He had not been there a week before he rang his bell one day, and was found bleeding from the lungs. His landlady called in a physician; and it is probable that this gentleman did not know or suspect the circumstances of his patient; for he not only ordered ice and various expensive things, but took fees, while the poor patient was lying forbidden to speak, and gnawed with anxiety as to where more money was to come from, and with eagerness to get to work. His friends soon found him out in his trouble; and I understood from him afterwards, and from others who knew more about it than he did, that they were extremely kind. I believe that one left a bank-note of a considerable amount at the door, in a blank envelope. All charges were defrayed, and he was bidden not to be anxious. Yet something must be done. What must it be?
As soon as he was allowed to raise his head from his pillow, he wrote me a note in pencil; and it afforded an opening for discussing his affairs with him. He had some impression of his life’s being in danger; for it was now that he confided to me the whole story of his attachment, and the sufferings attending it: but he was still sanguine about doing great things in literature, and chafing at his unwilling idleness. I was strongly of opinion that the best way of dealing with him was to be perfectly open; and, after proposing that we should have no reserves, I told him what (proceeding on his own report of his health) I should in his place decide upon doing. His pride would cause him some pain in either of the two courses which were open to him,–but, I thought, more in one than the other. If he remained in his lodgings, he would break his heart about being a burden (as he would say) to his friends; and he would fret after work so as to give himself no chance of such recovery as might be hoped for: whereas, if he could once cheerfully agree to enter a hospital, he would have every chance of rallying, and all the sooner for being free from any painful sense of obligation. If the treatment should succeed, this passage in his life would be something to smile at hereafter, or to look back upon with sound satisfaction; and if not, he would have friends about him, just as he would in a lodging.
The effect was what I wished. My letter gave no offence, and did him no harm. He only begged for a few days more, before deciding that he might satisfy himself whether he was getting well or not: if not, he would cheerfully go wherever his friends advised, and believe that the plan was the best for him.
In those few days arrangements were made for his being received at the Sanatorium,–an institution in which sick persons who had either previously subscribed, or who were the nominees of subscribers, were received, and well tended for a guinea a week, under the comfortable circumstances of a private house. Each patient had a separate chamber; and the medical attendance, diet, and arrangements were of a far higher order than poor Patrick could have commanded in lodgings. Above all, the resident surgeon–now a distinguished physician, superintendent of a lunatic asylum–was a man to make a friend of,–a man of cultivated mind, tender heart, and cheerful and gentle manners. Patrick won his heart at once; and every note of Patrick’s glowed with affection for Doctor H–. After a few weeks of alternating hope and fear, after a natural series of fluctuations of spirits, Patrick wrote me a remarkably quiet letter. He told me that both his doctors had given him a plain answer to his question whether he could recover. They had told him that it was impossible; but he could not learn from them how long they thought he would live. He saw now, however, that he must give up his efforts to work. He believed he could have worked a little: but perhaps he was no judge; and if he really was dying, he could not be wrong in obeying the directions of those who had the care of him. Once afterwards he told me that his physicians did not, he saw, expect him to live many months,–perhaps not even many weeks.
It was now clear to my mind what would please him best. I told him, that, if he liked to furnish me with the address of that house in Dublin in which his thoughts chiefly lived, I would take care that the young lady there should know that he died in honor, having fairly entered upon the literary career which had always been his aspiration, and surrounded by friends whose friendship was a distinction. His words in reply were few, calm, and fervent, intimating that he now had not a care left in the world: and Doctor H–wondered what had happened to make him so gay from the hour he received my letter.
His decline was a rapid one; and I soon learned, by very short notes, that he hardly left his bed. When it was supposed that he would never leave his room again, he surprised the whole household by a great feat. I should have related before what a favorite he was with all the other patients. He was the sunshine of the house while able to get to the drawing-room, and the pet of each invalid by the chamber-fire. On Christmas morning, he slipped out of bed, and managed to get his clothes on, while alone, and was met outside his own door, bent on giving a Christmas greeting to everybody in the house. He was indulged in this; for it was of little consequence now what he did. He appeared at each bedside, and at every sofa,–and not with any moving sentiment, but with genuine gayety. It was full in his thoughts that he had not many days to live, but he hoped the others had; and he entered into their prospect of renewed health and activity. At night they said that Patrick had brightened their Christmas Day.
He died very soon after,–sinking at last with perfect consciousness,–writing messages to me on his slate while his fingers would hold the pencil,–calm and cheerful without intermission. After his death, when the last offices were to be begun, my letters were taken warm from his breast. Every line that I had ever written to him was there; and the packet was sent to me by Doctor H–bound round with the green ribbon which he had himself tied before he quite lost the power. The kind friends who had watched over him during the months of his London life wrote to me not to trouble myself about his funeral. They buried him honorably, and two of his distinguished friends followed him to the grave.
Of course, I immediately performed my promise. I had always intended that not only the young lady, but her father, should know what we thought of Patrick, and what he might have been, if he had lived. I wrote to that potential personage, telling him of all the facts of the case, except the poverty, which might be omitted as essentially a slight and temporary circumstance. I reported of his life of industry and simple self-denial,–of his prospects, his friendships, his sweet and gay decline and departure, and his honorable funeral. No answer was needed; and I had supposed there would hardly be one. If there should be one, it was not likely to be very congenial to the mood of Patrick’s friends: but I could hardly have conceived of anything so bad as it was. The man wrote that it was not wonderful that any young man should get on under the advantage of my patronage; and that it was to be hoped that this young man would have turned out more worthy of such patronage than he was when he ungratefully returned his obligations to his employer by engaging the affections of his daughter. The young man had caused great trouble and anxiety to one who, now he was dead, was willing to forgive him; but no circumstance could ever change the aspect of his conduct, in regard to his treacherous behavior to his benefactor; and so forth. There was no sign of any consciousness of imprudence on the father’s own part; but strong indications of vindictive hatred, softened in the expression by being mixed up with odious flatteries to Patrick’s literary friends. The only compensation for the disgust of this letter was the confirmation it afforded of Patrick’s narrative, in which, it was clear, he had done no injustice to his oppressor.
I have not bestowed so much thought as this on the man and his letter, from the day I received it, till now; but it was necessary to speak of it at the close of the story. I lose sight of the painful incidents in thinking of Patrick himself. I only wish I had once seen his face, that I might know how near the truth is the image that I have formed of him.
There may have been, there no doubt have been, other such young Irishmen, whose lives have been misdirected for want of the knowledge which Patrick gained in good time by the accident of his coming to England. I fear that many such have lived a life of turbulence, or impotent discontent, under the delusion that their country was politically oppressed. The mistake may now be considered at an end. It is sufficiently understood in Ireland that her woes have been from social and not political causes, from the day of Catholic emancipation. But it is a painful thought what Patrick’s short life might have been, if he had remained under the O’Connell influence; and what the lives of hundreds more have been,–rendered wild by delusion, and wretched by strife and lawlessness, for want of a gleam of that clear daylight which made a sound citizen of a passionate Young Repealer.
BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER.
This is the new version of the _Panem et Circenses_ of the Roman populace. It is our _ultimatum_, as that was theirs. They must have something to eat, and the circus-shows to look at. We must have something to eat, and the papers to read.
Everything else we can give up. If we are rich, we can lay down our carriages, stay away from Newport or Saratoga, and adjourn the trip to Europe _sine die_. If we live in a small way, there are at least new dresses and bonnets and every-day luxuries which we can dispense with. If the young Zouave of the family looks smart in his new uniform, its respectable head is content, though he himself grow seedy as a caraway-umbel late in the season. He will cheerfully calm the perturbed nap of his old beaver by patient brushing in place of buying a new one, if only the Lieutenant’s jaunty cap is what it should be. We all take a pride in sharing the epidemic economy of the time. Only _bread and the newspaper_ we must have, whatever else we do without.
How this war is simplifying our mode of being! We live on our emotions, as the sick man is said in the common speech to be nourished by his fever. Our common mental food has become distasteful, and what would have been intellectual luxuries at other times are now absolutely repulsive.
All this change in our manner of existence implies that we have experienced some very profound impression, which will sooner or later betray itself in permanent effects on the minds and bodies of many among us. We cannot forget Corvisart’s observation of the frequency with which diseases of the heart were noticed as the consequence of the terrible emotions produced by the scenes of the great French Revolution. Laennec tells the story of a convent, of which he was the medical director, where all the nuns were subjected to the severest penances and schooled in the most painful doctrines. They all became consumptive soon after their entrance, so that, in the course of his ten years’ attendance, all the inmates died out two or three times, and were replaced by new ones. He does not hesitate to attribute the disease from which they suffered to those depressing moral influences to which they were subjected.
So far we have noticed little more than disturbances of the nervous system as a consequence of the war excitement in non-combatants. Take the first trifling example which comes to our recollection. A sad disaster to the Federal army was told the other day in the presence of two gentlemen and a lady. Both the gentlemen complained of a sudden feeling at the _epigastrium_, or, less learnedly, the pit of the stomach, changed color, and confessed to a slight tremor about the knees. The lady had a _”grande revolution_,” as French patients say,–went home, and kept her bed for the rest of the day. Perhaps the reader may smile at the mention of such trivial indispositions, but in more sensitive natures death itself follows in some cases from no more serious cause. An old gentleman fell senseless in fatal apoplexy, on hearing of Napoleon’s return from Elba. One of our early friends, who recently died of the same complaint, was thought to have had his attack mainly in consequence of the excitements of the time.
We all know what the _war fever_ is in our young men,–what a devouring passion it becomes in those whom it assails. Patriotism is the fire of it, no doubt, but this is fed with fuel of all sorts. The love of adventure, the contagion of example, the fear of losing the chance of participating in the great events of the time, the desire of personal distinction, all help to produce those singular transformations which we often witness, turning the most peaceful of our youth into the most ardent of our soldiers. But something of the same fever in a different form reaches a good many non-combatants, who have no thought of losing a drop of precious blood belonging to themselves or their families. Some of the symptoms we shall mention are almost universal; they are as plain in the people we meet everywhere as the marks of an influenza, when that is prevailing.
The first is a nervous restlessness of a very peculiar character. Men cannot think, or write, or attend to their ordinary business. They stroll up and down the streets, they saunter out upon the public places. We confessed to an illustrious author that we laid down the volume of his work which we were reading when the war broke out. It was as interesting as a romance, but the romance of the past grew pale before the red light of the terrible present. Meeting the same author not long afterwards, he confessed that he had laid down his pen at the same time that we had closed his book. He could not write about the sixteenth century any more than we could read about it, while the nineteenth was in the very agony and bloody sweat of its great sacrifice.
Another most eminent scholar told us in all simplicity that he had fallen into such a state that he would read the same telegraphic despatches over and over again in different papers, as if they were new, until he felt as if he were an idiot. Who did not do just the same thing, and does not often do it still, now that the first flush of the fever is over? Another person always goes through the side streets on his way for the noon _extra_,–he is so afraid somebody will meet him and _tell_ the news he wishes to _read_, first on the bulletin-board, and then in the great capitals and leaded type of the newspaper.
When any startling piece of war-news comes, it keeps repeating itself in our minds in spite of all we can do. The same trains of thought go tramping round in circle through the brain like the supernumeraries that make up the grand army of a stage-show. Now, if a thought goes round through the brain a thousand times in a day, it will have worn as deep a track as one which has passed through it once a week for twenty years. This accounts for the ages we seem to have lived since the twelfth of April last, and, to state it more generally, for that _ex post facto_ operation of a great calamity, or any very powerful impression, which we once illustrated by the image of a stain spreading backwards from the leaf of life open before us through all those which we have already turned.
Blessed are those who can sleep quietly in times like these! Yet, not wholly blessed, either; for what is more painful than the awaking from peaceful unconsciousness to a sense that there is something wrong, we cannot at first think what,–and then groping our way about through the twilight of our thoughts until we come full upon the misery, which, like some evil bird, seemed to have flown away, but which sits waiting for us on its perch by our pillow in the gray of the morning?
The converse of this is perhaps still more painful. Many have the feeling in their waking hours that the trouble they are aching with is, after all, only a dream,–if they will rub their eyes briskly enough and shake themselves, they will awake out of it, and find all their supposed grief is unreal. This attempt to cajole ourselves out of an ugly fact always reminds us of those unhappy flies who have been indulging in the dangerous sweets of the paper prepared for their especial use.
Watch one of them. He does not feel quite well,–at least, he suspects himself of indisposition. Nothing serious,–let us just rub our fore-feet together, as the enormous creature who provides for us rubs his hands, and all will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar twisting movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No! all is not quite right yet.–Ah! it is our head that is not set on just as it ought to be. Let us settle _that_ where it should be, and _then_ we shall certainly be in good trim again. So he pulls his head about as an old lady adjusts her cap, and passes his fore-paw over it like a kitten washing herself.–Poor fellow! It is not a fancy, but a fact, that he has to deal with. If he could read the letters at the head of the sheet, he would see they were _Fly-Paper_.–So with us, when, in our waking misery, we try to think we dream! Perhaps very young persons may not understand this; as we grow older, our waking and dreaming life run more and more into each other.
Another symptom of our excited condition is seen in the breaking up of old habits. The newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase; it will be had, and it will be read. To this all else must give place. If we must go out at unusual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner nap or evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it will not stand on ceremony, but cuts short the compliment and the story by the divine right of its telegraphic despatches.
War is a very old story, but it is a new one to this generation of Americans. Our own nearest relation in the ascending line remembers the Revolution well. How should she forget it? Did she not lose her doll, which was left behind, when she was carried out of Boston, then growing uncomfortable by reason of cannon-balls dropping in from the neighboring heights at all hours,–in token of which see the tower of Brattle-Street Church at this very day? War in her memory means ’76. As for the brush of 1812, “we did not think much about that”; and everybody knows that the Mexican business did not concern us much, except in its political relations. No! War is a new thing to all of us who are not in the last quarter of their century. We are learning many strange matters from our fresh experience. And besides, there are new conditions of existence which make war as it is with us very different from war as it has been.
The first and obvious difference consists in the fact that the whole nation is now penetrated by the ramifications of a network of iron nerves which flash sensation and volition backward and forward to and from towns and provinces as if they were organs and limbs of a single living body. The second is the vast system of iron muscles which, as it were, move the limbs of the mighty organism one upon another. What was the railroad-force which put the Sixth Regiment in Baltimore on the 19th of April but a contraction and extension of the arm of Massachusetts with a clenched fist full of bayonets at the end of it?
This perpetual intercommunication, joined to the power of instantaneous action, keeps us always alive with excitement. It is not a breathless courier who comes back with the report from an army we have lost sight of for a month, nor a single bulletin which tells us all we are to know for a week of some great engagement, but almost hourly paragraphs, laden with truth or falsehood as the case may be, making us restless always for the last fact or rumor they are telling. And so of the movements of our armies. To-night the stout lumbermen of Maine are encamped under their own fragrant pines. In a score or two of hours they are among the tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. The war passion burned like scattered coals of fire in the households of Revolutionary times; now it rushes all through the land like a flame over the prairie. And this instant diffusion of every fact and feeling produces another singular effect in the equalizing and steadying of public opinion. We may not be able to see a month ahead of us; but as to what has passed, a week afterwards it is as thoroughly talked out and judged as it would have been in a whole season before our national nervous system was organized.
“As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea, Thou only teachest all that man can be!”
We indulged in the above apostrophe to War in a Phi Beta Kappa poem of long ago, which we liked better before we read Mr. Cutler’s beautiful prolonged lyric delivered at the recent anniversary of that Society.
Oftentimes, in paroxysms of peace and good-will towards all mankind, we have felt twinges of conscience about the passage,–especially when one of our orators showed us that a ship of war costs as much to build and keep as a college, and that every port-hole we could stop would give us a new professor. Now we begin to think that there was some meaning in our poor couplet. War _has_ taught us, as nothing else could, what we can be and are. It has exalted our manhood and our womanhood, and driven us all back upon our substantial human qualities, for a long time more or less kept out of sight by the spirit of commerce, the love of art, science, or literature, or other qualities not belonging to all of us as men and women.
It is at this very moment doing more to melt away the petty social distinctions which keep generous souls apart from each other, than the preaching of the Beloved Disciple himself would do. We are finding out that not only “patriotism is eloquence,” but that heroism is gentility. All ranks are wonderfully equalized under the fire of a masked battery. The plain artisan or the rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like a man, is the truest representative we can show of the heroes of Crecy and Agincourt. And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his straw-colored kids and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or leads him on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs as if he were ill-dressed and his hands were soiled with labor.
Even our poor “Brahmins,”–whom a critic in ground-glass spectacles (the same who grasps his statistics by the blade and strikes at his supposed antagonist with the handle) oddly confounds with the “bloated aristocracy,” whereas they are very commonly pallid, undervitalized, shy, sensitive creatures, whose only birthright is an aptitude for learning,–even these poor New England Brahmins of ours, _subvirates_ of an organizable base as they often are, count as full men, if their courage is big enough for the uniform which hangs so loosely about their slender figures.
A young man was drowned not very long ago in the river running under our windows. A few days afterwards a field-piece was dragged to the water’s edge and fired many times over the river. We asked a bystander, who looked like a fisherman, what that was for. It was to “break the gall,” he said, and so bring the drowned person to the surface. A strange physiological fancy and a very odd _non sequitur_; but that is not our present point. A good many extraordinary objects do really come to the surface when the great guns of war shake the waters, as when they roared over Charleston harbor.
Treason came up, hideous, fit only to be huddled into its dishonorable grave. But the wrecks of precious virtues, which had been covered with the waves of prosperity, came up also. And all sorts of unexpected and unheard-of things, which had lain unseen during our national life of fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed by the concussions of the artillery bellowing around us.
It is a shame to own it, but there were persons otherwise respectable not unwilling to say that they believed the old valor of Revolutionary times had died out from among us. They talked about our own Northern people as the English in the last centuries used to talk about the French,–Goldsmith’s old soldier, it may be remembered, called one Englishman good for five of them. As Napoleon spoke of the English, again, as a nation of shopkeepers, so these persons affected to consider the multitude of their countrymen as unwarlike artisans,–forgetting that Paul Revere taught himself the value of liberty in working upon gold, and Nathaniel Greene fitted himself to shape armies in the labor of forging iron.
These persons have learned better now. The bravery of our free working-people was overlaid, but not smothered, sunken, but not drowned. The hands which had been busy conquering the elements had only to change their weapons and their adversaries, and they were as ready to conquer the masses of living force opposed to them as they had been to build towns, to dam rivers, to hunt whales, to harvest ice, to hammer brute matter into every shape civilization can ask for.
Another great fact came to the surface, and is coming up every day in new shapes,–that we are one people. It is easy to say that a man is a man in Maine or Minnesota, but not so easy to feel it, all through our bones and marrow. The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Poor Winthrop, marching with the city _elegants_, seems almost to have been astonished to find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or ought to do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is distributed over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, like the Sixty-Ninth, to show us that continental provincialism is as bad as that of Coos County, New Hampshire, or of Broadway, New York.
Here, too, side by side in the same great camp, are half a dozen chaplains, representing half a dozen modes of religious belief. When the masked battery opens, does the “Baptist” Lieutenant believe in his heart that God takes better care of him than of his “Congregationalist” Colonel? Does any man really suppose, that, of a score of noble young fellows who have just laid down their lives for their country, the _Homoousians_ are received to the mansions of bliss, and the _Homoiousians_ translated from the battle-field to the abodes of everlasting woe? War not only teaches what man can be, but it teaches also what he must not be. He must not be a bigot and a fool in the presence of that day of judgment proclaimed by the trumpet which calls to battle, and where a man should have but two thoughts: to do his duty, and trust his Maker. Let our brave dead come back from the fields where they have fallen for law and liberty, and if you will follow them to their graves, you will find out what the Broad Church means; the narrow church is sparing of its exclusive formulae over the coffins wrapped in the flag which the fallen heroes had defended! Very little comparatively do we hear at such times of the dogmas on which men differ; very much of the faith and trust in which all sincere Christians can agree. It is a noble lesson, and nothing less noisy than the voice of cannon can teach it so that it shall be heard over all the angry voices of theological disputants.
Now, too, we have a chance to test the sagacity of our friends, and to get at their principles of judgment. Perhaps most of us will agree that our faith in domestic prophets has been diminished by the experience of the last six months. We had the notable predictions attributed to the Secretary of State, which so unpleasantly refused to fulfil themselves. We were infested at one time with a set of ominous-looking seers, who shook their heads and muttered obscurely about some mighty preparations that were making to substitute the rule of the minority for that of the majority. Organizations were darkly hinted at; some thought our armories would be seized; and there are not wanting ancient women in the neighboring University town who consider that the country was saved by the intrepid band of students who stood guard, night after night, over the G.R. cannon and the pile of balls in the Cambridge Arsenal.
As a general rule, it is safe to say that the best prophecies are those which the sages _remember_ after the event prophesied of has come to pass, and remind us that they have made long ago. Those who are rash enough to predict publicly beforehand commonly give us what they hope, or what they fear, or some conclusion from an abstraction of their own, or some guess founded on private information not half so good as what everybody gets who reads the papers,–_never_ by any possibility a word that we can depend on, simply because there are cob-webs of contingency between every to-day and to-morrow that no field-glass can penetrate when fifty of them lie woven one over another. Prophesy as much as you like, but always _hedge_. Say that you think the rebels are weaker than is commonly supposed, but, on the other hand, that they may prove to be even stronger than is anticipated. Say what you like,–only don’t be too peremptory and dogmatic; we _know_ that wiser men than you have been notoriously deceived in their predictions in this very matter.
_Ibis et redibis nunquam in bello peribis._
Let that be your model; and remember, on peril of your reputation as a prophet, not to put a stop before or after the _nunquam_.
There are two or three facts connected with _time_, besides that already referred to, which strike us very forcibly in their relation to the great events passing around us. We spoke of the long period seeming to have elapsed since this war began. The buds were then swelling which held the leaves that are still green. It seems as old as Time himself. We cannot fail to observe how the mind brings together the scenes of to-day and those of the old Revolution. We shut up eighty years into each other like the joints of a pocket-telescope. When the young men from Middlesex dropped in Baltimore the other day, it seemed to bring Lexington and the other Nineteenth of April close to us. War has always been the mint in which the world’s history has been coined, and now every day or week or month has a new medal for us. It was Warren that the first impression bore in the last great coinage; if it is Ellsworth now, the new face hardly seems fresher than the old. All battle-fields are alike in their main features. The young fellows who fell in our earlier struggle seemed like old men to us until within these few months; now we remember they were like these fiery youth we are cheering as they go to the fight; it seems as if the grass of our bloody hill-side was crimsoned but yesterday, and the cannon-ball imbedded in the church-tower would feel warm, if we laid our hand upon it.
Nay, in this our quickened life we feel that all the battles from earliest time to our own day, where Right and Wrong have grappled, are but one great battle, varied with brief pauses or hasty bivouacs upon the field of conflict. The issues seem to vary, but it is always a right against a claim, and, however the struggle of the hour may go, a movement onward of the campaign, which uses defeat as well as victory to serve its mighty ends. The very weapons of our warfare change less than we think. Our bullets and cannon-balls have lengthened into bolts like those which whistled out of old arbalests. Our soldiers fight with Bowie-knives, such as are pictured on the walls of Theban tombs, wearing a newly-invented head-gear as old as the days of the Pyramids.
Whatever miseries this war brings upon us, it is making us wiser, and, we trust, better. Wiser, for we are learning our weakness, our narrowness, our selfishness, our ignorance, in lessons of sorrow and shame. Better, because all that is noble in men and women is demanded by the time, and our people are rising to the standard the time calls for. For this is the question the hour is putting to each of us: Are you ready, if need be, to sacrifice all that you have and hope for in this world, that the generations to follow you may inherit a whole country whose natural condition shall be peace, and not a broken province which must live under the perpetual threat, if not in the constant presence, of war and all that war brings with it? If we are all ready for this sacrifice, battles may be lost, but the campaign and its grand object must be won.
Heaven is very kind in its way of putting questions to mortals. We are not abruptly asked to give up all that we most care for, in view of the momentous issues before us. Perhaps we shall never be asked to give up all, but we have already been called upon to part with much that is dear to us, and should be ready to yield the rest as it is called for. The time may come when even the cheap public print shall be a burden our means cannot support, and we can only listen in the square that was once the market-place to the voices of those who proclaim defeat or victory. Then there will be only our daily food left. When we have nothing to read and nothing to eat, it will be a favorable moment to offer a compromise. At present we have all that Nature absolutely demands,–we can live on bread and the newspaper.
* * * * *
“UNDER THE CLOUD AND THROUGH THE SEA.”
So moved they, when false Pharaoh’s legion pressed, Chariots and horsemen following furiously,– Sons of old Israel, at their God’s behest, Under the cloud and through the swelling sea.
So passed they, fearless, where the parted wave, With cloven crest uprearing from the sand,– A solemn aisle before,–behind, a grave,– Rolled to the beckoning of Jehovah’s hand.
So led He them, in desert marches grand, By toils sublime, with test of long delay, On, to the borders of that Promised Land Wherein their heritage of glory lay.
And Jordan raged along his rocky bed, And Amorite spears flashed keen and fearfully: Still the same pathway must their footsteps tread,– Under the cloud and through the threatening sea.
God works no otherwise. No mighty birth But comes by throes of mortal agony;
No man-child among nations of the earth But findeth baptism in a stormy sea.
Sons of the Saints who faced their Jordan-flood In fierce Atlantic’s unretreating wave,– Who by the Red Sea of their glorious blood Reached to the Freedom that your blood shall save!
O Countrymen! God’s day is not yet done! He leaveth not His people utterly!
Count it a covenant, that He leads us on Beneath the Cloud and through the crimson Sea!
JOURNAL OF A PRIVATEERSMAN.
The following journal was written by the Captain’s Quartermaster on board the Sloop Revenge, of Newport, Rhode Island, on a cruise against the Spaniards in the year 1741. Rhode Island was famous at that time for the number and the success of her privateers. There was but little objection felt to the profession of privateering. Franklin had not yet roused by his effective protest the moral sentiment of the civilized world against it. The privateers that were fitted out in those days were intended for service against foreign enemies; they were not manned by rebels, with design to ruin their loyal fellow-citizens. England and Spain were at war, and the West Indian seas were white with the sails of national fleets and private armed vessels. Privateering afforded a vent for the active and restless spirits of the colonies; it was not without some creditable associations; and the life of a privateersman was full of the charms of novelty, adventure, and risk. This journal shows something of its character.
A journal _of all the transactions on board the sloop_ REVENGE, _Benj’n Norton Com’r by God’s grace and under his protection, bound on a cruising voyage against the Spaniards. Begun June the 5th, 1741_.
_Friday, 5th._ This day, at 4 A.M., the Cap’t went from Taylor’s wharf on board his sloop, which lay off of Connanicut, & at 6 o’clock Cap’t John Freebody [the chief owner] came off in the pinnace with several hands. We directly weighed anchor with 40 hands, officers included, bound to New York to get more hands, a Doctor, and some more provisions and other stores we stood in need of. The wind coming contrary, was obliged to put back. Came to an anchor again under Connanicut at 8 P.M.
_Saturday, 6th._ Weighed from under Connanicut at 4 A.M. with a small breeze of wind. Met several vessells bound to Newport and Boston. At 7 P.M. anchored under Block Island, over against the L10,000 Pear [pier?]. Bought 10s. worth of Codfish for the people.
_Sunday, 7th._ About 4 A.M. weighed from Block Island, and Monday, the 8th instant, at 9 A.M., anchored in Huntington Bay.
_Tuesday, 9th._ Weighed from Huntington Bay at 3 P.M. At 11 came to the white stone. Fired a gun & beat the drum to let them know what we were. The Ferryboat came off & told us we could not get hands at York, for the sloops fitted by the country had got them all. At 12 came to anchor at the 2 Brothers. At 4 took an acc’t of all the provisions on board, with the cost; together with a list of all the people on board. Price, a hand that came with us from Rhode Island, askt leave to go to York to see his wife. Set a shilling crazy fellow ashore, not thinking him fit to proceed the Voyage, his name unknown to me.
_Wednesday, 10th._ This morning, about 5 A.M., Cap’t Freebody went up to York in the pinnace to get provisions and leave to beat about for more hands. At 1 P.M. the Pinnace returned and brought word to Cap’t Norton from Mr. Freebody that he had waited on his Honour the Gov’r, and that he would not give him leave to beat up for Volunteers. The chief reason he gave was that the City was thinned of hands by the 2 country sloops that were fitted out by the Council to cruise after the Spanish privateers on the coast, and that his Grace the Duke of Newcastle had wrote him word, that, if Admiral Vernon or Gen. Wentworth[A] should write for more recruits, to use his endeavors to get them, so that he could not give encouragement to any privateers to take their men away. Three of the hands that went up to York left us. At 4 P.M. Edward Sampford, our pilot, went ashore in a canoe with four more hands, without leave from the Cap’n. When he came on board again the Cap’n talked to him, & found that he was a mutinous, quarrelsome fellow, and so ordered him to bundle up his clothes & go ashore for good. He carried with him 5 more hands. After they were gone, I read the articles to those on board, who readily signed; so hope we shall lead a peaceable life. Remain, out of the 41 hands that came with us from Rhode Island, 29 hands.
[Footnote A: Admiral Vernon (whose name is familiar to every American,–Mount Vernon was named in his honor) was in command of the British fleet in the Spanish Main. General Wentworth, an officer “without experience, authority, or resolution,” had command of the land forces in the West Indies. All the North American, colonies, except Georgia, which was too recently settled, and whose own borders were too much exposed, had been called upon to give aid to the expedition against the Spaniards, and a regiment thirty-six hundreds strong was actually supplied by them. The war was one in which the colonists took an active interest.]
_Friday, 12th._ Went to York with a letter from the Cap’n to Mr. Freebody, who ordered the vessel up to York. Three of our hands left me to see some negroes burnt,[B] took a pilot in to bring the vessel up, and so returned on board at 3 P.M.
[Footnote B: This little, indifferent phrase refers to one of the most shocking and cruel incidents of the colonial history of New York, the result of a delusion “less notorious,” says Mr. Hildreth, (_Hist, of the United States, ii. 391_,) “but not less lamentable, than the Salem witchcraft. The city of New York now contained some seven or eight thousand inhabitants, of whom twelve or fifteen hundred were slaves. Nine fires in rapid succession, most of them, however, merely the burning of chimneys, produced a perfect insanity of terror. An indented servant-woman purchased her liberty and secured a reward of one hundred pounds by pretending to give information of a plot formed by a low tavern-keeper, her master, and three negroes, to burn the city and murder the whites. This story was confirmed and amplified by an Irish prostitute convicted of a robbery, who, to recommend herself to mercy, reluctantly turned informer. Numerous arrests had been already made among the slaves and free blacks. Many others followed. The eight lawyers who then composed the bar of New York all assisted by turns in behalf of the prosecution. The prisoners, who had no counsel, were tried and convicted upon most insufficient evidence. Many confessed to save their lives, and then accused others. Thirteen unhappy convicts were burned at the stake, eighteen were hanged, and seventy-one transported.” Such are the panics of a slaveholding community!]
_Saturday, 13th._ At 5 A.M. weighed from the 2 Brothers and went to York. At 7 anchored off the town. Saluted it with 7 guns. Ship’t 7 hands to proceed the voyage.
_Sunday, 14th._ Between 6 & 7 A.M. came in a brig from Aberdeen with 40 servants,[C] but brings no news.
[Footnote C: At this time much of the agricultural and domestic labor in the colonies, especially south of New England, was performed by indented servants brought from Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany. They were generally an ill-used class. Their services were purchased of the captains who brought them over; the purchaser had a legal property in them during the time they were bound for, could sell or bequeath them, and, like other chattels, they were liable to be seized for debts.]
_Thursday, 18th._ At 11 A.M. our pilot came on board with 4 of our men that had left us when the Cap’n turned Edward Sampford ashore. At 2 P.M. the Cap’n ordered our gunner to deliver arms to them that had none. 25 hands fitted themselves. Great firing at our buoy, supposing him a Spaniard. I hope to God their courage may be as good, if ever they meet with any.
_Saturday, 20th._ At 10 A.M. there came in the Squirrel man of war, Cap’n Warren[D] Com’r, from Jamaica, who informed us that Admiral Vernon had taken all the forts at Carthagena except one, and the town.[E] We saluted him with 3 guns, having no more loaded. He returned us one, and we gave three cheers, which were returned by the ship. He further told the Captain, that, if he would come up to York, he would put him on a route which would be of service to his voyage.
[Footnote D: Captain, afterward Sir Peter Warren, was a distinguished naval officer in his day. In 1745 he was made Rear-Admiral for his services at the siege of Louisbourg. He married in New York.]
[Footnote E: The report of the taking of Cartagena was false, and the colonists were greatly disappointed at the failure of Vernon’s great enterprise.]
_Tuesday, 23d._ Wrote a letter, by the Captain’s order, to get Davison to go as mate with us. Our Captain went to York to carry it to Capt. Potter. At 3 P.M. came in a sloop from Jamaica, in a 20 days passage, from which we learn that Admiral Vernon’s fleet was fitting out for Cuba.[F] I wish them more success than what they got against Carthagena; for by all report they got more blows than honour. At 4 P.M. the Captain returned and brought a hand with him, John Watson, Clerk of a Dutch church.
[Footnote F: Five hundred additional men were sent from Massachusetts to take part in this new expedition. It was a total failure, like the preceding one, and Few of the colonial troops lived to return home.]
_Wednesday, 24th._ About 10 A.M. the pilot came on board with a message from Capt Freebody, who was returned from Long Island, to agree with a Doctor who had offered to go with us. At 1 P.M. came in a sloop from Jamaica, a prize of Capt Warren, which had formerly been taken by the Spaniards. She belonged to Providence, and had been retaken by the Squirrel. At 6 P.M. Mr. Stone & the Doctor came on board to see the Captain, but, he being at York, they went there to see him.
_Thursday, 25th._ Nothing remarkable the fore part of the day, but quarreling not worth mentioning. At 1 P.M. a sloop came in from Jamaica, and brought for news that they had spoken an English man of war at Port Marant, by which they had been informed that a fresh war was daily expected; also that the Bay was entirely cut off by the Spaniards. No Doctor as yet, for he that the Captain went to agree with was a drunkard and an extortioner, so we are better without him than with him.
_Friday, 26th._ The most remarkablest day this great while. All has been peace & quietness. Three ships came down the Narrows, one bound to London, another bound to Newfoundland, & the third to Ireland.
_Saturday, 27th._ This morning, about 10, the Cap’t went to York to take his leave of Cap’t Freebody, who was going to Rhode Island. At 2 P.M. he came on board & brought with him 2 bb’s of pork. At 3 came in a privateer from Bermudas, Capt Love Com’r, who came here for provisions for himself & his consort, who waited for him there. This day we heard that the two country sloops were expected in by Wednesday next. Lord send it, for we only wait for them in hopes of getting a Doctor & some more hands to make up our complement.
_Friday, July 3d._ At 5 A.M. we saw three hands who had left us the day before on board the Humming Bird privateer, who had been enticed by some of the owners to leave us by making of them drunk. About 10 we saw their canoe going ashore with our hands in her, also Joseph Ferrow, whom we had brought from Rhode Island, and since given him clothes, but who had entered on board that sloop as boatswain. As soon as they had done watering, and were returning to the ship, we manned our pinnace, and, having boarded their canoe, took our three hands out of her, and brought them and Joseph Ferrow aboard. Some time after, the Humming Bird’s canoe coming alongside, Ferrow jumpt into it, and they put off. Our pinnace being hauled up in the tackles, we immediately let her down, but unfortunately the plug was out, and the hands which had jumped into her being raw, she almost filled with water, which caused such confusion that the canoe got on board before we got off. Our hands then went to demand Ferrow, but the privateersmen got out their arms and would not suffer us to board them. At 4 P.M. the Cap’ of the little Privateer came on board of us to know the reason of the disturbance between his people and ours. Our Captain told him the reason, and forbid him to carry that fellow away, for, if he did, he might chance to hear of him in the West Indies, &, if he did, he would go 100 leagues to meet him, and take ten for one, and break up his voyage, & send him home to his owners, and give his people a good dressing. (I don’t doubt but he’ll be as good as his word.) Opened a bbl of bread. Thunder and lightning with a great deal of rain.
_Saturday, 4th._ This morning, about 5 A.M., came in a ship from Marblehead bound to S’o Carolina. She had lost her main mast, mizzen mast, & fore topmast. In Latitude 35 she met with a hard gale of wind which caused the disaster, and obliged her to put in to New York to refit. About 11 o’clock the Humming Bird weighed anchor for Philadelphia to get hands. At 4 P.M. the Lieu’t and 2 sergeants belonging to Capt Rigg’s Company came on board to look for some soldiers who were supposed to be on board the Humming Bird, which was lying off Coney Island, but, the wind and tide proving contrary, they were obliged to return. At 6 came in a ship from Lisbon, having made the passage in 6 weeks; also a sloop from Turks Island: both loaded with salt. The ship appearing to be a lofty vessel, our people were panic struck with fear, taking her for a 70 gun ship, and, as we had several deserters from the men at war, they desired the Cap’t to hoist the Jack and lower our pennant as a signal for our pinnace, which was then ashore, so that, if she proved to be a man of war, they might get ashore, and clear of the press. But it proved quite the contrary; for the ship & sloop’s crew, taking us, by the signal we had made for our pinnace, for a tender of a man of war, laying there to press hands, quitted their vessels and ran ashore, as soon as they saw our pinnace manned, and made for the bushes. At night the Cap’ gave the people a pail of punch to recover them of their fright. Thunder & lightning all this day.
_Sunday, 5th._ At 5 A.M. shipped a hand. Our mate went ashore to get water. About 8 he returned, and informed us that the two country sloops lay at the Hook, and only waited for a pilot to bring them up, which I hope will prove true. We are all tired of staying here. At 2 P.M. weighed anchor and got nearer in shore, out of the current. Rainy, squally, windy weather. Here lie a brig bound to Newfoundland, a ship to Jamaica, and a sloop which at 6 P.M. weighed anchor, bound to Barbadoes, loaded with lumber and horses. This day being a month since we left our commission port, I have set down what quantity of provisions has been expended, viz., 9-1/2 bb’s of beef, 1 bb of pork, 14 bb of Bread. Remaining, 49-1/2 bb’s of beef, 29 bb’s of pork, 40 cwt of bread.
_Monday, 6th._ About 6 A.M. came in the two Country sloops so long waited for. They were fitted out to take a Spanish privateer that has been cruising on the coast, and has taken several of our English vessels. A ship from Newfoundland also came up, and also the Humming bird privateer, which had been to meet them to get hands. Cap’t Langden, Com’r of one of the above sloops, as he came alongside, gave us three cheers, which we returned. The Cap’t went up to York to get a Doctor and some hands. One promised to give him an answer the next day. At 10 a hand came on board to list, but went away without signing.
_Tuesday, 6th._ This morning the Captain went up to York, and at last agreed with a Doctor who had been in the employ of Capt Cunningham, Com’r of one of the Privateer Sloops that came in the day before. His name is William Blake. He is a young gentleman, and well recommended by the Gen’l of York. At 6 P.M. the Captain returned on board, and brought with him a chest of medicines, a Doctor’s box which cost 90L York currency; also 10 pistols and cutlasses.
_Tuesday, 14th._ Weighed about 2 P.M., from the Hook with the wind at W.S.W, with a fresh gale, & by God’s leave and under his protection, bound on our cruise against the proud Dons, the Spaniards. The Captain ordered the people a pail of punch to drink to a good voyage. Opened a bb of beef & a tierce of bread. The people were put on allowance for the time, one pound of beef per man & 7 pounds of bread, per week.
_Wednesday, 15th._ At 3 P.M. set our shrouds up. There was a great, swelling sea. About 5 A.M. saw a sail under our bow, about a league distant. All hands were called upon deck, and got ready to receive her, should she prove an enemy. We fired one of our bow chasers & brought her to, and found that she was a sloop from Nantucket, Russell Master. He said he had met nothing since he had been out, which was 4 days. Our people returned to their _statu quo_, being all peaceable since they have got a Quartermaster to control them.
_Tuesday, 28th._ About 5 A.M. spied a sail under our lee bow, bore down on her, and when in gunshot fired one of our bow chasers. She immediately lowered all her sails, & went astern of us. We then ordered the master to send his boat aboard, which he did, and came himself with one hand. Upon examination, we found that she was a sloop belonging to some of the subjects of his Brittanick majesty, & was taken by a Spanish privateer. The sloop had been taken off of Obricock,[G] near N. Carolina, and when taken by us was in Latitude 31 deg. 59′ N., Longitude 73 deg. 6′ W. The master, when he came aboard, brought three Spanish papers, which he declared to be, the first, a copy of his commission; the second, Instructions what signal to make when arrived at S’t Augustine, where she was to be condemned; and the third paper was to let him know what route he was to steer. We sent our Lieu’t aboard, who reported that she was loaded with Pork, Beans, Live Hogs, &c., and a horse, & had on board 2 Englishmen; the Master, who is a Frenchman born, but turned Spaniard; 3 Spaniard slaves, & one negro. Upon examination, John Evergin, one of the owners, declared that he had been taken some time in April last by Don Pedro Estrado, Cap’t of the privateer that had taken this sloop, & that he forced him to list with them, and to pilot their vessel on the coast of N. Carolina, and that then they took this sloop at Obricock, on July 5’th; also 2 more sloops and a ship loaded with lumber & bound to S’o Carolina; that the Cap’t of the privateer put him on board with the French master, and another Englishman, Saml Elderidge, to navigate the vessel to Augustine, and that they were making the best of their way to that place. We sent our Master on board to fetch all the papers & bring the prisoners as above mentioned. At 11 A.M. sent Jeremiah Harman & John Webb with four hands to take care of the prize, the first to be master & the other mate. The Captain gave the master & mate the following orders, viz.,–
[Footnote G: Perhaps a misspelling of Occacoke, an island on the coast of North Carolina.]
On Board the Revenge,
_July 28th, 1741._
You, Jeremiah Harman, being appointed Master, & you, John Webb, mate, of a sloop taken by a Spanish privateer some time ago, belonging to some of the subjects of his Brittanick Majesty, and retaken by me by virtue of a commission granted to me by the Hon’ble Ritchard Ward, Esq., Gov’r in chief over Rhode Island & Providence plantations, &c., in New England, I order, that you keep company with my sloop, the Revenge, as long as weather will permit, & if by the Providence of God, by stormy weather, or some unforeseen accident, we should part, I then order you to proceed directly to the island of Providence, one of the Bahamia islands, and there to wait my arrival, and not to embezzle, diminish, waste, sell, or unload any part of her cargo till I am there present, under the penalty of the articles already signed by you. Upon your arrival at Providence, make a just report to his Hon’r the Gov’r of that place of the sloop & cargo, & what is on board, & how we came by her. I am y’rs,
B. NORTON. To Jeremiah Harman, Mas’r & John Webb, mate.
For signal, hoist your Dutch jack at mast head; if we hoist first, you answer us, & do not keep it up long.
_Wednesday, 29th._ About 4 P.M. saw a sloop. Gave chase, but, the weather being calm, was forced to get out our oars. Fired our bow chase to bring her to; but as the people were in confusion, the ship tacking about, and the night coming on very foggy, we were unable to speak to her. By her course she was bound to the North’d. Lost sight of our prize. The two Englishmen, who were taken prisoners by the Spanish privateer, signed our articles to-day.
_Saturday, Aug 1st._ The prize still alongside of us. Ordered the Master to send us the negro prisoner, having been informed that he was Cap’t of a Comp’y of Indians, mulattoes, and negroes, that was at the retaking of the Fort at St Augustine, which had formerly been taken while under the command of that worthiest G–O–pe,[H] who by his treachery suffered so many brave fellows to be mangled by those barbarians. The negro went under the name of Signior Capitano Francisco. Sent one of the mulattoes in his room on board the prize. Gave the people a pail of punch.
[Footnote H: General Oglethorpe, who was at this time the victim of unfavorable reports and calumnious stories, that had been spread by disaffected members of the infant settlements in Georgia, and by some of the officers who had served under him in his unsuccessful attempt to reduce the town of Saint Augustine in Florida, “The fort at Saint Augustine,” to which the writer of this Journal refers, as having been taken while under the command of Oglethorpe, was Fort Moosa, three miles from Saint Augustine, where a detachment of one hundred and thirty-seven men, under Colonel Palmer of Carolina, had been attacked by a vastly superior force of Spaniards, negroes, and Indians, and had been cut off almost to a man. This misfortune seems to have been due to Colonel Palmer’s disregard of Oglethorpe’s orders, and Oglethorpe himself was in no way responsible for it, although the popular blame fell on his shoulders.]
_Sunday, 2nd._ At 1 P.M. we examined the negro, who frankly owned that he was Cap’t of a Comp’y as aforesaid, & that his commission was on board the privateer; that he was in the privateer in hopes of getting to the Havanah, & that there he might get a passage to Old Spain to get the reward of his brave actions. We then askt him if it was his comp’y that had used the English so barbarously, when taken at the fort. He denied that it was his compy, but laid that cruel action to the Florida Indians, and nothing more could we get out of him. We then tied him to a gun & made the Doctor come with instruments, seemingly to treat him as they had served the English [prisoners], thinking by that means to get some confession out of him; but he still denied it. We then tried a mulatto, one that was taken with him, to find out if he knew anything about the matter. We gave him a dozen of stripes, but he declared that he knew nothing more than that he [the negro] had been Cap’t of a Comp’y all that time. The other fellow on board the sloop, he said, knew all about it. We sent to him, & he declared the whole truth, that it was the Florida Indians who had committed the acts under his [the negro’s] command, but did not know if he was consenting to it. However, to make sure, & to make him remember that he bore such a commission, we gave him 200 lashes, & having pickled him, left him to the care of the Doctor. Opened a tierce of bread and killed the 2 hogs.
_Monday, 3d._ Small breeze of wind. About 10 saw a schooner standing to N’ward. Gave her chase.
_Tuesday, 4th._ A fine breeze of wind. Still in chase of the schooner. At 5 P.M. gave her a gun, in hopes to bring her to and find out what she was; but she did not mind it, neither hoisted any colors. Then she bore down on us, tacked and bore away. We fired 10 shot, but all did not signify, for she hugged her wind, & it growing dark, and having a good pair of heels, she was soon lost sight of. We imagined she was an eastward schooner both by her build & course; but let her be what she will, she had a brave fellow for a Comr.
_Wednesday, 5th._ Fine breeze of wind. The man at the mast head about 2 P.M. spied 5 sail of vessels steering to the westward. Gave them chase till 1 A.M. About 2 we could see them at a great distance to leeward of us. Lay to till 4, and then began the chase again, they having got almost out of sight.
_Thursday, 6th._ Still in chase of the 5 vessels. Set our spritsail, topsail & squaresail, with a fair breeze of wind. One of the ships brought to and fired a gun to wait for a sloop that was in Comp’ with her, & to wait for us. We took in all our small sails, bore down on her, & hoisted our pennant. When alongside of her she fired 6 shot at us, but did us no damage. We still hedged upon her, and, having given her our broadside, stood off. The sloop tacked immediately and bore down on us, in hopes to get us between them to pepper us, as we supposed. At sight of this, we gave them three cheers. Our people were all agreed to fight them, & told the Captain, if he would venture his sloop, they would venture their lives; but he seemed unwilling, and gave for reason, that the prize would be of little profit, if taken, and perhaps would not make good a limb, if it was lost. He also said we had not hands sufficient to man them, and to bring them into Providence, & to carry them to the N’ward would be the breaking up of the voyage without profit. Nevertheless we let the sloop come alongside us, & received her shot. In return we gave her a broadside & a volley of small arms with three huzzas, and then bore down on the ship, which all this time had been pelting us with her shot, but to no purpose. As we passed, we gave her a broadside which did some damage, for she bore down to the sloop, and never fired another shot, but careened her over and let some men down the side to stop her holes, & sent some to repair the rigging and sails, which were full of shot holes. All the damage we got was one shot through our main-sail. The ship mounted 6 guns of a side, and the sloop eight. She was a Spanish privateer, bound on a cruize to the N’ward, & had taken 5 ships & the sloop which we had retaken some time before. It grieved us to think that the fellow should go off with those prizes, which he would not have done, had the Captain been as willing to fight as we. This battle took place in the Latitude 29 deg. 26′, Long. 74 deg. 30′ W. But no blood was shed on our side.
THE ADVANTAGES OF DEFEAT.
When the news flashed over the country, on Monday, the 22d of July, that our army, whose advance into Virginia had been so long expected, and had been watched with such intense interest and satisfaction,–that our army had been defeated, and was flying back in disorder to the intrenchments around Washington, it was but natural that the strong revulsion of feeling and the bitter disappointment should have been accompanied by a sense of dismay, and by alarm as to what was to follow. The panic which had disgraced some of our troops at the close of the fight found its parallel in the panic in our own hearts. But as the smoke of the battle and the dust of the retreat, which overshadowed the land in a cloud of lies and exaggerations, by degrees cleared away, men regained the even balance of their minds, and felt a not unworthy shame at their transient fears.
It is now plain that our defeat at Bull Run was in no true sense a disaster; that we not only deserved it, but needed it; that its ultimate consequences are better than those of a victory would have been. Far from being disheartened by it, it should give us new confidence in our cause, in our strength, in our final success. There are lessons which every great nation must learn which are cheap at any cost, and for some of those lessons the defeat of the 21st of July was a very small price to pay. The essential question now is, Whether this schooling has been sufficient and effectual, or whether we require still further hard discipline to enforce its instructions upon us.
In this moment of pause and compelled reflection, it is for us to examine closely the spirit and motives with which we have engaged in war, and to determine the true end for which the war must be carried on. It is no time for indulging in fallacies of the fancy or in feebleness of counsel. The temper of the Northern people, since the war was forced upon them, has been in large measure noble and magnanimous. The sudden interruption of peace, the prospect of a decline of long continued prosperity, were at once and manfully faced. An eager and emulous zeal in the defence of the imperilled liberties and institutions of the nation showed itself all over the land, and in every condition of life. None who lived through the months of April and May can ever forget the heroic and ideal sublimity of the time. But as the weeks went on, as the immediate alarm that had roused the invincible might of the people passed away, something of the spirit of over-confidence, of excited hope, of satisfied vanity mingled with and corrupted the earlier and purer emotion. The war was to be a short one. Our enemies would speedily yield before the overwhelming force arrayed against them; they would run from Northern troops; we were sure of easy victory. There was little sober foreboding, as our army set out from Washington on its great advance. The troops moved forward with exultation, as if going on a holiday and festive campaign; and the nation that watched them shared in their careless confidence, and prophesied a speedy triumph. But the event showed how far such a spirit was from that befitting a civil war like this. Never were men engaged in a cause which demanded more seriousness of purpose, more modesty and humility of pretension.
The duty before us is honorable in proportion to its difficulty. God has given us work to do not only for ourselves, but for coming generations of men. He has imposed on us a task which, if well performed, will require our most strenuous endeavors and our most patient and unremitting exertions. We are fairly engaged in a war which cannot be a short one, even though our enemies should before long lay down their arms; for it is a war not merely to support and defend the Constitution and to retake the property of the United States, not merely to settle the question of the right of a majority to control an insolent and rebellious minority in the republic, nor to establish the fact of the national existence and historic unity of the United States; but it is also and more essentially a war for the establishment of civilization in that immense portion of our country in which for many years barbarism has been gaining power. It is for the establishment of liberty and justice, of freedom of conscience and liberty of thought, of equal law and of personal rights, throughout the South. If these are not to be secured without the abolition of slavery, it is a war for the abolition of slavery. We are not making war to reestablish an old order of things, but to set up a new one. We are not giving ourselves and our fortunes for the purpose of fighting a few battles, and then making peace, restoring the Southern States to their old place in the Union,–but for the sake of destroying the root from which this war has sprung, and of making another such war impossible. It is not worth while to do only half or a quarter of our work. But if we do it thoroughly, as we ought, the war must be a long one, and will require from us long sacrifices. It is well to face up to the fact at once, that this generation is to be compelled to frugality, and that luxurious expenses upon trifles and superfluities must be changed for the large and liberal costliness of a noble cause. We are not to expect or hope for a speedy return of what is called prosperity; but we are greatly and abundantly prosperous, if we succeed in extending and establishing the principles which alone can give dignity and value to national or individual life, and without which, material abundance, success in trade, and increase of wealth are evidences rather of the decline than of the progress of a state. We, who have so long been eager in the pursuit and accumulation of riches, are now to show more generous energies in the free spending of our means to gain the invaluable objects for which we have gone to war. There is nothing disheartening in this prospect. Our people, accustomed as they have been during late years to the most lavish use of money, and to general extravagance in expense, have not yet lost the tradition of the economies and thrift of earlier times, and will not find it difficult to put them once more into practice. The burden will not fall upon any class; and when each man, whatever be his station in life, is called upon to lower his scale of living, no one person will find it too hard to do what all others are doing.
But if such be the objects and the prospects of the war, it is plain that they require more sober thought and more careful forecasting and more thorough preparation than have thus far been given to them. If we be the generation chosen to accomplish the work that lies ready to our hands, if we be commissioned to so glorious and so weighty an enterprise, there is but one spirit befitting our task. The war, if it is to be successful, must be a religious war: not in the old sense of that phrase, not a war of violent excitement and passionate enthusiasm, not a war in which the crimes of cruel bigots are laid to the charge of divine impulse, bur a war by itself, waged with dignified and solemn strength, with clean hands and pure hearts,–a war calm and inevitable in its processes as the judgments of God. When Cromwell’s men went out to win the victory at Winceby Fight, their watchword was “_Religion_.” Can we in our great struggle for liberty and right adopt any other watchword than this? Do we require another defeat and more suffering to bring us to a sense of our responsibility to God for the conduct and the issue of this war?
It is only by taking the highest ground, by raising ourselves to the full conception of what is involved in this contest, that we shall secure success, and prevent ourselves from sinking to the level of those who are fighting against us. The demoralization necessarily attendant upon all wars is to be met and overcome only by simple and manly religious conviction and effort. It will be one of the advantages of defeat to have made it evident that a regiment of bullies and prize-fighters is not the best stuff to compose an army. “Your men are not vindictive enough,” Mr. Russell is reported to have said, as he watched the battle. It was the saying of a shrewd observer, but it expresses only an imperfect apprehension of the truth. Vindictiveness is not the spirit our men should have, but a resoluteness of determination, as much more to be relied upon than a vindictive passion as it is founded upon more stable and more enduring qualities of character. The worst characters of our great cities may be the fit equals of Mississippi or Arkansas ruffians, but the mass of our army is not to be brought down to the standard of rowdies or the level of barbarians. The men of New England and of the West do not march under banners with the device of “Booty and Beauty,” though General Beauregard has the effrontery to declare it, and Bishop, now General, Polk the ignorance to utter similar slanders. The atrocities committed on our wounded and prisoners by the “chivalry” of the South may excite not only horror, but a wild fury of revenge. But our cause should not be stained with cruelty and crime, even in the name of vengeance. If the war is simply one in which brute force is to prevail, if we are fighting only for lust and pride and domination, then let us have our “Ellsworth Avengers,” and let us slay the wounded of our enemy without mercy; let us burn their hospitals, let us justify their, as yet, false charges against us; let us admit the truth of the words of the Bishop of Louisiana, that the North is prosecuting this war “with circumstances of barbarity which it was fondly believed would never more disgrace the annals of a civilized people.” But if we, if our brothers in the army, are to lose the proud distinctions of the North, and to be brought down to the level of the tender mercies and the humane counsels of slaveholders and slave-drivers, there would be little use in fighting. If our institutions at the North do not produce better, more humane, and more courageous men than those of the South, when taken in the mass, there is no reason for the sacrifice of blood and treasure in their support. War must be always cruel; it is not to be waged on principles of tenderness; but a just, a religious war can be waged only mercifully, with no excess, with no circumstance of avoidable suffering. Our enemies are our outward consciences, and their reproaches may warn us of our dangers.
The soldiers of the Northern army generally are men capable of understanding the force of moral considerations. They are intelligent, independent, vigorous,–as good material as an army ever was formed from. A large proportion of them have gone to the war from the best motives, and with clear appreciation of the nature and grounds of the contest. But they require to be confirmed in their principles, and to be strengthened against the temptations of life in the camp and in the field, by the voice and support of the communities from which they have come. If the country is careless or indifferent as to their moral standard, they will inevitably become so themselves, and lose the perception of the objects for which they are fighting, forgetting their responsibilities, not only as soldiers, but as good men. It is one of the advantages of defeat to force the thoughts which camp-life may have rendered unfamiliar back into the soldier’s mind. The boastfulness of the advance is gone,–and there is chance for sober reflection.
It is especially necessary for our men, unaccustomed to the profession of arms, and entering at once untried upon this great war, to take a just and high view of their new calling: to look at it with the eyes, not of mercenaries, but of men called into their country’s service; to regard it as a life which is not less, but more difficult than any other to be discharged with honor. “Our profession,” said Washington, “is the chastest of all; even the shadow of a fault tarnishes the lustre of our finest achievements.” Our soldiers in Virginia, and in the other Slave States, have not only their own reputation to support, but also that of the communities from which they come. There must be a rivalry in generous efforts among the troops of different States. Shall we not now have our regiments which by their brave and honorable conduct shall win appellations not less noble than that of the _Auvergne sans tache_, “Auvergne without a stain”? If the praise that Mr. Lincoln bestowed upon our men in his late Message to Congress be not undeserved, they are bound to show qualities such as no other common soldiers have ever been called to exhibit. There are among them more men of character, intelligence, and principle than were ever seen before in the ranks. There should be a higher tone in our service than in that of any other people; and it would be a reproach to our institutions, if our soldiers did not show themselves not only steady and brave in action, undaunted in spirit, unwearied in energy, but patient of discipline, self-controlled, and forbearing. The disgrace to our arms of the defeat at Bull Run was not so great as that of the riotous drunkenness and disorderly conduct of our men during the two or three days that succeeded at Washington. If our men are to be the worthy soldiers of so magnificent a cause as that in which they are engaged, they must raise themselves to its height. Battles may be won by mere human machines, by men serving for eleven dollars a month; but a victory such as we have to gain can be won only by men who know for what and why they are fighting, and who are conscious of the dignity given to them and the responsibility imposed upon them by the sacredness of their cause. The old flag, the stars and stripes, must not only be the symbol in their eyes of past glories and of the country’s honor, but its stars must shine before them with the light of liberty, and its stripes must be the emblem of the even and enduring lines of equal justice.
The retreat from Bull Run and the panic that accompanied it were not due to cowardice among our men. During long hours our troops had fought well, and showed their gallantry under the most trying circumstances. They were not afraid to die. It was not strange that raw volunteers, as many of them were, inefficiently supported, and poorly led, should at length give way before superior force, and yield to the weakness induced by exhaustion and hunger. But the lesson of defeat would be imperfectly learned, did not the army and the nation alike gain from it a juster sense than they before possessed of the value of individual life. Never has life been so much prized and so precious as it has become in America. Never before has each individual been of so much worth. It costs more to bring up a man here, and he is worth more when brought up, than elsewhere. The long peace and the extraordinary amount of comfort which the nation has enjoyed have made us (speaking broadly) fond of life and tender of it. We of the North have looked with astonishment at the recklessness of the South concerning it. We have thought it braver to save than to spend it; and a questionable humanity has undoubtedly led us sometimes into feeble sentimentalities, and false estimates of its value. We have been in danger of thinking too much of it, and of being mean-spirited in its use. But the first sacrifice for which war calls is life; and we must revise our estimates of its value, if we would conduct our war to a happy end. To gain that end, no sacrifice can be too precious or too costly. The shudder with which we heard the first report that three thousand of our men were slain was but the sign of the blow that our hearts received. But there must be no shrinking from the prospect of the death of our soldiers. Better than that we should fail that a million men should die on the battle-field. It is not often that men can have the privilege to offer their lives for a principle; and when the opportunity comes, it is only the coward that does not welcome it with gladness. Life is of no value in comparison with the spiritual principles from which it gains its worth. No matter how many lives it costs to defend or secure truth or justice or liberty, truth and justice and liberty must be defended and secured. Self-preservation must yield to Truth’s preservation. The little human life is for to-day,–the principle is eternal. To die for truth, to die open-eyed and resolutely for the “good old cause,” is not only honor, but reward. “Suffering is a gift not given to every one,” said one of the Scotch martyrs in 1684, “and I desire to bless the Lord with my whole heart and soul that He has counted such a poor thing as I am worthy of the gift of suffering.”
The little value of the individual in comparison with the principles upon which the progress and happiness of the race depend is a lesson enforced by the analogies of Nature, as well as by the evidence of history and the assurance of faith. Nature is careless of the single life. Her processes seem wasteful, but out of seeming waste she produces her great and durable results. Everywhere in her works are the signs of life cut short for the sake of some effect more permanent than itself. And for the establishing of those immortal foundations upon which the human race is to stand firm in virtue and in hope, for the building of the walls of truth, there will be no scanty expenditure of individual life. Men are nothing in the count,–man is everything.
The spirit of the nation will be shown in its readiness to meet without shrinking such sacrifice of life as may be demanded in gaining our end. We must all suffer and rejoice together,–but let there be no unmanly or unwomanly fear of bloodshed. The deaths of our men from sickness, from camp epidemics, are what we should fear and prevent; death on the battle-field we have no right to dread. The men who die in this cause die well; they could wish for no more honorable end of life.
The honor lost in our recent defeat cannot be regained,–but it is indeed one of the advantages of defeat to teach men the preciousness of honor, the necessity of winning and keeping it at any cost. Honor and duty are but two names for the same thing in war. But the novelty of war is so great to us, we are so unpractised in it, and we have thought so little of it heretofore as concerning ourselves, that there is danger lest we fail at first to appreciate its finer elements, and neglect the opportunities it affords for the practice of virtues rarely called out in civil life. The common boast of the South, that there alone was to be found the chivalry of America, and that among the Southern people was a higher strain of courage and a keener sense of honor than among the people of the North, is now to be brought to the test. There is not need to repeat the commonplaces about bravery and honor. But we and our soldiers should remember that it is not the mere performance of set work that is required of them, but the valiant and generous alacrity of noble minds in deeds of daring and of courtesy. Though the science of war has in modern times changed the relations and the duties of men on the battle-field from what they were in the old days of knighthood, yet there is still room for the display of stainless valor and of manful virtue. Honor and courage are part of our religion; and the coward or the man careless of honor in our army of liberty should fall under heavier shame than ever rested on the disgraced soldier in former times. The sense of honor is finer than the common sense of the world. It counts no cost and reckons no sacrifice great. “Then the king wept, and dried his eyes, and said, ‘Your courage had neere hand destroyed you, for I call it folly knights to abide when they be overmatched.’ ‘Nay,’ said Sir Lancelot and the other, ‘for once shamed may never be recovered.'” The examples of Bayard,–_sans peur et sans reproche_,–of Sidney, of the heroes of old or recent days, are for our imitation. We are bound to be no less worthy of praise and remembrance than they. They did nothing too high for us to imitate. And in their glorious company we may hope that some of our names may yet be enrolled, to stand as the inspiring exemplars and the models for coming times. If defeat has brought us shame, it has brought us also firmer resolve. No man can be said to know himself, or to have assurance of his force of principle and character, till he has been tested by the fires of trial in the crucible of defeat. The same is true of a nation. The test of defeat is the test of its national worth. Defeat shows whether it deserves success. We may well be grateful and glad for our defeat of the 21st of July, if we wrest from it the secrets of our weakness, and are thrown back by it to the true sources of strength. If it has done its work thoroughly, if we profit sufficiently by the advantages it has afforded us, we may be well content that so slight a harm has brought us so great a good. But if not, then let us be ready for another and another defeat, till our souls shall be tempered and our forces disciplined for the worthy attainment of victory. For victory we shall in good time have. There is no need to fear or be doubtful of the issue. As soon as we deserve it, victory will be ours; and were we to win it before, it would be but an empty and barren triumph. All history is but the prophecy of our final success,–and Milton has put the prophecy into words: “Go on, O Nation, never to be disunited! Be the praise and the heroic song of all posterity! Merit this, but seek only virtue, not to extend your limits, (for what needs to win a fading triumphant laurel out of the tears of wretched men?) but to settle the pure worship of God in his church, and justice in the state. Then shall the hardest difficulties smooth out themselves before thee; envy shall sink to hell, craft and malice be confounded, whether it be home-bred mischief or outlandish cunning; yea, other nations will then covet to serve thee, for lordship and victory are but the pages of justice and virtue. Use thine invincible might to do worthy and godlike deeds, and then he that seeks to break your union a cleaving curse be his inheritance to all generations!”
* * * * *
ODE TO HAPPINESS.
I.
Spirit, that rarely comest now,
And only to contrast my gloom,
Like rainbow-feathered birds that bloom A moment on some autumn bough
Which, with the spurn of their farewell, Sheds its last leaves,–thou once didst dwell With me year-long, and make intense
To boyhood’s wisely-vacant days
That fleet, but all-sufficing grace Of trustful inexperience,
While yet the soul transfigured sense, And thrilled, as with love’s first caress, At life’s mere unexpectedness.
II.
Those were thy days, blithe spirit, those When a June sunshine could fill up
The chalice of a buttercup
With such Falernian juice as flows No longer,–for the vine is dead
Whence that inspiring drop was shed: Days when my blood would leap and run,
As full of morning as a breeze,
Or spray tossed up by summer seas
That doubts if it be sea or sun;
Days that flew swiftly, like the band That in the Grecian games had strife
And passed from eager hand to hand The onward-dancing torch of life.
III.
Wing-footed! thou abid’st with him
Who asks it not; but he who hath
Watched o’er the waves thy fading path Shall nevermore on ocean’s rim,
At morn or eve, behold returning
Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning! Thou first reveal’st to us thy face
Turned o’er the shoulder’s parting grace, A moment glimpsed, then seen no more,– Thou whose swift footsteps we can trace Away from every mortal door!
IV.
Nymph of the unreturning feet,
How may I woo thee back? But no,
I do thee wrong to call thee so;
‘Tis we are changed, not thou art fleet: The man thy presence feels again
Not in the blood, but in the brain, Spirit, that lov’st the upper air,
Serene and vaporless and rare,
Such as on mountain-heights we find And wide-viewed uplands of the mind,
Or such as scorns to coil and sing Round any but the eagle’s wing
Of souls that with long upward beat Have won an undisturbed retreat,
Where, poised like winged victories, They mirror in unflinching eyes
The life broad-basking ‘neath their feet,– Man always with his Now at strife,
Pained with first gasps of earthly air, Then begging Death the last to spare,
Still fearful of the ampler life.
V.
Not unto them dost thou consent
Who, passionless, can lead at ease A life of unalloyed content,
A life like that of landlocked seas, That feel no elemental gush
Of tidal forces, no fierce rush
Of storm deep-grasping, scarcely spent ‘Twixt continent and continent:
Such quiet souls have never known
Thy truer inspiration, thou
Who lov’st to feel upon thy brow
Spray from the plunging vessel thrown, Grazing the tusked lee shore, the cliff That o’er the abrupt gorge holds its breath, Where the frail hair’s-breadth of an If Is all that sunders life and death:
These, too, are cared for, and round these Bends her mild crook thy sister Peace;
These in unvexed dependence lie
Each ‘neath his space of household sky; O’er them clouds wander, or the blue
Hangs motionless the whole day through; Stars rise for them, and moons grow large And lessen in such tranquil wise
As joys and sorrows do that rise
Within their nature’s sheltered marge; Their hours into each other flit,
Like the leaf-shadows of the vine
And fig-tree under which they sit; And their still lives to heaven incline With an unconscious habitude,
Unhistoried as smokes that rise
From happy hearths and sight elude In kindred blue of morning skies.
VI.
Wayward! when once we feel thy lack, ‘Tis worse than vain to tempt thee back! Yet there is one who seems to be
Thine elder sister, in whose eyes
A faint, far northern light will rise Sometimes and bring a dream of thee:
She is not that for which youth hoped; But she hath blessings all her own,
Thoughts pure as lilies newly oped, And faith to sorrow given alone:
Almost I deem that it is thou
Come back with graver matron brow, With deepened eyes and bated breath,
Like one who somewhere had met Death. “But no,” she answers, “I am she
Whom the gods love, Tranquillity;
That other whom you seek forlorn.
Half-earthly was; but I am born
Of the immortals, and our race
Have still some sadness in our face: He wins me late, but keeps me long,
Who, dowered with every gift of passion, In that fierce flame can forge and fashion Of sin and self the anchor strong;
Can thence compel the driving force Of daily life’s mechanic course,
Nor less the nobler energies
Of needful toil and culture wise:
Whose soul is worth the tempter’s lure, Who can renounce and yet endure,
To him I come, not lightly wooed,
And won by silent fortitude.”
* * * * *
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
_Florence_, July 5th, 1861.
“When some beloved voice that was to you Both sound and sweetness faileth suddenly, And silence, against which you dare not cry, Aches round you like a strong disease and new,– What hope? what help? what music will undo That silence to your sense? Not friendship’s sigh,– Not reason’s subtle count,–not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew,– Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales, Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees To the clear moon,–nor yet the spheric laws Self-chanted,–nor the angels’ sweet All-hails, Met in the smile of God. Nay, none of these! Speak THOU, availing Christ, and fill this pause!”
Thus sang the Muse of a great woman years ago; and now, alas! she, who, with constant suffering of her own, was called upon to grieve often for the loss of near and dear ones, has suddenly gone from among us, “and silence, against which we dare not cry, aches round us like a strong disease and new.” Her own beautiful words are our words, the world’s words,–and though the tears fall faster and thicker, as we search for all that is left of her in the noble poems which she bequeaths to humanity, there follows the sad consolation in feeling assured that she above all others _felt_ the full value of life, the full value of death, and was prepared to meet her God humbly, yet joyfully, whenever He should claim her for His own. Her life was one long, large-souled, large-hearted prayer for the triumph of Right, Justice, Liberty; and she who lived for others was
“poet true,
Who died for Beauty, as martyrs do For Truth,–the ends being scarcely two.”
Beauty _was_ truth with her, the wife, mother, and poet, three in one, and such an earthly trinity as God had never before blessed the world with.
This day week, at half-past four o’clock in the morning, Mrs. Browning died. A great invalid from girlhood, owing to an unfortunate accident, Mrs. Browning’s life was a prolonged combat with disease thereby engendered; and had not God given her extraordinary vitality of spirit, the frail body could never have borne up against the suffering to which it was doomed. Probably there never was a greater instance of the power of genius over the weakness of the flesh. Confined to her room in the country or city home of her father in England, Elizabeth Barrett developed into the great artist and scholar.
From her couch went forth those poems which have crowned her as “the world’s greatest poetess”; and on that couch, where she lay almost speechless at times, and seeing none but those friends dearest and nearest, the soul-woman struck deep into the roots of Latin and Greek, and drank of their vital juices. We hold in kindly affection her learned and blind teacher, Hugh Stuart Boyd, who, she tells us, was “enthusiastic for the good and the beautiful, and one of the most simple and upright of human beings.” The love of his grateful scholar, when called upon to mourn the good man’s death, embalms his memory among her Sonnets, where she addresses him as her
“Beloved friend, who, living many years With sightless eyes raised vainly to the sun, Didst learn to keep thy patient soul in tune To visible Nature’s elemental cheers!”
Nor did this “steadfast friend” forget his poet-pupil ere he went to “join the dead”:–
“Three gifts the Dying left me,–Aeschylus, And Gregory Nazianzen, and a clock
Chiming the gradual hours out like a flock Of stars, whose motion is melodious.”
We catch a glimpse of those communings over “our Sophocles the royal,” “our Aeschylus the thunderous,” “our Euripides the human,” and “my Plato the divine one,” in her pretty poem of “Wine of Cyprus,” addressed to Mr. Boyd. The woman translates the remembrance of those early lessons into her heart’s verse:–
“And I think of those long mornings
Which my thought goes far to seek, When, betwixt the folio’s turnings,
Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek.
Past the pane, the mountain spreading, Swept the sheep-bell’s tinkling noise,
While a girlish voice was reading,– Somewhat low for [Greek: ais] and [Greek: ois].”
These “golden hours” were not without that earnest argument so welcome to candid minds:–
“For we sometimes gently wrangled,
Very gently, be it said,–
Since our thoughts were disentangled By no breaking of the thread!
And I charged you with extortions
On the nobler fames of old,–
Ay, and sometimes thought your Persons Stained the purple they would fold.”
What high honor the scholar did her friend and teacher, and how nobly she could interpret the “rhythmic Greek,” let those decide who have read Mrs. Browning’s translations of “Prometheus Bound” and Bion’s “Lament for Adonis.”
Imprisoned within the four walls of her room, with books for her world and large humanity for her thought, the lamp of life burning so low at times that a feather would be placed on her lips to prove that there was still breath, Elizabeth Barrett read and wrote, and “heard the nations praising” her “far off.” She loved
“Art for art,
And good for God himself, the essential Good,”
until destiny (a destiny with God in it) brought two poets face to face and heart to heart. Mind had met mind and recognized its peer previously to that personal interview which made them one in soul; but it was not until after an acquaintance of two years that Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning were united in marriage for time and for eternity, a marriage the like of which can seldom be recorded. What wealth of love she could give is evidenced in those exquisite sonnets purporting to be from the Portuguese, the author being too modest to christen them by their right name, Sonnets from the Heart. None have failed to read the truth through this slight veil, and to see the woman more than the poet in such lines as these:–
“I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee!”
We have only to turn to the concluding poem in “Men and Women,” inscribed to E.B.B., to see how reciprocal was this great love.
From their wedding-day Mrs. Browning seemed to be endowed with new life. Her health visibly improved, and she was enabled to make excursions in England prior to her departure for the land of her adoption, Italy, where she found a second and a dearer home. For nearly fifteen years Florence and the Brownings have been one in the thoughts of many English and Americans; and Casa Guidi, which has been immortalized by Mrs. Browning’s genius, will be as dear to the Anglo-Saxon traveller as Milton’s Florentine residence has been heretofore. Those who now pass by Casa Guidi fancy an additional gloom has settled upon the dark face of the old palace, and grieve to think that those windows from which a spirit-face witnessed two Italian revolutions, and those large mysterious rooms where a spirit-hand translated the great Italian Cause into burning verse, and pleaded the rights of humanity in “Aurora Leigh,” are hereafter to be the passing homes of the thoughtless or the unsympathizing.
Those who have known Casa Guidi as it was could hardly enter the loved rooms now and speak above a whisper. They who have been so favored can never forget the square anteroom, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy Browning passed many an hour,–the little dining-room covered with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert Browning,–the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was Mr. Browning’s retreat,–and, dearest of all, the large drawing-room, where she always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out upon the old iron-gray church of Santa Felice. There was something about this room that seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreamy look, which was enhanced by the tapestry-covered walls and the old pictures of saints that looked out sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large book-cases, constructed of specimens of Florentine carving selected by Mr. Browning, were brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were covered with more gayly bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante’s grave profile, a cast of Keats’s face and brow taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning’s good friend and relative, little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. A quaint mirror, easy-chairs and sofas, and a hundred nothings that always add an indescribable charm, were all massed in this room. But the glory of all, and that which sanctified all, was seated in a low arm-chair near the door. A small table, strewn with writing-materials, books, and newspapers, was always by her side.
To those who loved Mrs. Browning (and to know her was to love her) she was singularly attractive. Hers was not the beauty of feature; it was the loftier beauty of expression. Her slight figure seemed hardly large enough to contain the great heart that beat so fervently within, and the soul that expanded more and more as one year gave place to another. It was difficult to believe that such a fairy hand could pen thoughts of such ponderous weight, or that such a “still small voice” could utter them with equal force. But it was Mrs. Browning’s face upon which one loved to gaze,–that face and head which almost lost themselves in the thick curls of her dark brown hair. That jealous hair could not hide the broad, fair forehead, “royal with the truth,” as smooth as any girl’s, and
“Too large for wreath of modern wont.”
Her large brown eyes were beautiful, and were in truth the windows of her soul. They combined the confidingness of a child with the poet-passion of heart and of intellect; and in gazing into them it was easy to read _why_ Mrs. Browning wrote. God’s inspiration was her motive power, and in her eyes was the reflection of this higher light.
“And her smile it seemed half holy,
As if drawn from thoughts more far Than our common jestings are.”
Mrs. Browning’s character was wellnigh perfect. Patient in long suffering, she never spoke of herself, except when the subject was forced upon her by others, and then with no complaint. She _judged not_, saving when great principles were imperilled, and then was ready to sacrifice herself upon the altar of Right. Forgiving as she wished to be forgiven, none approached her with misgivings, knowing her magnanimity. She was ever ready to accord sympathy to all, taking an earnest interest in the most insignificant, and so humble in her greatness that her friends looked upon her as a divinity among women. Thoughtful in the smallest things for others, she seemed to give little thought to herself; and believing in universal goodness, her nature was free from worldly suspicions. The first to see merit, she was the last to censure faults, and gave the praise that she _felt_ with a generous hand. No one so heartily rejoiced at the success of others, no one was so modest in her own triumphs, which she looked upon more as a favor of which she was unworthy than as a right due to her. She loved all who offered her affection, and would solace and advise with any. She watched the progress of the world with tireless eye and beating heart, and, anxious for the good of the _whole_ world, scorned to take an insular view of any political question. With her a political question was a moral question as well. Mrs. Browning belonged to no particular country; the world was inscribed upon the banner under which she fought. Wrong was her enemy; against this she wrestled, in whatever part of the globe it was to be found.
A noble devotion to and faith in the regeneration of Italy was a prominent feature in Mrs. Browning’s life. To her, Italy was from the first a living fire, not the bed of dead ashes at which the world was wont to sneer. Her trust in God and the People was supreme; and when the Revolution of 1848 kindled the passion of liberty from the Alps to Sicily, she, in common with many another earnest spirit, believed that the hour for the fulfilment of her hopes had arrived. Her joyful enthusiasm at the Tuscan uprising found vent in the “Eureka” which she sang with so much fervor in Part First of “Casa Guidi Windows.”
“But never say ‘No more’
To Italy’s life! Her memories undismayed Still argue ‘Evermore’; her graves implore Her future to be strong and not afraid; Her very statues send their looks before.”
And even she was ready to believe that a Pope _might_ be a reformer.
“Feet, knees, and sinews, energies divine, Were never yet too much for men who ran In such hard ways as must be this of thine, Deliverer whom we seek, whoe’er thou art, Pope, prince, or peasant! If, indeed, the first, The noblest therefore! since the heroic heart Within thee must be great enough to burst Those trammels buckling to the baser part Thy saintly peers in Rome, who crossed and cursed With the same finger.”
The Second Part of “Casa Guidi Windows” is a sad sequel to the First, but Mrs. Browning does not deride. She bows before the inevitable, but is firm in her belief of a future living Italy.
“In the name of Italy
Meantime her patriot dead have benison; They only have done well;–and what they did Being perfect, it shall triumph. Let them slumber!”
Her short-lived credence in the good faith of Popes was buried with much bitterness of heart:–
“And peradventure other eyes may see, From Casa Guidi windows, what is done
Or undone. Whatsoever deeds they be, Pope Pius will be glorified in none.”
It is a matter of great thankfulness that God permitted Mrs. Browning to witness the second Italian revolution before claiming her for heaven. No patriot Italian, of whatever high degree, gave greater sympathy to the aspirations of 1859 than Mrs. Browning, an echo of which the world has read in her “Poems before Congress” and still later contributions to the New York “Independent.” Great was the moral courage of this frail woman to publish the “Poems before Congress” at a time when England was most suspicious of Napoleon. Greater were her convictions, when she abased England and exalted France for the cold neutrality of the one and the generous aid of the other in this war of Italian independence. Bravely did she bear up against the angry criticism excited by such anti-English sentiment. Strong in her right, Mrs. Browning was willing to brave the storm, confident that truth would prevail in the end. Apart from certain _tours de force_ in rhythm, there is much that is grand and as much that is beautiful in these Poems, while there is the stamp of _power_ upon every page. It is felt that a great soul is in earnest about vital principles, and earnestness of itself is a giant as rare as forcible. Though there are few now who look upon Napoleon as
“Larger so much by the heart”
than others “who have governed and led,” there are many who acknowledge him to be
“Larger so much by the head,”
and regard him as she did,–Italy’s best friend in the hour of need. Her disciples are increasing, and soon “Napoleon III. in Italy” will be read with the admiration which it deserves.
Beautiful in its pathos is the poem of “A Court Lady,” and there are few satires more biting than “An August Voice,” which, as an interpretation of the Napoleonic words, is perfect. Nor did she fail to vindicate the Peace of Villafranca:–
“But He stood sad before the sun
(The peoples felt their fate):
‘The world is many,–I am one;
My great Deed was too great.
God’s fruit of justice ripens slow: Men’s souls are narrow; let them grow.
My brothers, we must wait.'”
And truly, what Napoleon then failed, from opposition, to accomplish by the sword, has since been, to a great extent, accomplished by diplomacy.
But though Mrs. Browning wrote her “Tale of Villafranca” in full faith, after many a mile-stone in time lay between her and the _fact_, her friends remember how the woman bent and was wellnigh crushed, as by a thunderbolt, when the intelligence of this Imperial Treaty was first received. Coming so quickly upon the heels of the victories of Solferino and San Martino, it is no marvel that what stunned Italy should have almost killed Mrs. Browning. That it hastened her into the grave is beyond a doubt, as she never fully shook off the severe attack of illness occasioned by this check upon her life-hopes. The summer of 1859 was a weary, suffering season for her in consequence; and although the following winter, passed in Rome, helped to repair the evil that had been wrought, a heavy cold, caught at the end of the season, (and for the sake of seeing Rome’s gift of swords to Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel,) told upon her lungs. The autumn of 1860 brought with it another sorrow in the death of a beloved sister, and this loss seemed more than Mrs. Browning could bear; but by breathing the soft air of Rome again she seemed to revive, and indeed wrote that she was “better in body and soul.”
Those who have known Mrs. Browning in later years thought she never looked better than upon her return to Florence in the first days of last June, although the overland journey had been unusually fatiguing to her. But the meeting was a sad one; for Cavour had died, and the national loss was as severe to her as a personal bereavement. Her deep nature regarded Italy’s benefactor in the light of a friend; for had he not labored unceasingly for that which was the burden of her song? and could she allow so great a man to pass away without many a heart-ache? It is as sublime as it is rare to see such intense appreciation of great deeds as Mrs. Browning could give. Her fears, too, for Italy, when the patriot pilot was hurried from the helm, gave rise to much anxiety, until quieted by the assuring words of the new minister, Ricasoli.
Nor was Mrs. Browning so much engrossed in the Italian regeneration that she had no thought for other nations and for other wrongs. Her interest in America was very great,–
“For poets, (bear the word!)
Half-poets even, are still whole democrats: Oh, not that we’re disloyal to the high, But loyal to the low, and cognizant
Of the less scrutable majesties.”
In Mrs. Browning’s poem of “A Curse for a Nation,” where she foretold the agony in store for America, and which has fallen upon us with the swiftness of lightning, she was loath to raise her poet’s voice against us, pleading,–
“For I am hound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea, Who stretch out kindly hands to me.”
And in one of her last letters, addressed to an American friend who had reminded her of her prophecy and of its present fulfilment, she replied,–“Never say that I have ‘cursed’ your country. I only _declared the consequence of the evil_ in her, and which has since developed itself in thunder and flame. I feel with more pain than many Americans do the sorrow of this transition-time; but I do know that it _is_ transition, that it _is_ crisis, and that you will come out of the fire purified, stainless, having had the angel of a great cause walking with you in the furnace.” Are not such burning, hopeful words from such a source–worthy of the grateful memory of the Americans? Our cause has lost an ardent supporter in Mrs. Browning; and did we dare rebel against God’s will, we should grieve deeply that she was not permitted to glorify the Right in America as she has glorified it in Italy. Among the last things that she read were Motley’s letters on the “American Crisis,” and the writer will ever hold in dear memory the all but final conversation had with Mrs. Browning, in which these letters were discussed and warmly approved. In referring to the attitude taken by foreign nations with regard to America, she said,–“Why do you heed what others say? You are strong, and can do without sympathy; and when you have triumphed, your glory will be the greater.” Mrs. Browning’s most enthusiastic admirers are Americans; and I am sure, that, now she is no longer of earth, they will love her the more for her sympathy in the cause which is nearest to all hearts.
Mrs. Browning’s conversation was most interesting. It was not characterized by sallies of wit or brilliant repartee, nor was it of that nature which is most welcome in society. It was frequently intermingled with trenchant, quaint remarks, leavened with a quiet, graceful humor of her own; but it was eminently calculated for a _tete-a-tete_. Mrs. Browning never made an insignificant remark. All that she said was _always_ worth hearing;–a greater compliment could not be paid her. She was a most conscientious listener, giving you her mind and heart, as well as her magnetic eyes. Though the latter spoke an eager language of their own, she conversed slowly, with a conciseness and point that, added to a matchless earnestness, which was the predominant trait of her conversation as it was of her character, made her a most delightful companion. _Persons_ were never her theme, unless public characters were under discussion, or friends were to be praised,–which kind office she frequently took upon herself. One never dreamed of frivolities in Mrs. Browning’s presence, and gossip felt itself out of place. _Your_self (not _her_self) was always a pleasant subject to her, calling out all her best sympathies in joy, and yet more in sorrow. Books and humanity, great deeds, and, above all, politics, which include all the grand questions of the day, were foremost in her thoughts, and therefore oftenest on her lips. I speak not of religion, for with her everything was religion. Her Christianity was not confined to church and rubric: it meant _civilization_.
Association with the Brownings, even though of the slightest nature, made one better in mind and soul. It was impossible to escape the influence of the magnetic fluid of love and poetry that was constantly passing between husband and wife. The unaffected devotion of one to the other wove an additional charm around the two, and the very contrasts in their natures made the union a more beautiful one. All remember Mrs. Browning’s pretty poem on her “Pet Name”:–
“I have a name, a little name,
Uncadenced for the ear,
Unhonored by ancestral claim,
Unsanctified by prayer and psalm
The solemn font anear.
* * * * *
“My brother gave that name to me,
When we were children twain,–
When names acquired baptismally
Were hard to utter, as to see
That life had any pain.”
It was this pet name of two small letters lovingly combined that dotted Mr. Browning’s spoken thoughts, as moonbeams fleck the ocean, and seemed the pearl-bead that linked conversation together in one harmonious whole. But what was written has now come to pass. The pet name is engraved only in the hearts of a few.
“Though I write books, it will be read Upon the leaves of none;
And afterward, when I am dead,
Will ne’er be graved, for sight or tread, Across my funeral stone.”
Mrs. Browning’s letters are masterpieces of their kind. Easy and conversational, they touch upon no subject without leaving an indelible impression of the writer’s originality; and the myriad matters of universal interest with which many of them are teeming will render them a precious legacy to the world, when the time shall have arrived for their publication. Of late, Italy has claimed the lion’s share in these unrhymed sketches of Mrs. Browning in the _negligee_ of home. Prose has recorded all that poetry threw aside; and thus much political thought, many an anecdote, many a reflection, and much womanly enthusiasm have