE SYCAMORES
THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW
TELLING THE BEES
THE SWAN SONG OF PARSON AVERY
THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY
PROEM
O Freedom! if to me belong
Nor mighty Milton's gift divine,
Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song,
Still with a love as deep and strong
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on thy shrine.
INTRODUCTION
"That there are pieces in this collection which I would 'willingly let
die,' I am free to confess. But it is now too late to disown them, and I
must submit to the inevitable penalty of poetical as well as other sins.
There are others, intimately connected with the author's life and times,
which owe their tenacity of vitality to the circumstances under which
they were written, and the events by which they were suggested.
"The long poem of Mogg Megone was in a great measure composed in early
life; and it is scarcely necessary to say that its subject is not such
as the writer would have chosen at any subsequent period."
After a lapse of thirty years since the above was written, I have been
requested by my publishers to make some preparation for a new and
revised edition of my poems. I cannot flatter myself that I have added
much to the interest of the work beyond the correction of my own errors
and those of the press, with the addition of a few heretofore
unpublished pieces, and occasional notes of explanation which seemed
necessary. I have made an attempt to classify the poems under a few
general heads, and have transferred the long poem of Mogg Megone to the
Appendix, with other specimens of my earlier writings. I have endeavored
to affix the dates of composition or publication as far as possible.
This poem was suggested by the account given of the manner which the
Waldenses disseminated their principles among the Catholic gentry. They
gained access to the house through their occupation as peddlers of
silks, jewels, and trinkets. "Having disposed of some of their goods,"
it is said by a writer who quotes the inquisitor Rainerus Sacco, "they
cautiously intimated that they had commodities far more valuable than
these, inestimable jewels, which they would show if they could be
protected from the clergy. They would then give their purchasers a Bible
or Testament; and thereby many were deluded into heresy." The poem,
under the title Le Colporteur Vaudois, was translated into French by
Professor G. de Felice, of Montauban, and further naturalized by
Professor Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet, who quoted it in his lectures on
French literature, afterwards published. It became familiar in this form
to the Waldenses, who adopted it as a household poem. An American
clergyman, J. C. Fletcher, frequently heard it when he was a student,
about the year 1850, in the theological seminary at Geneva, Switzerland,
but the authorship of the poem was unknown to those who used it.
Twenty-five years later, Mr. Fletcher, learning the name of the author,
wrote to the moderator of the Waldensian synod at La Tour, giving the
information. At the banquet which closed the meeting of the synod, the
moderator announced the fact, and was instructed in the name of the
Waldensian church to write to me a letter of thanks. My letter, written
in reply, was translated into Italian and printed throughout Italy.
And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil
faith had power,
The courtly knights of her father's train, and the
maidens of her bower;
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by lordly
feet untrod,
Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the
perfect love of God!
1830.
THE FOUNTAIN.
PENTUCKET.
THE NORSEMEN.
ST. JOHN.
As if suddenly smitten
La Tour staggered back;
His hand grasped his sword-hilt,
His forehead grew black.
He sprang on the deck
Of his shallop again.
"We cruise now for vengeance!
Give way!" cried Estienne.
THE EXILES.
The incidents upon which the following ballad has its foundation
about the year 1660. Thomas Macy was one of the first, if not the first
white settler of Nantucket. The career of Macy is briefly but carefully
outlined in James S. Pike's The New Puritan.
CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK.
In 1658 two young persons, son and daughter of Lawrence Smithwick of
Salem, who had himself been imprisoned and deprived of nearly all his
property for having entertained Quakers at his house, were fined for
non-attendance at church. They being unable to pay the fine, the General
Court issued an order empowering "the Treasurer of the County to sell
the said persons to any of the English nation of Virginia or Barbadoes,
to answer said fines." An attempt was made to carry this order into
execution, but no shipmaster was found willing to convey them to the
West Indies.
I. THE MERRIMAC.
O child of that white-crested mountain whose
springs
Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's
wings,
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy wild waters
shine,
Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the
dwarf pine;
From that cloud-curtained cradle so cold and so
lone,
From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of
stone,
By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and
free,
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the
sea.
Not for thee the dull jar of the loom and the wheel,
The gliding of shuttles, the ringing of steel;
But that old voice of waters, of bird and of breeze,
The dip of the wild-fowl, the rustling of trees.
II. THE BASHABA.
Lift we the twilight curtains of the Past,
And, turning from familiar sight and sound,
Sadly and full of reverence let us cast
A glance upon Tradition's shadowy ground,
Led by the few pale lights which, glimmering round
That dim, strange land of Eld, seem dying fast;
And that which history gives not to the eye,
The faded coloring of Time's tapestry,
Let Fancy, with her dream-dipped brush, supply.
O mighty Sowanna![7]
Thy gateways unfold,
From thy wigwam of sunset
Lift curtains of gold!
BARCLAY OF URY.
A letter-writer from Mexico during the Mexican war, when detailing some
of the incidents at the terrible fight of Buena Vista, mentioned that
Mexican women were seen hovering near the field of death, for the
purpose of giving aid and succor to the wounded. One poor woman was
found surrounded by the maimed and suffering of both armies, ministering
to the wants of Americans as well as Mexicans, with impartial
tenderness.
"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee
forth,
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely,
in the North!"
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him
with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the
wounds which bled.
KATHLEEN.
This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from
Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian
schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was
by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and
criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations
of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the
market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a
considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom.
Pennant, in his Voyage to the Hebrides, describes the holy well of Loch
Maree, the waters of which were supposed to effect a miraculous cure of
melancholy, trouble, and insanity.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
TAULER.
Tauler laid
His hand upon the stranger's coarse gray sleeve
"Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean.
Surely man's days are evil, and his life
Sad as the grave it leads to." "Nay, my son,
Our times are in God's hands, and all our days
Are as our needs; for shadow as for sun,
For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike
Our thanks are due, since that is best which is;
And that which is not, sharing not His life,
Is evil only as devoid of good.
And for the happiness of which I spake,
I find it in submission to his will,
And calm trust in the holy Trinity
Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power."
MAUD MULLER.
MARY GARVIN.
FROM the heart of Waumbek Methna, from the
lake that never fails,
Falls the Saco in the green lap of Conway's
intervales;
There, in wild and virgin freshness, its waters
foam and flow,
As when Darby Field first saw them, two hundred
years ago.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Sit ye down, and dry and warm ye, for the night
is chill with rain."
And the goodwife drew the settle, and stirred the
fire amain.
THE RANGER.
THE SYCAMORES.
Hugh Tallant was the first Irish resident of Haverhill, Mass. He planted
the button-wood trees on the bank of the river below the village in the
early part of the seventeenth century. Unfortunately this noble avenue
is now nearly destroyed.
MABEL MARTIN.
A HARVEST IDYL.
Susanna Martin, an aged woman of Amesbury, Mass., was tried and executed
for the alleged crime of witchcraft. Her home was in what is now known
as Pleasant Valley on the Merrimac, a little above the old Ferry way,
where, tradition says, an attempt was made to assassinate Sir Edmund
Andros on his way to Falmouth (afterward Portland) and Pemaquid, which
was frustrated by a warning timely given. Goody Martin was the only
woman hanged on the north side of the Merrimac during the dreadful
delusion. The aged wife of Judge Bradbury who lived on the other side of
the Powow River was imprisoned and would have been put to death but for
the collapse of the hideous persecution.
The substance of the poem which follows was published under the name of
The Witch's Daughter, in The National Era in 1857. In 1875 my publishers
desired to issue it with illustrations, and I then enlarged it and
otherwise altered it to its present form. The principal addition was in
the verses which constitute Part I.
PROEM.
I CALL the old time back: I bring my lay
in tender memory of the summer day
When, where our native river lapsed away,
V. IN THE SHADOW.
Poor Mabel, homeward turning, passed
The nameless terrors of the wood,
And saw, as if a ghost pursued,
THE PREACHER.
In the winter of 1675-76, the Eastern Indians, who had been making war
upon the New Hampshire settlements, were so reduced in numbers by
fighting and famine that they agreed to a peace with Major Waldron at
Dover, but the peace was broken in the fall of 1676. The famous chief,
Squando, was the principal negotiator on the part of the savages. He had
taken up the hatchet to revenge the brutal treatment of his child by
drunken white sailors, which caused its death.
It not unfrequently happened during the Border wars that young white
children were adopted by their Indian captors, and so kindly treated
that they were unwilling to leave the free, wild life of the woods; and
in some instances they utterly refused to go back with their parents to
their old homes and civilization.
MY PLAYMATE.
To a cobbler Minnesinger
The marvellous stone gave he,--
And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar,
Who brought it over the sea.
AMY WENTWORTH
TO WILLIAM BRADFORD.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
THE COUNTESS.
TO E. W.
. . . . . . . . . .
PRELUDE.
ALONG the roadside, like the flowers of gold
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought,
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod,
And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers
Hang motionless upon their upright staves.
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind,
Vying-weary with its long flight from the south,
Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams,
Confesses it. The locust by the wall
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm.
A single hay-cart down the dusty road
Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep
On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill,
Huddled along the stone wall's shady side,
The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still
Defied the dog-star. Through the open door
A drowsy smell of flowers-gray heliotrope,
And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette--
Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends
To the pervading symphony of peace.
No time is this for hands long over-worn
To task their strength; and (unto Him be praise
Who giveth quietness!) the stress and strain
Of years that did the work of centuries
Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more
Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters
Make glad their nooning underneath the elms
With tale and riddle and old snatch of song,
I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn
The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er
Old summer pictures of the quiet hills,
And human life, as quiet, at their feet.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Side by side
In the low sunshine by the turban stone
They knelt; each made his brother's woe his own,
Forgetting, in the agony and stress
Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness;
Peace, for his friend besought, his own became;
His prayers were answered in another's name;
And, when at last they rose up to embrace,
Each saw God's pardon in his brother's face!
NOREMBEGA.
MIRIAM.
TO FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
THE SISTERS.
MARGUERITE.
Done was the work of her bands, she had eaten her
bitter bread;
The world of the alien people lay behind her dim
and dead.
She saw the face of her mother, she heard the song
she sang;
And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers
rang.
THE ROBIN.
MY old Welsh neighbor over the way
Crept slowly out in the sun of spring,
Pushed from her ears the locks of gray,
And listened to hear the robin sing.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
Pastorius seems to have been on intimate terms with William Penn, Thomas
Lloyd, Chief Justice Logan, Thomas Story, and other leading men in the
Province belonging to his own religious society, as also with Kelpius,
the learned Mystic of the Wissahickon, with the pastor of the Swedes'
church, and the leaders of the Mennonites. He wrote a description of
Pennsylvania, which was published at Frankfort and Leipsic in 1700 and
1701. His Lives of the Saints, etc., written in German and dedicated to
Professor Schurmberg, his old teacher, was published in 1690. He left
behind him many unpublished manuscripts covering a very wide range of
subjects, most of which are now lost. One huge manuscript folio,
entitled Hive Beestock, Melliotropheum Alucar, or Rusca Apium, still
remains, containing one thousand pages with about one hundred lines to a
page. It is a medley of knowledge and fancy, history, philosophy, and
poetry, written in seven languages. A large portion of his poetry is
devoted to the pleasures of gardening, the description of flowers, and
the care of bees. The following specimen of his punning Latin is
addressed to an orchard-pilferer:--
HAIL to posterity!
Hail, future men of Germanopolis!
Let the young generations yet to be
Look kindly upon this.
Think how your fathers left their native land,--
Dear German-land! O sacred hearths and homes!--
PRELUDE.
I SING the Pilgrim of a softer clime
And milder speech than those brave men's who brought
To the ice and iron of our winter time
A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought
With one mailed hand, and with the other fought.
Simply, as fits my theme, in homely rhyme
I sing the blue-eyed German Spener taught,
Through whose veiled, mystic faith the Inward Light,
Steady and still, an easy brightness, shone,
Transfiguring all things in its radiance white.
The garland which his meekness never sought
I bring him; over fields of harvest sown
With seeds of blessing, now to ripeness grown,
I bid the sower pass before the reapers' sight.
. . . . . . . . . .
And thus the Old and New World reached their hands
Across the water, and the friendly lands
Talked with each other from their severed strands.
Then Elsie raised her head and met her wooer face
to face;
A roguish smile shone in her eye and on her lip
found place.
Back from her low white forehead the curls of
gold she threw,
And lifted up her eyes to his, steady and clear and
blue.
JOHN UNDERHILL.
CONDUCTOR BRADLEY.
I.
II.
On the 8th of July, 1677, Margaret Brewster with four other Friends
went into the South Church in time of meeting, "in sack-cloth, with
ashes upon her head, barefoot, and her face blackened," and delivered
"a warning from the great God of Heaven and Earth to the Rulers and
Magistrates of Boston." For the offence she was sentenced to be "whipped
at a cart's tail up and down the Town, with twenty lashes."
THE HENCHMAN.
VALUATION.
RABBI ISHMAEL.
"Rabbi Ishmael Ben Elisha said, Once, I entered into the Holy of Holies
[as High Priest] to burn incense, when I saw Aktriel [the Divine Crown]
Jah, Lord of Hosts, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, who said
unto me, 'Ishmael, my son, bless me.' I answered, 'May it please Thee to
make Thy compassion prevail over Thine anger; may it be revealed above
Thy other attributes; mayest Thou deal with Thy children according to
it, and not according to the strict measure of judgment.' It seemed to
me that He bowed His head, as though to answer Amen to my blessing."--
Talmud (Beraehoth, I. f. 6. b.)
The volume in which "The Bay of Seven Islands" was published was
dedicated to the late Edwin Percy Whipple, to whom more than to any
other person I was indebted for public recognition as one worthy of a
place in American literature, at a time when it required a great degree
of courage to urge such a claim for a pro-scribed abolitionist. Although
younger than I, he had gained the reputation of a brilliant essayist,
and was regarded as the highest American authority in criticism. His wit
and wisdom enlivened a small literary circle of young men including
Thomas Starr King, the eloquent preacher, and Daniel N. Haskell of the
Daily Transcript, who gathered about our common friend dames T. Fields
at the Old Corner Bookstore. The poem which gave title to the volume I
inscribed to my friend and neighbor Harriet Prescott Spofford, whose
poems have lent a new interest to our beautiful river-valley.
. . . . . . . . . .
This warrant was executed only in Dover and Hampton. At Salisbury the
constable refused to obey it. He was sustained by the town's people, who
were under the influence of Major Robert Pike, the leading man in the
lower valley of the Merrimac, who stood far in advance of his time, as
an advocate of religious freedom, and an opponent of ecclesiastical
authority. He had the moral courage to address an able and manly letter
to the court at Salem, remonstrating against the witchcraft trials.
BIRCHBROOK MILL.
A. D. 1209.
A. D. 1780.
REQUITAL.
THE HOMESTEAD.
AN ALGONQUIN LEGEND.
1660.
The hint of this ballad is found in Arndt's Miirchen, Berlin, 1816. The
ballad appeared first in St. Nicholas, whose young readers were advised,
while smiling at the absurd superstition, to remember that bad
companionship and evil habits, desires, and passions are more to be
dreaded now than the Elves and Trolls who frightened the children of
past ages.
She came not back; the search for her in field and
wood was vain
They cried her east, they cried her west, but she
came not again.
VOLUME II.
POEMS OF NATURE
RELIGIOUS POEMS
BY
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER
CONTENTS
POEMS OF NATURE:
THE FROST SPIRIT
THE MERRIMAC
HAMPTON BEACH
A DREAM OF SUMMER
THE LAKESIDE
AUTUMN THOUGHTS
ON RECEIVING AN EAGLE'S QUILL FROM LAKE SUPERIOR
APRIL
PICTURES
SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE
THE FRUIT-GIFT
FLOWERS IN WINTER
THE MAYFLOWERS
THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN
THE FIRST FLOWERS
THE OLD BURYING-GROUND
THE PALM-TREE
THE RIVER PATH
MOUNTAIN PICTURES
I. FRANCONIA FROM THE PEMIGEWASSET
II. MONADNOCK FROM WACHUSET
THE VANISHERS
THE PAGEANT
THE PRESSED GENTIAN
A MYSTERY
A SEA DREAM
HAZEL BLOSSOMS
SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP
THE SEEKING OF THE WATERFALL
THE TRAILING ARBUTUS
ST. MARTINS SUMMER
STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM
A SUMMER PILGRIMAGE
SWEET FERN
THE WOOD GIANT
A DAY
RELIGIOUS POEMS:
THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN
THE CALL OF THE CHRISTIAN
THE CRUCIFIXION
PALESTINE
HYMNS FROM THE FRENCH OF LAMARTINE
I. ENCORE UN HYMNE
II. LE CRI DE L'AME
THE FAMILIST'S HYMN
EZEKIEL
WHAT THE VOICE SAID
THE ANGEL OF PATIENCE
THE WIFE OF MANOAH TO HER HUSBAND
MY SOUL AND I
WORSHIP
THE HOLY LAND
THE REWARD
THE WISH OF TO-DAY
ALL'S WELL
INVOCATION
QUESTIONS OF LIFE
FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS
TRUST
TRINITAS
THE SISTERS
"THE ROCK" IN EL GHOR
THE OVER-HEART
THE SHADOW AND THE LIGHT
THE CRY OF A LOST SOUL
ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER
THE ANSWER
THE ETERNAL GOODNESS
THE COMMON QUESTION
OUR MASTER
THE MEETING
THE CLEAR VISION
DIVINE COMPASSION
THE PRAYER-SEEKER
THE BREWING OF SOMA
A WOMAN
THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ
IN QUEST
THE FRIEND'S BURIAL
A CHRISTMAS CARMEN
VESTA
CHILD-SONGS
THE HEALER
THE TWO ANGELS
OVERRULED
HYMN OF THE DUNKERS
GIVING AND TAKING
THE VISION OF ECHARD
INSCRIPTIONS
ON A SUN-DIAL
ON A FOUNTAIN
THE MINISTER'S DAUGHTER
BY THEIR WORKS
THE WORD
THE BOOK
REQUIREMENT
HELP
UTTERANCE
ORIENTAL MAXIMS
THE INWARD JUDGE
LAYING UP TREASURE
CONDUCT
AN EASTER FLOWER GIFT
THE MYSTIC'S CHRISTMAS
AT LAST
WHAT THE TRAVELLER SAID AT SUNSET
THE "STORY OF IDA"
THE LIGHT THAT IS FELT
THE TWO LOVES
ADJUSTMENT
HYMNS OF THE BRAHMO SOMAJ
REVELATION
POEMS OF NATURE
THE MERRIMAC.
HAMPTON BEACH
A DREAM OF SUMMER.
THE LAKESIDE
AUTUMN THOUGHTS
PICTURES
I.
Light, warmth, and sprouting greenness, and o'er all
Blue, stainless, steel-bright ether, raining down
Tranquillity upon the deep-hushed town,
The freshening meadows, and the hillsides brown;
Voice of the west-wind from the hills of pine,
And the brimmed river from its distant fall,
Low hum of bees, and joyous interlude
Of bird-songs in the streamlet-skirting wood,--
Heralds and prophecies of sound and sight,
Blessed forerunners of the warmth and light,
Attendant angels to the house of prayer,
With reverent footsteps keeping pace with mine,--
Once more, through God's great love, with you I share
A morn of resurrection sweet and fair
As that which saw, of old, in Palestine,
Immortal Love uprising in fresh bloom
From the dark night and winter of the tomb!
2d, 5th mo., 1852.
II.
White with its sun-bleached dust, the pathway winds
Before me; dust is on the shrunken grass,
And on the trees beneath whose boughs I pass;
Frail screen against the Hunter of the sky,
Who, glaring on me with his lidless eye,
While mounting with his dog-star high and higher
Ambushed in light intolerable, unbinds
The burnished quiver of his shafts of fire.
Between me and the hot fields of his South
A tremulous glow, as from a furnace-mouth,
Glimmers and swims before my dazzled sight,
As if the burning arrows of his ire
Broke as they fell, and shattered into light;
Yet on my cheek I feel the western wind,
And hear it telling to the orchard trees,
And to the faint and flower-forsaken bees,
Tales of fair meadows, green with constant streams,
And mountains rising blue and cool behind,
Where in moist dells the purple orchis gleams,
And starred with white the virgin's bower is twined.
So the o'erwearied pilgrim, as he fares
Along life's summer waste, at times is fanned,
Even at noontide, by the cool, sweet airs
Of a serener and a holier land,
Fresh as the morn, and as the dewfall bland.
Breath of the blessed Heaven for which we pray,
Blow from the eternal hills! make glad our earthly way!
8th mo., 1852.
LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE.
I. NOON.
White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep,
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep
The sunshine on the hills asleep!
II. EVENING.
Yon mountain's side is black with night,
While, broad-orhed, o'er its gleaming crown
The moon, slow-rounding into sight,
On the hushed inland sea looks down.
THE FRUIT-GIFT.
FLOWERS IN WINTER
THE MAYFLOWERS
I.
O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands
Plead with the leaden heavens in vain,
I see, beyond the valley lands,
The sea's long level dim with rain.
Around me all things, stark and dumb,
Seem praying for the snows to come,
And, for the summer bloom and greenness gone,
With winter's sunset lights and dazzling morn atone.
II.
Along the river's summer walk,
The withered tufts of asters nod;
And trembles on its arid stalk
The boar plume of the golden-rod.
And on a ground of sombre fir,
And azure-studded juniper,
The silver birch its buds of purple shows,
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild-rose!
III.
With mingled sound of horns and bells,
A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly,
Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells,
Like a great arrow through the sky,
Two dusky lines converged in one,
Chasing the southward-flying sun;
While the brave snow-bird and the hardy jay
Call to them from the pines, as if to bid them stay.
IV.
I passed this way a year ago
The wind blew south; the noon of day
Was warm as June's; and save that snow
Flecked the low mountains far away,
And that the vernal-seeming breeze
Mocked faded grass and leafless trees,
I might have dreamed of summer as I lay,
Watching the fallen leaves with the soft wind at play.
V.
Since then, the winter blasts have piled
The white pagodas of the snow
On these rough slopes, and, strong and wild,
Yon river, in its overflow
Of spring-time rain and sun, set free,
Crashed with its ices to the sea;
And over these gray fields, then green and gold,
The summer corn has waved, the thunder's organ rolled.
VI.
Rich gift of God! A year of time
What pomp of rise and shut of day,
What hues wherewith our Northern clime
Makes autumn's dropping woodlands gay,
What airs outblown from ferny dells,
And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells,
What songs of brooks and birds, what fruits and flowers,
Green woods and moonlit snows, have in its round been ours!
VII.
I know not how, in other lands,
The changing seasons come and go;
What splendors fall on Syrian sands,
What purple lights on Alpine snow!
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits
On Venice at her watery gates;
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale,
And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveller's tale.
VIII.
Yet, on life's current, he who drifts
Is one with him who rows or sails
And he who wanders widest lifts
No more of beauty's jealous veils
Than he who from his doorway sees
The miracle of flowers and trees,
Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air,
And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to prayer!
IX.
The eye may well be glad that looks
Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall;
But he who sees his native brooks
Laugh in the sun, has seen them all.
The marble palaces of Ind
Rise round him in the snow and wind;
From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles,
And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles.
X.
And thus it is my fancy blends
The near at hand and far and rare;
And while the same horizon bends
Above the silver-sprinkled hair
Which flashed the light of morning skies
On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes,
Within its round of sea and sky and field,
Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos stands revealed.
XI.
And thus the sick man on his bed,
The toiler to his task-work bound,
Behold their prison-walls outspread,
Their clipped horizon widen round!
While freedom-giving fancy waits,
Like Peter's angel at the gates,
The power is theirs to baffle care and pain,
To bring the lost world back, and make it theirs again!
XII.
What lack of goodly company,
When masters of the ancient lyre
Obey my call, and trace for me
Their words of mingled tears and fire!
I talk with Bacon, grave and wise,
I read the world with Pascal's eyes;
And priest and sage, with solemn brows austere,
And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of Thought, draw near.
XIII.
Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say,
"In vain the human heart we mock;
Bring living guests who love the day,
Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock!
The herbs we share with flesh and blood
Are better than ambrosial food
With laurelled shades." I grant it, nothing loath,
But doubly blest is he who can partake of both.
XIV.
He who might Plato's banquet grace,
Have I not seen before me sit,
And watched his puritanic face,
With more than Eastern wisdom lit?
Shrewd mystic! who, upon the back
Of his Poor Richard's Almanac,
Writing the Sufi's song, the Gentoo's dream,
Links Manu's age of thought to Fulton's age of steam!
XV.
Here too, of answering love secure,
Have I not welcomed to my hearth
The gentle pilgrim troubadour,
Whose songs have girdled half the earth;
Whose pages, like the magic mat
Whereon the Eastern lover sat,
Have borne me over Rhine-land's purple vines,
And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phrygia's mountain pines!
XVI.
And he, who to the lettered wealth
Of ages adds the lore unpriced,
The wisdom and the moral health,
The ethics of the school of Christ;
The statesman to his holy trust,
As the Athenian archon, just,
Struck down, exiled like him for truth alone,
Has he not graced my home with beauty all his own?
XVII.
What greetings smile, what farewells wave,
What loved ones enter and depart!
The good, the beautiful, the brave,
The Heaven-lent treasures of the heart!
How conscious seems the frozen sod
And beechen slope whereon they trod
The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass bends
Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent friends.
XVIII.
Then ask not why to these bleak hills
I cling, as clings the tufted moss,
To bear the winter's lingering chills,
The mocking spring's perpetual loss.
I dream of lands where summer smiles,
And soft winds blow from spicy isles,
But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flowers be sweet,
Could I not feel thy soil, New England, at my feet!
XIX.
At times I long for gentler skies,
And bathe in dreams of softer air,
But homesick tears would fill the eyes
That saw the Cross without the Bear.
The pine must whisper to the palm,
The north-wind break the tropic calm;
And with the dreamy languor of the Line,
The North's keen virtue blend, and strength to beauty join.
XX.
Better to stem with heart and hand
The roaring tide of life, than lie,
Unmindful, on its flowery strand,
Of God's occasions drifting by
Better with naked nerve to bear
The needles of this goading air,
Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego
The godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know.
XXI.
Home of my heart! to me more fair
Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls,
The painted, shingly town-house where
The freeman's vote for Freedom falls!
The simple roof where prayer is made,
Than Gothic groin and colonnade;
The living temple of the heart of man,
Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many-spired Milan!
XXII.
More dear thy equal village schools,
Where rich and poor the Bible read,
Than classic halls where Priestcraft rules,
And Learning wears the chains of Creed;
Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in
The scattered sheaves of home and kin,
Than the mad license ushering Lenten pains,
Or holidays of slaves who laugh and dance in chains.
XXIII.
And sweet homes nestle in these dales,
And perch along these wooded swells;
And, blest beyond Arcadian vales,
They hear the sound of Sabbath bells!
Here dwells no perfect man sublime,
Nor woman winged before her time,
But with the faults and follies of the race,
Old home-bred virtues hold their not unhonored place.
XXIV.
Here manhood struggles for the sake
Of mother, sister, daughter, wife,
The graces and the loves which make
The music of the march of life;
And woman, in her daily round
Of duty, walks on holy ground.
No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here
Is the bad lesson learned at human rights to sneer.
XXV.
Then let the icy north-wind blow
The trumpets of the coming storm,
To arrowy sleet and blinding snow
Yon slanting lines of rain transform.
Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold,
As gayly as I did of old;
And I, who watch them through the frosty pane,
Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er again.
XXVI.
And I will trust that He who heeds
The life that hides in mead and wold,
Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads,
And stains these mosses green and gold,
Will still, as He hath done, incline
His gracious care to me and mine;
Grant what we ask aright, from wrong debar,
And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter every star!
XXVII.
I have not seen, I may not see,
My hopes for man take form in fact,
But God will give the victory
In due time; in that faith I act.
And lie who sees the future sure,
The baffling present may endure,
And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand that leads
The heart's desires beyond the halting step of deeds.
XXVIII.
And thou, my song, I send thee forth,
Where harsher songs of mine have flown;
Go, find a place at home and hearth
Where'er thy singer's name is known;
Revive for him the kindly thought
Of friends; and they who love him not,
Touched by some strain of thine, perchance may take
The hand he proffers all, and thank him for thy sake.
1857.
THE PALM-TREE.
MOUNTAIN PICTURES.
THE VANISHERS.
THE PAGEANT.
A MYSTERY.
A SEA DREAM.
. . . . .
. . . . .
HAZEL BLOSSOMS.
SWEET FERN.
The subtle power in perfume found
Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned;
On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound
No censer idly burned.
A DAY.
Talk not of sad November, when a day
Of warm, glad sunshine fills the sky of noon,
And a wind, borrowed from some morn of June,
Stirs the brown grasses and the leafless spray.
RAPHAEL.
EGO.
THE PUMPKIN.
FORGIVENESS.
TO MY SISTER,
MY THANKS,
REMEMBRANCE
MY NAMESAKE.
A MEMORY
MY DREAM.
MY PSALM.
THE WAITING.
SNOW-BOUND.
A WINTER IDYL.
TO THE MEMORY
OF
MY TRIUMPH.
IN SCHOOL-DAYS.
MY BIRTHDAY.
RED RIDING-HOOD.
RESPONSE.
AT EVENTIDE.
Poor and inadequate the shadow-play
Of gain and loss, of waking and of dream,
Against life's solemn background needs must seem
At this late hour. Yet, not unthankfully,
I call to mind the fountains by the way,
The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the spray,
Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy of giving
And of receiving, the great boon of living
In grand historic years when Liberty
Had need of word and work, quick sympathies
For all who fail and suffer, song's relief,
Nature's uncloying loveliness; and chief,
The kind restraining hand of Providence,
The inward witness, the assuring sense
Of an Eternal Good which overlies
The sorrow of the world, Love which outlives
All sin and wrong, Compassion which forgives
To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear eyes
Through lapse and failure look to the intent,
And judge our frailty by the life we meant.
1878.
MY TRUST.
A NAME
GREETING.
AN AUTOGRAPH.
ABRAM MORRISON.
A LEGACY
RELIGIOUS POEMS
Then the shriek of the dying rose wild where the song
And the low tone of love had been whispered along;
For the fierce flames went lightly o'er palace and bower,
Like the red tongues of demons, to blast and devour!
THE CRUCIFIXION.
PALESTINE
There sleep the still rocks and the caverns which rang
To the song which the beautiful prophetess sang,
When the princes of Issachar stood by her side,
And the shout of a host in its triumph replied.
HYMNS.
I.
"Encore un hymne, O ma lyre
Un hymn pour le Seigneur,
Un hymne dans mon delire,
Un hymne dans mon bonheur."
II.
LE CRI DE L'AME.
EZEKIEL
Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking
against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak
one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you,
and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they
come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my
people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for
with their mouth they skew much love, but their heart goeth after
their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely
song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an
instrument: for they hear thy words, but they do them not. And when
this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that
a prophet hath been among them.--EZEKIEL, xxxiii. 30-33.
. . . . .
MY SOUL AND I
WORSHIP.
"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this. To
visit the fatherless and widows in, their affliction, and to keep
himself unspotted from the world."--JAMES I. 27.
ALL'S WELL
INVOCATION
QUESTIONS OF LIFE
And the angel that was sent unto me, whose name was Uriel,
gave me an answer and said,
"Thy heart hath gone too far in this world, and thinkest thou
to comprehend the way of the Most High?"
Then said I, "Yea, my Lord."
Then said he unto me, "Go thy way, weigh me the weight of
the fire or measure me the blast of the wind, or call me again the
day that is past."--2 ESDRAS, chap. iv.
FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS.
TRUST.
TRINITAS.
THE SISTERS
A PICTURE BY BARRY
THE OVER-HEART.
"For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things,
to whom be glory forever! "--PAUL.
. . . .
THE ANSWER.
OUR MASTER.
THE MEETING.
The two speakers in the meeting referred to in this poem were Avis
Keene, whose very presence was a benediction, a woman lovely in
spirit and person, whose words seemed a message of love and tender
concern to her hearers; and Sibyl Jones, whose inspired eloquence
and rare spirituality impressed all who knew her. In obedience to
her apprehended duty she made visits of Christian love to various
parts of Europe, and to the West Coast of Africa and Palestine.
DIVINE COMPASSION.
THE PRAYER-SEEKER.
"These libations mixed with milk have been prepared for Indra:
offer Soma to the drinker of Soma."
--Vashista, translated by MAX MULLER.
A WOMAN.
IN QUEST
A CHRISTMAS CARMEN.
I.
Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands,
The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands;
Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn,
Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born!
With glad jubilations
Bring hope to the nations
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!
II.
Sing the bridal of nations! with chorals of love
Sing out the war-vulture and sing in the dove,
Till the hearts of the peoples keep time in accord,
And the voice of the world is the voice of the Lord!
Clasp hands of the nations
In strong gratulations:
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun;
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!
III.
Blow, bugles of battle, the marches of peace;
East, west, north, and south let the long quarrel cease
Sing the song of great joy that the angels began,
Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man!
Hark! joining in chorus
The heavens bend o'er us'
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun;
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one!
1873.
VESTA.
CHILD-SONGS.
THE HEALER.
TO A YOUNG PHYSICIAN, WITH DORE'S PICTURE OF CHRIST
HEALING THE SICK.
God called the nearest angels who dwell with Him above:
The tenderest one was Pity, the dearest one was Love.
"My harps take up the mournful strain that from a lost world swells,
The smoke of torment clouds the light and blights the asphodels.
The way was strange, the flight was long; at last the angels came
Where swung the lost and nether world, red-wrapped in rayless flame.
There Pity, shuddering, wept; but Love, with faith too strong for fear,
Took heart from God's almightiness and smiled a smile of cheer.
And lo! that tear of Pity quenched the flame whereon it fell,
And, with the sunshine of that smile, hope entered into hell!
And deeper than the sound of seas, more soft than falling flake,
Amidst the hush of wing and song the Voice Eternal spake:
OVERRULED.
. . . . .
INSCRIPTIONS.
ON A SUN-DIAL.
ON A FOUNTAIN.
BY THEIR WORKS.
THE WORD.
REQUIREMENT.
HELP.
UTTERANCE.
But what avail inadequate words to reach
The innermost of Truth? Who shall essay,
Blinded and weak, to point and lead the way,
Or solve the mystery in familiar speech?
Yet, if it be that something not thy own,
Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes,
Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams,
Is even to thy unworthiness made known,
Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare
To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine
The real seem false, the beauty undivine.
So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer,
Give what seems given thee. It may prove a seed
Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of need.
1881.
ORIENTAL MAXIMS.
LAYING UP TREASURE
CONDUCT
AT LAST.
ADJUSTMENT.
I.
The mercy, O Eternal One!
By man unmeasured yet,
In joy or grief, in shade or sun,
I never will forget.
I give the whole, and not a part,
Of all Thou gayest me;
My goods, my life, my soul and heart,
I yield them all to Thee!
II.
We fast and plead, we weep and pray,
From morning until even;
We feel to find the holy way,
We knock at the gate of heaven
And when in silent awe we wait,
And word and sign forbear,
The hinges of the golden gate
Move, soundless, to our prayer!
Who hears the eternal harmonies
Can heed no outward word;
Blind to all else is he who sees
The vision of the Lord!
III.
O soul, be patient, restrain thy tears,
Have hope, and not despair;
As a tender mother heareth her child
God hears the penitent prayer.
And not forever shall grief be thine;
On the Heavenly Mother's breast,
Washed clean and white in the waters of joy
Shall His seeking child find rest.
Console thyself with His word of grace,
And cease thy wail of woe,
For His mercy never an equal hath,
And His love no bounds can know.
Lean close unto Him in faith and hope;
How many like thee have found
In Him a shelter and home of peace,
By His mercy compassed round!
There, safe from sin and the sorrow it brings,
They sing their grateful psalms,
And rest, at noon, by the wells of God,
In the shade of His holy palms!
1885.
REVELATION.
VOLUME III.
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS
BY
CONTENTS:
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS:
NOTES
ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS
..........
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.
. . . . . . . . . . .
THE SLAVE-SHIPS.
"The French ship Le Rodeur, with a crew of twenty-two men, and with one
hundred and sixty negro slaves, sailed from Bonny, in Africa, April,
1819. On approaching the line, a terrible malady broke out,--an
obstinate disease of the eyes,--contagious, and altogether beyond the
resources of medicine. It was aggravated by the scarcity of water among
the slaves (only half a wine-glass per day being allowed to an
individual), and by the extreme impurity of the air in which they
breathed. By the advice of the physician, they were brought upon deck
occasionally; but some of the poor wretches, locking themselves in each
other's arms, leaped overboard, in the hope, which so universally
prevails among them, of being swiftly transported to their own homes in
Africa. To check this, the captain ordered several who were stopped in
the attempt to be shot, or hanged, before their companions. The disease
extended to the crew; and one after another were smitten with it, until
only one remained unaffected. Yet even this dreadful condition did not
preclude calculation: to save the expense of supporting slaves rendered
unsalable, and to obtain grounds for a claim against the underwriters,
thirty-six of the negroes, having become blind, were thrown into the sea
and drowned!" Speech of M. Benjamin Constant, in the French Chamber of
Deputies, June 17, 1820.
In the midst of their dreadful fears lest the solitary individual, whose
sight remained unaffected, should also be seized with the malady, a sail
was discovered. It was the Spanish slaver, Leon. The same disease had
been there; and, horrible to tell, all the crew had become blind! Unable
to assist each other, the vessels parted. The Spanish ship has never
since been heard of. The Rodeur reached Guadaloupe on the 21st of June;
the only man who had escaped the disease, and had thus been enabled to
steer the slaver into port, caught it in three days after its arrival.--
Bibliotheque Ophthalmologique for November, 1819.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
EXPOSTULATION.
Dr. Charles Follen, a German patriot, who had come to America for the
freedom which was denied him in his native land, allied himself with the
abolitionists, and at a convention of delegates from all the anti-
slavery organizations in New England, held at Boston in May, 1834, was
chairman of a committee to prepare an address to the people of New
England. Toward the close of the address occurred the passage which
suggested these lines. "The despotism which our fathers could not bear
in their native country is expiring, and the sword of justice in her
reformed hands has applied its exterminating edge to slavery. Shall the
United States--the free United States, which could not bear the bonds of
a king--cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing? Shall a Republic
be less free than a Monarchy? Shall we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our
manhood, be less energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age?"
--Dr. Follen's Address.
HYMN.
These lines were written when the orators of the American Colonization
Society were demanding that the free blacks should be sent to Africa,
and opposing Emancipation unless expatriation followed. See the report
of the proceedings of the society at its annual meeting in 1834.
The "Times" referred to were those evil times of the pro-slavery meeting
in Faneuil Hall, August 21, 1835, in which a demand was made for the
suppression of free speech, lest it should endanger the foundation of
commercial society.
CLERICAL OPPRESSORS.
A SUMMONS
RITNER.
And oh, will the land where the free soul of Penn
Still lingers and breathes over mountain and glen;
Will the land where a Benezet's spirit went forth
To the peeled and the meted, and outcast of Earth;
Where the words of the Charter of Liberty first
From the soul of the sage and the patriot burst;
Where first for the wronged and the weak of their kind,
The Christian and statesman their efforts combined;
Will that land of the free and the good wear a chain?
Will the call to the rescue of Freedom be vain?
HYMN
As children of Thy gracious care,
We veil the eye, we bend the knee,
With broken words of praise and prayer,
Father and God, we come to Thee.
HYMN
Written for the celebration of the third anniversary of British
emancipation at the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, first of August,
1837.
PENNSYLVANIA HALL.
THE RELIC.
Written on receiving a cane wrought from a fragment of the wood-work
of Pennsylvania Hall which the fire had spared.
MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA.
THE blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon its Southern way,
Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachusetts Bay.
No word of haughty challenging, nor battle bugle's peal,
Nor steady tread of marching files, nor clang of horsemen's steel.
Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's bank;
Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and dank;
Through storm, and wave, and blinding mist, stout
are the hearts which man
The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.
The cold north light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms,
Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or wrestling with the storms;
Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam,
They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home.
What means the Old Dominion? Hath she forgot the day
When o'er her conquered valleys swept the Briton's steel array?
How side by side, with sons of hers, the Massachusetts men
Encountered Tarleton's charge of fire, and stout Cornwallis, then?
What asks the Old Dominion? If now her sons have proved
False to their fathers' memory, false to the faith they loved;
If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn,
Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?
All that a sister State should do, all that a free State may,
Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our early day;
But that one dark loathsome burden ye must stagger with alone,
And reap the bitter harvest which ye yourselves have sown!
Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, and burden God's free air
With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair;
Cling closer to the "cleaving curse" that writes upon your plains
The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains.
A voice from lips whereon the coal from Freedom's shrine hath been,
Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of Berkshire's mountain men:
The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly lingering still
In all our sunny valleys, on every wind-swept hill.
And when the prowling man-thief came hunting for his prey
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft of gray,
How, through the free lips of the son, the father's warning spoke;
How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the Pilgrim city broke!
And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the salt sea spray;
And Bristol sent her answering shout down Narragansett Bay
Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden felt the thrill,
And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen swept down from Holyoke Hill.
But for us and for our children, the vow which we have given
For freedom and humanity is registered in heaven;
No slave-hunt in our borders,--no pirate on our strand!
No fetters in the Bay State,--no slave upon our land!
1843.
TEXAS
The five poems immediately following indicate the intense feeling of the
friends of freedom in view of the annexation of Texas, with its vast
territory sufficient, as was boasted, for six new slave States.
It is coming, it is nigh!
Stand your homes and altars by;
On your own free thresholds die.
TO FANEUIL HALL.
TO MASSACHUSETTS.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
John C. Calhoun, who had strongly urged the extension of slave territory
by the annexation of Texas, even if it should involve a war with
England, was unwilling to promote the acquisition of Oregon, which would
enlarge the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded as an excuse the
peril of foreign complications which he had defied when the interests
of slavery were involved.
O my brothers! O my sisters
Would to God that ye were near,
Gazing with me down the vistas
Of a sorrow strange and drear;
Would to God that ye were listeners to the Voice
I seem to hear!
A LETTER.
LINES
FROM A LETTER TO A YOUNG CLERICAL FRIEND.
DANIEL NEALL.
Dr. Neall, a worthy disciple of that venerated philanthropist, Warner
Mifflin, whom the Girondist statesman, Jean Pierre Brissot, pronounced
"an angel of mercy, the best man he ever knew," was one of the noble
band of Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose bravery was equalled only by
their gentleness and tenderness. He presided at the great anti-slavery
meeting in Pennsylvania Hall, May 17, 1838, when the Hall was surrounded
by a furious mob. I was standing near him while the glass of the windows
broken by missiles showered over him, and a deputation from the rioters
forced its way to the platform, and demanded that the meeting should be
closed at once. Dr. Neall drew up his tall form to its utmost height. "I
am here," he said, "the president of this meeting, and I will be torn in
pieces before I leave my place at your dictation. Go back to those who
sent you. I shall do my duty." Some years after, while visiting his
relatives in his native State of Delaware, he was dragged from the house
of his friends by a mob of slave-holders and brutally maltreated. He
bore it like a martyr of the old times; and when released, told his
persecutors that he forgave them, for it was not they but Slavery which
had done the wrong. If they should ever be in Philadelphia and needed
hospitality or aid, let them call on him.
I.
FRIEND of the Slave, and yet the friend of all;
Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when
The need of battling Freedom called for men
To plant the banner on the outer wall;
Gentle and kindly, ever at distress
Melted to more than woman's tenderness,
Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post
Fronting the violence of a maddened host,
Like some gray rock from which the waves are
tossed!
Knowing his deeds of love, men questioned not
The faith of one whose walk and word were
right;
Who tranquilly in Life's great task-field wrought,
And, side by side with evil, scarcely caught
A stain upon his pilgrim garb of white
Prompt to redress another's wrong, his own
Leaving to Time and Truth and Penitence alone.
II.
Such was our friend. Formed on the good old plan,
A true and brave and downright honest man
He blew no trumpet in the market-place,
Nor in the church with hypocritic face
Supplied with cant the lack of Christian grace;
Loathing pretence, he did with cheerful will
What others talked of while their hands were still;
And, while "Lord, Lord!" the pious tyrants cried,
Who, in the poor, their Master crucified,
His daily prayer, far better understood
In acts than words, was simply doing good.
So calm, so constant was his rectitude,
That by his loss alone we know its worth,
And feel how true a man has walked with us on earth.
6th, 6th month, 1846.
"I am not surprised I got little satisfaction when I asked the Moors
about the songs of their slaves. Who will say that the above words are
not a very appropriate song? What could have been more congenially
adapted to their then woful condition? It is not to be wondered at that
these poor bondwomen cheer up their hearts, in their long, lonely, and
painful wanderings over the desert, with words and sentiments like
these; but I have often observed that their fatigue and sufferings were
too great for them to strike up this melancholy dirge, and many days
their plaintive strains never broke over the silence of the desert."--
Richardson's Journal in Africa.
TO DELAWARE.
YORKTOWN.
RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE.
He, the strong one and the manly, with the vassal's
garb and hue,
Holding still his spirit's birthright, to his higher
nature true;
The rights and liberties affirmed by Magna Charta were deemed of such
importance, in the thirteenth century, that the Bishops, twice a year,
with tapers burning, and in their pontifical robes, pronounced, in the
presence of the king and the representatives of the estates of England,
the greater excommunication against the infringer of that instrument.
The imposing ceremony took place in the great Hall of Westminster. A
copy of the curse, as pronounced in 1253, declares that, "by the
authority of Almighty God, and the blessed Apostles and Martyrs, and all
the saints in heaven, all those who violate the English liberties, and
secretly or openly, by deed, word, or counsel, do make statutes, or
observe then being made, against said liberties, are accursed and
sequestered from the company of heaven and the sacraments of the Holy
Church."
PAEAN.
THE CRISIS.
DERNE.
A SABBATH SCENE.
This poem finds its justification in the readiness with which, even in
the North, clergymen urged the prompt execution of the Fugitive Slave
Law as a Christian duty, and defended the system of slavery as a Bible
institution.
This and the four following poems have special reference to that darkest
hour in the aggression of slavery which preceded the dawn of a better
day, when the conscience of the people was roused to action.
OFFICIAL PIETY.
THE RENDITION.
On the 2d of June, 1854, Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave from Virginia,
after being under arrest for ten days in the Boston Court House, was
remanded to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act, and taken down State
Street to a steamer chartered by the United States Government, under
guard of United States troops and artillery, Massachusetts militia and
Boston police. Public excitement ran high, a futile attempt to rescue
Burns having been made during his confinement, and the streets were
crowded with tens of thousands of people, of whom many came from other
towns and cities of the State to witness the humiliating spectacle.
ARISEN AT LAST.
On the passage of the bill to protect the rights and liberties of the
people of the State against the Fugitive Slave Act.
THE HASCHISH.
Inscribed to friends under arrest for treason against the slave power.
This poem and the three following were called out by the popular
movement of Free State men to occupy the territory of Kansas, and by the
use of the great democratic weapon--an over-powering majority--to settle
the conflict on that ground between Freedom and Slavery. The opponents
of the movement used another kind of weapon.
BURIAL OF BARBER.
TO PENNSYLVANIA.
O STATE prayer-founded! never hung
Such choice upon a people's tongue,
Such power to bless or ban,
As that which makes thy whisper Fate,
For which on thee the centuries wait,
And destinies of man!
LE MARAIS DU CYGNE.
A BLUSH as of roses
Where rose never grew!
Great drops on the bunch-grass,
But not of the dew!
A taint in the sweet air
For wild bees to shun!
A stain that shall never
Bleach out in the sun.
Written in the summer of 1856, during the political campaign of the Free
Soil party under the candidacy of John C. Fremont.
Whoso loves not his kind, and who fears not the Lord,
Let him join that foe's service, accursed and abhorred
Let him do his base will, as the slave only can,--
Let him put on the bloodhound, and put off the Man!
Let him go where the cold blood that creeps in his veins
Shall stiffen the slave-whip, and rust on his chains;
Where the black slave shall laugh in his bonds, to behold
The White Slave beside him, self-fettered and sold!
Written during the stirring weeks when the great political battle for
Freedom under Fremont's leadership was permitting strong hope of
success,--a hope overshadowed and solemnized by a sense of the magnitude
of the barbaric evil, and a forecast of the unscrupulous and desperate
use of all its powers in the last and decisive struggle.
THE PANORAMA.
. . . . . . . . . .
ON A PRAYER-BOOK,
TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
On the 12th of January, 1861, Mr. Seward delivered in the Senate chamber
a speech on The State of the Union, in which he urged the paramount duty
of preserving the Union, and went as far as it was possible to go,
without surrender of principles, in concessions to the Southern party,
concluding his argument with these words: "Having submitted my own
opinions on this great crisis, it remains only to say, that I shall
cheerfully lend to the government my best support in whatever prudent
yet energetic efforts it shall make to preserve the public peace, and to
maintain and preserve the Union; advising, only, that it practise, as
far as possible, the utmost moderation, forbearance, and conciliation.
"This Union has not yet accomplished what good for mankind was manifestly
designed by Him who appoints the seasons and prescribes the duties of
states and empires. No; if it were cast down by faction to-day, it would
rise again and re-appear in all its majestic proportions to-morrow. It
is the only government that can stand here. Woe! woe! to the man that
madly lifts his hand against it. It shall continue and endure; and men,
in after times, shall declare that this generation, which saved the
Union from such sudden and unlooked-for dangers, surpassed in
magnanimity even that one which laid its foundations in the eternal
principles of liberty, justice, and humanity."
IN WAR TIME.
LUTHER'S HYMN.
WE wait beneath the furnace-blast
The pangs of transformation;
Not painlessly doth God recast
And mould anew the nation.
Hot burns the fire
Where wrongs expire;
Nor spares the hand
That from the land
Uproots the ancient evil.
TO JOHN C. FREMONT.
On the 31st of August, 1861, General Fremont, then in charge of the
Western Department, issued a proclamation which contained a clause,
famous as the first announcement of emancipation: "The property," it
declared, "real and personal, of all persons in the State of Missouri,
who shall take up arms against the United States, or who shall be
directly proven to have taken active part with their enemies in the
field, is declared to be confiscated to the public use; and their
slaves, if any they have, are hereby declared free men." Mr. Lincoln
regarded the proclamation as premature and countermanded it, after
vainly endeavoring to persuade Fremont of his own motion to revoke it.
THE WATCHERS.
TO ENGLISHMEN.
Written when, in the stress of our terrible war, the English ruling
class, with few exceptions, were either coldly indifferent or hostile to
the party of freedom. Their attitude was illustrated by caricatures of
America, among which was one of a slaveholder and cowhide, with the
motto, "Haven't I a right to wallop my nigger?"
THE PROCLAMATION.
ANNIVERSARY POEM.
Read before the Alumni of the Friends' Yearly Meeting School, at the
Annual Meeting at Newport, R. I., 15th 6th mo., 1863.
BARBARA FRIETCHIE.
LAUS DEO!
IT is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel!
How the great guns, peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town!
Ring, O bells!
Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime.
Loud and long, that all may hear,
Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time!
Let us kneel
God's own voice is in that peal,
And this spot is holy ground.
Lord, forgive us! What are we,
That our eyes this glory see,
That our ears have heard the sound!
Did we dare,
In our agony of prayer,
Ask for more than He has done?
When was ever His right hand
Over any time or land
Stretched as now beneath the sun?
Blotted out
All within and all about
Shall a fresher life begin;
Freer breathe the universe
As it rolls its heavy curse
On the dead and buried sin!
It is done!
In the circuit of the sun
Shall the sound thereof go forth.
It shall bid the sad rejoice,
It shall give the dumb a voice,
It shall belt with joy the earth!
HYMN
FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPATION AT NEWBURYPORT.
The thirty-ninth congress was that which met in 1565 after the close of
the war, when it was charged with the great question of reconstruction;
the uppermost subject in men's minds was the standing of those who had
recently been in arms against the Union and their relations to the
freedmen.
* Andersonville prison.
** The massacre of Negro troops at Fort Pillow.
HOWARD AT ATLANTA.
GARRISON.
The earliest poem in this division was my youthful tribute to the great
reformer when himself a young man he was first sounding his trumpet in
Essex County. I close with the verses inscribed to him at the end of his
earthly career, May 24, 1879. My poetical service in the cause of
freedom is thus almost synchronous with his life of devotion to the
same cause.
DEMOCRACY.
THE GALLOWS.
II.
Yet as of old, when, meekly "doing good,"
He fed a blind and selfish multitude,
And even the poor companions of His lot
With their dim earthly vision knew Him not,
How ill are His high teachings understood
Where He hath spoken Liberty, the priest
At His own altar binds the chain anew;
Where He hath bidden to Life's equal feast,
The starving many wait upon the few;
Where He hath spoken Peace, His name hath been
The loudest war-cry of contending men;
Priests, pale with vigils, in His name have blessed
The unsheathed sword, and laid the spear in rest,
Wet the war-banner with their sacred wine,
And crossed its blazon with the holy sign;
Yea, in His name who bade the erring live,
And daily taught His lesson, to forgive!
Twisted the cord and edged the murderous steel;
And, with His words of mercy on their lips,
Hung gloating o'er the pincer's burning grips,
And the grim horror of the straining wheel;
Fed the slow flame which gnawed the victim's limb,
Who saw before his searing eyeballs swim
The image of their Christ in cruel zeal,
Through the black torment-smoke, held mockingly to him!
III.
The blood which mingled with the desert sand,
And beaded with its red and ghastly dew
The vines and olives of the Holy Land;
The shrieking curses of the hunted Jew;
The white-sown bones of heretics, where'er
They sank beneath the Crusade's holy spear;
Goa's dark dungeons, Malta's sea-washed cell,
Where with the hymns the ghostly fathers sung
Mingled the groans by subtle torture wrung,
Heaven's anthem blending with the shriek of hell!
The midnight of Bartholomew, the stake
Of Smithfield, and that thrice-accursed flame
Which Calvin kindled by Geneva's lake;
New England's scaffold, and the priestly sneer
Which mocked its victims in that hour of fear,
When guilt itself a human tear might claim,--
Bear witness, O Thou wronged and merciful One!
That Earth's most hateful crimes have in Thy
name been done!
IV.
Thank God! that I have lived to see the time
When the great truth begins at last to find
An utterance from the deep heart of mankind,
Earnest and clear, that all Revenge is Crime,
That man is holier than a creed, that all
Restraint upon him must consult his good,
Hope's sunshine linger on his prison wall,
And Love look in upon his solitude.
The beautiful lesson which our Saviour taught
Through long, dark centuries its way hath wrought
Into the common mind and popular thought;
And words, to which by Galilee's lake shore
The humble fishers listened with hushed oar,
Have found an echo in the general heart,
And of the public faith become a living part.
V.
Who shall arrest this tendency? Bring back
The cells of Venice and the bigot's rack?
Harden the softening human heart again
To cold indifference to a brother's pain?
Ye most unhappy men! who, turned away
From the mild sunshine of the Gospel day,
Grope in the shadows of Man's twilight time,
What mean ye, that with ghoul-like zest ye brood,
O'er those foul altars streaming with warm blood,
Permitted in another age and clime?
Why cite that law with which the bigot Jew
Rebuked the Pagan's mercy, when he knew
No evil in the Just One? Wherefore turn
To the dark, cruel past? Can ye not learn
From the pure Teacher's life how mildly free
Is the great Gospel of Humanity?
The Flamen's knife is bloodless, and no more
Mexitli's altars soak with human gore,
No more the ghastly sacrifices smoke
Through the green arches of the Druid's oak;
And ye of milder faith, with your high claim
Of prophet-utterance in the Holiest name,
Will ye become the Druids of our time
Set up your scaffold-altars in our land,
And, consecrators of Law's darkest crime,
Urge to its loathsome work the hangman's hand?
Beware, lest human nature, roused at last,
From its peeled shoulder your encumbrance cast,
And, sick to loathing of your cry for blood,
Rank ye with those who led their victims round
The Celt's red altar and the Indian's mound,
Abhorred of Earth and Heaven, a pagan brotherhood!
1842.
I.
FAR from his close and noisome cell,
By grassy lane and sunny stream,
Blown clover field and strawberry dell,
And green and meadow freshness, fell
The footsteps of his dream.
Again from careless feet the dew
Of summer's misty morn he shook;
Again with merry heart he threw
His light line in the rippling brook.
Back crowded all his school-day joys;
He urged the ball and quoit again,
And heard the shout of laughing boys
Come ringing down the walnut glen.
Again he felt the western breeze,
With scent of flowers and crisping hay;
And down again through wind-stirred trees
He saw the quivering sunlight play.
An angel in home's vine-hung door,
He saw his sister smile once more;
Once more the truant's brown-locked head
Upon his mother's knees was laid,
And sweetly lulled to slumber there,
With evening's holy hymn and prayer!
II.
He woke. At once on heart and brain
The present Terror rushed again;
Clanked on his limbs the felon's chain
He woke, to hear the church-tower tell
Time's footfall on the conscious bell,
And, shuddering, feel that clanging din
His life's last hour had ushered in;
To see within his prison-yard,
Through the small window, iron barred,
The gallows shadow rising dim
Between the sunrise heaven and him;
A horror in God's blessed air;
A blackness in his morning light;
Like some foul devil-altar there
Built up by demon hands at night.
And, maddened by that evil sight,
Dark, horrible, confused, and strange,
A chaos of wild, weltering change,
All power of check and guidance gone,
Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on.
In vain he strove to breathe a prayer,
In vain he turned the Holy Book,
He only heard the gallows-stair
Creak as the wind its timbers shook.
No dream for him of sin forgiven,
While still that baleful spectre stood,
With its hoarse murmur, "Blood for Blood!"
Between him and the pitying Heaven.
III.
Low on his dungeon floor he knelt,
And smote his breast, and on his chain,
Whose iron clasp he always felt,
His hot tears fell like rain;
And near him, with the cold, calm look
And tone of one whose formal part,
Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart,
Is measured out by rule and book,
With placid lip and tranquil blood,
The hangman's ghostly ally stood,
Blessing with solemn text and word
The gallows-drop and strangling cord;
Lending the sacred Gospel's awe
And sanction to the crime of Law.
IV.
He saw the victim's tortured brow,
The sweat of anguish starting there,
The record of a nameless woe
In the dim eye's imploring stare,
Seen hideous through the long, damp hair,--
Fingers of ghastly skin and bone
Working and writhing on the stone!
And heard, by mortal terror wrung
From heaving breast and stiffened tongue,
The choking sob and low hoarse prayer;
As o'er his half-crazed fancy came
A vision of the eternal flame,
Its smoking cloud of agonies,
Its demon-worm that never dies,
The everlasting rise and fall
Of fire-waves round the infernal wall;
While high above that dark red flood,
Black, giant-like, the gallows stood;
Two busy fiends attending there
One with cold mocking rite and prayer,
The other with impatient grasp,
Tightening the death-rope's strangling clasp.
V.
The unfelt rite at length was done,
The prayer unheard at length was said,
An hour had passed: the noonday sun
Smote on the features of the dead!
And he who stood the doomed beside,
Calm gauger of the swelling tide
Of mortal agony and fear,
Heeding with curious eye and ear
Whate'er revealed the keen excess
Of man's extremest wretchedness
And who in that dark anguish saw
An earnest of the victim's fate,
The vengeful terrors of God's law,
The kindlings of Eternal hate,
The first drops of that fiery rain
Which beats the dark red realm of pain,
Did he uplift his earnest cries
Against the crime of Law, which gave
His brother to that fearful grave,
Whereon Hope's moonlight never lies,
And Faith's white blossoms never wave
To the soft breath of Memory's sighs;
Which sent a spirit marred and stained,
By fiends of sin possessed, profaned,
In madness and in blindness stark,
Into the silent, unknown dark?
No, from the wild and shrinking dread,
With which he saw the victim led
Beneath the dark veil which divides
Ever the living from the dead,
And Nature's solemn secret hides,
The man of prayer can only draw
New reasons for his bloody law;
New faith in staying Murder's hand
By murder at that Law's command;
New reverence for the gallows-rope,
As human nature's latest hope;
Last relic of the good old time,
When Power found license for its crime,
And held a writhing world in check
By that fell cord about its neck;
Stifled Sedition's rising shout,
Choked the young breath of Freedom out,
And timely checked the words which sprung
From Heresy's forbidden tongue;
While in its noose of terror bound,
The Church its cherished union found,
Conforming, on the Moslem plan,
The motley-colored mind of man,
Not by the Koran and the Sword,
But by the Bible and the Cord.
VI.
O Thou at whose rebuke the grave
Back to warm life its sleeper gave,
Beneath whose sad and tearful glance
The cold and changed countenance
Broke the still horror of its trance,
And, waking, saw with joy above,
A brother's face of tenderest love;
Thou, unto whom the blind and lame,
The sorrowing and the sin-sick came,
And from Thy very garment's hem
Drew life and healing unto them,
The burden of Thy holy faith
Was love and life, not hate and death;
Man's demon ministers of pain,
The fiends of his revenge, were sent
From thy pure Gospel's element
To their dark home again.
Thy name is Love! What, then, is he,
Who in that name the gallows rears,
An awful altar built to Thee,
With sacrifice of blood and tears?
Oh, once again Thy healing lay
On the blind eyes which knew Thee not,
And let the light of Thy pure day
Melt in upon his darkened thought.
Soften his hard, cold heart, and show
The power which in forbearance lies,
And let him feel that mercy now
Is better than old sacrifice.
VII.
As on the White Sea's charmed shore,
The Parsee sees his holy hill [10]
With dunnest smoke-clouds curtained o'er,
Yet knows beneath them, evermore,
The low, pale fire is quivering still;
So, underneath its clouds of sin,
The heart of man retaineth yet
Gleams of its holy origin;
And half-quenched stars that never set,
Dim colors of its faded bow,
And early beauty, linger there,
And o'er its wasted desert blow
Faint breathings of its morning air.
Oh, never yet upon the scroll
Of the sin-stained, but priceless soul,
Hath Heaven inscribed "Despair!"
Cast not the clouded gem away,
Quench not the dim but living ray,--
My brother man, Beware!
With that deep voice which from the skies
Forbade the Patriarch's sacrifice,
God's angel cries, Forbear
1843
SONGS OF LABOR.
DEDICATION.
Prefixed to the volume of which the group of six poems following this
prelude constituted the first portion.
THE SHOEMAKERS.
THE FISHERMEN.
THE LUMBERMEN.
Be it starlight, be it moonlight,
In these vales below,
When the earliest beams of sunlight
Streak the mountain's snow,
Crisps the boar-frost, keen and early,
To our hurrying feet,
And the forest echoes clearly
All our blows repeat.
THE SHIP-BUILDERS
THE DROVERS.
THE HUSKERS.
Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun rose broad and red,
At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he sped;
Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and subdued,
On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pictured wood.
And to! as through the western pines, on meadow, stream, and pond,
Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire beyond,
Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory shone,
And the sunset and the moonrise were mingled into one!
THE CORN-SONG.
Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard
Heap high the golden corn
No richer gift has Autumn poured
From out her lavish horn!
THE REFORMER.
Before the law authorizing imprisonment for debt had been abolished in
Massachusetts, a revolutionary pensioner was confined in Charlestown
jail for a debt of fourteen dollars, and on the fourth of July was seen
waving a handkerchief from the bars of his cell in honor of the day.
TO PIUS IX.
CALEF IN BOSTON.
1692.
OUR STATE.
ASTRAEA.
THE DISENTHRALLED.
THE VOICES.
WHY urge the long, unequal fight,
Since Truth has fallen in the street,
Or lift anew the trampled light,
Quenched by the heedless million's feet?
Written upon hearing that slavery had been formally abolished in Egypt.
Unhappily, the professions and pledges of the vacillating government of
Egypt proved unreliable.
"Joseph Sturge, with a companion, Thomas Harvey, has been visiting the
shores of Finland, to ascertain the amount of mischief and loss to poor
and peaceable sufferers, occasioned by the gun-boats of the allied
squadrons in the late war, with a view to obtaining relief for them."--
Friends' Review.
Around I see
The powers that be;
I stand by Empire's primal springs;
And princes meet,
In every street,
And hear the tread of uncrowned kings!
No jest is this;
One cast amiss
May blast the hope of Freedom's year.
Oh, take me where
Are hearts of prayer,
And foreheads bowed in reverent fear!
To party claims
And private aims,
Reveal that august face of Truth,
Whereto are given
The age of heaven,
The beauty of immortal youth.
FROM PERUGIA.
"The thing which has the most dissevered the people from the Pope,--the
unforgivable thing,--the breaking point between him and them,--has been
the encouragement and promotion he gave to the officer under whom were
executed the slaughters of Perugia. That made the breaking point in many
honest hearts that had clung to him before."--HARRIET BEECHER STOWE'S
Letters from Italy.
There they stand, the hired stabbers, the blood-stains yet fresh,
That splashed like red wine from the vintage of flesh;
Grim instruments, careless as pincers and rack
How the joints tear apart, and the strained sinews crack;
But the hate that glares on them is sharp as their swords,
And the sneer and the scowl print the air with fierce words!
Off with hats, down with knees, shout your vivas like mad!
Here's the Pope in his holiday righteousness clad,
From shorn crown to toe-nail, kiss-worn to the quick,
Of sainthood in purple the pattern and pick,
Who the role of the priest and the soldier unites,
And, praying like Aaron, like Joshua fights!
ITALY.
FREEDOM IN BRAZIL.
AFTER ELECTION.
THE PROBLEM.
I.
NOT without envy Wealth at times must look
On their brown strength who wield the reaping-hook
And scythe, or at the forge-fire shape the plough
Or the steel harness of the steeds of steam;
All who, by skill and patience, anyhow
Make service noble, and the earth redeem
From savageness. By kingly accolade
Than theirs was never worthier knighthood made.
Well for them, if, while demagogues their vain
And evil counsels proffer, they maintain
Their honest manhood unseduced, and wage
No war with Labor's right to Labor's gain
Of sweet home-comfort, rest of hand and brain,
And softer pillow for the head of Age.
II.
And well for Gain if it ungrudging yields
Labor its just demand; and well for Ease
If in the uses of its own, it sees
No wrong to him who tills its pleasant fields
And spreads the table of its luxuries.
The interests of the rich man and the poor
Are one and same, inseparable evermore;
And, when scant wage or labor fail to give
Food, shelter, raiment, wherewithal to live,
Need has its rights, necessity its claim.
Yea, even self-wrought misery and shame
Test well the charity suffering long and kind.
The home-pressed question of the age can find
No answer in the catch-words of the blind
Leaders of blind. Solution there is none
Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone.
1877.
OUR COUNTRY.
In the disastrous battle on the Big Horn River, in which General Custer
and his entire force were slain, the chief Rain-in-the-Face was one of
the fiercest leaders of the Indians. In Longfellow's poem on the
massacre, these lines will be remembered:--
NOTES
Note 1, page 18. The reader may, perhaps, call to mind the beautiful
sonnet of William Wordsworth, addressed to Toussaint L'Ouverture, during
his confinement in France.
Note 2, page 67. The Northern author of the Congressional rule against
receiving petitions of the people on the subject of Slavery.
Note 3, page 88. There was at the time when this poem was written an
Association in Liberty County, Georgia, for the religious instruction of
negroes. One of their annual reports contains an address by the Rev.
Josiah Spry Law, in which the following passage occurs: "There is a
growing interest in this community in the religious instruction of
negroes. There is a conviction that religious instruction promotes the
quiet and order of the people, and the pecuniary interest of the
owners."
Note 6, page 118. The justice before whom Elder Storrs was brought for
preaching abolition on a writ drawn by Hon. M. N., Jr., of Pittsfield.
The sheriff served the writ while the elder was praying.
Note 7, page 118. The academy at Canaan, N. H., received one or two
colored scholars, and was in consequence dragged off into a swamp by
Democratic teams.
Note 8, page 119. "Papers and memorials touching the subject of slavery
shall be laid on the table without reading, debate, or reference." So
read the gag-law, as it was called, introduced in the House by Mr.
Atherton.
Note 9, page 120. The Female Anti-Slavery Society, at its first meeting
in Concord, was assailed with stones and brickbats.
Note 10, page 168. The election of Charles Sumner to the United States
Senate "followed bard upon" the rendition of the fugitive Sims by the
United States officials and the armed police of Boston.
Note 11, page 290. For the idea of this line, I am indebted to Emerson,
in his inimitable sonnet to the Rhodora,--
VOLUME IV.
PERSONAL POEMS
BY
CONTENTS
PERSONAL POEMS
A LAMENT
TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES B. STORRS
LINES ON THE DEATH OF S. OLIVER TORREY
TO ----, WITH A COPY OF WOOLMAN'S JOURNAL
LEGGETT'S MONUMENT
TO A FRIEND, ON HER RETURN FROM EUROPE
LUCY HOOPER
FOLLEN
TO J. P.
CHALKLEY HALL
GONE
TO RONGE
CHANNING
TO MY FRIEND ON THE DEATH OF HIS SISTER
DANIEL WHEELER
TO FREDRIKA BREMER
TO AVIS KEENE
THE HILL-TOP
ELLIOTT
ICHABOD
THE LOST OCCASION
WORDSWORTH
TO ---- LINES WRITTEN AFTER A SUMMER DAY'S EXCURSION
IN PEACE
BENEDICITE
KOSSUTH
TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER
THE CROSS
THE HERO
RANTOUL
WILLIAM FORSTER
TO CHARLES SUMNER
BURNS
TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER
TO JAMES T. FIELDS
THE MEMORY OF BURNS
IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOSEPH STURGER
BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE
NAPLES
A MEMORIAL
BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY
THOMAS STARR KING
LINES ON A FLY-LEAF
GEORGE L. STEARNS
GARIBALDI
TO LYDIA MARIA CHILD
THE SINGER
HOW MARY GREW
SUMNER
THIERS
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK
WILLIAM FRANCIS BARTLETT
BAYARD TAYLOR
OUR AUTOCRAT
WITHIN THE GATE
IN MEMORY: JAMES T. FIELDS
WILSON
THE POET AND THE CHILDREN
A WELCOME TO LOWELL
AN ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL
MULFORD
TO A CAPE ANN SCHOONER
SAMUEL J. TILDEN
OCCASIONAL POEMS.
EVA
A LAY OF OLD TIME
A SONG OF HARVEST
KENOZA LAKE
FOR AN AUTUMN FESTIVAL
THE QUAKER ALUMNI
OUR RIVER
REVISITED
"THE LAURELS"
JUNE ON THE MERRIMAC
HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP
HYMN FOR THE HOUSE OF WORSHIP AT GEORGETOWN, ERECTED IN MEMORY
OF A MOTHER
A SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION
CHICAGO
KINSMAN
THE GOLDEN WEDDING OF LONGWOOD
HYMN FOR THE OPENING OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA
LEXINGTON
THE LIBRARY
"I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN"
CENTENNIAL HYMN
AT SCHOOL-CLOSE
HYMN OF THE CHILDREN
THE LANDMARKS
GARDEN
A GREETING
GODSPEED
WINTER ROSES
THE REUNION
NORUMBEGA HALL
THE BARTHOLDI STATUE
ONE OF THE SIGNERS
AT SUNDOWN.
TO E. C. S.
THE CHRISTMAS OF 1888.
THE Vow OF WASHINGTON
THE CAPTAIN'S WELL
AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION
R. S. S., AT DEER ISLAND ON THE MERRIMAC
BURNING DRIFT-WOOD.
O. W. HOLMES ON HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
HAVERHILL. 1640-1890
To G. G.
PRESTON POWERS, INSCRIPTION FOR BASS-RELIEF
LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY, INSCRIPTION ON TABLET
MILTON, ON MEMORIAL WINDOW
THE BIRTHDAY WREATH
THE WIND OF MARCH
BETWEEN THE GATES
THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER
TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 8TH Mo. 29TH, 1892
PERSONAL POEMS
A LAMENT
LINES
TO ------,
LEGGETT'S MONUMENT.
TO A FRIEND,
LUCY HOOPER.
Lucy Hooper died at Brooklyn, L. I., on the 1st of 8th mo., 1841,
aged twenty-four years.
FOLLEN.
TO J. P.
CHALKLEY HALL.
GONE
TO RONGE.
This was written after reading the powerful and manly protest of
Johannes Ronge against the "pious fraud" of the Bishop of Treves.
The bold movement of the young Catholic priest of Prussian Silesia
seemed to me full of promise to the cause of political as well as
religious liberty in Europe. That it failed was due partly to the
faults of the reformer, but mainly to the disagreement of the
Liberals of Germany upon a matter of dogma, which prevented them
from unity of action. Rouge was born in Silesia in 1813 and died in
October, 1887. His autobiography was translated into English and
published in London in 1846.
CHANNING.
The last time I saw Dr. Channing was in the summer of 1841, when,
in company with my English friend, Joseph Sturge, so well known for
his philanthropic labors and liberal political opinions, I visited
him in his summer residence in Rhode Island. In recalling the
impressions of that visit, it can scarcely be necessary to say,
that I have no reference to the peculiar religious opinions of a
man whose life, beautifully and truly manifested above the
atmosphere of sect, is now the world's common legacy.
DANIEL WHEELER
O Dearly loved!
And worthy of our love! No more
Thy aged form shall rise before
The bushed and waiting worshiper,
In meek obedience utterance giving
To words of truth, so fresh and living,
That, even to the inward sense,
They bore unquestioned evidence
Of an anointed Messenger!
Or, bowing down thy silver hair
In reverent awfulness of prayer,
The world, its time and sense, shut out
The brightness of Faith's holy trance
Gathered upon thy countenance,
As if each lingering cloud of doubt,
The cold, dark shadows resting here
In Time's unluminous atmosphere,
Were lifted by an angel's hand,
And through them on thy spiritual eye
Shone down the blessedness on high,
The glory of the Better Land!
Farewell!
And though the ways of Zion mourn
When her strong ones are called away,
Who like thyself have calmly borne
The heat and burden of the day,
Yet He who slumbereth not nor sleepeth
His ancient watch around us keepeth;
Still, sent from His creating hand,
New witnesses for Truth shall stand,
New instruments to sound abroad
The Gospel of a risen Lord;
To gather to the fold once more
The desolate and gone astray,
The scattered of a cloudy day,
And Zion's broken walls restore;
And, through the travail and the toil
Of true obedience, minister
Beauty for ashes, and the oil
Of joy for mourning, unto her!
So shall her holy bounds increase
With walls of praise and gates of peace
So shall the Vine, which martyr tears
And blood sustained in other years,
With fresher life be clothed upon;
And to the world in beauty show
Like the rose-plant of Jericho,
And glorious as Lebanon!
1847
TO FREDRIKA BREMER.
TO AVIS KEENE
THE HILL-TOP
ELLIOTT.
ICHABOD
This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of
evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March
speech of Daniel Webster in support of the "compromise," and the
Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On
the contrary my admiration of the splendid personality and
intellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger than
when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of
my life, penned my protest. I saw, as I wrote, with painful
clearness its sure results,--the Slave Power arrogant and defiant,
strengthened and encouraged to carry out its scheme for the
extension of its baleful system, or the dissolution of the Union,
the guaranties of personal liberty in the free States broken down,
and the whole country made the hunting-ground of slave-catchers. In
the horror of such a vision, so soon fearfully fulfilled, if one
spoke at all, he could only speak in tones of stern and sorrowful
rebuke. But death softens all resentments, and the consciousness of
a common inheritance of frailty and weakness modifies the severity
of judgment. Years after, in _The Lost Occasion_ I gave utterance
to an almost universal regret that the great statesman did not live
to see the flag which he loved trampled under the feet of Slavery,
and, in view of this desecration, make his last days glorious in
defence of "Liberty and Union, one and inseparable."
WORDSWORTH
TO ------
IN PEACE.
BENEDICITE.
KOSSUTH
TO MY OLD SCHOOLMASTER.
THE CROSS.
THE HERO.
The hero of the incident related in this poem was Dr. Samuel Gridley
Howe, the well-known philanthropist, who when a young man volunteered
his aid in the Greek struggle for independence.
RANTOUL.
WILLIAM FORSTER.
TO CHARLES SUMNER.
BURNS
TO GEORGE B. CHEEVER
BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE
NAPLES
A MEMORIAL
LINES ON A FLY-LEAF.
Mrs. Child wrote her lines, beginning, "Again the trees are clothed
in vernal green," May 24, 1859, on the first anniversary of Ellis
Gray Loring's death, but did not publish them for some years
afterward, when I first read them, or I could not have made the
reference which I did to the extinction of slavery.
THE SINGER.
This poem was written on the death of Alice Cary. Her sister
Phoebe, heart-broken by her loss, followed soon after. Noble and
richly gifted, lovely in person and character, they left behind
them only friends and admirers.
SUMNER
THEIRS
I.
Fate summoned, in gray-bearded age, to act
A history stranger than his written fact,
Him who portrayed the splendor and the gloom
Of that great hour when throne and altar fell
With long death-groan which still is audible.
He, when around the walls of Paris rung
The Prussian bugle like the blast of doom,
And every ill which follows unblest war
Maddened all France from Finistere to Var,
The weight of fourscore from his shoulders flung,
And guided Freedom in the path he saw
Lead out of chaos into light and law,
Peace, not imperial, but republican,
And order pledged to all the Rights of Man.
II.
Death called him from a need as imminent
As that from which the Silent William went
When powers of evil, like the smiting seas
On Holland's dikes, assailed her liberties.
Sadly, while yet in doubtful balance hung
The weal and woe of France, the bells were rung
For her lost leader. Paralyzed of will,
Above his bier the hearts of men stood still.
Then, as if set to his dead lips, the horn
Of Roland wound once more to rouse and warn,
The old voice filled the air! His last brave word
Not vainly France to all her boundaries stirred.
Strong as in life, he still for Freedom wrought,
As the dead Cid at red Toloso fought.
1877.
FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
BAYARD TAYLOR.
I.
"And where now, Bayard, will thy footsteps tend?"
My sister asked our guest one winter's day.
Smiling he answered in the Friends' sweet way
Common to both: "Wherever thou shall send!
What wouldst thou have me see for thee?" She laughed,
Her dark eyes dancing in the wood-fire's glow
"Loffoden isles, the Kilpis, and the low,
Unsetting sun on Finmark's fishing-craft."
"All these and more I soon shall see for thee!"
He answered cheerily: and he kept his pledge
On Lapland snows, the North Cape's windy wedge,
And Tromso freezing in its winter sea.
He went and came. But no man knows the track
Of his last journey, and he comes not back!
II.
He brought us wonders of the new and old;
We shared all climes with him. The Arab's tent
To him its story-telling secret lent.
And, pleased, we listened to the tales he told.
His task, beguiled with songs that shall endure,
In manly, honest thoroughness he wrought;
From humble home-lays to the heights of thought
Slowly he climbed, but every step was sure.
How, with the generous pride that friendship hath,
We, who so loved him, saw at last the crown
Of civic honor on his brows pressed down,
Rejoiced, and knew not that the gift was death.
And now for him, whose praise in deafened ears
Two nations speak, we answer but with tears!
III.
O Vale of Chester! trod by him so oft,
Green as thy June turf keep his memory. Let
Nor wood, nor dell, nor storied stream forget,
Nor winds that blow round lonely Cedarcroft;
Let the home voices greet him in the far,
Strange land that holds him; let the messages
Of love pursue him o'er the chartless seas
And unmapped vastness of his unknown star
Love's language, heard beyond the loud discourse
Of perishable fame, in every sphere
Itself interprets; and its utterance here
Somewhere in God's unfolding universe
Shall reach our traveller, softening the surprise
Of his rapt gaze on unfamiliar skies!
1879.
OUR AUTOCRAT.
L. M. C.
IN MEMORY.
JAMES T. FIELDS.
WILSON
LONGFELLOW.
A WELCOME TO LOWELL
GEORGE FULLER
SAMUEL J. TILDEN.
OCCASIONAL POEMS
EVA
Written for the Essex County Agricultural Fair, and sung at the
banquet at Newburyport, October 2, 1856.
A SONG OF HARVEST
KENOZA LAKE.
This beautiful lake in East Haverhill was the "Great Pond" the
writer's boyhood. In 1859 a movement was made for improving its
shores as a public park. At the opening of the park, August 31,
1859, the poem which gave it the name of Kenoza (in Indian language
signifying Pickerel) was read.
But, the first greetings over, you glance round the hall;
Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all
Through the turf green above them the dead cannot hear;
Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear!
And, yet more, for the faith which embraces the whole,
Of the creeds of the ages the life and the soul,
Wherein letter and spirit the same channel run,
And man has not severed what God has made one!
There are those who take note that our numbers are small,--
New Gibbons who write our decline and our fall;
But the Lord of the seed-field takes care of His own,
And the world shall yet reap what our sowers have sown.
No! the old paths we'll keep until better are shown,
Credit good where we find it, abroad or our own;
And while "Lo here" and "Lo there" the multitude call,
Be true to ourselves, and do justice to all.
There are moments in life when the lip and the eye
Try the question of whether to smile or to cry;
And scenes and reunions that prompt like our own
The tender in feeling, the playful in tone.
I, who never sat down with the boys and the girls
At the feet of your Slocums, and Cartlands, and Earles,--
By courtesy only permitted to lay
On your festival's altar my poor gift, to-day,--
I would joy in your joy: let me have a friend's part
In the warmth of your welcome of hand and of heart,--
On your play-ground of boyhood unbend the brow's care,
And shift the old burdens our shoulders must bear.
OUR RIVER.
REVISITED.
"THE LAURELS"
HYMN
FOR THE OPENING OF THOMAS STARR KING'S HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 1864.
The poetic and patriotic preacher, who had won fame in the East,
went to California in 1860 and became a power on the Pacific coast.
It was not long after the opening of the house of worship built for
him that he died.
HYMN
CHICAGO
KINSMAN.
With fifty years between you and your well-kept wedding vow,
The Golden Age, old friends of mine, is not a fable now.
And, sweet as has life's vintage been through all your pleasant past,
Still, as at Cana's marriage-feast, the best wine is the last!
Again before me, with your names, fair Chester's landscape comes,
Its meadows, woods, and ample barns, and quaint, stone-builded homes.
The smooth-shorn vales, the wheaten slopes, the boscage green and soft,
Of which their poet sings so well from towered Cedarcroft.
And lo! from all the country-side come neighbors, kith and kin;
From city, hamlet, farm-house old, the wedding guests come in.
Older and slower, yet the same, files in the long array,
And hearts are light and eyes are glad, though heads are badger-gray.
And haply with them, all unseen, old comrades, gone before,
Pass, silently as shadows pass, within your open door,--
Ah me! beyond all power to name, the worthies tried and true,
Grave men, fair women, youth and maid, pass by in hushed review.
And thank you for the lessons your fifty years are teaching,
For honest lives that louder speak than half our noisy preaching;
For your steady faith and courage in that dark and evil time,
When the Golden Rule was treason, and to feed the hungry, crime;
For the poor slave's house of refuge when the hounds were on his track,
And saint and sinner, church and state, joined hands to send him back.
Blessings upon you!--What you did for each sad, suffering one,
So homeless, faint, and naked, unto our Lord was done!
Fair fall on Kennett's pleasant vales and Longwood's bowery ways
The mellow sunset of your lives, friends of my early days.
Dear hearts are here, dear hearts are there, alike below, above;
Our friends are now in either world, and love is sure of love.
1874.
HYMN
LEXINGTON
1775.
THE LIBRARY.
CENTENNIAL HYMN.
I.
Our fathers' God! from out whose hand
The centuries fall like grains of sand,
We meet to-day, united, free,
And loyal to our land and Thee,
To thank Thee for the era done,
And trust Thee for the opening one.
II.
Here, where of old, by Thy design,
The fathers spake that word of Thine
Whose echo is the glad refrain
Of rended bolt and falling chain,
To grace our festal time, from all
The zones of earth our guests we call.
III.
Be with us while the New World greets
The Old World thronging all its streets,
Unveiling all the triumphs won
By art or toil beneath the sun;
And unto common good ordain
This rivalship of hand and brain.
IV.
Thou, who hast here in concord furled
The war flags of a gathered world,
Beneath our Western skies fulfil
The Orient's mission of good-will,
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece,
Send back its Argonauts of peace.
V.
For art and labor met in truce,
For beauty made the bride of use,
We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave
The austere virtues strong to save,
The honor proof to place or gold,
The manhood never bought nor sold.
VI.
Oh make Thou us, through centuries long,
In peace secure, in justice strong;
Around our gift of freedom draw
The safeguards of Thy righteous law
And, cast in some diviner mould,
Let the new cycle shame the old!
AT SCHOOL-CLOSE.
THE LANDMARKS.
I.
THROUGH the streets of Marblehead
Fast the red-winged terror sped;
II.
In the heart of Boston town
Stands the church of old renown,
A GREETING
WINTER ROSES.
THE REUNION
NORUMBEGA HALL.
1886
The land, that, from the rule of kings,
In freeing us, itself made free,
Our Old World Sister, to us brings
Her sculptured Dream of Liberty,
. . . . .
The Goody Cole who figures in this poem and The Changeling as
Eunice Cole, who for a quarter of a century or more was feared,
persecuted, and hated as the witch of Hampton. She lived alone in a
hovel a little distant from the spot where the Hampton Academy now
stands, and there she died, unattended. When her death was
discovered, she was hastily covered up in the earth near by, and a
stake driven through her body, to exorcise the evil spirit. Rev.
Stephen Bachiler or Batchelder was one of the ablest of the early
New England preachers. His marriage late in life to a woman
regarded by his church as disreputable induced him to return to
England, where he enjoyed the esteem and favor of Oliver Cromwell
during the Protectorate.
. . . . .
Desert-smothered caravan,
Knee-deep dust that once was man,
Battle-trenches ghastly piled,
Ocean-floors with white bones tiled,
Crowded tomb and mounded sod,
Dumbly crave that prayer to God.
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
THE CHANGELING.
. . . . .
. . . . .
KALLUNDBORG CHURCH
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . .
THE PALATINE.
. . . . .
ABRAHAM DAVENPORT
The famous Dark Day of New England, May 19, 1780, was a physical
puzzle for many years to our ancestors, but its occurrence brought
something more than philosophical speculation into the winds of
those who passed through it. The incident of Colonel Abraham
Davenport's sturdy protest is a matter of history.
. . . . .
AT SUNDOWN
TO E. C. S.
AN OUTDOOR RECEPTION.
BURNING DRIFT-WOOD
HAVERHILL.
1640-1890.
TO G. G.
AN AUTOGRAPH.
INSCRIPTION
For the bass-relief by Preston Powers, carved upon the huge boulder
in Denver Park, Col., and representing the Last Indian and the Last
Bison.
LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.
MILTON
This, the last of Mr. Whittier's poems, was written but a few weeks
before his death.
VOLUME V.
BY
A full and accurate account of Secretary Rawson and his family is about
to be published by his descendants, to which the reader is referred who
wishes to know more of the personages who figure prominently in this
Journal.
1866.
MARGARET SMITH'S JOURNAL IN THE PROVINCE OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY, 1678-9
1678-9.
I remember I did promise my kind Cousin Oliver (whom I pray God to have
always in his keeping), when I parted with him nigh unto three months
ago, at mine Uncle Grindall's, that, on coming to this new country,
I would, for his sake and perusal, keep a little journal of whatsoever
did happen both unto myself and unto those with whom I might sojourn;
as also, some account of the country and its marvels, and mine own
cogitations thereon. So I this day make a beginning of the same;
albeit, as my cousin well knoweth, not from any vanity of authorship,
or because of any undue confiding in my poor ability to edify one justly
held in repute among the learned, but because my heart tells me that
what I write, be it ever so faulty, will be read by the partial eye of
my kinsman, and not with the critical observance of the scholar, and
that his love will not find it difficult to excuse what offends his
clerkly judgment. And, to embolden me withal, I will never forget that
I am writing for mine old playmate at hide-and-seek in the farm-house at
Hilton,--the same who used to hunt after flowers for me in the spring,
and who did fill my apron with hazel-nuts in the autumn, and who was
then, I fear, little wiser than his still foolish cousin, who, if she
hath not since learned so many new things as himself, hath perhaps
remembered more of the old. Therefore, without other preface, I will
begin my record.
"Mr. Rawson," said he, "your niece, I fear me, has much more need of
spiritual adorning than of such gewgaws as these," and took hold of my
lace ruff so hard that I heard the stitches break; and then he pulled
out my sleeves, to see how wide they were, though they were only half an
ell. Madam ventured to speak a word to encourage me, for she saw I was
much abashed and flustered, yet he did not heed her, but went on talking
very loud against the folly and the wasteful wantonness of the times.
Poor Madam is a quiet, sickly-looking woman, and seems not a little in
awe of her husband, at the which I do not marvel, for he hath a very
impatient, forbidding way with him, and, I must say, seemed to carry
himself harshly at times towards her. Uncle Rawson says he has had much
to try his temper; that there have been many and sore difficulties in
Church as well as State; and he hath bitter enemies, in some of the
members of the General Court, who count him too severe with the Quakers
and other disturbers and ranters. I told him it was no doubt true; but
that I thought it a bad use of the Lord's chastenings to abuse one's
best friends for the wrongs done by enemies; and, that to be made to
atone for what went ill in Church or State, was a kind of vicarious
suffering that, if I was in Madam's place, I should not bear with half
her patience and sweetness.
We set out day before yesterday on our journey to Newbury. There were
eight of us,--Rebecca Rawson and her sister, Thomas Broughton, his wife,
and their man-servant, my brother Leonard and myself, and young Robert
Pike, of Newbury, who had been to Boston on business, his father having
great fisheries in the river as well as the sea. He is, I can perceive,
a great admirer of my cousin, and indeed not without reason; for she
hath in mind and person, in her graceful carriage and pleasant
discourse, and a certain not unpleasing waywardness, as of a merry
child, that which makes her company sought of all. Our route the first
day lay through the woods and along the borders of great marshes and
meadows on the seashore. We came to Linne at night, and stopped at the
house of a kinsman of Robert Pike's,--a man of some substance and note
in that settlement. We were tired and hungry, and the supper of warm
Indian bread and sweet milk relished quite as well as any I ever ate in
the Old Country. The next day we went on over a rough road to Wenham,
through Salem, which is quite a pleasant town. Here we stopped until
this morning, when we again mounted our horses, and reached this place,
after a smart ride of three hours. The weather in the morning was warm
and soft as our summer days at home; and, as we rode through the woods,
where the young leaves were fluttering, and the white blossoms of the
wind-flowers, and the blue violets and the yellow blooming of the
cowslips in the low grounds, were seen on either hand, and the birds all
the time making a great and pleasing melody in the branches, I was glad
of heart as a child, and thought if my beloved friends and Cousin Oliver
were only with us, I could never wish to leave so fair a country.
"There," said he, "are their summer-houses, which they build near unto
their fishing-grounds and corn-fields. In the winter they go far back
into the wilderness, where game is plenty of all kinds, and there build
their wigwams in warm valleys thick with trees, which do serve to
shelter them from the winds."
"Let us look into them," said I to Cousin Rebecca; "it seems but a
stone's throw from our way."
She tried to dissuade me, by calling them a dirty, foul people; but
seeing I was not to be put off, she at last consented, and we rode aside
down the hill, the rest following. On our way we had the misfortune to
ride over their corn-field; at the which, two or three women and as many
boys set up a yell very hideous to hear; whereat Robert Pike came up,
and appeased them by giving them some money and a drink of Jamaica
spirits, with which they seemed vastly pleased. I looked into one of
their huts; it was made of poles like unto a tent, only it was covered
with the silver-colored bark of the birch, instead of hempen stuff. A
bark mat, braided of many exceeding brilliant colors, covered a goodly
part of the space inside; and from the poles we saw fishes hanging, and
strips of dried meat. On a pile of skins in the corner sat a young
woman with a child a-nursing; they both looked sadly wild and neglected;
yet had she withal a pleasant face, and as she bent over her little one,
her long, straight, and black hair falling over him, and murmuring a low
and very plaintive melody, I forgot everything save that she was a woman
and a mother, and I felt my heart greatly drawn towards her. So, giving
my horse in charge, I ventured in to her, speaking as kindly as I could,
and asking to see her child. She understood me, and with a smile held
up her little papoose, as she called him,--who, to say truth, I could
not call very pretty. He seemed to have a wild, shy look, like the
offspring of an untamed, animal. The woman wore a blanket, gaudily
fringed, and she had a string of beads on her neck. She took down a
basket, woven of white and red willows, and pressed me to taste of her
bread; which I did, that I might not offend her courtesy by refusing.
It was not of ill taste, although so hard one could scarcely bite it,
and was made of corn meal unleavened, mixed with a dried berry, which
gives it a sweet flavor. She told me, in her broken way, that the whole
tribe now numbered only twenty-five men and women, counting out the
number very fast with yellow grains of corn, on the corner of her
blanket. She was, she said, the youngest woman in the tribe; and her
husband, Peckanaminet, was the Indian we had met in the bridlepath. I
gave her a pretty piece of ribbon, and an apron for the child; and she
thanked me in her manner, going with us on our return to the path; and
when I had ridden a little onward, I saw her husband running towards us;
so, stopping my horse, I awaited until he came up, when he offered me a
fine large fish, which he had just caught, in acknowledgment, as I
judged, of my gift to his wife. Rebecca and Mistress Broughton laughed,
and bid him take the thing away; but I would not suffer it, and so
Robert Pike took it, and brought it on to our present tarrying place,
where truly it hath made a fair supper for us all. These poor heathen
people seem not so exceeding bad as they have been reported; they be
like unto ourselves, only lacking our knowledge and opportunities,
which, indeed, are not our own to boast of, but gifts of God, calling
for humble thankfulness, and daily prayer and watchfulness, that they be
rightly improved.
We were hardly on our way yesterday, from Agawam, when a dashing young
gallant rode up very fast behind us. He was fairly clad in rich stuffs,
and rode a nag of good mettle. He saluted us with much ease and
courtliness, offering especial compliments to Rebecca, to whom he seemed
well known, and who I thought was both glad and surprised at his coming.
As I rode near, she said it gave her great joy to bring to each other's
acquaintance, Sir Thomas Hale, a good friend of her father's, and her
cousin Margaret, who, like himself, was a new-comer. He replied, that
he should look with favor on any one who was near to her in friendship
or kindred; and, on learning my father's name, said he had seen him at
his uncle's, Sir Matthew Hale's, many years ago, and could vouch for him
as a worthy man. After some pleasant and merry discoursing with us, he
and my brother fell into converse upon the state of affairs in the
Colony, the late lamentable war with the Narragansett and Pequod
Indians, together with the growth of heresy and schism in the churches,
which latter he did not scruple to charge upon the wicked policy of the
home government in checking the wholesome severity of the laws here
enacted against the schemers and ranters. "I quite agree," said he,
"with Mr. Rawson, that they should have hanged ten where they did one."
Cousin Rebecca here said she was sure her father was now glad the laws
were changed, and that he had often told her that, although the
condemned deserved their punishment, he was not sure that it was the
best way to put down the heresy. If she was ruler, she continued, in
her merry way, she would send all the schemers and ranters, and all the
sour, crabbed, busybodies in the churches, off to Rhode Island, where
all kinds of folly, in spirituals as well as temporals, were permitted,
and one crazy head could not reproach another.
Falling back a little, and waiting for Robert Pike and Cousin Broughton
to come up, I found them marvelling at the coming of the young
gentleman, who it did seem had no special concernment in these parts,
other than his acquaintance with Rebecca, and his desire of her company.
Robert Pike, as is natural, looks upon him with no great partiality, yet
he doth admit him to be wellbred, and of much and varied knowledge,
acquired by far travel as well as study. I must say, I like not his
confident and bold manner and bearing toward my fair cousin; and he hath
more the likeness of a cast-off dangler at the court, than of a modest
and seemly country gentleman, of a staid and well-ordered house.
Mistress Broughton says he was not at first accredited in Boston, but
that her father, and Mr. Atkinson, and the chief people there now, did
hold him to be not only what he professeth, as respecteth his
gentlemanly lineage, but also learned and ingenious, and well-versed in
the Scriptures, and the works of godly writers, both of ancient and
modern time. I noted that Robert was very silent during the rest of our
journey, and seemed abashed and troubled in the presence of the gay
gentleman; for, although a fair and comely youth, and of good family and
estate, and accounted solid and judicious beyond his years, he does,
nevertheless, much lack the ease and ready wit with which the latter
commendeth himself to my sweet kinswoman. We crossed about noon a broad
stream near to the sea, very deep and miry, so that we wetted our hose
and skirts somewhat; and soon, to our great joy, beheld the pleasant
cleared fields and dwellings of the settlement, stretching along for a
goodly distance; while, beyond all, the great ocean rolled, blue and
cold, under an high easterly wind. Passing through a broad path, with
well-tilled fields on each hand, where men were busy planting corn, and
young maids dropping the seed, we came at length to Uncle Rawson's
plantation, looking wellnigh as fair and broad as the lands of Hilton
Grange, with a good frame house, and large barns thereon. Turning up
the lane, we were met by the housekeeper, a respectable kinswoman, who
received us with great civility. Sir Thomas, although pressed to stay,
excused himself for the time, promising to call on the morrow, and rode
on to the ordinary. I was sadly tired with my journey, and was glad to
be shown to a chamber and a comfortable bed.
When we went below, we found on the window seat which looketh to the
roadway, a great bunch of flowers of many kinds, such as I had never
seen in mine own country, very fresh, and glistening with the dew. Now,
when Rebecca took them up, her sister said, "Nay, they are not Sir
Thomas's gift, for young Pike hath just left them." Whereat, as I
thought, she looked vexed, and ill at ease. "They are yours, then,
Cousin Margaret," said she, rallying, "for Robert and you did ride aside
all the way from Agawam, and he scarce spake to me the day long. I see
I have lost mine old lover, and my little cousin hath found a new one.
I shall write Cousin Oliver all about it."
"Nay," said I, "old lovers are better than new; but I fear my sweet
cousin hath not so considered It." She blushed, and looked aside, and
for some space of time I did miss her smile, and she spake little.
May 20.
We had scarcely breakfasted, when him they Call Sir Thomas called on us,
and with him came also a Mr. Sewall, and the minister of the church, Mr.
Richardson, both of whom did cordially welcome home my cousins, and were
civil to my brother and myself. Mr. Richardson and Leonard fell to
conversing about the state of the Church; and Sir Thomas discoursed us
in his lively way. After some little tarry, Mr. Sewall asked us to go
with him to Deer's Island, a small way up the river, where he and Robert
Pike had some men splitting staves for the Bermuda market. As the day
was clear and warm, we did readily agree to go, and forthwith set out
for the river, passing through the woods for nearly a half mile. When
we came to the Merrimac, we found it a great and broad stream. We took
a boat, and were rowed up the river, enjoying the pleasing view of the
green banks, and the rocks hanging over the water, covered with bright
mosses, and besprinkled with pale, white flowers. Mr. Sewall pointed
out to us the different kinds of trees, and their nature and uses, and
especially the sugar-tree, which is very beautiful in its leaf and
shape, and from which the people of this country do draw a sap wellnigh
as sweet as the juice of the Indian cane, making good treacle and sugar.
Deer's Island hath rough, rocky shores, very high and steep, and is well
covered with a great growth of trees, mostly evergreen pines and
hemlocks which looked exceeding old. We found a good seat on the mossy
trunk of one of these great trees, which had fallen from its extreme
age, or from some violent blast of wind, from whence we could see the
water breaking into white foam on the rocks, and hear the melodious
sound of the wind in the leaves of the pines, and the singing of birds
ever and anon; and lest this should seem too sad and lonely, we could
also hear the sounds of the axes and beetles of the workmen, cleaving
the timber not far off. It was not long before Robert Pike came up and
joined us. He was in his working dress, and his face and hands were
much discolored by the smut of the burnt logs, which Rebecca playfully
remarking, he said there were no mirrors in the woods, and that must be
his apology; that, besides, it did not become a plain man, like himself,
who had to make his own fortune in the world, to try to imitate those
who had only to open their mouths, to be fed like young robins, without
trouble or toil. Such might go as brave as they would, if they would
only excuse his necessity. I thought he spoke with some bitterness,
which, indeed, was not without the excuse, that the manner of our gay
young gentleman towards him savored much of pride and contemptuousness.
My beloved cousin, who hath a good heart, and who, I must think, apart
from the wealth and family of Sir Thomas, rather inclineth to her old
friend and neighbor, spake cheerily and kindly to him, and besought me
privately to do somewhat to help her remove his vexation. So we did
discourse of many things very pleasantly. Mr. Richardson, on hearing
Rebecca say that the Indians did take the melancholy noises of the
pinetrees in the winds to be the voices of the Spirits of the woods,
said that they always called to his mind the sounds in the mulberry-
trees which the Prophet spake of. Hereupon Rebecca, who hath her memory
well provided with divers readings, both of the poets and other writers,
did cite very opportunely some ingenious lines, touching what the
heathens do relate of the Sacred Tree of Dodona, the rustling of whose
leaves the negro priestesses did hold to be the language of the gods.
And a late writer, she said, had something in one of his pieces, which
might well be spoken of the aged and dead tree-trunk, upon which we were
sitting. And when we did all desire to know their import, she repeated
them thus:--
"Sure thou didst flourish once, and many springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers,
Passed o'er thy head; many light hearts and wings,
Which now are dead, lodged in thy living towers."
"Nay, Sir Thomas," quoth Mr. Richardson, "it is not seemly to jest over
the Word of God. The writers of our Book of Psalms in metre held
rightly, that God's altar needs no polishing; and truly they have
rendered the words of David into English verse with great fidelity."
"Nay," said she, "I have been there often, to small profit. The spirit
which thou persecutest testifieth against thee and thy meeting."
Sir Thomas jestingly asked her if the spirit she spoke of was not such
an one as possessed Mary Magdalen.
I did smile with the others, but was presently sorry for it; for the
young maid answered not a word to this, but turning to Rebecca, she
said, "Thy father hath been hard with us, but thou seemest kind and
gentle, and I have heard of thy charities to the poor. The Lord keep
thee, for thou walkest in slippery places; there is danger, and thou
seest it not; thou trustest to the hearing of the ear and the seeing of
the eye; the Lord alone seeth the deceitfulness and the guile of man;
and if thou wilt cry mightily to Him, He can direct thee rightly."
Her voice and manner were very weighty and solemn. I felt an awe come
upon me, and Rebecca's countenance was troubled. As the maiden left us,
the minister, looking after said, "There is a deal of poison under the
fair outside of yonder vessel, which I fear is fitted for destruction."
"Robert, Robert!" cried the minister, "I fear me you will follow your
honored father, who has made himself of ill repute, by favoring these
people."--"The Quaker hath bewitched him with her bright eyes, perhaps,"
quoth Sir Thomas. "I would she had laid a spell on an uncivil tongue I
wot of," answered Robert, angrily. Hereupon, Mr. Sewall proposed that
we should return, and in making ready and getting to the boat, the
matter was dropped.
To-day Sir Thomas took his leave of us, being about to go back to
Boston. Cousin Rebecca is, I can see, much taken with his outside
bravery and courtliness, yet she hath confessed to me that her sober
judgment doth greatly incline her towards her old friend and neighbor,
Robert Pike. She hath even said that she doubted not she could live a
quieter and happier life with him than with such an one as Sir Thomas;
and that the words of the Quaker maid, whom we met at the spring on the
river side, had disquieted her not a little, inasmuch as they did seem
to confirm her own fears and misgivings. But her fancy is so bedazzled
with the goodly show of her suitor, that I much fear he can have her for
the asking, especially as her father, to my knowledge, doth greatly
favor him. And, indeed, by reason of her gracious manner, witty and
pleasant discoursing, excellent breeding, and dignity, she would do no
discredit to the choice of one far higher than this young gentleman in
estate and rank.
June 10.
"But I thank God that even in that dark season my heart relented at the
sight of the poor starving women and children, chased from place to
place like partridges. Even the Indian fighters, I found, had sorrows
of their own, and grievous wrongs to avenge; and I do believe, if we had
from the first treated them as poor blinded brethren, and striven as
hard to give them light and knowledge, as we have to cheat them in
trade, and to get away their lands, we should have escaped many bloody
wars, and won many precious souls to Christ."
"I suffered much in moving with him to the Sebago Lake, owing to my
wound," he replied; "but the chief did all in his power to give me
comfort, and he often shared with me his scant fare, choosing rather to
endure hunger himself, than to see his son, as he called me, in want of
food. And one night, when I did marvel at this kindness on his part, he
told me that I had once done him a great service; asking me if I was not
at Black Point, in a fishing vessel, the summer before? I told him I
was. He then bade me remember the bad sailors who upset the canoe of a
squaw, and wellnigh drowned her little child, and that I had threatened
and beat them for it; and also how I gave the squaw a warm coat to wrap
up the poor wet papoose. It was his squaw and child that I had
befriended; and he told me that he had often tried to speak to me, and
make known his gratitude therefor; and that he came once to the garrison
at Sheepscot, where he saw me; but being fired at, notwithstanding his
signs of peace and friendship, he was obliged to flee into the woods.
He said the child died a few days after its evil treatment, and the
thought of it made his heart bitter; that he had tried to live peaceably
with the white men, but they had driven him into the war.
"On one occasion," said the sick soldier, "as we lay side by side in his
hut, on the shore of the Sebago Lake, Squando, about midnight, began to
pray to his God very earnestly. And on my querying with him about it,
he said he was greatly in doubt what to do, and had prayed for some sign
of the Great Spirit's will concerning him. He then told me that some
years ago, near the place where we then lay, he left his wigwam at
night, being unable to sleep, by reason of great heaviness and distemper
of mind. It was a full moon, and as he did walk to and fro, he saw a
fair, tall man in a long black dress, standing in the light on the
lake's shore, who spake to him and called him by name.
"'Squando,' he said, and his voice was deep and solemn, like the wind in
the hill pines, 'the God of the white man is the God of the Indian, and
He is angry with his red children. He alone is able to make the corn
grow before the frost, and to lead the fish up the rivers in the spring,
and to fill the woods with deer and other game, and the ponds and
meadows with beavers. Pray to Him always. Do not hunt on His day, nor
let the squaws hoe the corn. Never taste of the strong fire-water, but
drink only from the springs. It, is because the Indians do not worship
Him, that He has brought the white men among them; but if they will pray
like the white men, they will grow very great and strong, and their
children born in this moon will live to see the English sail back in
their great canoes, and leave the Indians all their fishing-places and
hunting-grounds.'
"When the strange man had thus spoken, Squando told me that he went
straightway up to him, but found where he had stood only the shadow of
a broken tree, which lay in the moon across the white sand of the shore.
Then he knew it was a spirit, and he trembled, but was glad. Ever
since, he told nee, he had prayed daily to the Great Spirit, had drank
no rum, nor hunted on the Sabbath.
"He said he did for a long time refuse to dig up his hatchet, and make
war upon the whites, but that he could not sit idle in his wigwam, while
his young men were gone upon their war-path. The spirit of his dead
child did moreover speak to him from the land of souls, and chide him
for not seeking revenge. Once, he told me, he had in a dream seen the
child crying and moaning bitterly, and that when he inquired the cause
of its grief, he was told that the Great Spirit was angry with its
father, and would destroy him and his people unless he did join with the
Eastern Indians to cut off the English."
"I saw her at Cocheco," said the sick man. "Squando found her in a sad
plight, and scarcely alive, took her to his wigwam, where his squaw did
lovingly nurse and comfort her; and when she was able to travel, he
brought her to Major Waldron's, asking no ransom for her. He might have
been made the fast friend of the English at that time, but he scarcely
got civil treatment."
"My father says that many friendly Indians, by the ill conduct of the
traders, have been made our worst enemies," said Rebecca. "He thought
the bringing in of the Mohawks to help us a sin comparable to that of
the Jews, who looked for deliverance from the King of Babylon at the
hands of the Egyptians."
"They did nothing but mischief," said Elnathan Stone; "they killed our
friends at Newichawannock, Blind Will and his family."
Rebecca here asked him if he ever heard the verses writ by Mr. Sewall
concerning the killing of Blind Will. And when he told her he had not,
and would like to have her repeat them, if she could remember, she did
recite them thus:--
A young woman entered the house just as Rebecca finished the verses.
She bore in her hands a pail of milk and a fowl neatly dressed, which
she gave to Elnathan's mother, and, seeing strangers by his bedside, was
about to go out, when he called to her and besought her to stay. As she
came up and spoke to him, I knew her to be the maid we had met at the
spring. The young man, with tears in his eyes, acknowledged her great
kindness to him, at which she seemed troubled and abashed. A pure,
sweet complexion she hath, and a gentle and loving look, full of
innocence and sincerity. Rebecca seemed greatly disturbed, for she no
doubt thought of the warning words of this maiden, when we were at the
spring. After she had left, Goodwife Stone said she was sure she could
not tell what brought that Quaker girl to her house so much, unless she
meant to inveigle Elnathan; but, for her part, she would rather see him
dead than live to bring reproach upon his family and the Church by
following after the blasphemers. I ventured to tell her that I did look
upon it as sheer kindness and love on the young woman's part; at which
Elnathan seemed pleased, and said he could not doubt it, and that he did
believe Peggy Brewster to be a good Christian, although sadly led astray
by the Quakers. His mother said that, with all her meek looks, and kind
words, she was full of all manner of pestilent heresies, and did remind
her always of Satan in the shape of an angel of light.
We went away ourselves soon after this, the sick man thanking us for our
visit, and hoping that he should see us again. "Poor Elnathan," said
Rebecca, as we walked home, "he will never go abroad again; but he is in
such a good and loving frame of mind, that he needs not our pity, as one
who is without hope."
"He reminds me," I said, "of the comforting promise of Scripture, 'Thou
wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.'"
Mr. Rawson and Sir Thomas Hale came yesterday from Boston. I was
rejoiced to see mine uncle, more especially as he brought for me a
package of letters, and presents and tokens of remembrance from my
friends on the other side of the water. As soon as I got them, I went
up to my chamber, and, as I read of the health of those who are very
dear to me, and who did still regard me with unchanged love, I wept in
my great joy, and my heart overflowed in thankfulness. I read the 22d
Psalm, and it did seem to express mine own feelings in view of the great
mercies and blessings vouchsafed to me. "My head is anointed with oil;
my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the
days of my life."
This morning, Sir Thomas and Uncle Rawson rode over to Hampton, where
they will tarry all night. Last evening, Rebecca had a long talk with
her father concerning Sir Thomas, who hath asked her of him. She came
to bed very late, and lay restless and sobbing; whereupon I pressed her
to know the cause of her grief, when she told me she had consented to
marry Sir Thomas, but that her heart was sorely troubled and full of
misgivings. On my querying whether she did really love the young
gentleman, she said she sometimes feared she did not; and that when her
fancy had made a fair picture of the life of a great lady in England,
there did often come a dark cloud over it like the shade of some heavy
disappointment or sorrow. "Sir Thomas," she said, "was a handsome and
witty young man, and had demeaned himself to the satisfaction and good
repute of her father and the principal people of the Colony; and his
manner towards her had been exceeding delicate and modest, inasmuch as
he had presumed nothing upon his family or estate, but had sought her
with much entreaty and humility, although he did well know that some of
the most admired and wealthy Young women in Boston did esteem him not a
little, even to the annoying of herself, as one whom he especially
favored."
"This will be heavy news to Robert Pike," said I; "and I am sorry for
him, for he is indeed a worthy man."
"That he is," quoth she; "but he hath never spoken to me of aught beyond
that friendliness which, as neighbors and school companions, we do
innocently cherish for each other."
"Nay," said I, "my sweet cousin knows full well that he entertaineth so
strong an affection for her, that there needeth no words to reveal it."
"Alas!" she answered, "it is too true. When I am with him, I sometimes
wish I had never seen Sir Thomas. But my choice is made, and I pray God
I may not have reason to repent of it."
We said no more, but I fear she slept little, for on waking about the
break of day, I saw her sitting in her night-dress by the window.
Whereupon I entreated her to return to her bed, which she at length did,
and folding me in her arms, and sobbing as if her heart would break, she
besought me to pity her, for it was no light thing which she had done,
and she scarcely knew her own mind, nor whether to rejoice or weep over
it. I strove to comfort her, and, after a time, she did, to my great
joy, fall into a quiet sleep.
This afternoon, Robert Pike came in, and had a long talk with Cousin
Broughton, who told him how matters stood between her sister and Sir
Thomas, at which he was vehemently troubled, and would fain have gone to
seek Rebecca at once, and expostulate with her, but was hindered on
being told that it could only grieve and discomfort her, inasmuch as the
thing was well settled, and could not be broken off. He said he had
known and loved her from a child; that for her sake he had toiled hard
by day and studied by night; and that in all his travels and voyages,
her sweet image had always gone with him. He would bring no accusation
against her, for she had all along treated him rather as a brother than
as a suitor: to which last condition he had indeed not felt himself at
liberty to venture, after her honored father, some months ago, had given
him to understand that he did design an alliance of his daughter with a
gentleman of estate and family. For himself, he would bear himself
manfully, and endure his sorrow with patience and fortitude. His only
fear was, that his beloved friend had been too hasty in deciding the
matter; and that he who was her choice might not be worthy of the great
gift of her affection. Cousin Broughton, who has hitherto greatly
favored the pretensions of Sir Thomas, told me that she wellnigh changed
her mind in view of the manly and noble bearing of Robert Pike; and that
if her sister were to live in this land, she would rather see her the
wife of him than of any other man therein.
July 3.
Sir Thomas took his leave to-day. Robert Pike hath been here to wish
Rebecca great joy and happiness in her prospect, which he did in so kind
and gentle a manner, that she was fain to turn away her head to hide her
tears. When Robert saw this, he turned the discourse, and did endeavor
to divert her mind in such sort that the shade of melancholy soon left
her sweet face, and the twain talked together cheerfully as had been
their wont, and as became their years and conditions.
July 6.
Yesterday a strange thing happened in the meeting-house. The minister
had gone on in his discourse, until the sand in the hour-glass on the
rails before the deacons had wellnigh run out, and Deacon Dole was about
turning it, when suddenly I saw the congregation all about me give a
great start, and look back. A young woman, barefooted, and with a
coarse canvas frock about her, and her long hair hanging loose like a
periwig, and sprinkled with ashes, came walking up the south aisle.
Just as she got near Uncle Rawson's seat she stopped, and turning round
towards the four corners of the house, cried out: "Woe to the
persecutors! Woe to them who for a pretence make long prayers! Humble
yourselves, for this is the day of the Lord's power, and I am sent as a
sign among you!" As she looked towards me I knew her to be the Quaker
maiden, Margaret Brewster. "Where is the constable?" asked Mr.
Richardson. "Let the woman be taken out." Thereupon the whole
congregation arose, and there was a great uproar, men and women climbing
the seats, and many crying out, some one thing and some another. In the
midst of the noise, Mr. Sewall, getting up on a bench, begged the people
to be quiet, and let the constable lead out the poor deluded creature.
Mr. Richardson spake to the same effect, and, the tumult a little
subsiding, I saw them taking the young woman out of the door; and, as
many followed her, I went out also, with my brother, to see what became
of her.
Captain Sewall, R. Pike, and the minister, Mr. Richardson, at our house
to-day. Captain Sewall, who lives mostly at Boston, says that a small
vessel loaded with negroes, taken on the Madagascar coast, came last
week into the harbor, and that the owner thereof had offered the negroes
for sale as slaves, and that they had all been sold to magistrates,
ministers, and other people of distinction in Boston and thereabouts.
He said the negroes were principally women and children, and scarcely
alive, by reason of their long voyage and hard fare. He thought it a
great scandal to the Colony, and a reproach to the Church, that they
should be openly trafficked, like cattle in the market. Uncle Rawson
said it was not so formerly; for he did remember the case of Captain
Smith and one Kesar, who brought negroes from Guinea thirty years ago.
The General Court, urged thereto by Sir Richard Saltonstall and many of
the ministers, passed an order that, for the purpose of "bearing a
witness against the heinous sin of man-stealing, justly abhorred of all
good and just men," the negroes should be taken back to their own
country at the charge of the Colony; which was soon after done.
Moreover, the two men, Smith and Kesar, were duly punished.
Captain Sewall said he did, for himself, look upon all slave-holding as
contrary to the Gospel and the New Dispensation. The Israelites had a
special warrant for holding the heathen in servitude; but he had never
heard any one pretend that he had that authority for enslaving Indians
and blackamoors.
Hereupon Mr. Richardson asked him if he did not regard Deacon Dole as a
godly man; and if he had aught to say against him and other pious men
who held slaves. And he cautioned him to be careful, lest he should be
counted an accuser of the brethren.
Here Robert Pike said he would tell of a matter which had fallen under
his notice. "Just after the war was over," said be, "owing to the loss
of my shallop in the Penobscot Bay, I chanced to be in the neighborhood
of him they call the Baron of Castine, who hath a strong castle, with
much cleared land and great fisheries at Byguyduce. I was preparing to
make a fire and sleep in the woods, with my two men, when a messenger
came from the Baron, saying that his master, hearing that strangers were
in the neighborhood, had sent him to offer us food and shelter, as the
night was cold and rainy. So without ado we went with him, and were
shown into a comfortable room in a wing of the castle, where we found a
great fire blazing, and a joint of venison with wheaten loaves on the
table. After we had refreshed ourselves, the Baron sent for me, and I
was led into a large, fair room, where he was, with Modockawando, who
was his father-in-law, and three or four other chiefs of the Indians,
together with two of his priests. The Baron, who was a man of goodly
appearance, received me with much courtesy; and when I told him my
misfortune, he said he was glad it was in his power to afford us a
shelter. He discoursed about the war, which he said had been a sad
thing to the whites as well as the Indians, but that he now hoped the
peace would be lasting. Whereupon, Modockawando, a very grave and
serious heathen, who had been sitting silent with his friends, got up
and spoke a load speech to me, which I did not understand, but was told
that he did complain of the whites for holding as slaves sundry Indian
captives, declaring that it did provoke another war. His own sister's
child, he said, was thus held in captivity. He entreated me to see the
great Chief of our people (meaning the Governor), and tell him that the
cries of the captives were heard by his young men, and that they were
talking of digging up the hatchet which the old men had buried at Casco.
I told the old savage that I did not justify the holding of Indians
after the peace, and would do what I could to have them set at liberty,
at which he seemed greatly rejoiced. Since I came back from Castine's
country, I have urged the giving up of the Indians, and many have been
released. Slavery is a hard lot, and many do account it worse than
death. When in the Barbadoes, I was told that on one plantation, in the
space of five years, a score of slaves had hanged themselves."
After the company had gone, Rebecca sat silent and thoughtful for a
time, and then bade her young serving-girl, whom her father had bought,
about a year before, of the master of a Scotch vessel, and who had been
sold to pay the cost of her passage, to come to her. She asked her if
she had aught to complain of in her situation. The poor girl looked
surprised, but said she had not. "Are you content to live as a
servant?" asked Rebecca. "Would you leave me if you could?" She here
fell a-weeping, begging her mistress not to speak of her leaving. "But
if I should tell you that you are free to go or stay, as you will, would
you be glad or sorry?" queried her mistress. The poor girl was silent.
"I do not wish you to leave me, Effie," said Rebecca, "but I wish you to
know that you are from henceforth free, and that if you serve me
hereafter, as I trust you will, it will be in love and good will, and
for suitable wages." The bondswoman did not at the first comprehend the
design of her mistress, but, on hearing it explained once more, she
dropped down on her knees, and clasping Rebecca, poured forth her thanks
after the manner of her people; whereupon Rebecca, greatly moved, bade
her rise, as she had only done what the Scriptures did require, in
giving to her servant that which is just and equal.
"How easy it is to make others happy, and ourselves also!" she said,
turning to me, with the tears shining in her eyes.
August 8, 1678.
Elnathan Stone, who died two days ago, was buried this afternoon. A
very solemn funeral, Mr. Richardson preaching a sermon from the 23d
psalm, 4th verse: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy
staff, they comfort me." Deacon Dole provided the wine and spirits, and
Uncle Rawson the beer, and bread, and fish for the entertainment, and
others of the neighbors did, moreover, help the widow to sundry matters
of clothing suitable for the occasion, for she was very poor, and, owing
to the long captivity and sickness of her son, she hath been much
straitened at times. I am told that Margaret Brewster hath been like an
angel of mercy unto her, watching often with the sick man, and helping
her in her work, so that the poor woman is now fain to confess that she
hath a good and kind heart. A little time before Elnathan died, he did
earnestly commend the said Margaret to the kindness of Cousin Rebecca,
entreating her to make interest with the magistrates, and others in
authority, in her behalf, that they might be merciful to her in her
outgoings, as he did verily think they did come of a sense of duty,
albeit mistaken. Mr. Richardson, who hath been witness to her gracious
demeanor and charity, and who saith she does thereby shame many of his
own people, hath often sought to draw her away from the new doctrines,
and to set before her the dangerous nature of her errors; but she never
lacketh answer of some sort, being naturally of good parts, and well
read in the Scriptures.
August 10.
I find the summer here greatly unlike that of mine own country. The
heat is great, the sun shining very strong and bright; and for more than
a month it hath been exceeding dry, without any considerable fall of
rain, so that the springs fail in many places, and the watercourses are
dried up, which doth bring to mind very forcibly the language of Job,
concerning the brooks which the drouth consumeth: "What time they wax
warm they vanish; when it is hot they are consumed out of their place.
The paths of their way are turned aside; they go to nothing and perish."
The herbage and grass have lost much of the brightness which they did
wear in the early summer; moreover, there be fewer flowers to be seen.
The fields and roads are dusty, and all things do seem to faint and wax
old under the intolerable sun. Great locusts sing sharp in the hedges
and bushes, and grasshoppers fly up in clouds, as it were, when one
walks over the dry grass which they feed upon, and at nightfall
mosquitoes are no small torment. Whenever I do look forth at noonday,
at which time the air is all aglow, with a certain glimmer and dazzle
like that from an hot furnace, and see the poor fly-bitten cattle
whisking their tails to keep off the venomous insects, or standing in
the water of the low grounds for coolness, and the panting sheep lying
together under the shade of trees, I must needs call to mind the summer
season of old England, the cool sea air, the soft-dropping showers, the
fields so thick with grasses, and skirted with hedge-rows like green
walls, the trees and shrubs all clean and moist, and the vines and
creepers hanging over walls and gateways, very plenteous and beautiful
to behold. Ah me I often in these days do I think of Hilton Grange,
with its great oaks, and cool breezy hills and meadows green the summer
long. I shut mine eyes, and lo! it is all before me like a picture; I
see mine uncle's gray hairs beneath the trees, and my good aunt standeth
in the doorway, and Cousin Oliver comes up in his field-dress, from the
croft or the mill; I can hear his merry laugh, and the sound of his
horse's hoofs ringing along the gravel-way. Our sweet Chaucer telleth
of a mirror in the which he that looked did see all his past life; that
magical mirror is no fable, for in the memory of love, old things do
return and show themselves as features do in the glass, with a perfect
and most beguiling likeness.
This morning Deacon Dole came in, and said his servant Tom had behaved
badly, for which he did moderately correct him, and that he did
thereupon run away, and he feared he should lose him. He bought him,
he said, of Captain Davenport, who brought him from the Narragansett
country, paying ten pounds and six shillings for him, and he could ill
bear so great a loss. I ventured to tell him that it was wrong to hold
any man, even an Indian or Guinea black, as a slave. My uncle, who saw
that my plainness was not well taken, bade me not meddle with matters
beyond my depth; and Deacon Dole, looking very surly at me, said I was a
forward one; that he had noted that I did wear a light and idle look in
the meeting-house; and, pointing with his cane to my hair, he said I did
render myself liable to presentment by the Grand Jury for a breach of
the statute of the General Court, made the year before, against "the
immodest laying out of the hair," &c. He then went on to say that he
had lived to see strange times, when such as I did venture to oppose
themselves to sober and grave people, and to despise authority, and
encourage rebellion and disorder; and bade me take heed lest all such
be numbered with the cursed children which the Apostle did rebuke: "Who,
as natural brute beasts, speak evil of things they understand not, and
shall utterly perish in their corruption." My dear Cousin Rebecca here
put in a word in my behalf, and told the Deacon that Tom's misbehavior
did all grow out of the keeping of strong liquors for sale, and that he
was wrong to beat him so cruelly, seeing that he did himself place the
temptation before him. Thereupon the Deacon rose up angrily, bidding
uncle look well to his forward household. "Nay, girls," quoth mine
uncle, after his neighbor had left the house, "you have angered the good
man sorely."--"Never heed," said Rebecca, laughing and clapping her
hands, "he hath got something to think of more profitable, I trow, than
Cousin Margaret's hair or looks in meeting. He has been tything of mint
and anise and cummin long enough, and 't is high time for him to look
after the weightier matters of the law."
The selling of beer and strong liquors, Mr. Ewall says, hath much
increased since the troubles of the Colony and the great Indian war.
The General Court do take some care to grant licenses only to discreet
persons; but much liquor is sold without warrant. For mine own part, I
think old Chaucer hath it right in his Pardoner's Tale:--
The weather being clear and the heat great, last week uncle and aunt,
with Rebecca and myself, and also Leonard and Sir Thomas, thought it a
fitting time to make a little journey by water to the Isles of Shoals,
and the Agamenticus, where dwelleth my Uncle Smith, who hath strongly
pressed me to visit him. One Caleb Powell, a seafaring man, having a
good new boat, with a small cabin, did undertake to convey us. He is a
drolling odd fellow, who hath been in all parts of the world, and hath
seen and read much, and, having a rare memory, is not ill company,
although uncle saith one must make no small allowance for his desire of
making his hearers marvel at his stories and conceits. We sailed with a
good westerly wind down the river, passing by the great salt marshes,
which stretch a long way by the sea, and in which the town's people be
now very busy in mowing and gathering the grass for winter's use.
Leaving on our right hand Plum Island (so called on account of the rare
plums which do grow upon it), we struck into the open sea, and soon came
in sight of the Islands of Shoals. There be seven of them in all, lying
off the town of Hampton on the mainland, about a league. We landed on
that called the Star, and were hospitably entertained through the day
and night by Mr. Abbott, an old inhabitant of the islands, and largely
employed in fisheries and trade, and with whom uncle had some business.
In the afternoon Mr. Abbott's son rowed us about among the islands, and
showed us the manner of curing the dun-fish, for which the place is
famed. They split the fishes, and lay them on the rocks in the sun,
using little salt, but turning them often. There is a court-house on
the biggest island, and a famous school, to which many of the planters
on the main-land do send their children. We noted a great split in the
rocks, where, when the Indians came to the islands many years ago, and
killed some and took others captive, one Betty Moody did hide herself,
and which is hence called Betty Moody's Hole. Also, the pile of rocks
set up by the noted Captain John Smith, when he did take possession of
the Isles in the year 1614. We saw our old acquaintance Peckanaminet
and his wife, in a little birch canoe, fishing a short way off. Mr.
Abbott says he well recollects the time when the Agawams were wellnigh
cut off by the Tarratine Indians; for that early one morning, hearing a
loud yelling and whooping, he went out on the point of the rocks, and
saw a great fleet of canoes filled with Indians, going back from Agawam,
and the noise they made he took to be their rejoicing over their
victory.
"There be women in the cold regions about Norway," said Caleb Powell,
"as I have heard the sailors relate, who do raise storms and sink boats
at their will."
"It may well be," quoth Mr. Hull, "since Satan is spoken of as the
prince and power of the air."
"Do you not remember, father," said Rebecca, "some verses of Tibullus,
in which he speaketh of a certain enchantress? Some one hath rendered
them thus:--
Here Sir Thomas laughingly told Rebecca, that he did put more faith in
what these old writers did tell of the magic arts of the sweet-singing
sirens, and of Circe and her enchantments, and of the Illyrian maidens,
so wonderful in their beauty, who did kill with their looks such as they
were angry with.
"It was, perhaps, for some such reason," said Rebecca, "that, as Mr.
Abbott tells me; the General Court many years ago did forbid women to
live on these islands."
"You must know," answered our host, "that in the early settlement of
the Shoals, vessels coming for fish upon this coast did here make their
harbor, bringing hither many rude sailors of different nations; and the
Court judged that it was not a fitting place for women, and so did by
law forbid their dwelling on the islands belonging to the
Massachusetts."
He then asked his wife to get the order of the Court concerning her stay
on the islands, remarking that he did bring her over from the Maine in
despite of the law. So his wife fetched it, and Uncle Rawson read it,
it being to this effect,--"That a petition having been sent to the
Court, praying that the law might be put in force in respect to John
Abbott his wife, the Court do judge it meet, if no further complaint
come against her, that she enjoy the company of her husband." Whereat
we all laughed heartily.
Next morning, the fog breaking away early, we set sail for Agamenticus,
running along the coast and off the mouth of the Piscataqua River,
passing near where my lamented Uncle Edward dwelt, whose fame as a
worthy gentleman and magistrate is still living. We had Mount
Agamenticus before us all day,--a fair stately hill, rising up as it
were from the water. Towards night a smart shower came on, with
thunderings and lightnings such as I did never see or hear before; and
the wind blowing and a great rain driving upon us, we were for a time in
much peril; but, through God's mercy, it suddenly cleared up, and we
went into the Agamenticus River with a bright sun. Before dark we got
to the house of my honored uncle, where, he not being at home, his wife
and daughters did receive us kindly.
September 10.
September 18.
September 30.
Yesterday, Cousin Polly and myself, with young Mr. Jordan, went up to
the top of the mountain, which is some miles from the harbor. It is not
hard to climb in respect to steepness, but it is so tangled with bushes
and vines, that one can scarce break through them. The open places were
yellow with golden-rods, and the pale asters were plenty in the shade,
and by the side of the brooks, that with pleasing noise did leap down
the hill. When we got upon the top, which is bare and rocky, we had a
fair view of the coast, with its many windings and its islands, from the
Cape Ann, near Boston, to the Cape Elizabeth, near Casco, the Piscataqua
and Agamenticus rivers; and away in the northwest we could see the peaks
of mountains looking like summer clouds or banks of gray fog. These
mountains lie many leagues off in the wilderness, and are said to be
exceeding lofty.
But I must needs speak of the color of the woods, which did greatly
amaze me, as unlike anything I had ever seen in old England. As far as
mine eyes could look, the mighty wilderness, under the bright westerly
sun, and stirred by a gentle wind, did seem like a garden in its season
of flowering; green, dark, and light, orange, and pale yellow, and
crimson leaves, mingling and interweaving their various hues, in a
manner truly wonderful to behold. It is owing, I am told, to the sudden
frosts, which in this climate do smite the vegetation in its full life
and greenness, so that in the space of a few days the colors of the
leaves are marvellously changed and brightened. These colors did remind
me of the stains of the windows of old churches, and of rich tapestry.
The maples were all aflame with crimson, the walnuts were orange, the
hemlocks and cedars were wellnigh black; while the slender birches, with
their pale yellow leaves, seemed painted upon them as pictures are laid
upon a dark ground. I gazed until mine eyes grew weary, and a sense of
the wonderful beauty of the visible creation, and of God's great
goodness to the children of men therein, did rest upon me, and I said in
mine heart, with one of old: "O Lord! how manifold are thy works in
wisdom hast thou made them all, and the earth is full of thy riches."
October 6.
Walked out to the iron mines, a great hole digged in the rocks, many
years ago, for the finding of iron. Aunt, who was then just settled in
housekeeping, told me many wonderful stories of the man who caused it to
be digged, a famous doctor of physic, and, as it seems, a great wizard
also. He bought a patent of land on the south side of the Saco River,
four miles by the sea, and eight miles up into the main-land of Mr.
Vines, the first owner thereof; and being curious in the seeking and
working of metals, did promise himself great riches in this new country;
but his labors came to nothing, although it was said that Satan helped
him, in the shape of a little blackamoor man-servant, who was his
constant familiar. My aunt says she did often see him, wandering about
among the hills and woods, and along the banks of streams of water,
searching for precious ores and stones. He had even been as far as the
great mountains, beyond Pigwackett, climbing to the top thereof, where
the snows lie wellnigh all the year, his way thither lying through
doleful swamps and lonesome woods. He was a great friend of the
Indians, who held him to be a more famous conjurer than their own
powahs; and, indeed, he was learned in all curious and occult arts,
having studied at the great College of Padua, and travelled in all parts
of the old countries. He sometimes stopped in his travels at my uncle's
house, the little blackamoor sleeping in the barn, for my aunt feared
him, as he was reputed to be a wicked imp. Now it so chanced that on
one occasion my uncle had lost a cow, and had searched the woods many
days for her to no purpose, when, this noted doctor coming in, he
besought him to find her out by his skill and learning; but he did
straightway deny his power to do so, saying he was but a poor scholar,
and lover of science, and had no greater skill in occult matters than
any one might attain to by patient study of natural things. But as mine
uncle would in no wise be so put off, and still pressing him to his art,
he took a bit of coal, and began to make marks on the floor, in a very
careless way.
Then he made a black dot in the midst, and bade my uncle take heed that
his cow was lying dead in that spot; and my uncle looking at it, said he
Could find her, for he now knew where she was, inasmuch as the doctor
had made a fair map of the country round about for many miles. So he
set off, and found the cow lying at the foot of a great tree, close
beside a brook, she being quite dead, which thing did show that he was a
magician of no Mean sort.
My aunt further said, that in those days there was great talk of mines
of gold and precious stones, and many people spent all their substance
in wandering about over the wilderness country seeking a fortune in this
way. There was one old man, who, she remembered, did roam about seeking
for hidden treasures, until he lost his wits, and might be seen filling
a bag with bright stones and shining sand, muttering and laughing to
himself. He was at last missed for some little time, when he was found
lying dead in the woods, still holding fast in his hands his bag of
pebbles.
Mr. Van Valken, the Dutchman, had before Mr. Rishworth, one of the
Commissioners of the Province, charged with being a Papist and a Jesuit.
He bore himself, I am told, haughtily enough, denying the right to call
him in question, and threatening the interference of his friend and
ruler, Sir Edmund, on account of the wrong done him.
My uncle and others did testify that he was a civil and courteous
gentleman, not intermeddling with matters of a religious nature; and
that they did regard it as a foul shame to the town that he should be
molested in this wise. But the minister put them to silence, by
testifying that he (Van Valken) had given away sundry Papist books; and,
one of them being handed to the Court, it proved to be a Latin Treatise,
by a famous Papist, intituled, "The Imitation of Christ." Hereupon, Mr.
Godfrey asked if there was aught evil in the book. The minister said it
was written by a monk, and was full of heresy, favoring both the Quakers
and the Papists; but Mr. Godfrey told him it had been rendered into the
English tongue, and printed some years before in the Massachusetts Bay;
and asked him if he did accuse such men as Mr. Cotton and Mr. Wilson,
and the pious ministers of their day, of heresy. "Nay," quoth the
minister, "they did see the heresy of the book, and, on their condemning
it, the General Court did forbid its sale." Mr. Rishworth hereupon said
he did judge the book to be pernicious, and bade the constable burn it
in the street, which he did. Mr. Van Valken, after being gravely
admonished, was set free; and he now saith he is no Papist, but that he
would not have said that much to the Court to save his life, inasmuch as
he did deny its right of arraigning him. Mr. Godfrey says the treatment
whereof he complains is but a sample of what the people hereaway are to
look for from the Massachusetts jurisdiction. Mr. Jordan, the younger,
says his father hath a copy of the condemned book, of the Boston
printing; and I being curious to see it, he offers to get it for me.
Like unto Newbury, this is an old town for so new a country. It was
made a city in 1642, and took the name of Gorgeana, after that of the
lord proprietor, Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The government buildings are
spacious, but now falling into decay somewhat. There be a few stone
houses, but the major part are framed, or laid up with square logs. The
look of the land a little out of the town is rude and unpleasing, being
much covered with stones and stumps; yet the soil is said to be strong,
and the pear and apple do flourish well here; also they raise rye, oats,
and barley, and the Indian corn, and abundance of turnips, as well as
pumpkins, squashes, and melons. The war with the Indians, and the
troubles and changes of government, have pressed heavily upon this and
other towns of the Maine, so that I am told that there be now fewer
wealthy planters here than there were twenty years ago, and little
increase of sheep or horned cattle. The people do seem to me less sober
and grave, in their carriage and conversation, than they of the
Massachusetts,--hunting, fishing, and fowling more, and working on the
land less. Nor do they keep the Lord's Day so strict; many of the young
people going abroad, both riding and walking, visiting each other, and
diverting themselves, especially after the meetings are over.
October 9.
October 14.
"Why, Thankful, don't you know me? I'm alive; but the folks in the barn
will have it that I 'm a ghost," said the man, springing towards her.
With a great cry of joy and wonder, my cousin caught hold of him: "O
John, you are alive!"
Then she swooned quite away, and we had a deal to do to bring her to
life again. By this time, the house was full of people, and among the
rest came John's old mother and his sisters, and we all did weep and
laugh at the same time. As soon as we got a little quieted, John told
us that he had indeed been grievously stunned by the blow of a tomahawk,
and been left for dead by his comrades, but that after a time he did
come to his senses, and was able to walk; but, falling into the hands of
the Indians, he was carried off to the French Canadas, where, by reason
of his great sufferings on the way, he fell sick, and lay for a long
time at the point of death. That when he did get about again, the
savage who lodged him, and who had taken him as a son, in the place of
his own, slain by the Mohawks, would not let him go home, although he
did confess that the war was at an end. His Indian father, he said, who
was feeble and old, died not long ago, and he had made his way home by
the way of Crown Point and Albany. Supper being ready, we all sat down,
and the minister, who had been sent for, offered thanks for the
marvellous preserving and restoring of the friend who was lost and now
was found, as also for the blessings of peace, by reason of which every
man could now sit under his own vine and fig-tree, with none to molest
or make him afraid, and for the abundance of the harvest, and the
treasures of the seas, and the spoil of the woods, so that our land
might take up the song of the Psalmist: "The Lord doth build up
Jerusalem; he gathereth the outcasts of Israel; he healeth the broken in
heart. Praise thy God, O Zion I For he strengtheneth the bars of thy
gates, he maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest
of wheat." Oh! a sweet supper we had, albeit little was eaten, for we
were filled fall of joy, and needed not other food. When the company
had gone, my dear cousin and her betrothed went a little apart, and
talked of all that had happened unto them during their long separation.
I left them sitting lovingly together in the light of the moon, and a
measure of their unspeakable happiness did go with me to my pillow.
This morning, Thankful came to my bedside to pour out her heart to me.
The poor girl is like a new creature. The shade of her heavy sorrow,
which did formerly rest upon her countenance, hath passed off like a
morning cloud, and her eye hath the light of a deep and quiet joy.
"I now know," said she, "what David meant when he said, 'We are like
them that dream; our mouth is filled with laughter, and our tongue with
singing; the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad!'"
October 18.
A cloudy wet day. Goody Nowell brought me this morning a little parcel
of papers, which she found in the corner of a closet. They are much
stained and smoked, and the mice have eaten them sadly, so that I can
make little of them. They seem to be letters, and some fragments of
what did take place in the life of a young woman of quality from the
North of England. I find frequent mention made of Cousin Christopher,
who is also spoken of as a soldier in the wars with the Turks, and as a
Knight of Jerusalem. Poorly as I can make out the meaning of these
fragments, I have read enough to make my heart sad, for I gather from
them that the young woman was in early life betrothed to her cousin, and
that afterwards, owing, as I judge, to the authority of her parents, she
did part with him, he going abroad, and entering into the wars, in the
belief that she was to wed another. But it seemed that the heart of the
young woman did so plead for her cousin, that she could not be brought
to marry as her family willed her to do; and, after a lapse of years,
she, by chance hearing that Sir Christopher had gone to the New England,
where he was acting as an agent of his kinsman, Sir Ferdinando Gorges,
in respect to the Maine Province, did privately leave her home, and take
passage in a Boston bound ship. How she did make herself known to Sir
Christopher, I find no mention made; but, he now being a Knight of the
Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and vowed to forego marriage, as is the
rule of that Order, and being, moreover, as was thought, a priest or
Jesuit, her great love and constancy could meet with but a sorrowful
return on his part. It does appear, however, that he journeyed to
Montreal, to take counsel of some of the great Papist priests there,
touching the obtaining of a dispensation from the Head of the Church,
so that he might marry the young woman; but, getting no encouragement
therein, he went to Boston to find a passage for her to England again.
He was there complained of as a Papist; and the coming over of his
cousin being moreover known, a great and cruel scandal did arise from
it, and he was looked upon as a man of evil life, though I find nothing
to warrant such a notion, but much to the contrary thereof. What became
of him and the young woman, his cousin, in the end, I do not learn.
One small parcel did affect me even unto tears. It was a paper
containing some dry, withered leaves of roses, with these words written
on it "To Anna, from her loving cousin, Christopher Gardiner, being the
first rose that hath blossomed this season in the College garden. St.
Omer's, June, 1630." I could but think how many tears had been shed
over this little token, and how often, through long, weary years, it did
call to mind the sweet joy of early love, of that fairest blossom of the
spring of life of which it was an emblem, alike in its beauty and its
speedy withering.
There be moreover among the papers sundry verses, which do seem to have
been made by Sir Christopher; they are in the Latin tongue, and
inscribed to his cousin, bearing date many years before the twain were
in this country, and when he was yet a scholar at the Jesuits' College
of St. Omer's, in France. I find nothing of a later time, save the
verses which I herewith copy, over which there are, in a woman's
handwriting, these words:
"VERSES
1.
"Ere down the blue Carpathian hills
The sun shall fall again,
Farewell this life and all its ills,
Farewell to cell and chain
2.
"These prison shades are dark and cold,
But darker far than they
The shadow of a sorrow old
Is on mine heart alway.
3.
"For since the day when Warkworth wood
Closed o'er my steed and I,--
An alien from my name and blood,--
A weed cast out to die;
4.
"When, looking back, in sunset light
I saw her turret gleam,
And from its window, far and white,
Her sign of farewell stream;
5.
"Like one who from some desert shore
Does home's green isles descry,
And, vainly longing, gazes o'er
The waste of wave and sky,
6.
"So, from the desert of my fate,
Gaze I across the past;
And still upon life's dial-plate
The shade is backward cast
7.
"I've wandered wide from shore to shore,
I've knelt at many a shrine,
And bowed me to the rocky floor
Where Bethlehem's tapers shine;
8.
"And by the Holy Sepulchre
I've pledged my knightly sword,
To Christ his blessed Church, and her
The Mother of our Lord!
9.
"Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife
How vain do all things seem!
My soul is in the past, and life
To-day is but a dream.
10.
"In vain the penance strange and long,
And hard for flesh to bear;
The prayer, the fasting, and the thong,
And sackcloth shirt of hair:
11.
"The eyes of memory will not sleep,
Its ears are open still,
And vigils with the past they keep
Against or with my will.
12.
"And still the loves and hopes of old
Do evermore uprise;
I see the flow of locks of gold,
The shine of loving eyes.
13.
"Ah me! upon another's breast
Those golden locks recline;
I see upon another rest
The glance that once was mine!
14.
"'O faithless priest! O perjured knight!'
I hear the master cry,
15.
"'The Church of God is now my spouse,
And thou the bridegroom art;
Then let the burden of thy vows
Keep down thy human heart.'
16.
"In vain!--This heart its grief must know,
Till life itself hath ceased,
And falls beneath the self-same blow
The lover and the priest!
17.
"O pitying Mother! souls of light,
And saints and martyrs old,
Pray for a weak and sinful knight,
A suffering man uphold.
18.
"Then let the Paynim work his will,
Let death unbind my chain,
Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill
The sunset falls again!"
Young Mr. Jordan spent yesterday and last night with us. He is a goodly
youth, of a very sweet and gentle disposition; nor doth he seem to me to
lack spirit, although his father (who liketh not his quiet ways and easy
temper, so contrary to his own, and who is sorely disappointed in that
he hath chosen the life of a farmer to that of a minister, for which he
did intend him) often accuseth him of that infirmity. Last night we had
much pleasant discourse touching the choice he hath made; and when I
told him that perhaps he might have become a great prelate in the
Church, and dwelt in a palace, and made a great lady of our cousin;
whereas now I did see no better prospect for him than to raise corn for
his wife to make pudding of, and chop wood to boil her kettle, he
laughed right merrily, and said he should never have gotten higher than
a curate in a poor parish; and as for Polly, he was sure she was more at
home in making puddings than in playing the fine lady.
"See, now," said Polly to me, "how hard he is upon us poor unlearned
folk."
"Nay, to tell the truth," said he, turning towards me, "your cousin here
is to be held not a little accountable for my present inclinations; for
she it was who did confirm and strengthen them. While I had been busy
over books, she had been questioning the fields and the woods; and, as
if the old fables of the poets were indeed true, she did get answers
from them, as the priestesses and sibyls did formerly from the rustling
of leaves and trees, and the sounds of running waters; so that she could
teach me much concerning the uses and virtues of plants and shrubs, and
of their time of flowering and decay; of the nature and habitudes of
wild animals and birds, the changes of the air, and of the clouds and
winds. My science, so called, had given me little more than the names
of things which to her were familiar and common. It was in her company
that I learned to read nature as a book always open, and full of
delectable teachings, until my poor school-lore did seem undesirable and
tedious, and the very chatter of the noisy blackbirds in the spring
meadows more profitable and more pleasing than the angry disputes and
the cavils and subtleties of schoolmen and divines."
My cousin blushed, and, smiling through her moist eyes at this language
of her beloved friend, said that I must not believe all he said; for,
indeed, it was along of his studies of the heathen poets that he had
first thought of becoming a farmer. And she asked him to repeat some of
the verses which he had at his tongue's end. He laughed, and said he
did suppose she meant some lines of Horace, which had been thus
Englished:--
We were up betimes in the morning, which was bright and pleasant. Uncle
soon found a friend of his, a Mr. Weare, who, with his wife, was to go
to his home, at Hampton, that day, and who did kindly engage to see me
thus far on my way. At about eight of the clock we got upon our horses,
the woman riding on a pillion behind her husband. Our way was for some
miles through the woods,--getting at times a view of the sea, and
passing some good, thriving plantations. The woods in this country are
by no means like those of England, where the ancient trees are kept
clear of bushes and undergrowth, and the sward beneath them is shaven
clean and close; whereas here they be much tangled with vines, and the
dead boughs and logs which have fallen, from their great age or which
the storms do beat off, or the winter snows and ices do break down.
Here, also, through the thick matting of dead leaves, all manner of
shrubs and bushes, some of them very sweet and fair in their flowering,
and others greatly prized for their healing virtues, do grow up
plenteously. In the season of them, many wholesome fruits abound in the
woods, such as blue and black berries. We passed many trees, well
loaded with walnuts and oilnuts, seeming all alive, as it were, with
squirrels, striped, red, and gray, the last having a large, spreading
tail, which Mr. Weare told me they do use as a sail, to catch the wind,
that it may blow them over rivers and creeks, on pieces of bark, in some
sort like that wonderful shell-fish which transformeth itself into a
boat, and saileth on the waves of the sea. We also found grapes, both
white and purple, hanging down in clusters from the trees, over which
the vines did run, nigh upon as large as those which the Jews of old
plucked at Eschol. The air was sweet and soft, and there was a clear,
but not a hot sun, and the chirping of squirrels, and the noise of
birds, and the sound of the waves breaking on the beach a little
distance off, and the leaves, at every breath of the wind in the tree-
tops, whirling and fluttering down about me, like so many yellow and
scarlet-colored birds, made the ride wonderfully pleasant and
entertaining.
Mr. Weare, on the way, told me that there was a great talk of the
bewitching of Goodman Morse's house at Newbury, and that the case of
Caleb Powell was still before the Court, he being vehemently suspected
of the mischief. I told him I thought the said Caleb was a vain,
talking man, but nowise of a wizard. The thing most against him, Mr.
Weare said, was this: that he did deny at the first that the house was
troubled by evil spirits, and even went so far as to doubt that such
things could be at all. "Yet many wiser men than Caleb Powell do deny
the same," I said. "True," answered he; "but, as good Mr. Richardson,
of Newbury, well saith, there have never lacked Sadducees, who believe
not in angel or spirit." I told the story of the disturbance at
Strawberry Bank the night before, and how so silly a thing as a rolling
pumpkin did greatly terrify a whole household; and said I did not doubt
this Newbury trouble was something very like it. Hereupon the good
woman took the matter up, saying she had been over to Newbury, and had
seen with her own eyes, and heard with her own ears; and that she could
say of it as the Queen of Sheba did of Solomon's glory, "The half had
not been told her." She then went on to tell me of many marvellous and
truly unaccountable things, so that I must needs think there is an
invisible hand at work there.
We reached Hampton about one hour before noon; and riding up the road
towards the meeting-house, to my great joy, Uncle Rawson, who had
business with the Commissioners then sitting, came out to meet me,
bidding me go on to Mr. Weare's house, whither he would follow me when
the Court did adjourn. He came thither accordingly, to sup and lodge,
bringing with him Mr. Pike the elder, one of the magistrates, a grave,
venerable man, the father of mine old acquaintance, Robert. Went in the
evening with Mistress Weare and her maiden sister to see a young girl in
the neighborhood, said to be possessed, or bewitched; but for mine own
part I did see nothing in her behavior beyond that of a vicious and
spoiled child, delighting in mischief. Her grandmother, with whom she
lives, lays the blame on an ill-disposed woman, named Susy Martin,
living in Salisbury. Mr. Pike, who dwells near this Martin, saith she
is no witch, although an arrant scold, as was her mother before her; and
as for the girl, he saith that a birch twig, smartly laid on, would cure
her sooner than the hanging of all the old women in the Colony.
Mistress Weare says this is not the first time the Evil Spirit hath been
at work in Hampton; for they did all remember the case of Goody
Marston's child, who was, from as fair and promising an infant as one
would wish to see, changed into the likeness of an ape, to the great
grief and sore shame of its parents; and, moreover, that when the child
died, there was seen by more than one person a little old woman in a
blue cloak, and petticoat of the same color, following on after the
mourners, and looking very like old Eunice Cole, who was then locked
fast in Ipswich jail, twenty miles off. Uncle Rawson says he has all
the papers in his possession touching the trial of this Cole, and will
let me see them when we get back to Newbury. There was much talk on
this matter, which so disturbed my fancy that I slept but poorly. This
afternoon we go over to Newbury, where, indeed, I do greatly long to be
once more.
Cousin Rebecca gone to Boston, and not expected home until next week.
The house seems lonely without her. R. Pike looked in upon us this
morning, telling us that there was a rumor in Boston, brought by way of
the New York Colony, that a great Papist Plot had been discovered in
England, and that it did cause much alarm in London and thereabout.
R. Pike saith he doubts not the Papists do plot, it being the custom of
their Jesuits so to do; but that, nevertheless, it would be no strange
thing if it should be found that the Bishops and the Government did set
this rumor a-going, for the excuse and occasion of some new persecutions
of Independents and godly people.
October 27.
It being cold weather, and a damp easterly wind keeping me within doors,
I have been looking over with uncle his papers about the Hampton witch,
Eunice Cole, who was twice tried for her mischiefs; and I incline to
copy some of them, as I know they will be looked upon as worthy of,
record by my dear Cousin Oliver and mine other English friends. I find
that as long ago as the year 1656, this same Eunice Cole was complained
of, and many witnesses did testify to her wickedness. Here followeth
some of the evidence on the first trial:--
"The deposition of Goody Marston and Goodwife Susanna Palmer, who, being
sworn, sayeth, that Goodwife Cole saith that she was sure there was a
witch in town, and that she knew where he dwelt, and who they are, and
that thirteen years ago she knew one bewitched as Goodwife Marston's
child was, and she was sure that party was bewitched, for it told her
so, and it was changed from a man to an ape, as Goody Marston's child
was, and she had prayed this thirteen year that God would discover that
witch. And further the deponent saith not.
"Taken on oath before the Commissioners of Hampton, the 8th of the 2nd
mo., 1656.
"WILLIAM FULLER.
"HENRY DOW.
"Vera copea:
"THOS. BRADBURY, Recorder.
"Thomas Philbrick testifieth that Goody Cole told him that if any of his
calves did eat of her grass, she hoped it would poison them; and it fell
out that one never came home again, and the other coming home died soon
after.
"Henry Morelton's wife and Goodwife Sleeper depose that, talking about
Goody Cole and Marston's child, they did hear a great scraping against
the boards of the window, which was not done by a cat or dog.
"Thomas Coleman's wife testifies that Goody Cole did repeat to another
the very words which passed between herself and her husband, in their
own house, in private; and Thomas Ormsby, the constable of Salisbury,
testifies, that when he did strip Eunice Cole of her shift, to be
whipped, by the judgment of the Court at Salisbury, he saw a witch's
mark under her left breast. Moreover, one Abra. Drake doth depose and
say, that this Goody Cole threatened that the hand of God would be
against his cattle, and forthwith two of his cattle died, and before the
end of summer a third also."
About five years ago, she was again presented by the Jury for the
Massachusetts jurisdiction, for having "entered into a covenant with the
Devil, contrary to the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown
and dignity, the laws of God and this jurisdiction"; and much testimony
was brought against her, tending to show her to be an arrant witch. For
it seems she did fix her evil eye upon a little maid named Ann Smith, to
entice her to her house, appearing unto her in the shape of a little old
woman, in a blue coat, a blue cap, and a blue apron, and a white
neckcloth, and presently changing into a dog, and running up a tree, and
then into an eagle flying in the air, and lastly into a gray cat,
speaking to her, and troubling her in a grievous manner. Moreover, the
constable of the town of Hampton testifies, that, having to supply Goody
Cole with diet, by order of the town, she being poor, she complained
much of him, and after that his wife could bake no bread in the oven
which did not speedily rot and become loathsome to the smell, but the
same meal baked at a neighbor's made good and sweet bread; and, further,
that one night there did enter into their chamber a smell like that of
the bewitched bread, only more loathsome, and plainly diabolical in its
nature, so that, as the constable's wife saith, "she was fain to rise in
the night and desire her husband to go to prayer to drive away the
Devil; and he, rising, went to prayer, and after that, the smell was
gone, so that they were not troubled with it." There is also the
testimony of Goodwife Perkins, that she did see, on the Lord's day,
while Mr. Dalton was preaching, an imp in the shape of a mouse, fall out
the bosom of Eunice Cole down into her lap. For all which, the County
Court, held at Salisbury, did order her to be sent to the Boston Jail,
to await her trial at the Court of Assistants. This last Court, I learn
from mine uncle, did not condemn her, as some of the evidence was old,
and not reliable. Uncle saith she was a wicked old woman, who had been
often whipped and set in the ducking-stool, but whether she was a witch
or no, he knows not for a certainty.
November 8.
This morning the weather is raw and cold, the ground frozen, and some
snow fell before sunrise. A little time ago, Dr. Russ, who was walking
in the garden, came in a great haste to the window where Rebecca and I
were sitting, bidding us come forth. So, we hurrying out, the good man
bade us look whither he pointed, and to! a flock of wild geese,
streaming across the sky, in two great files, sending down, as it were,
from the clouds, their loud and sonorous trumpetings, "Cronk, cronk,
cronk!" These birds, the Doctor saith, do go northward in March to
hatch their broods in the great bogs and on the desolate islands, and
fly back again when the cold season approacheth. Our worthy guest
improved the occasion to speak of the care and goodness of God towards
his creation, and how these poor birds are enabled, by their proper
instincts, to partake of his bounty, and to shun the evils of adverse
climates. He never looked, he said, upon the flight of these fowls,
without calling to mind the query which was of old put to Job: "Doth the
hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south? Doth
the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high?"
Dr. Russ preached yesterday, having for his text 1 Corinthians, chap.
xiii. verse 5: "Charity seeketh not her own." He began by saying that
mutual benevolence was a law of nature,--no one being a whole of
himself, nor capable of happily subsisting by himself, but rather a
member of the great body of mankind, which must dissolve and perish,
unless held together and compacted in its various parts by the force of
that common and blessed law. The wise Author of our being hath most
manifestly framed and fitted us for one another, and ordained that
mutual charity shall supply our mutual wants and weaknesses, inasmuch
as no man liveth to himself, but is dependent upon others, as others be
upon him. It hath been said by ingenious men, that in the outward world
all things do mutually operate upon and affect each other; and that it
is by the energy of this principle that our solid earth is supported,
and the heavenly bodies are made to keep the rhythmic harmonies of their
creation, and dispense upon us their benign favors; and it may be said,
that a law akin to this hath been ordained for the moral world,--mutual
benevolence being the cement and support of families, and churches, and
states, and of the great community and brotherhood of mankind. It doth
both make and preserve all the peace, and harmony, and beauty, which
liken our world in some small degree to heaven, and without it all
things would rush into confusion and discord, and the earth would become
a place of horror and torment, and men become as ravening wolves,
devouring and being devoured by one another.
Charity is the second great commandment, upon which hang all the Law
and the Prophets; and it is like unto the first, and cannot be separated
from it; for at the great day of recompense we shall be tried by these
commandments, and our faithfulness unto the first will be seen and
manifested by our faithfulness unto the last. Yea, by our love of one
another the Lord will measure our love of himself. "Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto
me." The grace of benevolence is therefore no small part of our
meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light; it is the temper of
heaven; the air which the angels breathe; an immortal grace,--for when
faith which supporteth us here, and hope which is as an anchor to the
tossed soul, are no longer needed, charity remaineth forever, for it is
native in heaven, and partaketh of the divine nature, for God himself is
love.
"We do all," he continued, "seek after happiness, but too often blindly
and foolishly. The selfish man, striving to live for himself, shutteth
himself up to partake of his single portion, and marvelleth that he
cannot enjoy it. The good things he hath laid up for himself fail to
comfort him; and although he hath riches, and wanteth nothing for his
soul of all that he desireth, yet hath he not power to partake thereof.
They be as delicates poured upon a mouth shut up, or as meats set upon a
grave. But he that hath found charity to be the temper of happiness,
which doth put the soul in a natural and easy condition, and openeth it
to the solaces of that pure and sublime entertainment which the angels
do spread for such as obey the will of their Creator, hath discovered a
more subtle alchemy than any of which the philosophers did dream,--for
he transmuteth the enjoyments of others into his own, and his large and
open heart partaketh of the satisfaction of all around him. Are there
any here who, in the midst of outward abundance, are sorrowful of
heart,--who go mourning on their way from some inward discomfort,---Who
long for serenity of spirit, and cheerful happiness, as the servant
earnestly desireth the shadow? Let such seek out the poor and forsaken,
they who have no homes nor estates, who are the servants of sin and evil
habits, who lack food for both the body and the mind. Thus shall they,
in rememering others, forget themselves; the pleasure they afford to
their fellow-creatures shall come back larger and fuller unto their own
bosoms, and they shall know of a truth how much the more blessed it is
to give than to receive. In love and compassion, God hath made us
dependent upon each other, to the end that by the use of our affections
we may find true happiness and rest to our souls. He hath united us so
closely with our fellows, that they do make, as it were, a part of our
being, and in comforting them we do most assuredly comfort ourselves.
Therein doth happiness come to us unawares, and without seeking, as the
servant who goeth on his master's errand findeth pleasant fruits and
sweet flowers overhanging him, and cool fountains, which he knew not of,
gushing up by the wayside, for his solace and refreshing."
The minister then spake of the duty of charity towards even the sinful
and froward, and of winning them by love and good will, and making even
their correction and punishment a means of awakening them to repentance,
and the calling forth of the fruits meet for it. He also spake of self-
styled prophets and enthusiastic people, who went about to cry against
the Church and the State, and to teach new doctrines, saying that
oftentimes such were sent as a judgment upon the professors of the
truth, who had the form of godliness only, while lacking the power
thereof; and that he did believe that the zeal which had been manifested
against such had not always been enough seasoned with charity. It did
argue a lack of faith in the truth, to fly into a panic and a great rage
when it was called in question; and to undertake to become God's
avengers, and to torture and burn heretics, was an error of the Papists,
which ill became those who had gone out from among them. Moreover, he
did believe that many of these people, who had so troubled the Colony of
late, were at heart simple and honest men and women, whose heads might
indeed be unsound, but who at heart sought to do the will of God; and,
of a truth, all could testify to the sobriety and strictness of their
lives, and the justice of their dealings in outward things. He spake
also somewhat of the Indians, who, he said, were our brethren, and
concerning whom we would have an account to give at the Great Day. The
hand of these heathen people had been heavy upon the Colonies, and many
had suffered from their cruel slaughterings, and the captivity of
themselves and their families. Here the aged minister wept, for he
doubtless thought of his son, who was slain in the war; and for a time
the words did seem to die in his throat, so greatly was he moved. But
he went on to say, that since God, in his great and undeserved mercy,
had put an end to the war, all present unkindness and hard dealing
towards he poor benighted heathen was an offence in the eyes of Him who
respecteth not the persons of men, but who regardeth with an equal eye
the white and the red men, both being the workmanship of His hands. It
is our blessed privilege to labor to bring them to a knowledge of the
true God, whom, like the Athenians, some of them do ignorantly worship;
while the greater part, as was said of the heathen formerly, do not,
out of the good pings that are seen, know Him that is; neither by
considering the works do they acknowledge the workmaster, but deem the
fire or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the
violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods who govern the
world.
Finally, he did exhort all to keep watch over their own spirits, and to
remember that what measure they do mete to others shall be measured to
them again; to lay aside all wrath, and malice, and evil-speaking; to
bear one another's burdens, and so make this Church in the wilderness
beautiful and comely, an example to the world of that peace and good
will to men, which the angels sang of at the birth of the blessed
Redeemer.
I have been the more careful to give the substance of Mr. Russ's sermon,
as nearly as I can remember it, forasmuch as it hath given offence to
some who did listen to it. Deacon Dole saith it was such a discourse as
a Socinian or a Papist might have preached, for the great stress it laid
upon works; and Goodwife Matson, a noisy, talking woman,--such an one,
no doubt, as those busybodies whom Saint Paul did rebuke for
forwardness, and command to keep silence in the church,--says the
preacher did go out of his way to favor Quakers, Indians, and witches;
and that the Devil in Goody Morse's house was no doubt well pleased with
the discourse. R. Pike saith he does no wise marvel at her complaints;
for when she formerly dwelt at the Marblehead fishing-haven, she was one
of the unruly women who did break into Thompson's garrison-house, and
barbarously put to death two Saugus Indians, who had given themselves up
for safe keeping, and who had never harmed any, which thing was a great
grief and scandal to all well-disposed people. And yet this woman, who
scrupled not to say that she would as lief stick an Indian as a hog, and
who walked all the way from Marblehead to Boston to see the Quaker woman
hung, and did foully jest over her dead body, was allowed to have her
way in the church, Mr. Richardson being plainly in fear of her ill
tongue and wicked temper.
November 13.
The Quaker maid, Margaret Brewster, came this morning, inquiring for the
Doctor, and desiring him to visit a sick man at her father's house, a
little way up the river; whereupon he took his staff and went with her.
On his coming back, he said he must do the Quakers the justice to say,
that, with all their heresies and pestilent errors of doctrine, they
were a kind people; for here was Goodman Brewster, whose small estate
had been wellnigh taken from him in fines, and whose wife was a weak,
ailing woman, who was at this time kindly lodging and nursing a poor,
broken-down soldier, by no means likely to repay him, in any sort. As
for the sick man, he had been hardly treated in the matter of his wages,
while in the war, and fined, moreover, on the ground that he did profane
the holy Sabhath; and though he had sent a petition to the Honorable
Governor and Council, for the remission of the same, it had been to no
purpose. Mr. Russ said he had taken a copy of this petition, with the
answer thereto, intending to make another application himself to the
authorities; for although the petitioner might have been blamable, yet
his necessity did go far to excuse it. He gave me the papers to copy,
which are as followeth:--
"To the Hon. the Governor and Council, now sitting in Boston, July 30,
1676. The Petition of Jonathan Atherton humbly showeth:
Went yesterday to the haunted house with Mr. Russ and Mr. Richardson,
Rebecca and Aunt Rawson being in the company. Found the old couple in
much trouble, sitting by the fire, with the Bible open before them, and
Goody Morse weeping. Mr. Richardson asked Goodman Morse to tell what he
had seen and heard in the house; which he did, to this effect: That
there had been great and strange noises all about the house, a banging
of doors, and a knocking on the boards, and divers other unaccountable
sounds; that he had seen his box of tools turn over of itself, and the
tools fly about the room; baskets dropping down the chimney, and the
pots hanging over the fire smiting against each other; and, moreover,
the irons on the hearth jumping into the pots, and dancing on the table.
Goodwife Morse said that her bread-tray would upset of its own accord,
and the great woollen wheel would contrive to turn itself upside down,
and stand on its end; and that when she and the boy did make the beds,
the blankets would fly off as fast as they put them on, all of which the
boy did confirm. Mr. Russ asked her if she suspected any one of the
mischief; whereupon she said she did believe it was done by the seaman
Powell, a cunning man, who was wont to boast of his knowledge in
astrology and astronomy, having been brought tip under one Norwood,
who is said to have studied the Black Art. He had wickedly accused her
grandson of the mischief, whereas the poor boy had himself suffered
greatly from the Evil Spirit, having been often struck with stones and
bits of boards, which were flung upon him, and kept awake o' nights by
the diabolical noises. Goodman Morse here said that Powell, coming in,
and pretending to pity their lamentable case, told them that if they
would let him have the boy for a day or two, they should be free of the
trouble while he was with him; and that the boy going with him, they had
no disturbance in that time; which plainly showed that this Powell had
the wicked spirits in his keeping, and could chain them up, or let them
out, as he pleased.
Now, while she was speaking, we did all hear a great thumping on the
ceiling, and presently a piece of a board flew across the room against
the chair on which Mr. Richardson was sitting; whereat the two old
people set up a dismal groaning, and the boy cried out, "That's the
witch!" Goodman Morse begged of Mr. Richardson to fall to praying,
which he presently did; and, when he had done, he asked Mr. Russ to
follow him, who sat silent and musing a little while, and then prayed
that the worker of the disturbance, whether diabolical or human, might
be discovered and brought to light. After which there was no noise
while we staid. Mr. Russ talked awhile with the boy, who did stoutly
deny what Caleb Powell charged upon him, and showed a bruise which he
got from a stick thrown at him in the cow-house. When we went away,
Mr. Richardson asked Mr. Russ what he thought of it. Mr. Russ said,
the matter had indeed a strange look, but that it might be,
nevertheless, the work of the boy, who was a cunning young rogue, and
capable beyond his years. Mr. Richardson said he hoped his brother was
not about to countenance the scoffers and Sadducees, who had all along
tried to throw doubt upon the matter. For himself, he did look upon it
as the work of invisible demons, and an awful proof of the existence of
such, and of the deplorable condition of all who fall into their bands;
moreover, he did believe that God would overrule this malice of the
Devil for good, and make it a means of awakening sinners and lukewarm
church-members to a sense of their danger.
Last night, brother Leonard, who is studying with the learned Mr. Ward,
the minister at Haverbill, came down, in the company of the worshipful
Major Saltonstall, who hath business with Esquire Dummer and other
magistrates of this place. Mr. Saltonstall's lady, who is the daughter
of Mr. Ward, sent by her husband and my brother a very kind and pressing
invitation to Rebecca and myself to make a visit to her; and Mr.
Saltonstall did also urge the matter strongly. So we have agreed to go
with them the day after to-morrow. Now, to say the truth, I am not
sorry to leave Newbury at this time, for there is so much talk of the
bewitched house, and such dismal stories told of the power of invisible
demons, added to what I did myself hear and see yesterday, that I can
scarce sleep for the trouble and disquiet this matter causeth. Dr.
Russ, who left this morning, said, in his opinion, the less that was
said and done about the witchcraft the better for the honor of the
Church and the peace of the neighborhood; for it might, after all, turn
out to be nothing more than an "old wife's fable;" but if it were indeed
the work of Satan, it could, he did believe, do no harm to sincere and
godly people, who lived sober and prayerful lives, and kept themselves
busy in doing good. The doers of the Word seldom fell into the snare of
the Devil's enchantments. He might be compared to a wild beast, who
dareth not to meddle with the traveller who goeth straightway on his
errand, but lieth in wait for such as loiter and fall asleep by the
wayside. He feared, he said, that some in our day were trying to get a
great character to themselves, as the old monks did, by their skill in
discerning witcherafts, and their pretended conflicts with the Devil in
his bodily shape; and thus, while they were seeking to drive the enemy
out of their neighbors' houses, they were letting him into their own
hearts, in the guise of deceit and spiritual pride. Repentance and
works meet for it were the best exorcism; and the savor of a good life
driveth off Evil Spirits, even as that of the fish of Tobit, at
Ecbatana, drove the Devil from the chamber of the bride into the
uttermost parts of Egypt. "For mine own part," continued the worthy
man, "I believe the Lord and Master, whom I seek to serve, is over all
the powers of Satan; therefore do I not heed them, being afraid only of
mine own accusing conscience and the displeasure of God."
November 19.
Leonard and Mr. Richardson, talking upon the matter of the ministry,
disagreed not a little. Mr. Richardson says my brother hath got into
his head many unscriptural notions, and that he will never be of service
in the Church until he casts them off. He saith, moreover, that he
shall write to Mr. Ward concerning the errors of the young man. His
words troubling me, I straightway discoursed my brother as to the points
of difference between them; but he, smiling, said it was a long story,
but that some time he would tell me the substance of the disagreement,
bidding me have no fear in his behalf, as what had displeasured Mr.
Richardson had arisen only from tenderness of conscience.
Left Newbury day before yesterday. The day cold, but sunshiny, and not
unpleasant. Mr. Saltonstall's business calling him that way, we crossed
over the ferry to Salisbury, and after a ride of about an hour, got to
the Falls of the Powow River, where a great stream of water rushes
violently down the rocks, into a dark wooded valley, and from thence
runs into the Merrimac, about a mile to the southeast. A wild sight it
was, the water swollen by the rains of the season, foaming and dashing
among the rocks and the trees, which latter were wellnigh stripped of
their leaves. Leaving this place, we went on towards Haverhill. Just
before we entered that town, we overtook an Indian, with a fresh wolf's
skin hanging over his shoulder. As soon as he saw us, he tried to hide
himself in the bushes; but Mr. Saltonstall, riding up to him, asked him
if he did expect Haverhill folks to pay him forty shillings for killing
that Amesbury wolf? "How you know Amesbury wolf?" asked the Indian.
"Oh," said Mr. Saltonstall, "you can't cheat us again, Simon. You must
be honest, and tell no more lies, or we will have you whipped for your
tricks." The Indian thereupon looked sullen enough, but at length he
begged Mr. Saltonstall not to tell where the wolf was killed, as the
Amesbury folks did now refuse to pay for any killed in their town; and,
as he was a poor Indian, and his squaw much sick, and could do no work,
he did need the money. Mr. Saltonstall told him he would send his wife
some cornmeal and bacon, when he got home, if he would come for them,
which he promised to do.
When we had ridden off, and left him, Mr. Saltonstall told us that this
Simon was a bad Indian, who, when in drink, was apt to be saucy and
quarrelsome; but that his wife was quite a decent body for a savage,
having long maintained herself and children and her lazy, cross husband,
by hard labor in the cornfields and at the fisheries.
Haverhill lieth very pleasantly on the river-side; the land about hilly
and broken, but of good quality. Mr. Saltonstall liveth in a stately
house for these parts, not far from that of his father-in-law, the
learned Mr. Ward. Madam, his wife, is a fair, pleasing young woman,
not unused to society, their house being frequented by many of the first
people hereabout, as well as by strangers of distinction from other
parts of the country. We had hardly got well through our dinner (which
was abundant and savory, being greatly relished by our hunger), when two
gentlemen came riding up to the door; and on their coming in, we found
them to be the young Doctor Clark, of Boston, a son of the old Newbury
physician, and a Doctor Benjamin Thompson, of Roxbury, who I hear is not
a little famous for his ingenious poetry and witty pieces on many
subjects. He was, moreover, an admirer of my cousin Rebecca; and on
learning of her betrothal to Sir Thomas did write a most despairing
verse to her, comparing himself to all manner of lonesome things, so
that when Rebecca showed it to me, I told her I did fear the poor young
gentleman would put an end to himself, by reason of his great sorrow and
disquiet; whereat she laughed merrily, bidding me not fear, for she knew
the writer too well to be troubled thereat, for he loved nobody so well
as himself, and that under no provocation would he need the Apostle's
advice to the jailer, "Do thyself no harm." All which I found to be
true,--he being a gay, witty man, full of a fine conceit of himself,
which is not so much to be marvelled at, as he hath been greatly
flattered and sought after.
The excellent Mr. Ward spent the evening with us; a pleasant, social old
man, much beloved by his people. He told us a great deal about the
early settlement of the town, and of the grievous hardships which many
did undergo the first season, from cold, and hunger, and sickness. He
thought, however, that, with all their ease and worldly prosperity, the
present generation were less happy and contented than their fathers; for
there was now a great striving to outdo each other in luxury and gay
apparel; the Lord's day was not so well kept as formerly; and the
drinking of spirits and frequenting of ordinaries and places of public
resort vastly increased. Mr. Saltonstall said the war did not a little
demoralize the people, and that since the soldiers cause back, there had
been much trouble in Church and State. The General Court, two years
ago, had made severe laws against the provoking evils of the times:
profaneness, Sabbath-breaking, drinking, and revelling to excess, loose
and sinful conduct on the part of the young and unmarried, pride in
dress, attending Quakers' meetings, and neglect of attendance upon
divine worship; but these laws had never been well enforced; and he
feared too many of the magistrates were in the condition of the Dutch
Justice in the New York Province, who, when a woman was brought before
him charged with robbing a henroost, did request his brother on the
bench to pass sentence upon her; for, said he, if I send her to the
whipping post, the wench will cry out against me as her accomplice.
Doctor Clark said his friend Doctor Thompson had written a long piece on
this untoward state of our affairs, which he hoped soon to see in print,
inasmuch as it did hold the looking-glass to the face of this
generation, and shame it by a comparison with that of the generation
which has passed. Mr. Ward said he was glad to hear of it, and hoped
his ingenious friend had brought the manuscript with him; whereupon, the
young gentleman said he did take it along with him, in the hope to
benefit it by Mr. Ward's judgment and learning, and with the leave of
the company he would read the Prologue thereof. To which we all
agreeing, he read what follows, which I copy from his book:--
Mr. Ward was much pleased with the verses, saying that they would do
honor to any writer.
Rebecca thought the lines concerning the long grace at meat happy, and
said she was minded of the wife of the good Mr. Ames, who prided herself
on her skill in housewifery and cookery; and on one occasion, seeing a
nice pair of roasted fowls growing cold under her husband's long grace,
was fain to jog his elbow, telling him that if he did not stop soon, she
feared they would have small occasion for thankfulness for their spoiled
dinner. Mr. Ward said he was once travelling in company with Mr.
Phillips of Rowley, and Mr. Parker of Newbury, and stopping all night at
a poor house near the sea-shore, the woman thereof brought into the room
for their supper a great wooden tray, full of something nicely covered
up by a clean linen cloth. It proved to be a dish of boiled clams, in
their shells; and as Mr. Phillips was remarkable in his thanks for aptly
citing passages of Scripture with regard to whatsoever food was upon the
table before him, Mr. Parker and himself did greatly wonder what he
could say of this dish; but he, nothing put to it, offered thanks that
now, as formerly, the Lord's people were enabled to partake of the
abundance of the seas, and treasures hid in the sands. "Whereat," said
Mr. Ward, "we did find it so hard to keep grave countenances, that our
good hostess was not a little disturbed, thinking we were mocking her
poor fare; and we were fain to tell her the cause of our mirth, which
was indeed ill-timed."
Mr. Saltonstall told another story of old Mr. Ward, which made us all
merry. There was a noted Antinomian, of Boston, who used to go much
about the country disputing with all who would listen to him, who,
coming to Ipswich one night, with another of his sort with him, would
fain have tarried with Mr. Ward; but he told them that he had scarce hay
and grain enough in his barn for the use of his own cattle, and that
they would do well to take their horses to the ordinary, where they
would be better cared for. But the fellow, not wishing to be so put
off, bade him consider what the Scripture said touching the keeping of
strangers, as some had thereby entertained angels unawares. "True,
my friend," said Mr. Ward, "but we don't read that the angels came
a-horseback!"
The evening passed away in a very pleasant and agreeable manner. We had
rare nuts, and apples, and pears, of Mr. Saltonstall's raising,
wonderfully sweet and luscious. Our young gentlemen, moreover, seemed
to think the wine and ale of good quality; for, long after we had gone
to our beds, we could hear them talking and laughing in the great hall
below, notwithstanding that Mr. Ward, when he took leave, bade Doctor
Thompson take heed to his own hint concerning the:
to which the young wit replied, that there was Scripture warrant for his
drinking, inasmuch as the command was, to give wine to those that be of
heavy heart. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his
misery no more; and, for his part, he had been little better than
miserable ever since he heard of Rebecca's betrothal. A light, careless
man, but of good parts, and as brave a talker as I have heard since I
have been in the Colony.
November 24.
Mr. Ward's negro girl Dinah came for me yesterday, saying that her
master did desire to see me. So, marvelling greatly what he wanted,
I went with her, and was shown into the study. Mr. Ward said he had
sent for me to have some discourse in regard to my brother Leonard, who
he did greatly fear was likely to make shipwreck of the faith; and that
Mr. Richardson had written him concerning the young man, telling him
that he did visit the Quakers when at Newbury, and even went over to
their conventicle at Hampton, on the Lord's day, in the company of the
Brewster family, noted Quakers and ranters. He had the last evening had
some words with the lad, but with small satisfaction. Being sorely
troubled by this account, I begged him to send for Leonard, which he
did, and, when he did come into the room, Mr. Ward told him that he
might see by the plight of his sister (for I was in tears) what a great
grief he was like to bring upon his family and friends, by running out
into heresies. Leonard said he was sorry to give trouble to any one,
least of all to his beloved sister; that he did indeed go to the
Quakers' meeting, on one occasion, to judge for himself concerning this
people, who are everywhere spoken against; and that he must say he did
hear or see nothing in their worship contrary to the Gospel. There was,
indeed, but little said, but the words were savory and Scriptural. "But
they deny the Scriptures," cried Mr. Ward, "and set above them what they
call the Light, which I take to be nothing better than their own
imaginations." "I do not so understand them," said Leonard; "I think
they do diligently study the Scripture, and seek to conform their lives
to its teachings; and for the Light of which they speak, it is borne--
witness to not only in the Bible, but by the early fathers and devout
men of all ages. I do not go to excuse the Quakers in all that they
have done, nor to defend all their doctrines and practices, many of
which I see no warrant in Scripture for, but believe to be pernicious
and contrary to good order; yet I must need look upon them as a sober,
earnest-seeking people, who do verily think themselves persecuted for
righteousness' sake." Hereupon Mr. Ward struck his cane smartly on the
floor, and, looking severely at my brother, bade him beware how he did
justify these canting and false pretenders. "They are," he said,
"either sad knaves, or silly enthusiasts,--they pretend to Divine
Revelation, and set up as prophets; like the Rosicrucians and Gnostics,
they profess to a knowledge of things beyond what plain Scripture
reveals. The best that can be said of them is, that they are befooled
by their own fancies, and the victims of distempered brains and ill
habits of body. Then their ranting against the Gospel order of the
Church, and against the ministers of Christ, calling us all manner of
hirelings, wolves, and hypocrites; belching out their blasphemies
against the ordinances and the wholesome laws of the land for the
support of a sound ministry and faith, do altogether justify the sharp
treatment they have met with; so that, if they have not all lost their
ears, they may thank our clemency rather than their own worthiness to
wear them. I do not judge of them ignorantly, for I have dipped into
their books, where, what is not downright blasphemy and heresy, is
mystical and cabalistic. They affect a cloudy and canting style, as if
to keep themselves from being confuted by keeping themselves from being
understood. Their divinity is a riddle, a piece of black art; the
Scripture they turn into allegory and parabolical conceits, and thus
obscure and debauch the truth. Argue with them, and they fall to
divining; reason with them, and they straightway prophesy. Then their
silent meetings, so called, in the which they do pretend to justify
themselves by quoting Revelation, 'There was silence in heaven;' whereas
they might find other authorities,--as, for instance in Psalm 115, where
hell is expressed by silence, and in the Gospel, where we read of a dumb
devil. As to persecuting these people, we have been quite too
charitable to them, especially of late, and they are getting bolder in
consequence; as, for example, the behavior of that shameless young wench
in Newbury, who disturbed Brother Richardson's church with her antics
not long ago. She should have been tied to the cart-tail and whipped
all the way to Rhode Island."
"Do you speak of Margaret Brewster?" asked Leonard, his face all
a-crimson, and his lip quivering. "Let me tell you, Mr. Ward, that you
greatly wrong one of Christ's little ones." And he called me to testify
to her goodness and charity, and the blamelessness of her life.
"Don't talk to me of the blameless life of such an one," said Mr. Ward,
in aloud, angry tone; "it is the Devil's varnish for heresy. The
Manichees, and the Pelagians, and Socinians, all did profess great
strictness and sanctity of life; and there never was heretic yet, from
they whom the Apostle makes mention of, who fasted from meats, giving
heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, down to the Quakers,
Dippers, and New Lights of this generation who have not, like their
fathers of old, put on the shape of Angels of Light, and lived severe
and over-strict lives. I grant that the Quakers are honest in their
dealings, making great show of sobriety and self-denial, and abhor the
practice of scandalous vices, being temperate, chaste, and grave in
their behavior, and thereby they win upon unstable souls, and make
plausible their damnable heresies. I warn you, young man, to take heed
of them, lest you be ensnared and drawn into their way."
My brother was about to reply, but, seeing Mr. Ward so moved and vexed,
I begged of him to say no more; and, company coming in, the matter was
dropped, to my great joy. I went back much troubled and disquieted for
my brother's sake.
Leonard hath left Mr. Ward, and given up the thought of fitting for the
ministry. This will be a heavy blow for his friends in England. He
tells me that Mr. Ward spake angrily to him after I left, but that, when
he come to part with him, the old man wept over him, and prayed that the
Lord would enable him to see his error, and preserve him from the
consequences thereof. I have discoursed with my brother touching his
future course of life, and he tells me he shall start in a day or two to
visit the Rhode Island, where he hath an acquaintance, one Mr. Easton,
formerly of Newbury. His design is to purchase a small plantation
there, and betake himself to fanning, of the which he hath some little
knowledge, believing that he can be as happy and do as much good to his
fellow-creatures in that employment as in any other.
Here Cousin Rebecca, who was by, looking up with that sweet archness
which doth so well become her, queried with him whether he did think to
live alone on his plantation like a hermit, or whether he had not his
eye upon a certain fair-haired young woman, as suitable to keep him
company. Whereat he seemed a little disturbed; but she bade him not
think her against his prospect, for she had known for some weeks that he
did favor the Young Brewster woman, who, setting aside her enthusiastic
notions of religion, was worthy of any man's love; and turning to me,
she begged of me to look at the matter as she did, and not set myself
against the choice of my brother, which, in all respects save the one
she had spoken of, she could approve with all her heart. Leonard goes
back with us o-morrow to Newbury, so I shall have a chance of knowing
how matters stand with him. The thought of his marrying a Quaker would
have been exceedingly grievous to me a few months ago; but this Margaret
Brewster hath greatly won upon me by her beauty, gentleness, and her
goodness of heart; and, besides, I know that she is much esteemed by the
best sort of people in her neighborhood.
Doctor Thompson left this morning, but his friend Doctor Clark goes with
us to Newbury. Rebecca found in her work-basket, after he had gone,
some verses, which amused us not a little, and which I here copy.
Doctor Clark, on hearing this read, told Rebecca she need not take its
melancholy to heart, for he could assure her that there was no danger of
his friend's acting on her account the sad part of the lover in the old
song of Barbara Allen. As a medical man, he could safely warrant him to
be heart-whole; and the company could bear him witness, that the poet
himself seemed very little like the despairing one depicted in his
verses.
The Indian Simon calling this forenoon, Rebecca and I went into the
kitchen to see him. He looks fierce and cruel, but he thanked Madain
Saltonstall for her gifts of food and clothing, and, giving her in
return a little basket wrought of curiously stained stuff, he told her
that if there were more like her, his heart would not be so bitter.
I ventured to ask him why he felt thus; whereupon he drew himself up,
and, sweeping about him with his arms, said: "This all Indian land. The
Great Spirit made it for Indians. He made the great river for them, and
birch-trees to make their canoes of. All the fish in the ponds, and all
the pigeons and deer and squirrels he made for Indians. He made land
for white men too; but they left it, and took Indian's land, because it
was better. My father was a chief; he had plenty meat and corn in his
wigwam. But Simon is a dog. When they fight Eastern Indians, I try to
live in peace; but they say, Simon, you rogue, you no go into woods to
hunt; you keep at home. So when squaw like to starve, I shoot one of
their hogs, and then they whip me. Look!" And he lifted the blanket
off from his shoulder, and showed the marks of the whip thereon.
"Well, well, Simon," said Mr. Saltonstall, "you do know that our people
then were much frightened by what the Indians had done in other places,
and they feared you would join them. But it is all over now, and you
have all the woods to yourself to range in; and if you would let alone
strong drink, you would do well."
"Who makes strong drink?" asked the Indian, with an ugly look. "Who
takes the Indian's beaver-skins and corn for it? Tell me that,
Captain."
So saying, he put his pack on his back, and calling a poor, lean dog,
that was poking his hungry nose into Madam's pots and kettles, he went
off talking to himself.
NEWBURY, December 6.
We got back from Haverhill last night, Doctor Clark accompanying us,
he having business in Newbury. When we came up to the door, Effie met
us with a shy look, and told her mistress that Mrs. Prudence (uncle's
spinster cousin) had got a braw auld wooer in the east room; and surely
enough we found our ancient kinswoman and Deacon Dole, a widower of
three years' standing, sitting at the supper-table. We did take note
that the Deacon had on a stiff new coat; and as for Aunt Prudence (for
so she was called in the family), she was clad in her bravest, with a
fine cap on her head. They both did seem a little disturbed by our
coming, but plates being laid for us, we sat down with them. After
supper, Rebecca had a fire kindled in uncle's room, whither we did
betake ourselves; and being very merry at the thought of Deacon Dole's
visit, it chanced to enter our silly heads that it would do no harm to
stop the clock in the entry a while, and let the two old folks make a
long evening of it. After a time Rebecca made an errand into the east
room, to see how matters went, and coming back, said the twain were
sitting on the same settle by the fire, smoking--a pipe of tobacco
together. Moreover, our foolish trick did work well, for Aunt Prudence
coming at last into the entry to look at the clock, we heard her tell
the Deacon that it was only a little past eight, when in truth it was
near ten. Not long after there was a loud knocking at the door, and as
Effie had gone to bed, Rebecca did open it, when, whom did she see but
the Widow Hepsy Barnet, Deacon Dole's housekeeper, and with her the
Deacon's son, Moses, and the minister, Mr. Richardson, with a lantern in
his hand! "Dear me," says the woman, looking very dismal, "have you
seen anything of the Deacon?" By this time we were all at the door, the
Deacon and Aunt Prudence among the rest, when Moses, like a great lout
as he is, pulled off his woollen cap and tossed it up in the air, crying
out, "There, Goody Barnet, did n't I tell ye so! There's father now!"
And the widow, holding up both her hands, said she never did in all her
born days see the like of this, a man of the Deacon's years and station
stealing away without letting folks know where to look for him; and then
turning upon poor Mrs. Prudence, she said she had long known that some
folks were sly and artful, and she was glad Mr. Richardson was here to
see for himself. Whereupon Aunt Prudence, in much amazement, said, it
was scarce past eight, as they might see by the clock; but Mr.
Richardson, who could scarce keep a grave face, pulling out his watch,
said it was past ten, and bade her note that the clock was stopped. He
told Deacon Dole, that seeing Goody Barnet so troubled about him, he had
offered to go along with her a little way, and that he was glad to find
that the fault was in the clock. The Deacon, who had stood like one in
a maze, here clapped on his hat, and snatched up his cane and went off,
looking as guilty as if he had been caught a-housebreaking, the widow
scolding him all the way. Now, as we could scarce refrain from
laughing, Mr. Richardson, who tarried a moment, shook his head at
Rebecca, telling her he feared by her looks she was a naughty girl,
taking pleasure in other folk's trouble. We did both feel ashamed and
sorry enough for our mischief, after it was all over; and poor Mistress
Prudence is so sorely mortified, that she told Rebecca this morning not
to mention Deacon Dole's name to her again, and that Widow Hepsy is
welcome to him, since he is so mean-spirited as to let her rule him
as she doth.
December 8.
She said this with so much tenderness of spirit, and withal with such an
engaging sweetness of look and voice, that I was greatly moved, and,
pressing her in my arms, I kissed her, and bade her look upon me as her
dear sister.
The family pressing us, we stayed to supper, and sitting down in silence
at the table, I was about to speak to my brother, but he made a sign to
check me, and I held my peace, although not then knowing wherefore. So
we all sat still for a little space of time, which I afterwards found is
the manner of these people at their meat. The supper was plain, but of
exceeding good relish: warm rye loaves with butter and honey, and bowls
of sweet milk, and roasted apples. Goodwife Brewster, who appeared much
above her husband (who is a plain, unlearned man) in her carriage and
discourse, talked with us very pleasantly, and Margaret seemed to grow
more at ease, the longer we stayed.
On our way back we met Robert Pike, who hath returned from the eastward.
He said Rebecca Rawson had just told him how matters stood with Leonard,
and that he was greatly rejoiced to hear of his prospect. He had known
Margaret Brewster from a child, and there was scarce her equal in these
parts for sweetness of temper and loveliness of person and mind; and,
were she ten times a Quaker, he was free to say this in her behalf.
I am more and more confirmed in the belief that Leonard hath not done
unwisely in this matter, and do cheerfully accept of his choice,
believing it to be in the ordering of Him who doeth all things well.
It wanteth but two hours to the midnight, and the end of the year. The
family are all abed, and I can hear nothing save the crackling of the
fire now burning low on the hearth, and the ticking of the clock in the
corner. The weather being sharp with frost, there is no one stirring in
the streets, and the trees and bushes in the yard, being stripped of
their leaves, look dismal enough above the white snow with which the
ground is covered, so that one would think that all things must needs
die with the year. But, from my window, I can see the stars shining
with marvellous brightness in the clear sky, and the sight thereof doth
assure me that God still watcheth over the work of His hands, and that
in due season He will cause the flowers to appear on the earth, and the
time of singing-birds to come, and-the voice of the turtle to be heard
in the land. And I have been led, while alone here, to think of the
many mercies which have been vouchsafed unto me in my travels and
sojourn in a strange land, and a sense of the wonderful goodness of God
towards me, and they who are dear unto me, both here and elsewhere, hath
filled mine heart with thankfulness; and as of old time they did use to
set up stones of memorial on the banks of deliverance, so would I at
this season set up, as it were, in my poor journal, a like pillar of
thanksgiving to the praise and honor of Him who hath so kindly cared for
His unworthy handmaid.
Have just got back from Reading, a small town ten or twelve miles out of
Boston, whither I went along with mine Uncle and Aunt Rawson, and many
others, to attend the ordination of Mr. Brock, in the place of the
worthy Mr. Hough, lately deceased. The weather being clear, and the
travelling good, a great concourse of people got together. We stopped
at the ordinary, which we found wellnigh filled; but uncle, by dint of
scolding and coaxing, got a small room for aunt and myself, with a clean
bed, which was more than we had reason to hope for. The ministers, of
whom there were many and of note (Mr. Mather and Mr. Wilson of Boston,
and Mr. Corbet of Ipswich, being among them), were already together at
the house of one of the deacons. It was quite a sight the next morning
to see the people coming in from the neighboring towns, and to note
their odd dresses, which were indeed of all kinds, from silks and
velvets to coarsest homespun woollens, dyed with hemlock, or oil-nut
bark, and fitting so ill that, if they had all cast their clothes into a
heap, and then each snatched up whatsoever coat or gown came to hand,
they could not have suited worse. Yet they were all clean and tidy, and
the young people especially did look exceeding happy, it being with them
a famous holiday. The young men came with their sisters or their
sweethearts riding behind them on pillions; and the ordinary and all the
houses about were soon noisy enough with merry talking and laughter.
The meeting-house was filled long before the services did begin. There
was a goodly show of honorable people in the forward seats, and among
them that venerable magistrate, Simon Broadstreet, who acteth as Deputy-
Governor since the death of Mr. Leverett; the Honorable Thomas Danforth;
Mr. William Brown of Salem; and others of note, whose names I do not
remember, all with their wives and families, bravely apparelled. The
Sermon was preached by Mr. Higginson of Salem, the Charge was given by
Mr. Phillips of Rowley, and the Right Hand of Fellowship by Mr. Corbet
of Ipswich. When we got back to our inn, we found a great crowd of
young roysterers in the yard, who had got Mr. Corbet's negro man, Sam,
on the top of a barrel, with a bit of leather, cut in the shape of
spectacles, astride of his nose, where he stood swinging his arms, and
preaching, after the manner of his master, mimicking his tone and manner
very shrewdly, to the great delight and merriment of the young rogues
who did set him on. We stood in the door a while to hear him, and, to
say the truth, he did wonderfully well, being a fellow of good parts and
much humor. But, just as he was describing the Devil, and telling his
grinning hearers that he was not like a black but a white man, old Mr.
Corbet, who had come up behind him, gave him a smart blow with his cane,
whereupon Sam cried,--
"You rascal," said Mr. Corbet, "get down with you; I'll teach you to
compare me to the Devil."
"Beg pardon, massa!" said Sam, getting down from his pulpit, and rubbing
his shoulder. "How you think Sam know you? He see nothing; he only
feel de lick."
"You shall feel it again," said his master, striking at him a great
blow, which Sam dodged.
"Nay, Brother Corbet," said Mr. Phillips, who was with him, "Sam's
mistake was not so strange after all; for if Satan can transform himself
into an Angel of Light, why not into the likeness of such unworthy
ministers as you and I."
This put the old minister in a good humor, and Sam escaped without
farther punishment than a grave admonition to behave more reverently for
the future. Mr. Phillips, seeing some of his young people in the crowd,
did sharply rebuke them for their folly, at which they were not a little
abashed.
The inn being greatly crowded, and not a little noisy, we were not
unwilling to accept the invitation of the provider of the ordination-
dinner, to sit down with the honored guests thereat. I waited, with
others of the younger class, until the ministers and elderly people had
made an end of their meal. Among those who sat at the second table was
a pert, talkative lad, a son of Mr. Increase Mather, who, although but
sixteen years of age, graduated at the Harvard College last year, and
hath the reputation of good scholarship and lively wit. He told some
rare stories concerning Mr. Brock, the minister ordained, and of the
marvellous efficacy of his prayers. He mentioned, among other things,
that, when Mr. Brock lived on the Isles of Shoals, he persuaded the
people there to agree to spend one day in a month, beside the Sabhath,
in religious worship. Now, it so chanced that there was on one occasion
a long season of stormy, rough weather, unsuitable for fishing; and when
the day came which had been set apart, it proved so exceeding fair, that
his congregation did desire him to put off the meeting, that they might
fish. Mr. Brock tried in vain to reason with them, and show the duty of
seeking first the kingdom of God, when all other things should be added
thereto, but the major part determined to leave the meeting. Thereupon
he cried out after them: "As for you who will neglect God's worship, go,
and catch fish if you can." There were thirty men who thus left, and
only five remained behind, and to these he said: "I will pray the Lord
for you, that you may catch fish till you are weary." And it so fell
out, that the thirty toiled all day, and caught only four fishes; while
the five who stayed at meeting went out, after the worship was over, and
caught five hundred; and ever afterwards the fishermen attended all the
meetings of the minister's appointing. At another time, a poor man, who
had made himself useful in carrying people to meeting in his boat, lost
the same in a storm, and came lamenting his loss to Mr. Brock. "Go
home, honest man," said the minister. "I will mention your case to the
Lord: you will have your boat again to-morrow." And surely enough, the
very next day, a vessel pulling up its anchor near where the boat sank,
drew up the poor man's boat, safe and whole, after it.
We went back to Boston after dinner, but it was somewhat of a cold ride,
especially after the night set in, a keen northerly wind blowing in
great gusts, which did wellnigh benumb us. A little way from Reading,
we overtook an old couple in the road; the man had fallen off his horse,
and his wife was trying to get him up again to no purpose; so young Mr.
Richards, who was with us, helped him up to the saddle again, telling
his wife to hold him carefully, as her old man had drank too much flip.
Thereupon the good wife set upon him with a vile tongue, telling him
that her old man was none other than Deacon Rogers of Wenham, and as
good and as pious a saint as there was out of heaven; and it did ill
become a young, saucy rake and knave to accuse him of drunkenness, and
it would be no more than his deserts if the bears did eat him before he
got to Boston. As it was quite clear that the woman herself had had a
taste of the mug, we left them and rode on, she fairly scolding us out
of hearing. When we got home, we found Cousin Rebecca, whom we did
leave ill with a cold, much better in health, sitting up and awaiting
us.
"You may well weep," said my uncle, "for you have done wickedly. As to
your brother, he will do well to keep where he is in the plantations;
for if he come hither a theeing and thouing of me, I will spare him
never a whit; and if I do not chastise him myself, it will be because
the constable can do it better at the cart-tail. As the Lord lives, I
had rather he had turned Turk!"
The little book which I brought with me from the Maine, it being the
gift of young Mr. Jordan, and which I have kept close hidden in my
trunk, hath been no small consolation to me this day, for it aboundeth
in sweet and goodly thoughts, although he who did write it was a monk.
Especially in my low state, have these words been a comfort to me:--
"What thou canst not amend in thyself or others, bear thou with patience
until God ordaineth otherwise. When comfort is taken away, do not
presently despair. Stand with an even mind resigned to the will of God,
whatever shall befall, because after winter cometh the summer; after the
dark night the day shineth, and after the storm followeth a great calm.
Seek not for consolation which shall rob thee of the grace of penitence;
for all that is high is not holy, nor all that is pleasant good; nor
every desire pure; nor is what is pleasing to us always pleasant in the
sight of God."
January 23.
The weather is bitter cold, and a great snow on the ground. By a letter
from Newbury, brought me by Mr. Sewall, who hath just returned from that
place, I hear that Goodwife Morse hath been bound for trial as a witch.
Mr. Sewall tells me the woman is now in the Boston jail. As to Caleb
Powell, he hath been set at liberty, there being no proof of his evil
practice. Yet inasmuch as he did give grounds of suspicion by boasting
of his skill in astrology and astronomy, the Court declared that he
justly deserves to bear his own shame and the costs of his prosecution
and lodging in jail.
Mr. Sewall tells me that Deacon Dole has just married his housekeeper,
Widow Barnet, and that Moses says he never knew before his father to get
the worst in a bargain.
January 30.
"DEAR FRIEND,--I salute thee with much love from this new country, where
the Lord hath spread a table for us in the wilderness. Here is a goodly
company of Friends, who do seek to know the mind of Truth, and to live
thereby, being held in favor and esteem by the rulers of the land, and
so left in peace to worship God according to their consciences. The
whole country being covered with snow, and the weather being extreme
cold, we can scarce say much of the natural gifts and advantages of our
new home; but it lieth on a small river, and there be fertile meadows,
and old corn-fields of the Indians, and good springs of water, so that I
am told it is a desirable and pleasing place in the warm season. My
soul is full of thankfulness, and a sweet inward peace is my portion.
Hard things are made easy to me; this desert place, with its lonely
woods and wintry snows, is beautiful in mine eyes. For here we be no
longer gazing-stocks of the rude multitude, we are no longer haled from
our meetings, and railed upon as witches and possessed people. Oh, how
often have we been called upon heretofore to repeat the prayer of one
formerly: 'Let me not fall into the hands of man.' Sweet, beyond the
power of words to express, hath been the change in this respect; and in
view of the mercies vouchsafed unto us, what can we do but repeat the
language of David, 'Praise is comely yea, a joyful and pleasant thing it
is to be thankful. It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, to
sing praises unto thy name, O Most High! to show forth thy loving-
kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night.'
"Thou hast doubtless heard that thy dear brother hath been favored to
see the way of truth, according to our persuasion thereof, and hath been
received into fellowship with us. I fear this hath been a trial to
thee; but, dear heart, leave it in the hands of the Lord, whose work I
do indeed count it. Nor needest thou to fear that thy brother's regard
for thee will be lessened thereby, for the rather shall it be increased
by a measure of that Divine love which, so far from destroying, doth but
purify and strengthen the natural affections.
"Think, then, kindly of thy brother, for his love towards thee is very
great; and of me, also, unworthy as I am, for his sake. And so, with
salutations of love and peace, in which my dear mother joins, I remain
thy loving friend, MARGARET BREWSTER.
"The Morse woman, I hear, is in your jail, to be tried for a witch. She
is a poor, weak creature, but I know no harm of her, and do believe her
to be more silly than wicked in the matter of the troubles in her house.
I fear she will suffer much at this cold season in the jail, she being
old and weakly, and must needs entreat thee to inquire into her
condition.
"M. B."
February 10.
Speaking of Goody Morse to-day, Uncle Rawson says she will, he thinks,
be adjudged a witch, as there be many witnesses from Newbury to testify
against her. Aunt sent the old creature some warm blankets and other
necessaries, which she stood much in need of, and Rebecca and I altered
one of aunt's old gowns for her to wear, as she hath nothing seemly of
her own. Mr. Richardson, her minister, hath visited her twice since she
hath been in jail; but he saith she is hardened in her sin, and will
confess nothing thereof.
February 14.
The famous Mr. John Eliot, having business with my uncle, spent the last
night with us, a truly worthy man, who, by reason of his great labors
among the heathen Indians, may be called the chiefest of our apostles.
He brought with him a young Indian lad, the son of a man of some note
among his people, very bright and comely, and handsomely apparelled
after the fashion of his tribe. This lad hath a ready wit, readeth and
writeth, and hath some understanding of Scripture; indeed, he did repeat
the Lord's Prayer in a manner edifying to hear.
The worshipful Major Gookins coming in to sup with us, there was much
discourse concerning the affairs of the Province: both the Major and his
friend Eliot being great sticklers for the rights and liberties of the
people, and exceeding jealous of the rule of the home government, and
in this matter my uncle did quite agree with them. In a special manner
Major Gookins did complain of the Acts of Trade, as injurious to the
interests of the Colony, and which he said ought not to be submitted to,
as the laws of England were bounded by the four seas, and did not justly
reach America. He read a letter which he had from Mr. Stoughton, one of
the agents of the Colony in England, showing how they had been put off
from time to time, upon one excuse or another, without being able to get
a hearing; and now the Popish Plot did so occupy all minds there, that
Plantation matters were sadly neglected; but this much was certain, the
laws for the regulating of trade must be consented to by the
Massachusetts, if we would escape a total breach. My uncle struck his
hand hard on the table at this, and said if all were of his mind they
would never heed the breach; adding, that he knew his rights as a free-
born Englishman, under Magna Charta, which did declare it the privilege
of such to have a voice in the making of laws; whereas the Massachusetts
had no voice in Parliament, and laws were thrust upon them by strangers.
"For mine own part," said Major Gookins, "I do hold our brother Eliot's
book on the Christian Commonwealth, which the General Court did make
haste to condemn on the coming in of the king, to be a sound and
seasonable treatise, notwithstanding the author himself hath in some
sort disowned it."
"I did truly condemn and deny the false and seditious doctrines charged
upon it," said Mr. Eliot, "but for the book itself, rightly taken, and
making allowance for some little heat of discourse and certain hasty
and ill-considered words therein, I have never seen cause to repent.
I quite agree with what my lamented friend and fellow-laborer, Mr.
Danforth, said, when he was told that the king was to be proclaimed at
Boston: 'Whatever form of government may be deduced from Scripture, that
let us yield to for conscience' sake, not forgetting at the same time
that the Apostle hath said, if thou mayest be free use it rather.'"
My uncle said this was well spoken of Mr. Danforth, who was a worthy
gentleman and a true friend to the liberties of the Colony; and he asked
Rebecca to read some ingenious verses writ by him in one of his
almanacs, which she had copied not long ago, wherein he compareth New
England to a goodly tree or plant. Whereupon, Rebecca read them as
followeth:--
After a little time, Rebecca found means to draw the good Mr. Eliot into
some account of his labors and journeys among the Indians, and of their
manner of life, ceremonies, and traditions, telling him that I was a
stranger in these parts, and curious concerning such matters. So he did
address himself to me very kindly, answering such questions as I
ventured to put to him. And first, touching the Powahs, of whom I had
heard much, he said they were manifestly witches, and such as had
familiar spirits; but that, since the Gospel has been preached here,
their power had in a great measure gone from them. "My old friend,
Passaconaway, the Chief of the Merrimac River Indians," said he, "was,
before his happy and marvellous conversion, a noted Powah and wizard.
I once queried with him touching his sorceries, when he said he had done
wickedly, and it was a marvel that the Lord spared his life, and did not
strike him dead with his lightnings. And when I did press him to tell
me how he did become a Powah, he said he liked not to speak of it, but
would nevertheless tell me. His grandmother used to tell him many
things concerning the good and bad spirits, and in a special manner of
the Abomako, or Chepian, who had the form of a serpent, and who was the
cause of sickness and pain, and of all manner of evils. And it so
chanced that on one occasion, when hunting in the wilderness, three
days' journey from home, he did lose his way, and wandered for a long
time without food, and night coming on, he thought he did hear voices of
men talking; but, on drawing near to the place whence the noise came, he
could see nothing but the trees and rocks; and then he did see a light,
as from a wigwam a little way off, but, going towards it, it moved away,
and, following it, he was led into a dismal swamp, full of water, and
snakes, and briers; and being in so sad a plight, he bethought him of
all he had heard of evil demons and of Chepian, who, he doubted not was
the cause of his trouble. At last, coming to a little knoll in the
swamp, he lay down under a hemlock-tree, and being sorely tired, fell
asleep. And he dreamed a dream, which was in this wise:--
"He thought he beheld a great snake crawl up out of the marsh, and stand
upon his tail under a tall maple-tree; and he thought the snake spake to
him, and bade him be of good cheer, for he would guide him safe out of
the swamp, and make of him a great chief and Powah, if he would pray to
him and own him as his god. All which he did promise to do; and when he
awoke in the morning, he beheld before him the maple-tree under which he
had seen the snake in his dream, and, climbing to the top of it, he saw
a great distance off the smoke of a wigwam, towards which he went, and
found some of his own people cooking a plentiful meal of venison. When
he got back to Patucket, he told his dream to his grandmother, who was
greatly rejoiced, and went about from wigwam to wigwam, telling the
tribe that Chepian had appeared to her grandson. So they had a great
feast and dance, and he was thenceforth looked upon as a Powah. Shortly
after, a woman of the tribe falling sick, he was sent for to heal her,
which he did by praying to Chepian and laying his hands upon her; and at
divers other times the Devil helped him in his enchantments and
witcheries."
I asked Mr. Eliot whether he did know of any women who were Powahs.
He confessed he knew none; which was the more strange, as in Christian
countries the Old Serpent did commonly find instruments of his craft
among the women.
To my query as to what notion the heathen had of God and a future state,
he said that, when he did discourse them concerning the great and true
God, who made all things, and of heaven and hell, they would readily
consent thereto, saying that so their fathers had taught them; but when
he spake to them of the destruction of the world by fire, and the
resurrection of the body, they would not hear to it, for they pretend to
hold that the spirit of the dead man goes forthwith, after death, to the
happy hunting-grounds made for good Indians, or to the cold and dreary
swamps and mountains, where the bad Indians do starve and freeze, and
suffer all manner of hardships.
There was, Mr. Eliot told us, a famous Powah, who, coming to Punkapog,
while he was at that Indian town, gave out among the people there that a
little humming-bird did come to him and peck at him when he did aught
that was wrong, and sing sweetly to him when he did a good thing, or
spake the right words; which coming to Mr. Eliot's ear, he made him
confess, in the presence of the congregation, that he did only mean, by
the figure of the bird, the sense he had of right and wrong in his own
mind. This fellow was, moreover, exceeding cunning, and did often ask
questions hard to be answered touching the creation of the Devil, and
the fall of man.
So, after some further discourse, our guests left us, Mr. Eliot kindly
inviting me to visit his Indian congregation near Boston, whereby I
could judge for myself of their condition.
The weather suddenly changing from a warm rain and mist to sharp, clear
cold, the trees a little way from the house did last evening so shine
with a wonderful brightness in the light of the moon, now nigh unto its
full, that I was fain to go out upon the hill-top to admire them. And
truly it was no mean sight to behold every small twig becrusted with
ice, and glittering famously like silver-work or crystal, as the rays of
the moon did strike upon them. Moreover, the earth was covered with
frozen snow, smooth and hard like to marble, through which the long
rushes, the hazels, and mulleins, and the dry blades of the grasses, did
stand up bravely, bedight with frost. And, looking upward, there were
the dark tops of the evergreen trees, such as hemlocks, pines, and
spruces, starred and bespangled, as if wetted with a great rain of
molten crystal. After admiring and marvelling at this rare
entertainment and show of Nature, I said it did mind me of what the
Spaniards and Portuguese relate of the great Incas of Guiana, who had a
garden of pleasure in the Isle of Puna, whither they were wont to betake
themselves when they would enjoy the air of the sea, in which they had
all manner of herbs and flowers, and trees curiously fashioned of gold
and silver, and so burnished that their exceeding brightness did dazzle
the eyes of the beholders.
"Nay," said the worthy Mr. Mather, who did go with us, "it should
rather, methinks, call to mind what the Revelator hath said of the Holy
City. I never look upon such a wonderful display of the natural world
without remembering the description of the glory of that city which
descended out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, and her light
like unto a stone most precious, even like unto a jasper stone, clear as
crystal. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper, and the city
was pure gold like unto clear glass. And the twelve gates were twelve
pearls, every several gate was of one pearl, and the street of the city
was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.
"There never was a king's palace lighted up and adorned like this,"
continued Mr. Mather, as we went homewards. "It seemeth to be Gods
design to show how that He can glorify himself in the work of His hands,
even at this season of darkness and death, when all things are sealed
up, and there be no flowers, nor leaves, nor ruining brooks, to speak of
His goodness and sing forth His praises. Truly hath it been said, Great
things doeth He, which we cannot comprehend. For He saith to the snow,
Be thou on the earth; likewise to the small rain and the great rain of
His strength. He sealeth up the hand of every man, that all men may
know His work. Then the beasts go into their dens, and they remain in
their places. Out of the south cometh the whirlwind, and cold out of
the north. By the breath of God is the frost given, and the breadth of
the waters straitened."
March 10.
I have been now for many days afflicted with a great cold and pleurisy,
although, by God's blessing on the means used, I am wellnigh free from
pain, and much relieved, also, from a tedious cough. In this sickness I
have not missed the company and kind ministering of my dear Cousin
Rebecca, which was indeed a great comfort. She tells me to-day that the
time hath been fixed upon for her marriage with Sir Thomas, which did
not a little rejoice me, as I am to go back to mine own country in their
company. I long exceedingly to see once again the dear friends from whom
I have been separated by many months of time and a great ocean.
Now it had so chanced that at a Keutikaw held the present winter, two
men had been taken ill, and had died the next day; and although Mr.
Eliot, when he was told of it, laid the blame thereof upon their hard
dancing until they were in a great heat, and then running out into the
snow and sharp air to cool themselves, it was thought by many that they
were foully dealt with and poisoned. So two noted old Powahs from
Wauhktukook, on the great river Connecticut, were sent for to discover
the murderers. Then these poor heathen got together in a great wigwam,
where the old wizards undertook, by their spells and incantations, to
consult the invisible powers in the matter. I asked Wauwoonemeen if she
knew how they did practise on the occasion; whereupon she said that none
but men were allowed to be in the wigwam, but that she could hear the
beating of sticks on the ground, and the groans and howlings and dismal
mutterings of the Powahs, and that she, with another young woman,
venturing to peep through a hole in the back of the wigwam, saw a great
many people sitting on the ground, and the two Powahs before the fire,
jumping and smiting their breasts, and rolling their eyes very
frightfully.
"But what came of it?" asked Rebecca. "Did the Evil Spirit whom they
thus called upon testify against himself, by telling who were his
instruments in mischief?"
The girl said she had never heard of any discovery of the poisoners, if
indeed there were such. She told us, moreover, that many of the best
people in the tribe would have no part in the business, counting it
sinful; and that the chief actors were much censured by the ministers,
and so ashamed of it that they drove the Powahs out of the village, the
women and boys chasing them and beating them with sticks and frozen
snow, so that they had to take to the woods in a sorry plight.
We gave the girl some small trinkets, and a fair piece of cloth for an
apron, whereat she was greatly pleased. We were all charmed with her
good parts, sweetness of countenance, and discourse and ready wit, being
satisfied thereby that Nature knoweth no difference between Europe and
America in blood, birth, and bodies, as we read in Acts 17 that God hath
made of one blood all mankind. I was specially minded of a saying of
that ingenious but schismatic man, Mr. Roger Williams, in the little
book which he put forth in England on the Indian tongue:--
One Master O'Shane, an Irish scholar, of whom my cousins here did learn
the Latin tongue, coming in last evening, and finding Rebecca and I
alone (uncle and aunt being on a visit to Mr. Atkinson's), was exceeding
merry, entertaining us rarely with his stories and songs. Rebecca tells
me he is a learned man, as I can well believe, but that he is too fond
of strong drink for his good, having thereby lost the favor of many of
the first families here, who did formerly employ him. There was one
ballad, which he saith is of his own making, concerning the selling of
the daughter of a great Irish lord as a slave in this land, which
greatly pleased me; and on my asking for a copy of it, he brought it to
me this morning, in a fair hand. I copy it in my Journal, as I know
that Oliver, who is curious in such things, will like it.
KATHLEEN.
Spent the afternoon and evening yesterday at Mr. Mather's, with uncle
and aunt, Rebecca and Sir Thomas, and Mr. Torrey of Weymouth, and his
wife; Mr. Thacher, the minister of the South Meeting, and Major Simon
Willard of Concord, being present also. There was much discourse of
certain Antinomians, whose loose and scandalous teachings in respect to
works were strongly condemned, although Mr. Thacher thought there might
be danger, on the other hand, of falling into the error of the
Socinians, who lay such stress upon works, that they do not scruple to
undervalue and make light of faith. Mr. Torrey told of some of the
Antinomians, who, being guilty of scandalous sins, did nevertheless
justify themselves, and plead that they were no longer under the law.
Sir Thomas drew Rebecca and I into a corner of the room, saying he was
a-weary of so much disputation, and began relating somewhat which befell
him in a late visit to the New Haven people. Among other things, he
told us that while he was there, a maid of nineteen years was put upon
trial for her life, by complaint of her parents of disobedience of their
commands, and reviling them; that at first the mother of the girl did
seem to testify strongly against her; but when she had spoken a few
words, the accused crying out with a bitter lamentation, that she should
be destroyed in her youth by the words of her own mother, the woman did
so soften her testimony that the Court, being in doubt upon the matter,
had a consultation with the ministers present, as to whether the accused
girl had made herself justly liable to the punishment prescribed for
stubborn and rebellious children in Deut. xxi. 20, 21. It was thought
that this law did apply specially unto a rebellious son, according to
the words of the text, and that a daughter could not be put to death
under it; to which the Court did assent, and the girl, after being
admonished, was set free. Thereupon, Sir Thomas told us, she ran
sobbing into the arms of her mother, who did rejoice over her as one
raised from the dead, and did moreover mightily blame herself for
putting her in so great peril, by complaining of her disobedience
to the magistrates.
"He was a shining light, indeed," said Mr. Mather, "and, in view of his
loss and that of other worthies in Church and State, we may well say, as
of old, Help, Lord, for the godly man ceaseth!"
Major Willard said that the works of Mr. Johnson did praise him,
especially that monument of his piety and learning, "The History of New
England; or, Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour," wherein he
did show himself in verse and in prose a workman not to be ashamed.
There was a piece which Mr. Johnson writ upon birchen bark at the head
of the Merrimac, during the journey of which he had spoken, which had
never been printed, but which did more deserve that honor than much of
the rhymes with which the land now aboundeth. Mr. Mather said he had
the piece of bark then in his possession, on which Mr. Johnson did
write; and, on our desiring to see it, he brought it to us, and, as we
could not well make out the writing thereon, he read it as followeth:--
The Lord hath blest this wilderness with meadows, streams, and springs,
And like a garden planted it with green and growing things;
And filled the woods with wholesome meats, and eke with fowls the air,
And sown the land with flowers and herbs, and fruits of savor rare.
But here the nations know him not, and come and go the days,
Without a morning prayer to Him, or evening song of praise;
The heathen fish upon the lake, or hunt the woods for meat,
And like the brutes do give no thanks for wherewithal to eat.
Yet God on them His sun and rain doth evermore bestow,
And ripens all their harvest-fields and pleasant fruits also.
For them He makes the deer and moose, for them the fishes swim,
And all the fowls in woods and air are goodly gifts from Him.
Yea, more; for them, as for ourselves, hath Christ a ransom paid,
And on Himself, their sins and ours, a common burden laid.
By nature vessels of God's wrath, 't is He alone can give
To English or to Indians wild the grace whereby we live.
Oh, let us pray that in these wilds the Gospel may be preached,
And these poor Gentiles of the woods may by its truth be reached;
That ransomed ones the tidings glad may sound with joy abroad,
And lonesome Aquedahcan hear the praises of the Lord!
March 18.
"I have heard say his hand was heavy upon these people," I said.
"And well it might be," said the old woman, for more pestilent and
provoking strollers and ranters you shall never find than these same
Quakers. They were such a sore trouble to the Governor, that I do
believe his days were shortened by reason of them. For neither the
jail, nor whipping, nor cropping of ears, did suffice to rid him of
them. At last, when a law was made by the General Court, banishing them
on pain of death, the Governor, coming home from Boston, said that he
now hoped to have peace in the Colony, and that this sharpness would
keep the land free from these troublers. I remember it well, how the
next day he did invite the ministers and chief men, and in what a
pleasant frame he was. In the morning I had mended his best velvet
breeches for him, and he praised my work not a little, and gave me six
shillings over and above my wages; and, says he to me: 'Goody Lake,'
says he, 'you are a worthy woman, and do feel concerned for the good of
Zion, and the orderly carrying of matters in Church and State, and hence
I know you will be glad to hear that, after much ado, and in spite of
the strivings of evil-disposed people, the General Court have agreed
upon a law for driving the Quakers out of the jurisdiction, on pain of
death; so that, if any come after this, their blood be upon their own
heads. It is what I have wrestled with the Lord for this many a month,
and I do count it a great deliverance and special favor; yea, I may
truly say, with David: "Thou hast given me my heart's desire, and hast
not withholden the prayer of my lips. Thy hand shall find out all thine
enemies; thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine
anger; the Lord shall wallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall
devour them." You will find these words, Goody Lake,' says he, 'in the
21st Psalm, where what is said of the King will serve for such as be in
authority at this time.' For you must know, young woman, that the
Governor was mighty in Scripture, more especially in his prayers,
when you could think that he had it all at his tongue's end.
"There was a famous dinner at the Governor's that day, and many guests,
and the Governor had ordered from his cellar some wine, which was a gift
from a Portuguese captain, and of rare quality, as I know of mine own
tasting, when word was sent to the Governor that a man wished to see
him, whom he bid wait awhile. After dinner was over, he went into the
hall, and who should be there but Wharton, the Quaker, who, without
pulling off his hat, or other salutation, cried out: 'John Endicott,
hearken to the word of the Lord, in whose fear and dread I am come.
Thou and thy evil counsellors, the priests, have framed iniquity by law,
but it shall not avail you. Thus saith the Lord, Evil shall slay the
wicked, and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate!' Now, when
the Governor did hear this, he fell, as must needs be, into a rage, and,
seeing me by the door, he bade me call the servants from the kitchen,
which I did, and they running up, he bade them lay hands on the fellow,
and take him away; and then, in a great passion, he called for his
horse, saying he would not rest until he had seen forty stripes save one
laid upon that cursed Quaker, and that he should go to the gallows yet
for his sauciness. So they had him to jail, and the next morning he was
soundly whipped, and ordered to depart the jurisdiction."
I, being curious to know more concerning the Quakers, asked her if she
did ever talk with any of them who were dealt with by the authorities,
and what they said for themselves.
"Oh, they never lacked words," said she, "but cried out for liberty of
conscience, and against persecution, and prophesied all manner of evil
upon such as did put in force the law. Some time about the year '56,
there did come two women of them to Boston, and brought with them
certain of their blasphemous books, which the constables burnt in the
street, as I well remember by this token, that, going near the fire, and
seeing one of the books not yet burnt, I stooped to pick it up, when one
of the constables gave me a smart rap with his staff, and snatched it
away. The women being sent to the jail, the Deputy-Governor, Mr.
Bellingham, and the Council, thinking they might be witches, were for
having them searched; and Madam Bellingham naming me and another woman
to her husband, he sent for us, and bade us go to the jail and search
them, to see if there was any witch-mark on their bodies. So we went,
and told them our errand, at which they marvelled not a little, and one
of them, a young, well-favored woman, did entreat that they might not be
put to such shame, for the jailer stood all the time in the yard,
looking in at the door; but we told them such was the order, and so,
without more ado, stripped them of their clothes, but found nothing save
a mole on the left breast of he younger, into which Goodwife Page thrust
her needle, at which the woman did give a cry as of pain, and the blood
flowed; whereas, if it had been witch's mark, she would not have felt
the prick, for would it have caused blood. So, finding nothing that did
look like witchcraft, we left them; and on being brought before the
Court, Deputy-Governor Bellingham asked us what we had to say concerning
the women. Whereupon Goodwife Page, being the oldest of us, told him
that we did find no appearance of witches upon their bodies, save the
mole on the younger woman's breast (which was but natural), but that
otherwise she was fair as Absalom, who had no blemish from the soles of
his feet to the crown of his head. Thereupon the Deputy-Governor
dismissed us, saying that it might be that the Devil did not want them
for witches, because they could better serve him as Quakers: whereat all
the Court fell to laughing."
"They kept them in jail awhile," said Nurse Lake, "and then sent them
back to England. But the others that followed fared harder,--some
getting whipped at the cart-tail, and others losing their ears. The
hangman's wife showed me once the ears of three of them, which her
husband cut off in the jail that very morning."
"Nay; but they were sturdy knaves and vagabonds," answered Nurse Lake,
"although one of them was the son of a great officer in the Barbadoes,
and accounted a gentleman before he did run out into his evil practices.
But cropping of ears did not stop these headstrong people, and they
still coming, some were put to death. There were three of them to be
hanged at one time. I do remember it well, for it was a clear, warm day
about the last of October, and it was a brave sight to behold. There
was Marshal Michelson and Captain Oliver, with two hundred soldiers
afoot, besides many on horse of our chief people, and among them the
minister, Mr. Wilson, looking like a saint as he was, with a pleasant
and joyful countenance, and a great multitude of people, men, women, and
children, not only of Boston, but from he towns round about. I got
early on to the ground, and when they were going to the gallows I kept
as near to the condemned ones as I could. There were two young, well-
favored men, and a woman with gray hairs. As they walked hand in band,
the woman in the middle, the Marshal, who was riding beside them, and
who was a merry drolling man, asked her if she was n't ashamed to walk
hand in hand between two young men; whereupon, looking upon him
solemnly, she said she was not ashamed, for this was to her an hour of
great joy, and that no eye could see, no ear hear, no tongue speak, and
no heart understand, the sweet incomes and refreshings of the Lord's
spirit, which she did then feel. This she spake aloud, so that all
about could hear, whereat Captain Oliver bid the drums to beat and drown
her voice. Now, when they did come to the gallows ladder, on each side
of which the officers and chief people stood, the two men kept on their
hats, as is the ill manner of their sort, which so provoked Mr. Wilson,
the minister, that he cried out to them: 'What! shall such Jacks as you
come before authority with your hats on?' To which one of them said:
'Mind you, it is for not putting off our hats that we are put to death.'
The two men then went up the ladder, and tried to speak; but I could not
catch a word, being outside of the soldiers, and much fretted and
worried by the crowd. They were presently turned off, and then the
woman went up the ladder, and they tied her coats down to her feet, and
put the halter on her neck, and, lacking a handkerchief to tie over her
face, the minister lent the hangman his. Just then your Uncle Rawson
comes a-riding up to the gallows, waving his hand, and crying out,
'Stop! she is reprieved!' So they took her down, although she said she
was ready to die as her brethren did, unless they would undo their
bloody laws. I heard Captain Oliver tell her it was for her son's sake
that she was spared. So they took her to jail, and after a time sent
her back to her husband in Rhode Island, which was a favor she did in no
wise deserve; but good Governor Endicott, much as he did abhor these
people, sought not their lives, and spared no pains to get them
peaceably out the country; but they were a stubborn crew, and must needs
run their necks into the halter, as did this same woman; for, coming
back again, under pretence of pleading for the repeal of the laws
against Quakers, she was not long after put to death. The excellent Mr.
Wilson made a brave ballad on the hanging, which I have heard the boys
in the street sing many a time."
A great number, both men and women, were--"whipped and put in the
stocks," continued the woman, "and I once beheld two of them, one a
young and the other an aged woman, in a cold day in winter, tied to the
tail of a cart, going through Salem Street, stripped to their waists as
naked as they were born, and their backs all covered with red whip-
marks; but there was a more pitiful case of one Hored Gardner, a young
married woman, with a little child and her nurse, who, coming to
Weymouth, was laid hold of and sent to Boston, where both were whipped,
and, as I was often at the jail to see the keeper's wife, it so chanced
that I was there at the time. The woman, who was young and delicate,
when they were stripping her, held her little child in her arms; and
when the jailer plucked it from her bosom, she looked round anxiously,
and, seeing me, said, 'Good woman, I know thou 't have pity on the
babe,' and asked me to hold it, which I did. She was then whipped with
a threefold whip, with knots in the ends, which did tear sadly into her
flesh; and, after it was over, she kneeled down, with her back all
bleeding, and prayed for them she called her persecutors. I must say I
did greatly pity her, and I spoke to the jailer's wife, and we washed
the poor creature's back, and put on it some famous ointment, so that
she soon got healed."
Aunt Rawson now coming in, the matter was dropped; but, on my speaking
to her of it after Nurse Lake had left, she said it was a sore trial to
many, even those in authority, and who were charged with the putting in
force of the laws against these people. She furthermore said, that
Uncle Rawson and Mr. Broadstreet were much cried out against by the
Quakers and their abettors on both sides of the water, but they did but
their duty in the matter, and for herself she had always mourned over
the coming of these people, and was glad when the Court did set any of
them free. When the woman was hanged, my aunt spent the whole day with
Madam Broadstreet, who was so wrought upon that she was fain to take to
her bed, refusing to be comforted, and counting it the heaviest day of
her life.
"Looking out of her chamber window," said Aunt Rawson, "I saw the people
who had been to the hanging coming back from the training-field; and
when Anne Broadstreet did hear the sound of their feet in the road, she
groaned, and said that it did seem as if every foot fell upon her heart.
Presently Mr. Broadstreet came home, bringing with him the minister,
Mr. John Norton. They sat down in the chamber, and for some little time
there was scarce a word spoken. At length Madam Broadstreet, turning to
her husband and laying her hand on his arm, as was her loving manner,
asked him if it was indeed all over. 'The woman is dead,' said he; 'but
I marvel, Anne, to see you so troubled about her. Her blood is upon her
own head, for we did by no means seek her life. She hath trodden under
foot our laws, and misused our great forbearance, so that we could do no
otherwise than we have done. So under the Devil's delusion was she,
that she wanted no minister or elder to pray with her at the gallows,
but seemed to think herself sure of heaven, heeding in no wise the
warnings of Mr. Norton, and other godly people.'
"'Did she rail at, or cry out against any?' asked his wife. 'Nay, not to
my hearing,' he said, 'but she carried herself as one who had done no
harm, and who verily believed that she had obeyed the Lord's will.'
"'This is very dreadful,' said she, 'and I pray that the death of that
poor misled creature may not rest heavy upon us.'
"Hereupon Mr. Norton lifted up his head, which had been bowed down upon
his hand; and I shall never forget how his pale and sharp features did
seem paler than their wont, and his solemn voice seemed deeper and
sadder. 'Madam!' he said, 'it may well befit your gentleness and
sweetness of heart to grieve over the sufferings even of the froward and
ungodly, when they be cut off from the congregation of the Lord, as His
holy and just law enjoineth, for verily I also could weep for the
condemned one, as a woman and a mother; and, since her coming, I have
wrestled with the Lord, in prayer and fasting, that I might be His
instrument in snatching her as a brand from the burning. But, as a
watchman on the walls of Zion, when I did see her casting poison into
the wells of life, and enticing unstable souls into the snares and
pitfalls of Satan, what should I do but sound an alarm against her? And
the magistrate, such as your worthy husband, who is also appointed of
God, and set for the defence of the truth, and the safety of the Church
and the State, what can he do but faithfully to execute the law of God,
which is a terror to evil doers? The natural pity which we feel must
give place unto the duty we do severally owe to God and His Church, and
the government of His appointment. It is a small matter to be judged of
man's judgment, for, though certain people have not scrupled to call me
cruel and hard of heart, yet the Lord knows I have wept in secret places
over these misguided men and women.
"'It is appointed unto all to die,' said Mr. Norton, 'and after death
cometh the judgment. The death of these poor bodies is a bitter thing,
but the death of the soul is far more dreadful; and it is better that
these people should suffer than that hundreds of precious souls should
be lost through their evil communication. The care of the dear souls of
my flock lieth heavily upon me, as many sleepless nights and days of
fasting do bear witness. I have not taken counsel of flesh and blood in
this grave matter, nor yielded unto the natural weakness of my heart.
And while some were for sparing these workers of iniquity, even as Saul
spared Agag, I have been strengthened, as it were, to hew them in pieces
before the Lord in Gilgal. O madam, your honored husband can tell you
what travail of spirit, what sore trials, these disturbers have cost us;
and as you do know in his case, so believe also in mine, that what we
have done hath been urged, not by hardness and cruelty of heart, but
rather by our love and tenderness towards the Lord's heritage in this
land. Through care and sorrow I have grown old before my time; few and
evil have been the days of my pilgrimage, and the end seems not far off;
and though I have many sins and shortcomings to answer for, I do humbly
trust that the blood of the souls of the flock committed to me will not
then be found upon my garments.'
"Ah, me! I shall never forget these words of that godly man," continued
my aunt, "for, as he said, his end was not far off. He died very
suddenly, and the Quakers did not scruple to say that it was God's
judgment upon him for his severe dealing with their people. They even
go so far as to say that the land about Boston is cursed because of the
hangings and whippings, inasmuch as wheat will not now grow here, as it
did formerly, and, indeed, many, not of their way, do believe the same
thing."
April 24.
A vessel from London has just come to port, bringing Rebecca's dresses
for the wedding, which will take place about the middle of June, as I
hear. Uncle Rawson has brought me a long letter from Aunt Grindall,
with one also from Oliver, pleasant and lively, like himself. No
special news from abroad that I hear of. My heart longs for Old England
more and more.
May 2.
After riding about two hours we came upon an Indian camp, in the midst
of a thick wood of maples. Here were six spacious wigwams; but the men
were away, except two very old and infirm ones. There were five or six
women, and perhaps twice as many children, who all came out to see us.
They brought us some dried meat, as hard nigh upon as chips of wood, and
which, although hungry, I could feel no stomach for; but I bought of one
of the squaws two great cakes of sugar, made from the sap of the maples
which abound there, very pure and sweet, and which served me instead of
their unsavory meat and cakes of pounded corn, of which Mr. Easton and
his sister did not scruple to partake. Leaving them, we had a long and
hard ride to a place called Winnicinnit, where, to my great joy, we
found a comfortable house and Christian people, with whom we tarried.
The next day we got to the Plantations; and about noon, from the top of
a hill, Mr. Easton pointed out the settlement where my brother dwelt,--
a fair, pleasant valley, through which ran a small river, with the
houses of the planters on either side. Shortly after, we came to a new
frame house, with a great oak-tree left standing on each side of the
gate, and a broad meadow before it, stretching down to the water. Here
Mr. Easton stopped; and now, who should come hastening down to us but my
new sister, Margaret, in her plain but comely dress, kindly welcoming
me; and soon my brother came up from the meadow, where he was busy with
his men. It was indeed a joyful meeting.
The next day being the Sabhath, I went with my brother and his wife to
the meeting, which was held in a large house of one of their Quaker
neighbors. About a score of grave, decent people did meet there,
sitting still and quiet for a pretty while, when one of their number,
a venerable man, spake a few words, mostly Scripture; then a young
woman, who, I did afterwards learn, had been hardly treated by the
Plymouth people, did offer a few words of encouragement and exhortation
from this portion of the 34th Psalm: "The angel of the Lord encampeth
round about them that fear him, and delivereth them." When the meeting
was over, some of the ancient women came and spake kindly to me,
inviting me to their houses. In the evening certain of these people
came to my brother's, and were kind and loving towards me. There was,
nevertheless, a gravity and a certain staidness of deportment which I
could but ill conform unto, and I was not sorry when they took leave.
My Uncle Rawson need not fear my joining with them; for, although I do
judge them to be a worthy and pious people, I like not their manner of
worship, and their great gravity and soberness do little accord with my
natural temper and spirits.
May 16.
Yesterday came the Governor of the Rhode Island, Nicholas Easton, the
father of John, with his youngest daughter Mary, as fair and as ladylike
a person as I have seen for many a day. Both her father and herself do
meet with the "Friends," as they call themselves, at their great house
on the Island, and the Governor sometimes speaks therein, having, as one
of the elders here saith of him, "a pretty gift in the ministry." Mary,
who is about the age of my brother's wife, would fain persuade us to go
back with them on the morrow to the Island, but Leonard's business will
not allow it, and I would by no means lose his company while I tarry in
these parts, as I am so soon to depart for home, where a great ocean
will separate us, it may be for many years. Margaret, who hath been to
the Island, saith that the Governor's house is open to all new-comers,
who are there entertained with rare courtesy, he being a man of
substance, having a great plantation, with orchards and gardens, and
a stately house on an hill over-looking the sea on either hand, where,
six years ago, when the famous George Fox was on the Island, he did
entertain and lodge no less than fourscore persons, beside his own
family and servants.
Now, while I did ponder these lines, hearing a step in the leaves, I
looked up, and behold there was an old Indian close beside me; and,
being much affrighted, I gave a loud cry, and ran towards the house.
The old man laughed at this, and, calling after me, said he would not
harm me; and Leonard, hearing my cries, now coming up, bade me never
fear the Indian, for he was a harmless creature, who was well known to
him. So he kindly saluted the old man, asking me to shake hands with
him, which I did, when he struck across the field to a little cleared
spot on the side of the hill. My brother bidding me note his actions,
I saw him stoop down on his knees, with his head to the ground, for some
space of time, and then, getting up, he stretched out his hands towards
the southwest, as if imploring some one whom I could not see. This he
repeated for nigh upon half an hour, when he came back to the house,
where he got some beer and bread to eat, and a great loaf to carry away.
He said but little until he rose to depart, when he told my brother that
he had been to see the graves of his father and his mother, and that he
was glad to find them as he did leave them the last year; for he knew
that the spirits of the dead would be sore grieved, if the white man's
hoe touched their bones.
My brother promised him that the burial-place of his people should not
be disturbed, and that he would find it as now, when he did again visit
it.
"Me never come again," said the old Indian. "No. Umpachee is very old.
He has no squaw; he has no young men who call him father. Umpachee is
like that tree;" and he pointed, as he spoke, to a birch, which stood
apart in the field, from which the bark had fallen, and which did show
no leaf nor bud.
My brother hereupon spake to him of the great Father of both white and
red men, and of his love towards them, and of the measure of light which
he had given unto all men, whereby they might know good from evil, and
by living in obedience to which they might be happy in this life and in
that to come; exhorting him to put his trust in God, who was able to
comfort and sustain him in his old age, and not to follow after lying
Powahs, who did deceive and mislead him.
"My young brother's talk is good," said the old man. "The Great Father
sees that his skin is white, and that mine is red. He sees my young
brother when he sits in his praying-house, and me when me offer him corn
and deer's flesh in the woods, and he says good. Umpachee's people have
all gone to one place. If Umpachee go to a praying-house, the Great
Father will send him to the white man's place, and his father and his
mother and his sons will never see him in their hunting-ground. No.
Umpachee is an old beaver that sits in his own house, and swims in his
own pond. He will stay where he is, until his Father calls him."
Saying this, the old savage went on his way. As he passed out of the
valley, and got to the top of the hill on the other side, we, looking
after him, beheld him standing still a moment, as if bidding farewell to
the graves of his people.
May 24.
Through God's mercy, I got here safe and well, saving great weariness,
and grief at parting with my brother and his wife. The first day we
went as far as a place they call Rehoboth, where we tarried over night,
finding but small comfort therein; for the house was so filled, that
Leonard and a friend who came with us were fain to lie all night in the
barn, on the mow before their horses; and, for mine own part, I had to
choose between lying in the large room, where the man of the house and
his wife and two sons, grown men, did lodge, or to climb into the dark
loft, where was barely space for a bed,--which last I did make choice
of, although the woman thought it strange, and marvelled not a little at
my unwillingness to sleep in the same room with her husband and boys,
as she called them. In the evening, hearing loud voices in a house near
by, we inquired what it meant, and were told that some people from
Providence were holding a meeting there, the owner of the house being
accounted a Quaker. Whereupon, I went thither with Leonard, and found
nigh upon a score of people gathered, and a man with loose hair and
beard speaking to them. My brother whispered to me that he was no
Friend, but a noted ranter, a noisy, unsettled man. He screamed
exceeding loud, and stamped with his feet, and foamed at the mouth, like
one possessed with an evil spirit, crying against all order in State or
Church, and declaring that the Lord had a controversy with Priests and
Magistrates, the prophets who prophesy falsely, and the priests who bear
rule by their means, and the people who love to have it so. He spake of
the Quakers as a tender and hopeful people in their beginning, and while
the arm of the wicked was heavy upon them; but now he said that they,
even as the rest, were settled down into a dead order, and heaping up
worldly goods, and speaking evil of the Lord's messengers. They were a
part of Babylon, and would perish with their idols; they should drink of
the wine of God's wrath; the day of their visitation was at hand. After
going on thus for a while, up gets a tall, wild-looking woman, as pale
as a ghost, and trembling from head to foot, who, stretching out her
long arms towards the man who had spoken, bade the people take notice
that this was the angel spoken of in Revelation, flying through the
midst of heaven, and crying, Woe! woe! to the inhabitants of the earth!
with more of the like wicked rant, whereat I was not a little
discomposed, and, beckoning my brother, left them to foam out their
shame to themselves.
The next morning, we got upon our horses at an early hour, and after a
hard and long ride reached Mr. Torrey's at Weymouth, about an hour after
dark. Here we found Cousin Torrey in bed with her second child, a boy,
whereat her husband is not a little rejoiced. My brother here took his
leave of me, going back to the Plantations. My heart is truly sad and
heavy with the great grief of parting.
May 30.
Went to the South meeting to-day, to hear the sermon preached before the
worshipful Governor, Mr. Broadstreet, and his Majesty's Council, it
being the election day. It was a long sermon, from Esther x. 3. Had
much to say concerning the duty of Magistrates to support the Gospel and
its ministers, and to put an end to schism and heresy. Very pointed,
also, against time-serving Magistrates.
June 1.
Mr. Wigglesworth said that there were certain general rules laid down,
from which we might make a right application to particular cases. The
wearing of long hair by men is expressly forbidden in 1 Corinthians xi.
14, 15; and there is a special word for women, also, in 1 Tim. ii. 9.
Hereupon Aunt Rawson told me she thought I was well answered; but I
(foolish one that I was), being unwilling to give up the matter so,
ventured further to say that there were the Nazarites, spoken of in
Numbers vi. 5, upon whose heads, by the appointment of God, no razor
was to come.
Uncle Rawson said that long hair might, he judged, be lawfully worn,
where the bodily health did require it, to guard the necks of weakly
people from the cold.
"Where there seems plainly a call of nature for it," said Mr.
Wigglesworth, "as a matter of bodily comfort, and for the warmth of the
head and neck, it is nowise unlawful. But for healthy, sturdy young
people to make this excuse for their sinful vanity doth but add to their
condemnation. If a man go any whit beyond God's appointment and the
comfort of nature, I know not where he will stop, until he grows to be
the veriest ruffian in the world. It is a wanton and shameful thing for
a man to liken himself to a woman, by suffering his hair to grow, and
curling and parting it in a seam, as is the manner of too many. It
betokeneth pride and vanity, and causeth no small offence to godly,
sober people.
"The time hath been," continued Mr. Wigglesworth, "when God's people
were ashamed of such vanities, both in the home country and in these
parts; but since the Bishops and the Papists have had their way, and
such as feared God are put down from authority, to give place to
scorners and wantons, there hath been a sad change."
Rebecca here roguishly pinched my arm, saying apart that, after all, we
weaker vessels did seem to be of great consequence, and nobody could
tell but that our head-dresses would yet prove the ruin of the country.
June 4
Robert Pike, coming into the harbor with his sloop, from the Pemaquid
country, looked in upon us yesterday. Said that since coming to the
town he had seen a Newbury man, who told him that old Mr. Wheelwright,
of Salisbury, the famous Boston minister in the time of Sir Harry Vane
and Madam Hutchinson, was now lying sick, and nigh unto his end. Also,
that Goodman Morse was so crippled by a fall in his barn, that he cannot
get to Boston to the trial of his wife, which is a sore affliction to
him. The trial of the witch is now going on, and uncle saith it looks
much against her, especially the testimony of the Widow Goodwin about
her child, and of John Gladding about seeing one half of the body of
Goody Morse flying about in the sun, as if she had been cut in twain, or
as if the Devil did hide the lower part of her. Robert Pike said such
testimony ought not to hang a cat, the widow being little more than a
fool; and as for the fellow Gladding, he was no doubt in his cups, for
he had often seen him in such a plight that he could not have told Goody
Morse from the Queen of Sheba.
June 8.
The Morse woman having been found guilty by the Court of Assistants,
she was brought out to the North Meeting, to hear the Thursday Lecture,
yesterday, before having her sentence. The house was filled with
people, they being curious to see the witch. The Marshal and the
constables brought her in, and set her in, front of the pulpit; the old
creature looking round her wildly, as if wanting her wits, and then
covering her face with her dark wrinkled hands; a dismal sight! The
minister took his text in Romans xiii. 3, 4, especially the last clause
of the 4th verse, relating to rulers: For he beareth not the sword in
vain, &c. He dwelt upon the power of the ruler as a Minister of God,
and as a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil; and showeth
that the punishment of witches and such as covenant with the Devil is
one of the duties expressly enjoined upon rulers by the Word of God,
inasmuch as a witch was not to be suffered to live.
June 9.
Uncle Rawson being at the jail to-day, a messenger, who had been sent to
the daughter of Goody Morse, who is the wife of one Hate Evil Nutter, on
the Cocheco, to tell her that her mother did greatly desire to see her
once more before she was hanged, coming in, told the condemned woman
that her daughter bade him say to her, that inasmuch as she had sold
herself to the Devil, she did owe her no further love or service, and
that she could not complain of this, for as she had made her bed, so she
must lie. Whereat the old creature set up a miserable cry, saying that
to have her own flesh and blood turn against her was more bitter than
death itself. And she begged Mr. Willard to pray for her, that her
trust in the Lord might not be shaken by this new affliction.
June 10.
The condemned woman hath been reprieved by the Governor and the
Magistrates until the sitting of the Court in October. Many people,
both men and women, coming in from the towns about to see the hanging,
be sore disappointed, and do vehemently condemn the conduct of the
Governor therein. For mine own part, I do truly rejoice that mercy hath
been shown to the poor creature; for even if she is guilty, it affordeth
her a season for repentance; and if she be innocent, it saveth the land
from a great sin. The sorrowful look of the old creature at the Lecture
hath troubled me ever since, so forlorn and forsaken did she seem.
Major Pike (Robert's father), coming in this morning, says, next to the
sparing of Goody Morse's life, it did please him to see the bloodthirsty
rabble so cheated out of their diversion; for example, there was Goody
Matson, who had ridden bare-backed, for lack of a saddle, all the way
from Newbury, on Deacon Dole's hard-trotting horse, and was so galled
and lame of it that she could scarce walk. The Major said he met her at
the head of King Street yesterday, with half a score more of her sort,
scolding and railing about the reprieve of the witch, and prophesying
dreadful judgments upon all concerned in it. He said he bade her shut
her mouth and go home, where she belonged; telling her that if he heard
any more of her railing, the Magistrates should have notice of it, and
she would find that laying by the heels in the stocks was worse than
riding Deacon Dole's horse.
June 14.
Yesterday the wedding took place. It was an exceeding brave one; most
of the old and honored families being at it, so that the great house
wherein my uncle lives was much crowded. Among them were Governor
Broadstreet and many of the honorable Magistrates, with Mr. Saltonstall
and his worthy lady; Mr. Richardson, the Newbury minister, joining the
twain in marriage, in a very solemn and feeling manner. Sir Thomas was
richly apparelled, as became one of his rank, and Rebecca in her white
silk looked comely as an angel. She wore the lace collar I wrought for
her last winter, for my sake, although I fear me she had prettier ones
of her own working. The day was wet and dark, with an easterly wind
blowing in great gusts from the bay, exceeding cold for the season.
Rebecca, or Lady Hale, as she is now called, had invited Robert Pike
to her wedding, but he sent her an excuse for not coming, to the effect
that urgent business did call him into the eastern country as far as
Monhegan and Pemaquid. His letter, which was full of good wishes for
her happiness and prosperity, I noted saddened Rebecca a good deal; and
she was, moreover, somewhat disturbed by certain things that did happen
yesterday: the great mirror in the hall being badly broken, and the
family arms hanging over the fire-place thrown down, so that it was
burned by the coals kindled on the hearth, on account of the dampness;
which were looked upon as ill signs by most people. Grindall, a
thoughtless youth, told his sister of the burning of the arms, and that
nothing was left save the head of the raven in the crest, at which she
grew very pale, and said it was strange, indeed, and, turning to me,
asked me if I did put faith in what was said of signs and prognostics.
So, seeing her troubled, I laughed at the matter, although I secretly
did look upon it as an ill omen, especially as I could never greatly
admire Sir Thomas. My brother's wife, who seemed fully persuaded that
he is an unworthy person, sent by me a message to Rebecca, to that
effect; but I had not courage to speak of it, as matters had gone so
far, and uncle and aunt did seem so fully bent upon making a great lady
of their daughter.
The vessel in which we are to take our passage is near upon ready for
the sea. The bark is a London one, called "The Three Brothers," and is
commanded by an old acquaintance of Uncle Rawson. I am happy with the
thought of going home, yet, as the time of departure draws nigh, I do
confess some regrets at leaving this country, where I have been so
kindly cared for and entertained, and where I have seen so many new and
strange things. The great solemn woods, as wild and natural as they
were thousands of years ago, the fierce suns of the summer season and
the great snows of the winter, and the wild beasts, and the heathen
Indians,--these be things the memory whereof will over abide with me.
To-day the weather is again clear and warm, the sky wonderfully bright;
the green leaves flutter in the wind, and the birds are singing sweetly.
The waters of the bay, which be yet troubled by the storm of last night,
are breaking in white foam on the rocks of the main land, and on the
small islands covered with trees and vines; and many boats and sloops
going out with the west wind, to their fishing, do show their white
sails in the offing. How I wish I had skill to paint the picture of all
this for my English friends! My heart is pained, as I look upon it,
with the thought that after a few days I shall never see it more.
June 18.
"It appears that the brave gallant calling himself Sir Thomas Hale,
for all his fair seething and handsome address, was but a knave and
impostor, deceiving with abominable villany Rebecca Rawson and most of
her friends (although my grandmother was never satisfied with him, as is
seen in her journal). When they got, to London, being anxious, on
account of sea-sickness and great weariness, to leave the vessel as soon
as possible, they went ashore to the house of a kinsman to lodge,
leaving their trunks and clothing on board. Early on the next morning,
he that called himself Sir Thomas left his wife, taking with him the
keys of her trunks, telling her he would send them up from the vessel in
season for her to dress for dinner. The trunks came, as he said, but
after waiting impatiently for the keys until near the dinner-hour, and
her husband not returning, she had them broken open, and, to her grief
and astonishment, found nothing therein but shavings and other
combustible matter. Her kinsman forthwith ordered his carriage, and
went with her to the inn where they first stopped on landing from the
vessel, where she inquired for Sir Thomas Hale. The landlord told her
there was such a gentleman, but he had not seen him for some days.
'But he was at your house last night,' said the astonished young woman.
'He is my husband, and I was with him.' The landlord then said that one
Thomas Rumsey was at his house, with a young lady, the night before, but
she was not his lawful wife, for he had one already in Kent. At this
astounding news, the unhappy woman swooned outright, and, being taken
back to her kinsman's, she lay grievously ill for many days, during
which time, by letters from Kent, it was ascertained that this Rumsey
was a graceless young spendthrift, who had left his wife and his two
children three years before, and gone to parts unknown.
"My grandmother, who affectionately watched over her, and comforted her
in her great affliction, has often told me that, on coming to herself,
her poor cousin said it was a righteous judgment upon her, for her pride
and vanity, which had led her to discard worthy men for one of great
show and pretensions, who had no solid merit to boast of. She had
sinned against God, and brought disgrace upon her family, in choosing
him. She begged that his name might never be mentioned again in her
hearing, and that she might only be known as a poor relative of her
English kinsfolk, and find a home among them until she could seek out
some employment for her maintenance, as she could not think of going
back to Boston, to become the laughing-stock of the thoughtless and the
reproach of her father's family.
"R. G."
TALES AND SKETCHES
A FRAGMENT.
CHAPTER I.
Well, what of it? All who live die sooner or later; and pray who was
Dr. Singletary, that his case should claim particular attention?
Why, in the first place, Dr. Singletary, as a man born to our common
inheritance of joy and sorrow, earthly instincts and heavenward
aspirations,--our brother in sin and suffering, wisdom and folly, love,
and pride, and vanity,--has a claim upon the universal sympathy.
Besides, whatever the living man may have been, death has now invested
him with its great solemnity. He is with the immortals. For him the
dark curtain has been lifted. The weaknesses, the follies, and the
repulsive mental and personal idiosyncrasies which may have kept him
without the sphere of our respect and sympathy have now fallen off, and
he stands radiant with the transfiguration of eternity, God's child, our
recognized and acknowledged brother.
Dr. Singletary is dead. He was an old man, and seldom, of latter years,
ventured beyond the precincts of his neighborhood. He was a single man,
and his departure has broken no circle of family affection. He was
little known to the public, and is now little missed. The village
newspaper simply appended to its announcement of his decease the
customary post mortem compliment, "Greatly respected by all who knew
him;" and in the annual catalogue of his alma mater an asterisk has been
added to his name, over which perchance some gray-haired survivor of his
class may breathe a sigh, as he calls up, the image of the fresh-faced,
bright-eyed boy, who, aspiring, hopeful, vigorous, started with him on
the journey of life,--a sigh rather for himself than for its unconscious
awakener.
But, a few years have passed since he left us; yet already wellnigh all
the outward manifestations, landmarks, and memorials of the living man
have passed away or been removed. His house, with its broad, mossy roof
sloping down on one side almost to the rose-bushes and lilacs, and with
its comfortable little porch in front, where he used to sit of a
pleasant summer afternoon, has passed into new hands, and has been sadly
disfigured by a glaring coat of white paint; and in the place of the
good Doctor's name, hardly legible on the corner-board, may now be seen,
in staring letters of black and gold, "VALENTINE ORSON STUBBS, M. D.,
Indian doctor and dealer in roots and herbs." The good Doctor's old
horse, as well known as its owner to every man, woman, and child in the
village, has fallen into the new comer's hands, who (being prepared to
make the most of him, from the fact that he commenced the practice of
the healing art in the stable, rising from thence to the parlor) has
rubbed him into comparative sleekness, cleaned his mane and tail of the
accumulated burrs of many autumns, and made quite a gay nag of him. The
wagon, too, in which at least two generations of boys and girls have
ridden in noisy hilarity whenever they encountered it on their way to
school, has been so smartly painted and varnished, that if its former
owner could look down from the hill-slope where he lies, he would
scarcely know his once familiar vehicle as it whirls glittering along
the main road to the village. For the rest, all things go on as usual;
the miller grinds, the blacksmith strikes and blows, the cobbler and
tailor stitch and mend, old men sit in the autumn sun, old gossips stir
tea and scandal, revival meetings alternate with apple-bees and
bushings,--toil, pleasure, family jars, petty neighborhood quarrels,
courtship, and marriage,--all which make up the daily life of a country
village continue as before. The little chasm which his death has made
in the hearts of the people where he lived and labored seems nearly
closed up. There is only one more grave in the burying-ground,--that is
all.
Let nobody infer from what I have said that the good man died
unlamented; for, indeed, it was a sad day with his neighbors when the
news, long expected, ran at last from house to house and from workshop
to workshop, "Dr. Singletary is dead!"
He had not any enemy left among them; in one way or another he had been
the friend and benefactor of all. Some owed to his skill their recovery
from sickness; others remembered how he had watched with anxious
solicitude by the bedside of their dying relatives, soothing them, when
all human aid was vain, with the sweet consolations of that Christian
hope which alone pierces the great shadow of the grave and shows the
safe stepping-stones above the dark waters. The old missed a cheerful
companion and friend, who had taught them much without wounding their
pride by an offensive display of his superiority, and who, while making
a jest of his own trials and infirmities, could still listen with real
sympathy to the querulous and importunate complaints of others. For one
day, at least, even the sunny faces of childhood were marked with
unwonted thoughtfulness; the shadow of the common bereavement fell over
the play-ground and nursery. The little girl remembered, with tears,
how her broken-limbed doll had taxed the surgical ingenuity of her
genial old friend; and the boy showed sorrowfully to his playmates the
top which the good Doctor had given him. If there were few, among the
many who stood beside his grave, capable of rightly measuring and
appreciating the high intellectual and spiritual nature which formed the
background of his simple social life, all could feel that no common loss
had been sustained, and that the kindly and generous spirit which had
passed away from them had not lived to himself alone.
CHAPTER. II.
WELL and truly said the wise man of old, "Much study is a weariness to
the flesh." Hard and close application through the winter had left me
ill prepared to resist the baleful influences of a New England spring.
I shrank alike from the storms of March, the capricious changes of
April, and the sudden alternations of May, from the blandest of
southwest breezes to the terrible and icy eastern blasts which sweep our
seaboard like the fabled sanser, or wind of death. The buoyancy and
vigor, the freshness and beauty of life seemed leaving me. The flesh
and the spirit were no longer harmonious. I was tormented by a
nightmare feeling of the necessity of exertion, coupled with a sense of
utter inability. A thousand plans for my own benefit, or the welfare of
those dear to me, or of my fellow-men at large, passed before me; but I
had no strength to lay hold of the good angels and detain them until
they left their blessing. The trumpet sounded in my ears for the
tournament of life; but I could not bear the weight of my armor. In the
midst of duties and responsibilities which I clearly comprehended, I
found myself yielding to the absorbing egotism of sickness. I could
work only when the sharp rowels of necessity were in my sides.
The march of mind had not overtaken it. It had neither printing-press
nor lyceum. As the fathers had done before them, so did its inhabitants
at the time of my visit. There was little or no competition in their
business; there were no rich men, and none that seemed over-anxious to
become so. Two or three small vessels were annually launched from the
carpenters' yards on the river. It had a blacksmith's shop, with its
clang of iron and roar of bellows; a pottery, garnished with its coarse
earthen-ware; a store, where molasses, sugar, and spices were sold on
one side, and calicoes, tape, and ribbons on the other. Three or four
small schooners annually left the wharves for the St. George's and
Labrador fisheries. Just back of the village, a bright, noisy stream,
gushing out, like a merry laugh, from the walnut and oak woods which
stretched back far to the north through a narrow break in the hills,
turned the great wheel of a grist-mill, and went frolicking away, like a
wicked Undine, under the very windows of the brown, lilac-shaded house
of Deacon Warner, the miller, as if to tempt the good man's handsome
daughters to take lessons in dancing. At one end of the little
crescent-shaped village, at the corner of the main road and the green
lane to Deacon Warner's mill, stood the school-house,--a small, ill-
used, Spanish-brown building, its patched windows bearing unmistakable
evidence of the mischievous character of its inmates. At the other end,
farther up the river, on a rocky knoll open to all the winds, stood the
meeting-house,--old, two story, and full of windows,--its gilded
weathercock glistening in the sun. The bell in its belfry had been
brought from France by Skipper Evans in the latter part of the last
century. Solemnly baptized and consecrated to some holy saint, it had
called to prayer the veiled sisters of a convent, and tolled heavily in
the masses for the dead. At first some of the church felt misgivings as
to the propriety of hanging a Popish bell in a Puritan steeple-house;
but their objections were overruled by the minister, who wisely
maintained that if Moses could use the borrowed jewels and ornaments of
the Egyptians to adorn and beautify the ark of the Lord, it could not be
amiss to make a Catholic bell do service in an Orthodox belfry. The
space between the school and the meeting-house was occupied by some
fifteen or twenty dwellings, many-colored and diverse in age and
appearance. Each one had its green yard in front, its rose-bushes and
lilacs. Great elms, planted a century ago, stretched and interlocked
their heavy arms across the street. The mill-stream, which found its
way into the Tocketuek, near the centre of the village, was spanned by a
rickety wooden bridge, rendered picturesque by a venerable and gnarled
white-oak which hung over it, with its great roots half bared by the
water and twisted among the mossy stones of the crumbling abutment.
The house of Dr. Singletary was situated somewhat apart from the main
street, just on the slope of Blueberry Will,--a great, green swell of
land, stretching far down from the north, and terminating in a steep
bluff at the river side. It overlooked the village and the river a long
way up and down. It was a brown-looking, antiquated mansion, built by
the Doctor's grandfather in the earlier days of the settlement. The
rooms were large and low, with great beams, scaly with whitewash,
running across them, scarcely above the reach of a tall man's head.
Great-throated fireplaces, filled with pine-boughs and flower-pots, gave
promise of winter fires, roaring and crackling in boisterous hilarity,
as if laughing to scorn the folly and discomfort of our modern stoves.
In the porch at the frontdoor were two seats, where the Doctor was
accustomed to sit in fine weather with his pipe and his book, or with
such friends as might call to spend a half hour with him. The lawn in
front had scarcely any other ornament than its green grass, cropped
short by the Doctor's horse. A stone wall separated it from the lane,
half overrun with wild hop, or clematis, and two noble rock-maples
arched over with their dense foliage the little red gate. Dark belts of
woodland, smooth hill pasture, green, broad meadows, and fields of corn
and rye, the homesteads of the villagers, were seen on one hand; while
on the other was the bright, clear river, with here and there a white
sail, relieved against bold, wooded banks, jutting rocks, or tiny
islands, dark with dwarf evergreens. It was a quiet, rural picture,
a happy and peaceful contrast to all I had looked upon for weary,
miserable months. It soothed the nervous excitement of pain and
suffering. I forgot myself in the pleasing interest which it awakened.
Nature's healing ministrations came to me through all my senses. I felt
the medicinal virtues of her sights, and sounds, and aromal breezes.
From the green turf of her hills and the mossy carpets of her woodlands
my languid steps derived new vigor and elasticity. I felt, day by day,
the transfusion of her strong life.
CHAPTER III.
"My friend, who is spending a few weeks with me," explained the Doctor.
"Oh, it is so long since you have called on us that we have been talking
of going up to the village to see you, as soon as Robert can get away
from his cornfield. You don't know how little Lucy has grown. You must
stop and see her."
The delighted mother caught up her darling and held her before the
Doctor.
"Does n't she look like Robert?" she inquired. "His very eyes and
forehead! Bless me! here he is now."
A stout, hale young farmer, in a coarse checked frock and broad straw
hat, came up from the adjoining field.
"Well, Robert," said the Doctor, "how do matters now stand with you?
Well, I hope."
"All right, Doctor. We've paid off the last cent of the mortgage, and
the farm is all free and clear. Julia and I have worked hard; but we're
none the worse for it."
"You look well and happy, I am sure," said the Doctor. "I don't think
you are sorry you took the advice of the old Doctor, after all."
The young wife's head drooped until her lips touched those of her child.
"Pshaw!" said the Doctor, catching up his reins and whip. "You owe me
nothing. But I must not forget my errand. Poor old Widow Osborne needs
a watcher to-night; and she insists upon having Julia Barnet, and nobody
else. What shall I tell her?"
"Good-by, neighbors."
"Good-by, Doctor."
As we drove off I saw the Doctor draw his hand hastily across his eyes,
and he said nothing for some minutes.
"You speak of the young farmer Barnet and his wife, I suppose?" said I.
"Yes. I will give their case as an illustration. Julia Atkins was the
daughter of Ensign Atkins, who lived on the mill-road, just above Deacon
Warner's. When she was ten years old her mother died; and in a few
months afterwards her father married Polly Wiggin, the tailoress, a
shrewd, selfish, managing woman. Julia, poor girl! had a sorry time of
it; for the Ensign, although a kind and affectionate man naturally, was
too weak and yielding to interpose between her and his strong-minded,
sharp-tongued wife. She had one friend, however, who was always ready
to sympathize with her. Robert Barnet was the son of her next-door
neighbor, about two years older than herself; they had grown up together
as school companions and playmates; and often in my drives I used to
meet them coming home hand in hand from school, or from the woods with
berries and nuts, talking and laughing as if there were no scolding
step-mothers in the world.
"It so fell out that when Julia was in her sixteenth year there came
a famous writing-master to Peewawkin. He was a showy, dashing fellow,
with a fashionable dress, a wicked eye, and a tongue like the old
serpent's when he tempted our great-grandmother. Julia was one of his
scholars, and perhaps the prettiest of them all. The rascal singled her
out from the first; and, the better to accomplish his purpose, he left
the tavern and took lodgings at the Ensign's. He soon saw how matters
stood in the family, and governed himself accordingly, taking special
pains to conciliate the ruling authority. The Ensign's wife hated young
Barnet, and wished to get rid of her step-daughter. The writing-master,
therefore, had a fair field. He flattered the poor young girl by his
attentions and praised her beauty. Her moral training had not fitted
her to withstand this seductive influence; no mother's love, with its
quick, instinctive sense of danger threatening its object, interposed
between her and the tempter. Her old friend and playmate--he who could
alone have saved her--had been rudely repulsed from the house by her
step-mother; and, indignant and disgusted, he had retired from all
competition with his formidable rival. Thus abandoned to her own
undisciplined imagination, with the inexperience of a child and the
passions of a woman, she was deceived by false promises, bewildered,
fascinated, and beguiled into sin.
"It is the same old story of woman's confidence and man's duplicity.
The rascally writing-master, under pretence of visiting a neighboring
town, left his lodgings and never returned. The last I heard of him,
he was the tenant of a western penitentiary. Poor Julia, driven in
disgrace from her father's house, found a refuge in the humble dwelling
of an old woman of no very creditable character. There I was called to
visit her; and, although not unused to scenes of suffering and sorrow, I
had never before witnessed such an utter abandonment to grief, shame,
and remorse. Alas! what sorrow was like unto her sorrow? The birth
hour of her infant was also that of its death.
"The agony of her spirit seemed greater than she could bear. Her eyes
were opened, and she looked upon herself with loathing and horror. She
would admit of no hope, no consolation; she would listen to no
palliation or excuse of her guilt. I could only direct her to that
Source of pardon and peace to which the broken and contrite heart never
appeals in vain.
"In the mean time Robert Barnet shipped on board a Labrador vessel. The
night before he left he called on me, and put in my hand a sum of money,
small indeed, but all he could then command.
"'You will see her often,' he said. 'Do not let her suffer; for she is
more to be pitied than blamed.'
"I answered him that I would do all in my power for her; and added, that
I thought far better of her, contrite and penitent as she was, than of
some who were busy in holding her up to shame and censure.
"'God bless you for these words!' he said, grasping my hand. 'I shall
think of them often. They will be a comfort to me.'
"As for Julia, God was more merciful to her than man. She rose from her
sick-bed thoughtful and humbled, but with hopes that transcended the
world of her suffering and shame. She no longer murmured against her
sorrowful allotment, but accepted it with quiet and almost cheerful
resignation as the fitting penalty of God's broken laws and the needed
discipline of her spirit. She could say with the Psalmist, 'The
judgments of the Lord are true, justified in themselves. Thou art just,
O Lord, and thy judgment is right.' Through my exertions she obtained
employment in a respectable family, to whom she endeared herself by her
faithfulness, cheerful obedience, and unaffected piety.
"Her trials had made her heart tender with sympathy for all in
affliction. She seemed inevitably drawn towards the sick and suffering.
In their presence the burden of her own sorrow seemed to fall off. She
was the most cheerful and sunny-faced nurse I ever knew; and I always
felt sure that my own efforts would be well seconded when I found her by
the bedside of a patient. Beautiful it was to see this poor young girl,
whom the world still looked upon with scorn and unkindness, cheering the
desponding, and imparting, as it were, her own strong, healthful life to
the weak and faint; supporting upon her bosom, through weary nights, the
heads of those who, in health, would have deemed her touch pollution; or
to hear her singing for the ear of the dying some sweet hymn of pious
hope or resignation, or calling to mind the consolations of the gospel
and the great love of Christ."
"I trust," said I, "that the feelings of the community were softened
towards her."
"You know what human nature is," returned the Doctor, "and with what
hearty satisfaction we abhor and censure sin and folly in others. It is
a luxury which we cannot easily forego, although our own experience
tells us that the consequences of vice and error are evil and bitter
enough without the aggravation of ridicule and reproach from without.
So you need not be surprised to learn that, in poor Julia's case, the
charity of sinners like herself did not keep pace with the mercy and
forgiveness of Him who is infinite in purity. Nevertheless, I will do
our people the justice to say that her blameless and self-sacrificing
life was not without its proper effect upon them."
"'I should think better of it if you had wholly made up your mind,' said
I; 'and if you were my own son, I wouldn't ask for you a better wife
than Julia Atkins. Don't hesitate, Robert, on account of what some ill-
natured people may say. Consult your own heart first of all.'
"'I don't care for the talk of all the busybodies in town,' said he;
'but I wish father and mother could feel as you do about her.'
"'Leave that to me,' said I. 'They are kindhearted and reasonable, and
I dare say will be disposed to make the best of the matter when they
find you are decided in your purpose.'
"I did not see him again; but a few days after I learned from his
parents that he had gone on another voyage. It was now autumn, and the
most sickly season I had ever known in Peewawkin. Ensign Atkins and his
wife both fell sick; and Julia embraced with alacrity this providential
opportunity to return to her father's house and fulfil the duties of a
daughter. Under her careful nursing the Ensign soon got upon his feet;
but his wife, whose constitution was weaker, sunk under the fever. She
died better than she had lived,--penitent and loving, asking forgiveness
of Julia for her neglect and unkindness, and invoking blessings on her
head. Julia had now, for the first time since the death of her mother,
a comfortable home and a father's love and protection. Her sweetness of
temper, patient endurance, and forgetfulness of herself in her labors
for others, gradually overcame the scruples and hard feelings of her
neighbors. They began to question whether, after all, it was
meritorious in them to treat one like her as a sinner beyond
forgiveness. Elder Staples and Deacon Warner were her fast friends.
The Deacon's daughters--the tall, blue-eyed, brown-locked girls you
noticed in meeting the other day--set the example among the young people
of treating her as their equal and companion. The dear good girls!
They reminded me of the maidens of Naxos cheering and comforting the
unhappy Ariadne.
"In the mean time the storm had grown more violent; there was a blinding
snow-fall in the air; and we could feel the jar of the great waves as
they broke upon the beach.
"'It is a terrible night for sailors on the coast,' I said, breaking our
long silence with the dead. 'God grant them sea-room!'
"'Julia,' said I, 'do you know that Robert Barnet loves you with all the
strength of an honest and true heart?'
"She trembled, and her voice faltered as she confessed that when Robert
was at home he had asked her to become his wife.
"'O Doctor!' she exclaimed. 'How can you talk so? It is just because
Robert is so good, and noble, and generous, that I dared not take him at
his word. You yourself, Doctor, would have despised me if I had taken
advantage of his pity or his kind remembrance of the old days when we
were children together. I have already brought too much disgrace upon
those dear to me.'
"I was endeavoring to convince her, in reply, that she was doing
injustice to herself and wronging her best friend, whose happiness
depended in a great measure upon her, when, borne on the strong blast,
we both heard a faint cry as of a human being in distress. I threw up
the window which opened seaward, and we leaned out into the wild night,
listening breathlessly for a repetition of the sound.
"Once more, and once only, we heard it,--a low, smothered, despairing
cry.
"'Some one is lost, and perishing in the snow,' said Julia. 'The sound
conies in the direction of the beach plum-bushes on the side of the
marsh. Let us go at once.'
"She snatched up her hood and shawl, and was already at the door. I
found and lighted a lantern and soon overtook her. The snow was already
deep and badly drifted, and it was with extreme difficulty that we could
force our way against the storm. We stopped often to take breath and
listen; but the roaring of the wind and waves was alone audible. At
last we reached a slightly elevated spot, overgrown with dwarf plum-
trees, whose branches were dimly visible above the snow.
"'Here, bring the lantern here!' cried Julia, who had strayed a few
yards from me. I hastened to her, and found her lifting up the body of
a man who was apparently insensible. The rays of the lantern fell full
upon his face, and we both, at the same instant, recognized Robert
Barnet. Julia did not shriek nor faint; but, kneeling in the snow, and
still supporting the body, she turned towards me a look of earnest and
fearful inquiry.
"Robert told us that his vessel had been thrown upon the beach a mile or
two below, and that he feared all the crew had perished save himself.
Assured of his safety, I went out once more, in the faint hope of
hearing the voice of some survivor of the disaster; but I listened only
to the heavy thunder of the surf rolling along the horizon of the east.
The storm had in a great measure ceased; the gray light of dawn was just
visible; and I was gratified to see two of the nearest neighbors
approaching the house. On being informed of the wreck they immediately
started for the beach, where several dead bodies, half buried in snow,
confirmed the fears of the solitary survivor.
"The result of all this you can easily conjecture. Robert Barnet
abandoned the sea, and, with the aid of some of his friends, purchased
the farm where he now lives, and the anniversary of his shipwreck found
him the husband of Julia. I can assure you I have had every reason to
congratulate myself on my share in the match-making. Nobody ventured to
find fault with it except two or three sour old busybodies, who, as
Elder Staples well says, 'would have cursed her whom Christ had
forgiven, and spurned the weeping Magdalen from the feet of her Lord.'"
CHAPTER IV.
BY THE SPRING.
IT was one of the very brightest and breeziest of summer mornings that
the Doctor and myself walked homeward from the town poor-house, where
he had always one or more patients, and where his coming was always
welcomed by the poor, diseased, and age-stricken inmates. Dark,
miserable faces of lonely and unreverenced age, written over with the
grim records of sorrow and sin, seemed to brighten at his approach as
with an inward light, as if the good man's presence had power to call
the better natures of the poor unfortunates into temporary ascendency.
Weary, fretful women--happy mothers in happy homes, perchance, half a
century before--felt their hearts warm and expand under the influence of
his kind salutations and the ever-patient good-nature with which he
listened to their reiterated complaints of real or imaginary suffering.
However it might be with others, he never forgot the man or the woman in
the pauper. There was nothing like condescension or consciousness in
his charitable ministrations; for he was one of the few men I have ever
known in whom the milk of human kindness was never soured by contempt
for humanity in whatever form it presented itself. Thus it was that his
faithful performance of the duties of his profession, however repulsive
and disagreeable, had the effect of Murillo's picture of St. Elizabeth
of Hungary binding up the ulcered limbs of the beggars. The moral
beauty transcended the loathsomeness of physical evil and deformity.
Our nearest route home lay across the pastures and over Blueberry Hill,
just at the foot of which we encountered Elder Staples and Skipper
Evans, who had been driving their cows to pasture, and were now
leisurely strolling back to the village. We toiled together up the hill
in the hot sunshine, and, just on its eastern declivity, were glad to
find a white-oak tree, leaning heavily over a little ravine, from the
bottom of which a clear spring of water bubbled up and fed a small
rivulet, whose track of darker green might be traced far down the hill
to the meadow at its foot.
A broad shelf of rock by the side of the spring, cushioned with mosses,
afforded us a comfortable resting-place. Elder Staples, in his faded
black coat and white neck-cloth, leaned his quiet, contemplative head on
his silver-mounted cane: right opposite him sat the Doctor, with his
sturdy, rotund figure, and broad, seamed face, surmounted by a coarse
stubble of iron-gray hair, the sharp and almost severe expression of his
keen gray eyes, flashing under their dark penthouse, happily relieved by
the softer lines of his mouth, indicative of his really genial and
generous nature. A small, sinewy figure, half doubled up, with his chin
resting on his rough palms, Skipper Evans sat on a lower projection of
the rock just beneath him, in an attentive attitude, as at the feet of
Gatnaliel. Dark and dry as one of his own dunfish on a Labrador flake,
or a seal-skin in an Esquimaux hut, he seemed entirely exempt from one
of the great trinity of temptations; and, granting him a safe
deliverance from the world and the devil, he had very little to fear
from the flesh.
"Doctor," said I, "this spring, with the oak hanging over it, is, I
suppose, your Fountain of Bandusia. You remember what Horace says of
his spring, which yielded such cool refreshment when the dog-star had
set the day on fire. What a fine picture he gives us of this charming
feature of his little farm!"
The Doctor's eye kindled. "I'm glad to see you like Horace; not merely
as a clever satirist and writer of amatory odes, but as a true lover of
Nature. How pleasant are his simple and beautiful descriptions of his
yellow, flowing Tiber, the herds and herdsmen, the harvesters, the grape
vintage, the varied aspects of his Sabine retreat in the fierce summer
heats, or when the snowy forehead of Soracte purpled in winter sunsets!
Scattered through his odes and the occasional poems which he addresses
to his city friends, you find these graceful and inimitable touches of
rural beauty, each a picture in itself."
"Too true," replied the Elder, the smile which had just played over his
pale face fading into something sadder than its habitual melancholy.
"The living companions of our youth, whom we daily meet, are more
strange to us than the dead in yonder graveyard. They alone remain
unchanged!"
"It reminds me," said Elder Staples, "of the sad burden of
Ecclesiastes, the mournfulest book of Scripture; because, while the
preacher dwells with earnestness upon the vanity and uncertainty of the
things of time and sense, he has no apparent hope of immortality to
relieve the dark picture. Like Horace, he sees nothing better than to
eat his bread with joy and drink his wine with a merry heart. It seems
to me the wise man might have gone farther in his enumeration of the
folly and emptiness of life, and pronounced his own prescription for the
evil vanity also. What is it but plucking flowers on the banks of the
stream which hurries us over the cataract, or feasting on the thin crust
of a volcano upon delicate meats prepared over the fires which are soon
to ingulf us? Oh, what a glorious contrast to this is the gospel of Him
who brought to light life and immortality! The transition from the
Koheleth to the Epistles of Paul is like passing from a cavern, where
the artificial light falls indeed upon gems and crystals, but is
everywhere circumscribed and overshadowed by unknown and unexplored
darkness, into the warm light and free atmosphere of day."
"Yet," I asked, "are there not times when we all wish for some clearer
evidence of immortal life than has been afforded us; when we even turn
away unsatisfied from the pages of the holy book, with all the
mysterious problems of life pressing about us and clamoring for
solution, till, perplexed and darkened, we look up to the still heavens,
as if we sought thence an answer, visible or audible, to their
questionings? We want something beyond the bare announcement of the
momentous fact of a future life; we long for a miracle to confirm our
weak faith and silence forever the doubts which torment us."
"And what would a miracle avail us at such times of darkness and strong
temptation?" said the Elder. "Have we not been told that they whom
Moses and the prophets have failed to convince would not believe
although one rose from the dead? That God has revealed no more to
us is to my mind sufficient evidence that He has revealed enough."
"May it not be," queried the Doctor, "that Infinite Wisdom sees that a
clearer and fuller revelation of the future life would render us less
willing or able to perform our appropriate duties in the present
condition? Enchanted by a clear view of the heavenly hills, and of our
loved ones beckoning us from the pearl gates of the city of God, could
we patiently work out our life-task here, or make the necessary
exertions to provide for the wants of these bodies whose encumbrance
alone can prevent us from rising to a higher plane of existence?"
"I reckon," said the Skipper, who had been an attentive, although at
times evidently a puzzled, listener, "that it would be with us pretty
much as it was with a crew of French sailors that I once shipped at the
Isle of France for the port of Marseilles. I never had better hands
until we hove in sight of their native country, which they had n't seen
for years. The first look of the land set 'em all crazy; they danced,
laughed, shouted, put on their best clothes; and I had to get new hands
to help me bring the vessel to her moorings."
"Your story is quite to the point, Skipper," said the Doctor. "If
things had been ordered differently, we should all, I fear, be disposed
to quit work and fall into absurdities, like your French sailors, and so
fail of bringing the world fairly into port."
"God's ways are best," said the Elder; "and I don't see as we can do
better than to submit with reverence to the very small part of them
which He has made known to us, and to trust Him like loving and dutiful
children for the rest."
CHAPTER V.
THE HILLSIDE.
THE pause which naturally followed the observation of the Elder was
broken abruptly by the Skipper.
"Hillo!" he cried, pointing with the glazed hat with which he had been
fanning himself. "Here away in the northeast. Going down the coast for
better fishing, I guess."
"An eagle, as I live!" exclaimed the Doctor, following with his cane the
direction of the Skipper's hat. "Just see how royally he wheels upward
and onward, his sail-broad wings stretched motionless, save an
occasional flap to keep up his impetus! Look! the circle in which he
moves grows narrower; he is a gray cloud in the sky, a point, a mere
speck or dust-mote. And now he is clean swallowed up in the distance.
The wise man of old did well to confess his ignorance of 'the way of an
eagle in the air.'"
"What think you of this passage?" said the Doctor. "'As when a bird
hath flown through the air, there is no token of her way to be found;
but the light air, beaten with the stroke of her wings and parted by the
violent noise and motion thereof, is passed through, and therein
afterward no sign of her path can be found.'
"I dare say not," quoth the Doctor. "You clergymen take it for granted
that no good thing can come home from the Nazareth of the Apocrypha.
But where will you find anything more beautiful and cheering than these
verses in connection with that which I just cited?--'The hope of the
ungodly is like dust that is blown away by the wind; like the thin foam
which is driven by the storm; like the smoke which is scattered here and
there by the whirlwind; it passeth away like the remembrance of a guest
that tarrieth but a day. But the righteous live forevermore; their
reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them with the Most High.
Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown
from the Lord's hand; for with his right hand shall He cover them, and
with his arm shall He protect them.'"
"That, if I mistake not, is from the Wisdom of Solomon," said the Elder.
"It is a striking passage; and there are many such in the uncanonical
books."
"Canonical or not," answered the Doctor, "it is God's truth, and stands
in no need of the endorsement of a set of well-meaning but purblind
bigots and pedants, who presumed to set metes and bounds to Divine
inspiration, and decide by vote what is God's truth and what is the
Devil's falsehood. But, speaking of eagles, I never see one of these
spiteful old sea-robbers without fancying that he may be the soul of a
mad Viking of the middle centuries. Depend upon it, that Italian
philosopher was not far out of the way in his ingenious speculations
upon the affinities and sympathies existing between certain men and
certain animals, and in fancying that he saw feline or canine traits and
similitudes in the countenances of his acquaintance."
"Swedenborg tells us," said I, "that lost human souls in the spiritual
world, as seen by the angels, frequently wear the outward shapes of the
lower animals,--for instance, the gross and sensual look like swine, and
the cruel and obscene like foul birds of prey, such as hawks and
vultures,--and that they are entirely unconscious of the metamorphosis,
imagining themselves marvellous proper men,' and are quite well
satisfied with their company and condition."
"Perhaps so," said the Doctor; "but there is a great deal of 'method in
his madness,' and plain common sense too. There is one grand and
beautiful idea underlying all his revelations or speculations about the
future life. It is this: that each spirit chooses its own society, and
naturally finds its fitting place and sphere of action,--following in
the new life, as in the present, the leading of its prevailing loves and
desires,--and that hence none are arbitrarily compelled to be good or
evil, happy or miserable. A great law of attraction and gravitation
governs the spiritual as well as the material universe; but, in obeying
it, the spirit retains in the new life whatever freedom of will it
possessed in its first stage of being. But I see the Elder shakes his
head, as much as to say, I am 'wise above what is written,' or, at any
rate, meddling with matters beyond my comprehension. Our young friend
here," he continued, turning to me, "has the appearance of a listener;
but I suspect he is busy with his own reveries, or enjoying the fresh
sights and sounds of this fine morning. I doubt whether our discourse
has edified him."
"Pardon me," said I; "I was, indeed, listening to another and older
oracle."
"A faint, low murmur, rising and falling on the wind. Now it comes
rolling in upon me, wave after wave of sweet, solemn music. There was a
grand organ swell; and now it dies away as into the infinite distance;
but I still hear it,--whether with ear or spirit I know not,--the very
ghost of sound."
"Ah, yes," said the Doctor; "I understand it is the voice of the pines
yonder,--a sort of morning song of praise to the Giver of life and Maker
of beauty. My ear is dull now, and I cannot hear it; but I know it is
sounding on as it did when I first climbed up here in the bright June
mornings of boyhood, and it will sound on just the same when the
deafness of the grave shall settle upon my failing senses. Did it never
occur to you that this deafness and blindness to accustomed beauty and
harmony is one of the saddest thoughts connected with the great change
which awaits us? Have you not felt at times that our ordinary
conceptions of heaven itself, derived from the vague hints and Oriental
imagery of the Scriptures, are sadly inadequate to our human wants and
hopes? How gladly would we forego the golden streets and gates of
pearl, the thrones, temples, and harps, for the sunset lights of our
native valleys; the woodpaths, whose moss carpets are woven with violets
and wild flowers; the songs of birds, the low of cattle, the hum of bees
in the apple-blossom,--the sweet, familiar voices of human life and
nature! In the place of strange splendors and unknown music, should we
not welcome rather whatever reminded us of the common sights and sounds
of our old home?"
"You touch a sad chord, Doctor," said I. "Would that we could feel
assured of the eternity of all we love!"
The Elder, who had listened silently thus far, not without an occasional
and apparently involuntary manifestation of dissent, here interposed.
"Pardon me, my dear friend," said he; "but I must needs say that I look
upon speculations of this kind, however ingenious or plausible, as
unprofitable, and well-nigh presumptuous. For myself, I only know that
I am a weak, sinful man, accountable to and cared for by a just and
merciful God. What He has in reserve for me hereafter I know not, nor
have I any warrant to pry into His secrets. I do not know what it is to
pass from one life to another; but I humbly hope that, when I am sinking
in the dark waters, I may hear His voice of compassion and
encouragement, 'It is I; be not afraid.'"
"Amen," said the Skipper, solemnly.
"I dare say the Parson is right, in the main," said the Doctor. "Poor
creatures at the best, it is safer for us to trust, like children, in
the goodness of our Heavenly Father than to speculate too curiously in
respect to the things of a future life; and, notwithstanding all I have
said, I quite agree with good old Bishop Hall: 'It is enough for me to
rest in the hope that I shall one day see them; in the mean time, let me
be learnedly ignorant and incuriously devout, silently blessing the
power and wisdom of my infinite Creator, who knows how to honor himself
by all those unrevealed and glorious subordinations.'"
CHAPTER VI.
"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?"
"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?"
"Good!" said the Doctor, with emphasis. "Poor Widow Osborne's prayers
are answered, and she will see her son before she dies."
"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."
"No, not exactly, though it's from Labrador, which is about the last
place the Lord made, I reckon."
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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,
"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."
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.
"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."
"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.
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.
"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.
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Wonolanset!"
The young savage started suddenly at the word, and rolled his keen
bright eye upon the speaker.
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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?"
"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!"
"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.
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.
"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.
[1833.]
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."
"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.
"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
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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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:
"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:--
"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.
"'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.
"'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.
"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:
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 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.
[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.
"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."
"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.
"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."
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."
"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."
"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.
"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."
"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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
"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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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."
"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."
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!
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:--
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.
That very night the rascal decamped, taking with him the doctor's horse,
and was never after heard of.
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.
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.
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 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
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:
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.
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.
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.)
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:--
"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.
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.
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.
"What ails you?" asked the boy at length. "What makes you lie there?"
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.
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.
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."
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.
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 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:
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.
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.
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."
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:
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.
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.
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.
THE BEAUTIFUL
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.
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:--
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.
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,--
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 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.
"to me is given
Such hope I may not fear;
I long to breathe the airs of heaven,
Which sometimes meet me here.
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
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."
[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.
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.
"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.
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.
HISTORICAL PAPERS
BY
CONTENTS
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
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,
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."
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.
"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.
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."
"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."
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."
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
"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.'
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:--
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:--
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!"
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.
"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."
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.
"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.
"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
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:--
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:--
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."
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.
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.
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."
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:--
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.
"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."
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.
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."
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:--
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:--
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.
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 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:--
A little poem of Marvell's, which he calls Eyes and Tears, has the
following passages:--
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.
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,
The tone and temper of his mind may be most fitly expressed in his own
paraphrase of Horace:--
"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."
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.
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_?
"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."
"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.
"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 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."
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."
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.
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.
"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."
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,
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.
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.
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?"
The slave was at work in an adjoining field, and at the call of his
master came promptly to receive his commands.
"But are you happy in your present condition?" queried the Doctor.
"O yes, massa," exclaimed the negro, his dark face glowing with new life;
"berry much more happy!"
"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.
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.
RICHARD BAXTER.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.'"
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.
"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
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."
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
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 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:--
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.
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--
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?"
In the summer of 1835, a mob of excited citizens broke open the post-
office at Charleston, South Carolina, and burnt in the street such papers
and pamphlets as they judged to be "incendiary;" in other words, such as
advocated the application of the democratic principle to the condition of
the slaves of the South. These papers were addressed, not to the slave,
but to the master. They contained nothing which had not been said and
written by Southern men themselves, the Pinkneys, Jeffersons, Henrys, and
Martins, of Maryland and Virginia. The example set at Charleston did not
lack imitators. Every petty postmaster south of Mason and Dixon's line
became ex officio a censor of the press. The Postmaster-General, writing
to his subordinate at Charleston, after stating that the post-office
department had "no legal right to exclude newspapers from the mail, or
prohibit their carriage or delivery, on account of their character or
tendency, real or supposed," declared that he would, nevertheless, give
no aid, directly or indirectly, in circulating publications of an
incendiary or inflammatory character; and assured the perjured
functionary, who had violated his oath of office, that, while he could
not sanction, he would not condemn his conduct. Against this virtual
encouragement of a flagrant infringement of a constitutional right, this
licensing of thousands of petty government officials to sit in their mail
offices--to use the figure of Milton--cross-legged, like so many envious
Junos, in judgment upon the daily offspring of the press, taking counsel
of passion, prejudice, and popular excitement as to what was "incendiary"
or "inflammatory," the Evening Post spoke in tones of manly protest.
While almost all the editors of his party throughout the country either
openly approved of the conduct of the Postmaster-General or silently
acquiesced in it, William Leggett, who, in the absence of his colleague,
was at that time sole editor of the Post, and who had everything to lose,
in a worldly point of view, by assailing a leading functionary of the
government, who was a favorite of the President and a sharer of his
popularity, did not hesitate as to the course which consistency and duty
required at his hands. He took his stand for unpopular truth, at a time
when a different course on his part could not have failed to secure him
the favor and patronage of his party. In the great struggle with the
Bank of the United States, his services had not been unappreciated by the
President and his friends. Without directly approving the course of the
administration on the question of the rights of the Abolitionists, by
remaining silent in respect to it, he might have avoided all suspicion of
mental and moral independence incompatible with party allegiance. The
impracticable honesty of Leggett, never bending from the erectness of
truth for the sake of that "thrift which follows fawning," dictated a
most severe and scorching review of the letter of the Postmaster-General.
"More monstrous, more detestable doctrines we have never heard
promulgated," he exclaimed in one of his leading editorials. "With what
face, after this, can the Postmaster-General punish a postmaster for any
exercise of the fearfully dangerous power of stopping and destroying any
portion of the mails?" "The Abolitionists do not deserve to be placed on
the same footing with a foreign enemy, nor their publications as the
secret despatches of a spy. They are American citizens, in the exercise
of their undoubted right of citizenship; and however erroneous their
views, however fanatic their conduct, while they act within the limits of
the law, what official functionary, be he merely a subordinate or the
head of the post-office department, shall dare to abridge them of their
rights as citizens, and deny them those facilities of intercourse which
were instituted for the equal accommodation of all? If the American
people will submit to this, let us expunge all written codes, and resolve
society into its original elements, where the might of the strong is
better than the right of the weak."
has been worn deeper, not effaced, by time; and we eagerly and ardently
trust that the day will yet arrive when the clank of the bondman's
fetters will form no part of the multitudinous sounds which our country
sends up to Heaven, mingling, as it were, into a song of praise for our
national prosperity. We yearn with strong desire for the day when
freedom shall no longer wave
A few days after, in reply to the assaults made upon him from all
quarters, he calmly and firmly reiterated his determination to maintain
the right of free discussion of the subject of slavery.
"The course we are pursuing," said he, "is one which we entered upon after
mature deliberation, and we are not to be turned from it by a species of
opposition, the inefficacy of which we have seen displayed in so many
former instances. It is Philip Van Artevelde who says:--
"The senseless cry of 'Abolitionist' shall never deter us, nor the more
senseless attempt of puny prints to read us out of the democratic party.
The often-quoted and beautiful saying of the Latin historian, Homo sum:
humani nihil a me alienum puto, we apply to the poor slave as well as his
master, and shall endeavor to fulfil towards both the obligations of an
equal humanity."
The generation which, since the period of which we are speaking, have
risen into active life can have but a faint conception of the boldness of
this movement on the part of William Leggett. To be an Abolitionist then
was to abandon all hope of political preferment or party favor; to be
marked and branded as a social outlaw, under good society's interdict of
food and fire; to hold property, liberty, and life itself at the mercy of
lawless mobs. All this William Leggett clearly saw. He knew how rugged
and thorny was the path upon which, impelled by his love of truth and the
obligations of humanity, he was entering. From hunted and proscribed
Abolitionists and oppressed and spirit-broken colored men, the Pariahs of
American democracy, he could alone expect sympathy. The Whig journals,
with a few honorable exceptions, exulted over what they regarded as the
fall of a formidable opponent; and after painting his abolitionism in the
most hideous colors, held him up to their Southern allies as a specimen
of the radical disorganizers and democratic levellers of the North. His
own party, in consequence, made haste to proscribe him. Government
advertising was promptly withdrawn from his paper. The official journals
of Washington and Albany read him out of the pale of democracy. Father
Ritchie scolded and threatened. The democratic committee issued its bull
against him from Tammany Hall. The resolutions of that committee were
laid before him when he was sinking under a severe illness. Rallying his
energies, he dictated from his sick-bed an answer marked by all his
accustomed vigor and boldness. Its tone was calm, manly, self-relying;
the language of one who, having planted his feet hard down on the rock of
principle, stood there like Luther at Worms, because he "could not
otherwise." Exhausted nature sunk under the effort. A weary sickness of
nearly a year's duration followed. In this sore affliction, deserted as
he was by most of his old political friends, we have reason to know that
he was cheered by the gratitude of those in whose behalf he had well-nigh
made a martyr's sacrifice; and that from the humble hearths of his poor
colored fellow-citizens fervent prayers went up for his restoration.
His work was not yet done. Purified by trial, he was to stand forth once
more in vindication of the truths of freedom. As soon as his health was
sufficiently reestablished, he commenced the publication of an
independent political and literary journal, under the expressive title of
The Plaindealer. In his first number he stated, that, claiming the right
of absolute freedom of discussion, he should exercise it with no other
limitations than those of his own judgment. A poor man, he admitted that
he established the paper in the expectation of deriving from it a
livelihood, but that even for that object he could not trim its sails to
suit the varying breeze of popular prejudice. "If," said he, "a paper
which makes the Right, and not the Expedient, its cardinal object, will
not yield its conductor a support, there are honest vocations that will,
and better the humblest of them than to be seated at the head of an
influential press, if its influence is not exerted to promote the cause
of truth." He was true to his promise. The free soul of a free, strong
man spoke out in his paper. How refreshing was it, after listening to
the inanities, the dull, witless vulgarity, the wearisome commonplace of
journalists, who had no higher aim than to echo, with parrot-like
exactness, current prejudices and falsehoods, to turn to the great and
generous thoughts, the chaste and vigorous diction, of the Plaindealer!
No man ever had a clearer idea of the duties and responsibilities of a
conductor of the public press than William Leggett, and few have ever
combined so many of the qualifications for their perfect discharge: a
nice sense of justice, a warm benevolence, inflexible truth, honesty
defying temptation, a mind stored with learning, and having at command
the treasures of the best thoughts of the best authors. As was said of
Fletcher of Saltoun, he was "a gentleman steady in his principles; of
nice honor, abundance of learning; bold as a lion; a sure friend; a man
who would lose his life to serve his country, and would not do a base
thing to save it."
He had his faults: his positive convictions sometimes took the shape
of a proud and obstinate dogmatism; he who could so well appeal to the
judgment and the reason of his readers too often only roused their
passions by invective and vehement declamation. Moderate men were
startled and pained by the fierce energy of his language; and he not
unfrequently made implacable enemies of opponents whom he might have
conciliated and won over by mild expostulation and patient explanation.
It must be urged in extenuation, that, as the champion of unpopular
truths, he was assailed unfairly on all sides, and indecently
misrepresented and calumniated to a degree, as his friend Sedgwick justly
remarks, unprecedented even in the annals of the American press; and that
his errors in this respect were, in the main, errors of retaliation.
"We have Mr. Calhoun's own warrant for attacking his position with all
the fervor which a high sense of duty can give, for we do hold, from the
bottom of our soul, that slavery is an evil,--a deep, detestable,
damnable evil; evil in all its aspects to the blacks, and a greater evil
to the whites; an evil moral, social, and political; an evil which shows
itself in the languishing condition of agriculture where it exists, in
paralyzed commerce, and in the prostration of the mechanic arts; an evil
which stares you in the face from uncultivated fields, and howls in your
ears through tangled swamps and morasses. Slavery is such an evil that
it withers what it touches. Where it is once securely established the
land becomes desolate, as the tree inevitably perishes which the sea-hawk
chooses for its nest; while freedom, on the contrary, flourishes like the
tannen, 'on the loftiest and least sheltered rocks,' and clothes with its
refreshing verdure what, without it, would frown in naked and incurable
sterility.
"This is the State which, but a few years ago, slept in the unbroken
solitude of nature. The forest spread an interminable canopy of shade
over the dark soil on which the fat and useless vegetation rotted at
ease, and through the dusky vistas of the wood only savage beasts and
more savage men prowled in quest of prey. The whole land now blossoms
like a garden. The tall and interlacing trees have unlocked their hold,
and bowed before the woodman's axe. The soil is disencumbered of the
mossy trunks which had reposed upon it for ages. The rivers flash in the
sunlight, and the fields smile with waving harvests. This is Ohio, and
this is what freedom has done for it.
The Plaindealer was uniformly conducted with eminent ability; but its
editor was too far in advance of his contemporaries to find general
acceptance, or even toleration. In addition to pecuniary embarrassments,
his health once more failed, and in the autumn of 1837 he was compelled
to suspend the publication of his paper. One of the last articles which
he wrote for it shows the extent to which he was sometimes carried by the
intensity and depth of his abhorrence of oppression, and the fervency of
his adoration of liberty. Speaking of the liability of being called upon
to aid the master in the subjection of revolted slaves, and in replacing
their cast-off fetters, he thus expresses himself: "Would we comply with
such a requisition? No! Rather would we see our right arm lopped from
our body, and the mutilated trunk itself gored with mortal wounds, than
raise a finger in opposition to men struggling in the holy cause of
freedom. The obligations of citizenship are strong, but those of
justice, humanity, and religion, stronger. We earnestly trust that the
great contest of opinion which is now going on in this country may
terminate in the enfranchisement of the slaves, without recourse to the
strife of blood; but should the oppressed bondmen, impatient of the tardy
progress of truth, urged only in discussion, attempt to burst their
chains by a more violent and shorter process, they should never encounter
our arm nor hear our voice in the ranks of their opponents. We should
stand a sad spectator of the conflict; and, whatever commiseration we
might feel for the discomfiture of the oppressors, we should pray that
the battle might end in giving freedom to the oppressed."
With the Plain dealer, his connection with the public, in a great
measure, ceased. His steady and intimate friend, personal as well as
political, Theodore Sedgwick, Jun., a gentleman who has, on many
occasions, proved himself worthy of his liberty-loving ancestry, thus
speaks of him in his private life at this period: "Amid the reverses of
fortune, harassed by pecuniary embarrassments, during the tortures of a
disease which tore away his life piecemeal, hee ever maintained the same
manly and unaltered front, the same cheerfulness of disposition, the same
dignity of conduct. No humiliating solicitation, no weak complaint,
escaped him." At the election in the fall of 1838, the noble-spirited
democrat was not wholly forgotten. A strenuous effort, which was well-
nigh successful, was made to secure his nomination as a candidate for
Congress. It was at this juncture that he wrote to a friend in the city,
from his residence at New Rochelle, one of the noblest letters ever
penned by a candidate for popular favor. The following extracts will
show how a true man can meet the temptations of political life:--
"And here, let me add, (apart from any consideration already adverted
to,) that, as a matter of mere policy, I would not, if I could, have my
name disjoined from abolitionism. To be an Abolitionist now is to be an
incendiary; as, three years ago, to be an anti-monopolist was to be a
leveller and a Jack Cade. See what three short years have done in
effecting the anti-monopoly reform; and depend upon it that the next
three years, or, if not three, say three times three, if you please, will
work a greater revolution on the slavery question. The stream of public
opinion now sets against us; but it is about to turn, and the
regurgitation will be tremendous. Proud in that day may well be the man
who can float in triumph on the first refluent wave, swept onward by the
deluge which he himself, in advance of his fellows, has largely shared in
occasioning. Such be my fate; and, living or dead, it will, in some
measure, be mine! I have written my name in ineffaceable letters on the
abolition record; and whether the reward ultimately come in the shape of
honors to the living man, or a tribute to the memory of a departed one, I
would not forfeit my right to it for as many offices as has in his gift,
if each of them was greater than his own."
After mentioning that he had understood that some of his friends had
endeavored to propitiate popular prejudice by representing him as no
Abolitionist, he says:--
"Keep them, for God's sake, from committing any such fooleries for the
sake of getting me into Congress. Let others twist themselves into what
shapes they please, to gratify the present taste of the people; as for
me, I am not formed of such pliant materials, and choose to retain,
undisturbed, the image of my God! I do not wish to cheat the people of
their votes. I would not get their support, any more than their money,
under false pretences. I am what I am; and if that does not suit them,
I am content to stay at home."
God be praised for affording us, even in these latter days, the sight of
an honest man! Amidst the heartlessness, the double-dealing, the
evasions, the prevarications, the shameful treachery and falsehood, of
political men of both parties, in respect to the question of slavery, how
refreshing is it to listen to words like these! They renew our failing
faith in human nature. They reprove our weak misgivings. We rise up
from their perusal stronger and healthier. With something of the spirit
which dictated them, we renew our vows to freedom, and, with manlier
energy, gird up our souls for the stern struggle before us.
The praises which such men are now constrained to bestow upon him are
their own condemnation. Every stone which they pile upon his grave is
written over with the record of their hypocrisy.
We have written rather for the living than the dead. As one of that
proscribed and hunted band of Abolitionists, whose rights were so bravely
defended by William Leggett, we should, indeed, be wanting in ordinary
gratitude not to do honor to his memory; but we have been actuated at the
present time mainly by a hope that the character, the lineaments of which
we have so imperfectly sketched, may awaken a generous emulation in the
hearts of the young democracy of our country. Democracy such as William
Leggett believed and practised, democracy in its full and all-
comprehensive significance, is destined to be the settled political faith
of this republic. Because the despotism of slavery has usurped its name,
and offered the strange incense of human tears and blood on its profaned
altars, shall we, therefore, abandon the only political faith which
coincides with the Gospel of Jesus, and meets the aspirations and wants
of humanity? No. The duty of the present generation in the United
States is to reduce this faith to practice, to make the beautiful ideal a
fact.
We have before us, at this time, a letter from Seidensticker, one of the
leaders of the patriotic movement in behalf of German liberty in 1831.
It was written from the prison of Celle, where he had been confined for
eight years. The writer expresses his indignant astonishment at the
speeches of John C. Calhoun, and others in Congress, on the slavery
question, and deplores the disastrous influence of our great
inconsistency upon the cause of freedom throughout the world,--an
influence which paralyzes the hands of the patriotic reformer, while it
strengthens those of his oppressor, and deepens around the living martyrs
and confessors of European democracy the cold shadow of their prisons.
How long shall such appeals, from such sources, be wasted upon us? Shall
our baleful example enslave the world? Shall the tree of democracy,
which our fathers intended for "the healing of the nations," be to them
like the fabled upas, blighting all around it?
The men of the North, the pioneers of the free West, and the non-
slaveholders of the South must answer these questions. It is for them to
say whether the present wellnigh intolerable evil shall continue to
increase its boundaries, and strengthen its hold upon the government, the
political parties, and the religious sects of our country. Interest and
honor, present possession and future hope, the memory of fathers, the
prospects of children, gratitude, affection, the still call of the dead,
the cry of oppressed nations looking hitherward for the result of all
their hopes, the voice of God in the soul, in revelation, and in His
providence, all appeal to them for a speedy and righteous decision. At
this moment, on the floor of Congress, Democracy and Slavery have met in
a death-grapple. The South stands firm; it allows no party division on
the slave question. One of its members has declared that "the slave
States have no traitors." Can the same be said of the free? Now, as in
the time of the fatal Missouri Compromise, there are, it is to be feared,
political peddlers among our representatives, whose souls are in the
market, and whose consciences are vendible commodities. Through their
means, the slave power may gain a temporary triumph; but may not the very
baseness of the treachery arouse the Northern heart? By driving the free
States to the wall, may it not compel them to turn and take an aggressive
attitude, clasp hands over the altar of their common freedom, and swear
eternal hostility to slavery?
Be the issue of the present contest what it may, those who are faithful
to freedom should allow no temporary reverse to shake their confidence in
the ultimate triumph of the right. The slave will be free. Democracy in
America will yet be a glorious reality; and when the topstone of that
temple of freedom which our fathers left unfinished shall be brought
forth with shoutings and cries of grace unto it, when our now drooping-
Liberty lifts up her head and prospers, happy will be he who can say,
with John Milton, "Among those who have something more than wished her
welfare, I too have my charter and freehold of rejoicing to me and my
heirs."
So, in one of the sweetest and most pathetic of his poems touching the
loss of his literary friends, sang Wordsworth. We well remember with
what freshness and vividness these simple lines came before us, on
hearing, last autumn, of the death of the warm-hearted and gifted friend
whose name heads this article; for there was much in his character and
genius to remind us of the gentle author of Elia. He had the latter's
genial humor and quaintness; his nice and delicate perception of the
beautiful and poetic; his happy, easy diction, not the result, as in the
case of that of the English essayist, of slow and careful elaboration,
but the natural, spontaneous language in which his conceptions at once
embodied themselves, apparently without any consciousness of effort. As
Mark Antony talked, he wrote, "right on," telling his readers often what
"they themselves did know," yet imparting to the simplest commonplaces of
life interest and significance, and throwing a golden haze of poetry over
the rough and thorny pathways of every-day duty. Like Lamb, he loved his
friends without stint or limit. The "old familiar faces" haunted him.
Lamb loved the streets and lanes of London--the places where he oftenest
came in contact with the warm, genial heart of humanity--better than the
country. Rogers loved the wild and lonely hills and valleys of New
Hampshire none the less that he was fully alive to the enjoyments of
society, and could enter with the heartiest sympathy into all the joys
and sorrows of his friends and neighbors.
In another point of view, he was not unlike Elia. He had the same love
of home, and home friends, and familiar objects; the same fondness for
common sights and sounds; the same dread of change; the same shrinking
from the unknown and the dark. Like him, he clung with a child's love to
the living present, and recoiled from a contemplation of the great change
which awaits us. Like him, he was content with the goodly green earth
and human countenances, and would fain set up his tabernacle here. He
had less of what might be termed self-indulgence in this feeling than
Lamb. He had higher views; he loved this world not only for its own
sake, but for the opportunities it afforded of doing good. Like the
Persian seer, he beheld the legions of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of Light and
Darkness, contending for mastery over the earth, as the sunshine and
shadow of a gusty, half-cloudy day struggled on the green slopes of his
native mountains; and, mingled with the bright host, he would fain have
fought on until its banners waved in eternal sunshine over the last
hiding-place of darkness. He entered into the work of reform with the
enthusiasm and chivalry of a knight of the crusades. He had faith in
human progress,--in the ultimate triumph of the good; millennial lights
beaconed up all along his horizon. In the philanthropic movements of the
day; in the efforts to remove the evils of slavery, war, intemperance,
and sanguinary laws; in the humane and generous spirit of much of our
modern poetry and literature; in the growing demand of the religious
community, of all sects, for the preaching of the gospel of love and
humanity, he heard the low and tremulous prelude of the great anthem of
universal harmony. "The world," said he, in a notice of the music of the
Hutchinson family, "is out of tune now. But it will be tuned again, and
all will become harmony." In this faith he lived and acted; working, not
always, as it seemed to some of his friends, wisely, but bravely,
truthfully, earnestly, cheering on his fellow-laborers, and imparting to
the dullest and most earthward looking of them something of his own zeal
and loftiness of purpose.
"Who was he?" does the reader ask? Naturally enough, too, for his name
has never found its way into fashionable reviews; it has never been
associated with tale, or essay, or poem, to our knowledge. Our friend
Griswold, who, like another Noah, has launched some hundreds of American
poets and prose writers on the tide of immortality in his two huge arks
of rhyme and reason, has either overlooked his name, or deemed it
unworthy of preservation. Then, too, he was known mainly as the editor
of a proscribed and everywhere-spoken-against anti-slavery paper. It had
few readers of literary taste and discrimination; plain, earnest men and
women, intent only upon the thought itself, and caring little for the
clothing of it, loved the _Herald of Freedom_ for its honestness and
earnestness, and its bold rebukes of the wrong, its all-surrendering
homage to what its editor believed to be right. But the literary world
of authors and critics saw and heard little or nothing of him or his
writings. "I once had a bit of scholar-craft," he says of himself on one
occasion, "and had I attempted it in some pitiful sectarian or party or
literary sheet, I should have stood a chance to get quoted into the
periodicals. Now, who dares quote from the _Herald of Freedom_?" He
wrote for humanity, as his biographer justly says, not for fame. "He
wrote because he had something to say, and true to nature, for to him
nature was truth; he spoke right on, with the artlessness and simplicity
of a child."
In 1838, he gave up his law practice, left his fine outlook at Plymouth
upon the mountains of the North, Moosehillock and the Haystacks, and took
up his residence at Concord, for the purpose of editing the _Herald of
Freedom_, an anti-slavery paper which had been started some three or four
years before. John Pierpont, than whom there could not be a more
competent witness, in his brief and beautiful sketch of the life and
writings of Rogers, does not overestimate the ability with which the
Herald was conducted, when he says of its editor: "As a newspaper writer,
we think him unequalled by any living man; and in the general strength,
clearness, and quickness of his intellect, we think all who knew him well
will agree with us that he was not excelled by any editor in the
country." He was not a profound reasoner: his imagination and brilliant
fancy played the wildest tricks with his logic; yet, considering the way
by which he reached them, it is remarkable that his conclusions were so
often correct. The tendency of his mind was to extremes. A zealous
Calvinistic church-member, he became an equally zealous opponent of
churches and priests; a warm politician, he became an ultra non-resistant
and no-government man. In all this, his sincerity was manifest. If, in
the indulgence of his remarkable powers of sarcasm, in the free antics of
a humorous fancy, upon whose graceful neck he had flung loose the reins,
he sometimes did injustice to individuals, and touched, in irreverent
sport, the hem of sacred garments, it had the excuse, at least, of a
generous and honest motive. If he sometimes exaggerated, those who best,
knew him can testify that he "set down naught in malice."
Our limits will not admit of such extracts from the Collection of his
writings as would convey to our readers an adequate idea of his thought
and manner. His descriptions of natural scenery glow with life. One can
almost see the sunset light flooding the Franconia Notch, and glorifying
the peaks of Moosehillock, and hear the murmur of the west wind in the
pines, and the light, liquid voice of Pemigewasset sounding up from its
rocky channel, through its green hem of maples, while reading them. We
give a brief extract from an editorial account of an autumnal trip to
Vermont:
"We have recently journeyed through a portion of this, free State; and it
is not all imagination in us that sees, in its bold scenery, its
uninfected inland position, its mountainous but fertile and verdant
surface, the secret of the noble predisposition of its people. They are
located for freedom. Liberty's home is on their Green Mountains. Their
farmer republic nowhere touches the ocean, the highway of the world's
crimes, as well as its nations. It has no seaport for the importation of
slavery, or the exportation of its own highland republicanism. Should
slavery ever prevail over this nation, to its utter subjugation, the last
lingering footsteps of retiring Liberty will be seen, not, as Daniel
Webster said, in the proud old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, about
Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall; but she will be found wailing, like
Jephthah's daughter, among the 'hollows' and along the sides of the Green
Mountains.
"Vermont shows gloriously at this autumn season. Frost has gently laid
hands on her exuberant vegetation, tinging her rock-maple woods without
abating the deep verdure of her herbage. Everywhere along her peopled
hollows and her bold hillslopes and summits the earth is alive with
green, while her endless hard-wood forests are uniformed with all the
hues of early fall, richer than the regimentals of the kings that
glittered in the train of Napoleon on the confines of Poland, when he
lingered there, on the last outposts of summer, before plunging into the
snow-drifts of the North; more gorgeous than the array of Saladin's life-
guard in the wars of the Crusaders, or of 'Solomon in all his glory,'
decked in, all colors and hues, but still the hues of life. Vegetation
touched, but not dead, or, if killed, not bereft yet of 'signs of life.'
'Decay's effacing fingers' had not yet 'swept the hills' 'where beauty
lingers.' All looked fresh as growing foliage. Vermont frosts don't seem
to be 'killing frosts.' They only change aspects of beauty. The mountain
pastures, verdant to the peaks, and over the peaks of the high, steep
hills, were covered with the amplest feed, and clothed with countless
sheep; the hay-fields heavy with second crop, in some partly cut and
abandoned, as if in very weariness and satiety, blooming with
honeysuckle, contrasting strangely with the colors on the woods; the fat
cattle and the long-tailed colts and close-built Morgans wallowing in it
up to the eyes, or the cattle down to rest, with full bellies, by ten in
the morning. Fine but narrow roads wound along among the hills, free
almost entirely of stone, and so smooth as to be safe for the most rapid
driving, made of their rich, dark, powder-looking soil. Beautiful
villages or scattered settlements breaking upon the delighted view, on
the meandering way, making the ride a continued scene of excitement and
admiration. The air fresh, free, and wholesome; the road almost dead
level for miles and miles, among mountains that lay over the land like
the great swells of the sea, and looking in the prospect as though there
could be no passage."
"At last Spring is here in full flush. Winter held on tenaciously and
mercilessly, but it has let go. The great sun is high on his northern
journey, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and the loud frog-
chorus, the tree budding and blowing, are all upon us; and the glorious
grass--super-best of earth's garniture--with its ever-satisfying green.
The king-birds have come, and the corn-planter, the scolding bob-o-link.
'Plant your corn, plant your corn,' says he, as he scurries athwart the
ploughed ground, hardly lifting his crank wings to a level with his back,
so self-important is he in his admonitions. The earlier birds have gone
to housekeeping, and have disappeared from the spray. There has been
brief period for them, this spring, for scarcely has the deep snow gone,
but the dark-green grass has come, and first we shall know, the ground
will be yellow with dandelions.
"I incline to thank Heaven this glorious morning of May 16th for the
pleasant home from which we can greet the Spring. Hitherto we have had
to await it amid a thicket of village houses, low down, close together,
and awfully white. For a prospect, we had the hinder part of an ugly
meeting-house, which an enterprising neighbor relieved us of by planting
a dwelling-house, right before our eyes, (on his own land, and he had a
right to,) which relieved us also of all prospect whatever. And the
revival spirit of habitation which has come over Concord is clapping up a
house between every two in the already crowded town; and the prospect is,
it will be soon all buildings. They are constructing, in quite good
taste though, small, trim, cottage-like. But I had rather be where I can
breathe air, and see beyond my own features, than be smothered among the
prettiest houses ever built. We are on the slope of a hill; it is all
sand, be sure, on all four sides of us, but the air is free, (and the
sand, too, at times,) and our water, there is danger of hard drinking to
live by it. Air and water, the two necessaries of life, and high, free
play-ground for the small ones. There is a sand precipice hard by, high
enough, were it only rock and overlooked the ocean, to be as sublime as
any of the Nahant cliffs. As it is, it is altogether a safer haunt for
daring childhood, which could hardly break its neck by a descent of some
hundreds of feet.
"A low flat lies between us and the town, with its State-house, and body-
guard of well-proportioned steeples standing round. It was marshy and
wet, but is almost all redeemed by the translation into it of the high
hills of sand. It must have been a terrible place for frogs, judging
from what remains of it. Bits of water from the springs hard by lay here
and there about the low ground, which are peopled as full of singers as
ever the gallery of the old North Meeting-house was, and quite as
melodious ones. Such performers I never heard, in marsh or pool. They
are not the great, stagnant, bull-paddocks, fat and coarse-noted like
Parson, but clear-water frogs, green, lively, and sweet-voiced. I
passed their orchestra going home the other evening, with a small lad,
and they were at it, all parts, ten thousand peeps, shrill, ear-piercing,
and incessant, coming up from every quarter, accompanied by a second,
from some larger swimmer with his trombone, and broken in upon, every now
and then, but not discordantly, with the loud, quick hallo, that
resembles the cry of the tree-toad. 'There are the Hutchinsons,' cried
the lad. 'The Rainers,' responded I, glad to remember enough of my
ancient Latin to know that Rana, or some such sounding word, stood for
frog. But it was a 'band of music,' as the Miller friends say. Like
other singers, (all but the Hutchinsons,) these are apt to sing too much,
all the time they are awake, constituting really too much of a good
thing. I have wondered if the little reptiles were singing in concert,
or whether every one peeped on his own hook, their neighbor hood only
making it a chorus. I incline to the opinion that they are performing
together, that they know the tune, and each carries his part, self-
selected, in free meeting, and therefore never discordant. The hour rule
of Congress might be useful, though far less needed among the frogs than
among the profane croakers of the fens at Washington."
"The earth sphered up all around us, in every quarter of the horizon,
like the crater of a vast volcano, and the great hollow within the
mountain circle was as smoky as Vesuvius or Etna in their recess of
eruption. The little village of Plymouth lay right at our feet, with its
beautiful expanse of intervale opening on the eye like a lake among the
woods and hills, and the Pemigewasset, bordered along its crooked way
with rows of maples, meandering from upland to upland through the
meadows. Our young footsteps had wandered over these localities. Time
had cast it all far back that Pemigewasset, with its meadows and border
trees; that little village whitening in the margin of its inter vale; and
that one house which we could distinguish, where the mother that watched
over and endured our wayward childhood totters at fourscore!
"To the south stretched a broken, swelling upland country, but champaign
from the top of North Hill, patched all over with grain-fields and green
wood-lots, the roofs of the farm-houses shining in the sun. Southwest,
the Cardigan Mountain showed its bald forehead among the smokes of a
thousand fires, kindled in the woods in the long drought. Westward,
Moosehillock heaved up its long back, black as a whale; and turning the
eye on northward, glancing down the while on the Baker's River valley,
dotted over with human dwellings like shingle-bunches for size, you
behold the great Franconia Range, its Notch and its Haystacks, the
Elephant Mountain on the left, and Lafayette (Great Haystack) on the
right, shooting its peak in solemn loneliness high up into the desert
sky, and overtopping all the neighboring Alps but Mount Washington
itself. The prospect of these is most impressive and satisfactory. We
don't believe the earth presents a finer mountain display. The Haystacks
stand there like the Pyramids on the wall of mountains. One of them
eminently has this Egyptian shape. It is as accurate a pyramid to the
eye as any in the old valley of the Nile, and a good deal bigger than any
of those hoary monuments of human presumption, of the impious tyranny of
monarchs and priests, and of the appalling servility of the erecting
multitude. Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh does not more finely resemble a
sleeping lion than the huge mountain on the left of the Notch does an
elephant, with his great, overgrown rump turned uncivilly toward the gap
where the people have to pass. Following round the panorama, you come to
the Ossipees and the Sandwich Mountains, peaks innumerable and nameless,
and of every variety of fantastic shape. Down their vast sides are
displayed the melancholy-looking slides, contrasting with the fathomless
woods.
"But the lakes,--you see lakes, as well as woods and mountains, from the
top of North Hill. Newfound Lake in Hebron, only eight miles distant,
you can't see; it lies too deep among the hills. Ponds show their small
blue mirrors from various quarters of the great picture. Worthen's Mill-
Pond and the Hardhack, where we used to fish for trout in truant,
barefooted days, Blair's Mill-Pond, White Oak Pond, and Long Pond, and
the Little Squam, a beautiful dark sheet of deep, blue water, about two
miles long, stretched an id the green hills and woods, with a charming
little beach at its eastern end, and without an island. And then the
Great Squam, connected with it on the east by a short, narrow stream, the
very queen of ponds, with its fleet of islands, surpassing in beauty all
the foreign waters we have seen, in Scotland or elsewhere,--the islands
covered with evergreens, which impart their hue to the mass of the lake,
as it stretches seven miles on east from its smaller sister, towards the
peerless Winnipesaukee. Great Squam is as beautiful as water and island
can be. But Winnipesaukee, it is the very 'Smile of the Great Spirit.'
It looks as if it had a thousand islands; some of them large enough for
little towns, and others not bigger than a swan or a wild duck swimming
on its surface of glass."
His wit and sarcasm were generally too good-natured to provoke even their
unfortunate objects, playing all over his editorials like the thunderless
lightnings which quiver along the horizon of a night of summer calmness;
but at times his indignation launched them like bolts from heaven. Take
the following as a specimen. He is speaking of the gag rule of Congress,
and commending Southern representatives for their skilful selection of a
proper person to do their work:--
"They have a quick eye at the South to the character, or, as they would
say, the points of a slave. They look into him shrewdly, as an old
jockey does into a horse. They will pick him out, at rifle-shot
distance, among a thousand freemen. They have a nice eye to detect
shades of vassalage. They saw in the aristocratic popinjay strut of a
counterfeit Democrat an itching aspiration to play the slaveholder. They
beheld it in 'the cut of his jib,' and his extreme Northern position made
him the very tool for their purpose. The little creature has struck at
the right of petition. A paltrier hand never struck at a noble right.
The Eagle Right of Petition, so loftily sacred in the eyes of the
Constitution that Congress can't begin to 'abridge' it, in its pride of
place, is hawked at by this crested jay-bird. A 'mousing owl' would have
seen better at midnoon than to have done it. It is an idiot blue-jay,
such as you see fooling about among the shrub oaks and dwarf pitch pines
in the winter. What an ignominious death to the lofty right, were it to
die by such a hand; but it does not die. It is impalpable to the
'malicious mockery' of such vain blows.' We are glad it is done--done by
the South--done proudly, and in slaveholding style, by the hand of a
vassal. What a man does by another he does by himself, says the maxim.
But they will disown the honor of it, and cast it on the despised 'free
nigger' North."
Or this description--not very flattering to the "Old Commonwealth"--of
the treatment of the agent of Massachusetts in South Carolina:--
"Slavery may perpetrate anything, and New England can't see it. It can
horsewhip the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and spit in her
governmental face, and she will not recognize it as an offence. She sent
her agent to Charleston on a State embassy. Slavery caught him, and sent
him ignominiously home. The solemn great man came back in a hurry. He
returned in a most undignified trot. He ran; he scampered,--the stately
official. The Old Bay State actually pulled foot, cleared, dug, as they
say, like any scamp with a hue and cry after him. Her grave old Senator,
who no more thought of having to break his stately walk than he had of
being flogged at school for stealing apples, came back from Carolina upon
the full run, out of breath and out of dignity. Well, what's the result?
Why, nothing. She no more thinks of showing resentment about it than she
would if lightning had struck him. He was sent back 'by the visitation
of God;' and if they had lynched him to death, and stained the streets of
Charleston with his blood, a Boston jury, if they could have held inquest
over him, would have found that he 'died by the visitation of God.' And
it would have been crowner's quest law, Slavery's crowners."
Replying to the charge that the Abolitionists of the North were "secret"
in their movements and designs, he says:--
"'In secret!' Why, our movements have been as prominent and open as the
house-tops from the beginning. We have striven from the outset to write
the whole matter cloud-high in the heavens, that the utmost South might
read it. We have cast an arc upon the horizon, like the semicircle of
the polar lights, and upon it have bent our motto, 'Immediate
Emancipation,' glorious as the rainbow. We have engraven it there, on
the blue table of the cold vault, in letters tall enough for the reading
of the nations. And why has the far South not read and believed before
this? Because a steam has gone up--a fog--from New England's pulpit and
her degenerate press, and hidden the beaming revelation from its vision.
The Northern hierarchy and aristocracy have cheated the South."
Scattered all over his editorials, like gems, are to be found beautiful
images, sweet touches of heartfelt pathos,--thoughts which the reader
pauses over with surprise and delight. We subjoin a few specimens, taken
almost at random from the book before us:--
"A thunder-storm,--what can match it for eloquence and poetry? That rush
from heaven of the big drops, in what multitude and succession, and how
they sound as they strike! How they play on the old home roof and the
thick tree-tops! What music to go to sleep by, to the tired boy, as he
lies under the naked roof! And the great, low bass thunder, as it rolls
off over the hills, and settles down behind them to the very centre, and
you can feel the old earth jar under your feet!"
"The hard hands of Irish labor, with nothing in them,--they ring like
slabs of marble together, in response to the wild appeals of O'Connell,
and the British stand conquered before them, with shouldered arms.
Ireland is on her feet, with nothing in her hands, impregnable,
unassailable, in utter defencelessness,--the first time that ever a
nation sprung to its feet unarmed. The veterans of England behold them,
and forbear to fire. They see no mark. It will not do to fire upon men;
it will do only to fire upon soldiers. They are the proper mark of the
murderous gun, but men cannot be shot."
"It is coming to that [abolition of war] the world over; and when it does
come to it, oh what a long breath of relief the tired world will draw, as
it stretches itself for the first time out upon earth's greensward, and
learns the meaning of repose and peaceful sleep!"
"He who vests his labor in the faithful ground is dealing directly with
God; human fraud or weakness do not intervene between him and his
requital. No mechanic has a set of customers so trustworthy as God and
the elements. No savings bank is so sure as the old earth."
"That accursed drum and fife! How they have maddened mankind! And the
deep bass boom of the cannon, chiming in in the chorus of battle, that
trumpet and wild charging bugle,--how they set the military devil in a
man, and make him into a soldier! Think of the human family falling upon
one another at the inspiration of music! How must God feel at it, to see
those harp-strings he meant should be waked to a love bordering on
divine, strung and swept to mortal hate and butchery!"
"Leave off being Jews," (he is addressing Major Noah with regard to his
appeal to his brethren to return to Judaea,) "and turn mankind. The
rocks and sands of Palestine have been worshipped long enough.
Connecticut River or the Merrimac are as good rivers as any Jordan that
ever run into a dead or live sea, and as holy, for that matter. In
Humanity, as in Christ Jesus, as Paul says, 'there is neither Jew nor
Greek.' And there ought to be none. Let Humanity be reverenced with the
tenderest devotion; suffering, discouraged, down-trodden, hard-handed,
haggard-eyed, care-worn mankind! Let these be regarded a little. Would
to God I could alleviate all their sorrows, and leave them a chance to
laugh! They are, miserable now. They might be as happy as the blackbird
on the spray, and as full of melody."
"The divines always admit things after the age has adopted them. They
are as careful of the age as the weathercock is of the wind. You might
as well catch an old experienced weathercock, on some ancient Orthodox
steeple, standing all day with its tail east in a strong out wind, as the
divines at odds with the age."
But we must cease quoting. The admirers of Jean Paul Richter might find
much of the charm and variety of the "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces" in
this newspaper collection. They may see, perhaps, as we do, some things
which they cannot approve of, the tendency of which, however intended, is
very questionable. But, with us, they will pardon something to the
spirit of liberty, much to that of love and humanity which breathes
through all.
His last visit to his native valley was in the autumn of 1845. In a
familiar letter to a friend, he thus describes his farewell view of the
mountain glories of his childhood's home:--
"I went a jaunt, Thursday last, about twenty miles north of this valley,
into the mountain region, where what I beheld, if I could tell it as I
saw it, would make your outlawed sheet sought after wherever our Anglo-
Saxon tongue is spoken in the wide world. I have been many a time among
those Alps, and never without a kindling of wildest enthusiasm in my
woodland blood. But I never saw them till last Thursday. They never
loomed distinctly to my eye before, and the sun never shone on them from
heaven till then. They were so near me, I could seem to hear the voice
of their cataracts, as I could count their great slides, streaming adown
their lone and desolate sides,--old slides, some of them overgrown with
young woods, like half-healed scars on the breast of a giant. The great
rains had clothed the valleys of the upper Pemigewasset in the darkest
and deepest green. The meadows were richer and more glorious in their
thick 'fall feed' than Queen Anne's Garden, as I saw it from the windows
of Windsor Castle. And the dark hemlock and hackmatack woods were yet
darker after the wet season, as they lay, in a hundred wildernesses, in
the mighty recesses of the mountains. But the peaks,--the eternal, the
solitary, the beautiful, the glorious and dear mountain peaks, my own
Moosehillock and my native Haystacks,--these were the things on which eye
and heart gazed and lingered, and I seemed to see them for the last time.
It was on my way back that I halted and turned to look at them from a
high point on the Thornton road. It was about four in the afternoon. It
had rained among the hills about the Notch, and cleared off. The sun,
there sombred at that early hour, as towards his setting, was pouring his
most glorious light upon the naked peaks, and they casting their mighty
shadows far down among the inaccessible woods that darken the hollows
that stretch between their bases. A cloud was creeping up to perch and
rest awhile on the highest top of Great Haystack. Vulgar folks have
called it Mount Lafayette, since the visit of that brave old Frenchman in
1825 or 1826. If they had asked his opinion, he would have told them the
names of mountains couldn't be altered, and especially names like that,
so appropriate, so descriptive, and so picturesque. A little hard white
cloud, that looked like a hundred fleeces of wool rolled into one, was
climbing rapidly along up the northwestern ridge, that ascended to the
lonely top of Great Haystack. All the others were bare. Four or five of
them,--as distinct and shapely as so many pyramids; some topped out with
naked cliff, on which the sun lay in melancholy glory; others clothed
thick all the way up with the old New Hampshire hemlock or the daring
hackmatack,--Pierpont's hackmatack. You could see their shadows
stretching many and many a mile, over Grant and Location, away beyond the
invading foot of Incorporation,--where the timber-hunter has scarcely
explored, and where the moose browses now, I suppose, as undisturbed as
he did before the settlement of the State. I wish our young friend and
genius, Harrison Eastman, had been with me, to see the sunlight as it
glared on the tops of those woods, and to see the purple of the
mountains. I looked at it myself almost with the eye of a painter. If a
painter looked with mine, though, he never could look off upon his canvas
long enough to make a picture; he would gaze forever at the original.
His health, never robust, had been gradually failing for some time
previous to his death. He needed more repose and quiet than his duties
as an editor left him; and to this end he purchased a small and pleasant
farm in his loved Pennigewasset valley, in the hope that he might there
recruit his wasted energies. In the sixth month of the year of his
death, in a letter to us, he spoke of his prospects in language which
even then brought moisture to our eyes:--
Alas! the haven of a deeper repose than he had dreamed of was close at
hand. He lingered until the middle of the tenth month, suffering much,
yet calm and sensible to the last. Just before his death, he desired his
children to sing at his bedside that touching song of Lover's, _The
Angel's Whisper_. Turning his eyes towards the open window, through
which the leafy glory of the season he most loved was visible, he
listened to the sweet melody. In the words of his friend Pierpont,--
ROBERT DINSMORE.
The great charm of Scottish poetry consists in its simplicity, and
genuine, unaffected sympathy with the common joys and sorrows of daily
life. It is a home-taught, household melody. It calls to mind the
pastoral bleat on the hillsides, the kirkbells of a summer Sabbath, the
song of the lark in the sunrise, the cry of the quail in the corn-land,
the low of cattle, and the blithe carol of milkmaids "when the kye come
hame" at gloaming. Meetings at fair and market, blushing betrothments,
merry weddings, the joy of young maternity, the lights and shades of
domestic life, its bereavements and partings, its chances and changes,
its holy death-beds, and funerals solemnly beautiful in quiet kirkyards,
--these furnish the hints of the immortal melodies of Burns, the sweet
ballads of the Ettrick Shepherd and Allan Cunningham, and the rustic
drama of Ramsay. It is the poetry of home, of nature, and the
affections.
but are more famous for growing Indian corn and potatoes, and the
manufacture of wooden ware and pedler notions, than for romantic
associations and legendary interest? That our huge, unshapely shingle
structures, blistering in the sun and glaring with windows, were
evidently never reared by the spell of pastoral harmonies, as the walls
of Thebes rose at the sound of the lyre of Amphion? That the habits of
our people are too cool, cautious, undemonstrative, to furnish the warp
and woof of song and pastoral, and that their dialect and figures of
speech, however richly significant and expressive in the autobiography of
Sam Slick, or the satire of Hosea Biglow and Ethan Spike, form a very
awkward medium of sentiment and pathos? All this may be true. But the
Yankee, after all, is a man, and as such his history, could it be got at,
must have more or less of poetic material in it; moreover, whether
conscious of it or not, he also stands relieved against the background of
Nature's beauty or sublimity. There is a poetical side to the
commonplace of his incomings and outgoings; study him well, and you may
frame an idyl of some sort from his apparently prosaic existence. Our
poets, we must needs think, are deficient in that shiftiness, ready
adaptation to circumstances, and ability of making the most of things,
for which, as a people, we are proverbial. Can they make nothing of our
Thanksgiving, that annual gathering of long-severed friends? Do they
find nothing to their purpose in our apple-bees, buskings, berry-
pickings, summer picnics, and winter sleigh-rides? Is there nothing
available in our peculiarities of climate, scenery, customs, and
political institutions? Does the Yankee leap into life, shrewd, hard,
and speculating, armed, like Pallas, for a struggle with fortune? Are
there not boys and girls, school loves and friendship, courtings and
match-makings, hope and fear, and all the varied play of human passions,
--the keen struggles of gain, the mad grasping of ambition,--sin and
remorse, tearful repentance and holy aspirations? Who shall say that we
have not all the essentials of the poetry of human life and simple
nature, of the hearth and the farm-field? Here, then, is a mine
unworked, a harvest ungathered. Who shall sink the shaft and thrust in
the sickle?
And here let us say that the mere dilettante and the amateur ruralist may
as well keep their hands off. The prize is not for them. He who would
successfully strive for it must be himself what he sings,--part and
parcel of the rural life of New England,--one who has grown strong amidst
its healthful influences, familiar with all its details, and capable of
detecting whatever of beauty, humor, or pathos pertain to it,--one who
has added to his book-lore the large experience of an active
participation in the rugged toil, the hearty amusements, the trials, and
the pleasures he describes.
Their moral acclimation in Ireland had not been without its effect upon
their character. Side by side with a Presbyterianism as austere as that
of John Knox had grown up something of the wild Milesian humor, love of
convivial excitement and merry-making. Their long prayers and fierce
zeal in behalf of orthodox tenets only served, in the eyes of their
Puritan neighbors, to make more glaring still the scandal of their marked
social irregularities. It became a common saying in the region round
about that "the Derry Presbyterians would never give up a pint of
doctrine or a pint of rum." Their second minister was an old scarred
fighter, who had signalized himself in the stout defence of Londonderry,
when James II. and his Papists were thundering at its gates. Agreeably
to his death-bed directions, his old fellow-soldiers, in their leathern
doublets and battered steel caps, bore him to his grave, firing over him
the same rusty muskets which had swept down rank after rank of the men of
Amalek at the Derry siege.
We envy not the man who can sneer at this simple picture. It is honest
as Nature herself. An old and lonely man looks back upon the young years
of his wedded life. Can we not look with him? The sunlight of a summer
morning is weaving itself with the leafy shadows of the bass-tree,
beneath which a fair and ruddy-checked young woman, with her full,
rounded arms bared to the elbow, bends not ungracefully to her task,
pausing ever and anon to play with the bright-eyed child beside her, and
mingling her songs with the pleasant murmurings of gliding water! Alas!
as the old man looks, he hears that voice, which perpetually sounds to us
all from the past--no more!
Let us look at him in his more genial mood. Take the opening lines of
his Thanksgiving Day. What a plain, hearty picture of substantial
comfort!
Something of the humor of Burns gleams out occasionally from the sober
decorum of his verses. In an epistle to his friend Betton, high sheriff
of the county, who had sent to him for a peck of seed corn, he says:--
The practical philosophy of the stout, jovial rhymer was but little
affected by the sour-featured asceticism of the elder. He says:--
"We'll eat and drink, and cheerful take
Our portions for the Donor's sake,
For thus the Word of Wisdom spake--
Man can't do better;
Nor can we by our labors make
The Lord our debtor!"
The reply is in the same strain, and may serve to give the reader some
idea of the old gentleman as a religious controversialist:--
yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his thick shoes of cowhide,
like one accustomed to tread independently the soil of his own acres,--
his broad, honest face seamed by care and darkened by exposure to "all
the airts that blow," and his white hair flowing in patriarchal glory
beneath his felt hat. A genial, jovial, large-hearted old man, simple as
a child, and betraying, neither in look nor manner, that he was
accustomed to
[1845.]
I have been greatly interested in the fate of Juan Placido, the black
revolutionist of Cuba, who was executed in Havana, as the alleged
instigator and leader of an attempted revolt on the part of the slaves in
that city and its neighborhood.
Juan Placido was born a slave on the estate of Don Terribio de Castro.
His father was an African, his mother a mulatto. His mistress treated
him with great kindness, and taught him to read. When he was twelve
years of age she died, and he fell into other and less compassionate
hands. At the age of eighteen, on seeing his mother struck with a heavy
whip, he for the first time turned upon his tormentors. To use his own
words, "I felt the blow in my heart. To utter a loud cry, and from a
downcast boy, with the timidity of one weak as a lamb, to become all at
office like a raging lion, was a thing of a moment." He was, however,
subdued, and the next morning, together with his mother, a tenderly
nurtured and delicate woman, severely scourged. On seeing his mother
rudely stripped and thrown down upon the ground, he at first with tears
implored the overseer to spare her; but at the sound of the first blow,
as it cut into her naked flesh, he sprang once more upon the ruffian,
who, having superior strength, beat him until he was nearer dead than
alive.
It is not too much to say of these poems that they will bear a comparison
with most of the productions of modern Spanish literature. The style is
bold, free, energetic. Some of the pieces are sportive and graceful;
such is the address to _The Cucuya_, or Cuban firefly. This beautiful
insect is sometimes fastened in tiny nets to the light dresses of the
Cuban ladies, a custom to which the writer gallantly alludes in the
following lines:--
"Ah!--still as one looks on such brightness and bloom,
On such beauty as hers, one might envy the doom
Of a captive Cucuya that's destined, like this,
To be touched by her hand and revived by her kiss!
In the cage which her delicate hand has prepared,
The beautiful prisoner nestles unscared,
O'er her fair forehead shining serenely and bright,
In beauty's own bondage revealing its light!
And when the light dance and the revel are done,
She bears it away to her alcove alone,
Where, fed by her hand from the cane that's most choice,
In secret it gleans at the sound of her voice!
O beautiful maiden! may Heaven accord
Thy care of the captive a fitting reward,
And never may fortune the fetters remove
Of a heart that is thine in the bondage of love!"
The writer then imagines himself borne lightly through the air to the
place of his birth. The valley of Matanzas lies beneath him, hallowed by
the graves of his parents. He proceeds:--
Some of his devotional pieces evince the fervor and true feeling of the
Christian poet. His _Ode to Religion_ contains many admirable lines.
Speaking of the martyrs of the early days of Christianity, he says
finely:--
His best and noblest production is an ode _To Cuba_, written on the
occasion of Dr. Madden's departure from the island, and presented to that
gentleman. It was never published in Cuba, as its sentiments would have
subjected the author to persecution. It breathes a lofty spirit of
patriotism, and an indignant sense of the wrongs inflicted upon his race.
Withal, it has something of the grandeur and stateliness of the old
Spanish muse.
The disastrous result of the last rising of the slaves--in Cuba is well
known. Betrayed, and driven into premature collision with their
oppressors, the insurrectionists were speedily crushed into subjection.
Placido was arrested, and after a long hearing was condemned to be
executed, and consigned to the Chapel of the Condemned.
Thus perished the hero poet of Cuba. He has not fallen in vain. His
genius and his heroic death will doubtless be regarded by his race as
precious legacies. To the great names of L'Ouverture and Petion the
colored man can now add that of Juan Placido.
Some seven years ago, we saw Charles T. Torrey for the first time. His
wife was leaning on his arm,--young, loving, and beautiful; the heart
that saw them blessed them. Since that time, we have known him as a most
energetic and zealous advocate of the anti-slavery cause. He had fine
talents, improved by learning and observation, a clear, intensely active
intellect, and a heart full of sympathy and genial humanity. It was with
strange and bitter feelings that we bent over his coffin and looked upon
his still face. The pity which we had felt for him in his long
sufferings gave place to indignation against his murderers. Hateful
beyond the power of expression seemed the tyranny which had murdered him
with the slow torture of the dungeon. May God forgive us, if for the
moment we felt like grasping His dread prerogative of vengeance. As we
passed out of the hall, a friend grasped our hand hard, his eye flashing
through its tears, with a stern reflection of our own emotions, while he
whispered through his pressed lips: "It is enough to turn every anti-
slavery heart into steel." Our blood boiled; we longed to see the wicked
apologists of slavery--the blasphemous defenders of it in Church and
State--led up to the coffin of our murdered brother, and there made to
feel that their hands had aided in riveting the chain upon those still
limbs, and in shutting out from those cold lips the free breath of
heaven.
The young, the beautiful, the brave!--he is safe now from the malice of
his enemies. Nothing can harm him more. His work for the poor and
helpless was well and nobly done. In the wild woods of Canada, around
many a happy fireside and holy family altar, his name is on the lips of
God's poor. He put his soul in their souls' stead; he gave his life for
those who had no claim on his love save that of human brotherhood. How
poor, how pitiful and paltry, seem our labors! How small and mean our
trials and sacrifices! May the spirit of the dead be with us, and infuse
into our hearts something of his own deep sympathy, his hatred of
injustice, his strong faith and heroic endurance. May that spirit be
gladdened in its present sphere by the increased zeal and faithfulness of
the friends he has left behind.
EDWARD EVERETT.
When the grave closed over him who added new lustre to the old and
honored name of Quincy, all eyes instinctively turned to Edward Everett
as the last of that venerated class of patriotic civilians who, outliving
all dissent and jealousy and party prejudice, held their reputation by
the secure tenure of the universal appreciation of its worth as a common
treasure of the republic. It is not for me to pronounce his eulogy.
Others, better qualified by their intimate acquaintance with him, have
done and will do justice to his learning, eloquence, varied culture, and
social virtues. My secluded country life has afforded me few
opportunities of personal intercourse with him, while my pronounced
radicalism on the great question which has divided popular feeling
rendered our political paths widely divergent. Both of us early saw the
danger which threatened the country. In the language of the prophet, we
"saw the sword coming upon the land," but while he believed in the
possibility of averting it by concession and compromise, I, on the
contrary, as firmly believed that such a course could only strengthen and
confirm what I regarded as a gigantic conspiracy against the rights and
liberties, the union and the life, of the nation.
Recent events have certainly not tended to change this belief on my part;
but in looking over the past, while I see little or nothing to retract in
the matter of opinion, I am saddened by the reflection that through the
very intensity of my convictions I may have done injustice to the motives
of those with whom I differed. As respects Edward Everett, it seems to
me that only within the last four years I have truly known him.
To keep green the memory of such a man is at once a privilege and a duty.
That stainless life of seventy years is a priceless legacy. His hands
were pure. The shadow of suspicion never fell on him. If he erred in
his opinions (and that he did so he had the Christian grace and courage
to own), no selfish interest weighed in the scale of his judgment against
truth.
LEWIS TAPPAN.
[1873.]
One after another, those foremost in the antislavery conflict of the last
half century are rapidly passing away. The grave has just closed over
all that was mortal of Salmon P. Chase, the kingliest of men, a statesman
second to no other in our history, too great and pure for the Presidency,
yet leaving behind him a record which any incumbent of that station might
envy,--and now the telegraph brings us the tidings of the death of Lewis
Tappan, of Brooklyn, so long and so honorably identified with the anti-
slavery cause, and with every philanthropic and Christian enterprise. He
was a native of Massachusetts, born at Northampton in 1788, of Puritan
lineage,--one of a family remarkable for integrity, decision of
character, and intellectual ability. At the very outset, in company with
his brother Arthur, he devoted his time, talents, wealth, and social
position to the righteous but unpopular cause of Emancipation, and
became, in consequence, a mark for the persecution which followed such
devotion. His business was crippled, his name cast out as evil, his
dwelling sacked, and his furniture dragged into the street and burned.
Yet he never, in the darkest hour, faltered or hesitated for a moment.
He knew he was right, and that the end would justify him; one of the
cheerfullest of men, he was strong where others were weak, hopeful where
others despaired. He was wise in counsel, and prompt in action; like
Tennyson's Sir Galahad,
I met him for the first time forty years ago, at the convention which
formed the American Anti-Slavery Society, where I chanced to sit by him
as one of the secretaries. Myself young and inexperienced, I remember
how profoundly I was impressed by his cool self-possession, clearness of
perception, and wonderful executive ability. Had he devoted himself to
party politics with half the zeal which he manifested in behalf of those
who had no votes to give and no honors to bestow, he could have reached
the highest offices in the land. He chose his course, knowing all that
he renounced, and he chose it wisely. He never, at least, regretted it.
And now, at the ripe age of eighty-five years, the brave old man has
passed onward to the higher life, having outlived here all hatred, abuse,
and misrepresentation, having seen the great work of Emancipation
completed, and white men and black men equal before the law. I saw him
for the last time three years ago, when he was preparing his valuable
biography of his beloved brother Arthur. Age had begun to tell upon his
constitution, but his intellectual force was not abated. The old,
pleasant laugh and playful humor remained. He looked forward to the
close of life hopefully, even cheerfully, as he called to mind the dear
friends who had passed on before him, to await his coming.
Read at the memorial meeting in Tremont Temple, Boston, January 10, 1879.
I scarcely need say that I yield to no one in love and reverence for the
great and good man whose memory, outliving all prejudices of creed, sect,
and party, is the common legacy of Christendom. As the years go on, the
value of that legacy will be more and more felt; not so much, perhaps, in
doctrine as in spirit, in those utterances of a devout soul which are
above and beyond the affirmation or negation of dogma.
His ethical severity and Christian tenderness; his hatred of wrong and
oppression, with love and pity for the wrong-doer; his noble pleas for
self-culture, temperance, peace, and purity; and above all, his precept
and example of unquestioning obedience to duty and the voice of God in
his soul, can never become obsolete. It is very fitting that his memory
should be especially cherished with that of Hopkins and Berkeley in the
beautiful island to which the common residence of those worthies has lent
additional charms and interest.
DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.
Through all the stages of the solemn tragedy which has just closed with
the death of our noblest and best, I have felt that the Divine Providence
was overruling the mighty affliction,--that the patient sufferer at
Washington was drawing with cords of sympathy all sections and parties
nearer to each other. And now, when South and North, Democrat and
Republican, Radical and Conservative, lift their voices in one unbroken
accord of lamentation; when I see how, in spite of the greed of gain, the
lust of office, the strifes and narrowness of party politics, the great
heart of the nation proves sound and loyal, I feel a new hope for the
republic, I have a firmer faith in its stability. It is said that no man
liveth and no man dieth to himself; and the pure and noble life of
Garfield, and his slow, long martyrdom, so bravely borne in view of all,
are, I believe, bearing for us as a people "the peaceable fruits of
righteousness." We are stronger, wiser, better, for them.
With him it is well. His mission fulfilled, he goes to his grave by the
Lakeside honored and lamented as man never was before. The whole world
mourns him. There is no speech nor language where the voice of his
praise is not heard. About his grave gather, with heads uncovered, the
vast brotherhood of man.
And with us it is well, also. We are nearer a united people than ever
before. We are at peace with all; our future is full of promise; our
industrial and financial condition is hopeful. God grant that, while our
material interests prosper, the moral and spiritual influence of the
occasion may be permanently felt; that the solemn sacrament of Sorrow,
whereof we have been made partakers, may be blest to the promotion of the
righteousness which exalteth a nation.
Her education was limited to the public schools, with the exception of
one year at a private seminary in her native town. From a note by her
brother, Dr. Francis, we learn that when twelve years of age she went to
Norridgewock, Maine, where her married sister resided. At Dr. Brown's,
in Skowhegan, she first read _Waverley_. She was greatly excited, and
exclaimed, as she laid down the book, "Why cannot I write a novel?"
She remained in Norridgewock and vicinity for several years, and on her
return to Massachusetts took up her abode with her brother at Watertown.
He encouraged her literary tastes, and it was in his study that she
commenced her first story, _Hobomok_, which she published in the twenty-
first year of her age. The success it met with induced her to give to
the public, soon after, _The Rebels: a Tale of the Revolution_, which was
at once received into popular favor, and ran rapidly through several
editions. Then followed in close succession _The Mother's Book_, running
through eight American editions, twelve English, and one German, _The
Girl's Book_, the _History of Women_, and the _Frugal Housewife_, of
which thirty-five editions were published. Her _Juvenile Miscellany_ was
commenced in 1826.
It is not too much to say that half a century ago she was the most
popular literary woman in the United States. She had published
historical novels of unquestioned power of description and
characterization, and was widely and favorably known as the editor of the
_Juvenile Miscellany_, which was probably the first periodical in the
English tongue devoted exclusively to children, and to which she was by
far the largest contributor. Some of the tales and poems from her pen
were extensively copied and greatly admired. It was at this period that
the _North American Review_, the highest literary authority of the
country, said of her, "We are not sure that any woman of our country
could outrank Mrs. Child. This lady has been long before the public as
an author with much success. And she well deserves it, for in all her
works nothing can be found which does not commend itself, by its tone of
healthy morality and good sense. Few female writers, if any, have done
more or better things for our literature in the lighter or graver
departments."
Comparatively young, she had placed herself in the front rank of American
authorship. Her books and her magazine had a large circulation, and were
affording her a comfortable income, at a time when the rewards of
authorship were uncertain and at the best scanty.
In 1828 she married David Lee Child, Esq., a young and able lawyer, and
took up her residence in Boston. In 1831-32 both became deeply
interested in the subject of slavery, through the writings and personal
influence of William Lloyd Garrison. Her husband, a member of the
Massachusetts legislature and editor of the _Massachusetts Journal_, had,
at an earlier date, denounced the project of the dismemberment of Mexico
for the purpose of strengthening and extending American slavery. He was
one of the earliest members of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and
his outspoken hostility to the peculiar institution greatly and
unfavorably affected his interests as a lawyer. In 1832 he addressed a
series of able letters on slavery and the slave-trade to Edward S. Abdy,
a prominent English philanthropist. In 1836 he published in Philadelphia
ten strongly written articles on the same subject. He visited England
and France in 1837, and while in Paris addressed an elaborate memoir to
the Societe pour l'Abolition d'Esclavage, and a paper on the same subject
to the editor of the _Eclectic Review_, in London. To his facts and
arguments John Quincy Adams was much indebted in the speeches which he
delivered in Congress on the Texas question.
Thenceforth her life was a battle; a constant rowing hard against the
stream of popular prejudice and hatred. And through it all--pecuniary
privation, loss of friends and position, the painfulness of being
suddenly thrust from "the still air of delightful studies" into the
bitterest and sternest controversy of the age--she bore herself with
patience, fortitude, and unshaken reliance upon the justice and ultimate
triumph of the cause she had espoused. Her pen was never idle. Wherever
there was a brave word to be spoken, her voice was heard, and never
without effect. It is not exaggeration to say that no man or woman at
that period rendered more substantial service to the cause of freedom, or
made such a "great renunciation" in doing it.
The opposition she met with from those who had shared her confidence
and friendship was of course keenly felt, but her kindly and genial
disposition remained unsoured. She rarely spoke of her personal
trials, and never posed as a martyr. The nearest approach to
anything like complaint is in the following lines, the date of which
I have not been able to ascertain:--
While faithful to the great duty which she felt was laid upon her in an
especial manner, she was by no means a reformer of one idea, but her
interest was manifested in every question affecting the welfare of
humanity. Peace, temperance, education, prison reform, and equality of
civil rights, irrespective of sex, engaged her attention. Under all the
disadvantages of her estrangement from popular favor, her charming Greek
romance of _Philothea_ and her _Lives of Madame Roland_ and the _Baroness
de Stael_ proved that her literary ability had lost nothing of its
strength, and that the hand which penned such terrible rebukes had still
kept its delicate touch, and gracefully yielded to the inspiration of
fancy and art. While engaged with her husband in the editorial
supervision of the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, she wrote her admirable
_Letters from New York_; humorous, eloquent, and picturesque, but still
humanitarian in tone, which extorted the praise of even a pro-slavery
community. Her great work, in three octavo volumes, _The Progress of
Religious Ideas_, belongs, in part, to that period. It is an attempt to
represent in a candid, unprejudiced manner the rise and progress of the
great religions of the world, and their ethical relations to each other.
She availed herself of, and carefully studied, the authorities at that
time accessible, and the result is creditable to her scholarship,
industry, and conscientiousness. If, in her desire to do justice to the
religions of Buddha and Mohammed, in which she has been followed by
Maurice, Max Muller, and Dean Stanley, she seems at times to dwell upon
the best and overlook the darker features of those systems, her
concluding reflections should vindicate her from the charge of
undervaluing the Christian faith, or of lack of reverent appreciation of
its founder. In the closing chapter of her work, in which the large
charity and broad sympathies of her nature are manifest, she thus turns
with words of love, warm from the heart, to Him whose Sermon on the Mount
includes most that is good and true and vital in the religions and
philosophies of the world:--
"It was reserved for Him to heal the brokenhearted, to preach a gospel to
the poor, to say, 'Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved
much.' Nearly two thousand years have passed away since these words of
love and pity were uttered, yet when I read them my eyes fill with tears.
I thank Thee, O Heavenly Father, for all the messengers thou hast sent to
man; but, above all, I thank Thee for Him, thy beloved Son! Pure lily
blossom of the centuries, taking root in the lowliest depths, and
receiving the light and warmth of heaven in its golden heart! All that
the pious have felt, all that poets have said, all that artists have
done, with their manifold forms of beauty, to represent the ministry of
Jesus, are but feeble expressions of the great debt we owe Him who is
even now curing the lame, restoring sight to the blind, and raising the
dead in that spiritual sense wherein all miracle is true."
After leaving New York, her husband and herself took up their residence
in the rural town of Wayland, Mass. Their house, plain and
unpretentious, had a wide and pleasant outlook; a flower garden,
carefully tended by her own hands, in front, and on the side a fruit
orchard and vegetable garden, under the special care of her husband. The
house was always neat, with some appearance of unostentatious decoration,
evincing at once the artistic taste of the hostess and the conscientious
economy which forbade its indulgence to any great extent. Her home was
somewhat apart from the lines of rapid travel, and her hospitality was in
a great measure confined to old and intimate friends, while her visits to
the city were brief and infrequent. A friend of hers, who had ample
opportunities for a full knowledge of her home-life, says, "The domestic
happiness of Mr. and Mrs. Child seemed to me perfect. Their sympathies,
their admiration of all things good, and their hearty hatred of all
things mean and evil were in entire unison. Mr. Child shared his wife's
enthusiasms, and was very proud of her. Their affection, never paraded,
was always manifest. After Mr. Child's death, Mrs. Child, in speaking of
the future life, said, 'I believe it would be of small value to me if I
were not united to him.'"
"In 1852 we made a humble home in Wayland, Mass., where we spent twenty-
two pleasant years entirely alone, without any domestic, mutually serving
each other, and dependent upon each other for intellectual companionship.
I always depended on his richly stored mind, which was able and ready to
furnish needed information on any subject. He was my walking dictionary
of many languages, my Universal Encyclopaedia.
"In his old age he was as affectionate and devoted as when the lover of
my youth; nay, he manifested even more tenderness. He was often
singing,--
"Very often, when he passed by me, he would lay his hand softly on my
head and murmur, 'Carum caput.' . . . But what I remember with the
most tender gratitude is his uniform patience and forbearance with my
faults. . . . He never would see anything but the bright side of my
character. He always insisted upon thinking that whatever I said was the
wisest and the wittiest, and that whatever I did was the best. The
simplest little jeu d'esprit of mine seemed to him wonderfully witty.
Once, when he said, 'I wish for your sake, dear, I were as rich as
Croesus,' I answered, 'You are Croesus, for you are king of Lydia.' How
often he used to quote that!
"His mind was unclouded to the last. He had a passion for philology, and
only eight hours before he passed away he was searching out the
derivation of a word."
Her well-stored mind and fine conversational gifts made her company
always desirable. No one who listened to her can forget the earnest
eloquence with which she used to dwell upon the evidences, from history,
tradition, and experience, of the superhuman and supernatural; or with
what eager interest she detected in the mysteries of the old religions of
the world the germs of a purer faith and a holier hope. She loved to
listen, as in St. Pierre's symposium of _The Coffee-House of Surat_,
to the confessions of faith of all sects and schools of philosophy,
Christian and pagan, and gather from them the consoling truth that our
Father has nowhere left his children without some witness of Himself.
She loved the old mystics, and lingered with curious interest and
sympathy over the writings of Bohme, Swedenborg, Molinos, and Woolman.
Yet this marked speculative tendency seemed not in the slightest degree
to affect her practical activities. Her mysticism and realism ran in
close parallel lines without interfering with each other.
In 1859 the descent of John Brown upon Harper's Ferry, and his capture,
trial, and death, startled the nation. When the news reached her that
the misguided but noble old man lay desperately wounded in prison, alone
and unfriended, she wrote him a letter, under cover of one to Governor
Wise, asking permission to go and nurse and care for him. The expected
arrival of Captain Brown's wife made her generous offer unnecessary. The
prisoner wrote her, thanking her, and asking her to help his family, a
request with which she faithfully complied. With his letter came one
from Governor Wise, in courteous reproval of her sympathy for John Brown.
To this she responded in an able and effective manner. Her reply found
its way from Virginia to the New York Tribune, and soon after Mrs. Mason,
of King George's County, wife of Senator Mason, the author of the
infamous Fugitive Slave Law, wrote her a vehement letter, commencing with
threats of future damnation, and ending with assuring her that "no
Southerner, after reading her letter to Governor Wise, ought to read a
line of her composition, or touch a magazine which bore her name in its
list of contributors." To this she wrote a calm, dignified reply,
declining to dwell on the fierce invectives of her assailant, and wishing
her well here and hereafter. She would not debate the specific merits or
demerits of a man whose body was in charge of the courts, and whose
reputation was sure to be in charge of posterity. "Men," she continues,
"are of small consequence in comparison with principles, and the
principle for which John Brown died is the question at issue between us."
These letters were soon published in pamphlet form, and had the immense
circulation of 300,000 copies.
Her last publication was in 1878, when her _Aspirations of the World_, a
book of selections, on moral and religious subjects, from the literature
of all nations and times, was given to the public. The introduction,
occupying fifty pages, shows, at threescore and ten, her mental vigor
unabated, and is remarkable for its wise, philosophic tone and felicity
of diction. It has the broad liberality of her more elaborate work on
the same subject, and in the mellow light of life's sunset her words seem
touched with a tender pathos and beauty. "All we poor mortals," she
says, "are groping our way through paths that are dim with shadows; and
we are all striving, with steps more or less stumbling, to follow some
guiding star. As we travel on, beloved companions of our pilgrimage
vanish from our sight, we know not whither; and our bereaved hearts utter
cries of supplication for more light. We know not where Hermes
Trismegistus lived, or who he was; but his voice sounds plaintively
human, coming up from the depths of the ages, calling out, 'Thou art God!
and thy man crieth these things unto Thee!' Thus closely allied in our
sorrows and limitations, in our aspirations and hopes, surely we ought
not to be separated in our sympathies. However various the names by
which we call the Heavenly Father, if they are set to music by brotherly
love, they can all be sung together."
Her interest in the welfare of the emancipated class at the South and of
the ill-fated Indians of the West remained unabated, and she watched with
great satisfaction the experiment of the education of both classes in
General Armstrong's institution at Hampton, Va. She omitted no
opportunity of aiding the greatest social reform of the age, which aims
to make the civil and political rights of women equal to those of men.
Her sympathies, to the last, went out instinctively to the wronged and
weak. She used to excuse her vehemence in this respect by laughingly
quoting lines from a poem entitled _The Under Dog in the Fight_:--
"Mrs. Child's life in the place made, indeed, an atmosphere of its own, a
benison of peace and good-will, which was a noticeable feature to all who
were acquainted with the social feeling of the little community, refined,
as it was too, by the elevating influence of its distinguished pastor,
Dr. Sears. Many are the acts of loving kindness and maternal care which
could be chronicled of her residence there, were we permitted to do so;
and numberless are the lives that have gathered their onward impulse from
her helping hand. But it was all a confidence which she hardly betrayed
to her inmost self, and I will not recall instances which might be her
grandest eulogy. Her monument is builded in the hearts which knew her
benefactions, and it will abide with 'the power that makes for
righteousness.'
"One of the pleasantest elements of her life in Wayland was the high
regard she won from the people of the village, who, proud of her literary
attainment, valued yet more the noble womanhood of the friend who dwelt
so modestly among them. The grandeur of her exalted personal character
had, in part, eclipsed for them the qualities which made her fame with
the world outside.
"The little house on the quiet by-road overlooked broad green meadows.
The pond behind it, where bloom the lilies whose spotless purity may well
symbolize her gentle spirit, is a sacred pool to her townsfolk. But
perhaps the most fitting similitude of her life in Wayland was the quiet
flow of the river, whose gentle curves make green her meadows, but whose
powerful energy, joining the floods from distant mountains, moves, with
resistless might, the busy shuttles of a hundred mills. She was too
truthful to affect to welcome unwarrantable invaders of her peace, but no
weary traveller on life's hard ways ever applied to her in vain. The
little garden plot before her door was a sacred enclosure, not to be
rudely intruded upon; but the flowers she tended with maternal care were
no selfish possession, for her own enjoyment only, and many are the lives
their sweetness has gladdened forever. So she lived among a singularly
peaceful and intelligent community as one of themselves, industrious,
wise, and happy; with a frugality whose motive of wider benevolence was
in itself a homily and a benediction."
The funeral was, as befitted one like her, plain and simple. Many of her
old friends were present, and Wendell Phillips paid an affecting and
eloquent tribute to his old friend and anti-slavery coadjutor. He
referred to the time when she accepted, with serene self-sacrifice, the
obloquy which her _Appeal_ had brought upon her, and noted, as one of the
many ways in which popular hatred was manifested, the withdrawal from her
of the privileges of the Boston Athenaeum. Her pallbearers were elderly,
plain farmers in the neighborhood; and, led by the old white-haired
undertaker, the procession wound its way to the not distant burial-
ground, over the red and gold of fallen leaves, and tinder the half-
clouded October sky. A lover of all beautiful things, she was, as her
intimate friends knew, always delighted by the sight of rainbows, and
used to so arrange prismatic glasses as to throw the colors on the walls
of her room. Just after her body was consigned to the earth, a
magnificent rainbow spanned with its are of glory the eastern sky.
The letters in this collection constitute but a small part of her large
correspondence. They have been gathered up and arranged by the hands of
dear relatives and friends as a fitting memorial of one who wrote from
the heart as well as the head, and who held her literary reputation
subordinate always to her philanthropic aim to lessen the sum of human
suffering, and to make the world better for her living. If they
sometimes show the heat and impatience of a zealous reformer, they may
well be pardoned in consideration of the circumstances under which they
were written, and of the natural indignation of a generous nature in view
of wrong and oppression. If she touched with no very reverent hand the
garment hem of dogmas, and held to the spirit of Scripture rather than
its letter, it must be remembered that she lived in a time when the Bible
was cited in defence of slavery, as it is now in Utah in support of
polygamy; and she may well be excused for some degree of impatience with
those who, in the tithing of mint and anise and cummin, neglected the
weightier matters of the law of justice and mercy.
Of the men and women directly associated with the beloved subject of this
sketch, but few are now left to recall her single-hearted devotion to
apprehended duty, her unselfish generosity, her love of all beauty and
harmony, and her trustful reverence, free from pretence and cant. It is
not unlikely that the surviving sharers of her love and friendship may
feel the inadequateness of this brief memorial, for I close it with the
consciousness of having failed to fully delineate the picture which my
memory holds of a wise and brave, but tender and loving woman, of whom it
might well have been said, in the words of the old Hebrew text, "Many,
daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all."
and perhaps the next page melts us into tears by a pathos only equalled
by that of Sterne's sick Lieutenant. He is Montaigne and Bacon under one
hat. His varied qualities would suffice for the mental furnishing of
half a dozen literary specialists.
To those who have enjoyed the privilege of his intimate acquaintance, the
man himself is more than the author. His genial nature, entire freedom
from jealousy or envy, quick tenderness, large charity, hatred of sham,
pretence, and unreality, and his reverent sense of the eternal and
permanent have secured for him something more and dearer than literary
renown,--the love of all who know him. I might say much more: I could
not say less. May his life be long in the land.
LONGFELLOW
The gift of the Westminster Abbey committee cannot fail to add another
strong tie of sympathy between two great English-speaking peoples. And
never was gift more fitly bestowed. The city of Portland--the poet's
birthplace, "beautiful for situation," looking from its hills on the
scenery he loved so well, Deering's Oaks, the many-islanded bay and far
inland mountains, delectable in sunset--needed this sculptured
representation of her illustrious son, and may well testify her joy and
gratitude at its reception, and repeat in so doing the words of the
Hebrew prophet: "O man, greatly beloved! thou shalt stand in thy place."
OLD NEWBURY.
I have, I fear, dwelt too long upon the story and tradition of the old
town, which will doubtless be better told by the orator of the day. The
theme is to me full of interest. Among the blessings which I would
gratefully own is the fact that my lot has been cast in the beautiful
valley of the Merrimac, within sight of Newbury steeples, Plum Island,
and Crane Neck and Pipe Stave hills.
Let me, in closing, pay something of the debt I have owed from boyhood,
by expressing a sentiment in which I trust every son of the ancient town
will unite: Joshua Coffin, historian of Newbury, teacher, scholar, and
antiquarian, and one of the earliest advocates of slave emancipation. May
his memory be kept green, to use the words of Judge Sewall, "so long as
Plum island keeps its post and a sturgeon leaps in Merrimac River."
SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES.
Let me, gentlemen, return my heartiest thanks to you, and to all who have
interested themselves in the preparation of the Academy Album, and assure
you of my sincere wishes for your health and happiness.
I have been pained to learn of the decease of nay friend of many years,
Edwin P. Whipple. Death, however expected, is always something of a
surprise, and in his case I was not prepared for it by knowing of any
serious failure of his health. With the possible exception of Lowell and
Matthew Arnold, he was the ablest critical essayist of his time, and the
place he has left will not be readily filled.
He was a modest man, sinking his own personality out of sight, and he
always seemed to me more interested in the success of others than in his
own. Many of his literary contemporaries have had reason to thank him
not only for his cordial recognition and generous praise, but for the
firm and yet kindly hand which pointed out deficiencies and errors of
taste and judgment. As one of those who have found pleasure and profit
in his writings in the past, I would gratefully commend them to the
generation which survives him. His _Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_
is deservedly popular, but there are none of his Essays which will not
repay a careful study. "What works of Mr. Baxter shall I read?" asked
Boswell of Dr. Johnson. "Read any of them," was the answer, "for they
are all good."
It is the inevitable sorrow of age that one's companions must drop away
on the right hand and the left with increasing frequency, until we are
compelled to ask with Wordsworth,--
But in the case of him who has just passed from us, we have the
satisfaction of knowing that his life-work has been well and faithfully
done, and that he leaves behind him only friends.
HISTORICAL PAPERS
DANIEL O'CONNELL.
Perhaps the most unlucky portion of the unlucky speech of Henry Clay on
the slavery question is that in which an attempt is made to hold up to
scorn and contempt the great Liberator of Ireland. We say an attempt,
for who will say it has succeeded? Who feels contempt for O'Connell?
Surely not the slaveholder? From Henry Clay, surrounded by his slave-
gang at Ashland, to the most miserable and squalid slave-driver and small
breeder of human cattle in Virginia and Maryland who can spell the name
of O'Connell in his newspaper, these republican brokers in blood fear and
hate the eloquent Irishman. But their contempt, forsooth! Talk of the
sheep-stealer's contempt for the officer of justice who nails his ears to
the pillory, or sets the branding iron on his forehead!
"And like a notorious agitator upon another theatre, they would hunt down
and proscribe from the pale of civilized society the inhabitants of that
entire section. Allow me, Mr. President, to say that whilst I recognize
in the justly wounded feelings of the Minister of the United States at
the Court of St. James much to excuse the notice which he was provoked to
take of that agitator, in my humble opinion he would better have
consulted the dignity of his station and of his country in treating him
with contemptuous silence. He would exclude us from European society, he
who himself, can only obtain a contraband admission, and is received with
scornful repugnance into it! If he be no more desirous of our society
than we are of his, he may rest assured that a state of perpetual non-
intercourse will exist between us. Yes, sir, I think the American
Minister would best have pursued the dictates of true dignity by
regarding the language of the member of the British House of Commons as
the malignant ravings of the plunderer of his own country, and the
libeller of a foreign and kindred people."
The defeat of the Whigs of New York and the cause of it have excited no
small degree of alarm among the adherents of the Kentucky orator. In
this city, the delicate _Philadelphia Gazette_ comes magnanimously to the
aid of Henry Clay,--
We have heard it rumored during the past week, among some of the self-
constituted organs of the Clay party in this city, that at a late meeting
in Chestnut Street a committee was appointed to collect, collate, and
publish the correspondence between Andrew Stevenson and O'Connell, and so
much of the latter's speeches and writings as relate to American slavery,
for the purpose of convincing the countrymen of O'Connell of the justice,
propriety, and, in view of the aggravated circumstances of the case,
moderation and forbearance of Henry Clay when speaking of a man who has
had the impudence to intermeddle with the "patriarchal institutions" of
our country, and with the "domestic relations" of Kentucky and Virginia
slave-traders.
But who is Daniel O'Connell? "A demagogue--a ruffian agitator!" say the
Tory journals of Great Britain, quaking meantime with awe and
apprehension before the tremendous moral and political power which he is
wielding,--a power at this instant mightier than that of any potentate of
Europe. "A blackguard"--a fellow who "obtains contraband admission into
European society"--a "malignant libeller"--a "plunderer of his country"--
a man whose "wind should be stopped," say the American slaveholders, and
their apologists, Clay, Stevenson, Hamilton, and the Philadelphia
Gazette, and the Democratic Whig Association.
But who is Daniel O'Connell? Ireland now does justice to him, the world
will do so hereafter. No individual of the present age has done more for
human liberty. His labors to effect the peaceable deliverance of his own
oppressed countrymen, and to open to the nations of Europe a new and
purer and holier pathway to freedom unstained with blood and unmoistened
by tears, and his mighty instrumentality in the abolition of British
colonial slavery, have left their impress upon the age. They will be
remembered and felt beneficially long after the miserable slanders of
Tory envy and malignity at home, and the clamors of slaveholders abroad,
detected in their guilt, and writhing in the gaze of Christendom, shall
have perished forever,--when the Clays and Calhouns, the Peels and
Wellingtons, the opponents of reform in Great Britain and the enemies of
slave emancipation in the United States, shall be numbered with those who
in all ages, to use the words of the eloquent Lamartine, have "sinned
against the Holy Ghost in opposing the improvement of things,--in an
egotistical and stupid attempt to draw back the moral and social world
which God and nature are urging forward."
The character and services of O'Connell have never been fully appreciated
in this country. Engrossed in our own peculiar interests, and in the
plenitude of our self-esteem; believing that "we are the people, and that
wisdom will perish with us," that all patriotism and liberality of
feeling are confined to our own territory, we have not followed the
untitled Barrister of Derrynane Abbey, step by step, through the
development of one of the noblest experiments ever made for the cause
of liberty and the welfare of man.
[The celebrated Mr. Attwood has been called the "father of political
unions." In a speech delivered by his brother, C. Attwood, Esq., at
the Sunderland Reform Meeting, September 10, 1832, I find the
following admission: "Gentlemen, the first political union was the
Roman Catholic Association of Ireland, and the true founder and
father of political unions is Daniel O'Connell."]
Strange, that the truth to which all history so strongly testifies should
thus be overlooked,--the undeniable truth that religious bigotry and
intolerance have been confined to no single sect; that the persecuted of
one century have been the persecutors of another. In our own country,
it would be well for us to remember that at the very time when in New
England the Catholic, the Quaker, and the Baptist were banished on pain
of death, and where some even suffered that dreadful penalty, in Catholic
Maryland, under the Catholic Lord Baltimore, perfect liberty of
conscience was established, and Papist and Protestant went quietly
through the same streets to their respective altars.
A Catholic peer could not sit in the House of Peers, nor a Catholic
commoner in the House of Commons. A Catholic could not be Lord
Chancellor, or Keeper, or Commissioner of the Great Seal; Master or
Keeper of the Rolls; Justice of the King's Bench or of the Common Pleas;
Baron of the Exchequer; Attorney or Solicitor General; King's Sergeant at
Law; Member of the King's Council; Master in Chancery, nor Chairman of
Sessions for the County of Dublin. He could not be the Recorder of a
city or town; an advocate in the spiritual courts; Sheriff of a county,
city, or town; Sub-Sheriff; Lord Lieutenant, Lord Deputy, or other
governor of Ireland; Lord High Treasurer; Governor of a county; Privy
Councillor; Postmaster General; Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary
of State; Vice Treasurer, Cashier of the Exchequer; Keeper of the Privy
Seal or Auditor General; Provost or Fellow of Dublin University; nor Lord
Mayor or Alderman of a corporate city or town. He could not be a member
of a parish vestry, nor bequeath any sum of money or any lands for the
maintenance of a clergyman, or for the support of a chapel or a school;
and in corporate towns he was excluded from the grand juries.
The spirit of the olden time was awakened, of the day when Flood
thundered and Curran lightened; the light which shone for a moment in the
darkness of Ireland's century of wrong burned upwards clearly and
steadily from all its ancient altars. Shoulder to shoulder gathered
around him the patriot spirits of his nation,--men unbribed by the golden
spoils of governmental patronage Shiel with his ardent eloquence, O'Dwyer
and Walsh, and Grattan and O'Connor, and Steel, the Protestant agitator,
wearing around him the emblem of national reconciliation, of the reunion
of Catholic and Protestant,--the sash of blended orange and green, soiled
and defaced by his patriotic errands, stained with the smoke of cabins,
and the night rains and rust of weapons, and the mountain mist, and the
droppings of the wild woods of Clare. He united in one mighty and
resistless mass the broken and discordant factions, whose desultory
struggles against tyranny had hitherto only added strength to its
fetters, and infused into that mass his own lofty principles of action,
until the solemn tones of expostulation and entreaty, bursting at once
from the full heart of Ireland, were caught up by England and echoed back
from Scotland, and the language of justice and humanity was wrung from
the reluctant lips of the cold and remorseless oppressor of his native
land, at once its disgrace and glory,--the conqueror of Napoleon; and, in
the words of his own Curran, the chains of the Catholic fell from around
him, and he stood forth redeemed and disenthralled by the irresistible
genius of Universal Emancipation.
On the passage of the bill for Catholic emancipation, O'Connell took his
seat in the British Parliament. The eyes of millions were upon him.
Ireland--betrayed so often by those in whom she had placed her
confidence; brooding in sorrowful remembrance over the noble names and
brilliant reputations sullied by treachery and corruption, the long and
dark catalogue of her recreant sons, who, allured by British gold and
British patronage, had sacrificed on the altar of their ambition Irish
pride and Irish independence, and lifted their parricidal arms against
their sorrowing mother, "crownless and voiceless in her woe"--now hung
with breathless eagerness over the ordeal to which her last great
champion was subjected.
The crisis in O'Connell's destiny had come.
The glitter of the golden bribe was in his eye; the sound of titled
magnificence was in his ear; the choice was before him to sit high among
the honorable, the titled, and the powerful, or to take his humble seat
in the hall of St. Stephen's as the Irish demagogue, the agitator, the
Kerry representative. He did not hesitate in his choice. On the first
occasion that offered he told the story of Ireland's wrongs, and demanded
justice in the name of his suffering constituents. He had put his hand
to the plough of reform, and he could not relinquish his hold, for his
heart was with it.
In this hasty and imperfect sketch we cannot enter into the details of
that cruel disregard of Irish rights which was manifested by a Reformed
Parliament, convoked, to use the language of William IV., "to ascertain
the sense of the people." It is perhaps enough to say that O'Connell's
indignant refusal to receive as full justice the measure of reform meted
out to Ireland was fully justified by the facts of the case. The Irish
Reform Bill gave Ireland, with one third of the entire population of the
United Kingdoms, only one sixth of the Parliamentary delegation. It
diminished instead of increasing the number of voters; in the towns and
cities it created a high and aristocratic franchise; in many boroughs it
established so narrow a basis of franchise as to render them liable to
corruption and abuse as the rotten boroughs of the old system. It threw
no new power into the hands of the people; and with no little justice has
O'Connell himself termed it an act to restore to power the Orange
ascendancy in Ireland, and to enable a faction to trample with impunity
on the friends of reform and constitutional freedom. [Letters to the
Reformers of Great Britain, No. 1.]
The tithe system, unutterably odious and full of all injustice, had
prepared the way for this expression of feeling on the part of the
people. Ireland had never, in any period of her history, bowed her neck
peaceably to the ecclesiastical yoke. From the Canon of Cashel, prepared
by English deputies in the twelfth century, decreeing for the first time
that tithes should be paid in Ireland, down to the present moment, the
Church in her borders has relied solely upon the strong arm of the law,
and literally reaped its tithes with the sword. The decree of the Dublin
Synod, under Archbishop Comyn, in 1185, could only be enforced within the
pale of the English settlement. The attempts of Henry VIII. also failed.
Without the pale all endeavors to collect tithes were met by stern
opposition. And although from the time of William III. the tithe system
has been established in Ireland, yet at no period has it been regarded
otherwise than as a system of legalized robbery by seven eighths of the
people. An examination of this system cannot fail to excite our wonder,
not that it has been thus regarded, but that it has been so long endured
by any people on the face of the earth, least of all by Irishmen. Tithes
to the amount of L1,000,000 are annually wrung from impoverished Ireland,
in support of a clergy who can only number about one sixteenth of her
population as their hearers; and wrung, too, in an undue proportion, from
the Catholic counties. [See Dr. Doyle's Evidence before Hon. E. G.
Stanley.] In the southern and middle counties, almost entirely inhabited
by the Catholic peasantry, every thing they possess is subject to the
tithe: the cow is seized in the hovel, the potato in the barrel, the coat
even on the poor man's back. [Speech of T. Reynolds, Esq., at an anti-
tithe meeting.] The revenues of five of the dignitaries of the Irish
Church Establishment are as follows: the Primacy L140,000; Derry
L120,000; Kilmore L100,000; Clogher L100,000; Waterford L70,000. Compare
these enormous sums with that paid by Scotland for the maintenance of the
Church, namely L270,000. Yet that Church has 2,000,000 souls under its
care, while that of Ireland has not above 500,000. Nor are these
princely livings expended in Ireland by their possessors. The bishoprics
of Cloyne and Meath have been long held by absentees,--by men who know no
more of their flocks than the non-resident owner of a West India
plantation did of the miserable negroes, the fruits of whose thankless
labor were annually transmitted to him. Out of 1289 benefited clergymen
in Ireland, between five and six hundred are non-residents, spending in
Bath and London, or in making the fashionable tour of the Continent, the
wealth forced from the Catholic peasant and the Protestant dissenter by
the bayonets of the military. Scorching and terrible was the sarcasm of
Grattan applied to these locusts of the Church: "A beastly and pompous
priesthood, political potentates and Christian pastors, full of false
zeal, full of worldly pride, and full of gluttony, empty of the true
religion, to their flocks oppressive, to their inferior clergy brutal, to
their king abject, and to their God impudent and familiar,--they stand on
the altar as a stepping-stone to the throne, glorying in the ear of
princes, whom they poison with crooked principles and heated advice; a
faction against their king when they are not his slaves,--ever the dirt
under his feet or a poniard to his heart."
The signs of the times are most favorable to the success of the Irish
Liberator. The tremendous power of the English political unions is
beginning to develop itself in favor of Ireland. A deep sympathy is
evinced for her sufferings, and a general determination to espouse her
cause. Brute force cannot put down the peaceable and legal agitation of
the question of her rights and interests. The spirit of the age forbids
it. The agitation will go on, for it is spreading among men who, to use
the words of the eloquent Shiel, while looking out upon the ocean, and
gazing upon the shore, which Nature has guarded with so many of her
bulwarks, can hear the language of Repeal muttered in the dashing of the
very waves which separate them from Great Britain by a barrier of God's
own creation. Another bloodless victory, we trust, awaits O'Connell,--a
victory worthy of his heart and intellect, unstained by one drop of human
blood, unmoistened by a solitary tear.
Ireland will be redeemed and disenthralled, not perhaps by a repeal of
the Union, but by the accomplishment of such a thorough reform in the
government and policy of Great Britain as shall render a repeal
unnecessary and impolitic.
Of the more recent efforts of O'Connell we need not speak, for no one can
read the English periodicals and papers without perceiving that O'Connell
is, at this moment, the leading politician, the master mind of the
British empire. Attempts have been made to prejudice the American mind
against him by a republication on this side of the water of the false and
foul slanders of his Tory enemies, in reference to what is called the
"O'Connell rent," a sum placed annually in his hands by a grateful
people, and which he has devoted scrupulously to the great object of
Ireland's political redemption. He has acquired no riches by his
political efforts his heart and soul and mind and strength have been
directed to his suffering country and the cause of universal freedom.
For this he has deservedly a place in the heart and affections of every
son of Ireland. One million of ransomed slaves in the British
dependencies will teach their children to repeat the name of O'Connell
with that of Wilberforce and Clarkson. And when the stain and caste of
slavery shall have passed from our own country, he will be regarded as
our friend and benefactor, whose faithful rebukes and warnings and
eloquent appeals to our pride of character, borne to us across the
Atlantic, touched the guilty sensitiveness of the national conscience,
and through shame prepared the way for repentance.
The style is that which lends such a charm to the author's essays,--
brilliant, epigrammatic, vigorous. Indeed, herein lies the fault of the
work, when viewed as a mere detail of historical facts. Its sparkling
rhetoric is not the safest medium of truth to the simple-minded inquirer.
A discriminating and able critic has done the author no injustice in
saying that, in attempting to give effect and vividness to his thoughts
and diction, he is often overstrained and extravagant, and that his
epigrammatic style seems better fitted for the glitter of paradox than
the sober guise of truth. The intelligent and well-informed reader of
the volume before us will find himself at times compelled to reverse the
decisions of the author, and deliver some unfortunate personage, sect, or
class from the pillory of his rhetoric and the merciless pelting of his
ridicule. There is a want of the repose and quiet which we look for in
a narrative of events long passed away; we rise from the perusal of the
book pleased and excited, but with not so clear a conception of the
actual realities of which it treats as would be desirable. We cannot
help feeling that the author has been somewhat over-scrupulous in
avoiding the dulness of plain detail, and the dryness of dates, names,
and statistics. The freedom, flowing diction, and sweeping generality of
the reviewer and essayist are maintained throughout; and, with one
remarkable exception, the _History of England_ might be divided into
papers of magazine length, and published, without any violence to
propriety, as a continuation of the author's labors in that department of
literature in which he confessedly stands without a rival,--historical
review.
Beyond the Trent the country seems at this period to have been in a state
of barbarism. The parishes kept bloodhounds for the purpose of hunting
freebooters. The farm-houses were fortified and guarded. So dangerous
was the country that persons about travelling thither made their wills.
Judges and lawyers only ventured therein, escorted by a strong guard of
armed men.
The natural resources of the island were undeveloped. The tin mines of
Cornwall, which two thousand years before attracted the ships of the
merchant princes of Tyre beyond the Pillars of Hercules, were indeed
worked to a considerable extent; but the copper mines, which now yield
annually fifteen thousand tons, were entirely neglected. Rock salt was
known to exist, but was not used to any considerable extent; and only a
partial supply of salt by evaporation was obtained. The coal and iron of
England are at this time the stable foundations of her industrial and
commercial greatness. But in 1685 the great part of the iron used was
imported. Only about ten thousand tons were annually cast. Now eight
hundred thousand is the average annual production. Equally great has
been the increase in coal mining. "Coal," says Macaulay, "though very
little used in any species of manufacture, was already the ordinary fuel
in some districts which were fortunate enough to possess large beds, and
in the capital, which could easily be supplied by water carriage. It
seems reasonable to believe that at least one half of the quantity then
extracted from the pits was consumed in London. The consumption of
London seemed to the writers of that age enormous, and was often
mentioned by them as a proof of the greatness of the imperial city. They
scarcely hoped to be believed when they affirmed that two hundred and
eighty thousand chaldrons--that is to say, about three hundred and fifty
thousand tons-were, in the last year of the reign of Charles II., brought
to the Thames. At present near three millions and a half of tons are
required yearly by the metropolis; and the whole annual produce cannot,
on the most moderate computation, be estimated at less than twenty
millions of tons."
After thus passing in survey the England of our ancestors five or six
generations back, the author closes his chapter with some eloquent
remarks upon the progress of society. Contrasting the hardness and
coarseness of the age of which he treats with the softer and more humane
features of our own, he says: "Nowhere could be found that sensitive and
restless compassion which has in our time extended powerful protection to
the factory child, the Hindoo widow, to the negro slave; which pries into
the stores and water-casks of every emigrant ship; which winces at every
lash laid on the back of a drunken soldier; which will not suffer the
thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked; and which has repeatedly
endeavored to save the life even of the murderer. The more we study the
annals of the past, the more shall we rejoice that we live in a merciful
age, in an age in which cruelty is abhorred, and in which pain, even when
deserved, is inflicted reluctantly and from a sense of duty. Every
class, doubtless, has gained largely by this great moral change; but the
class which has gained most is the poorest, the most dependent, and the
most defenceless."
The second volume details the follies and misfortunes, the decline and
fall, of the last of the Stuarts. All the art of the author's splendid
rhetoric is employed in awakening, by turns, the indignation and contempt
of the reader in contemplating the character of the wrong-headed king.
In portraying that character, he has brought into exercise all those
powers of invective and merciless ridicule which give such a savage
relish to his delineation of Barrere. To preserve the consistency of
this character, he denies the king any credit for whatever was really
beneficent and praiseworthy in his government. He holds up the royal
delinquent in only two lights: the one representing him as a tyrant
towards his people; the other as the abject slave of foreign priests,--
a man at once hateful and ludicrous, of whom it is difficult to speak
without an execration or a sneer.
Four years before the events of which we are about to speak, the Indian
allies of the French in Canada suddenly made their appearance in the
westerly part of the settlement. At the close of a midwinter day six
savages rushed into the open gate of a garrison-house owned by one
Bradley, who appears to have been absent at the time. A sentinel,
stationed in the house, discharged his musket, killing the foremost
Indian, and was himself instantly shot down. The mistress of the house,
a spirited young woman, was making soap in a large kettle over the fire.
--She seized her ladle and dashed the boiling liquid in the faces of the
assailants, scalding one of them severely, and was only captured after
such a resistance as can scarcely be conceived of by the delicately
framed and tenderly nurtured occupants of the places of our great-
grandmothers. After plundering the house, the Indians started on their
long winter march for Canada. Tradition says that some thirteen persons,
probably women and children, were killed outright at the garrison.
Goodwife Bradley and four others were spared as prisoners. The ground
was covered with deep snow, and the captives were compelled to carry
heavy burdens of their plundered household-stuffs; while for many days in
succession they had no other sustenance than bits of hide, ground-nuts,
the bark of trees, and the roots of wild onions, and lilies. In this
situation, in the cold, wintry forest, and unattended, the unhappy young
woman gave birth to a child. Its cries irritated the savages, who
cruelly treated it and threatened its life. To the entreaties of the
mother they replied, that they would spare it on the condition that it
should be baptized after their fashion. She gave the little innocent
into their hands, when with mock solemnity they made the sign of the
cross upon its forehead, by gashing it with their knives, and afterwards
barbarously put it to death before the eyes of its mother, seeming to
regard the whole matter as an excellent piece of sport. Nothing so
strongly excited the risibilities of these grim barbarians as the tears
and cries of their victims, extorted by physical or mental agony.
Capricious alike in their cruelties and their kindnesses, they treated
some of their captives with forbearance and consideration and tormented
others apparently without cause. One man, on his way to Canada, was
killed because they did not like his looks, "he was so sour;" another,
because he was "old and good for nothing." One of their own number, who
was suffering greatly from the effects of the scalding soap, was derided
and mocked as a "fool who had let a squaw whip him;" while on the other
hand the energy and spirit manifested by Goodwife Bradley in her defence
was a constant theme of admiration, and gained her so much respect among
her captors as to protect her from personal injury or insult. On her
arrival in Canada she was sold to a French farmer, by whom she was kindly
treated.
In the mean time her husband made every exertion in his power to
ascertain her fate, and early in the next year learned that she was a
slave in Canada. He immediately set off through the wilderness on foot,
accompanied only by his dog, who drew a small sled, upon which he carried
some provisions for his sustenance, and a bag of snuff, which the
Governor of the Province gave him as a present to the Governor of Canada.
After encountering almost incredible hardships and dangers with a
perseverance which shows how well he appreciated the good qualities of
his stolen helpmate, he reached Montreal and betook himself to the
Governor's residence. Travel-worn, ragged, and wasted with cold and
hunger, he was ushered into the presence of M. Vaudreuil. The courtly
Frenchman civilly received the gift of the bag of snuff, listened to the
poor fellow's story, and put him in a way to redeem his wife without
difficulty. The joy of the latter on seeing her husband in the strange
land of her captivity may well be imagined. They returned by water,
landing at Boston early in the summer.
There is a tradition that this was not the goodwife's first experience of
Indian captivity. The late Dr. Abiel Abbott, in his manuscript of Judith
Whiting's _Recollections of the Indian Wars_, states that she had
previously been a prisoner, probably before her marriage. After her
return she lived quietly at the garrison-house until the summer of the
next year. One bright moonlit-night a party of Indians were seen
silently and cautiously approaching. The only occupants of the garrison
at that time were Bradley, his wife and children, and a servant. The
three adults armed themselves with muskets, and prepared to defend
themselves. Goodwife Bradley, supposing the Indians had come with the
intention of again capturing her, encouraged her husband to fight to the
last, declaring that she had rather die on her own hearth than fall into
their hands. The Indians rushed upon the garrison, and assailed the
thick oaken door, which they forced partly open, when a well-aimed shot
from Goodwife Bradley laid the foremost dead on the threshold. The loss
of their leader so disheartened them that they made a hasty retreat.
The year 1707 passed away without any attack upon the exposed frontier
settlement. A feeling of comparative security succeeded to the almost
sleepless anxiety and terror of the inhabitants; and they were beginning
to congratulate each other upon the termination of their long and bitter
trials. But the end was not yet.
They were joined by one hundred French Canadians and several volunteers,
consisting of officers of the French army, and younger sons of the
nobility, adventurous and unscrupulous. The Sieur de Chaillons, and
Hertel de Rouville, distinguished as a partisan in former expeditions,
cruel and unsparing as his Indian allies, commanded the French troops;
the Indians, marshalled under their several chiefs, obeyed the general
orders of La Perriere. A Catholic priest accompanied them. De Ronville,
with the French troops and a portion of the Indians, took the route by
the River St. Francois about the middle of summer. La Perriere, with the
French Mohawks, crossed Lake Champlain. The place of rendezvous was Lake
Nickisipigue. On the way a Huron accidentally killed one of his
companions; whereupon the tribe insisted on halting and holding a
council. It was gravely decided that this accident was an evil omen, and
that the expedition would prove disastrous; and, in spite of the
endeavors of the French officers, the whole band deserted. Next the
Mohawks became dissatisfied, and refused to proceed. To the entreaties
and promises of their French allies they replied that an infectious
disease had broken out among them, and that, if they remained, it would
spread through the whole army. The French partisans were not deceived by
a falsehood so transparent; but they were in no condition to enforce
obedience; and, with bitter execrations and reproaches, they saw the
Mohawks turn back on their warpath. The diminished army pressed on to
Nickisipigue, in the expectation of meeting, agreeably to their promise,
the Norridgewock and Penobscot Indians. They found the place deserted,
and, after waiting for some days, were forced to the conclusion that the
Eastern tribes had broken their pledge of cooperation. Under these
circumstances a council was held; and the original design of the
expedition, namely, the destruction of the whole line of frontier towns,
beginning with Portsmouth, was abandoned. They had still a sufficient
force for the surprise of a single settlement; and Haverhill, on the
Merrimac, was selected for conquest.
The wife of Thomas Hartshorne, after her husband and three sons had
fallen, took her younger children into the cellar, leaving an infant on a
bed in the garret, fearful that its cries would betray her place of
concealment if she took it with her. The Indians entered the garret and
tossed the child out of the window upon a pile of clapboards, where it
was afterwards found stunned and insensible. It recovered, nevertheless,
and became a man of remarkable strength and stature; and it used to be a
standing joke with his friends that he had been stinted by the Indians
when they threw him out of the window. Goodwife Swan, armed with a long
spit, successfully defended her door against two Indians. While the
massacre went on, the priest who accompanied the expedition, with some of
the French officers, went into the meeting-house, the walls of which were
afterwards found written over with chalk. At sunrise, Major Turner, with
a portion of his soldiers, entered the village; and the enemy made a
rapid retreat, carrying with them seventeen, prisoners. They were
pursued and overtaken just as they were entering the woods; and a severe
skirmish took place, in which the rescue of some of the prisoners was
effected. Thirty of the enemy were left dead on the field, including the
infamous Hertel de Rouville. On the part of the villagers, Captains Ayer
and Wainwright and Lieutenant Johnson, with thirteen others, were killed.
The intense heat of the weather made it necessary to bury the dead on the
same day. They were laid side by side in a long trench in the burial-
ground. The body of the venerated and lamented minister, with those of
his wife and child, sleep in another part of the burial-ground, where may
still be seen a rude monument with its almost llegible inscription:--
Of the prisoners taken, some escaped during the skirmish, and two or
three were sent back by the French officers, with a message to the
English soldiers, that, if they pursued the party on their retreat to
Canada, the other prisoners should be put to death. One of them, a
soldier stationed in Captain Wainwright's garrison, on his return four
years after, published an account of his captivity. He was compelled to
carry a heavy pack, and was led by an Indian by a cord round his neck.
The whole party suffered terribly from hunger. On reaching Canada the
Indians shaved one side of his head, and greased the other, and painted
his face. At a fort nine miles from Montreal a council was held in order
to decide his fate; and he had the unenviable privilege of listening to a
protracted discussion upon the expediency of burning him. The fire was
already kindled, and the poor fellow was preparing to meet his doom with
firmness, when it was announced to him that his life was spared. This
result of the council by no means satisfied the women and boys, who had
anticipated rare sport in the roasting of a white man and a heretic. One
squaw assailed him with a knife and cut off one of his fingers; another
beat him with a pole. The Indians spent the night in dancing and
singing, compelling their prisoner to go round the ring with them. In
the morning one of their orators made a long speech to him, and formally
delivered him over to an old squaw, who took him to her wigwam and
treated him kindly. Two or three of the young women who were carried
away captive married Frenchmen in Canada and never returned. Instances
of this kind were by no means rare during the Indian wars. The simple
manners, gayety, and social habits of the French colonists among whom the
captives were dispersed seem to have been peculiarly fascinating to the
daughters of the grave and severe Puritans.
At the beginning of the present century, Judith Whiting was the solitary
survivor of all who witnessed the inroad of the French and Indians in
1708. She was eight years of age at the time of the attack, and her
memory of it to the last was distinct and vivid. Upon her old brain,
from whence a great portion of the records of the intervening years had
been obliterated, that terrible picture, traced with fire and blood,
retained its sharp outlines and baleful colors.
Life's tragedy and comedy are never far apart. The ludicrous and the
sublime, the grotesque and the pathetic, jostle each other on the stage;
the jester, with his cap and bells, struts alongside of the hero; the
lord mayor's pageant loses itself in the mob around Punch and Judy; the
pomp and circumstance of war become mirth-provoking in a militia muster;
and the majesty of the law is ridiculous in the mock dignity of a
justice's court. The laughing philosopher of old looked on one side of
life and his weeping contemporary on the other; but he who has an eye to
both must often experience that contrariety of feeling which Sterne
compares to "the contest in the moist eyelids of an April morning,
whether to laugh or cry."
It was about the middle of the afternoon of this day that the people of
Newbury, ten miles farther north, assembled in an informal meeting, at
the town-house to hear accounts from the Lexington fight, and to consider
what action was necessary in consequence of that event. Parson Carey was
about opening the meeting with prayer when hurried hoof-beats sounded up
the street, and a messenger, loose-haired and panting for breath, rushed
up the staircase. "Turn out, turn out, for God's sake," he cried, "or
you will be all killed! The regulars are marching onus; they are at
Ipswich now, cutting and slashing all before them!" Universal
consternation was the immediate result of this fearful announcement;
Parson Carey's prayer died on his lips; the congregation dispersed over
the town, carrying to every house the tidings that the regulars had come.
Men on horseback went galloping up and down the streets, shouting the
alarm. Women and children echoed it from every corner. The panic became
irresistible, uncontrollable. Cries were heard that the dreaded invaders
had reached Oldtown Bridge, a little distance from the village, and that
they were killing all whom they encountered. Flight was resolved upon.
All the horses and vehicles in the town were put in requisition; men,
women, and children hurried as for life towards the north. Some threw
their silver and pewter ware and other valuables into wells. Large
numbers crossed the Merrimac, and spent the night in the deserted houses
of Salisbury, whose inhabitants, stricken by the strange terror, had fled
into New Hampshire, to take up their lodgings in dwellings also abandoned
by their owners. A few individuals refused to fly with the multitude;
some, unable to move by reason of sickness, were left behind by their
relatives. One old gentleman, whose excessive corpulence rendered
retreat on his part impossible, made a virtue of necessity; and, seating
himself in his doorway with his loaded king's arm, upbraided his more
nimble neighbors, advising them to do as he did, and "stop and shoot the
devils." Many ludicrous instances of the intensity of the terror might
be related. One man got his family into a boat to go to Ram Island for
safety. He imagined he was pursued by the enemy through the dusk of the
evening, and was annoyed by the crying of an infant in the after part of
the boat. "Do throw that squalling brat overboard," he called to his
wife, "or we shall be all discovered and killed!" A poor woman ran four
or five miles up the river, and stopped to take breath and nurse her
child, when she found to her great horror that she had brought off the
cat instead of the baby!
All through that memorable night the terror swept onward towards the
north with a speed which seems almost miraculous, producing everywhere
the same results. At midnight a horseman, clad only in shirt and
breeches, dashed by our grandfather's door, in Haverhill, twenty miles up
the river. "Turn out! Get a musket! Turn out!" he shouted; "the
regulars are landing on Plum Island!" "I'm glad of it," responded the
old gentleman from his chamber window; "I wish they were all there, and
obliged to stay there." When it is understood that Plum Island is little
more than a naked sand-ridge, the benevolence of this wish can be readily
appreciated.
All the boats on the river were constantly employed for several hours in
conveying across the terrified fugitives. Through "the dead waste and
middle of the night" they fled over the border into New Hampshire. Some
feared to take the frequented roads, and wandered over wooded hills and
through swamps where the snows of the late winter had scarcely melted.
They heard the tramp and outcry of those behind them, and fancied that
the sounds were made by pursuing enemies. Fast as they fled, the terror,
by some unaccountable means, outstripped them. They found houses
deserted and streets strewn with household stuffs, abandoned in the hurry
of escape. Towards morning, however, the tide partially turned. Grown
men began to feel ashamed of their fears. The old Anglo-Saxon hardihood
paused and looked the terror in its face. Single or in small parties,
armed with such weapons as they found at hand,--among which long poles,
sharpened and charred at the end, were conspicuous,--they began to
retrace their steps. In the mean time such of the good people of Ipswich
as were unable or unwilling to leave their homes became convinced that
the terrible rumor which had nearly depopulated their settlement was
unfounded.
Among those who had there awaited the onslaught of the regulars was a
young man from Exeter, New Hampshire. Becoming satisfied that the whole
matter was a delusion, he mounted his horse and followed after the
retreating multitude, undeceiving all whom he overtook. Late at night
he reached Newburyport, greatly to the relief of its sleepless
inhabitants, and hurried across the river, proclaiming as he rode the
welcome tidings. The sun rose upon haggard and jaded fugitives, worn
with excitement and fatigue, slowly returning homeward, their
satisfaction at the absence of danger somewhat moderated by an unpleasant
consciousness of the ludicrous scenes of their premature night flitting.
It was certainly lucky for the good people of Essex County that no wicked
wag of a Tory undertook to immortalize in rhyme their ridiculous hegira,
as Judge Hopkinson did the famous Battle of the Kegs in Philadelphia.
Like the more recent Madawaska war in Maine, the great Chepatchet
demonstration in Rhode Island, and the "Sauk fuss" of Wisconsin, it
remains to this day "unsyllabled, unsung;" and the fast-fading memory of
age alone preserves the unwritten history of the great Ipswich fright.
POPE NIGHT.
In this country, where every sect takes its own way, undisturbed by legal
restrictions, each ecclesiastical tub balancing itself as it best may on
its own bottom, and where bishops Catholic and bishops Episcopal, bishops
Methodist and bishops Mormon, jostle each other in our thoroughfares, it
is not to be expected that we should trouble ourselves with the matter at
issue between the rival hierarchies on the other side of the water. It
is a very pretty quarrel, however, and good must come out of it, as it
cannot fail to attract popular attention to the shallowness of the
spiritual pretensions of both parties, and lead to the conclusion that a
hierarchy of any sort has very little in common with the fishermen and
tent-makers of the New Testament.
Up to the time of the Revolution the powder plot was duly commemorated
throughout New England. At that period the celebration of it was
discountenanced, and in many places prohibited, on the ground that it was
insulting to our Catholic allies from France. In Coffin's History of
Newbury it is stated that, in 1774, the town authorities of Newburyport
ordered "that no effigies be carried about or exhibited only in the
daytime." The last public celebration in that town was in the following
year. Long before the close of the last century the exhibitions of Pope
Night had entirely ceased throughout the country, with, as far as we can
learn, a solitary exception. The stranger who chances to be travelling
on the road between Newburyport and Haverhill, on the night of the 5th of
November, may well fancy that an invasion is threatened from the sea, or
that an insurrection is going on inland; for from all the high hills
overlooking the river tall fires are seen blazing redly against the cold,
dark, autumnal sky, surrounded by groups of young men and boys busily
engaged in urging them with fresh fuel into intenser activity. To feed
these bonfires, everything combustible which could be begged or stolen
from the neighboring villages, farm-houses, and fences is put in
requisition. Old tar-tubs, purloined from the shipbuilders of the
river-side, and flour and lard barrels from the village-traders, are
stored away for days, and perhaps weeks, in the woods or in the rain-
gullies of the hills, in preparation for Pope Night. From the earliest
settlement of the towns of Amesbury and Salisbury, the night of the
powder plot has been thus celebrated, with unbroken regularity, down to
the present time. The event which it once commemorated is probably now
unknown to most of the juvenile actors. The symbol lives on from
generation to generation after the significance is lost; and we have seen
the children of our Catholic neighbors as busy as their Protestant
playmates in collecting, "by hook or by crook," the materials for Pope-
Night bonfires. We remember, on one occasion, walking out with a gifted
and learned Catholic friend to witness the fine effect of the
illumination on the hills, and his hearty appreciation of its picturesque
and wild beauty,--the busy groups in the strong relief of the fires, and
the play and corruscation of the changeful lights on the bare, brown
hills, naked trees, and autumn clouds.
It should be the fervent prayer of all good men that the evil spirit of
religious hatred and intolerance, which on the one hand prompted the
gunpowder plot, and which on the other has ever since made it the
occasion of reproach and persecution of an entire sect of professing
Christians, may be no longer perpetuated. In the matter of exclusiveness
and intolerance, none of the older sects can safely reproach each other;
and it becomes all to hope and labor for the coming of that day when the
hymns of Cowper and the Confessions of Augustine, the humane philosophy
of Channing and the devout meditations of Thomas a Kempis, the simple
essays of Woolman and the glowing periods of Bossuet, shall be regarded
as the offspring of one spirit and one faith,--lights of a common altar,
and precious stones in the temple of the one universal Church.
In 1695 the township was many times molested by Indians, and several
persons were killed and wounded. Early in the fall a small party made
their appearance in the northerly part of the town, where, finding two
boys at work in an open field, they managed to surprise and capture them,
and, without committing further violence, retreated through the woods to
their homes on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee. Isaac Bradley, aged
fifteen, was a small but active and vigorous boy; his companion in
captivity, Joseph Whittaker, was only eleven, yet quite as large in size,
and heavier in his movements. After a hard and painful journey they
arrived at the lake, and were placed in an Indian family, consisting of a
man and squaw and two or three children. Here they soon acquired a
sufficient knowledge of the Indian tongue to enable them to learn from
the conversation carried on in their presence that it was designed to
take them to Canada in the spring. This discovery was a painful one.
Canada, the land of Papist priests and bloody Indians, was the especial
terror of the New England settlers, and the anathema maranatha of Puritan
pulpits. Thither the Indians usually hurried their captives, where they
compelled them to work in their villages or sold them to the French
planters. Escape from thence through a deep wilderness, and across lakes
and mountains and almost impassable rivers, without food or guide, was
regarded as an impossibility. The poor boys, terrified by the prospect
of being carried still farther from their home and friends, began to
dream of escaping from their masters before they started for Canada. It
was now winter; it would have been little short of madness to have chosen
for flight that season of bitter cold and deep snows. Owing to exposure
and want of proper food and clothing, Isaac, the eldest of the boys, was
seized with a violent fever, from which he slowly recovered in the course
of the winter. His Indian mistress was as kind to him as her
circumstances permitted,--procuring medicinal herbs and roots for her
patient, and tenderly watching over him in the long winter nights.
Spring came at length; the snows melted; and the ice was broken up on the
lake. The Indians began to make preparations for journeying to Canada;
and Isaac, who had during his sickness devised a plan of escape, saw that
the time of putting it in execution had come. On the evening before he
was to make the attempt he for the first time informed his younger
companion of his design, and told him, if he intended to accompany him,
he must be awake at the time appointed. The boys lay down as usual in
the wigwam, in the midst of the family. Joseph soon fell asleep; but
Isaac, fully sensible of the danger and difficulty of the enterprise
before him, lay awake, watchful for his opportunity. About midnight he
rose, cautiously stepping over the sleeping forms of the family, and
securing, as he went, his Indian master's flint, steel, and tinder, and a
small quantity of dry moose-meat and cornbread. He then carefully
awakened his companion, who, starting up, forgetful of the cause of his
disturbance, asked aloud, "What do you want?" The savages began to stir;
and Isaac, trembling with fear of detection, lay down again and pretended
to be asleep. After waiting a while he again rose, satisfied, from the
heavy breathing of the Indians, that they were all sleeping; and fearing
to awaken Joseph a second time, lest he should again hazard all by his
thoughtlessness, he crept softly out of the wigwam. He had proceeded but
a few rods when he heard footsteps behind him; and, supposing himself
pursued, he hurried into the woods, casting a glance backward. What was
his joy to see his young companion running after him! They hastened on
in a southerly direction as nearly as they could determine, hoping to
reach their distant home. When daylight appeared they found a large
hollow log, into which they crept for concealment, wisely judging that
they would be hotly pursued by their Indian captors.
The poor fugitives, starving, weary, and chilled by the cold spring
blasts, gazed down upon the ample fire; and the savory meats which the
squaws were cooking by it, but felt no temptation to purchase warmth and
food by surrendering themselves to captivity. Death in the forest seemed
preferable. They turned and fled back upon their track, expecting every
moment to hear the yells of pursuers. The morning found them seated on
the bank of a small stream, their feet torn and bleeding, and their
bodies emaciated. The elder, as a last effort, made search for roots,
and fortunately discovered a few ground-nuts, (glicine apios) which
served to refresh in some degree himself and his still weaker companion.
As they stood together by the stream, hesitating and almost despairing,
it occurred to Isaac that the rivulet might lead to a larger stream of
water, and that to the sea and the white settlements near it; and he
resolved to follow it. They again began their painful march; the day
passed, and the night once more overtook them. When the eighth morning
dawned, the younger of the boys found himself unable to rise from his bed
of leaves. Isaac endeavored to encourage him, dug roots, and procured
water for him; but the poor lad was utterly exhausted. He had no longer
heart or hope. The elder boy laid him on leaves and dry grass at the
foot of a tree, and with a heavy heart bade him farewell. Alone he
slowly and painfully proceeded down the stream, now greatly increased in
size by tributary rivulets. On the top of a hill, he climbed with
difficulty into a tree, and saw in the distance what seemed to be a
clearing and a newly raised frame building. Hopeful and rejoicing, he
turned back to his young companion, told him what he had seen, and, after
chafing his limbs awhile, got him upon his feet. Sometimes supporting
him, and at others carrying him on his back, the heroic boy staggered
towards the clearing. On reaching it he found it deserted, and was
obliged to continue his journey. Towards night signs of civilization
began to appear,--the heavy, continuous roar of water was heard; and,
presently emerging from the forest, he saw a great river dashing in white
foam down precipitous rocks, and on its bank the gray walls of a huge
stone building, with flankers, palisades, and moat, over which the
British flag was flying. This was the famous Saco Fort, built by
Governor Phips two years before, just below the falls of the Saco River.
The soldiers of the garrison gave the poor fellows a kindly welcome.
Joseph, who was scarcely alive, lay for a long time sick in the fort; but
Isaac soon regained his strength, and set out for his home in Haverhill,
which he had the good fortune to arrive at in safety.
Amidst the stirring excitements of the present day, when every thrill of
the electric wire conveys a new subject for thought or action to a
generation as eager as the ancient Athenians for some new thing, simple
legends of the past like that which we have transcribed have undoubtedly
lost in a great degree their interest. The lore of the fireside is
becoming obsolete, and with the octogenarian few who still linger among
us will perish the unwritten history of border life in New England.
THE BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 1812.
The return of the festival of our national independence has called our
attention to a matter which has been very carefully kept out of sight by
orators and toast-drinkers. We allude to the participation of colored
men in the great struggle for American freedom. It is not in accordance
with our taste or our principles to eulogize the shedders of blood even
in a cause of acknowledged justice; but when we see a whole nation doing
honor to the memories of one class of its defenders to the total neglect
of another class, who had the misfortune to be of darker complexion, we
cannot forego the satisfaction of inviting notice to certain historical
facts which for the last half century have been quietly elbowed aside,
as no more deserving of a place in patriotic recollection than the
descendants of the men to whom the facts in question relate have to a
place in a Fourth of July procession.
In the debate in the New York Convention of 1821 for amending the
Constitution of the State, on the question of extending the right of
suffrage to the blacks, Dr. Clarke, the delegate from Delaware County,
and other members, made honorable mention of the services of the colored
troops in the Revolutionary army.
Governor Eustis, in the speech before quoted, states that the free
colored soldiers entered the ranks with the whites. The time of those
who were slaves was purchased of their masters, and they were induced to
enter the service in consequence of a law of Congress by which, on
condition of their serving in the ranks during the war, they were made
freemen. This hope of liberty inspired them with courage to oppose their
breasts to the Hessian bayonet at Red Bank, and enabled them to endure
with fortitude the cold and famine of Valley Forge. The anecdote of the
slave of General Sullivan, of New Hampshire, is well known. When his
master told him that they were on the point of starting for the army, to
fight for liberty, he shrewdly suggested that it would be a great
satisfaction to know that he was indeed going to fight for his liberty.
Struck with the reasonableness and justice of this suggestion, General
Sullivan at once gave him his freedom.
"They (the colored people) were in numerous instances the pioneers, and
in all the laborers, of our armies. To their hands were owing the
greatest part of the fortifications raised for the protection of the
country. Fort Moultrie gave, at an early period of the inexperienced and
untried valor of our citizens, immortality to the American arms; and in
the Northern States numerous bodies of them were enrolled, and fought
side by side with the whites at the battles of the Revolution."
Let us now look forward thirty or forty years, to the last war with Great
Britain, and see whether the whites enjoyed a monopoly of patriotism at
that time.
Dr. Clarke, in the convention which revised the Constitution of New York
in 1821, speaking of the colored inhabitants of the State, said:--
"In your late war they contributed largely towards some of your most
splendid victories. On Lakes Erie and Champlain, where your fleets
triumphed over a foe superior in numbers and engines of death, they were
manned in a large proportion with men of color. And in this very house,
in the fall of 1814, a bill passed, receiving the approbation of all the
branches of your government, authorizing the governor to accept the
services of a corps of two thousand free people of color. Sir, these
were times which tried men's souls. In these times it was no sporting
matter to bear arms. These were times when a man who shouldered his
musket did not know but he bared his bosom to receive a death-wound from
the enemy ere he laid it aside; and in these times these people were
found as ready and as willing to volunteer in your service as any other.
They were not compelled to go; they were not drafted. No; your pride had
placed them beyond your compulsory power. But there was no necessity for
its exercise; they were volunteers,--yes, sir, volunteers to defend that
very country from the inroads and ravages of a ruthless and vindictive
foe which had treated them with insult, degradation, and slavery."
"As sons of freedom, you are now called on to defend our most inestimable
blessings. As Americans, your country looks with confidence to her
adopted children for a valorous support. As fathers, husbands, and
brothers, you are summoned to rally round the standard of the eagle, to
defend all which is dear in existence."
"Soldiers! when on the banks of the Mobile I called you to take up arms,
inviting you to partake the perils and glory of your white fellow-
citizens, I expected much from you; for I was not ignorant that you
possessed qualities most formidable to an invading enemy. I knew with
what fortitude you could endure hunger, and thirst, and all the fatigues
of a campaign. I knew well how you loved your native country, and that
you, as well as ourselves, had to defend what man holds most dear,--his
parents, wife, children, and property. You have done more than I
expected. In addition to the previous qualities I before knew you to
possess, I found among you a noble enthusiasm, which leads to the
performance of great things.
"Soldiers! the President of the United States shall hear how praiseworthy
was your conduct in the hour of danger, and the Representatives of the
American people will give you the praise your exploits entitle you to.
Your general anticipates them in applauding your noble ardor."
It will thus be seen that whatever honor belongs to the "heroes of the
Revolution" and the volunteers in "the second war for independence" is to
be divided between the white and the colored man. We have dwelt upon
this subject at length, not because it accords with our principles or
feelings, for it is scarcely necessary for us to say that we are one of
those who hold that
"What right, I demand," said an American orator some years ago, "have the
children of Africa to a homestead in the white man's country?" The
answer will in part be found in the facts which we have presented. Their
right, like that of their white fellow-citizens, dates back to the dread
arbitrament of battle. Their bones whiten every stricken field of the
Revolution; their feet tracked with blood the snows of Jersey; their toil
built up every fortification south of the Potomac; they shared the famine
and nakedness of Valley Forge and the pestilential horrors of the old
Jersey prisonship. Have they, then, no claim to an equal participation
in the blessings which have grown out of the national independence for
which they fought? Is it just, is it magnanimous, is it safe, even, to
starve the patriotism of such a people, to cast their hearts out of the
treasury of the Republic, and to convert them, by political
disfranchisement and social oppression, into enemies?
"The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He
all."
FRIEDRICH VON LOGAU.
"What, then, has been my crime? Not the lending to a relation a copy of
Thomas Paine's works,--not the giving away to another a few numbers of an
innocent and constitutional publication; but my crime is, for having
dared to be, according to the measure of my feeble abilities, a strenuous
and an active advocate for an equal representation of the people in the
House of the people,--for having dared to accomplish a measure by legal
means which was to diminish the weight of their taxes and to put an end
to the profusion of their blood. Gentlemen, from my infancy to this
moment I have devoted myself to the cause of the people. It is a good
cause: it will ultimately prevail,--it will finally triumph."
The next victim was Palmer, a learned and highly accomplished Unitarian
minister in Dundee. He was greatly beloved and respected as a polished
gentleman and sincere friend of the people. He was charged with
circulating a republican tract, and was sentenced to seven years'
transportation.
But the Friends of the People were not quelled by this summary punishment
of two of their devoted leaders. In the tenth month, 1793, delegates
were called together from various towns in Scotland, as well as from
Birmingham, Sheffield, and other places in England. Gerrald and Margarot
were sent up by the London society. After a brief sitting, the
convention was dispersed by the public authorities. Its sessions were
opened and closed with prayer, and the speeches of its members manifested
the pious enthusiasm of the old Cameronians and Parliament-men of the
times of Cromwell. Many of the dissenting clergy were present. William
Skirving, the most determined of the band, had been educated for the
ministry, and was a sincerely religious man. Joseph Gerrald was a young
man of brilliant talents and exemplary character. When the sheriff
entered the hall to disperse the friends of liberty, Gerrald knelt in
prayer. His remarkable words were taken down by a reporter on the spot.
There is nothing in modern history to compare with this supplication,
unless it be that of Sir Henry Vane, a kindred martyr, at the foot of the
scaffold, just before his execution. It is the prayer of universal
humanity, which God will yet hear and answer.
"O thou Governor of the universe, we rejoice that, at all times and in
all circumstances, we have liberty to approach Thy throne, and that we
are assured that no sacrifice is more acceptable to Thee than that which
is made for the relief of the oppressed. In this moment of trial and
persecution we pray that Thou wouldst be our defender, our counsellor,
and our guide. Oh, be Thou a pillar of fire to us, as Thou wast to our
fathers of old, to enlighten and direct us; and to our enemies a pillar
of cloud, and darkness, and confusion.
"Thou art Thyself the great Patron of liberty. Thy service is perfect
freedom. Prosper, we beseech Thee, every endeavor which we make to
promote Thy cause; for we consider the cause of truth, or every cause
which tends to promote the happiness of Thy creatures, as Thy cause.
"O thou merciful Father of mankind, enable us, for Thy name's sake, to
endure persecution with fortitude; and may we believe that all trials and
tribulations of life which we endure shall work together for good to them
that love Thee; and grant that the greater the evil, and the longer it
may be continued, the greater good, in Thy holy and adorable providence,
may be produced therefrom. And this we beg, not for our own merits, but
through the merits of Him who is hereafter to judge the world in
righteousness and mercy."
He ceased, and the sheriff, who had been temporarily overawed by the
extraordinary scene, enforced the warrant, and the meeting was broken up.
The delegates descended to the street in silence,--Arthur's Seat and
Salisbury Crags glooming in the distance and night,--an immense and
agitated multitude waiting around, over which tossed the flaring
flambeaux of the sheriff's train. Gerrald, who was already under arrest,
as he descended, spoke aloud, "Behold the funeral torches of Liberty!"
Skirving and several others were immediately arrested. They were tried
in the first month, 1794, and sentenced, as Muir and Palmer had
previously been, to transportation. Their conduct throughout was worthy
of their great and holy cause. Gerrald's defence was that of freedom
rather than his own. Forgetting himself, he spoke out manfully and
earnestly for the poor, the oppressed, the overtaxed, and starving
millions of his countrymen. That some idea may be formed of this noble
plea for liberty, I give an extract from the concluding paragraphs:--
"Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of
the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always
preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated
by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented,
the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting
rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and
conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called
in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their
proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to
the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and
become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may
become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish;
but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every
quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest
and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.
Years have passed, and the generation which knew the persecuted reformers
has given place to another. And now, half a century after William
Skirving, as he rose to receive his sentence, declared to his judges,
"You may condemn us as felons, but your sentence shall yet be reversed by
the people," the names of these men are once more familiar to British
lips. The sentence has been reversed; the prophecy of Skirving has
become history. On the 21st of the eighth month, 1853, the corner-stone
of a monument to the memory of the Scottish martyrs--for which
subscriptions had been received from such men as Lord Holland, the Dukes
of Bedford and Norfolk; and the Earls of Essex and Leicester--was laid
with imposing ceremonies in the beautiful burial-place of Calton Hill,
Edinburgh, by the veteran reformer and tribune of the people, Joseph
Hume, M. P. After delivering an appropriate address, the aged radical
closed the impressive scene by reading the prayer of Joseph Gerrald. At
the banquet which afterwards took place, and which was presided over by
John Dunlop, Esq., addresses were made by the president and Dr. Ritchie,
and by William Skirving, of Kirkaldy, son of the martyr. The Complete
Suffrage Association of Edinburgh, to the number of five hundred, walked
in procession to Calton Hill, and in the open air proclaimed unmolested
the very principles for which the martyrs of the past century had
suffered.
The account of this tribute to the memory of departed worth cannot fail
to awaken in generous hearts emotions of gratitude towards Him who has
thus signally vindicated His truth, showing that the triumph of the
oppressor is but for a season, and that even in this world a lie cannot
live forever. Well and truly did George Fox say in his last days,
Will it be said, however, that this tribute comes too late; that it
cannot solace those brave hearts which, slowly broken by the long agony
of colonial servitude, are now cold in strange graves? It is, indeed, a
striking illustration of the truth that he who would benefit his fellow-
man must "walk by faith," sowing his seed in the morning, and in the
evening withholding not his hand; knowing only this, that in God's good
time the harvest shall spring up and ripen, if not for himself, yet for
others, who, as they bind the full sheaves and gather in the heavy
clusters, may perchance remember him with gratitude and set up stones of
memorial on the fields of his toil and sacrifices. We may regret that in
this stage of the spirit's life the sincere and self-denying worker is
not always permitted to partake of the fruits of his toil or receive the
honors of a benefactor. We hear his good evil spoken of, and his noblest
sacrifices counted as naught; we see him not only assailed by the wicked,
but discountenanced and shunned by the timidly good, followed on his hot
and dusty pathway by the execrations of the hounding mob and the
contemptuous pity of the worldly wise and prudent; and when at last the
horizon of Time shuts down between him and ourselves, and the places
which have known him know him no more forever, we are almost ready to say
with the regal voluptuary of old, This also is vanity and a great evil;
"for what hath a man of all his labor and of the vexation of his heart
wherein he hath labored under the sun?" But is this the end? Has God's
universe no wider limits than the circle of the blue wall which shuts in
our nestling-place? Has life's infancy only been provided for, and
beyond this poor nursery-chamber of Time is there no playground for the
soul's youth, no broad fields for its manhood? Perchance, could we but
lift the curtains of the narrow pinfold wherein we dwell, we might see
that our poor friend and brother whose fate we have thus deplored has by
no means lost the reward of his labors, but that in new fields of duty he
is cheered even by the tardy recognition of the value of his services in
the old. The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward
and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same
waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad
by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,--flowers,
perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of
Time. Who shall say that the mournful and repentant love with which the
benefactors of our race are at length regarded may not be to them, in
their new condition of being, sweet and grateful as the perfume of long-
forgotten flowers, or that our harvest-hymns of rejoicing may not reach
the ears of those who in weakness and suffering scattered the seeds of
blessing?
Unhappily, in the case of the reformer, his most dangerous foes are those
of his own household. True, the world's garden has become a desert and
needs renovation; but is his own little nook weedless? Sin abounds
without; but is his own heart pure? While smiting down the giants and
dragons which beset the outward world, are there no evil guests sitting
by his own hearth-stone? Ambition, envy, self-righteousness, impatience,
dogmatism, and pride of opinion stand at his door-way ready to enter
whenever he leaves it unguarded. Then, too, there is no small danger of
failing to discriminate between a rational philanthropy, with its
adaptation of means to ends, and that spiritual knight-errantry which
undertakes the championship of every novel project of reform, scouring
the world in search of distressed schemes held in durance by common sense
and vagaries happily spellbound by ridicule. He must learn that,
although the most needful truth may be unpopular, it does not follow that
unpopularity is a proof of the truth of his doctrines or the expediency
of his measures. He must have the liberality to admit that it is barely
possible for the public on some points to be right and himself wrong, and
that the blessing invoked upon those who suffer for righteousness is not
available to such as court persecution and invite contempt; for folly has
its martyrs as well as wisdom; and he who has nothing better to show of
himself than the scars and bruises which the popular foot has left upon
him is not even sure of winning the honors of martyrdom as some
compensation for the loss of dignity and self-respect involved in the
exhibition of its pains. To the reformer, in an especial manner, comes
home the truth that whoso ruleth his own spirit is greater than he who
taketh a city. Patience, hope, charity, watchfulness unto prayer,--how
needful are all these to his success! Without them he is in danger of
ingloriously giving up his contest with error and prejudice at the first
repulse; or, with that spiteful philanthropy which we sometimes witness,
taking a sick world by the nose, like a spoiled child, and endeavoring to
force down its throat the long-rejected nostrums prepared for its relief.
What then? Shall we, in view of these things, call back young, generous
spirits just entering upon the perilous pathway? God forbid! Welcome,
thrice welcome, rather. Let them go forward, not unwarned of the dangers
nor unreminded of the pleasures which belong to the service of humanity.
Great is the consciousness of right. Sweet is the answer of a good
conscience. He who pays his whole-hearted homage to truth and duty, who
swears his lifelong fealty on their altars, and rises up a Nazarite
consecrated to their holy service, is not without his solace and
enjoyment when, to the eyes of others, he seems the most lonely and
miserable. He breathes an atmosphere which the multitude know not of;
"a serene heaven which they cannot discern rests over him, glorious in
its purity and stillness." Nor is he altogether without kindly human
sympathies. All generous and earnest hearts which are brought in contact
with his own beat evenly with it. All that is good, and truthful, and
lovely in man, whenever and wherever it truly recognizes him, must sooner
or later acknowledge his claim to love and reverence. His faith
overcomes all things. The future unrolls itself before him, with its
waving harvest-fields springing up from the seed he is scattering; and he
looks forward to the close of life with the calm confidence of one who
feels that he has not lived idle and useless, but with hopeful heart and
strong arm has labored with God and Nature for the best.
And not in vain. In the economy of God, no effort, however small, put
forth for the right cause, fails of its effect. No voice, however
feeble, lifted up for truth, ever dies amidst the confused noises of
time. Through discords of sin and sorrow, pain and wrong, it rises a
deathless melody, whose notes of wailing are hereafter to be changed to
those of triumph as they blend with the great harmony of a reconciled
universe. The language of a transatlantic reformer to his friends is
then as true as it is hopeful and cheering: "Triumph is certain. We have
espoused no losing cause. In the body we may not join our shout with the
victors; but in spirit we may even now. There is but an interval of time
between us and the success at which we aim. In all other respects the
links of the chain are complete. Identifying ourselves with immortal and
immutable principles, we share both their immortality and immutability.
The vow which unites us with truth makes futurity present with us. Our
being resolves itself into an everlasting now. It is not so correct to
say that we shall be victorious as that we are so. When we will in
unison with the supreme Mind, the characteristics of His will become, in
some sort, those of ours. What He has willed is virtually done. It may
take ages to unfold itself; but the germ of its whole history is wrapped
up in His determination. When we make His will ours, which we do when we
aim at truth, that upon which we are resolved is done, decided, born.
Life is in it. It is; and the future is but the development of its
being. Ours, therefore, is a perpetual triumph. Our deeds are, all of
them, component elements of success." [Miall's Essays; Nonconformist,
Vol. iv.]
No one can appreciate more highly than myself the noble qualities of the
men and women of the Mayflower. It is not of them that I, a descendant
of the "sect called Quakers," have reason to complain in the matter of
persecution. A generation which came after them, with less piety and
more bigotry, is especially responsible for the little unpleasantness
referred to; and the sufferers from it scarcely need any present
championship. They certainly did not wait altogether for the revenges of
posterity. If they lost their ears, it is satisfactory to remember that
they made those of their mutilators tingle with a rhetoric more sharp
than polite.
The Pilgrims were right in affirming the paramount authority of the law
of God. If they erred in seeking that authoritative law, and passed over
the Sermon on the Mount for the stern Hebraisms of Moses; if they
hesitated in view of the largeness of Christian liberty; if they seemed
unwilling to accept the sweetness and light of the good tidings, let us
not forget that it was the mistake of men who feared more than they dared
to hope, whose estimate of the exceeding awfulness of sin caused them to
dwell upon God's vengeance rather than his compassion; and whose dread of
evil was so great that, in shutting their hearts against it, they
sometimes shut out the good. It is well for us if we have learned to
listen to the sweet persuasion of the Beatitudes; but there are crises in
all lives which require also the emphatic "Thou shalt not" or the
Decalogue which the founders wrote on the gate-posts of their
commonwealth.
Let us then be thankful for the assurances which the last few years have
afforded us that:
GOVERNOR ENDICOTT.
Time has proved that the Quakers had the best of the controversy; and
their descendants can well afford to forget and forgive an error which
the Puritan governor shared with the generation in which he lived.
JOHN WINTHROP.
It was a happy thought of the Institute to select for its first meeting
of the season the day and the place of the landing of the great and good
governor, and permit me to say, as thy father's old friend, that its
choice for orator, of the son of him whose genius, statesmanship, and
eloquence honored the place of his birth, has been equally happy. As I
look over the list of the excellent worthies of the first emigrations, I
find no one who, in all respects, occupies a nobler place in the early
colonial history of Massachusetts than John Winthrop. Like Vane and
Milton, he was a gentleman as well as a Puritan, a cultured and
enlightened statesman as well as a God-fearing Christian. It was not
under his long and wise chief magistracy that religious bigotry and
intolerance hung and tortured their victims, and the terrible delusion of
witchcraft darkened the sun at noonday over Essex. If he had not quite
reached the point where, to use the words of Sir Thomas More, he could
"hear heresies talked and yet let the heretics alone," he was in charity
and forbearance far in advance of his generation.
VOLUME VII.
CRITICISM
BY
CONTENTS:
CRITICISM.
EVANGELINE
MIRTH AND MEDICINE
FAME AND GLORY
FANATICISM
THE POETRY OF THE NORTH
OR, SLAVERY CONSIDERED WITH A VIEW TO ITS RIGHTFUL AND EFFECTUAL REMEDY,
ABOLITION.
[1833.]
"There is a law above all the enactments of human codes, the same
throughout the world, the same in all time,--such as it was before
the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened
to one world the sources of wealth and power and knowledge, to
another all unutterable woes; such as it is at this day: it is the
law written by the finger of God upon the heart of man; and by that
law, unchangeable and eternal while men despise fraud, and loathe
rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild
and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man."
--LORD BROUGHAM.
But it may be said that the miserable victims of the system have our
sympathies. Sympathy the sympathy of the Priest and the Levite, looking
on, and acknowledging, but holding itself aloof from mortal suffering.
Can such hollow sympathy reach the broken of heart, and does the blessing
of those who are ready to perish answer it? Does it hold back the lash
from the slave, or sweeten his bitter bread? One's heart and soul are
becoming weary of this sympathy, this heartless mockery of feeling; sick
of the common cant of hypocrisy, wreathing the artificial flowers of
sentiment over unutterable pollution and unimaginable wrong. It is
white-washing the sepulchre to make us forget its horrible deposit. It
is scattering flowers around the charnel-house and over the yet festering
grave to turn away our thoughts "from the dead men's bones and all
uncleanness," the pollution and loathsomeness below.
No! let the truth on this subject, undisguised, naked, terrible as it is,
stand out before us. Let us no longer seek to cover it; let us no longer
strive to forget it; let us no more dare to palliate it. It is better to
meet it here with repentance than at the bar of God. The cry of the
oppressed, of the millions who have perished among us as the brute
perisheth, shut out from the glad tidings of salvation, has gone there
before us, to Him who as a father pitieth all His children. Their blood
is upon us as a nation; woe unto us, if we repent not, as a nation, in
dust and ashes. Woe unto us if we say in our hearts, "The Lord shall not
see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. He that planted the ear,
shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?"
But it may be urged that New England has no participation in slavery, and
is not responsible for its wickedness.
Why are we thus willing to believe a lie? New England not responsible!
Bound by the United States constitution to protect the slave-holder in
his sins, and yet not responsible! Joining hands with crime, covenanting
with oppression, leaguing with pollution, and yet not responsible!
Palliating the evil, hiding the evil, voting for the evil, do we not
participate in it?
Let us not forget that should the slaves, goaded by wrongs unendurable,
rise in desperation, and pour the torrent of their brutal revenge over
the beautiful Carolinas, or the consecrated soil of Virginia, New England
would be called upon to arrest the progress of rebellion,--to tread out
with the armed heel of her soldiery that spirit of freedom, which knows
no distinction of cast or color; which has been kindled in the heart of
the black as well as in that of the white.
And what is this system which we are thus protecting and upholding? A
system which holds two millions of God's creatures in bondage, which
leaves one million females without any protection save their own feeble
strength, and which makes even the exercise of that strength in
resistance to outrage punishable with death! which considers rational,
immortal beings as articles of traffic, vendible commodities,
merchantable property,--which recognizes no social obligations, no
natural relations,--which tears without scruple the infant from the
mother, the wife from the husband, the parent from the child. In the
strong but just language of another: "It is the full measure of pure,
unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or
comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed
possession of its detestable preeminence."
So fearful an evil should have its remedies. The following are among the
many which have been from time to time proposed:--
3. Abstinence on the part of the people of the free states from the use
of the known products of slave labor, in order to render that labor
profitless. Beyond a doubt the example of conscientious individuals may
have a salutary effect upon the minds of some of the slave-holders; I but
so long as our confederacy exists, a commercial intercourse with slave
states and a consumption of their products cannot be avoided.
4. Colonization.
The exclusive object of the American Colonization Society, according to
the second article of its constitution, is to colonize the free people of
color residing among us, in Africa or such other place as Congress may
direct. Steadily adhering to this object it has nothing to do with
slavery; and I allude to it as a remedy only because some of its friends
have in view an eventual abolition or an amelioration of the evil.
Let facts speak. The Colonization Society was organized in 1817. It has
two hundred and eighteen auxiliary societies. The legislatures of
fourteen states have recommended it. Contributions have poured into its
treasury from every quarter of the United States. Addresses in its favor
have been heard from all our pulpits. It has been in operation sixteen
years. During this period nearly one million human beings have died in
slavery: and the number of slaves has increased more than half a million,
or in round numbers, 550,000
The Colonization Society has been busily engaged all this while in
conveying the slaves to Africa; in other words, abolishing slavery. In
this very charitable occupation it has carried away of manumitted slaves
613
But enough of its abolition tendency. What has it done for amelioration?
Witness the newly enacted laws of some of the slave states, laws bloody
as the code of Draco, violating the laws of Cod and the unalienable
rights of His children?--[It will be seen that the society approves of
these laws.]--But why talk of amelioration? Amelioration of what? of
sin, of crime unutterable, of a system of wrong and outrage horrible in
the eye of God Why seek to mark the line of a selfish policy, a carnal
expediency between the criminality of hell and that repentance and its
fruits enjoined of heaven?
For the principles and views of the society we must look to its own
statements and admissions; to its Annual Reports; to those of its
auxiliaries; to the speeches and writings of its advocates; and to its
organ, the African Repository.
"The Colonization Society, as such, have renounced wholly the name and
the characteristics of abolitionists. On this point they have been
unjustly and injuriously slandered. Into their accounts the subject of
emancipation does not enter at all."
"From its origin, and throughout the whole period of its existence, it
has constantly disclaimed all intention of interfering, in the smallest
degree, with the rights of property, or the object of emancipation,
gradual or immediate." . . . "The society presents to the American
public no project of emancipation."--[ Mr. Clay's Speech, Idem, vol. vi.
pp. 13, 17.]
Proof. "We hold their slaves, as we hold their other property, sacred."
"It is equally plain and undeniable that the society, in the prosecution
of this work, has never interfered or evinced even a disposition to
interfere in any way with the rights of proprietors of slaves."
"To the slave-holder, who has charged upon them the wicked design of
interfering with the rights of property under the specious pretext of
removing a vicious and dangerous free population, they address themselves
in a tone of conciliation and sympathy. We know your rights, say they,
and we respect them."
"So far from being connected with the abolition of slavery, the measure
proposed would be one of the greatest securities to enable the master to
keep in possession his own property."--[Speech of John Randolph at the
first meeting of the Colonization Society.]
"The tendency of the scheme, and one of its objects, is to secure slave-
holders, and the whole Southern country, against certain evil
consequences growing out of the present threefold mixture of our
population."
"There was but one way (to avert danger), but that might be made
effectual, fortunately. It was to provide and keep open a drain for the
excess beyond the occasions of profitable employment. Mr. Archer had
been stating the case in the supposition, that after the present class of
free blacks had been exhausted, by the operation of the plan he was
recommending, others would be supplied for its action, in the proportion
of the excess of colored population it would be necessary to throw off,
by the process of voluntary manumission or sale. This effect must result
inevitably from the depreciating value of the slaves, ensuing their
disproportionate multiplication. The depreciation would be relieved and
retarded at the same time by the process. The two operations would aid
reciprocally, and sustain each other, and both be in the highest degree
beneficial. It was on the ground of interest, therefore, the most
indisputable pecuniary interest, that he addressed himself to the people
and legislatures of the slave-holding states."
Proof. "The managers consider it clear that causes exist and are
operating to prevent their (the blacks) improvement and elevation to any
considerable extent as a class, in this country, which are fixed, not
only beyond the control of the friends of humanity, but of any human
power. Christianity will not do for them here what it will do for them
in Africa. This is not the fault of the colored man, nor Christianity;
but an ordination of Providence, and no more to be changed than the laws
of Nature!"--[Last Annual Report of the American Colonization Society.]
"Is it not wise, then, for the free people of color and their friends to
admit, what cannot reasonably be doubted, that the people of color must,
in this country, remain for ages, probably forever, a separate and
inferior caste, weighed down by causes, powerful, universal, inevitable;
which neither legislation nor Christianity can remove?"
Proof. "If the free colored people were generally taught to read it
might be an inducement to them to remain in this country (that is, in
their native country). We would offer then no such inducement."--
[Southern Religious Telegraph, February 19, 1831.]
"The public safety of our brethren at the South requires them (the
slaves) to be kept ignorant and uninstructed."
"It is the business of the free (their safety requires it) to keep the
slaves in ignorance. But a few days ago a proposition was made in the
legislature of Georgia to allow them so much instruction as to enable
them to read the Bible; which was promptly rejected by a large
majority."--[Proceedings of New York State Colonization Society at its
second anniversary.]
"And here it may be well to observe, that as long as negro slavery lasts,
all colonies on the African coast, of whatever description, must tend to
support it, because, in all commerce, the supply is more or less
proportioned to the demand. The demand exists in negro slavery; the
supply arises from the African slave-trade. And what greater convenience
could the African slave-traders desire than shops well stored along the
coast with the very articles which their trade demands. That the African
slave-traders do get thus supplied at Sierra Leone and Liberia is matter
of official evidence; and we know, from the nature of human things, that
they will get so supplied, in defiance of all law or precaution, as long
as the demand calls for the supply, and there are free shops stored with
all they want at hand. The shopkeeper, however honest, would find it
impossible always to distinguish between the African slave-trader or his
agents and other dealers. And how many shopkeepers are there anywhere
that would be over scrupulous in questioning a customer with a full
purse?"
"Each emigrant," says Henry Clay, the ablest advocate which the society
has yet found, "is a missionary, carrying with him credentials in the
holy cause of civilization, religion, and free institutions."
Beautiful and heart-cheering idea! But stay who are these emigrants,
these missionaries?
The free people of color. "They, and they only," says the African
Repository, the society's organ, "are qualified for colonizing Africa."
What are their qualifications? Let the society answer in its own words:--
Free blacks are a greater nuisance than even slaves themselves."--
[African Repository, vol. ii. p. 328.]
"Of all classes of our population the most vicious is that of the free
colored."--[Tenth Annual Report of the Colonization Society.]
I come now to the only practicable, the only just scheme of emancipation:
Immediate abolition of slavery; an immediate acknowledgment of the great
truth, that man cannot hold property in man; an immediate surrender of
baneful prejudice to Christian love; an immediate practical obedience to
the command of Jesus Christ: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto
you, do ye even so to them."
They seek to impress indelibly upon every human heart the true doctrines
of the rights of man; to establish now and forever this great and
fundamental truth of human liberty, that man cannot hold property in his
brother; for they believe that the general admission of this truth will
utterly destroy the system of slavery, based as that system is upon a
denial or disregard of it. To make use of the clear exposition of an
eminent advocate of immediate abolition, our plan of emancipation is
simply this: "To promulgate the true doctrine of human rights in high
places and low places, and all places where there are human beings; to
whisper it in chimney corners, and to proclaim it from the house-tops,
yea, from the mountain-tops; to pour it out like water from the pulpit
and the press; to raise it up with all the food of the inner man, from
infancy to gray hairs; to give 'line upon line, and precept upon
precept,' till it forms one of the foundation principles and parts
indestructible of the public soul. Let those who contemn this plan
renounce, if they have not done it already, the gospel plan of converting
the world; let them renounce every plan of moral reformation, and every
plan whatsoever, which does not terminate in the gratification of their
own animal natures."
The number of slaves in these portions of the country, coming under the
direct jurisdiction of the general government, is as follows:--
Total 26,196
Here, then, are twenty-six thousand human beings, fashioned in the image
of God, the fitted temples of His Holy Spirit, held by the government in
the abhorrent chains of slavery. The power to emancipate them is clear.
It is indisputable. It does not depend upon the twenty-five slave votes
in Congress. It lies with the free states. Their duty is before them:
in the fear of God, and not of man let them perform it.
Let them at once strike off the grievous fetters. Let them declare that
man shall no longer hold his fellow-man in bondage, a beast of burden, an
article of traffic, within the governmental domain. God and truth and
eternal justice demand this. The very reputation of our fathers, the
honor of our land, every principle of liberty, humanity, expediency,
demand it. A sacred regard to free principles originated our
independence, not the paltry amount of practical evil complained of. And
although our fathers left their great work unfinished, it is our duty to
follow out their principles. Short of liberty and equality we cannot
stop without doing injustice to their memories. If our fathers intended
that slavery should be perpetual, that our practice should forever give
the lie to our professions, why is the great constitutional compact so
guardedly silent on the subject of human servitude? If state necessity
demanded this perpetual violation of the laws of God and the rights of
man, this continual solecism in a government of freedom, why is it not
met as a necessity, incurable and inevitable, and formally and distinctly
recognized as a settled part of our social system? State necessity, that
imperial tyrant, seeks no disguise. In the language of Sheridan, "What
he does, he dares avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification than
the great motives which placed the iron sceptre in his grasp."
Can it be possible that our fathers felt this state necessity strong upon
them? No; for they left open the door for emancipation, they left us the
light of their pure principles of liberty, they framed the great charter
of American rights, without employing a term in its structure to which in
aftertimes of universal freedom the enemies of our country could point
with accusation or reproach.
"To feel
The weight of human misery less, and glide
Ungroaning to the tomb,"
Far be it from me to cast new bitterness into the gall and wormwood
waters of sectional prejudice. No; I desire peace, the peace of
universal love, of catholic sympathy, the peace of a common interest, a
common feeling, a common humanity. But so long as slavery is tolerated,
no such peace can exist. Liberty and slavery cannot dwell in harmony
together. There will be a perpetual "war in the members" of the
political Mezentius between the living and the dead. God and man have
placed between them an everlasting barrier, an eternal separation. No
matter under what name or law or compact their union is attempted, the
ordination of Providence has forbidden it, and it cannot stand. Peace!
there can be no peace between justice and oppression, between robbery and
righteousness, truth and falsehood, freedom and slavery.
The slave-holding states are not free. The name of liberty is there, but
the spirit is wanting. They do not partake of its invaluable blessings.
Wherever slavery exists to any considerable extent, with the exception of
some recently settled portions of the country, and which have not yet
felt in a great degree the baneful and deteriorating influences of slave
labor, we hear at this moment the cry of suffering. We are told of
grass-grown streets, of crumbling mansions, of beggared planters and
barren plantations, of fear from without, of terror within. The once
fertile fields are wasted and tenantless, for the curse of slavery, the
improvidence of that labor whose hire has been kept back by fraud, has
been there, poisoning the very earth beyond the reviving influence of the
early and the latter rain. A moral mildew mingles with and blasts the
economy of nature. It is as if the finger of the everlasting God had
written upon the soil of the slave-holder the language of His
displeasure.
Let this be done, and the horrible fears which now haunt the slumbers of
the slave-holder will depart. Conscience will take down its racks and
gibbets, and his soul will be at peace. His lands will no longer
disappoint his hopes. Free labor will renovate them.
Historical facts; the nature of the human mind; the demonstrated truths
of political economy; the analysis of cause and effect, all concur in
establishing:
1. That immediate abolition is a safe and just and peaceful remedy for
the evils of the slave system.
2. That free labor, its necessary consequence, is more productive, and
more advantageous to the planter than slave labor.
The case of St. Domingo is in point. Blood was indeed shed on that
island like water, but it was not in consequence of emancipation. It was
shed in the civil war which preceded it, and in the iniquitous attempt to
restore the slave system in 1801. It flowed on the sanguine altar of
slavery, not on the pure and peaceful one of emancipation. No; there, as
in all the world and in all time, the violence of oppression engendered
violence on the part of the oppressed, and vengeance followed only upon
the iron footsteps of wrong. When, where, did justice to the injured
waken their hate and vengeance? When, where, did love and kindness and
sympathy irritate and madden the persecuted, the broken-hearted, the
foully wronged?
"There were estates," he says, "which had neither owners nor managers
resident upon them, yet upon these estates, though abandoned, the negroes
continued their labors where there were any, even inferior, agents to
guide them; and on those estates where no white men were left to direct
them, they betook themselves to the planting of provisions; but upon all
the plantations where the whites resided the blacks continued to labor as
quietly as before." Colonel Malenfant says that when many of his
neighbors, proprietors or managers, were in prison, the negroes of their
plantations came to him to beg him to direct them in their work. "If you
will take care not to talk to them of the restoration of slavery, but
talk to them of freedom, you may with this word chain them down to their
labor. How did Toussaint succeed? How did I succeed before his time in
the plain of the Cul-de-Sac on the plantation of Gouraud, during more
than eight months after liberty had been granted to the slaves? Let
those who knew me at that time, let the blacks themselves be asked. They
will all reply that not a single negro upon that plantation, consisting
of more than four hundred and fifty laborers, refused to work; and yet
this plantation was thought to be under the worst discipline and the
slaves the most idle of any in the plain. I inspired the same activity
into three other plantations of which I had the management. If all the
negroes had come from Africa within six months, if they had the love of
independence that the Indians have, I should own that force must be
employed; but ninety-nine out of a hundred of the blacks are aware that
without labor they cannot procure the things that are necessary for them;
that there is no other method of satisfying their wants and their tastes.
They know that they must work, they wish to do so, and they will do so."
Mr. Harvey, who during the reign of Christophe resided at Cape Francois,
in describing the character and condition of the inhabitants, says "It
was an interesting sight to behold this class of the Haytiens, now in
possession of their freedom, coming in groups to the market nearest which
they resided, bringing the produce of their industry there for sale; and
afterwards returning, carrying back the necessary articles of living
which the disposal of their commodities had enabled them to purchase; all
evidently cheerful and happy. Nor could it fail to occur to the mind
that their present condition furnished the most satisfactory answer to
that objection to the general emancipation of slaves founded on their
alleged unfitness to value and improve the benefits of liberty. . . .
As they would not suffer, so they do not require, the attendance of one
acting in the capacity of a driver with the instrument of punishment in
his hand. As far as I had an opportunity of ascertaining from what fell
under my own observation, and from what I gathered from other European
residents, I am persuaded of one general fact, which on account of its
importance I shall state in the most explicit terms, namely, that the
Haytiens employed in cultivating the plantations, as well as the rest of
the population, perform as much work in a given time as they were
accustomed to do during their subjection to the French. And if we may
judge of their future improvement by the change which has been already
effected, it may be reasonably anticipated that Hayti will erelong
contain a population not inferior in their industry to that of any
civilized nation in the world. . . . Every man had some calling to
occupy his attention; instances of idleness or intemperance were of rare
occurrence; the most perfect subordination prevailed, and all appeared
contented and happy. A foreigner would have found it difficult to
persuade himself, on his first entering the place, that the people he now
beheld so submissive, industrious, and contented, were the same people
who a few years before had escaped from the shackles of slavery."
The present condition of Hayti may be judged of from the following well-
authenticated facts its population is more than 700,000, its resources
ample, its prosperity and happiness general, its crimes few, its labor
crowned with abundance, with no paupers save the decrepit and aged, its
people hospitable, respectful, orderly, and contented.
The manumitted slaves, who to the number of two thousand were settled in
Nova Scotia by the British Government at the close of the Revolutionary
War, "led a harmless life, and gained the character of an honest,
industrious people from their white neighbors." Of the free laborers of
Trinidad we have the same report. At the Cape of Good Hope, three
thousand negroes received their freedom, and with scarce a single
exception betook themselves to laborious employments.
5. The result has proved the entire correctness of this conviction; and
the planters would now be as unwilling as the blacks themselves to return
to the old system.
They seem the evidence of the displeasure of Him who created man after
His own image, at the unnatural attempt to govern the bones and sinews,
the bodies and souls, of one portion of His children by the caprice, the
avarice, the lusts of another; at that utter violation of the design of
His merciful Providence, whereby the entire dependence of millions of His
rational creatures is made to centre upon the will, the existence, the
ability, of their fellow-mortals, instead of resting under the shadow of
His own Infinite Power and exceeding love.
4. "In coffee districts it is usual for the master to hire his people
after they have done the regular task for the day, at a rate varying from
10d. to 15.8d. for every extra bushel which they pluck from the trees;
and many, almost all, are found eager to earn their wages."
Let us look at this subject from another point of view. The large sum of
money necessary for stocking a plantation with slaves has an inevitable
tendency to place the agriculture of a slave-holding community
exclusively in the hands of the wealthy, a tendency at war with practical
republicanism and conflicting with the best maxims of political economy.
Two hundred slaves at $200 per head would cost in the outset $40,000.
Compare this enormous outlay for the labor of a single plantation with
the beautiful system of free labor as exhibited in New England, where
every young laborer, with health and ordinary prudence, may acquire by
his labor on the farms of others, in a few years, a farm of his own, and
the stock necessary for its proper cultivation; where on a hard and
unthankful soil independence and competence may be attained by all.
In an old plantation of three hundred slaves, not more than one hundred
effective laborers will be found. Children, the old and superannuated,
the sick and decrepit, the idle and incorrigibly vicious, will be found
to constitute two thirds of the whole number. The remaining third
perform only about one third as much work as the same number of free
laborers.
Now disburden the master of this heavy load of maintenance; let him
employ free able, industrious laborers only, those who feel conscious of
a personal interest in the fruits of their labor, and who does not see
that such a system would be vastly more safe and economical than the
present?
The slave states are learning this truth by fatal experience. Most of
them are silently writhing under the great curse. Virginia has uttered
her complaints aloud. As yet, however, nothing has been done even there,
save a small annual appropriation for the purpose of colonizing the free
colored inhabitants of the state. Is this a remedy?
But it may be said that Virginia will ultimately liberate her slaves on
condition of their colonization in Africa, peacefully if possible,
forcibly if necessary.
Well, admitting that Virginia may be able and willing at some remote
period to rid herself of the evil by commuting the punishment of her
unoffending colored people from slavery to exile, will her fearful remedy
apply to some of the other slaveholding states?
To what remedy, then, can the friends of humanity betake themselves but
to that of emancipation?
And when the voice of all the non-slave-holding states shall be heard on
this question, a voice of expostulation, rebuke, entreaty--when the full
light of truth shall break through the night of prejudice, and reveal all
the foul abominations of slavery, will Delaware still cling to the curse
which is wasting her moral strength, and still rivet the fetters upon her
three or four thousand slaves? Let Delaware begin the work, and Maryland
and Virginia must follow; the example will be contagious; and the great
object of universal emancipation will be attained. Freemen, Christians,
lovers of truth and justice Why stand ye idle? Ours is a government of
opinion, and slavery is interwoven with it. Change the current of
opinion, and slavery will be swept away. Let the awful sovereignty of
the people, a power which is limited only by the sovereignty of Heaven,
arise and pronounce judgment against the crying iniquity. Let each
individual remember that upon himself rests a portion of that
sovereignty; a part of the tremendous responsibility of its exercise.
The burning, withering concentration of public opinion upon the slave
system is alone needed for its total annihilation. God has given us the
power to overthrow it; a power peaceful, yet mighty, benevolent, yet
effectual, "awful without severity," a moral strength equal to the
emergency.
"How does it happen," inquires an able writer, "that whenever duty is named
we begin to hear of the weakness of human nature? That same nature which
outruns the whirlwind in the chase of gain, which rages like a maniac at
the trumpet call of glory, which laughs danger and death to scorn when
its least passion is awakened, becomes weak as childhood when reminded of
the claims of duty." But let no one hope to find an excuse in hypocrisy.
The humblest individual of the community in one way or another possesses
influence; and upon him as well as upon the proudest rests the
responsibility of its rightful exercise and proper direction. The
overthrow of a great national evil like that of slavery can only be
effected by the united energies of the great body of the people.
Shoulder must be put to shoulder and hand linked with hand, the whole
mass must be put in motion and its entire strength applied, until the
fabric of oppression is shaken to its dark foundations and not one stone
is left upon another.
Let the Christian remember that the God of his worship hateth oppression;
that the mystery of faith can only be held by a pure conscience; and that
in vain is the tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, if the weihtier
matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and truth, are forgotten. Let him
remember that all along the clouded region of slavery the truths of the
everlasting gospel are not spoken, that the ear of iniquity is lulled,
that those who minister between the "porch and the altar" dare not speak
out the language of eternal justice: "Is not this the fast which I have
chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and
to let the oppressed go free?" (Isa. viii. 6.) "He that stealeth a man
and selleth him; or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to
death." (Exod. xxi. 16.1) Yet a little while and the voice of impartial
prayer for humanity will be heard no more in the abiding place of
slavery. The truths of the gospel, its voice of warning and exhortation,
will be denounced as incendiary? The night of that infidelity, which
denies God in the abuse and degradation of man, will settle over the
land, to be broken only by the upheaving earthquake of eternal
retribution.
Let the patriot, the friend of liberty and the Union of the States, no
longer shut his eyes to the great danger, the master-evil before which
all others dwindle into insignificance. Our Union is tottering to its
foundation, and slavery is the cause. Remove the evil. Dry up at their
source the bitter waters. In vain you enact and abrogate your tariffs;
in vain is individual sacrifice, or sectional concession. The accursed
thing is with us, the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence remains.
Drag, then, the Achan into light; and let national repentance atone for
national sin.
The conflicting interests of free and slave labor furnish the only ground
for fear in relation to the permanency of the Union. The line of
separation between them is day by day growing broader and deeper;
geographically and politically united, we are already, in a moral point
of view, a divided people. But a few months ago we were on the very
verge of civil war, a war of brothers, a war between the North and the
South, between the slave-holder and the free laborer. The danger has
been delayed for a time; this bolt has fallen without mortal injury to
the Union, but the cloud from whence it came still hangs above us,
reddening with the elements of destruction.
Recent events have furnished ample proof that the slave-holding interest
is prepared to resist any legislation on the part of the general
government which is supposed to have a tendency, directly or indirectly,
to encourage and invigorate free labor; and that it is determined to
charge upon its opposite interest the infliction of all those evils which
necessarily attend its own operation, "the primeval curse of Omnipotence
upon slavery."
"There is not one general principle," justly remarks Lord Nugent, "on
which the slave-trade is to be stigmatized which does not impeach slavery
itself." Kindred in iniquity, both must fall speedily, fall together,
and be consigned to the same dishonorable grave. The spirit which is
thrilling through every nerve of England is awakening America from her
sleep of death. Who, among our statesmen, would not shrink from the
baneful reputation of having supported by his legislative influence the
slave-trade, the traffic in human flesh? Let them then beware; for the
time is near at hand when the present defenders of slavery will sink
under the same fatal reputation, and leave to posterity a memory which
will blacken through all future time, a legacy of infamy.
"Let us not betake us to the common arts and stratagems of nations, but
fear God, and put away the evil which provokes Him; and trust not in man,
but in the living God; and it shall go well for England!" This counsel,
given by the purehearted William Penn, in a former age, is about to be
followed in the present. An intense and powerful feeling is working in
the mighty heart of England; it is speaking through the lips of Brougham
and Buxton and O'Connell, and demanding justice in the name of humanity
and according to the righteous law of God. The immediate emancipation of
eight hundred thousand slaves is demanded with an authority which cannot
much longer be disputed or trifled with. That demand will be obeyed;
justice will be done; the heavy burdens will be unloosed; the oppressed
set free. It shall go well for England.
And when the stain on our own escutcheon shall be seen no more; when the
Declaration of our Independence and the practice of our people shall
agree; when truth shall be exalted among us; when love shall take the
place of wrong; when all the baneful pride and prejudice of caste and
color shall fall forever; when under one common sun of political liberty
the slave-holding portions of our republic shall no longer sit, like the
Egyptians of old, themselves mantled in thick darkness, while all around
them is glowing with the blessed light of freedom and equality, then, and
not till then, shall it go well for America!
THE ABOLITIONISTS.
I.
I perceive that since the adjustment of the tariff question a new subject
of discontent and agitation seems to engross your attention.
But when I find my opinions quoted as the sentiment of New England, and
then denounced as dangerous, "false and fanatical;" and especially when I
see them made the occasion of earnest appeals to the prejudices and
sectional jealousies of the South, it becomes me to endeavor to establish
their truths, and defend them from illegitimate influences and unjust
suspicions.
And that object is the overthrow of slavery in the United States, by such
means only as are sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion.
In your paper of the 2d of 7th mo., the same in which you denounce the
"false and fanatical philanthropy" of abolitionists, you avow yourselves
members of the Bible Society, and bestow warm and deserved encomiums on
the "truly pious undertaking of sending the truth among all nations."
You, therefore, gentlemen, whatever others may do, will not accuse me of
"fanaticism," if I endeavor to sustain my first great reason for opposing
slavery by a reference to the volume of inspiration:
"Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you, take heed and do it;
for there is no iniquity with the Lord, nor respect of persons."
"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of
wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and
that ye break every yoke?"
"If a man be found stealing any of his brethren, and maketh merchandise
of him, or selling him, that thief shall die."
The fundamental principle of all equal and just law is contained in the
following extract from Blackstone's Commentaries, Introduction, sec. 2.
"The rights which God and Nature have established, and which are
therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the
aid of human laws to be more effectually vested in every man than they
are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by
municipal laws to be inviolable: on the contrary, no human legislation
has power to abridge or destroy there, unless the owner shall himself
commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture."
Has the negro committed such offence? Above all, has his infant child
forfeited its unalienable right?
Yet you must prove the forfeiture, or no human legislation can deprive
that child of its freedom.
What! throw the responsibility upon God! Charge the common Father of the
white and the black, He, who is no respecter of persons, with plundering
His unoffending children of all which makes the boon of existence
desirable; their personal liberty!
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."--
[Declaration of Independence, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson.]
For more than half a century we have openly violated that solemn
declaration.
"Chains clank and groans echo around the walls of their spotless
Congress."--[Francis Jeffrey.]
Gentlemen, is not this true? Does there exist even in Virginia any law
limiting the punishment of a slave? Are there any bounds prescribed,
beyond which the brutal, the revengeful, the intoxicated slave-master,
acting in the double capacity of judge and executioner, cannot pass?
You will, perhaps, tell me that the general law against murder applies
alike to master and slave. True; but will you point out instances of
masters suffering the penalty of that law for the murder of their slaves?
If you examine your judicial reports you will find the wilful murder of a
slave decided to be only a trespass!--[Virginia Reports, vol. v. p. 481,
Harris versus Nichols.]
It indeed argues well for Virginian pride of character, that latterly,
the law, which expressly sanctioned the murder of a slave, who in the
language of Georgia and North Carolina, "died of moderate correction,"
has been repealed. But, although the letter of the law is changed, its
practice remains the same. In proof of this, I would refer to
Brockenborough and Holmes' Virginia Cases, p. 258.
"If any slave shall suffer in his life, limbs, or members, when no white
person shall be present, or being present shall neglect or refuse to give
evidence concerning the same, in every such case the owner or other
person who shall have the care and government of the slave shall be
deemed and taken to be guilty of such offence; unless such owner or other
person can make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or
shall by his own oath clear and exculpate himself, which oath every court
where such offence shall be tried is hereby empowered to administer and
to acquit the offender accordingly, if clear proof of the offence be not
made by two witnesses at least, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary
notwithstanding."
Is not this offering a reward for perjury? And what shall we think of
that misnamed court of justice, where it is optional with the witnesses,
in a case of life and death, to give or withhold their testimony.
What shook the pillars of the Union when the Missouri question was
agitated? What but a few months ago arrayed in arms a state against the
Union, and the Union against a state?
From Maine to Florida, gentlemen, the answer must be the same, slavery.
Political economy has been the peculiar study of Virginia. But there are
some important truths connected with this science which she has hitherto
overlooked or wantonly disregarded.
Again, in the latter states the slave population has increased twice as
fast as the white. Let us take, for example, the period of twenty years,
from 1790 to 1810, and compare the increase of the two classes in three
of the Southern states.
Maryland 13 31
Virginia 24 38
North Carolina 30 70
There is yet another cause for the decline of the white population. In
the free states labor is reputable. The statesman, whose eloquence has
electrified a nation, does not disdain in the intervals of the public
service to handle the axe and the hoe. And the woman whose beauty,
talents, and accomplishments have won the admiration of all deems it no
degradation to "look well to her household."
But the slave stamps with indelible ignominy the character of occupation.
It is a disgrace for a highborn Virginian or chivalrous Carolinian to
labor, side by side, with the low, despised, miserable black man.
Wretched must be the condition of the poorer classes of whites in a
slave-holding community! Compelled to perform the despised offices of
the slave, they can hardly rise above his level. They become the pariahs
of society. No wonder, then, that the tide of emigration flows from the
slave-cursed shores of the Atlantic to the free valleys of the West.
In the early and better days of the Roman Republic, the ancient warriors
and statesmen cultivated their fields with their own hands; but so soon
as their agriculture was left to the slaves, it visibly declined, the
once fertile fields became pastures, and the inhabitants of that garden
of the world were dependent upon foreign nations for the necessaries of
life. The beautiful villages, once peopled by free contented laborers,
became tenantless, and, over the waste of solitude, we see, here and
there, at weary distances, the palaces of the master, contrasting
painfully with the wretched cottages and subterranean cells of the slave.
In speaking of the extraordinary fertility of the soil in the early times
of the Republic, Pliny inquires, "What was the cause of these abundant
harvests? It was this, that men of rank employed themselves in the
culture of the fields; whereas now it is left to wretches loaded with
fetters, who carry in their countenances the shameful evidence of their
slavery."
And what was true in the days of the Roman is now written legibly upon
the soil of your own Virginia. A traveller in your state, in
contemplating the decline of its agriculture, has justly remarked that,
"if the miserable condition of the negro had left his mind for
reflection, he would laugh in his chains to see how slavery has stricken
the land with ugliness."
7. Because, by the terms of the national compact, the free and the slave
states are alike involved in the guilt of maintaining slavery, and the
citizens of the former are liable, at any moment, to be called upon to
aid the latter in suppressing, at the point of the bayonet, the
insurrection of the slaves.
Slavery is, at the best, an unnatural state. And Nature, when her
eternal principles are violated, is perpetually struggling to restore
them to their first estate.
All history, ancient and modern, is full of warning on this point. Need
I refer to the many revolts of the Roman and Grecian slaves, the bloody
insurrection of Etruria, the horrible servile wars of Sicily and Capua?
Or, to come down to later times, to France in the fourteenth century,
Germany in the sixteenth, to Malta in the last? Need I call to mind the
untold horrors of St. Domingo, when that island, under the curse of its
servile war, glowed redly in the view of earth and heaven,--an open hell?
Have our own peculiar warnings gone by unheeded,--the frequent slave
insurrections of the South? One horrible tragedy, gentlemen, must still
be fresh in your recollection,--Southampton, with its fired dwellings and
ghastly dead! Southampton, with its dreadful associations, of the death
struggle with the insurgents, the groans of the tortured negroes, the
lamentations of the surviving whites over woman in her innocence and
beauty, and childhood, and hoary age!
To the just and prophetic language of your own great statesman I have but
a few words to add. They shall be those of truth and soberness.
The terms of the national compact compel us to consider more than two
millions of our fellow-beings as your property; not, indeed, morally,
really, de facto, but still legally your property! We acknowledge that
you have a power derived from the United States Constitution to hold this
"property," but we deny that you have any moral right to take advantage
of that power. For truth will not allow us to admit that any human law
or compact can make void or put aside the ordinance of the living God and
the eternal laws of Nature.
Because the slave has never forfeited his right to freedom, and the
continuance of his servitude is a continuance of robbery; and because, in
the event of a servile war, the people of the free states would be called
upon to take a part in its unutterable horrors.
New England would obey that call, for she will abide unto death by the
Constitution of the land. Yet what must be the feelings of her citizens,
while engaged in hunting down like wild beasts their fellow-men--brutal
and black it may be, but still oppressed, suffering human beings,
struggling madly and desperately for their liberty, if they feel and know
that the necessity of so doing has resulted from a blind fatality on the
part of the oppressor, a reckless disregard of the warnings of earth and
heaven, an obstinate perseverance in a system founded and sustained by
robbery and wrong?
All wars are horrible, wicked, inexcusable, and truly and solemnly has
Jefferson himself said that, in a contest of this kind, between the slave
and the master, "the Almighty has no attribute which could take side with
us."
8. Because all the facts connected with the subject warrant us in a most
confident belief that a speedy and general emancipation might be made
with entire safety, and that the consequences of such an emancipation
would be highly beneficial to the planters of the South.
A long and careful examination of the subject will I think fully justify
me in advancing this general proposition.
Wherever, whether in Europe, the East and West Indies, South America, or
in our own country, a fair experiment has been made of the comparative
expense of free and slave labor, the result has uniformly been favorable
to the former.
The facts, gentlemen! In God's name, bring out your facts! If slavery
is to cast over the prosperity of our country the thick shadow of an
everlasting curse, because emancipation is dreaded as a remedy worse than
the disease itself, let us know the real grounds of your fear.
I have now given some of our reasons for opposing slavery. In my next
letter I shall explain our method of opposition, and I trust I shall be
able to show that there is nothing "fanatical," nothing
"unconstitutional," and nothing unchristian in that method.
Having made this disclaimer on the part of myself and my friends, let me
inquire from whence this charge of advocating the interference of the
general government with the sovereign jurisdiction of the states has
arisen? Will you, gentlemen, will the able editors of the United States
Telegraph and the Columbian Telescope, explain? For myself, I have
sought in vain among the writings of our "Northern Enthusiasts," and
among the speeches of the Northern statesmen and politicians, for some
grounds for the accusation.
The doctrine, such as it is, does not belong to us. I think it may be
traced home to the South, to Virginia, to her Convention of 1829, to the
speech of Ex-President Monroe, on the white basis question.
"As to emancipation," said that distinguished son of your state, "if ever
that should take place, it cannot be done by the state; it must be done
by the Union."
Again, "If emancipation can ever be effected, it can only be done with
the aid of the general government."
Our testimony against slavery is the same which has uniformly, and with
so much success, been applied to prevailing iniquity in all ages of the
world, the truths of divine revelation.
Believing that there can be nothing in the Providence of God to which His
holy and eternal law is not strictly applicable, we maintain that no
circumstances can justify the slave-holder in a continuance of his
system.
That the fact that this system did not originate with the present
generation is no apology for retaining it, inasmuch as crime cannot be
entailed; and no one is under a necessity of sinning because others have
done so before him;
That the black child born in a slave plantation is not "an entailed
article of property;" and that the white man who makes of that child a
slave is a thief and a robber, stealing the child as the sea pirate stole
his father!
Besides, the plan of gradual abolition has been tried in this country and
the West Indies, and found wanting. It has been in operation in our
slave states ever since the Declaration of Independence, and its results
are before the nation. Let us see.
THE ABOLITIONISTS 79
In 1790 there were in the slave states south of the Potomac and the Ohio
20,415 free blacks. Their increase for the ten years following was at
the rate of sixty per cent., their number in 1800 being 32,604. In 1810
there were 58,046, an increase of seventy-five per cent. This
comparatively large increase was, in a great measure, owing to the free
discussions going on in England and in this country on the subject of the
slave-trade and the rights of man. The benevolent impulse extended to
the slave-masters, and manumissions were frequent. But the salutary
impression died away; the hand of oppression closed again upon its
victims; and the increase for the period of twenty years, 1810 to 1830,
was only seventy-seven per cent., about one half of what it was in the
ten years from 1800 to 1810. And this is the practical result of the
much-lauded plan of gradual abolition.
In 1790, in the states above mentioned, there were only 550,604 slaves,
but in 1830 there were 1,874,098! And this, too, is gradual abolition.
"What, then!" perhaps you will ask, "do you expect to overthrow our whole
slave system at once? to turn loose to-day two millions of negroes?"
Of this doctrine, and of our plan for crrrying it into effect, I have
given an exposition, with the most earnest regard to the truth. Does
either embrace anything false, fanatical, or unconstitutional? Do they
afford a reasonable protext for your fierce denunciations of your
Northern brethren? Do they furnish occasion for your newspaper chivalry,
your stereotyped demonstrations of Southern magnanimity and Yankee
meanness?--things, let me say, unworthy of Virginians, degrading to
yourselves, insulting to us.
Gentlemen, it is too late for Virginia, with all her lofty intellect and
nobility of feeling, to defend and advocate the principle of slavery.
The death-like silence which for nearly two centuries brooded over her
execrable system has been broken; light is pouring in upon the minds of
her citizens; truth is abroad, "searching out and overturning the lies of
the age." A moral reformation has been already awakened, and it cannot
now be drugged to sleep by the sophistries of detected sin. A thousand
intelligences are at work in her land; a thousand of her noblest hearts
are glowing with the redeeming spirit of that true philanthropy, which is
moving all the world. No, gentlemen; light is spreading from the hills
of Western Virginia to the extremest East. You cannot arrest its
progress. It is searching the consciences; it is exercising the reason;
it is appealing to the noblest characteristics of intelligent Virginians.
It is no foreign influence. From every abandoned plantation where the
profitless fern and thistle have sprung up under the heel of slavery;
from every falling mansion of the master, through whose windows the fox
may look out securely, and over whose hearth-stone the thin grass is
creeping, a warning voice is sinking deeply into all hearts not imbruted
by avarice, indolence, and the lust of power.
Against the tottering ark of the idol these strong men have placed their
shoulders. That ark must fall; that idol must be cast down; what, then,
will be the fate of their supporters?
"In a political point of view," says the memorial, "we esteem slavery an
evil greater than the aggregate of all the other evils which beset us,
and we are perfectly willing to bear our proportion of the burden of
removing it. We ask, further, What is the evil of any such alarm as our
proposition may excite in minds unnecessarily jealous compared with that
of the fatal catastrophe which ultimately awaits our country, and the
general depravation of manners which slavery has already produced and is
producing?"
I cannot forbear giving one more extract from this paper. The
memorialists state their belief
"That the labor of slaves is vastly less productive than that of freemen;
that it therefore requires a larger space to furnish subsistence for a
given number of the former than of the latter; that the employment of the
former necessarily excludes that of the latter; that hence our
population, white and black, averages seventeen, when it ought, and would
under other circumstances, average, as in New England, at least sixty to
a square mile; that the possession and management of slaves form a source
of endless vexation and misery in the house, and of waste and ruin on the
farm; that the youth of the country are growing up with a contempt of
steady industry as a low and servile thing, which contempt induces
idleness and all its attendant effeminacy, vice, and worthlessness; that
the waste of the products of the land, nay, of the land itself, is
bringing poverty on all its inhabitants; that this poverty and the
sparseness of population either prevent the institution of schools
throughout the country, or keep them in a most languid and inefficient
condition; and that the same causes most obviously paralyze all our
schemes and efforts for the useful improvement of the country."
Gentlemen, you have only to look around you to know that this picture has
been drawn with the pencil of truth. What has made desolate and sterile
one of the loveliest regions of the whole earth? What mean the signs of
wasteful neglect, of long improvidence around you: the half-finished
mansion already falling into decay, the broken-down enclosures, the weed-
grown garden the slave hut open to the elements, the hillsides galled and
naked, the fields below them run over with brier and fern? Is all this
in the ordinary course of nature? Has man husbanded well the good gifts
of God, and are they nevertheless passing from him, by a process of
deterioration over which he has no control? No, gentlemen. For more
than two centuries the cold and rocky soil of New England has yielded its
annual tribute, and it still lies green and luxuriant beneath the sun of
our brief summer. The nerved and ever-exercised arm of free labor has
changed a landscape wild and savage as the night scenery of Salvator Rosa
into one of pastoral beauty,--the abode of independence and happiness.
Under a similar system of economy and industry, how would Virginia, rich
with Nature's prodigal blessings, have worn at this time over all her
territory the smiles of plenty, the charms of rewarded industry! What a
change would have been manifest in your whole character! Freemen in the
place of slaves, industry, reputable economy, a virtue, dissipation
despised, emigration unnecessary!
All this, you will say, comes too late; the curse is upon you, the evil
in the vitals of your state, the desolation widening day by day. No, it
is not too late. There are elements in the Virginian character capable
of meeting the danger, extreme as it is, and turning it aside. Could you
but forget for a time partisan contest and unprofitable political
speculations, you might successfully meet the dangerous exigencies of
your state with those efficient remedies which the spirit of the age
suggests; you might, and that too without pecuniary loss, relinquish your
claims to human beings as slaves, and employ them as free laborers, under
such restraint and supervision as their present degraded condition may
render necessary. In the language of one of your own citizens, "it is
useless for you to attempt to linger on the skirts of the age which is
departed. The action of existing causes and principles is steady and
progressive. It cannot be retarded, unless you would blow out all the
moral lights around you; and if you refuse to keep up with it, you will
be towed in the wake, whether you will or not."--[Speech in Virginia
legislature, 1832.]
Gentlemen, in concluding these letters, let me once more assure you that
I entertain towards you and your political friends none other than kindly
feelings. If I have spoken at all with apparent harshness, it has been
of principles rather than of men. But I deprecate no censure. Conscious
of the honest and patriotic motives which have prompted their avowal, I
cheerfully leave my sentiments to their fate. Despised and contemned as
they may be, I believe they cannot be gainsaid. Sustained by the truth
as it exists in Nature and Revelation, sanctioned by the prevailing
spirit of the age, they are yet destined to work out the political and
moral regeneration of our country. The opposition which they meet with
does not dishearten me. In the lofty confidence of John Milton, I
believe that "though all the winds of doctrine be let loose upon the
earth, so Truth be among them, we need not fear. Let her and Falsehood
grapple; whoever knew her to be put to the worst in a free and open
encounter?"
I need not say to the members of that society that I am with them, heart
and soul, in the cause of abolition; the abolition not of physical
slavery alone, abhorrent and monstrous as it is, but of that intellectual
slavery, the bondage of corrupt and mistaken opinion, which has fettered
as with iron the moral energies and intellectual strength of New England.
For what is slavery, after all, but fear,--fear, forcing mind and body
into unnatural action? And it matters little whether it be the terror of
the slave-whip on the body, or of the scourge of popular opinion upon the
inner man.
We all know how often the representatives of the Southern division of the
country have amused themselves in Congress by applying the opprobrious
name of "slave" to the free Northern laborer. And how familiar have the
significant epithets of "white slave" and "dough-face" become!
I fear these epithets have not been wholly misapplied. Have we not been
told here, gravely and authoritatively, by some of our learned judges,
divines, and politicians, that we, the free people of New England, have
no right to discuss the subject of slavery? Freemen, and no right to
suggest the duty or the policy of a practical adherence to the doctrines
of that immortal declaration upon which our liberties are founded!
Christians, enjoying perfect liberty of conscience, yet possessing no
right to breathe one whisper against a system of adultery and blood,
which is filling the whole land with abomination and blasphemy! And this
craven sentiment is echoed by the very men whose industry is taxed to
defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of property, vested in
beings fashioned in the awful image of their Maker; by men whose hard
earnings aid in supporting a standing army mainly for the protection of
slaveholding indolence; by men who are liable at any moment to be called
from the field and workshop to put down by force the ever upward
tendencies of oppressed humanity, to aid the negro-breeder and the negro-
trader in the prosecution of a traffic most horrible in the eye of God,
to wall round with their bayonets two millions of colored Americans,
children of a common Father and heirs of a common eternity, while the
broken chain is riveted anew and the thrown-off fetter replaced.
At every step of our peaceful and legal agitation of this subject we are
met with one grave objection. We are told that the system which we are
conscientiously opposing is recognized and protected by the Constitution.
For all the benefits of our fathers' patriotism--and they are neither few
nor trifling--let us be grateful to God and to their memories. But it
should not be forgotten that the same constitutional compact which now
sanctions slavery guaranteed protection for twenty years to the foreign
slave-trade. It threw the shield of its "sanctity" around the now
universally branded pirate. It legalized the most abhorrent system of
robbery which ever cursed the family of man.
And if the slave-trade has become thus odious, what must be the fate,
erelong, of its parent, slavery? If the mere consequence be thus
blackening under the execration of all the world, who shall measure the
dreadful amount of infamy which must finally settle on the cause itself?
The titled ecclesiastic and the ambitious statesman should have their
warning on this point. They should know that public opinion is steadily
turning to the light of truth. The fountains are breaking up around us,
and the great deep will soon be in motion. A stern, uncompromising, and
solemn spirit of inquiry is abroad. It cannot be arrested, and its
result may be easily foreseen. It will not long be popular to talk of
the legality of soul-murder, the constitutionality of man-robbery.
In 1837 Isaac Knapp printed Letters from John Quincy Adams to his
Constituents of the Twelfth Congressional District in Massachusetts,
to which is added his Speech in Congress, delivered February 9,
1837, and the following stood as an introduction to the pamphlet.
THE following letters have been published, within a few weeks, in the
Quincy (Mass.) 'Patriot'. Notwithstanding the great importance of the
subjects which they discuss, the intense interest which they are
calculated to awaken throughout this commonwealth and the whole country,
and the exalted reputation of their author as a profound statesman and
powerful writer, they are as yet hardly known beyond the limits of the
constituency to whom they are particularly addressed. The reason of this
is sufficiently obvious. John Quincy Adams belongs to neither of the
prominent political parties, fights no partisan battles, and cannot be
prevailed upon to sacrifice truth and principle upon the altar of party
expediency and interest. Hence neither party is interested in defending
his course, or in giving him an opportunity to defend himself. But
however systematic may be the efforts of mere partisan presses to
suppress and hold back from the public eye the powerful and triumphant
vindication of the Right of Petition, the graphic delineation of the
slavery spirit in Congress, and the humbling disclosure of Northern
cowardice and treachery, contained in these letters, they are destined to
exert a powerful influence upon the public mind. They will constitute
one of the most striking pages in the history of our times. They will be
read with avidity in the North and in the South, and throughout Europe.
Apart from the interest excited by the subjects under discussion, and
viewed only as literary productions, they may be ranked among the highest
intellectual efforts of their author. Their sarcasm is Junius-like,--
cold, keen, unsparing. In boldness, directness, and eloquent appeal,
they will bear comparison with O'Connell's celebrated 'Letters to the
Reformers of Great Britain'. They are the offspring of an intellect
unshorn of its primal strength, and combining the ardor of youth with the
experience of age.
We need not solicit for these letters, and the speech which accompanies
them, a thorough perusal. They deserve, and we trust will receive, a
circulation throughout the entire country. They will meet a cordial
welcome from every lover of human liberty, from every friend of justice
and the rights of man, irrespective of color or condition. The
principles which they defend, the sentiments which they express, are
those of Massachusetts, as recently asserted, almost unanimously, by her
legislature. In both branches of that body, during the discussion of the
subject of slavery and the right of petition, the course of the ex-
President was warmly and eloquently commended. Massachusetts will
sustain her tried and faithful representative; and the time is not far
distant when the best and worthiest citizens of the entire North will
proffer him their thanks for his noble defence of their rights as
freemen, and of the rights of the slave as a man.
THE second part of the essay is occupied in proving that the slavery in
the Roman world, at the time of our Saviour, was similar in all essential
features to American slavery at the present day; and the third and
concluding part is devoted to an examination of the apostolical
directions to slaves and masters, as applicable to the same classes in
the United States. He thinks the command to give to servants that which
is just and equal means simply that the masters should treat their slaves
with equity, and that while the servant is to be profitable to the
master, the latter is bound in "a fair and equitable manner to provide
for the slave's subsistence and happiness." Although he professes to
believe that a faithful adherence to Scriptural injunctions on this point
would eventually terminate in the emancipation of the slaves, he thinks
it not necessary to inquire whether the New Testament does or does not
"tolerate slavery as a permanent institution"!
From the foregoing synopsis it will be seen at once that whatever may
have been the motives of the writer, the effect of his publication, so
far as it is at all felt, will be to strengthen the oppressor in his
guilt, and hold him back from the performance of his immediate duty in
respect to his slaves, and to shield his conscience from the reproofs of
that class who, according to "Evangelicus," have "no personal
acquaintance with the actual domestic state or the social and political
connections of their Southern fellow-citizens." We look upon it only as
another vain attempt to strike a balance between Christian duty and
criminal policy, to reconcile Christ and Belial, the holy philanthropy of
Him who went about doing good with the most abhorrent manifestation of
human selfishness, lust, and hatred which ever provoked the divine
displeasure. There is a grave-stone coldness about it. The author
manifests as little feeling as if he were solving a question in algebra.
No sigh of sympathy breathes through its frozen pages for the dumb,
chained millions, no evidence of a feeling akin to that of Him who at the
grave of Lazarus
"Wept, and forgot His power to save;"
"It is not necessary," says Evangelicus, "to inquire whether the New
Testament does not tolerate slavery as a permanent institution." And
this is said when the entire slave-holding church has sheltered its
abominations under the pretended sanction of the gospel; when slavery,
including within itself a violation of every command uttered amidst the
thunders of Sinai, a system which has filled the whole South with the
oppression of Egypt and the pollutions of Sodom, is declared to be an
institution of the Most High. With all due deference to the author, we
tell him, and we tell the church, North and South, that this question
must be met. Once more we repeat the solemn inquiry which has been
already made in our columns, "Is the Bible to enslave the world?" Has it
been but a vain dream of ours that the mission of the Author of the
gospel was to undo the heavy burdens, to open the prison doors, and to
break the yoke of the captive? Let Andover and Princeton answer. If the
gospel does sanction the vilest wrong which man can inflict upon his
fellow-man, if it does rivet the chains which humanity, left to itself,
would otherwise cast off, then, in humanity's name, let it perish forever
from the face of the earth. Let the Bible societies dissolve; let not
another sheet issue from their presses. Scatter not its leaves abroad
over the dark places of the earth; they are not for the healing of the
nations. Leave rather to the Persian his Zendavesta, to the Mussulman
his Koran. We repeat it, this question must be met. Already we have
heard infidelity exulting over the astute discoveries of bespectacled
theological professors, that the great Head of the Christian Church
tolerated the horrible atrocities of Roman slavery, and that His most
favored apostle combined slave-catching with his missionary labors. And
why should it not exult? Fouler blasphemy than this was never uttered.
A more monstrous libel upon the Divine Author of Christianity was never
propagated by Paine or Voltaire, Kneeland or Owen; and we are constrained
to regard the professor of theology or the doctor of divinity who tasks
his sophistry and learning in an attempt to show that the Divine Mind
looks with complacency upon chattel slavery as the most dangerous enemy
with which Christianity has to contend. The friends of pure and
undefiled religion must awake to this danger. The Northern church must
shake itself clean from its present connection with blasphemers and
slave-holders, or perish with them.
WHAT IS SLAVERY
I HAVE just received your kind invitation to attend the meeting of the
Liberty Party in New Bedford on the 2d of next month. Believe me, it is
with no ordinary feelings of regret that I find myself under the
necessity of foregoing the pleasure of meeting with you on that occasion.
But I need not say to you, and through you to the convention, that you
have my hearty sympathy.
I am with the Liberty Party because it is the only party in the country
which is striving openly and honestly to reduce to practice the great
truths which lie at the foundation of our republic: all men created
equal, endowed with rights inalienable; the security of these rights the
only just object of government; the right of the people to alter or
modify government until this great object is attained. Precious and
glorious truths! Sacred in the sight of their Divine Author, grateful
and beneficent to suffering humanity, essential elements of that ultimate
and universal government of which God is laying the strong and wide
foundations, turning and overturning, until He whose right it is shall
rule. The voice which calls upon us to sustain them is the voice of God.
In the eloquent language of the lamented Myron Holley, the man who first
lifted up the standard of the Liberty Party: "He calls upon us to sustain
these truths in the recorded voice of the holy of ancient times. He
calls us to sustain them in the sound as of many waters and mighty
thunderings rising from the fields of Europe, converted into one vast
Aceldama by the exertions of despots to suppress them; in the persuasive
history of the best thoughts and boldest deeds of all our brave, self-
sacrificing ancestors; in the tender, heart-reaching whispers of our
children, preparing to suffer or enjoy the future, as we leave it for
them; in the broken and disordered but moving accents of half our race
yet groping in darkness and galled by the chains of bondage. He calls
upon us to sustain them by the solemn and considerate use of all the
powers with which He has invested us." In a time of almost universal
political scepticism, in the midst of a pervading and growing unbelief in
the great principles enunciated in the revolutionary declaration, the
Liberty Party has dared to avow its belief in these truths, and to carry
them into action as far as it has the power. It is a protest against the
political infidelity of the day, a recurrence to first principles, a
summons once more to that deserted altar upon which our fathers laid
their offerings.
It may be asked why it is that a party resting upon such broad principles
is directing its exclusive exertions against slavery. "Are there not
other great interests?" ask all manner of Whig and Democrat editors and
politicians. "Consider, for instance," say the Democrats, "the mighty
question which is agitating us, whether a 'Northern man with Southern
principles' or a Southern man with the principles of a Nero or Caligula
shall be President." "Or look at us," say the Whigs, "deprived of our
inalienable right to office by this Tyler-Calhoun administration. And
bethink you, gentlemen, how could your Liberty Party do better than to
vote with us for a man who, if he does hold some threescore of slaves,
and maintain that 'two hundred years of legislation has sanctioned and
sanctified negro slavery,' is, at the same time, the champion of Greek
liberty, and Polish liberty, and South American liberty, and, in short,
of all sorts of liberties, save liberty at home."
Yes, friends, we have considered all this, and more, namely, that one
sixth part of our entire population are slaves, and that you, with your
subtreasuries and national banks, propose no relief for them. Nay,
farther, it is because both of you, when in power, have used your
authority to rivet closer the chains of unhappy millions, that we have
been compelled to abandon you, and form a liberty party having for its
first object the breaking of these chains.
What is slavery? For upon the answer to this question must the Liberty
Party depend for its justification.
The slave laws of the South tell us that it is the conversion of men into
articles of property; the transformation of sentient immortal beings into
"chattels personal." The principle of a reciprocity of benefits, which
to some extent characterizes all other relations, does not exist in that
of master and slave. The master holds the plough which turns the soil of
his plantation, the horse which draws it, and the slave who guides it by
one and the same tenure. The profit of the master is the great end of
the slave's existence. For this end he is fed, clothed, and prescribed
for in sickness. He learns nothing, acquires nothing, for himself. He
cannot use his own body for his own benefit. His very personality is
destroyed. He is a mere instrument, a means in the hands of another for
the accomplishment of an end in which his own interests are not regarded,
a machine moved not by his own will, but by another's. In him the awful
distinction between a person and a thing is annihilated: he is thrust
down from the place which God and Nature assigned him, from the equal
companionship of rational intelligence's,--a man herded with beasts, an
immortal nature classed with the wares of the merchant!
The relations of parent and child, master and apprentice, government and
subject, are based upon the principle of benevolence, reciprocal
benefits, and the wants of human society; relations which sacredly
respect the rights and legacies which God has given to all His rational
creatures. But slavery exists only by annihilating or monopolizing these
rights and legacies. In every other modification of society, man's
personal ownership remains secure. He may be oppressed, deprived of
privileges, loaded with burdens, hemmed about with legal disabilities,
his liberties restrained. But, through all, the right to his own body
and soul remains inviolate. He retains his inherent, original possession
of himself. Even crime cannot forfeit it, for that law which destroys
his personality makes void its own claims upon him as a moral agent; and
the power to punish ceases with the accountability of the criminal. He
may suffer and die under the penalties of the law, but he suffers as a
man, he perishes as a man, and not as a thing. To the last moments of
his existence the rights of a moral agent are his; they go with him to
the grave; they constitute the ground of his accountability at the bar of
infinite justice,--rights fixed, eternal, inseparable; attributes of all
rational intelligence in time and eternity; the same in essence, and
differing in degree only, with those of the highest moral being, of God
himself.
Slavery alone lays its grasp upon the right of personal ownership, that
foundation right, the removal of which uncreates the man; a right which
God himself could not take away without absolving the being thus deprived
of all moral accountability; and so far as that being is concerned,
making sin and holiness, crime and virtue, words without significance,
and the promises and sanctions of revelation, dreams. Hence, the
crowning horror of slavery, that which lifts it above all other
iniquities, is not that it usurps the prerogatives of Deity, but that it
attempts that which even He who has said, "All souls are mine," cannot
do, without breaking up the foundations of His moral government. Slavery
is, in fact, a struggle with the Almighty for dominion over His rational
creatures. It is leagued with the powers of darkness, in wresting man
from his Maker. It is blasphemy lifting brazen brow and violent hand to
heaven, attempting a reversal of God's laws. Man claiming the right to
uncreate his brother; to undo that last and most glorious work, which God
himself pronounced good, amidst the rejoicing hosts of heaven! Man
arrogating to himself the right to change, for his own selfish purposes,
the beautiful order of created existences; to pluck the crown of an
immortal nature, scarce lower than that of angels, from the brow of his
brother; to erase the God-like image and superscription stamped upon him
by the hand of his Creator, and to write on the despoiled and desecrated
tablet, "A chattel personal!"
This, then, is slavery. Nature, with her thousand voices, cries out
against it. Against it, divine revelation launches its thunders. The
voice of God condemns it in the deep places of the human heart. The woes
and wrongs unutterable which attend this dreadful violation of natural
justice, the stripes, the tortures, the sunderings of kindred, the
desolation of human affections, the unchastity and lust, the toil
uncompensated, the abrogated marriage, the legalized heathenism, the
burial of the mind, are but the mere incidentals of the first grand
outrage, that seizure of the entire man, nerve, sinew, and spirit, which
robs him of his body, and God of his soul. These are but the natural
results and outward demonstrations of slavery, the crystallizations from
the chattel principle.
October, 1843.
[1843.]
He saw clearly that slavery, as it existed in the South and on his own
plantation, was inconsistent with this doctrine. His early efforts for
emancipation in Virginia failed of success; but he next turned his
attention to the vast northwestern territory, and laid the foundation of
that ordinance of 1787, which, like the flaming sword of the angel at the
gates of Paradise, has effectually guarded that territory against the
entrance of slavery. Nor did he stop here. He was the friend and
admirer of the ultra-abolitionists of revolutionary France; he warmly
urged his British friend, Dr. Price, to send his anti-slavery pamphlets
into Virginia; he omitted no opportunity to protest against slavery as
anti-democratic, unjust, and dangerous to the common welfare; and in his
letter to the territorial governor of Illinois, written in old age, he
bequeathed, in earnest and affecting language, the cause of negro
emancipation to the rising generation. "This enterprise," said he, "is
for the young, for those who can carry it forward to its consummation.
It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old
man."
Such was Thomas Jefferson, the great founder of American Democracy, the
advocate of the equality of human rights, irrespective of any conditions
of birth, or climate, or color. His political doctrines, it is strange
to say, found their earliest recipients and most zealous admirers in the
slave states of the Union. The privileged class of slaveholders, whose
rank and station "supersede the necessity of an order of nobility,"
became earnest advocates of equality among themselves--the democracy of
aristocracy. With the misery and degradation of servitude always before
them, in the condition of their own slaves, an intense love of personal
independence, and a haughty impatience of any control over their actions,
prepared them to adopt the democratic idea, so far as it might be applied
to their own order. Of that enlarged and generous democracy, the love,
not of individual freedom alone, but of the rights and liberties of all
men, the unselfish desire to give to others the privileges which all men
value for themselves, we are constrained to believe the great body of
Thomas Jefferson's slave-holding admirers had no adequate conception.
They were just such democrats as the patricians of Rome and the
aristocracy of Venice; lords over their own plantations, a sort of "holy
alliance" of planters, admitting and defending each other's divine right
of mastership.
The Northern States were slow to adopt the Democratic creed. The
oligarchy of New England, and the rich proprietors and landholders of the
Middle States, turned with alarm and horror from the levelling doctrines
urged upon them by the "liberty and equality" propagandists of the South.
The doctrines of Virginia were quite as unpalatable to Massachusetts at
the beginning of the present century as those of Massachusetts now are to
the Old Dominion. Democracy interfered with old usages and time-honored
institutions, and threatened to plough up the very foundations of the
social fabric. It was zealously opposed by the representatives of New
England in Congress and in the home legislatures; and in many pulpits
hands were lifted to God in humble entreaty that the curse and bane of
democracy, an offshoot of the rabid Jacobinism of revolutionary France,
might not be permitted to take root and overshadow the goodly heritage of
Puritanism. The alarmists of the South, in their most fervid pictures of
the evils to be apprehended from the prevalence of anti-slavery doctrines
in their midst, have drawn nothing more fearful than the visions of such
as Fisher Ames in the forum and Parish in the desk, when contemplating
the inroads of Jeffersonian democracy upon the politics, religion, and
property of the North.
But great numbers of the free laborers of the Northern States, the
mechanics and small farmers, took a very different view of the matter.
The doctrines of Jefferson were received as their political gospel. It
was in vain that federalism denounced with indignation the impertinent
inconsistency of slave-holding interference in behalf of liberty in the
free states. Come the doctrine from whom it might, the people felt it to
be true. State after state revolted from the ranks of federalism, and
enrolled itself on the side of democracy. The old order of things was
broken up; equality before the law was established, religious tests and
restrictions of the right of suffrage were abrogated. Take
Massachusetts, for example. There the resistance to democratic
principles was the most strenuous and longest continued. Yet, at this
time, there is no state in the Union more thorough in its practical
adoption of them. No property qualifications or religious tests prevail;
all distinctions of sect, birth, or color, are repudiated, and suffrage
is universal. The democracy, which in the South has only been held in a
state of gaseous abstraction, hardened into concrete reality in the cold
air of the North. The ideal became practical, for it had found lodgment
among men who were accustomed to act out their convictions and test all
their theories by actual experience.
While thus making a practical application of the new doctrine, the people
of the free states could not but perceive the incongruity of democracy
and slavery.
Meanwhile the South had wellnigh forgotten the actual significance of the
teachings of its early political prophets, and their renewal in the shape
of abolitionism was, as might have been expected, strange and unwelcome.
Pleasant enough it had been to hold up occasionally these democratic
abstractions for the purpose of challenging the world's admiration and
cheaply acquiring the character of lovers of liberty and equality.
Frederick of Prussia, apostrophizing the shades of Cato and Brutus,
[1844.]
The news of the revolution of the three days in Paris, and the triumph of
the French people over Charles X. and his ministers, as a matter of
course acted with great effect upon our national susceptibility. We all
threw up our hats in excessive joy at the spectacle of a king dashed down
headlong from his throne and chased out of his kingdom by his long-
suffering and oppressed subjects. We took half the credit of the
performance to ourselves, inasmuch as Lafayette was a principal actor in
it. Our editors, from Passamaquoddy to the Sabine, indited paragraphs
for a thousand and one newspapers, congratulating the Parisian patriots,
and prophesying all manner of evil to holy alliances, kings, and
aristocracies. The National Intelligencer for September 27, 1830,
contains a full account of the public rejoicings of the good people of
Washington on the occasion. Bells were rung in all the steeples, guns
were fired, and a grand procession was formed, including the President of
the United States, the heads of departments, and other public
functionaries. Decorated with tricolored ribbons, and with tricolored
flags mingling with the stripes and stars over their heads, and gazed
down upon by bright eyes from window and balcony, the "general
sympathizers" moved slowly and majestically through the broad avenue
towards the Capitol to celebrate the revival of French liberty in a
manner becoming the chosen rulers of a free people.
Unluckily, however, the moral effect of this grand spectacle was marred
somewhat by the appearance of another procession, moving in a contrary
direction. It was a gang of slaves! Handcuffed in pairs, with the
sullen sadness of despair in their faces, they marched wearily onward to
the music of the driver's whip and the clanking iron on their limbs.
Think of it! Shouts of triumph, rejoicing bells, gay banners, and
glittering cavalcades, in honor of Liberty, in immediate contrast with
men and women chained and driven like cattle to market! The editor of
the American Spectator, a paper published at Washington at that time,
speaking of this black procession of slavery, describes it as "driven
along by what had the appearance of a man on horseback." The miserable
wretches who composed it were doubtless consigned to a slave-jail to
await their purchase and transportation to the South or Southwest; and
perhaps formed a part of that drove of human beings which the same editor
states that he saw on the Saturday following, "males and females chained
in couples, starting from Robey's tavern, on foot, for Alexandria, to
embark on board a slave-ship."
A CHAPTER OF HISTORY.
[1844.]
THE theory which a grave and learned Northern senator has recently
announced in Congress, that slavery, like the cotton-plant, is confined
by natural laws to certain parallels of latitude, beyond which it can by
no possibility exist, however it may have satisfied its author and its
auditors, has unfortunately no verification in the facts of the case.
Slavery is singularly cosmopolitan in its habits. The offspring of
pride, and lust, and avarice, it is indigenous to the world. Rooted in
the human heart, it defies the rigors of winter in the steppes of Tartary
and the fierce sun of the tropics. It has the universal acclimation of
sin.
The first account we have of negro slaves in New England is from the pen
of John Josselyn. Nineteen years after the landing at Plymouth, this
interesting traveller was for some time the guest of Samuel Maverick, who
then dwelt, like a feudal baron, in his fortalice on Noddle's Island,
surrounded by retainers and servants, bidding defiance to his Indian
neighbors behind his strong walls, with "four great guns" mounted
thereon, and "giving entertainment to all new-comers gratis."
"On the 2d of October, 1639, about nine o'clock in the morning, Mr.
Maverick's negro woman," says Josselyn, "came to my chamber, and in her
own country language and tune sang very loud and shrill. Going out to
her, she used a great deal of respect towards me, and would willingly
have expressed her grief in English had she been able to speak the
language; but I apprehended it by her countenance and deportment.
Whereupon I repaired to my host to learn of him the cause, and resolved
to entreat him in her behalf; for I had understood that she was a queen
in her own country, and observed a very dutiful and humble garb used
towards her by another negro, who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was
desirous to have a breed of negroes; and therefore, seeing she would not
yield by persuasions to company with a negro young man he had in his
house, he commanded him, willed she, nilled she, to go to her bed, which
was no sooner done than she thrust him out again. This she took in high
disdain beyond her slavery; and this was the cause of her grief."
Upon this petition the General Court passed the following order,
eminently worthy of men professing to rule in the fear and according to
the law of God,--a terror to evil-doers, and a praise to them that do
well:--
Three years after, in 1649, the following law was placed upon the
statute-book of the Massachusetts Colony:--
"If any man stealeth a man, or mankind, he shall surely be put to death."
It will thus be seen that these early attempts to introduce slavery into
New England were opposed by severe laws and by that strong popular
sentiment in favor of human liberty which characterized the Christian
radicals who laid the foundations of the Colonies. It was not the rigor
of her Northern winter, nor the unkindly soil of Massachusetts, which
discouraged the introduction of slavery in the first half-century of her
existence as a colony. It was the Puritan's recognition of the
brotherhood of man in sin, suffering, and redemption, his estimate of the
awful responsibilities and eternal destinies of humanity, his hatred of
wrong and tyranny, and his stern sense of justice, which led him to
impose upon the African slave-trader the terrible penalty of the Mosaic
code.
But that brave old generation passed away. The civil contentions in the
mother country drove across the seas multitudes of restless adventurers
and speculators. The Indian wars unsettled and demoralized the people.
Habits of luxury and the greed of gain took the place of the severe self-
denial and rigid virtues of the fathers. Hence we are not surprised to
find that Josselyn, in his second visit to New England, some twenty-five
years after his first, speaks of the great increase of servants and
negroes. In 1680 Governor Bradstreet, in answer to the inquiries of his
Majesty's Privy Council, states that two years before a vessel from
Madagasca "brought into the Colony betwixt forty and fifty negroes,
mostly women and children, who were sold at a loss to the owner of the
vessel." "Now and then," he continues, "two or three negroes are brought
from Barbadoes and other of his Majesty's plantations and sold for twenty
pounds apiece; so that there may be within the government about one
hundred or one hundred and twenty, and it may be as many Scots, brought
hither and sold for servants in the time of the war with Scotland, and
about half as many Irish."
In the year 1690 the inhabitants of Newbury were greatly excited by the
arrest of a Jerseyman who had been engaged in enticing Indians and
negroes to leave their masters. He was charged before the court with
saying that "the English should be cut off and the negroes set free."
James, a negro slave, and Joseph, an Indian, were arrested with him.
Their design was reported to be, to seize a vessel in the port and escape
to Canada and join the French, and return and lay waste and plunder their
masters. They were to come back with five hundred Indians and three
hundred Canadians; and the place of crossing the Merrimac River, and of
the first encampment on the other side, were even said to be fixed upon.
When we consider that there could not have been more than a score of
slaves in the settlement, the excitement into which the inhabitants were
thrown by this absurd rumor of conspiracy seems not very unlike that of a
convocation of small planters in a backwoods settlement in South Carolina
on finding an anti-slavery newspaper in their weekly mail bag.
On the part of the blacks, the law and usage of the mother country,
confirmed by the Great Charter, that no man can be deprived of his
liberty but by the judgment of his peers, were effectually pleaded. The
early laws of the Province prohibited slavery, and no subsequent
legislation had sanctioned it; for, although the laws did recognize its
existence, they did so only to mitigate and modify an admitted evil.
In 1788 three free black citizens of Boston were kidnapped and sold into
slavery in one of the French islands. An intense excitement followed.
Governor Hancock took efficient measures for reclaiming the unfortunate
men. The clergy of Boston petitioned the Legislature for a total
prohibition of the foreign slave-trade. The Society of Friends, and the
blacks generally, presented similar petitions; and the same year an act
was passed prohibiting the slave-trade and granting relief to persons
kidnapped or decoyed out of the Commonwealth. The fear of a burden to
the state from the influx of negroes from abroad led the Legislature, in
connection with this law, to prevent those who were not citizens of the
state or of other states from gaining a residence.
With a history like this to look back upon, is it strange that the people
of Massachusetts at the present day are unwilling to see their time-
honored defences of personal freedom, the good old safeguards of Saxon
liberty, overridden and swept away after the summary fashion of "the
Fugitive Slave Bill;" that they should loathe and scorn the task which
that bill imposes upon them of aiding professional slave-hunters in
seizing, fettering, and consigning to bondage men and women accused only
of that which commends them to esteem and sympathy, love of liberty and
hatred of slavery; that they cannot at once adjust themselves to
"constitutional duties" which in South Carolina and Georgia are reserved
for trained bloodhounds? Surely, in view of what Massachusetts has been,
and her strong bias in favor of human freedom, derived from her great-
hearted founders, it is to be hoped that the Executive and Cabinet at
Washington will grant her some little respite, some space for turning,
some opportunity for conquering her prejudices, before letting loose the
dogs of war upon her. Let them give her time, and treat with forbearance
her hesitation, qualms of conscience, and wounded pride. Her people,
indeed, are awkward in the work of slave-catching, and, it would seem,
rendered but indifferent service in a late hunt in Boston. Whether they
would do better under the surveillance of the army and navy of the United
States is a question which we leave with the President and his Secretary
of State. General Putnam once undertook to drill a company of Quakers,
and instruct them, by force of arms, in the art and mystery of fighting;
but not a single pair of drab-colored breeches moved at his "forward
march;" not a broad beaver wheeled at his word of command; no hand
unclosed to receive a proffered musket. Patriotic appeal, hard swearing,
and prick of bayonet had no effect upon these impracticable raw recruits;
and the stout general gave them up in despair. We are inclined to
believe that any attempt on the part of the Commander-in-chief of our
army and navy to convert the good people of Massachusetts into expert
slave-catchers, under the discipline of West Point and Norfolk, would
prove as idle an experiment as that of General Putnam upon the Quakers.
[1846.]
But our author, in this matter of negro slavery, has undertaken to apply
his explosive pitch and rosin, not to the affectation of humanity, but to
humanity itself. He mocks at pity, scoffs at all who seek to lessen the
amount of pain and suffering, sneers at and denies the most sacred
rights, and mercilessly consigns an entire class of the children of his
Heavenly Father to the doom of compulsory servitude. He vituperates the
poor black man with a coarse brutality which would do credit to a
Mississippi slave-driver, or a renegade Yankee dealer in human cattle on
the banks of the Potomac. His rhetoric has a flavor of the slave-pen and
auction-block, vulgar, unmanly, indecent, a scandalous outrage upon good
taste and refined feeling, which at once degrades the author and insults
his readers.
He tells us that the blacks have no right to use the islands of the West
Indies for growing pumpkins and garden stuffs for their own use and
behoof, because, but for the wisdom and skill of the whites, these
islands would have been productive only of "jungle, savagery, and swamp
malaria." The negro alone could never have improved the islands or
civilized himself; and therefore their and his "born lord," the white
man, has a right to the benefits of his own betterments of land and "two-
legged cattle!" "Black Quashee" has no right to dispose of himself and
his labor because he owes his partial civilization to others! And pray
how has it been with the white race, for whom our philosopher claims the
divine prerogative of enslaving? Some twenty and odd centuries ago, a
pair of half-naked savages, daubed with paint, might have been seen
roaming among the hills and woods of the northern part of the British
island, subsisting on acorns and the flesh of wild animals, with an
occasional relish of the smoked hams and pickled fingers of some
unfortunate stranger caught on the wrong side of the Tweed. This
interesting couple reared, as they best could, a family of children, who,
in turn, became the heads of families; and some time about the beginning
of the present century one of their descendants in the borough of
Ecclefechan rejoiced over the birth of a man child now somewhat famous as
"Thomas Carlyle, a maker of books." Does it become such a one to rave
against the West India negro's incapacity for self-civilization? Unaided
by the arts, sciences, and refinements of the Romans, he might have been,
at this very day, squatted on his naked haunches in the woods of
Ecclefechan, painting his weather-hardened epidermis in the sun like his
Piet ancestors. Where, in fact, can we look for unaided self-improvement
and spontaneous internal development, to any considerable extent, on the
part of any nation or people? From people to people the original God-
given impulse towards civilization and perfection has been transmitted,
as from Egypt to Greece, and thence to the Roman world.
But the blacks, we are told, are indolent and insensible to the duty of
raising sugar and coffee and spice for the whites, being mainly careful
to provide for their own household and till their own gardens for
domestic comforts and necessaries. The exports have fallen off somewhat.
And what does this prove? Only that the negro is now a consumer of
products, of which, under the rule of the whip, he was a producer merely.
As to indolence, under the proper stimulus of fair wages we have reason
to believe that the charge is not sustained. If unthrifty habits and
lack of prudence on the part of the owners of estates, combined with the
repeal of duties on foreign sugars by the British government, have placed
it out of their power to pay just and reasonable wages for labor, who can
blame the blacks if they prefer to cultivate their own garden plots
rather than raise sugar and spice for their late masters upon terms
little better than those of their old condition, the "beneficent whip"
always excepted? The despatches of the colonial governors agree in
admitting that the blacks have had great cause for complaint and
dissatisfaction, owing to the delay or non-payment of their wages. Sir
C. E. Gray, writing from Jamaica, says, that "in a good many instances
the payment of the wages they have earned has been either very
irregularly made, or not at all, probably on account of the inability of
the employers." He says, moreover:--
The paper from which we have quoted, the official journal of the colony,
thinks the condition of the emancipated British colonies decidedly
preferable to that of Surinam, where the old slave system has continued
in force, and insists that the Dutch government must follow the example
of Great Britain. The actual condition of the British colonies since
emancipation is perfectly well known in Surinam: three of them,
Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice, being its immediate neighbors, whatever
evils and inconveniences have resuited from emancipation must be well
understood by the Dutch slave-holders; yet we find them looking towards
emancipation as the only prospect of remedy for the greater evils of
their own system.
"We cannot imagine a more deadly moral poison for the American people
than his [Carlyle's] last composition. Every cruel practice of social
exclusion will derive from it new sharpness and venom. The slave-holder,
of course, will exult to find himself, not apologized for, but
enthusiastically cheered, upheld, and glorified, by a writer of European
celebrity. But it is not merely the slave who will feel Mr. Carlyle's
hand in the torture of his flesh, the riveting of his fetters, and the
denial of light to his mind. The free black will feel him, too, in the
more contemptuous and abhorrent scowl of his brother man, who will easily
derive from this unfortunate essay the belief that his inhuman feelings
are of divine ordination. It is a true work of the Devil, the fostering
of a tyrannical prejudice. Far and wide over space, and long into the
future, the winged words of evil counsel will go. In the market-place,
in the house, in the theatre, and in the church,--by land and by sea, in
all the haunts of men,--their influence will be felt in a perennial
growth of hate and scorn, and suffering and resentment. Amongst the
sufferers will be many to whom education has given every refined
susceptibility that makes contempt and exclusion bitter. Men and women,
faithful and diligent, loving and worthy to be loved, and bearing, it may
be, no more than an almost imperceptible trace of African descent, will
continue yet longer to be banished from the social meal of the white man,
and to be spurned from his presence in the house of God, because a writer
of genius has lent the weight of his authority and his fame, if not of
his power, to the perpetuation of a prejudice which Christianity was
undermining."
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have received thy kind letter, with the accompanying
circular, inviting me to attend the commemoration of the thirtieth
anniversary of the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at
Philadelphia. It is with the deepest regret that I am compelled, by the
feeble state of my health, to give up all hope of meeting thee and my
other old and dear friends on an occasion of so much interest. How much
it costs me to acquiesce in the hard necessity thy own feelings will tell
thee better than any words of mine.
I look back over thirty years, and call to mind all the circumstances of
my journey to Philadelphia, in company with thyself and the excellent Dr.
Thurston of Maine, even then, as we thought, an old man, but still
living, and true as ever to the good cause. I recall the early gray
morning when, with Samuel J. May, our colleague on the committee to
prepare a Declaration of Sentiments for the convention, I climbed to the
small "upper chamber" of a colored friend to hear thee read the first
draft of a paper which will live as long as our national history. I see
the members of the convention, solemnized by the responsibility, rise one
by one, and solemnly affix their names to that stern pledge of fidelity
to freedom. Of the signers, many have passed away from earth, a few have
faltered and turned back, but I believe the majority still live to
rejoice over the great triumph of truth and justice, and to devote what
remains of time and strength to the cause to which they consecrated their
youth and manhood thirty years ago.
For while we may well thank God and congratulate one another on the
prospect of the speedy emancipation of the slaves of the United States,
we must not for a moment forget that, from this hour, new and mighty
responsibilities devolve upon us to aid, direct, and educate these
millions, left free, indeed, but bewildered, ignorant, naked, and
foodless in the wild chaos of civil war. We have to undo the accumulated
wrongs of two centuries; to remake the manhood which slavery has well-
nigh unmade; to see to it that the long-oppressed colored man has a fair
field for development and improvement; and to tread under our feet the
last vestige of that hateful prejudice which has been the strongest
external support of Southern slavery. We must lift ourselves at once to
the true Christian altitude where all distinctions of black and white are
overlooked in the heartfelt recognition of the brotherhood of man.
"My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard Wherever Freedom
raised her cry of pain."
Let me, through thee, extend a warm greeting to the friends, whether of
our own or the new generation, who may assemble on the occasion of
commemoration. There is work yet to be done which will task the best
efforts of us all. For thyself, I need not say that the love and esteem
of early boyhood have lost nothing by the test of time; and
JOHN G. WHITTIER
[1865.]
How slowly we of the North have learned the true character of this mighty
mischief! How our politicians bowed their strong shoulders under its
burthens! How our churches reverenced it! How our clergy contrasted the
heresy-tolerating North with the purely orthodox and Scriptural type of
slave-holding Christianity! How all classes hunted down, not merely the
fugitive slave, but the few who ventured to give him food and shelter and
a Godspeed in his flight from bondage! How utterly ignored was the
negro's claim of common humanity! How readily was the decision of the
slave-holding chief justice acquiesced in, that "the black man had no
rights which the white man is bound to respect"!
We saw a senator of the United States, world-known and honored for his
learning, talents, and stainless integrity, beaten down and all but
murdered at his official desk by a South Carolina slave-holder, for the
crime of speaking against the extension of slavery; and we heard the
dastardly deed applauded throughout the South, while its brutal
perpetrator was rewarded with orations and gifts and smiles of beauty as
a chivalrous gentleman. We saw slavery enter Kansas, with bowieknife in
hand and curses on its lips; we saw the life of the Union struck at by
secession and rebellion; we heard of the bones of sons and brothers,
fallen in defence of freedom and law, dug up and wrought into ornaments
for the wrists and bosoms of slave-holding women; we looked into the open
hell of Andersonville, upon the deliberate, systematic starvation of
helpless prisoners; we heard of Libby Prison underlaid with gunpowder,
for the purpose of destroying thousands of Union prisoners in case of the
occupation of Richmond by our army; we saw hundreds of prisoners
massacred in cold blood at Fort Pillow, and the midnight sack of Lawrence
and the murder of its principal citizens. The flames of our merchant
vessels, seized by pirates, lighted every sea; we heard of officers of
the rebel army and navy stealing into our cities, firing hotels filled
with sleeping occupants, and laying obstructions on the track of rail
cars, for the purpose of killing and mangling their passengers. Yet in
spite of these revelations of the utterly barbarous character of slavery
and its direful effect upon all connected with it, we were on the very
point of trusting to its most criminal defenders the task of
reestablishing the state governments of the South, leaving the real Union
men, white as well as black, at the mercy of those who have made hatred a
religion and murder a sacrament. The nation needed one more terrible
lesson. It has it in the murder of its beloved chief magistrate and the
attempted assassination of its honored prime minister, the two men of all
others prepared to go farthest to smooth the way of defeated rebellion
back to allegiance.
Even now the lesson of these terrible events seems but half learned. In
the public utterances I hear much of punishing and hanging leading
traitors, fierce demands for vengeance, and threats of the summary
chastisement of domestic sympathizers with treason, but comparatively
little is said of the accursed cause, the prolific mother of
abominations, slavery. The government is exhorted to remember that it
does not bear the sword in vain, the Old Testament is ransacked for texts
of Oriental hatred and examples of the revenges of a semi-barbarous
nation; but, as respects the four millions of unmistakably loyal people
of the South, the patient, the long-suffering, kind-hearted victims of
oppressions, only here and there a voice pleads for their endowment with
the same rights of citizenship which are to be accorded to the rank and
file of disbanded rebels. The golden rule of the Sermon on the Mount is
not applied to them. Much is said of executing justice upon rebels;
little of justice to loyal black men. Hanging a few ringleaders of
treason, it seems to be supposed, is all that is needed to restore and
reestablish the revolted states. The negro is to be left powerless in
the hands of the "white trash," who hate him with a bitter hatred,
exceeding that of the large slave-holders. In short, four years of
terrible chastisement, of God's unmistakable judgments, have not taught
us, as a people, their lesson, which could scarcely be plainer if it had
been written in letters of fire on the sky. Why is it that we are so
slow to learn, so unwilling to confess that slavery is the accursed thing
which whets the knife of murder, and transforms men, with the exterior of
gentlemen and Christians, into fiends? How pitiful is our exultation
over the capture of the wretched Booth and his associates! The great
criminal, of whom he and they were but paltry instruments, still stalks
abroad in the pine woods of Jersey, where the state has thrown around him
her legislative sanction and protection. He is in Pennsylvania,
thrusting the black man from public conveyances. Wherever God's children
are despised, insulted, and abused on account of their color, there is
the real assassin of the President still at large. I do not wonder at
the indignation which has been awakened by the late outrage, for I have
painfully shared it. But let us see to it that it is rightly directed.
The hanging of a score of Southern traitors will not restore Abraham
Lincoln nor atone for the mighty loss. In wreaking revenge upon these
miserable men, we must see to it that we do not degrade ourselves and do
dishonor to the sacred memory of the dead. We do well to be angry; and,
if need be, let our wrath wax seven times hotter, until that which "was a
murderer from the beginning" is consumed from the face of the earth. As
the people stand by the grave of Lincoln, let them lift their right hands
to heaven and take a solemn vow upon their souls to give no sleep to
their eyes nor slumber to their eyelids until slavery is hunted from its
last shelter, and every man, black and white, stands equal before the
law.
As respects the misguided masses of the South, the shattered and crippled
remnants of the armies of treason, the desolate wives, mothers, and
children mourning for dear ones who have fallen in a vain and hopeless
struggle, it seems to me our duty is very plain. We must forgive their
past treason, and welcome and encourage their returning loyalty. None
but cowards will insult and taunt the defeated and defenceless. We must
feed and clothe the destitute, instruct the ignorant, and, bearing
patiently with the bitterness and prejudice which will doubtless for a
time thwart our efforts and misinterpret our motives, aid them in
rebuilding their states on the foundation of freedom. Our sole enemy was
slavery, and slavery is dead. We have now no quarrel with the people of
the South, who have really more reason than we have to rejoice over the
downfall of a system which impeded their material progress, perverted
their religion, shut them out from the sympathies of the world, and
ridged their land with the graves of its victims.
We are victors, the cause of all this evil and suffering is removed
forever, and we can well afford to be magnanimous. How better can we
evince our gratitude to God for His great mercy than in doing good to
those who hated us, and in having compassion on those who have
despitefully used us? The hour is hastening for us all when our sole
ground of dependence will be the mercy and forgiveness of God. Let us
endeavor so to feel and act in our relations to the people of the South
that we can repeat in sincerity the prayer of our Lord: "Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," reverently
acknowledging that He has indeed "led captivity captive and received
gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might
dwell among them."
[1868.]
THE wise reticence of the President elect in the matter of his cabinet
has left free course to speculation and conjecture as to its composition.
That he fully comprehends the importance of the subject, and that he will
carefully weigh the claims of the possible candidates on the score of
patriotic services, ability, and fitness for specific duties, no one who
has studied his character, and witnessed his discretion, clear insight,
and wise adaptation of means to ends, under the mighty responsibilities
of his past career, can reasonably doubt.
I am not unaware that there are some, even in the Republican party, who
have failed to recognize in Senator Sumner the really wise and practical
statesmanship which a careful review of his public labors cannot but make
manifest. It is only necessary to point such to the open record of his
senatorial career. Few men have had the honor of introducing and
defending with exhaustive ability and thoroughness so many measures of
acknowledged practical importance to his immediate constituents, the
country at large, and the wider interests of humanity and civilization.
In what exigency has he been found wanting? What legislative act of
public utility for the last eighteen years has lacked his encouragement?
At the head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, his clearness of vision,
firmness, moderation, and ready comprehension of the duties of his time
and place must be admitted by all parties. It was shrewdly said by Burke
that "men are wise with little reflection and good with little self-
denial, in business of all times except their own." But Charles Sumner,
the scholar, loving the "still air of delightful studies," has shown
himself as capable of thoroughly comprehending and digesting the events
transpiring before his eyes as of pronouncing judgment upon those
recorded in history. Far in advance of most of his contemporaries, he
saw and enunciated the true doctrine of reconstruction, the early
adoption of which would have been of incalculable service to the country.
One of the ablest statesmen and jurists of the Democratic party has had
the rare magnanimity to acknowledge that in this matter the Republican
senator was right, and himself and his party wrong.
In a few weeks Charles Summer will be returned for his fourth term in the
United States Senate by the well-nigh unanimous vote of both branches of
the legislature of Massachusetts. Not a syllable of opposition to his
reelection is heard from any quarter. There is not a Republican in the
legislature who could have been elected unless he had been virtually
pledged to his support. No stronger evidence of the popular estimate of
his ability and integrity than this could be offered. As a matter of
course, the marked individuality of his intense convictions, earnestness,
persistence, and confident reliance upon the justice of his conclusions,
naturally growing out of the consciousness of having brought to his
honest search after truth all the lights of his learning and experience,
may, at times, have brought him into unpleasant relations with some of
his colleagues; but no one, friend or foe, has questioned his ability and
patriotism, or doubted his fidelity to principle. He has lent himself to
no schemes of greed. While so many others have taken advantage of the
facilities of their official stations to fill, directly or indirectly,
their own pockets or those of their relatives and retainers, it is to the
honor of Massachusetts that her representatives in the Senate have not
only "shaken their hands from the holding of bribes," but have so borne
themselves that no shadow of suspicion has ever rested on them.
DEAR FRIENDS,--I have just received your letter of the 29th ult. asking
my opinion of your present duty as colored voters in the choice between
General Grant and Horace Greeley for the presidency. You state that you
have been confused by the contradictory advice given you by such friends
of your people as Charles Sumner on one hand, and William L. Garrison and
Wendell Phillips on the other; and you ask me, as one whom you are
pleased to think "free from all bias," to add my counsel to theirs.
I thank you for the very kind expression of your confidence and your
generous reference to my endeavors to serve the cause of freedom; but I
must own that I would fain have been spared the necessity of adding to
the already too long list of political epistles. I have felt it my duty
in times past to take an active part--often very distasteful to me--in
political matters, having for my first object the deliverance of my
country from the crime and curse of slavery. That great question being
now settled forever, I have been more than willing to leave to younger
and stronger hands the toils and the honors of partisan service. Pained
and saddened by the bitter and unchristian personalities of the canvass
now in progress, I have hitherto held myself aloof from it as far as
possible, unwilling to sanction in the slightest degree the criminations
and recriminations of personal friends whom I have every reason to love
and respect, and in whose integrity I have unshaken confidence. In the
present condition of affairs I have not been able to see that any special
action as an abolitionist was required at my hands. Both of the great
parties, heretofore widely separated, have put themselves on
substantially the same platform. The Republican party, originally
pledged only to the non-extension of slavery, and whose most illustrious
representative, President Lincoln, avowed his willingness to save the
Union without abolishing slavery, has been, under Providence, mainly
instrumental in the total overthrow of the detestable system; while the
Democratic party, composed largely of slave-holders, and, even at the
North, scarcely willing to save the Union at the expense of the slave
interest upon which its success depended, shattered and crippled by the
civil war and its results, has at last yielded to the inexorable logic of
events, abandoned a position no longer tenable, and taken its "new
departure" with an abolitionist as its candidate. As a friend of the
long-oppressed colored man, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity
of the country, I rejoice at this action of the Democratic party. The
underlying motives of this radical change are doubtless somewhat mixed
and contradictory, honest conviction on the part of some, and party
expediency and desire of office on the part of others; but the change
itself is real and irrevocable; the penalty of receding would be swift
and irretrievable ruin. In any point of view the new order of things is
desirable; and nothing more fully illustrates "the ways that are dark and
the tricks that are vain" of party politics than the attempt of professed
friends of the Union and equal rights for all to counteract it by giving
aid and comfort to a revival of the worst characteristics of the old
party in the shape of a straight-out Democratic convention.
As respects the candidates now before us, I can see no good reason why
colored voters as such should oppose General Grant, who, though not an
abolitionist and not even a member of the Republican party previous to
his nomination, has faithfully carried out the laws of Congress in their
behalf. Nor, on the other hand, can I see any just grounds for distrust
of such a man as Horace Greeley, who has so nobly distinguished himself
as the advocate of human rights irrespective of race or color, and who by
the instrumentality of his press has been for thirty years the educator
of the people in the principles of justice, temperance, and freedom.
Both of these men have, in different ways, deserved too well of the
country to be unnecessarily subjected to the brutalities of a
presidential canvass; and, so far as they are personally concerned, it
would doubtless have been better if the one had declined a second term of
uncongenial duties, and the other continued to indite words of wisdom in
the shades of Chappaqua. But they have chosen otherwise; and I am
willing, for one, to leave my colored fellow-citizens to the unbiased
exercise of their own judgment and instincts in deciding between them.
The Democratic party labors under the disadvantage of antecedents not
calculated to promote a rapid growth of confidence; and it is no matter
of surprise that the vote of the emancipated class is likely to be
largely against it. But if, as will doubtless be the case, that vote
shall be to some extent divided between the two candidates, it will have
the effect of inducing politicians of the rival parties to treat with
respect and consideration this new element of political power, from self-
interest if from no higher motive. The fact that at this time both
parties are welcoming colored orators to their platforms, and that, in
the South, old slave-masters and their former slaves fraternize at caucus
and barbecue, and vote for each other at the polls, is full of
significance. If, in New England, the very men who thrust Frederick
Douglass from car and stage-coach, and mobbed and hunted him like a wild
beast, now crowd to shake his hand and cheer him, let us not despair of
seeing even the Ku-Klux tarried into decency, and sitting "clothed in
their right minds" as listeners to their former victims. The colored man
is to-day the master of his own destiny. No power on earth can deprive
him of his rights as an American citizen. And it is in the light of
American citizenship that I choose to regard my colored friends, as men
having a common stake in the welfare of the country; mingled with, and
not separate from, their white fellow-citizens; not herded together as a
distinct class to be wielded by others, without self-dependence and
incapable of self-determination. Thanks to such men as Sumner and Wilson
and their compeers, nearly all that legislation can do for them has
already been done. We can now only help them to help themselves.
Industry, economy, temperance, self-culture, education for their
children,--these things, indispensable to their elevation and progress,
are in a great measure in their own hands.
I BEG leave to occupy a small space in the columns of the Advertiser for
the purpose of noticing a charge which has been brought against the
petitioners for rescinding the resolutions of the late extra session
virtually censuring the Hon. Charles Sumner. It is intimated that the
action of these petitioners evinces a lack of appreciation of the
services of the soldiers of the Union, and that not to censure Charles
Sumner is to censure the volunteers of Massachusetts.
He can well afford to wait, and the issue of the present question before
our legislature is of far less consequence to him than to us. To use the
words of one who stood by him in the dark days of the Fugitive Slave Law,
the Chief Justice of the United States,--"Time and the wiser thought will
vindicate the illustrious statesman to whom Massachusetts, the country,
and humanity owe so much, but the state can ill afford the damage to its
own reputation which such a censure of such a man will inflict."
[1874.]
In the gray twilight of a chill day of late November, forty years ago, a
dear friend of mine, residing in Boston, made his appearance at the old
farm-house in East Haverhill. He had been deputed by the abolitionists
of the city, William L. Garrison, Samuel E. Sewall, and others, to
inform me of my appointment as a delegate to the Convention about to be
held in Philadelphia for the formation of an American Anti-Slavery
Society, and to urge upon me the necessity of my attendance.
So the next morning I took the stage for Boston, stopping at the ancient
hostelry known as the Eastern Stage Tavern; and on the day following, in
company with William Lloyd Garrison, I left for New York. At that city
we were joined by other delegates, among them David Thurston, a
Congregational minister from Maine. On our way to Philadelphia, we took,
as a matter of necessary economy, a second-class conveyance, and found
ourselves, in consequence, among rough and hilarious companions, whose
language was more noteworthy for strength than refinement. Our worthy
friend the clergyman bore it awhile in painful silence, but at last felt
it his duty to utter words of remonstrance and admonition. The leader of
the young roisterers listened with a ludicrous mock gravity, thanked him
for his exhortation, and, expressing fears that the extraordinary effort
had exhausted his strength, invited him to take a drink with him. Father
Thurston buried his grieved face in his cloak-collar, and wisely left the
young reprobates to their own devices.
That tall, gaunt, swarthy man, erect, eagle-faced, upon whose somewhat
martial figure the Quaker coat seemed a little out of place, was Lindley
Coates, known in all eastern Pennsylvania as a stern enemy of slavery;
that slight, eager man, intensely alive in every feature and gesture, was
Thomas Shipley, who for thirty years had been the protector of the free
colored people of Philadelphia, and whose name was whispered reverently
in the slave cabins of Maryland as the friend of the black man, one of a
class peculiar to old Quakerism, who in doing what they felt to be duty,
and walking as the Light within guided them, knew no fear and shrank from
no sacrifice. Braver men the world has not known. Beside him, differing
in creed, but united with him in works of love and charity, sat Thomas
Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends, fresh from his farm in
Lancaster County, dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form surmounted
by a shock of unkempt hair, the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting
strongly with he clearness and directness of his spiritual insight.
Elizur Wright, the young professor of a Western college, who had lost his
place by his bold advocacy of freedom, with a look of sharp concentration
in keeping with an intellect keen as a Damascus blade, closely watched
the proceedings through his spectacles, opening his mouth only to speak
directly to the purpose. The portly form of Dr. Bartholomew Russell, the
beloved physician, from that beautiful land of plenty and peace which
Bayard Taylor has described in his Story of Kennett, was not to be
overlooked. Abolitionist in heart and soul, his house was known as the
shelter of runaway slaves, and no sportsman ever entered into the chase
with such zest as he did into the arduous and sometimes dangerous work of
aiding their escape and baffling their pursuers. The youngest man
present was, I believe, James Miller McKim, a Presbyterian minister from
Columbia, afterwards one of our most efficient workers. James Mott, E.
L. Capron, Arnold Buffum, and Nathan Winslow, men well known in the anti-
slavery agitation, were conspicuous members. Vermont sent down from her
mountains Orson S. Murray, a man terribly in earnest, with a zeal that
bordered on fanaticism, and who was none the more genial for the mob-
violence to which he had been subjected. In front of me, awakening
pleasant associations of the old homestead in Merrimac valley, sat my
first school-teacher, Joshua Coffin, the learned and worthy antiquarian
and historian of Newbury. A few spectators, mostly of the Hicksite
division of Friends, were present, in broad brims and plain bonnets,
among them Esther Moore and Lucretia Mott.
Committees were chosen to draft a constitution for a national Anti-
Slavery Society, nominate a list of officers, and prepare a declaration
of principles to be signed by the members. Dr. A. L. Cox of New York,
while these committees were absent, read something from my pen eulogistic
of William Lloyd Garrison; and Lewis Tappan and Amos A. Phelps, a
Congregational clergyman of Boston, afterwards one of the most devoted
laborers in the cause, followed in generous commendation of the zeal,
courage, and devotion of the young pioneer. The president, after calling
James McCrummell, one of the two or three colored members of the
Convention, to the chair, made some eloquent remarks upon those editors
who had ventured to advocate emancipation. At the close of his speech a
young man rose to speak, whose appearance at once arrested my attention.
I think I have never seen a finer face and figure, and his manner, words,
and bearing were in keeping. "Who is he?" I asked of one of the
Pennsylvania delegates. "Robert Purvis, of this city, a colored man,"
was the answer. He began by uttering his heart-felt thanks to the
delegates who had convened for the deliverance of his people. He spoke
of Garrison in terms of warmest eulogy, as one who had stirred the heart
of the nation, broken the tomblike slumber of the church, and compelled
it to listen to the story of the slave's wrongs. He closed by declaring
that the friends of colored Americans would not be forgotten. "Their
memories," he said, "will be cherished when pyramids and monuments shall
have crumbled in dust. The flood of time which is sweeping away the
refuge of lies is bearing on the advocates of our cause to a glorious
immortality."
The paper was read to the Convention by Dr. Atlee, chairman of the
committee, and listened to with the profoundest interest.
We also maintain that there are, at the present time, the highest
obligations resting upon the people of the free states to remove slavery
by moral and political action, as prescribed in the Constitution of the
United States. They are now living under a pledge of their tremendous
physical force to fasten the galling fetters of tyranny upon the limbs of
millions in the Southern states; they are liable to be called at any
moment to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves; they authorize
the slave-owner to vote on three fifths of his slaves as property, and
thus enable him to perpetuate his oppression; they support a standing
army at the South for its protection; and they seize the slave who has
escaped into their territories, and send him back to be tortured by an
enraged master or a brutal driver. This relation to slavery is criminal
and full of danger. It must be broken up.
"These are our views and principles,--these our designs and measures.
With entire confidence in the overruling justice of God, we plant
ourselves upon the Declaration of Independence and the truths of divine
revelation as upon the everlasting rock.
"We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering
and the dumb.
"We shall encourage the labor of freemen over that of the slaves, by
giving a preference to their productions; and
"We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to
speedy repentance.
Our work as a Convention was now done. President Green arose to make the
concluding address. The circumstances under which it was uttered may
have lent it an impressiveness not its own; but as I now recall it, it
seems to me the most powerful and eloquent speech to which I have ever
listened. He passed in review the work that had been done, the
constitution of the new society, the declaration of sentiments, and the
union and earnestness which had marked the proceedings. His closing
words will never be forgotten by those who heard them:--
"But now we must retire from these balmy influences and breathe another
atmosphere. The chill hoar-frost will be upon us. The storm and tempest
will rise, and the waves of persecution will dash against our souls. Let
us be prepared for the worst. Let us fasten ourselves to the throne of
God as with hooks of steel. If we cling not to Him, our names to that
document will be but as dust.
[1879.]
I no not know that any word of mine can give additional interest to this
memorial of William Lloyd Garrison from the pen of one of his earliest
and most devoted friends, whose privilege it has been to share his
confidence and his labors for nearly half a century; but I cannot well
forego the opportunity afforded me to add briefly my testimony to the
tribute to the memory of the great Reformer, whose friendship I have
shared, and with whom I have been associated in a common cause from youth
to age.
During the long and hard struggle in which the abolitionists were
engaged, and amidst the new and difficult questions and side-issues which
presented themselves, it could scarcely be otherwise than that
differences of opinion and action should arise among them. The leader
and his disciples could not always see alike. My friend, the author of
this book, I think, generally found himself in full accord with him,
while I often decidedly dissented. I felt it my duty to use my right of
citizenship at the ballot-box in the cause of liberty, while Garrison,
with equal sincerity, judged and counselled otherwise. Each acted under
a sense of individual duty and responsibility, and our personal relations
were undisturbed. If, at times, the great anti-slavery leader failed to
do justice to the motives of those who, while in hearty sympathy with his
hatred of slavery, did not agree with some of his opinions and methods,
it was but the pardonable and not unnatural result of his intensity of
purpose, and his self-identification with the cause he advocated; and,
while compelled to dissent, in some particulars, from his judgment of men
and measures, the great mass of the antislavcry people recognized his
moral leadership. The controversies of old and new organization,
nonresistance and political action, may now be looked upon by the parties
to them, who still survive, with the philosophic calmness which follows
the subsidence of prejudice and passion. We were but fallible men, and
doubtless often erred in feeling, speech, and action. Ours was but the
common experience of reformers in all ages.
The verdict of posterity in his case may be safely anticipated. With the
true reformers and benefactors of his race he occupies a place inferior
to none other. The private lives of many who fought well the battles of
humanity have not been without spot or blemish. But his private
character, like his public, knew no dishonor. No shadow of suspicion
rests upon the white statue of a life, the fitting garland of which
should be the Alpine flower that symbolizes noble purity.
ANTI-SLAVERY ANNIVERSARY.
I NEED not say how gladly I would be with you at the semi-centennial of
the American Anti-Slavery Society. I am, I regret to say, quite unable
to gratify this wish, and can only represent myself by a letter.
Looking back over the long years of half a century, I can scarcely
realize the conditions under which the convention of 1833 assembled.
Slavery was predominant. Like Apollyon in Pilgrim's Progress, it
"straddled over the whole breadth of the way." Church and state, press
and pulpit, business interests, literature, and fashion were prostrate at
its feet. Our convention, with few exceptions, was composed of men
without influence or position, poor and little known, strong only in
their convictions and faith in the justice of their cause. To onlookers
our endeavor to undo the evil work of two centuries and convert a nation
to the "great renunciation" involved in emancipation must have seemed
absurd in the last degree. Our voices in such an atmosphere found no
echo. We could look for no response but laughs of derision or the
missiles of a mob.
But we felt that we had the strength of truth on our side; we were right,
and all the world about us was wrong. We had faith, hope, and
enthusiasm, and did our work, nothing doubting, amidst a generation who
first despised and then feared and hated us. For myself I have never
ceased to be grateful to the Divine Providence for the privilege of
taking a part in that work.
And now for more than twenty years we have had a free country. No slave
treads its soil. The anticipated dangerous consequences of complete
emancipation have not been felt. The emancipated class, as a whole, have
done wisely, and well under circumstances of peculiar difficulty. The
masters have learned that cotton can be raised better by free than by
slave labor, and nobody now wishes a return to slave-holding. Sectional
prejudices are subsiding, the bitterness of the civil war is slowly
passing away. We are beginning to feel that we are one people, with no
really clashing interests, and none more truly rejoice in the growing
prosperity of the South than the old abolitionists, who hated slavery as
a curse to the master as well as to the slave.
RESPONSE
It could not answer me from the rice swamp and cotton field, but now, God
be praised, it speaks from your great meeting in Washington and from all
the colleges and schools where the youth of your race are taught. I
scarcely expected then that the people for whom I pleaded would ever know
of my efforts in their behalf. I cannot be too thankful to the Divine
Providence that I have lived to hear their grateful response.
I stand amazed at the rapid strides which your people have made since
emancipation, at your industry, your acquisition of property and land,
your zeal for education, your self-respecting but unresentful attitude
toward those who formerly claimed to be your masters, your pathetic but
manly appeal for just treatment and recognition. I see in all this the
promise that the time is not far distant when, in common with the white
race, you will have the free, undisputed rights of American citizenship
in all parts of the Union, and your rightful share in the honors as well
as the protection of the government.
Your letter would have been answered sooner if it had been possible. I
have been literally overwhelmed with letters and telegrams, which, owing
to illness, I have been in a great measure unable to answer or even read.
THERE is a large class of men, not in Europe alone, but in this country
also, whose constitutional conservatism inclines them to regard any
organic change in the government of a state or the social condition of
its people with suspicion and distrust. They admit, perhaps, the evils
of the old state of things; but they hold them to be inevitable, the
alloy necessarily mingled with all which pertains to fallible humanity.
Themselves generally enjoying whatever of good belongs to the political
or social system in which their lot is cast, they are disposed to look
with philosophic indifference upon the evil which only afflicts their
neighbors. They wonder why people are not contented with their
allotments; they see no reason for change; they ask for quiet and peace
in their day; being quite well satisfied with that social condition which
an old poet has quaintly described:--
The romance of Sir Thomas More, which has long afforded to the
conservatives of church and state a term of contempt applicable to all
reformatory schemes and innovations, is one of a series of fabulous
writings, in which the authors, living in evil times and unable to
actualize their plans for the well-being of society, have resorted to
fiction as a safe means of conveying forbidden truths to the popular
mind. Plato's "Timaeus," the first of the series, was written after the
death of Socrates and the enslavement of the author's country. In this
are described the institutions of the Island of Atlantis,--the writer's
ideal of a perfect commonwealth. Xenophon, in his "Cyropaedia," has also
depicted an imaginary political society by overlaying with fiction
historical traditions. At a later period we have the "New Atlantis" of
Lord Bacon, and that dream of the "City of the Sun" with which Campanella
solaced himself in his long imprisonment.
The "Utopia" of More is perhaps the best of its class. It is the work of
a profound thinker, the suggestive speculations and theories of one who
could
"He judged it wrong to lay down anything rashly, and seemed to doubt
whether these different forms of religion might not all come from God,
who might inspire men in a different manner, and be pleased with the
variety. He therefore thought it to be indecent and foolish for any man
to threaten and terrify another, to make him believe what did not strike
him as true."
Harrington, on the other hand, as became the friend of Milton and Marvel,
held fast, through good and evil report, his republican faith. He
published his work after the Restoration, and defended it boldly and ably
from the numerous attacks made upon it. Regarded as too dangerous an
enthusiast to be left at liberty, he was imprisoned at the instance of
Lord Chancellor Hyde, first in the Tower, and afterwards on the Island of
St. Nicholas, where disease and imprudent remedies brought on a partial
derangement, from which he never recovered.
Bernardin St. Pierre, whose pathetic tale of "Paul and Virginia" has
found admirers in every language of the civilized world, in a fragment,
entitled "Arcadia," attempted to depict an ideal republic, without
priest, noble, or slave, where all are so religious that each man is the
pontiff of his family, where each man is prepared to defend his country,
and where all are in such a state of equality that there are no such
persons as servants. The plan of it was suggested by his friend Rousseau
during their pleasant walking excursions about the environs of Paris, in
which the two enthusiastic philosophers, baffled by the evil passions and
intractable materials of human nature as manifested in existing society,
comforted themselves by appealing from the actual to the possible, from
the real to the imaginary. Under the chestnut-trees of the Bois de
Boulogne, through long summer days, the two friends, sick of the noisy
world about them, yet yearning to become its benefactors,--gladly
escaping from it, yet busy with schemes for its regeneration and
happiness,--at once misanthropes and philanthropists,--amused and solaced
themselves by imagining a perfect and simple state of society, in which
the lessons of emulation and selfish ambition were never to be taught;
where, on the contrary, the young were to obey their parents, and to
prefer father, mother, brother, sister, wife, and friend to themselves.
They drew beautiful pictures of a country blessed with peace, indus try,
and love, covered with no disgusting monuments of violence and pride and
luxury, without columns, triumphal arches, hospitals, prisons, or
gibbets; but presenting to view bridges over torrents, wells on the arid
plain, groves of fruit-trees, and houses of shelter for the traveller in
desert places, attesting everywhere the sentiment of humanity. Religion
was to speak to all hearts in the eternal language of Nature. Death was
no longer to be feared; perspectives of holy consolation were to open
through the cypress shadows of the tomb; to live or to die was to be
equally an object of desire.
The plan of the "Arcadia" of St. Pierre is simply this: A learned young
Egyptian, educated at Thebes by the priests of Osiris, desirous of
benefiting humanity, undertakes a voyage to Gaul for the purpose of
carrying thither the arts and religion of Egypt. He is shipwrecked on
his return in the Gulf of Messina, and lands upon the coast, where he is
entertained by an Arcadian, to whom he relates his adventures, and from
whom he receives in turn an account of the simple happiness and peace of
Arcadia, the virtues and felicity of whose inhabitants are beautifully
exemplified in the lives and conversation of the shepherd and his
daughter. This pleasant little prose poem closes somewhat abruptly.
Although inferior in artistic skill to "Paul and Virginia" or the "Indian
Cottage", there is not a little to admire in the simple beauty of its
pastoral descriptions. The closing paragraph reminds one of Bunyan's
upper chamber, where the weary pilgrim's windows opened to the sunrising
and the singing of birds:--
"Now, as soon as Amasis was left alone with Cephas, he spoke with joy of
the delight and tranquillity of the valley, of the goodness of the
shepherd, and the grace of his young daughter, to whom he had seen none
worthy to be compared, and of the pleasure which he promised himself the
next day, at the festival on Mount Lyceum, of beholding a whole people as
happy as this sequestered family. Converse so delightful might have
charmed away the night without the aid of sleep, had they not been
invited to repose by the mild light of the moon shining through the
window, the murmuring wind in the leaves of the poplars, and the distant
noise of the Achelous, which falls roaring from the summit of Mount
Lyceum."
The young patrician wits of Athens doubtless laughed over Plato's ideal
republic. Campanella's "City of the Sun" was looked upon, no doubt, as
the distempered vision of a crazy state prisoner. Bacon's college, in
his "New Atlantis," moved the risibles of fat-witted Oxford. More's
"Utopia," as we know, gave to our language a new word, expressive of the
vagaries and dreams of fanatics and lunatics. The merciless wits,
clerical and profane, of the court of Charles II. regarded Harrington's
romance as a perfect godsend to their vocation of ridicule. The gay
dames and carpet knights of Versailles made themselves merry with the
prose pastoral of St. Pierre; and the poor old enthusiast went down to
his grave without finding an auditory for his lectures upon natural
society.
The world had its laugh over these romances. When unable to refute their
theories, it could sneer at the authors, and answer them to the
satisfaction of the generation in which they lived, at least by a general
charge of lunacy. Some of their notions were no doubt as absurd as those
of the astronomer in "Rasselas", who tells Imlac that he has for five
years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of
making to the different nations an equal and impartial dividend of rain
and sunshine. But truth, even when ushered into the world through the
medium of a dull romance and in connection with a vast progeny of errors,
however ridiculed and despised at first, never fails in the end of
finding a lodging-place in the popular mind. The speculations of the
political theorists whom we have noticed have not all proved to be of
"such stuff
As dreams are made of, and their little life
Rounded with sleep."
They have entered into and become parts of the social and political
fabrics of Europe and America. The prophecies of imagination have been
fulfilled; the dreams of romance have become familiar realities.
[1851.]
BERNARDIN ST. PIERRE, in his Wishes of a Solitary, asks for his country
neither wealth, nor military glory, nor magnificent palaces and
monuments, nor splendor of court nobility, nor clerical pomp. "Rather,"
he says, "O France, may no beggar tread thy plains, no sick or suffering
man ask in vain for relief; in all thy hamlets may every young woman find
a lover and every lover a true wife; may the young be trained arightly
and guarded from evil; may the old close their days in the tranquil hope
of those who love God and their fellow-men."
We are reminded of the amiable wish of the French essayist--a wish even
yet very far from realization, we fear, in the empire of Napoleon III.--
by the perusal of two documents recently submitted to the legislature of
the State of Massachusetts. They indicate, in our view, the real glory
of a state, and foreshadow the coming of that time when Milton's
definition of a true commonwealth shall be no longer a prophecy, but the
description of an existing fact,--"a huge Christian personage, a mighty
growth and stature of an honest man, moved by the purpose of a love of
God and of mankind."
The commissioners were Dr. Samuel G. Howe, so well and honorably known
for his long and arduous labors in behalf of the blind, Judge Byington,
and Dr. Gilman Kimball. The burden of the labor fell upon the chairman,
who entered upon it with the enthusiasm, perseverance, and practical
adaptation of means to ends which have made him so efficient in his
varied schemes of benevolence. On the 26th of the second month, 1848, a
full report of the results of this labor was made to the Governor,
accompanied by statistical tables and minute details. One hundred towns
had been visited by the chairman or his reliable agent, in which five
hundred and seventy-five persons in a state of idiocy were discovered.
These were examined carefully in respect to their physical as well as
mental condition, no inquiry being omitted which was calculated to throw
light upon the remote or immediate causes of this mournful imperfection
in the creation of God. The proximate causes Dr. Howe mentions are to be
found in the state of the bodily organization, deranged and
disproportioned by some violation of natural law on the part of the
parents or remoter ancestors of the sufferers. Out of 420 cases of
idiocy, he had obtained information respecting the condition of the
progenitors of 359; and in all but four of these eases he found that one
or the other, or both, of their immediate progenitors had in some way
departed widely from the condition of health; they were scrofulous, or
predisposed to affections of the brain, and insanity, or had intermarried
with blood-relations, or had been intemperate, or guilty of sensual
excesses.
Of the 575 cases, 420 were those of idiocy from birth, and 155 of idiocy
afterwards. Of the born idiots, 187 were under twenty-five years of age,
and all but 13 seemed capable of improvement. Of those above twenty-five
years of age, 73 appeared incapable of improvement in their mental
condition, being helpless as children at seven years of age; 43 out of
the 420 seemed as helpless as children at two years of age; 33 were in
the condition of mere infants; and 220 were supported at the public
charge in almshouses. A large proportion of them were found to be given
over to filthy and loathsome habits, gluttony, and lust, and constantly
sinking lower towards the condition of absolute brutishness.
Of the ten pupils, it appears that not one had the usual command of
muscular motion,--the languid body obeyed not the service of the imbecile
will. Some could walk and use their limbs and hands in simple motions;
others could make only make slight use of their muscles; and two were
without any power of locomotion.
One of these last, a boy six years of age, who had been stupefied on the
day of his birth by the application of hot rum to his head, could
scarcely see or notice objects, and was almost destitute of the sense of
touch. He could neither stand nor sit upright, nor even creep, but would
lie on the floor in whatever position he was placed. He could not feed
himself nor chew solid food, and had no more sense of decency than an
infant. His intellect was a blank; he had no knowledge, no desires, no
affections. A more hopeless object for experiment could scarcely have
been selected.
In the case of another boy, aged twelve years, the improvement has been
equally remarkable. The gentleman who first called attention to him, in
a recent note to Dr. Howe, published in the report, thus speaks of his
present condition: "When I remember his former wild and almost frantic
demeanor when approached by any one, and the apparent impossibility of
communicating with him, and now see him standing in his class, playing
with his fellows, and willingly and familiarly approaching me, examining
what I gave him,--and when I see him already selecting articles named by
his teacher, and even correctly pronouncing words printed on cards,--
improvement does not convey the idea presented to my mind; it is
creation; it is making him anew."
All the pupils have more or less advanced. Their health and habits have
improved; and there is no reason to doubt that the experiment, at the
close of its three years, will be found to have been quite as successful
as its most sanguine projectors could have anticipated. Dr. Howe has
been ably seconded by an accomplished teacher, James B. Richards, who has
devoted his whole time to the pupils. Of the nature and magnitude of
their task, an idea may be formed only by considering the utter
listlessness of idiocy, the incapability of the poor pupil to fix his
attention upon anything, and his general want of susceptibility to
impressions. All his senses are dulled and perverted. Touch, hearing,
sight, smell, are all more or less defective. His gluttony is
unaccompanied with the gratification of taste,--the most savory viands
and the offal which he shares with the pigs equally satisfy him. His
mental state is still worse than his physical. Thought is painful and
irksome to him.
His teacher can only engage his attention by strenuous efforts, loud,
earnest tones, gesticulations and signs, and a constant presentation of
some visible object of bright color and striking form. The eye wanders,
and the spark of consciousness and intelligence which has been fanned
into momentary brightness darkens at the slightest relaxation of the
teacher's exertions. The names of objects presented to him must
sometimes be repeated hundreds of times before he can learn them. Yet
the patience and enthusiasm of the teacher are rewarded by a progress,
slow and unequal, but still marked and manifest. Step by step, often
compelled to turn back and go over the inch of ground he had gained, the
idiot is still creeping forward; and by almost imperceptible degrees his
sick, cramped, and prisoned spirit casts off the burden of its body of
death, breath as from the Almighty--is breathed into him, and he becomes
a living soul.
The moral nature of the idiot needs training and development as well as
his physical and mental. All that can be said of him is, that he has the
latent capacity for moral development and culture. Uninstructed and left
to himself, he has no ideas of regulated appetites and propensities, of
decency and delicacy of affection and social relations. The germs of
these ideas, which constitute the glory and beauty of humanity,
undoubtedly exist in him; but there can be no growth without patient and
persevering culture. Where this is afforded, to use the language of the
report, "the idiot may learn what love is, though he may not know the
word which expresses it; he may feel kindly affections while unable to
understand the simplest virtuous principle; and he may begin to live
acceptably to God before he has learned the name by which men call him."
In the facts and statistics presented in the report, light is shed upon
some of the dark pages of God's providence, and it is seen that the
suffering and shame of idiocy are the result of sin, of a violation of
the merciful laws of God and of the harmonies of His benign order. The
penalties which are ordained for the violators of natural laws are
inexorable and certain. For the transgressor of the laws of life there
is, as in the case of Esau, "no place for repentance, though he seek it
earnestly and with tears." The curse cleaves to him and his children.
In this view, how important becomes the subject of the hereditary
transmission of moral and physical disease and debility! and how
necessary it is that there should be a clearer understanding of, and a
willing obedience, at any cost, to the eternal law which makes the parent
the blessing or the curse of the child, giving strength and beauty, and
the capacity to know and do the will of God, or bequeathing
loathsomeness, deformity, and animal appetite, incapable of the
restraints of the moral faculties! Even if the labors of Dr. Howe and
his benevolent associates do not materially lessen the amount of present
actual evil and suffering in this respect, they will not be put forth in
vain if they have the effect of calling public attention to the great
laws of our being, the violation of which has made this goodly earth a
vast lazarhouse of pain and sorrow.
"THEY that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," was
the significant answer of our Lord to the self-righteous Pharisees who
took offence at his companions,--the poor, the degraded, the weak, and
the sinful. "Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and
not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance."
The great lesson of duty inculcated by this answer of the Divine Teacher
has been too long overlooked by individuals and communities professedly
governed by His maxims. The phylacteries of our modern Pharisees are as
broad as those of the old Jewish saints. The respectable Christian
detests his vicious and ill-conditioned neighbors as heartily as the
Israelite did the publicans and sinners of his day. He folds his robe of
self-righteousness closely about him, and denounces as little better than
sinful weakness all commiseration for the guilty; and all attempts to
restore and reclaim the erring violators of human law otherwise than by
pains and penalties as wicked collusion with crime, dangerous to the
stability and safety of society, and offensive in the sight of God. And
yet nothing is more certain than that, just in proportion as the example
of our Lord has been followed in respect to the outcast and criminal, the
effect has been to reform and elevate,--to snatch as brands from the
burning souls not yet wholly given over to the service of evil. The
wonderful influence for good exerted over the most degraded and reckless
criminals of London by the excellent and self-denying Elizabeth Fry, the
happy results of the establishment of houses of refuge, and reformation,
and Magdalen asylums, all illustrate the wisdom of Him who went about
doing good, in pointing out the morally diseased as the appropriate
subjects of the benevolent labors of His disciples. No one is to be
despaired of. We have no warrant to pass by any of our fellow-creatures
as beyond the reach of God's grace and mercy; for, beneath the most
repulsive and hateful outward manifestation, there is always a
consciousness of the beauty of goodness and purity, and of the
loathsomeness of sin,--one chamber of the heart as yet not wholly
profaned, whence at times arises the prayer of a burdened and miserable
spirit for deliverance. Deep down under the squalid exterior,
unparticipative in the hideous merriment and recklessness of the
criminal, there is another self,--a chained and suffering inner man,--
crying out, in the intervals of intoxication and brutal excesses, like
Jonah from the bosom of hell. To this lingering consciousness the
sympathy and kindness of benevolent and humane spirits seldom appeal in
vain; for, whatever may be outward appearances, it remains true that the
way of the transgressor is hard, and that sin and suffering are
inseparable. Crime is seldom loved or persevered in for its own sake;
but, when once the evil path is entered upon, a return is in reality
extremely difficult to the unhappy wanderer, and often seems as well nigh
impossible. The laws of social life rise up like insurmountable barriers
between him and escape. As he turns towards the society whose rights he
has outraged, its frown settles upon him; the penalties of the laws he
has violated await him; and he falls back despairing, and suffers the
fetters of the evil habit to whose power he has yielded himself to be
fastened closer and heavier upon him. O for some good angel, in the form
of a brother-man and touched with a feeling of his sins and infirmities,
to reassure his better nature and to point out a way of escape from its
body of death!
We have been led into these remarks by an account, given in the London
Weekly Chronicle, of a most remarkable interview between the professional
thieves of London and Lord Ashley,--a gentleman whose best patent of
nobility is to be found in his generous and untiring devotion to the
interests of his fellow-men. It appears that a philanthropic gentleman
in London had been applied to by two young thieves, who had relinquished
their evil practices and were obtaining a precarious but honest
livelihood by picking up bones and rags in the streets, their loss of
character closing against them all other employments. He had just been
reading an address of Lord Ashley's in favor of colonial emigration, and
he was led to ask one of the young men how he would like to emigrate.
"I should jump at the chance!" was the reply. Not long after the
gentleman was sent for to visit one of those obscure and ruinous courts
of the great metropolis where crime and poverty lie down together,--
localities which Dickens has pictured with such painful distinctness.
Here, to his surprise, he met a number of thieves and outlaws, who
declared themselves extremely anxious to know whether any hope could be
held out to them of obtaining an honest living, however humble, in the
colonies, as their only reason for continuing in their criminal course
was the impossibility of extricating themselves. He gave them such
advice and encouragement as he was able, and invited them to assemble
again, with such of their companions as they could persuade to do so, at
the room of the Irish Free School, for the purpose of meeting Lord
Ashley. On the 27th of the seventh month last the meeting took place.
At the hour appointed, Lord Ashley and five or six other benevolent
gentlemen, interested in emigration as a means of relief and reformation
to the criminal poor, entered the room, which was already well-nigh
filled. Two hundred and seven professed thieves were present. "Several
of the most experienced thieves were stationed at the door to prevent the
admission of any but thieves. Some four or five individuals, who were
not at first known, were subjected to examination, and only allowed to
remain on stating that they were, and being recognized as, members of the
dishonest fraternity; and before the proceedings of the evening commenced
the question was very carefully put, and repeated several times, whether
any one was in the room of whom others entertained doubts as to who he
was. The object of this care was, as so many of them were in danger of
'getting into trouble,' or, in other words, of being taken up for their
crimes, to ascertain if any who might betray them were present; and
another intention of this scrutiny was, to give those assembled, who
naturally would feel considerable fear, a fuller confidence in opening
their minds."
What a novel conference between the extremes of modern society! All that
is beautiful in refinement and education, moral symmetry and Christian
grace, contrasting with the squalor, the ignorance, the lifelong
depravity of men living "without God in the world,"--the pariahs of
civilization,--the moral lepers, at the sight of whom decency covers its
face, and cries out, "Unclean!" After a prayer had been offered, Lord
Ashley spoke at considerable length, making a profound impression on his
strange auditory as they listened to his plans of emigration, which
offered them an opportunity to escape from their miserable condition and
enter upon a respectable course of life. The hard heart melted and the
cold and cruel eye moistened. With one accord the wretched felons
responded to the language of Christian love and good-will, and declared
their readiness to follow the advice of their true friend. They looked
up to him as to an angel of mercy, and felt the malignant spirits which
had so long tormented them disarmed of all power of evil in the presence
of simple goodness. He stood in that felon audience like Spenser's Una
amidst the satyrs; unassailable and secure in the "unresistible might of
meekness," and panoplied in that "noble grace which dashed brute violence
with sudden adoration and mute awe."
Twenty years ago, when Elizabeth Fry ventured to visit those "spirits in
prison,"--the female tenants of Newgate,--her temerity was regarded with
astonishment, and her hope of effecting a reformation in the miserable
objects of her sympathy was held to be wholly visionary. Her personal
safety and the blessed fruits of her labors, nevertheless, confirmed the
language of her Divine Master to His disciples when He sent them forth as
lambs among wolves: "Behold, I give unto you power over all the power of
the enemy." The still more unpromising experiment of Lord Ashley, thus
far, has been equally successful; and we hail it as the introduction of a
new and more humane method of dealing with the victims of sin and
ignorance, and the temptations growing out of the inequalities and vices
of civilization.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
The sacred memory of mother and sister; the wisdom and dignity of women
of my own religious communion who have been accustomed to something like
equality in rights as well as duties; my experience as a co-worker with
noble and self-sacrificing women, as graceful and helpful in their
household duties as firm and courageous in their public advocacy of
unpopular truth; the steady friendships which have inspired and
strengthened me, and the reverence and respect which I feel for human
nature, irrespective of sex, compel me to look with something more than
acquiescence on the efforts you are making. I frankly confess that I am
not able to forsee all the consequences of the great social and political
change proposed, but of this I am, at least, sure, it is always safe to
do right, and the truest expediency is simple justice. I can understand,
without sharing, the misgivings of those who fear that, when the vote
drops from woman's hand into the ballot-box, the beauty and sentiment,
the bloom and sweetness, of womankind will go with it. But in this
matter it seems to me that we can trust Nature. Stronger than statutes
or conventions, she will be conservative of all that the true man loves
and honors in woman. Here and there may be found an equivocal, unsexed
Chevalier D'Eon, but the eternal order and fitness of things will remain.
I have no fear that man will be less manly or woman less womanly when
they meet on terms of equality before the law.
On the other hand, I do not see that the exercise of the ballot by woman
will prove a remedy for all the evils of which she justly complains. It
is her right as truly as mine, and when she asks for it, it is something
less than manhood to withhold it. But, unsupported by a more practical
education, higher aims, and a deeper sense of the responsibilities of
life and duty, it is not likely to prove a blessing in her hands any more
than in man's.
With great respect and hearty sympathy, I am very truly thy friend.
ITALIAN UNITY
For many years I have watched with deep interest and sympathy the popular
movement on the Italian peninsula, and especially every effort for the
deliverance of Rome from a despotism counting its age by centuries. I
looked at these struggles of the people with little reference to their
ecclesiastical or sectarian bearings. Had I been a Catholic instead of a
Protestant, I should have hailed every symptom of Roman deliverance from
Papal rule, occupying, as I have, the standpoint of a republican radical,
desirous that all men, of all creeds, should enjoy the civil liberty
which I prized so highly for myself.
The withdrawal of the temporal power of the Pope will prove a blessing to
the Catholic Church, as well as to the world. Many of its most learned
and devout priests and laymen have long seen the necessity of such a
change, which takes from it a reproach and scandal that could no longer
be excused or tolerated. A century hence it will have as few apologists
as the Inquisition or the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
In the belief that the unity of Italy and the overthrow of Papal rule
will strengthen the cause of liberty throughout the civilized' world, I
am very truly thy friend.
INDIAN CIVILIZATION.
The nomadic habits and warlike propensities of the native tribes are
indeed formidable but not insuperable difficulties in the way of their
elevation. The wildest of them may compare not unfavorably with those
Northern barbarian hordes that swooped down upon Christian Europe, and
who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had
conquered. The Arapahoes and Camanches of our day are no further removed
from the sweetness and light of Christian culture than were the
Scandinavian Sea Kings of the middle centuries, whose gods were patrons
of rapine and cruelty, their heaven a vast, cloud-built ale-house, where
ghostly warriors drank from the skulls of their victims, and whose hell
was a frozen horror of desolation and darkness, to be avoided only by
diligence in robbery and courage in murder. The descendants of these
human butchers are now among the best exponents of the humanizing
influence of the gospel of Christ. The report of the Superintendent of
the remnants of the once fierce and warlike Six Nations, now peaceable
and prosperous in Canada, shows that the Indian is not inferior to the
Norse ancestors of the Danes and Norwegians of our day in capability of
improvement.
[1880.]
I thank thee for thy letter, and beg of thee to assure the students that
I am deeply interested in their welfare and progress, and that my prayer
is that their inward and spiritual eyes may become so clear that they can
well dispense with the outward and material ones.
Read at the meeting in Boston, May, 1883, for the consideration of the
condition of the Indians in the United States.
Some of our friends and neighbors, who have been with us heretofore, last
year saw fit to vote with the opposite party. I would be the last to
deny their perfect right to do so, or to impeach their motives, but I
think they were mistaken in expecting that party to reform the abuses and
evils which they complained of. President Cleveland has proved himself
better than his party, and has done and said some good things which I
give him full credit for, but the instincts of his party are against him,
and must eventually prove too strong for him, and, instead of his
carrying the party, it will be likely to carry him. It has already
compelled him to put his hands in his pockets for electioneering
purposes, and travel all the way from Washington to Buffalo to give his
vote for a spoilsman and anti-civil service machine politician. I would
not like to call it a case of "offensive partisanship," but it looks a
good deal like it.
[1886.]
IT was said of St. Francis of Assisi, that he had attained, through the
fervor of his love, the secret of that deep amity with God and His
creation which, in the language of inspiration, makes man to be in league
with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field to be at peace
with him. The world has never been without tender souls, with whom the
golden rule has a broader application than its letter might seem to
warrant. The ancient Eastern seers recognized the rights of the brute
creation, and regarded the unnecessary taking of the life of the humblest
and meanest as a sin; and in almost all the old religions of the world
there are legends of saints, in the depth of whose peace with God and
nature all life was sacredly regarded as the priceless gift of heaven,
and who were thus enabled to dwell safely amidst lions and serpents.
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.
In our associations and kinship, our aims and interests, our common
claims in the great names and achievements of a common ancestry, we are
essentially one people. Whatever other nations may do, we at least
should be friends. God grant that the noble and generous attempt shall
not be in vain! May it hasten the time when the only rivalry between us
shall be the peaceful rivalry of progress and the gracious interchange of
good.
that indeed, out of their peculiar province, and apart from the routine
of their vocation, they have become the most thorough sceptics and
unbelievers among us. Yet it must be owned that, if they have not the
marvellous themselves, they are the cause of it in others. In certain
states of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professional
garb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within us. Imagination
goes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt. We
think of Jannes and Jambres; of the Persian magi; dim oak groves, with
Druid altars, and priests, and victims, rise before us. For what is the
priest even of our New England but a living testimony to the truth of the
supernatural and the reality of the unseen,--a man of mystery, walking in
the shadow of the ideal world,--by profession an expounder of spiritual
wonders? Laugh he may at the old tales of astrology and witchcraft and
demoniacal possession; but does he not believe and bear testimony to his
faith in the reality of that dark essence which Scripture more than hints
at, which has modified more or less all the religious systems and
speculations of the heathen world,--the Ahriman of the Parsee, the Typhon
of the Egyptian, the Pluto of the Roman mythology, the Devil of Jew,
Christian, and Mussulman, the Machinito of the Indian,--evil in the
universe of goodness, darkness in the light of divine intelligence,--in
itself the great and crowning mystery from which by no unnatural process
of imagination may be deduced everything which our forefathers believed
of the spiritual world and supernatural agency? That fearful being with
his tributaries and agents,--"the Devil and his angels,"--how awfully he
rises before us in the brief outline limning of the sacred writers! How
he glooms, "in shape and gesture proudly eminent," on the immortal canvas
of Milton and Dante! What a note of horror does his name throw into the
sweet Sabbath psalmody of our churches. What strange, dark fancies are
connected with the very language of common-law indictments, when grand
juries find under oath that the offence complained of has been committed
"at the instigation of the Devil"!
How hardly effaced are the impressions of childhood! Even at this day,
at the mention of the evil angel, an image rises before me like that with
which I used especially to horrify myself in an old copy of Pilgrim's
Progress. Horned, hoofed, scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudal
extremity twisted tight with rage, I remember him, illustrating the
tremendous encounter of Christian in the valley where "Apollyon straddled
over the whole breadth of the way." There was another print of the enemy
which made no slight impression upon me. It was the frontispiece of an
old, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady,
(who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind
enough to edify her young visitors,) containing a solemn account of the
fate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent
declaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the
lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith
commenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly,
without the power to suspend their exercise, until their feet and legs
were worn off to the knees! The rude wood-cut represented the demon
fiddler and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in
"cotillons, jigs, strathspeys, and reels." He would have answered very
well to the description of the infernal piper in Tam O'Shanter.
"Do you not believe in the Devil?" some one once asked the Non-conformist
Robinson. "I believe in God," was the reply; "don't you?"
The old schoolmen and fathers seem to agree that the Devil and his
ministers have bodies in some sort material, subject to passions and
liable to injury and pain. Origen has a curious notion that any evil
spirit who, in a contest with a human being, is defeated, loses from
thenceforth all his power of mischief, and may be compared to a wasp who
has lost his sting.
Trembling with terror, he passed down two flights of stairs, and found
himself treading on the cold brick floor of a large room in the basement,
or cellar, where he had never been before. The voice still beckoned him
onward; and, groping after it, his hand touched an upright post, against
which he leaned for a moment. He heard it again, apparently only two or
three yards in front of him "You have murdered a man; the officers are
close behind you; follow me!" Putting one foot forward while his hand
still grasped the post, it fell upon empty air, and he with difficulty
recovered himself. Stooping down and feeling with his hands, he found
himself on the very edge of a large uncovered cistern, or tank, filled
nearly to the top with water. The sudden shock of this discovery broke
the horrible enchantment. The whisperer was silent. He believed, at the
time, that he had been the subject, and well-nigh the victim, of a
diabolical delusion; and he states that, even now, with the recollection
of that strange whisper is always associated a thought of the universal
tempter.
Our worthy ancestors were, in their own view of the matter, the advance
guard and forlorn hope of Christendom in its contest with the bad angel.
The New World, into which they had so valiantly pushed the outposts of
the Church militant, was to them, not God's world, but the Devil's. They
stood there on their little patch of sanctified territory like the
gamekeeper of Der Freischutz in the charmed circle; within were prayer
and fasting, unmelodious psalmody and solemn hewing of heretics, "before
the Lord in Gilgal;" without were "dogs and sorcerers, red children of
perdition, Powah wizards," and "the foul fiend." In their grand old
wilderness, broken by fair, broad rivers and dotted with loveliest lakes,
hanging with festoons of leaf, and vine, and flower, the steep sides of
mountains whose naked tops rose over the surrounding verdure like altars
of a giant world,--with its early summer greenness and the many-colored
wonder of its autumn, all glowing as if the rainbows of a summer shower
had fallen upon it, under the clear, rich light of a sun to which the
misty day of their cold island was as moonlight,--they saw no beauty,
they recognized no holy revelation. It was to them terrible as the
forest which Dante traversed on his way to the world of pain. Every
advance step they made was upon the enemy's territory. And one has only
to read the writings of the two Mathers to perceive that that enemy was
to them no metaphysical abstraction, no scholastic definition, no figment
of a poetical fancy, but a living, active reality, alternating between
the sublimest possibilities of evil and the lowest details of mean
mischief; now a "tricksy spirit," disturbing the good-wife's platters or
soiling her newwashed linen, and anon riding the storm-cloud and pointing
its thunder-bolts; for, as the elder Mather pertinently inquires, "how
else is it that our meeting-houses are burned by the lightning?" What
was it, for instance, but his subtlety which, speaking through the lips
of Madame Hutchinson, confuted the "judges of Israel" and put to their
wits' end the godly ministers of the Puritan Zion? Was not his evil
finger manifested in the contumacious heresy of Roger Williams? Who else
gave the Jesuit missionaries--locusts from the pit as they were--such a
hold on the affections of those very savages who would not have scrupled
to hang the scalp of pious Father Wilson himself from their girdles? To
the vigilant eye of Puritanism was he not alike discernible in the light
wantonness of the May-pole revellers, beating time with the cloven foot
to the vain music of obscene dances, and in the silent, hat-canopied
gatherings of the Quakers, "the most melancholy of the sects," as Dr.
Moore calls them? Perilous and glorious was it, under these
circumstances, for such men as Mather and Stoughton to gird up their
stout loins and do battle with the unmeasured, all-surrounding terror.
Let no man lightly estimate their spiritual knight-errantry. The heroes
of old romance, who went about smiting dragons, lopping giants' heads,
and otherwise pleasantly diverting themselves, scarcely deserve mention
in comparison with our New England champions, who, trusting not to carnal
sword and lance, in a contest with principalities and powers, "spirits
that live throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man,"--
encountered their enemies with weapons forged by the stern spiritual
armorer of Geneva. The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance as
the legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltenebros and Florisando in
Amadis de Gaul. All about him was enchanted ground; devils glared on him
in his "closet wrestlings;" portents blazed in the heavens above him;
while he, commissioned and set apart as the watcher, and warder, and
spiritual champion of "the chosen people," stood ever ready for battle,
with open eye and quick ear for the detection of the subtle approaches of
the enemy. No wonder is it that the spirits of evil combined against
him; that they beset him as they did of old St. Anthony; that they shut
up the bowels of the General Court against his long-cherished hope of the
presidency of Old Harvard; that they even had the audacity to lay hands
on his anti-diabolical manuscripts, or that "ye divil that was in ye girl
flewe at and tore" his grand sermon against witches. How edifying is his
account of the young bewitched maiden whom he kept in his house for the
purpose of making experiments which should satisfy all "obstinate
Sadducees"! How satisfactory to orthodoxy and confounding to heresy is
the nice discrimination of "ye divil in ye girl," who was choked in
attempting to read the Catechism, yet found no trouble with a pestilent
Quaker pamphlet; who was quiet and good-humored when the worthy Doctor
was idle, but went into paroxysms of rage when he sat down to indite his
diatribes against witches and familiar spirits!
The enemies of the Quakers, in order to account for the power and
influence of their first preachers, accused them of magic and
sorcery. "The Priest of Wakefield," says George Fox (one trusts he
does not allude to our old friend the Vicar), "raised many wicked
slanders upon me, as that I carried bottles with me and made people
drink, and that made them follow me; that I rode upon a great black
horse, and was seen in one county upon my black horse in one hour,
and in the same hour in another county fourscore miles off." In his
account of the mob which beset him at Walney Island, he says: "When
I came to myself I saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my
face, and her husband lying over me to keep off the blows and
stones; for the people had persuaded her that I had bewitched her
husband."
All this is pleasant enough now; we can laugh at the Doctor and his
demons; but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on Salem
Hill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with
planks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and his
life from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a
whole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sick
dream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie. We may
laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also
pity and shudder. The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion in
its own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule,
their spell-bound generation,--the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone,
the English Scot, and the New England Calef,--deserve high honors as the
benefactors of their race. It is true they were branded through life as
infidels and "damnable Sadducees;" but the truth which they uttered
lived after them, and wrought out its appointed work, for it had a Divine
commission and Godspeed.
Dimmer and dimmer, as the generations pass away, this tremendous terror,
this all-pervading espionage of evil, this active incarnation of
motiveless malignity, presents itself to the imagination. The once
imposing and solemn rite of exorcism has become obsolete in the Church.
Men are no longer, in any quarter of the world, racked or pressed under
planks to extort a confession of diabolical alliance. The heretic now
laughs to scorn the solemn farce of the Church which, in the name of the
All-Merciful, formally delivers him over to Satan. And for the sake of
abused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when we
consider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professed
Christendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual and
temporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in a
despair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliance
with tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes of
terror,--the spectres of God's wrath to the uttermost, the fiend, and
that torment the smoke of which rises forever. Through fear of a Satan
of the future,--a sort of ban-dog of priestcraft, held in its leash and
ready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority,--our toiling
brothers of past ages have permitted their human taskmasters to convert
God's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happiness
of all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actual
terrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm of
Rhadamanthus. And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightest
degree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution,--the
accountability of the spirit for the deeds done in the body,--the truth
of which reason, revelation, and conscience unite in attesting as the
necessary result of the preservation in another state of existence of the
soul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that the
many are no longer willing to permit the few, for their especial benefit,
to convert our common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, in
return for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can have
gracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one. Better
is the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil; holier and more
acceptable the obedience of love and reverence than the submission of
slavish terror. The heart which has felt the "beauty of holiness," which
has been in some measure attuned to the divine harmony which now, as of
old in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of "glory to God, peace on
earth, and good-will to men," in the serene atmosphere of that "perfect
love which casteth out fear," smiles at the terrors which throng the sick
dreams of the sensual, which draw aside the nightcurtains of guilt, and
startle with whispers of revenge the oppressor of the poor.
The excellent Baxter and other pious men of his day deprecated in all
sincerity and earnestness the growing disbelief in witchcraft and
diabolical agency, fearing that mankind, losing faith in a visible Satan
and in the supernatural powers of certain paralytic old women, would
diverge into universal skepticism. It is one of the saddest of sights to
see these good men standing sentry at the horn gate of dreams; attempting
against the most discouraging odds to defend their poor fallacies from
profane and irreverent investigation; painfully pleading doubtful
Scripture and still more doubtful tradition in behalf of detected and
convicted superstitions tossed on the sharp horns of ridicule, stretched
on the rack of philosophy, or perishing under the exhausted receiver of
science. A clearer knowledge of the aspirations, capacities, and
necessities of the human soul, and of the revelations which the infinite
Spirit makes to it, not only through the senses by the phenomena of
outward nature, but by that inward and direct communion which, under
different names, has been recognized by the devout and thoughtful of
every religious sect and school of philosophy, would have saved them much
anxious labor and a good deal of reproach withal in their hopeless
championship of error. The witches of Baxter and "the black man" of
Mather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of
sane men. But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in
its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star worlds
and thought-wearying spaces, remains. Nature's mighty miracle is still
over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the
inheritance of humanity; still are there beautiful repentances and holy
deathbeds; and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises,
starlike, the great idea of duty. By higher and better influences than
the poor spectres of superstition, man must henceforth be taught to
reverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness,
and sin, and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy
of an overruling Providence,--walking by faith through the shadow and
mystery, and cheered by the remembrance that, whatever may be his
apparent allotment,--
It is a sad spectacle to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith and
its "reasonable service" of devotion transformed by fanaticism and
credulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, if
possible, there is one still sadder. It is that of men in our own time
regarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, and
professing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of a
godless universe, and new occasion for sneering at sincere devotion as
cant, and humble reverence as fanaticism. Alas! in comparison with
such, the religious enthusiast, who in the midst of his delusion still
feels that he is indeed a living soul and an heir of immortality, to whom
God speaks from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man. Better
is it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancing
Shaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith,
than to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look upon
ourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization,--barnacles on a
dead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earth
gazing into earth, and saying to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to
the worm, "Thou art my sister."
[1844.]
Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city. It
is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead,"--a tract of some forty
or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and
covered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is
conspicuous. The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is
marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family
lots." It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills,
its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a
solitary farm-house attracts the eye. All is still and solemn, as befits
the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the
great lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted
foliage of the autumnal forest.
Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting. The Lowell and Boston
Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing
there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing
along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,--the
young, the beautiful, the gay,--busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle
years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs,
hurrying on, on,--car after car,--like the generations of man sweeping
over the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.
It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite
resort. The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among
these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light
upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in
these leafy recesses. Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the
gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad,
--a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow. How true is it, that, in the
language of Wordsworth,--
The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated
their grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popular
resort. The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through
which the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, and
beneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse through
the long days of summer, in all the luxurious quiet and happy
indifference of the indolent East. Most of the visitors whom I met at
the Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along,
apparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full,
perhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves the
stern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlanded
mounds. But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence
of the dead. I cannot jest above the gravestone. My spirit is silenced
and rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me,
and involuntarily pays:
Even Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and birdvoices only serve to remind
me that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leaves
and sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listened
to the same wild music of the woods for the last time. Then, too, comes
the saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, that
these trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fall
upon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds and
the ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes and ears have closed
forever. It is hard for us to realize this. We are so accustomed to
look upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seems
strange that they should survive us. Tennyson, in his exquisite
metaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to this
sentiment:--
Yet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery,--a curtain lifted only
on one side by the hands of those who are passing under its solemn
shadow. No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknown
state; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal the
mysteries towards which we are all moving. "Man giveth up the ghost; and
where is he?"
SWEDENBORG
[1844.]
THERE are times when, looking only on the surface of things, one is
almost ready to regard Lowell as a sort of sacred city of Mammon,--the
Benares of gain: its huge mills, temples; its crowded dwellings, lodging-
places of disciples and "proselytes within the gate;" its warehouses,
stalls for the sale of relics. A very mean idol-worship, too, unrelieved
by awe and reverence,--a selfish, earthward-looking devotion to the
"least-erected spirit that fell from paradise." I grow weary of seeing
man and mechanism reduced to a common level, moved by the same impulse,
answering to the same bell-call. A nightmare of materialism broods over
all. I long at times to hear a voice crying through the streets like
that of one of the old prophets proclaiming the great first truth,--that
the Lord alone is God.
Yet is there not another side to the picture? High over sounding
workshops spires glisten in the sun,--silent fingers pointing heavenward.
The workshops themselves are instinct with other and subtler processes
than cotton-spinning or carpet-weaving. Each human being who watches
beside jack or power loom feels more or less intensely that it is a
solemn thing to live. Here are sin and sorrow, yearnings for lost peace,
outgushing gratitude of forgiven spirits, hopes and fears, which stretch
beyond the horizon of time into eternity. Death is here. The graveyard
utters its warning. Over all bends the eternal heaven in its silence and
mystery. Nature, even here, is mightier than Art, and God is above all.
Underneath the din of labor and the sounds of traffic, a voice, felt
rather than beard, reaches the heart, prompting the same fearful
questions which stirred the soul of the world's oldest poet,--"If a man
die, shall he live again?" "Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"
Out of the depths of burdened and weary hearts comes up the agonizing
inquiry, "What shall I do to be saved?" "Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?"
[1844.]
The Churchman, listening to the solemn chant of weal music or the deep
tones of the organ, thinks of the song of the elders and the golden harps
of the New Jerusalem.
The heaven of the northern nations of Europe was a gross and sensual
reflection of the earthly life of a barbarous and brutal people.
The excellent Dr. Nelson, of Missouri, was one who, while on earth,
seemed to live another and higher life in the contemplation of infinite
purity and happiness. A friend once related an incident concerning him
which made a deep impression upon my mind. They had been travelling
through a summer's forenoon in the prairie, and had lain down to rest
beneath a solitary tree. The Doctor lay for a long time, silently
looking upwards through the openings of the boughs into the still
heavens, when he repeated the following lines, in a low tone, as if
communing with himself in view of the wonders he described:--
"O the joys that are there mortal eye bath not seen!
O the songs they sing there, with hosannas between!
O the thrice-blessed song of the Lamb and of Moses!
O brightness on brightness! the pearl gate uncloses!
O white wings of angels! O fields white with roses!
O white tents of peace, where the rapt soul reposes
O the waters so still, and the pastures so green!"
The brief hints afforded us by the sacred writings concerning the better
land are inspiring and beautiful. Eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard,
neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive of the good in
store for the righteous. Heaven is described as a quiet habitation,--a
rest remaining for the people of God. Tears shall be wiped away from all
eyes; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither
shall there be any more pain. To how many death-beds have these words
spoken peace! How many failing hearts have gathered strength from them
to pass through the dark valley of shadows!
Yet we should not forget that "the kingdom of heaven is within;" that it
is the state and affections of the soul, the answer of a good conscience,
the sense of harmony with God, a condition of time as well as of
eternity. What is really momentous and all-important with us is the
present, by which the future is shaped and colored. A mere change of
locality cannot alter the actual and intrinsic qualities of the soul.
Guilt and remorse would make the golden streets of Paradise intolerable
as the burning marl of the infernal abodes; while purity and innocence
would transform hell itself into heaven.
THERE are men who, irrespective of the names by which they are called in
the Babel confusion of sects, are endeared to the common heart of
Christendom. Our doors open of their own accord to receive them. For in
them we feel that in some faint degree, and with many limitations, the
Divine is again manifested: something of the Infinite Love shines out of
them; their very garments have healing and fragrance borrowed from the
bloom of Paradise. So of books. There are volumes which perhaps contain
many things, in the matter of doctrine and illustration, to which our
reason does not assent, but which nevertheless seem permeated with a
certain sweetness and savor of life. They have the Divine seal and
imprimatur; they are fragrant with heart's-ease and asphodel; tonic with
the leaves which are for the healing of the nations. The meditations of
the devout monk of Kempen are the common heritage of Catholic and
Protestant; our hearts burn within us as we walk with Augustine under
Numidian fig-trees in the gardens of Verecundus; Feuelon from his
bishop's palace and John Woolman from his tailor's shop speak to us in
the same language. The unknown author of that book which Luther loved
next to his Bible, the Theologia Germanica, is just as truly at home in
this present age, and in the ultra Protestantism of New England, as in
the heart of Catholic Europe, and in the fourteenth century. For such
books know no limitations of time or place; they have the perpetual
freshness and fitness of truth; they speak out of profound experience
heart answers to heart as we read them; the spirit that is in man, and
the inspiration that giveth understanding, bear witness to them. The
bent and stress of their testimony are the same, whether written in this
or a past century, by Catholic or Quaker: self-renunciation,--
reconcilement to the Divine will through simple faith in the Divine
goodness, and the love of it which must needs follow its recognition, the
life of Christ made our own by self-denial and sacrifice, and the
fellowship of His suffering for the good of others, the indwelling
Spirit, leading into all truth, the Divine Word nigh us, even in our
hearts. They have little to do with creeds, or schemes of doctrine, or
the partial and inadequate plans of salvation invented by human
speculation and ascribed to Him who, it is sufficient to know, is able to
save unto the uttermost all who trust in Him. They insist upon simple
faith and holiness of life, rather than rituals or modes of worship; they
leave the merely formal, ceremonial, and temporal part of religion to
take care of itself, and earnestly seek for the substantial, the
necessary, and the permanent.
With these legacies of devout souls, it seems to me, the little volume
herewith presented is not wholly unworthy of a place. It assumes the
life and power of the gospel as a matter of actual experience; it bears
unmistakable evidence of a realization, on the part of its author, of the
truth, that Christianity is not simply historical and traditional, but
present and permanent, with its roots in the infinite past and its
branches in the infinite future, the eternal spring and growth of Divine
love; not the dying echo of words uttered centuries ago, never to be
repeated, but God's good tidings spoken afresh in every soul,--the
perennial fountain and unstinted outflow of wisdom and goodness, forever
old and forever new. It is a lofty plea for patience, trust, hope, and
holy confidence, under the shadow, as well as in the light, of Christian
experience, whether the cloud seems to rest on the tabernacle, or moves
guidingly forward. It is perhaps too exclusively addressed to those who
minister in the inner sanctuary, to be entirely intelligible to the
vaster number who wait in the outer courts; it overlooks, perhaps, too
much the solidarity and oneness of humanity;' but all who read it will
feel its earnestness, and confess to the singular beauty of its style,
the strong, steady march of its argument, and the wide and varied
learning which illustrates it.
["The good are not so good as I once thought, nor the bad so evil,
and in all there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to
testify for God and holiness, than I once believed."--Baxter.]
"This is a book for Christian men, for the quiet hour of holy solitude,
when the heart longs and waits for access to the presence of the Master.
The weary heart that thirsts amidst its conflicts and its toils for
refreshing water will drink eagerly of these sweet and refreshing words.
To thoughtful men and women, especially such as have learnt any of the
patience of hope in the experiences of sorrow and trial, we commend this
little volume most heartily and earnestly."
_The Patience of Hope_ fell into my hands soon after its publication in
Edinburgh, some two years ago. I was at once impressed by its
extraordinary richness of language and imagery,--its deep and solemn tone
of meditation in rare combination with an eminently practical tendency,--
philosophy warm and glowing with love. It will, perhaps, be less the
fault of the writer than of her readers, if they are not always able to
eliminate from her highly poetical and imaginative language the subtle
metaphysical verity or phase of religious experience which she seeks to
express, or that they are compelled to pass over, without appropriation,
many things which are nevertheless profoundly suggestive as vague
possibilities of the highest life. All may not be able to find in some
of her Scriptural citations the exact weight and significance so apparent
to her own mind. She startles us, at times, by her novel applications of
familiar texts, by meanings reflected upon them from her own spiritual
intuitions, making the barren Baca of the letter a well. If the
rendering be questionable, the beauty and quaint felicity of illustration
and comparison are unmistakable; and we call to mind Augustine's saying,
that two or more widely varying interpretations of Scripture may be alike
true in themselves considered. "When one saith, Moses meant as I do,'
and another saith, 'Nay, but as I do,' I ask, more reverently, 'Why not
rather as both, if both be true?"
Some minds, for instance, will hesitate to assent to the use of certain
Scriptural passages as evidence that He who is the Light of men, the Way
and the Truth, in the mystery of His economy, designedly "delays,
withdraws, and even hides Himself from those who love and follow Him."
They will prefer to impute spiritual dearth and darkness to human
weakness, to the selfishness which seeks a sign for itself, to evil
imaginations indulged, to the taint and burden of some secret sin, or to
some disease and exaggeration of the conscience, growing out of bodily
infirmity, rather than to any purpose on the part of our Heavenly Father
to perplex and mislead His children. The sun does not shine the less
because one side of our planet is in darkness. To borrow the words of
Augustine "Thou, Lord, forsakest nothing thou hast made. Thou alone art
near to those even who remove far from thee. Let them turn and seek
thee, for not as they have forsaken their Creator hast thou forsaken thy
creation." It is only by holding fast the thought of Infinite Goodness,
and interpreting doubtful Scripture and inward spiritual experience by
the light of that central idea, that we can altogether escape the
dreadful conclusion of Pascal, that revelation has been given us in
dubious cipher, contradictory and mystical, in order that some, through
miraculous aid, may understand it to their salvation, and others be
mystified by it to their eternal loss.
"Such of our readers--a fast increasing number--as have read and enjoyed
_The Patience of Hope_, listening to the gifted nature which, through
such deep and subtile thought, and through affection and godliness still
deeper and more quick, has charmed and soothed them, will not be
surprised to learn that she is not only poetical, but, what is more, a
poet, and one as true as George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, or our own
Cowper; for, with all our admiration of the searching, fearless
speculation, the wonderful power of speaking clearly upon dark and all
but unspeakable subjects, the rich outcome of 'thoughts that wander
through eternity,' which increases every time we take up that wonderful
little book, we confess we were surprised at the kind and the amount of
true poetic _vis_ in these poems, from the same fine and strong hand.
There is a personality and immediateness, a sort of sacredness and
privacy, as if they were overheard rather than read, which gives to these
remarkable productions a charm and a flavor all their own. With no
effort, no consciousness of any end but that of uttering the inmost
thoughts and desires of the heart, they flow out as clear, as living, as
gladdening as the wayside well, coming from out the darkness of the
central depths, filtered into purity by time and travel. The waters are
copious, sometimes to overflowing; but they are always limpid and
unforced, singing their own quiet tune, not saddening, though sometimes
sad, and their darkness not that of obscurity, but of depth, like that of
the deep sea.
ASCENDING.
LIFE TAPESTRY.
HOPE.
GONE.
A bell's dull clangor that hath sped so far, it faints and dies
So soon as it hath reached the ear whereto its errand lies;
In accents clearer far than words, spake, "Pray yet longer, pray,
For one that ever prayed for thee this night hath passed away;
"Was stored no blessing and no boon, for thee she did not claim,
(So lowly, yet importunate!) and ever with thy name
"This very night within my arms this gracious soul I bore Within the
Gate, where many a prayer of hers had gone before;
"And where she resteth, evermore one constant song they raise Of 'Holy,
holy,' so that now I know not if she prays;
"But for the voice of praise in Heaven, a voice of Prayer hath gone
From Earth; thy name upriseth now no more; pray on, pray on!"
The following may serve as a specimen of the writer's lighter, half-
playful strain of moralizing:--
SEEKING.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Thou, O Friend
From heaven, that madest this our heart Thine own,
Dost pierce the broken language of its moan--
Thou dost not scorn our needs, but satisfy!
Each yearning deep and wide,
Each claim, is justified;
Our young illusions fail not, though they die
Within the brightness of Thy Rising, kissed
To happy death, like early clouds that lie
About the gates of Dawn,--a golden mist
Paling to blissful white, through rose and amethyst.
No one, I am quite certain, will regret that I have made these liberal
quotations. Apart from their literary merit, they have a special
interest for the readers of The Patience of Hope, as more fully
illustrating the writer's personal experience and aspirations.
Tauler in mediaeval times and Woolman in the last century are among the
most earnest teachers of the inward life and spiritual nature of
Christianity, yet both were distinguished for practical benevolence.
They did not separate the two great commandments. Tauler strove with
equal intensity of zeal to promote the temporal and the spiritual welfare
of men. In the dark and evil time in which he lived, amidst the untold
horrors of the "Black Plague," he illustrated by deeds of charity and
mercy his doctrine of disinterested benevolence. Woolman's whole life
was a nobler Imitation of Christ than that fervid rhapsody of monastic
piety which bears the name.
How faithful, yet, withal, how full of kindness, were his rebukes of
those who refused labor its just reward, and ground the faces of the
poor? How deep and entire was his sympathy with overtasked and ill-paid
laborers; with wet and illprovided sailors; with poor wretches
blaspheming in the mines, because oppression had made them mad; with the
dyers plying their unhealthful trade to minister to luxury and pride;
with the tenant wearing out his life in the service of a hard landlord;
and with the slave sighing over his unrequited toil! What a significance
there was in his vision of the "dull, gloomy mass" which appeared before
him, darkening half the heavens, and which he was told was "human beings
in as great misery as they could be and live; and he was mixed with them,
and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate
being"! His saintliness was wholly unconscious; he seems never to have
thought himself any nearer to the tender heart of God than the most
miserable sinner to whom his compassion extended. As he did not
live, so neither did he die to himself. His prayer upon his death-bed
was for others rather than himself; its beautiful humility and simple
trust were marred by no sensual imagery of crowns and harps and golden
streets, and personal beatific exaltations; but tender and touching
concern for suffering humanity, relieved only by the thought of the
paternity of God, and of His love and omnipotence, alone found utterance
in ever-memorable words.
The following letters were addressed to the Editor of the Friends' Review
in Philadelphia, in reference to certain changes of principle and
practice in the Society then beginning to be observable, but which have
since more than justified the writer's fears and solicitude.
I.
But for myself I prefer the old ways. With the broadest possible
tolerance for all honest seekers after truth! I love the Society of
Friends. My life has been nearly spent in laboring with those of other
sects in behalf of the suffering and enslaved; and I have never felt like
quarrelling with Orthodox or Unitarians, who were willing to pull with
me, side by side, at the rope of Reform. A very large proportion of my
dearest personal friends are outside of our communion; and I have learned
with John Woolman to find "no narrowness respecting sects and opinions."
But after a kindly and candid survey of them all, I turn to my own
Society, thankful to the Divine Providence which placed me where I am;
and with an unshaken faith in the one distinctive doctrine of Quakerism--
the Light within--the immanence of the Divine Spirit in Christianity. I
cheerfully recognize and bear testimony to the good works and lives of
those who widely differ in faith and practice; but I have seen no truer
types of Christianity, no better men and women, than I have known and
still know among those who not blindly, but intelligently, hold the
doctrines and maintain the testimonies of our early Friends. I am not
blind to the shortcomings of Friends. I know how much we have lost by
narrowness and coldness and inactivity, the overestimate of external
observances, the neglect of our own proper work while acting as
conscience-keepers for others. We have not, as a society, been active
enough in those simple duties which we owe to our suffering fellow-
creatures, in that abundant labor of love and self-denial which is never
out of place. Perhaps our divisions and dissensions might have been
spared us if we had been less "at ease in Zion." It is in the decline of
practical righteousness that men are most likely to contend with each
other for dogma and ritual, for shadow and letter, instead of substance
and spirit. Hence I rejoice in every sign of increased activity in doing
good among us, in the precious opportunities afforded of working with the
Divine Providence for the Freedmen and Indians; since the more we do, in
the true spirit of the gospel, for others, the more we shall really do
for ourselves. There is no danger of lack of work for those who, with an
eye single to the guidance of Truth, look for a place in God's vineyard;
the great work which the founders of our Society began is not yet done;
the mission of Friends is not accomplished, and will not be until this
world of ours, now full of sin and suffering, shall take up, in jubilant
thanksgiving, the song of the Advent: "Glory to God in the highest!
Peace on earth and good-will to men!"
It is charged that our Society lacks freedom and adaptation to the age in
which we live, that there is a repression of individuality and manliness
among us. I am not prepared to deny it in certain respects. But, if we
look at the matter closely, we shall see that the cause is not in the
central truth of Quakerism, but in a failure to rightly comprehend it; in
an attempt to fetter with forms and hedge about with dogmas that great
law of Christian liberty, which I believe affords ample scope for the
highest spiritual aspirations and the broadest philanthropy. If we did
but realize it, we are "set in a large place."
II.
I believe that the world needs the Society of Friends as a testimony and
a standard. I know that this is the opinion of some of the best and most
thoughtful members of other Christian sects. I know that any serious
departure from the original foundation of our Society would give pain to
many who, outside of our communion, deeply realize the importance of our
testimonies. They fail to read clearly the signs of the times who do not
see that the hour is coming when, under the searching eye of philosophy
and the terrible analysis of science, the letter and the outward evidence
will not altogether avail us; when the surest dependence must be upon the
Light of Christ within, disclosing the law and the prophets in our own
souls, and confirming the truth of outward Scripture by inward
experience; when smooth stones from the brook of present revelation
shall' prove mightier than the weapons of Saul; when the doctrine of the
Holy Spirit, as proclaimed by George Fox and lived by John Woolman, shall
be recognized as the only efficient solvent of doubts raised by an age of
restless inquiry. In this belief my letter was written. I am sorry it
did not fall to the lot of a more fitting hand; and can only hope that no
consideration of lack of qualification on the part of its writer may
lessen the value of whatever testimony to truth shall be found in it.
After all, anything like personal eulogy seems out of place in speaking
of one who in the humblest self-abasement sought no place in the world's
estimation, content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of his
Master; and who, as has been remarked, through modesty concealed the
events in which he was an actor. A desire to supply in some sort this
deficiency in his Journal is my especial excuse for this introductory
paper.
. . . . . . . . .
Such was the state of things when, in 1671, George Fox visited Barbadoes.
He was one of those men to whom it is given to discern through the mists
of custom and prejudice something of the lineaments of absolute truth,
and who, like the Hebrew lawgiver, bear with them, from a higher and
purer atmosphere, the shining evidence of communion with the Divine
Wisdom. He saw slavery in its mildest form among his friends, but his
intuitive sense of right condemned it. He solemnly admonished those who
held slaves to bear in mind that they were brethren, and to train them up
in the fear of God. "I desired, also," he says, "that they would cause
their overseers to deal gently and mildly with their negroes, and not use
cruelty towards them as the manner of some hath been and is; and that,
after certain years of servitude, they should make them free."
In 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisited
Barbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of
slaves. He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among
the blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge. It was
probably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends
in Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves. It is one of
the first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro
slavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls
of Urban and Leo the Tenth.
The Society gave these memorials a cold reception. The love of gain and
power was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters
and merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the
Chester meeting to take the shape of discipline. The utmost that could
be obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to
the importation of negroes, and a desire that "Friends generally do, as
much as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought
in, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is only
caution, and not censure."
In the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the same
question. Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friends
became purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in the
foreign traffic. In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth and
Nantucket suggested that it was "not agreeable to truth to purchase
slaves and keep them during their term of life." Nothing was done in the
Yearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importing
negroes was censured. That the practice was continued notwithstanding,
for many years afterwards, is certain. In 1758, a rule was adopted
prohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from
engaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade.
In the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was made
the instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in the
Society of Friends. A small storekeeper at Mount Holly, in New Jersey, a
member of the Society, sold a negro woman, and requested the young man in
his employ to make a bill of sale of her.
When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty
years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and
the house of Woolman, then standing. He describes it as a very
"humble abode." But one person was then living in the town who had
ever seen its venerated owner. This aged man stated that he was at
Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary
among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers. John
Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death,
as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a
smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature,
when a single blow terminated its existence. Nothing was more
remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the
well-being and comfort of the brute creation. "What is religion?"
asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman. "Tenderness toward
all creatures." Or, as Woolman expresses it, "Where the love of God
is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject
to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen
that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator
intends for them under our government."]
On taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in
his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his
fellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against the desecration of
His image spoke in the soul. He yielded to the will of his employer,
but, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both to
the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent
with the Christian religion. This young man was John Woolman. The
circumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long testimony
against slavery. In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and
North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. It
appeared to him, in his own words, "as a dark gloominess overhanging the
land." On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was
published in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to the
Southern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he
was compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who
were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could
not comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift
food and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression. He was a
poor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either placed
the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family,
for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had
opportunity. Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled
in the mischief of slavery. Elders and ministers, as well as the younger
and less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands.
He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the
same Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since
been cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; and
Baptist preachers for the same purpose. He found the meetings generally
in a low and evil state. The gold of original Quakerism had become dim,
and the fine gold changed. The spirit of the world prevailed among them,
and had wrought an inward desolation. Instead of meekness, gentleness,
and heavenly wisdom, he found "a spirit of fierceness and love of
dominion."
[Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who sometimes visited him.
Among other schemes of reform he entertained the idea of converting
all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three
witnesses,--himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr.
Franklin. But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the
three "chosen vessels" got into a violent controversy on points of
doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been
an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project
of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each
other.]
This solemn and weighty appeal was responded to by many in the assembly,
in a spirit of sympathy and unity. Some of the slave-holding members
expressed their willingness that a strict rule of discipline should be
adopted against dealing in slaves for the future. To this it was
answered that the root of the evil would never be reached effectually
until a searching inquiry was made into the circumstances and motives of
such as held slaves. At length the truth in a great measure triumphed
over all opposition; and, without any public dissent, the meeting agreed
that the injunction of our Lord and Saviour to do to others as we would
that others should do to us should induce Friends who held slaves "to set
them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them," and four
Friends--John Woolman, John Scarborough, Daniel Stanton, and John Sykes--
were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept
slaves, within the limits of the meeting.
An extract or two from the Journal at this period will serve to show both
the nature of the service in which he was engaged and the frame of mind
in which he accomplished it:--
"In the beginning of the 12th month I joined in company with my friends,
John Sykes and Daniel Stanton, in visiting such as had slaves. Some,
whose hearts were rightly exercised about them, appeared to be glad of
our visit, but in some places our way was more difficult. I often saw
the necessity of keeping down to that root from whence our concern
proceeded, and have cause in reverent thankfulness humbly to bow down
before the Lord who was near to me, and preserved my mind in calmness
under some sharp conflicts, and begat a spirit of sympathy and tenderness
in me towards some who were grievously entangled by the spirit of this
world."
"1st month, 1759.--Having found my mind drawn to visit some of the more
active members of society at Philadelphia who had slaves, I met my friend
John Churchman there by agreement, and we continued about a week in the
city. We visited some that were sick, and some widows and their
families; and the other part of the time was mostly employed in visiting
such as had slaves. It was a time of deep exercise; but looking often to
the Lord for assistance, He in unspeakable kindness favored us with the
influence of that spirit which crucifies to the greatness and splendor of
this world, and enabled us to go through some heavy labors, in which we
found peace."
These labors were attended with the blessing of the God of the poor and
oppressed. Dealing in slaves was almost entirely abandoned, and many who
held slaves set them at liberty. But many members still continuing the
practice, a more emphatic testimony against it was issued by the Yearly
Meeting in 1774; and two years after the subordinate meetings were
directed to deny the right of membership to such as persisted in holding
their fellow-men as property.
A concern was now felt for the temporal and religious welfare of the
emancipated slaves, and in 1779 the Yearly Meeting came to the conclusion
that some reparation was due from the masters to their former slaves for
services rendered while in the condition of slavery. The following is an
extract from an epistle on this subject:
"We are united in judgment that the state of the oppressed people who
have been held by any of us, or our predecessors, in captivity and
slavery, calls for a deep inquiry and close examination how far we are
clear of withholding from them what under such an exercise may open to
view as their just right; and therefore we earnestly and affectionately
entreat our brethren in religious profession to bring this matter home,
and that all who have let the oppressed go free may attend to the further
openings of duty.
John Woolman, in his Journal for 1769, states, that having some years
before, as one of the executors of a will, disposed of the services of a
negro boy belonging to the estate until he should reach the age of thirty
years, he became uneasy in respect to the transaction, and, although he
had himself derived no pecuniary benefit from it, and had simply acted as
the agent of the heirs of the estate to which the boy belonged, he
executed a bond, binding himself to pay the master of the young man for
four years and a half of his unexpired term of service.
The New England Yearly Meeting then, as now, was held in Newport, on
Rhode Island. In the year 1760 John Woolman, in the course of a
religious visit to New England, attended that meeting. He saw the
horrible traffic in human beings,--the slave-ships lying at the wharves
of the town, the sellers and buyers of men and women and children
thronging the market-place. The same abhorrent scenes which a few years
after stirred the spirit of the excellent Hopkins to denounce the slave-
trade and slavery as hateful in the sight of God to his congregation at
Newport were enacted in the full view and hearing of the annual
convocation of Friends, many of whom were themselves partakers in the
shame and wickedness. "Understanding," he says, "that a large number of
slaves had been imported from Africa into the town, and were then on sale
by a member of our Society, my appetite failed; I grew outwardly weak,
and had a feeling of the condition of Habakkuk: 'When I heard, my belly
trembled, my lips quivered; I trembled in myself, that I might rest in
the day of trouble.' I had many cogitations, and was sorely distressed."
He prepared a memorial to the Legislature, then in session, for the
signatures of Friends, urging that body to take measures to put an end to
the importation of slaves. His labors in the Yearly Meeting appear to
have been owned and blessed by the Divine Head of the church. The London
Epistle for 1758, condemning the unrighteous traffic in men, was read,
and the substance of it embodied in the discipline of the meeting; and
the following query was adopted, to be answered by the subordinate
meetings:--
At the close of the Yearly Meeting, John Woolman requested those members
of the Society who held slaves to meet with him in the chamber of the
house for worship, where he expressed his concern for the well-being of
the slaves, and his sense of the iniquity of the practice of dealing in
or holding them as property. His tender exhortations were not lost upon
his auditors; his remarks were kindly received, and the gentle and loving
spirit in which they were offered reached many hearts.
It was stated in the Epistle to London Yearly Meeting of the year 1772,
that a few Friends had freed their slaves from bondage, but that others
"have been so reluctant thereto that they have been disowned for not
complying with the advice of this meeting."
In 1773 the following minute was made: "It is our sense and judgment that
truth not only requires the young of capacity and ability, but likewise
the aged and impotent, and also all in a state of infancy and nonage,
among Friends, to be discharged and set free from a state of slavery,
that we do no more claim property in the human race, as we do in the
brutes that perish."
In the New York Yearly Meeting, slave-trading was prohibited about the
middle of the last century. In 1771, in consequence of an Epistle from
the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, a committee was appointed to visit those
who held slaves, and to advise with them in relation to emancipation. In
1776 it was made a disciplinary offence to buy, sell, or hold slaves upon
any condition. In 1784 but one slave was to be found in the limits of
the meeting. In the same year, by answers from the several subordinate
meetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for past
services had been effected between the emancipated negroes and their
masters in all save three cases.
In the Virginia Yearly Meeting slavery had its strongest hold. Its
members, living in the midst of slave-holding communities, were
necessarily exposed to influences adverse to emancipation. I have
already alluded to the epistle addressed to them by William Edmondson,
and to the labors of John Woolman while travelling among them. In 1757
the Virginia Yearly Meeting condemned the foreign slave-trade. In 1764
it enjoined upon its members the duty of kindness towards their servants,
of educating them, and carefully providing for their food and clothing.
Four years after, its members were strictly prohibited from purchasing
any more slaves. In 1773 it earnestly recommended the immediate
manumission of all slaves held in bondage, after the females had reached
eighteen and the males twenty-one years of age. At the same time it was
advised that committees should be appointed for the purpose of
instructing the emancipated persons in the principles of morality and
religion, and for advising and aiding them in their temporal concerns.
I quote a single paragraph from the advice sent down to the subordinate
meetings, as a beautiful manifestation of the fruits of true repentance:--
"It is the solid sense of this meeting, that we of the present generation
are under strong obligations to express our love and concern for the
offspring of those people who by their labors have greatly contributed
towards the cultivation of these colonies under the afflictive
disadvantage of enduring a hard bondage, and the benefit of whose toil
many among us are enjoying."
In 1784, the different Quarterly Meetings having reported that many still
held slaves, notwithstanding the advice and entreaties of their friends,
the Yearly Meeting directed that where endeavors to convince those
offenders of their error proved ineffectual, the Monthly Meetings should
proceed to disown them. We have no means of ascertaining the precise
number of those actually disowned for slave-holding in the Virginia
Yearly Meeting, but it is well known to have been very small. In almost
all cases the care and assiduous labors of those who had the welfare of
the Society and of humanity at heart were successful in inducing
offenders to manumit their slaves, and confess their error in resisting
the wishes of their friends and bringing reproach upon the cause of
truth.
The influence of the life and labors of John Woolman has by no means been
confined to the religious society of which he was a member. It may be
traced wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been taken in
this country or in Europe. During the war of the Revolution many of the
noblemen and officers connected with the French army became, as their
journals abundantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends,
and took back to France with them something of its growing anti-slavery
sentiment. Especially was this the case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the
thinker and statesman of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner
Mifflin, a friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected his
whole after life. He became the leader of the "Friends of the Blacks,"
and carried with him to the scaffold a profound hatred, of slavery. To
his efforts may be traced the proclamation of emancipation in Hayti by
the commissioners of the French convention, and indirectly the subsequent
uprising of the blacks and their successful establishment of a free
government. The same influence reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated
his early efforts for the abolition of the slave-trade; and in after life
the volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished companion of
himself and his amiable helpmate. It was in a degree, at least, the
influence of Stephen Grellet and William Allen, men deeply imbued with
the spirit of Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his mantle
had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. of Russia to the
importance of taking measures for the abolition of serfdom, an object the
accomplishment of which the wars during his reign prevented, but which,
left as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his namesake,
Alexander II. In the history of emancipation in our own country
evidences of the same original impulse of humanity are not wanting. In
1790 memorials against slavery from the Society of Friends were laid
before the first Congress of the United States. Not content with
clearing their own skirts of the evil, the Friends of that day took an
active part in the formation of the abolition societies of New England,
New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Jacob Lindley, Elisha
Tyson, Warner Mifflin, James Pemberton, and other leading Friends were
known throughout the country as unflinching champions of freedom. One of
the earliest of the class known as modern abolitionists was Benjamin
Lundy, a pupil in the school of Woolman, through whom William Lloyd
Garrison became interested in the great work to which his life has been
so faithfully and nobly devoted. Looking back to the humble workshop at
Mount Holly from the stand-point of the Proclamation of President
Lincoln, how has the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power!
It was not for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne
expresses it, to "order the finger of the Almighty to His will and
pleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers of Providence." Very
wise are these essays, but their wisdom is not altogether that of this
world. They lead one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and
competitions of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of
parties and sects, into a region of calmness,--
"The haunt
Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach
The wild to love tranquillity,"--
a quiet habitation where all things are ordered in what he calls "the
pure reason;" a rest from all self-seeking, and where no man's interest
or activity conflicts with that of another. Beauty they certainly have,
but it is not that which the rules of art recognize; a certain
indefinable purity pervades them, making one sensible, as he reads, of a
sweetness as of violets. "The secret of Woolman's purity of style," said
Dr. Channing, "is that his eye was single, and that conscience dictated
his words."
Of course we are not to look to the writings of such a man for tricks of
rhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the unscrupulousness of
epigram and antithesis. He wrote as he lived, conscious of "the great
Task-master's eye." With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he
had learned to "wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and let the
spirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his guardian and guide,
bear rule."
I have thought it inexpedient to swell the bulk of this volume with the
entire writings appended to the old edition of the Journal, inasmuch as
they mainly refer to a system which happily on this continent is no
longer a question at issue. I content myself with throwing together a
few passages from them which touch subjects of present interest.
"Selfish men may possess the earth: it is the meek alone who inherit it
from the Heavenly Father free from all defilements and perplexities of
unrighteousness."
"Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some thereby promotes the good of
the whole."
"If one suffer by the unfaithfulness of another, the mind, the most noble
part of him that occasions the discord, is thereby alienated from its
true happiness."
"There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine work in the hearts
of men. He who leads them to cease from those gainful employments which
are carried on in the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the
desire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so plain that a
little suffices."
"After days and nights of drought, when the sky hath grown dark, and
clouds like lakes of water have hung over our heads, I have at times
beheld with awfulness the vehement lightning accompanying the blessings
of the rain, a messenger from Him to remind us of our duty in a right use
of His benefits."
"In the obedience of faith we die to self-love, and, our life being `hid
with Christ in God,' our hearts are enlarged towards mankind universally;
but many in striving to get treasures have departed from this true light
of life and stumbled on the dark mountains. That purity of life which
proceeds from faithfulness in following the pure spirit of truth, that
state in which our minds are devoted to serve God and all our wants are
bounded by His wisdom, has often been opened to me as a place of
retirement for the children of the light, in which we may be separated
from that which disordereth and confuseth the affairs of society, and may
have a testimony for our innocence in the hearts of those who behold us."
"When trade is carried on productive of much misery, and they who suffer
by it are many thousand miles off, the danger is the greater of not
laying their sufferings to heart. In procuring slaves on the coast of
Africa, many children are stolen privately; wars are encouraged among the
negroes, but all is at a great distance. Many groans arise from dying
men which we hear not. Many cries are uttered by widows and fatherless
children which reach not our ears. Many cheeks are wet with tears, and
faces sad with unutterable grief, which we see not. Cruel tyranny is
encouraged. The hands of robbers are strengthened.
"Were we, for the term of one year only, to be eye-witnesses of what
passeth in getting these slaves; were the blood that is there shed to be
sprinkled on our garments; were the poor captives, bound with thongs, and
heavily laden with elephants' teeth, to pass before our eyes on their way
to the sea; were their bitter lamentations, day after day, to ring in our
ears, and their mournful cries in the night to hinder us from sleeping,--
were we to behold and hear these things, what pious heart would not be
deeply affected with sorrow!"
"Our gracious Creator cares and provides for all His creatures; His
tender mercies are over all His works, and so far as true love influences
our minds, so far we become interested in His workmanship, and feel a
desire to make use of every opportunity to lessen the distresses of the
afflicted, and to increase the happiness of the creation. Here we have a
prospect of one common interest from which our own is inseparable, so
that to turn all we possess into the channel of universal love becomes
the business of our lives."
His liberality and freedom from "all narrowness as to sects and opinions"
are manifest in the following passages:--
"Men who sincerely apply their minds to true virtue, and find an inward
support from above, by which all vicious inclinations are made subject;
who love God sincerely, and prefer the real good of mankind universally
to their own private interest,--though these, through the strength of
education and tradition, may remain under some great speculative errors,
it would be uncharitable to say that therefore God rejects them. The
knowledge and goodness of Him who creates, supports, and gives
understanding to all men are superior to the various states and
circumstances of His creatures, which to us appear the most difficult.
Idolatry indeed is wickedness; but it is the thing, not the name, which
is so. Real idolatry is to pay that adoration to a creature which is
known to be due only to the true God.
"He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Creator, and in His Son
Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent on the honors, profits, and
friendships of the world than he is, in singleness of heart, to stand
faithful to the Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry; while
the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, is established
in the true principle of virtue, and humbly adores an Almighty Power, may
be of the number that fear God and work righteousness."
Nowhere has what is called the "Labor Question," which is now agitating
the world, been discussed more wisely and with a broader humanity than in
these essays. His sympathies were with the poor man, yet the rich too
are his brethren, and he warns them in love and pity of the consequences
of luxury and oppression:--
"Every degree of luxury, every demand for money inconsistent with the
Divine order, hath connection with unnecessary labors."
"When house is joined to house, and field laid to field, until there is
no place, and the poor are thereby straitened, though this is done by
bargain and purchase, yet so far as it stands distinguished from
universal love, so far that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany
their proceedings. As He who first founded the earth was then the true
proprietor of it, so He still remains, and though He hath given it to the
children of men, so that multitudes of people have had their sustenance
from it while they continued here, yet He bath never alienated it, but
His right is as good as at first; nor can any apply the increase of their
possessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way
which they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being
justly chargeable with usurpation."
It will not lessen the value of the foregoing extracts in the minds of
the true-disciples of our Divine Lord, that they are manifestly not
written to subserve the interests of a narrow sectarianism. They might
have been penned by Fenelon in his time, or Robertson in ours, dealing as
they do with Christian practice,--the life of Christ manifesting itself
in purity and goodness,--rather than with the dogmas of theology. The
underlying thought of all is simple obedience to the Divine word in the
soul. "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven."
In the preface to an English edition, published some years ago, it is
intimated that objections had been raised to the Journal on the ground
that it had so little to say of doctrines and so much of duties. One may
easily understand that this objection might have been forcibly felt by
the slave-holding religious professors of Woolman's day, and that it may
still be entertained by a class of persons who, like the Cabalists,
attach a certain mystical significance to words, names, and titles, and
who in consequence question the piety which hesitates to flatter the
Divine ear by "vain repetitions" and formal enumeration of sacred
attributes, dignities, and offices. Every instinct of his tenderly
sensitive nature shrank from the wordy irreverence of noisy profession.
His very silence is significant: the husks of emptiness rustle in every
wind; the full corn in the ear holds up its golden fruit noiselessly to
the Lord of the harvest. John Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is
manifested by his labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration
of the spirit,--a faith that works by love to the purifying of the heart.
The entire outcome of this faith was love manifested in reverent waiting
upon God, and in that untiring benevolence, that quiet but deep
enthusiasm of humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow-
creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father.
However the intellect may criticise such a life, whatever defects it may
present to the trained eyes of theological adepts, the heart has no
questions to ask, but at once owns and reveres it. Shall we regret that
he who had so entered into fellowship of suffering with the Divine One,
walking with Him under the cross, and dying daily to self, gave to the
faith and hope that were in him this testimony of a life, rather than any
form of words, however sound? A true life is at once interpreter and
proof of the gospel, and does more to establish its truth in the hearts
of men than all the "Evidences" and "Bodies of Divinity" which have
perplexed the world with more doubts than they solved. Shall we venture
to account it a defect in his Christian character, that, under an abiding
sense of the goodness and long-suffering of God, he wrought his work in
gentleness and compassion, with the delicate tenderness which comes of a
deep sympathy with the trials and weaknesses of our nature, never
allowing himself to indulge in heat or violence, persuading rather than
threatening? Did he overestimate that immeasurable Love, the
manifestation of which in his own heart so reached the hearts of others,
revealing everywhere unsuspected fountains of feeling and secret longings
after purity, as the rod of the diviner detects sweet, cool water-springs
under the parched surfaces of a thirsty land? And, looking at the
purity, wisdom, and sweetness of his life, who shall say that his faith
in the teaching of the Holy Spirit--the interior guide and light--was a
mistaken one? Surely it was no illusion by which his feet were so guided
that all who saw him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God. "Without
the actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward teacher and
soul of our souls," says Fenelon, "we could neither do, will, nor believe
good. We must silence every creature, we must silence ourselves also, to
hear in a profound stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of
Christ. The outward word of the gospel itself without this living
efficacious word within would be but an empty sound." "Thou Lord," says
Augustine in his Meditations, "communicatest thyself to all: thou
teachest the heart without words; thou speakest to it without articulate
sounds."
Never was this divine principle more fully tested than by John Wool man;
and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence that the world
is still better and richer for its sake, and the fragrance of it comes
down to us through a century, still sweet and precious.
It will be noted throughout the Journal and essays that in his lifelong
testimony against wrong he never lost sight of the oneness of humanity,
its common responsibility, its fellowship of suffering and communion of
sin. Few have ever had so profound a conviction of the truth of the
Apostle's declaration that no man liveth and no man dieth to himself.
Sin was not to him an isolated fact, the responsibility of which began
and ended with the individual transgressor; he saw it as a part of a vast
network and entanglement, and traced the lines of influence converging
upon it in the underworld of causation. Hence the wrong and discord
which pained him called out pity, rather than indignation. The first
inquiry which they awakened was addressed to his own conscience. How far
am I in thought, word, custom, responsible for this? Have none of my
fellow-creatures an equitable right to any part which is called mine?
Have the gifts and possessions received by me from others been conveyed
in a way free from all unrighteousness? "Through abiding in the law of
Christ," he says, "we feel a tenderness towards our fellow-creatures, and
a concern so to walk that our conduct may not be the means of
strengthening them in error." He constantly recurs to the importance of
a right example in those who profess to be led by the spirit of Christ,
and who attempt to labor in His name for the benefit of their fellow-men.
If such neglect or refuse themselves to act rightly, they can but
"entangle the minds of others and draw a veil over the face of
righteousness." His eyes were anointed to see the common point of
departure from the Divine harmony, and that all the varied growths of
evil had their underlying root in human selfishness. He saw that every
sin of the individual was shared in greater or less degree by all whose
lives were opposed to the Divine order, and that pride, luxury, and
avarice in one class gave motive and temptation to the grosser forms of
evil in another. How gentle, and yet how searching, are his rebukes of
self-complacent respectability, holding it responsible, in spite of all
its decent seemings, for much of the depravity which it condemned with
Pharisaical harshness! In his Considerations on the True Harmony of
Mankind be dwells with great earnestness upon the importance of
possessing "the mind of Christ," which removes from the heart the desire
of superiority and worldly honors, incites attention to the Divine
Counsellor, and awakens an ardent engagement to promote the happiness of
all. "This state," he says, "in which every motion from the selfish
spirit yieldeth to pure love, I may acknowledge with gratitude to the
Father of Mercies, is often opened before me as a pearl to seek after."
At times when I have felt true love open my heart towards my fellow-
creatures, and have been engaged in weighty conversation in the cause of
righteousness, the instructions I have received under these exercises in
regard to the true use of the outward gifts of God have made deep and
lasting impressions on my mind. I have beheld how the desire to provide
wealth and to uphold a delicate life has greviously entangled many, and
has been like a snare to their offspring; and though some have been
affected with a sense of their difficulties, and have appeared desirous
at times to be helped out of them, yet for want of abiding under the
humbling power of truth they have continued in these entanglements;
expensive living in parents and children hath called for a large supply,
and in answering this call the 'faces of the poor' have been ground away,
and made thin through hard dealing.
HAVERFORD COLLEGE.
May Haverford emulate the example of these brave but reverent men, who,
in investigating nature, never lost sight of the Divine Ideal, and who,
to use the words of Fenelon, "Silenced themselves to hear in the
stillness of their souls the inexpressible voice of Christ." Holding
fast the mighty truth of the Divine Immanence, the Inward Light and
Word, a Quaker college can have no occasion to renew the disastrous
quarrel of religion with science. Against the sublime faith which shall
yet dominate the world, skepticism has no power. No possible
investigation of natural facts; no searching criticism of letter and
tradition can disturb it, for it has its witness in all human hearts.
That Haverford may fully realize and improve its great opportunities as
an approved seat of learning and the exponent of a Christian philosophy
which can never be superseded, which needs no change to fit it for
universal acceptance, and which, overpassing the narrow limits of sect,
is giving new life and hope to Christendom, and finding its witnesses in
the Hindu revivals of the Brahmo Somaj and the fervent utterances of
Chunda Sen and Mozoomdar, is the earnest desire of thy friend.
CRITICISM
EVANGELINE
EUREKA! Here, then, we have it at last,--an American poem, with the lack
of which British reviewers have so long reproached us. Selecting the
subject of all others best calculated for his purpose,--the expulsion of
the French settlers of Acadie from their quiet and pleasant homes around
the Basin of Minas, one of the most sadly romantic passages in the
history of the Colonies of the North,--the author has succeeded in
presenting a series of exquisite pictures of the striking and peculiar
features of life and nature in the New World. The range of these
delineations extends from Nova Scotia on the northeast to the spurs of
the Rocky Mountains on the west and the Gulf of Mexico on the south.
Nothing can be added to his pictures of quiet farm-life in Acadie, the
Indian summer of our northern latitudes, the scenery of the Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers, the bayous and cypress forests of the South, the
mocking-bird, the prairie, the Ozark hills, the Catholic missions, and
the wild Arabs of the West, roaming with the buffalo along the banks of
the Nebraska. The hexameter measure he has chosen has the advantage of a
prosaic freedom of expression, exceedingly well adapted to a descriptive
and narrative poem; yet we are constrained to think that the story of
Evangeline would have been quite as acceptable to the public taste had it
been told in the poetic prose of the author's Hyperion.
In reading it and admiring its strange melody we were not without fears
that the success of Professor Longfellow in this novel experiment might
prove the occasion of calling out a host of awkward imitators, leading us
over weary wastes of hexameters, enlivened neither by dew, rain, nor
fields of offering.
Apart from its Americanism, the poem has merits of a higher and universal
character. It is not merely a work of art; the pulse of humanity throbs
warmly through it. The portraits of Basil the blacksmith, the old
notary, Benedict Bellefontaine, and good Father Felician, fairly glow
with life. The beautiful Evangeline, loving and faithful unto death, is
a heroine worthy of any poet of the present century.
"It is true that the wrong in this case is in a great degree fathered
upon our own Massachusetts; and it maybe said that it is afoul bird that
pollutes its own nest. We deny the applicability of the rather musty
proverb. All the worse. Of not a more contemptible vice is what is
called American literature guilty than this of unmitigated self-
laudation. If we persevere in it, the stock will become altogether too
small for the business. It seems that no period of our history has been
exempt from materials for patriotic humiliation and national self-
reproach; and surely the present epoch is laying in a large store of that
sort. Had our poets always told us the truth of ourselves, perhaps it
would now be otherwise. National self-flattery and concealment of faults
must of course have their natural results."
We must confess that we read the first part of Evangeline with something
of the feeling so forcibly expressed by Professor Wright. The natural
and honest indignation with which, many years ago, we read for the first
time that dark page of our Colonial history--the expulsion of the French
neutrals--was reawakened by the simple pathos of the poem; and we longed
to find an adequate expression of it in the burning language of the poet.
We marvelled that he who could so touch the heart by his description of
the sad suffering of the Acadian peasants should have permitted the
authors of that suffering to escape without censure. The outburst of the
stout Basil, in the church of Grand Pre, was, we are fain to acknowledge,
a great relief to us. But, before reaching the close of the volume, we
were quite reconciled to the author's forbearance. The design of the
poem is manifestly incompatible with stern "rhadamanthine justice" and
indignant denunciation of wrong. It is a simple story of quiet pastoral
happiness, of great sorrow and painful bereavement, and of the endurance
of a love which, hoping and seeking always, wanders evermore up and down
the wilderness of the world, baffled at every turn, yet still retaining
faith in God and in the object of its lifelong quest. It was no part of
the writer's object to investigate the merits of the question at issue
between the poor Acadians and their Puritan neighbors. Looking at the
materials before him with the eye of an artist simply, he has arranged
them to suit his idea of the beautiful and pathetic, leaving to some
future historian the duty of sitting in judgment upon the actors in the
atrocious outrage which furnished them. With this we are content. The
poem now has unity and sweetness which might have been destroyed by
attempting to avenge the wrongs it so vividly depicts. It is a psalm of
love and forgiveness: the gentleness and peace of Christian meekness and
forbearance breathe through it. Not a word of censure is directly
applied to the marauding workers of the mighty sorrow which it describes
just as it would a calamity from the elements,--a visitation of God. The
reader, however, cannot fail to award justice to the wrong-doers. The
unresisting acquiescence of the Acadians only deepens his detestation of
the cupidity and religious bigotry of their spoilers. Even in the
language of the good Father Felician, beseeching his flock to submit to
the strong hand which had been laid upon them, we see and feel the
magnitude of the crime to be forgiven:--
"Lo, where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you!
See in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion!
Hark! how those lips still repeat the prayer, O Father, forgive
them!
Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when the wicked assail us;
Let us repeat it now, and say, O Father, forgive them!"
How does this simple prayer of the Acadians contrast with the "deep
damnation of their taking off!"
At the late celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims in New York, the
orator of the day labored at great length to show that the charge of
intolerance, as urged against the colonists of New England, is unfounded
in fact. The banishment of the Catholics was very sagaciously passed
over in silence, inasmuch as the Catholic Bishop of New York was one of
the invited guests, and (hear it, shade of Cotton Mather!) one of the
regular toasts was a compliment to the Pope. The expulsion of Roger
Williams was excused and partially justified; while the whipping, ear-
cropping, tongue-boring, and hanging of the Quakers was defended, as the
only effectual method of dealing with such devil-driven heretics, as
Mather calls them. The orator, in the new-born zeal of his amateur
Puritanism, stigmatizes the persecuted class as "fanatics and ranters,
foaming forth their mad opinions;" compares them to the Mormons and the
crazy followers of Mathias; and cites an instance of a poor enthusiast,
named Eccles, who, far gone in the "tailor's melancholy," took it into
his head that he must enter into a steeple-house pulpit and stitch
breeches "in singing time,"--a circumstance, by the way, which took place
in Old England,--as a justification of the atrocious laws of the
Massachusetts Colony. We have not the slightest disposition to deny the
fanaticism and folly of some few professed Quakers in that day; and had
the Puritans treated them as the Pope did one of their number whom he
found crazily holding forth in the church of St. Peter, and consigned
them to the care of physicians as religious monomaniacs, no sane man
could have blamed them. Every sect, in its origin, and especially in its
time of persecution, has had its fanatics. The early Christians, if we
may credit the admissions of their own writers or attach the slightest
credence to the statements of pagan authors, were by no means exempt from
reproach and scandal in this respect. Were the Puritans themselves the
men to cast stones at the Quakers and Baptists? Had they not, in the
view at least of the Established Church, turned all England upside down
with their fanaticisms and extravagances of doctrine and conduct? How
look they as depicted in the sermons of Dr. South, in the sarcastic pages
of Hudibras, and the coarse caricatures of the clerical wits of the times
of the second Charles? With their own backs scored and their ears
cropped for the crime of denying the divine authority of church and state
in England, were they the men to whip Baptists and hang Quakers for doing
the same thing in Massachusetts?
Of all that is noble and true in the Puritan character we are sincere
admirers. The generous and self-denying apostleship of Eliot is, of
itself, a beautiful page in their history. The physical daring and
hardihood with which, amidst the times of savage warfare, they laid the
foundations of mighty states, and subdued the rugged soil, and made the
wilderness blossom; their steadfast adherence to their religious
principles, even when the Restoration had made apostasy easy and
profitable; and the vigilance and firmness with which, under all
circumstances, they held fast their chartered liberties and extorted new
rights and privileges from the reluctant home government,--justly entitle
them to the grateful remembrance of a generation now reaping the fruits
of their toils and sacrifices. But, in expressing our gratitude to the
founders of New England, we should not forget what is due to truth and
justice; nor, for the sake of vindicating them from the charge of that
religious intolerance which, at the time, they shared with nearly all
Christendom, undertake to defend, in the light of the nineteenth century,
opinions and practices hostile to the benignant spirit of the gospel and
subversive of the inherent rights of man.
IF any of our readers (and at times we fear it is the case with all) need
amusement and the wholesome alterative of a hearty laugh, we commend
them, not to Dr. Holmes the physician, but to Dr. Holmes the scholar, the
wit, and the humorist; not to the scientific medical professor's
barbarous Latin, but to his poetical prescriptions, given in choice old
Saxon. We have tried them, and are ready to give the Doctor certificates
of their efficacy.
Looking at the matter from the point of theory only, we should say that a
physician could not be otherwise than melancholy. A merry doctor! Why,
one might as well talk of a laughing death's-head,--the cachinnation of a
monk's _memento mori_. This life of ours is sorrowful enough at its best
estate; the brightest phase of it is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast"
of the future or the past. But it is the special vocation of the doctor
to look only upon the shadow; to turn away from the house of feasting and
go down to that of mourning; to breathe day after day the atmosphere of
wretchedness; to grow familiar with suffering; to look upon humanity
disrobed of its pride and glory, robbed of all its fictitious ornaments,
--weak, helpless, naked,--and undergoing the last fearful metempsychosis
from its erect and godlike image, the living temple of an enshrined
divinity, to the loathsome clod and the inanimate dust. Of what ghastly
secrets of moral and physical disease is he the depositary! There is woe
before him and behind him; he is hand and glove with misery by
prescription,--the ex officio gauger of the ills that flesh is heir to.
He has no home, unless it be at the bedside of the querulous, the
splenetic, the sick, and the dying. He sits down to carve his turkey,
and is summoned off to a post-mortem examination of another sort. All
the diseases which Milton's imagination embodied in the lazar-house dog
his footsteps and pluck at his doorbell. Hurrying from one place to
another at their beck, he knows nothing of the quiet comfort of the
"sleek-headed men who sleep o' nights." His wife, if he has one, has an
undoubted right to advertise him as a deserter of "bed and board." His
ideas of beauty, the imaginations of his brain, and the affections of his
heart are regulated and modified by the irrepressible associations of his
luckless profession. Woman as well as man is to him of the earth,
earthy. He sees incipient disease where the uninitiated see only
delicacy. A smile reminds him of his dental operations; a blushing cheek
of his hectic patients; pensive melancholy is dyspepsia; sentimentalism,
nervousness. Tell him of lovelorn hearts, of the "worm I' the bud," of
the mental impalement upon Cupid's arrow, like that of a giaour upon the
spear of a janizary, and he can only think of lack of exercise, of
tightlacing, and slippers in winter. Sheridan seems to have understood
all this, if we may judge from the lament of his Doctor, in St.
Patrick's Day, over his deceased helpmate. "Poor dear Dolly," says he.
"I shall never see her like again; such an arm for a bandage! veins that
seemed to invite the lancet! Then her skin,--smooth and white as a
gallipot; her mouth as round and not larger than that of a penny vial;
and her teeth,--none of your sturdy fixtures,--ache as they would, it was
only a small pull, and out they came. I believe I have drawn half a
score of her dear pearls. [Weeps.] But what avails her beauty? She has
gone, and left no little babe to hang like a label on papa's neck!"
The volume now before us gives, in addition to the poems and lyrics
contained in the two previous editions, some hundred or more pages of the
later productions of the author, in the sprightly vein, and marked by the
brilliant fancy and felicitous diction for which the former were
noteworthy. His longest and most elaborate poem, _Urania_, is perhaps
the best specimen of his powers. Its general tone is playful and
humorous; but there are passages of great tenderness and pathos. Witness
the following, from a description of the city churchgoers. The whole
compass of our literature has few passages to equal its melody and
beauty.
This is but one of many passages, showing that the author is capable of
moving the heart as well as of tickling the fancy. There is no straining
for effect; simple, natural thoughts are expressed in simple and
perfectly transparent language.
"A Spanish galleon brought the bar; so runs the ancient tale;
'T was hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail;
And now and then between the strokes, for fear his strength should fail,
He wiped his brow, and quaffed a cup of good old Flemish ale.
"And then, of course, you know what's next,--it left the Dutchman's shore
With those that in the Mayflower came,--a hundred souls and more,--
Along with all the furniture, to fill their new abodes,--
To judge by what is still on hand, at least a hundred loads.
"'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night was closing dim,
When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, and filled it to the brim;
The little Captain stood and stirred the posset with his sword,
And all his sturdy men-at-arms were ranged about the board.
"He poured the fiery Hollands in,--the man that never feared,--
He took a long and solemn draught, and wiped his yellow beard;
And one by one the musketeers--the men that fought and prayed--
All drank as 't were their mother's milk, and not a man afraid.
"That night, affrighted from his nest, the screaming eagle flew,
He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the soldier's wild halloo;
And there the sachem learned the rule he taught to kith and kin,
'Run from the white man when you find he smells of Hollands gin!'"
It was said of James Smith, of the Rejected Addresses, that "if he had
not been a witty man, he would have been a great man." Hood's humor and
drollery kept in the background the pathos and beauty of his sober
productions; and Dr. Holmes, we suspect, might have ranked higher among a
large class of readers than he now does had he never written his _Ballad
of the Oysterman_, his _Comet_, and his _September Gale_. Such lyrics as
_La Grisette_, the _Puritan's Vision_, and that unique compound of humor
and pathos, _The Last Leaf_; show that he possesses the power of touching
the deeper chords of the heart and of calling forth tears as well as
smiles. Who does not feel the power of this simple picture of the old
man in the last-mentioned poem?
Dr. Holmes has been likened to Thomas Hood; but there is little in common
between them save the power of combining fancy and sentiment with
grotesque drollery and humor. Hood, under all his whims and oddities,
conceals the vehement intensity of a reformer. The iron of the world's
wrongs had entered into his soul; there is an undertone of sorrow in his
lyrics; his sarcasm, directed against oppression and bigotry, at times
betrays the earnestness of one whose own withers have been wrung. Holmes
writes simply for the amusement of himself and his readers; he deals only
with the vanity, the foibles, and the minor faults of mankind, good
naturedly and almost sympathizingly suggesting excuses for the folly
which he tosses about on the horns of his ridicule. In this respect he
differs widely from his fellow-townsman, Russell Lowell, whose keen wit
and scathing sarcasm, in the famous Biglow Papers, and the notes of
Parson Wilbur, strike at the great evils of society and deal with the
rank offences of church and state. Hosea Biglow, in his way, is as
earnest a preacher as Habakkuk Mucklewrath or Obadiah Bind-their-kings-
in-chains-and-their-nobles-in-fetters-of-iron. His verse smacks of the
old Puritan flavor. Holmes has a gentler mission. His careless, genial
humor reminds us of James Smith in his _Rejected Addresses_ and of Horace
in _London_. Long may he live to make broader the face of our care-
ridden generation, and to realize for himself the truth of the wise man's
declaration that a "merry heart is a continual feast."
THE learned and eloquent author of the pamphlet lying before us with the
above title belongs to a class, happily on the increase in our country,
who venture to do homage to unpopular truths in defiance of the social
and political tyranny of opinion which has made so many of our statesmen,
orators, and divines the mere playthings and shuttlecocks of popular
impulses for evil far oftener than for good. His first production, the
_True Grandeur of Nations_, written for the anniversary of American
Independence, was not more remarkable for its evidences of a highly
cultivated taste and wide historical research than for its inculcation of
a high morality,--the demand for practical Christianity in nations as
well as individuals. It burned no incense under the nostrils of an
already inflated and vain people. It gratified them by no rhetorical
falsehoods about "the land of the free and the home of the brave." It
did not apostrophize military heroes, nor strut "red wat shod" over the
plains of battle, nor call up, like another Ezekiel, from the valley of
vision the dry bones thereof. It uttered none of the precious scoundrel
cant, so much in vogue after the annexation of Texas was determined upon,
about the destiny of the United States to enter in and possess the lands
of all whose destiny it is to live next us, and to plant everywhere the
"peculiar institutions" of a peculiarly Christian and chosen people, the
landstealing propensity of whose progressive republicanism is declared to
be in accordance with the will and by the grace of God, and who, like the
Scotch freebooter,--
His next public effort, an Address before the Literary Society of his
Alma Mater, was in the same vein. He improved the occasion of the recent
death of four distinguished members of that fraternity to delineate his
beautiful ideal of the jurist, the scholar, the artist, and the
philanthropist, aided by the models furnished by the lives of such men as
Pickering, Story, Allston, and Channing. Here, also, he makes greatness
to consist of goodness: war and slavery and all their offspring of evil
are surveyed in the light of the morality of the New Testament. He looks
hopefully forward to the coming of that day when the sword shall devour
no longer, when labor shall grind no longer in the prison-house, and the
peace and freedom of a realized and acted-out Christianity shall
overspread the earth, and the golden age predicted by the seers and poets
alike of Paganism and Christianity shall become a reality.
The Address now before us, with the same general object in view, is more
direct and practical. We can scarcely conceive of a discourse better
adapted to prepare the young American, just issuing from his collegiate
retirement, for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship. It
treats the desire of fame and honor as one native to the human heart,
felt to a certain extent by all as a part of our common being,--a motive,
although by no means the most exalted, of human conduct; and the lesson
it would inculcate is, that no true and permanent fame can be founded
except in labors which promote the happiness of mankind. To use the
language of Dr. South, "God is the fountain of honor; the conduit by
which He conveys it to the sons of men are virtuous and generous
practices." The author presents the beautiful examples of St. Pierre,
Milton, Howard, and Clarkson,--men whose fame rests on the firm
foundation of goodness,--for the study and imitation of the young
candidate for that true glory which belongs to those who live, not for
themselves, but for their race. "Neither present fame, nor war, nor
power, nor wealth, nor knowledge alone shall secure an entrance to the
true and noble Valhalla. There shall be gathered only those who have
toiled each in his vocation for the welfare of others." "Justice and
benevolence are higher than knowledge and power It is by His goodness
that God is most truly known; so also is the great man. When Moses said
to the Lord, Show me Thy glory, the Lord said, I will make all my
goodness pass before thee."
"Let us reverse the very poles of the worship of past ages. Men have
thus far bowed down before stocks, stones, insects, crocodiles, golden
calves,--graven images, often of cunning workmanship, wrought with
Phidian skill, of ivory, of ebony, of marble, but all false gods. Let
them worship in future the true God, our Father, as He is in heaven and
in the beneficent labors of His children on earth. Then farewell to the
siren song of a worldly ambition! Farewell to the vain desire of mere
literary success or oratorical display! Farewell to the distempered
longings for office! Farewell to the dismal, blood-red phantom of
martial renown! Fame and glory may then continue, as in times past, the
reflection of public opinion; but of an opinion sure and steadfast,
without change or fickleness, enlightened by those two sons of Christian
truth,--love to God and love to man. From the serene illumination of
these duties all the forms of selfishness shall retreat like evil spirits
at the dawn of day. Then shall the happiness of the poor and lowly and
the education of the ignorant have uncounted friends. The cause of those
who are in prison shall find fresh voices; the majesty of peace other
vindicators; the sufferings of the slave new and gushing floods of
sympathy. Then, at last, shall the brotherhood of man stand confessed;
ever filling the souls of all with a more generous life; ever prompting
to deeds of beneficence; conquering the heathen prejudices of country,
color, and race; guiding the judgment of the historian; animating the
verse of the poet and the eloquence of the orator; ennobling human
thought and conduct; and inspiring those good works by which alone we may
attain to the heights of true glory. Good works! Such even now is the
heavenly ladder on which angels are ascending and descending, while weary
humanity, on pillows of storfe, slumbers heavily at its feet."
What was John Woolman, to the wise and prudent of his day, but an amiable
enthusiast? What, to those of our own, is such an angel of mercy as
Dorothea Dix? Who will not, in view of the labors of such
philanthropists, adopt the language of Jonathan Edwards: "If these things
be enthusiasms and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be
evermore possessed with this happy distemper"?
FANATICISM.
THERE are occasionally deeds committed almost too horrible and revolting
for publication. The tongue falters in giving them utterance; the pen
trembles that records them. Such is the ghastly horror of a late tragedy
in Edgecomb, in the State of Maine. A respectable and thriving citizen
and his wife had been for some years very unprofitably engaged in
brooding over the mysteries of the Apocalypse, and in speculations upon
the personal coming of Christ and the temporal reign of the saints on
earth,--a sort of Mahometan paradise, which has as little warrant in
Scripture as in reason. Their minds of necessity became unsettled; they
meditated self-destruction; and, as it appears by a paper left behind in
the handwriting of both, came to an agreement that the husband should
first kill his wife and their four children, and then put an end to his
own existence. This was literally executed,--the miserable man striking
off the heads of his wife and children with his axe, and then cutting his
own throat.
Alas for man when he turns from the light of reason and from the simple
and clearly defined duties of the present life, and undertakes to pry
into the mysteries of the future, bewildering himself with uncertain and
vague prophecies, Oriental imagery, and obscure Hebrew texts! Simple,
cheerful faith in God as our great and good Father, and love of His
children as our brethren, acted out in all relations and duties, is
certainly best for this world, and we believe also the best preparation
for that to come. Once possessed by the falsity that God's design is
that man should be wretched and gloomy here in order to obtain rest and
happiness hereafter; that the mental agonies and bodily tortures of His
creatures are pleasant to Him; that, after bestowing upon us reason for
our guidance, He makes it of no avail by interposing contradictory
revelations and arbitrary commands,--there is nothing to prevent one of a
melancholic and excitable temperament from excesses so horrible as almost
to justify the old belief in demoniac obsession.
Charles Brockden Brown, a writer whose merits have not yet been
sufficiently acknowledged, has given a powerful and philosophical
analysis of this morbid state of mind--this diseased conscientiousness,
obeying the mad suggestions of a disordered brain as the injunctions of
Divinity--in his remarkable story of Wieland. The hero of this strange
and solemn romance, inheriting a melancholy and superstitious mental
constitution, becomes in middle age the victim of a deep, and tranquil
because deep, fanaticism. A demon in human form, perceiving his state of
mind, wantonly experiments upon it, deepening and intensifying it by a
fearful series of illusions of sight and sound. Tricks of jugglery and
ventriloquism seem to his feverish fancies miracles and omens--the eye
and the voice of the Almighty piercing the atmosphere of supernatural
mystery in which he has long dwelt. He believes that he is called upon
to sacrifice the beloved wife of his bosom as a testimony of the entire
subjugation of his carnal reason and earthly affections to the Divine
will. In the entire range of English literature there is no more
thrilling passage than that which describes the execution of this baleful
suggestion. The coloring of the picture is an intermingling of the
lights of heaven and hell,--soft shades of tenderest pity and warm tints
of unextinguishable love contrasting with the terrible outlines of an
insane and cruel purpose, traced with the blood of murder. The masters
of the old Greek tragedy have scarcely exceeded the sublime horror of
this scene from the American novelist. The murderer confronted with his
gentle and loving victim in her chamber; her anxious solicitude for his
health and quiet; her affectionate caress of welcome; his own relentings
and natural shrinking from his dreadful purpose; and the terrible
strength which he supposes is lent him of Heaven, by which he puts down
the promptings and yearnings of his human heart, and is enabled to
execute the mandate of an inexorable Being,--are described with an
intensity which almost stops the heart of the reader. When the deed is
done a frightful conflict of passions takes place, which can only be told
in the words of the author:--
"I lifted the corpse in my arms and laid it on the bed. I gazed upon it
with delight. Such was my elation that I even broke out into laughter.
I clapped my hands, and exclaimed, 'It is done! My sacred duty is
fulfilled! To that I have sacrificed, O God, Thy last and best gift, my
wife!'
"For a while I thus soared above frailty. I imagined I had set myself
forever beyond the reach of selfishness. But my imaginations were false.
This rapture quickly subsided. I looked again at my wife. My joyous
ebullitions vanished. I asked myself who it was whom I saw. Methought
it could not be my Catharine; it could not be the woman who had lodged
for years in my heart; who had slept nightly in my bosom; who had borne
in her womb and fostered at her breast the beings who called me father;
whom I had watched over with delight and cherished with a fondness ever
new and perpetually growing. It could not be the same!
"The breath of heaven that sustained me was withdrawn, and I sunk into
mere man. I leaped from the floor; I dashed my head against the wall; I
uttered screams of horror; I panted after torment and pain. Eternal fire
and the bickerings of hell, compared with what I felt, were music and a
bed of roses.
"I thank my God that this was transient; that He designed once more to
raise me aloft. I thought upon what I had done as a sacrifice to duty,
and was calm. My wife was dead; but I reflected that, although this
source of human consolation was closed, others were still open. If the
transports of the husband were no more, the feelings of
the father had still scope for exercise. When remembrance of their
mother should excite too keen a pang, I would look upon my children and
be comforted.
"While I revolved these things new warmth flowed in upon my heart. I was
wrong. These feelings were the growth of selfishness. Of this I was not
aware; and, to dispel the mist that obscured my perceptions, a new light
and a new mandate were necessary.
"From these thoughts I was recalled by a ray which was shot into the
room. A voice spoke like that I had before heard: 'Thou hast done well;
but all is not done--the sacrifice is incomplete--thy children must be
offered--they must perish with their mother!'"
The misguided man obeys the voice; his children are destroyed in their
bloom and innocent beauty. He is arrested, tried for murder, and
acquitted as insane. The light breaks in upon him at last; he discovers
the imposture which has controlled him; and, made desperate by the full
consciousness of his folly and crime, ends the terrible drama by suicide.
THE Democratic Review not long since contained a singularly wild and
spirited poem, entitled the Norseman's Ride, in which the writer appears
to have very happily blended the boldness and sublimity of the heathen
saga with the grace and artistic skill of the literature of civilization.
The poetry of the Northmen, like their lives, was bold, defiant, and full
of a rude, untamed energy. It was inspired by exhibitions of power
rather than of beauty. Its heroes were beastly revellers or cruel and
ferocious plunderers; its heroines unsexed hoidens, playing the ugliest
tricks with their lovers, and repaying slights with bloody revenge,--very
dangerous and unsatisfactory companions for any other than the fire-
eating Vikings and redhanded, unwashed Berserkers. Significant of a
religion which reverenced the strong rather than the good, and which
regarded as meritorious the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, it
delighted to sing the praises of some coarse debauch or pitiless
slaughter. The voice of its scalds was often but the scream of the
carrion-bird, or the howl of the wolf, scenting human blood:--
Its gods were brutal giant forces, patrons of war, robbery, and drunken
revelry; its heaven a vast cloud-built ale-house, where ghostly warriors
drank from the skulls of their victims; its hell a frozen horror of
desolation and darkness,--all that the gloomy Northern imagination could
superadd to the repulsive and frightful features of arctic scenery:
volcanoes spouting fire through craters rimmed with perpetual frost,
boiling caldrons flinging their fierce jets high into the air, and huge
jokuls, or ice-mountains, loosened and upheaved by volcanic agencies,
crawling slowly seaward, like misshapen monsters endowed with life,--a
region of misery unutterable, to be avoided only by diligence in robbery
and courage in murder.
But we have wandered somewhat aside from our purpose, which was simply to
introduce the following poem, which, in the boldness of its tone and
vigor of language, reminds us of the Sword Chant, the Wooing Song, and
other rhymed sagas of Motherwell.
BY BAYARD TAYLOR.
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