OUR OLD HOME. See page 63. ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY EDITION. OUR OLD HOME, AND SEPTIMIUS FELTON BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. TWO VOLUMES IN ONE BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, LATH TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, Co. I375- ; to Act of Congress, in the year t 7 i by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, b the Clerk VOce of the District Court of the District of LOAN STACK PRESS : WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. Al 1875 OUR OLD HOME: A SERIES OF ENGLISH SKETCHES. 443 To FRANKLIN PIERCE, & SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF A COLLEGE FRIENDSHIP, PROLONGED THROUGH MANHOOD, AND RETAINING ALL ITS VITALITY IN OUR AUTUMNAL YEARS, JH* Volume In Enscrffaeu BT NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE- CONTENTS. CONSULAR EXPERIENCES 9 LEAMINGTON SPA 49 ABOUT WARWICK 77 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN 106 LlCHFIELD AND TJTTOXETER 141 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 163 NEAR OXFORD 195 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 225 A LONDON SUBURB 248 UP THE THAMES 282 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY 320 Civic BANQUETS * 58 TO A FRIEND. 1 HAVE not asked your consent, my dear General, to th foregoing inscription, because it would have been no inconsid erable disappointment to me had you withheld it ; for 1 have long desired to connect your name with some book of mine, in commemoration of an early friendship that* has grown old between two individuals of widely dissimilar pursuits and fortunes. I only wish that the offering were a worthier one than this volume of sketches, which certainly are not of a kind likely to prove interesting to a statesman in retirement, inasmuch as they meddle with no matters of policy or govern ment, and have very little to say about the deeper traits of national character. In their humble way, they belong entirely to aesthetic literature, and can achieve no higher success than to represent to the American reader a few of the external aspects of English scenery and life, especially those that are touched with the antique charm to which our countrymen are more susceptible than are the people among whom it is of native growth. I once hoped, indeed, that so slight a volume would not be all that I might write. These and other sketches, with which, in a somewhat rougher form than I have given them lu-re, my journal was copiously filled, were intended for the side-scenes a -id backgrounds and exterior adornment of a work of fic tion of which the plan had imperfectly developed itself in my mind, and into which I ambitiously proposed to convey more of various modes of truth than I could have grasped by a direct effort. Of course, I should not mention this abortive project, only that it has been utterly thrown aside and will X TO A FRIEND. never now be accomplished. The Present, the Immediate, the Actual, has proved too potent for me. It takes away not only my scanty faculty, but even my desire for imaginative composition, and leaves me sadly content to scatter a thousand peaceful fantasies upon the hurricane that is sweeping us all along with it, possibly, into a Limbo where our nation and its polity may be as literally the fragments of a shattered dream as my unwritten Romance. But I have far better hopes for our dear country; and for my individual share of the catastrophe, 1 afflict myself little, or not at all, and shall easily find room for the abortive work on a certain ideal shelf, where are re- posited many other shadowy volumes of mine, more in num ber, and very much superior in quality, to those which I hava succeeded in rendering actual. To return to these poor Sketches ; some of my friends have told me that they evince an asperity of sentiment towards the English people which I ought not to feel, and which it is highly inexpedient to express. The charge surprises me, be cause, if it be true, I have written from a shallower mood than I supposed. I seldom came into personal relations with an Englishman without beginning to like him, and feeling my favorable impression wax stronger with the progress of the acquaintance. I never stood in an English crowd without being conscious of hereditary sympathies. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that an American is continually thrown upon his national antagonism by some acrid quality in the moral atmosphere of England. These people think so loftily of themselves, and so contemptuously of everybody else, that it requires more generosity than I possess to keep always in per fectly good humor with them. Jotting down the little acrimo nies of the moment in my journal, and transferring them thence (when they happened to be tolerably well expressed) to these pages, it is very possible that I may have said things which a profound observer of national character would hesitate to sanction, though never any, I verily believe, that had not TO A FRIEND. XI more or less of truth. If they be true, there is no reason ia the world why they should not be said. Not an Englishman of them all ever spared America for courtesy s sake or kind ness ; nor, in my opinion, would it contribute in the least to our mutual advantage and comfort if we were to besmear one another all over with butter and honey. At any rate, wo must not judge of an Englishman s susceptibilities by our own, which, likewise, I trust, are of a far less sensitive texture than ormerly. And now farewell, my dear friend ; and excuse (if you think it needs any excuse) the freedom with which I thus publicly assert a personal friendship between a private individual and a statesman who has filled what was then the most august position in the world. But I dedicate my book to the Friend, and shall defer a colloquy with the Statesman till some calmer and sunnier hour. Only this let me say, that, with the record of your life in my memory, and with a sense of your character in my deeper consciousness as among the few things that time has left as it found them, I need no assurance that you continue faithful forever to that grand idea of an irrevocable Union, which, as you once told me, was the earli est that your brave father taught you. For other men there may be a choice of paths for you, but one ; and it rests among my certainties that no man s loyalty is more steadfast, no man s hopes or apprehensions on behalf of our national existence more deeply heartfelt, or more closely intertwined with his possibilities of personal happiness, than those of FRANKLIN PIERCE. THE WAYSIDE, July 2, 1863. OUR OLD HOME. CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. THE Consulate of the United States, in my day, was located in Washington Buildings, (a shabby and smoke- stained edifice of four stories high, thus illustriously named in honor of our national establishment,) at the lower cor ner of Brunswick Street, contiguous to the Goree Ar cade, and in th* 1 neighborhood of some of the oldest docks. This was by no means a polite or elegant portion of England s great commercial city, nor were the apart ments of the American official so splendid as to indicate the assumption of much consular pomp on his part. A narrow and ill-lighted staircase gave access to an equally narrow and ill-lighted passage-way on the first floor, at the extremity of which, surmounting a door-frame, ap peared an exceedingly stiff pictorial representation of the Goose and Gridiron, according to the English idea of those ever-to-be-honored symbols. The staircase and passage-way were often thronged, of a morning, with a set of beggarly and piratical-looking scoundrels, (I do no wrong to our own countrymen in styling them so, for not one in twenty was a genuine American,) purporting to 10 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. belong to our mercantile marine, and chiefly compose i of Liverpool Blackballers and the scum of every man time nation on earth ; such being the seamen by whose assist ance we then disputed the navigation of the world with England. These specimens of a most unfortunate class of people were shipwrecked crews in quest of bed, board, and clothing, invalids asking permits for the hospital, bruised and bloody -wretches complaining of ill-treatment by their officers, drunkards, desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly intermingled with an uncertain pro portion of reasonably honest men. All of them (save here and there a poor devil of a kidnapped landsman in his shore-going rags) wore red flannel shirts, in which they had sweltered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all required consular assistance in one form or another. Any respectable visitor, if he could make up his mind to elbow a passage among these sea-monsters, was admit ted into an outer office, where he found more of the same species, explaining their respective wants or grievances to the Vice- Consul and clerks, while their shipmates awaited their turn outside the door. Passing through this exterior court, the stranger was ushered into an in ner privacy, where sat the Consul himself, ready to give personal attention to such peculiarly difficult and more important cases as might demand the exercise of (what tve will courteously suppdse to be) his own higher judi cial or administrative sagacity. It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted in imitation of oak, and duskily lighted by two windows looking across a by-street at the rough brick-side of an immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and uglier structure CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 11 than ever was built in America. On the walls of the room hung a large map of the United States, (as they were, twenty years ago, but seem little likely to be, twenty years hence,) and a similar one of Great Britain, with its territory so provokingly compact, that we may expect it to sink sooner than sunder. Farther adornments were some rude engravings of our naval victories in the war of 1812, together with the Tennessee State House, and a Hudson River steamer, and a colored, life-size lithograph of General Taylor, with an honest hideousness of aspect, occupying the place of honor above the mantel piece. On the top of a bookcase stood a fierce and ter rible bust of General Jackson, pilloried in a military collar which rose above his ears, and frowning forth im- mitigably at any Englishman who might happen to cross the threshold. I am afraid, however, that the truculence of the old General s expression was utterly thrown away on this stolid and obdurate race of men ; for, when they occasionally inquired whom this work of art represented, I was mortified to find that the younger ones had never heard of the battle of New Orleans, and that their elders had either forgotten it altogether, or contrived to mis- remember, and twist it wrong end foremost into something like an English victory. They have caught from the old Romans (whom they resemble in so many other charac teristics) this excellent method of keeping the national glory intact by sweeping all defeats and humiliations clean out of their memory. Nevertheless, my patriotism for bade me to take down either the bust or the pictures, both because it seemed no more than right that an Amer ican Consulate (being a little patch of our nationality im bedded into the soil and institutions of England) should 12 CONSU1AR EXPERIENCES. fairly represent the American taste in the fine arts, and because these decorations reminded me so delightfully of an old-fashioned American barber s shop. One truly English object was a barometer hanging on the wall, generally indicating one or another degree of disagreeable weather, and so seldom pointing to Fair, that I began to consider that portion of its circle as made superfluously. The deep chimney, with its grate of bitu minous coal, was English too, as was also the chill tem perature that sometimes called for a fire at mid-summer, and the foggy or smoky atmosphere which often, between November and March, compelled me to set the gas aflame at noonday. I am not aware of omitting any thing important in the above descriptive inventory, un less it be some bookshelves filled with octavo volumes of the American Statutes, and a good many pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty communications from former Secreta ries of State, and other official documents of similar value, constituting part of the archives of the Consulate, which I might have done my successor a favor by flinging into the coal-grate. Yes ; there was one other article demand ing prominent notice : the consular copy of the New Testament, bound in black morocco, and greasy, I fear, with a daily succession of perjured kisses ; at least, I can hardly hope that all the ten thousand oaths, administered by me between two breaths, to all sorts of people and 01 all manner of worldly business, were reckoned by the swearer as if taken at his soul s peril. Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber in which I spent wearily a considerable portion of more than four good years of my existence. At first, to be quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it as nc ^to CONSULAR EXPEDIENCES. 13 gether fit to be tenanted by the commercial representative of so great and prosperous a country as the United States then were ; and I should speedily have transferred my headquarters to airier and loftier apartments, except for the prudent consideration that my Government would have left me thus to support its dignity at my own per sonal expense. Besides, a long line of distinguished pred ecessors, of whom the latest is now a gallant general under the Union banner, had found the locality good enough for them ; it might certainly be tolerated, there fore, by an individual so little ambitious of external mag nificence as myself. So I settled quietly down, striking some of my roots into such soil as I could find, adapting myself to circumstances, and with so much success, that, though from first to last I hi\ted the very sight of the little room, I should yet have felt a singular kind of re luctance in changing it for a better. Hither, in the course of my incumbency, came a great variety of visitors, principally Americans, but including almost every other nationality on earth, especially the distressed and downfallen ones like those of Poland and Hungary. Italian bandits (for so they looked), pro- Bcribed conspirators from Old Spain, Spanish Ameri cans, Cubans who professed to have stood by Lopez and narrowly escaped his fate, scarred French soldiers of the Second Republic, in a word, all sufferers, or pre tended ones, in the cause of Liberty, all people homeless in the widest sense, those who never had a country or had lost it, those whom their native land had impatiently Hung off for planning a better system of things than they were born to, a multitude of these, and, doubtless, a*v equal numtar of jail-birds, outwardJv ot the same feathu 14 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. Bought the American Consulate, in hopes of at /ast a bit of bread, and, perhaps, to beg a passage tx. tne blessed shores of Freedom. In most cases there was nothing, and in any case distressingly little, to be done for them ; neither was I of a proselyting disposition, nor desired to make my Consulate a nucleus for the vagrant discontents of other lands. And yet it was a proud thought, a forcible appeal to the sympathies of an Amer ican, that these unfortunates claimed the privileges of citizenship in our Republic on the strength of the very same noble misdemeanors that had rendered them out laws to their native despotisms. So I gave them what small help I could. Methinks the true patriots and mar tyr-spirits of the whole world should have been conscious of a pang near the heart, when a deadly blow was aimed at the vitality of a country which they have felt to be their own in the last resort. As for my countrymen, I grew better acquainted with many of our national characteristics during those four years than in all my preceding life. Whether brought more strikingly out by the contrast with English man ners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an extra pecu liarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so it was that their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even their figures and cast of countenance, all seemed chiselled in sharper angles than ever I had imagined them to be at home. It impressed me with an odd idea of having somehow lost the property of my own person, when I occasionally heard one of them speaking of me as " my Consul ! " They often came to the Consulate in parties of half a dozen or more, on no business whatever, but merely to subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 15 see how he was getting on with his duties. These inter views were rather formidable, being characterized by a certain stiffness which I felt to be sufficiently irksome at the moment, though it looks laughable enough in the retrospect. It is my firm belief that these fellow-citizens, possessing a native tendency to organization, generally halted outside of the door to elect a speaker, chairman, or moderator, and thus approached me with all the for malities of a deputation from the American people. After salutations on both sides, abrupt, awful, and severe on their part, and deprecatory on mine, and the national ceremony of shaking hands being duly gone through with, the interview proceeded by a series of calm and well-considered questions or remarks from the spokes man, (no other of the guests vouchsafing to utter a word,) and diplomatic responses from the Consul, who sometimes found the investigation a little more searching than he liked. I flatter myself, however, that, by much practice, I attained considerable skill in this kind of intercourse, the art of which lies in passing off common places for new and valuable truths, and talking trash and emptiness in such a way that a pretty acute auditor might mistake it for something solid. If there be any better method of dealing with such junctures, when talk is to be created out of nothing, and within the scope of several minds at once, so that you cannot apply your self to your interlocutor s individuality, I have not learned it. Sitting, as it were, in the gateway between the old world and the new, where the steamers and packets landed the greater part of our wandering countrymen, and received them again when their wanderings were 16 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. done, I saw that no people on earth have such vagabond habits as ourselves. The Continental races never travel at all, if they can help it ; nor does an Englishman ever think of stirring abroad, unless he has the money to spare, or proposes to himself some definite advantage from the journey; but it seemed to me that nothing was more common than for a young American deliberately to spend nil his resources in an aesthetic peregrination about Eu rope, returning with pockets nearly empty to begin the world in earnest. It happened, indeed, much oftener than was at all agreeable to myself, that their funds held out just long enough to bring them to the door of my Consulate, where they entered as if with an undeniable right to its shelter and protection, and required at my hands to be sent home again. In my first simplicity, finding them gentlemanly in manners, passably educated, and only tempted a little beyond their means by a laud able desire of improving and refining themselves, or, perhaps, for the sake of getting better artistic instruction in music, painting, or sculpture, than our country could supply, I sometimes took charge of them on my pri vate responsibility, since our Government gives itself no trouble about its stray children, except the seafaring class. But, after a few such experiments, discovering that none of these estimable and ingenuous young men, however trustworthy they might appear, ever dreamed of reimbursing the Consul, I deemed it expedient to take another course with them. Applying myself to some friendly shipmaster, I engaged homeward passages on their behalf, with the understanding that they were to make themselves serviceable on shipboard ; and I re member several very pathetic appeals from painters and CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 17 musicians, touching the damage which their artistic fin gers were likely to incur from handling the ropes. But my observation of so many heavier troubles left me very litile tenderness for their finger-ends. In time, I grew to be reasonably hard-hearted, though it never was quite possible to leave a countryman with no shelter save an English poor-house, when, as he invariably averred, he had only to set foot on his native soil to be possessed of ample funds. It was my ultimate conclusion, however, that American ingenuity may be pretty safely left to itself, and that, one way or another, a Yankee vagabond is certain to turn up at his own threshold, if he has any, without help of a consul, and perhaps be taught a lesson of foresight that may profit him hereafter. Among these stray Americans, I met with no other case so remarkable as that of an old man, who was in the habit of visiting me once in a few months, and soberly affirmed that he had been wandering about England more than a quarter of a century, (precisely twenty-seven years, 1 think,) and all the while doing his utmost to get home again. Herman Melville, in his excellent novel or biography ol " Israel Potter," has an idea somewhat sim ilar to this. The individual now in question was a mild and patient, but very ragged and pitiable old fellow, shabby beyond description, lean and hungry-looking, but with a large and somewhat red nose. He made no com plaint of his ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice, with a pathos of which he was himself evidently uncon scious, "I want to get home to Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia." He described himself as a printer by trade, and said that he had come over when he was a younger man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for 2 18 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. the sake of seeing the Old Country, but had never since been rich enough to pay his homeward passage. Hia manner and accent did not quite convince me that he was an American, and I told him so ; but he steadfastly affirmed, " Sir, I was born and have lived in Ninety- second Street, Philadelphia," and then went on to describe some public edifices and other local objects with which he used to be familiar, adding, with a simplicity that touched me very closely, " Sir, I had rather be there than here ! " Though I still manifested a lingering doubt, he took no offence, replying with the same mild depression as at first, and insisting again and again on Ninety-second Street. Up to the time when I saw him, he still got a little occasional job-work at his trade, but subsisted mainly on such charity as he met with in his wanderings, shifting from place to place continually, and asking assistance to convey him to his native land. Possibly he was an impostor, one of the multitudinous shapes of English vagabondism, and told his falsehood with such powerful simplicity, because, by many repeti tions, he had convinced himself of its truth. But if, as I believe, the tale was fact, how very strange and sad was this old man s fate ! Homeless on a foreign shore, looking always towards his country, coming again and again to the point whence so many were setting sail for it, so many who would soon tread in Ninety-second Street, losing, in this long series of years, some of the distinctive characteristics of an American, and at last dying and surrendering his clay to be a portion of the soil whence he could not escape in his lifetime. Pie appeared to see that he had moved me, but did not attempt to press his advantage with any new argu CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 19 inent, or any varied form of entreaty. He had bat scanty and scattered thoughts in his gray head, and in the intervals of those, like the refrain of an old ballad, came in the monotonous burden of his appeal, "If I could only find myself in Ninety-second Street, Phila delphia ! " But even his desire of getting home had ceased to be an ardent one, (if, indeed, it had not al ways partaken of the dreamy sluggishness of his char acter,) although it remained his only locomotive impulse, and perhaps the sole principle of life that kept his blood from actual torpor. The poor old fellow s story seemed to me almost as worthy of being chanted in immortal song as that of Odysseus or Evangeline. I took his case into deep con sideration, but dared not incur the moral responsibility of sending him across the sea, at his age, after so many years of exile, when the very tradition of him had passed away, to find his friends dead, or forgetful, or irretriev ably vanished, and the whole country become more truly a foreign land to liim than England was now, and even Ninety-second Street, in the weedlike decay and growth of our localities, made over anew and grown unrecogniz able by his old eyes. That street, so patiently longed for, had transferred itself to the New Jerusalem, and he must seek it there, contenting his slow heart, mean while, with the smoke-begrimed thoroughfares of English towns, or the green country lanes and by-paths with which his wanderings had made him familiar ; for doubtless ho had a beaten track and was the "long-remembered beggar" now, with food and a roughly hospitable greeting ready for him at many a farm-house door, and his choice of odging under a score of haystacks. In America, nctl> 20 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. ing awaited him but that worst form of disappointment which comes under the guise of a long-cherished and late- accomplished purpose, and then a year or two of dry and barren sojourn in an almshouse, and death among stran gers at last, where he had imagined a circle of familiar faces. So I contented myself with giving him alms, which he thankfully accepted, and went away with bent shoulders and an .aspect of gentle forlornness ; returning upon his orbit, however, after a few months, to tell the same sad and quiet story of his abode in England for more than twenty-seven years, in all which time he had been endeavoring, and still endeavored as patiently as ever, to find his way home to Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia. I recollect another case, of a more ridiculous order, but still with a foolish kind of pathos entangled in it, which impresses me now more forcibly than it did at the moment. One day, a queer, stupid, good-natured, fat- faced individual came into my private room, dressed in a sky-blue, cut-away coat and mixed trousers, both gar ments worn and shabby, and rather too small for his overgrown bulk. After a little preliminary talk, he turned out to be a country shopkeeper, (from Connecti cut, I think,) who had left a nourishing business, and come over to England purposely and solely to have an interview with the Queen. Some years before he had named his two children, one for Her Majesty and the other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted photographs of the little people, as well as of his wife and himself, to the illustrious godmother. The Queen had gratefully acknowledged the favor in a letter under the hand of her private secretary. Nov^ th sto opkeeper, like a greal CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 21 many other Americans, had long cherished a fantastic notion that he was one of the rightful heirs of a rich English estate ; and on the strength of Her Majesty s letter and the hopes of royal patronage which it inspired, he had shut up his little country-store and come over to claim his inheritance. On the voyage, a German fellow- passenger had relieved him of his money on pretence of getting it favorably exchanged, and had disappeared im mediately on the ship s arrival ; so that the poor fellow was compelled to pawn all his clothes except the remark ably shabby ones in which I beheld him, and in which (as he himself hinted, with a melancholy, yet good- natured smile) he did not look altogether fit to see the Queen. I agreed with him that the bobtailed coat and mixed trousers constituted a very odd-looking court-dress, and suggested that it was doubtless his present purpose to get back to Connecticut as fast as possible. But no ! The resolve to see the Queen was as strong in him as ever ; and it was marvellous the pertinacity with which he clung to it amid raggedness and starvation, and the earnestness of his supplication that I would supply him with funds for a suitable appearance at Windsor Castle. I never had so satisfactory a perception of a complete Looby before in my life ; and it caused me to feel kindly towards him, and yet impatient and exasperated on be half of common sense, which could not possibly tolerate that such an unimaginable donkey should exist. I laid his absurdity before him in the very plainest terms, but without either exciting his anger or shaking his resolu tion. u Oh, my dear man," quoth he, with good-natured placid, simple, and tearful stubbornness, " if you could but enter into my feelings and see the matter from beginning 22 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. to end as I see it ! " To confess the truth, I have since felt that I was hard-hearted to the poor simpleton, and that there was more weight in his remonstrance thnn T chose to be sensible of, at the time ; for, like many men who have been in the habit of making playthings or tools of their imagination and sensibility, I was too rigidly tenacious of what was reasonable in the affairs of real life. And even absurdity has its rights, when, as in this case, it has absorbed a human being s entire nature and purposes. I ought to have transmitted him to Mr. Buchanan, in London, who, being a good-natured old gentleman, and anxious, just then, to gratify the univer sal Yankee nation, might, for the joke s sake, have got him admittance to the Queen, who had fairly laid herself open to his visit, and has received hundreds of our coun trymen on infinitely slighter grounds. But I was inex orable, being turned to flint by the insufferable proximity of a fool, and refused to interfere with his business in any way except to procure him a passage home. I can see his face of mild, ridiculous despair, at this moment, and appreciate, better than I could then, how awfully cruel he must have felt my obduracy to be. For years and years, the idea of an interview with Queen Victoria had haunted his poor foolish mind ; and now, when he really stood on English ground, and the palace-door was hanging ajar for him, he was expected to turn back, a pennyless and bamboozled simpleton, merely because an iron-hearted consul refused to lend him thirty shillings (so low had his demand ultimately sunk) to buy a second- class ticket on the rail for London ! He visited the Consulate several times afterwards, subsisting on a pittance that I allowed him ir the hope CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 23 of gradually starving him back to Connecticut, assailing me with the old petition at every opportunity, looking shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good-tem pered, mildly stubborn, and smiling through his tears not without a perception of the ludicrousness of his own position. Finally, he disappeared altogether, and whither he had wandered, and whether he ever saw the Queen or wasted quite away in the endeavor, I never knew ; but I remember unfolding the " Times," about that period, \vith a daily dread of reading an account of a ragged Yankee s attempt to steal into Buckingham Palace, and how he smiled tearfully at his captors and besought them to introduce him to Her Majesty. I submit to Mr. Sec retary Seward that he ought to make diplomatic remon strances to the British Ministry, and require them to take such order that the Queen shall not any longer bewilder the wits of our poor compatriots by responding to their epistles and thanking them for their photographs. One circumstance in the foregoing incident I mean the unhappy storekeeper s notion of establishing his claim to an English estate was common to a great many other applications, personal or by letter, with which I was favored by my countrymen. The cause of this pe culiar insanity lies deep in the Anglo-American heart. After all these bloody wars and vindictive animosities, we have still an unspeakable yearning towards England. "When our forefathers left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, but trailed along with them others, which were never snapt asunder by the tug of such a lengthening distance, nor have been torn out of the orig inal soil by jthe violence of subsequent struggles, nor sev ered ty the edge of the sword. Even so late as these 24 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. days, they remain entangled with our heart-strings, and might often have influenced our national cause like the tiller-ropes of a ship, if the rough gripe of England had been capable of managing so sensitive a kind of t machin ery. It has required nothing less than the boorishness, the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, the contemptuous jeal ousy, the half-sagacity, invariably blind of one eye and often distorted of the other, that characterize this strange people, to compel us to be a great nation in our own right, instead of continuing virtually, if not in name, a province of their small island. What pains did they take to shake us off, and have ever since taken to keep us wide apart from them ! It might seem their folly, but was really their fate, or, rather, the Providence of God, who has doubtless a work for us to do, in which the mas sive materiality of the English character would have been too ponderous a dead-weight upon our progress. And, besides, if England had been wise enough to twine our new vigor round about her ancient strength, her power would have been too firmly established ever to yield, in its due season, to the otherwise immutable law of imperial vicissitude. The earth might then have beheld the intolerable spectacle of a sovereignty and institutions, imperfect, but indestructible. Nationally, there has ceased to be any peril of so inaus picious and yet outwardly attractive an amalgamation But as an individual, the American is often conscious of the deep-rooted sympathies that belong more fitly to times gone by, and feels a blind, pathetic tendency to wander back again, which makes itself evident in such wild dreams as I have alluded to above, about English inher itances. A mere coincidence of names, (the Yankee CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 25 one, perhaps, having been assumed by legislative per mission,) a supposititious pedigree, a silver mug on which an anciently engraved coat-of-arms has been half scrubbed outj, a seal with an uncertain crest, an old yellow letter or document in faded ink, the more scantily legible the bet ter, rubbish of this kind, found in a neglected drawer, has been potent enough to turn the brain of many an honest Republican, especially if assisted by an advertise ment for lost heirs, cut out of a British newspaper. There is no estimating or believing, till we come into a position to know it, what foolery lurks latent in the breasts of very sensible people. Remembering such sober extravagances, I should not be at all surprised to find that I am myself guilty of some unsuspected absurdity, that may appear to me the most substantial trait in my character. I might fill many pages with instances of this diseased American appetite for English soil. A respectable-look ing woman, well advanced in life, of sour aspect, exceed ingly homely, but decidedly New Englandish in figure and manners, came to my office with a great bundle of documents, at the very first glimpse of which I appre hended something terrible. Nor was I mistaken. The bundle contained evidences of her indubitable claim to the site on which Castle Street, the Town Hall, the Ex change, and all the principal business part of Liverpool, have long been situated ; and with considerable peremp- toriness, the good lady signified her expectation that I should take charge of her suit, and prosecute it to judg ment ; not, however, on the equitable condition of receiv ing half the value of the property recovered, (which, in case of complete success, would have made both of us ten 26 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. or twenty-fold millionnaires,) but without recompense or reimbursement of legal expenses, solely as an incident ot my official duty. Another time came two ladies, bearing a letter of emphatic introduction from his Excellency the Governor of their native State, who testified in most satisfactory terms to their social respectability. They were claimants of a great estate in Cheshire, and announced themselves as blood-relatives of Queen Vic toria, a point, however, which they deemed it expe dient to keep in the background until their territorial rights should be established, apprehending that the Lord High Chancellor might otherwise be less likely to come to a fair decision in respect to them, from a probable dis inclination to admit new members into the royal kin. Upon my honor, I imagine that they had an eye to the possibility of the eventual succession of one or both of them to the crown of Great Britain through superior ity of title over the Brunswick line; although, being maiden ladies, like their predecessor Elizabeth, they could hardly have hoped to establish a lasting dynasty upon the throne. It proves, I trust, a certain disinter estedness on my part, that, encountering them thus in the dawn of their fortunes, I forbore to put in a plea for a future dukedom. Another visitor of the same class was a gentleman of refined manners, handsome figure, and remarkably intel lectual aspect. Like many men of an adventurous cast, he had so quiet a deportment, and such an apparent dis inclination to general sociability, that you would have fancied him moving always along some peaceful and secluded walk of life. Yet, literally from his first hour, he had been tossed upon the surges of a most varied and CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 27 tumultuous existence, having been born at sea, of Amer ican parentage, but on board of a Spanish vessel, and spending many of the subsequent years in voyages, trav els, and outlandish incidents and vicissitudes, which, methought, had hardly been paralleled since the days of Gulliver or De Foe. When his dignified reserve was overcome, he had the faculty of narrating these adven tures with wonderful eloquence, working up his descrip tive sketches with such intuitive perception of the picturesque points that the whole was thrown forward with a positively illusive effect, like matters of your own visual experience. In fact, they were so admirably done that I could never more than half believe them, because the genuine affairs of life are not apt to transact them selves so artistically. Many of his scenes were laid in the East, and among those seldom visited archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean, so that there was an Oriental fra grance breathing through his talk and an odor of the Spice Islands still lingering in his garments. He had much to say of the delightful qualities of the Malay pirates, who, indeed, carry on a predatory warfare against the ships of all civilized nations, and cut every Christian throat among their prisoners ; but (except for deeds of that character, which are the rule and habit of their life, and matter of religion and conscience with them,) they are a gentle-natured people, of primitive innocence aiu 1 integrity. But his best story was about a race of men, (if men they were,) who seemed so fully to realize Swift s wicked fable of the Yahoos, that my friend was much exercised with psychological speculations whether or no they had any souls. They dwelt in the wilds of Ceylon, 28 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. like other savage beasts, hairy, and spotted with tufts of fur, filthy, shameless, weaponless, (though warlike in their individual bent,) tool-less, houseless, language-less, except for a few guttural sounds, hideously dissonant, whereby they held some rudest kind of communication among themselves. They lacked both memory and fore- eight, and were wholly destitute of government, social institutions, or law or rulership of any description, except the immediate tyranny of the strongest ; radically un tamable, moreover, save that the people of the country managed to subject a few of the less ferocious and stupid ones to out-door servitude among their other cattle. They were beastly in almost all their attributes, and that to such a degree that the observer, losing sight of any \ink betwixt them and manhood, could generally witness |heir brutalities without greater horror than at those of some disagreeable quadruped in a menagerie. And yet, at times, comparing what were the lowest general traits in his own race, with what was highest in these abomi nable monsters, he found a ghastly similitude that half compelled him to recognize them as human brethren. After these Gulliverian researches, my agreeable ac quaintance had fallen under the ban of the Dutch gov ernment, and had suffered (this, at least, being matter of fact) nearly two years imprisonment with confiscation of a large amount of property, for which Mr. Belmont, our minister at the Hague, had just made a peremptory demand of reimbursement and damages. Meanwhile, since arriving in England on his way to the United States, he had been providentially led to inquire into the circumstances of his birth on shipboard, and had discov ered that not himself alone, but another baby, had come CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 29 into the \\rorld during the same voyage of the proliiic ves sel, and that there were almost irrefragable reasons for believing that these two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of his early days confirmed him in the idea that his nominal parents were aware of the exchange. The family to which he felt authorized to attribute his lineage was that of a nobleman, in the picture-gallery of whose country-seat (whence, if I mistake not, our adventurous friend had just returned) he had discovered a portrait bearing a striking resemblance to himself. As soon as he should have reported the outrageous action of the Dutch gov ernment to President Pierce and the Secretary of State, and recovered the confiscated property, he purposed to return to England and establish his claim to the noble man s title and estate. I had accepted his Oriental fantasies, (which, indeed, to do him justice, have been recorded by scientific societies among the genuine phenomena of natural history,) not as matters of indubitable credence, but as allowable specimens of an imaginative traveller s vivid coloring and rich embroidery on the coarse texture and dull neutral tints of truth. The English romance was among the latest communications that he intrusted to my private car ; and as soon as I heard the first chapter, so won derfully akin to what I might have wrought out of my own head, not unpractised in such figments, I began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman s passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Nevertheless, should his English rent-roll fall a little behindhand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars was certainly in the hands of our gov- 30 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. ernment, and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have reason to fear that his Dutch riches turned out to be Dutch gilt or fairy gold, and his English coun try-seat a mere castle in the air, which I exceedingly regret, for he was a delightful companion and .1 very gentlemanly man. A Consul, in his position of universal responsibili .y, the general adviser and helper, sometimes finds himself compelled to assume the guardianship of personages who, in their own sphere, are supposed capable of superintend ing the highest interests of whole communities. An elderly Irishman, a naturalized citizen, once put the desire and expectation of all our penniless vagabonds into a very suitable phrase, by pathetically entreating me to be a " father to him ; " and, simple as I sit scrib bling here, I have acted a father s part, not only by scores of such unthrifty old children as himself, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. It may be well for persons who are conscious of any radical weakness in their character, any besetting sin, any unlawful propen sity, any unhallowed impulse, which (while surrounded with the manifold restraints that protect a man from that treacherous and lifelong enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society where he is at home) they may have succeeded in keeping under the lock and key of strides propriety, it may be well for them, before seeking the perilous freedom of a distant land, released from the watchful eyes of neighborhoods and coteries, lightened of that wearisome burden, an immaculate name, and bliss fully obscure after years of local prominence, it may be well for such individuals to know that when they set CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 31 toot on a foreign shore, the long-imprisoned Evil, scenting a wild license in the unaccustomed atmosphere, is apt to grow riotous in its iron cage. It rattles the rusty bar riers with gigantic turbulence, and if there be an infirm joint anywhere in the framework, it breaks madly forth, compressing the mischief of a lifetime into a little space. A parcel of letters had been accumulating at the Con sulate for two or three weeks, directed to a certain Doctor of Divinity, who had left America by a sailing-packet and was still upon the sea. In due time, the vessel arrived, and the reverend Doctor paid me a visit. Ho was a fine-looking middle-aged gentleman, a perfect model of clerical propriety, scholar-like, yet with the air of a man of the world rather than a student, though overspread with the graceful sanctity of a popular metropolitan divine, a part of whose duty it might be to exemplify the natural accordance between Christianity and good-breed ing. He seemed a little excited, as an American is apt to be on first arriving in England, but conversed with intelligence as well as animation, making himself so agreeable that his visit stood out in considerable relief from the monotony of my daily commonplace. As I learned from authentic sources, he was somewhat distin guished in his own region for fervor and eloquence in the pulpit, but was now compelled to relinquish it temporarily lor the purpose of renovating his impaired health by an extensive tour in Europe. Promising to dine with me, he took up his bundle of letters and went away. The Doctor, however, failed to make his appearance at dinner-time, or to apologize the next day for his absence ; and in the course of a day or two more, I forgot all about him, concluding that he must have set forth on his con- 32 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. tinental travels, the plan of which he had sketched out at our interview. But, by and by, I received a call from the master of the vessel in which he had arrived. He was in some alarm about his passenger, whose luggago remained on shipboard, but of whom nothing had been heard or seen since the moment of his departure from the Consulate. We conferred together, the Captain and I, about the expediency of setting the police on the traces (if any were to be found) of our vanished friend ; but it struck me that the good Captain was singularly reticent, and that there was something a little mysterious in a few points that he hinted at, rather than expressed ; so that, scrutinizing the affair carefully, I surmised that the inti macy of life on shipboard might have taught him more about the reverend gentleman than, for some reason or other, he deemed it prudent to reveal. At home, in our native country, I would have looked to the Doctor s per sonal safety and left his reputation to take care of itself, knowing that the good fame of a thousand saintly clergy men would amply dazzle out any lamentable spot on a single brother s character. But in scornful and invidious England, on the idea that the credit of the sacred oifice was measurably intrusted to my discretion, I could not endure, for the sake of American Doctors of Divinity generally, that this particular Doctor should cut an ignoble figure in the police reports of the English news papers, except at the last necessity. The clerical body, I flatter myself, will acknowledge that I acted on their own principle. Besides, it was now too late ; the mischief and violence, if any had been impending, were not of a kind which it requires the better part of a week to per petrate ; and to sum up the entire matter, I teit certain, CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 33 from a good deal of somewhat similar experience, that, if the missing Doctor still breathed this vital air, he would turn up at the Consulate as soon as his money should be stolen or spent. Precisely a week after this reverend person s disappear ance, there came to my office a tall, middle-aged gentle man in a blue military surtout, braided at the seams, but out at elbows, and as shabby as if the wearer had been bivouacking in it throughout a Crimean campaign. It was buttoned up to the very chin, except where three or four of the buttons were lost ; nor was there any glimpse of a white shirt-collar illuminating the rusty black cravat. A grisly moustache was just beginning to roughen the stranger s upper lip. He looked disreputable to the last degree, but still had a ruined air of good society glim mering about him, like a few specks of polish on a sword- blade that has lain corroding in a mud-puddle. I took him to be some American marine officer, of dissipated habits, or perhaps a cashiered British major, stumbling into the wrong quarters through the unrectified bewilder ment of last night s debauch. He greeted me, however, with polite familiarity, as though we had been previously acquainted ; whereupon I drew coldly back (as sensible people naturally do, whether from strangers or former friends, when too evidently at odds with fortune) and re quested to know who my visitor might be, and what was his business at the Consulate. " Am I then so changed ? " he exclaimed with a vast depth of tragic intonation ; and after a little blind and bewildered talk, behold ! the truth flashed upon me. It was the Doctor of Divinity ! If 1 had meditated a scene or a coup de theatre, I could not have contrived a more effectual one than by this simple 84 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES and genuine difficulty of recognition. The poor Divine must have felt that he had lost his personal identity through the misadventures of one little week. And, to say the truth, he did look as if, like Job, on account of his especial sanctity, he had been delivered over to the direst temptations of Satan, and proving weaker than the man of Uz, the Arch Enemy had been empowered to drag him through Tophet, transforming him, in the pro cess, from the most decorous of metropolitan clergymen into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded officers. I never fathomed the mystery of his military costume, but conjectured that a lurking sense of fitness had induced him to exchange his clerical garments for this habit of a sinner ; nor can I tell precisely into what pitfall, not more of vice than terrible calamity, he had precipitated him self, being more than satisfied to know that the out- oasts of society can sink no lower than this poor, de secrated wretch had sunk. The opportunity, I presume, does not often happen to a layman, of administering moral and religious reproof to a Doctor of Divinity; but finding the occasion thrust upon me, and the hereditary Puritan waxing strong in my breast, I deemed it a matter of conscience not to let it pass entirely unimproved. The truth is, I was un speakably shocked and disgusted. Not, however, that I was then to learn that clergymen are made of the same llesh and blood as other people, and perhaps lack one small safeguard which the rest of us possess, because they are aware of their own peccability, and therefore cannot look up to the clerical class for the proof of the possibility of a pure life on earth, with such reverential confidence as we are prone to do. But I remembered CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 35 the innocent faith of my boyhood, and the good old silver-headed clergyman, who seemed to me as much a saint then on earth as he is now in heaven, and partly for whose sake, through all these darkening year*, I re tain a devout, though not intact nor unwavering respect for the entire fraternity. What a hideous wrong, there fore, had the backslider inflicted on his brethren, and still more on me, who much needed whatever fragments of broken reverence (broken, not as concerned religion, but its earthly institutions and professors), it might yet be possible to patch into a sacred image ! Should all pul pits and communion-tables have thenceforth a stain upon them, and the guilty one go unrebuked for it? So I spoke to the unhappy man as I never thought myself war ranted in speaking to any other mortal, hitting him hard, doing my utmost to find out his vulnerable part, and prick him into the depths of it. And not without more effect than I had dreamed of, or desired ! No doubt, the novelty of the Doctor s reversed position, thus standing up to receive such a fulmination as the clergy have heretofore arrogated the exclusive right of inflicting, might give additional weight and sting to the words which I found utterance for. But there was another reason (which, had I in the least suspected it, would have closed my lips at once,) for his feeling mor bidly sensitive to the cruel rebuke that I administered. The unfortunate man had come to me, laboring under one of the consequences of his riotous outbreak, in the shape n f delirium tremens ; he bore a hell within the compass of his own breast, all the torments of which blazed up with tenfold inveteracy when I thus took upon myself the devil s office of stirring up the red-hot embers. His emotions, 86 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. as well as the external movement and expression of them by voice, countenance, and gesture, were terribly exag gerated by the tremendous vibration of nerves resulting from the disease. It was the deepest tragedy I ever wit nessed. I know sufficiently, from that one experience, how a condemned soul would manifest its agonies ; and for the future, if I have anything to do with sinners, I mean to operate upon them through sympathy, and not rebuke. What had I to do with rebuking him? The disease, long latent in his heart, had shown itself in a frightful eruption on the surface of his life. That was all ! Is it a thing to scold the sufferer for ? To conclude this wretched story, the poor Doctor of Divinity, having been robbed of all his money in this little airing beyond the limits of propriety, was easily persuaded to give up the intended tour and return to his bereaved flock, who, very probably, were thereafter con scious of an increased unction in his soul-stirring elo quence, without suspecting the awful depths into which their pastor had dived in quest of it. His voice is now silent. I leave it to members of his own profession to decide whether it was better for him thus to sin outright, and so to be let into the miserable secret what manner of man he was, or to have gone through life outwardly un spotted, making the first discovery of his latent evil at the judgment-seat. It has occurred to me that his dirt calamity, as botli he and I regarded it, might have beei the only method by which precisely such a man as him self, and so situated, could be redeemed. He has learned, ere now, how that matter stood. For a man, with a natural tendency to meddh,- with other people s business, there could not possibly bf- a CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 37 more congenial sphere than the Liverpool Consulate. For myself, I had never been in the habit of feeling that I could sufficiently comprehend any particular conjunction of circumstances with human character, to justify me in thrusting in my awkward agency among the intricate and unintelligible machinery of Providence. I have always hated to give advice, especially when there is a prospect of its being taken. It is only one-eyed people who love to advise, or have any spontaneous promptitude of action. When a man opens both his eyes, he generally sees about as many reasons for acting in any one way as in any other, and quite as many for acting in neither ; and is therefore likely to leave his friends to regulate their own conduct, and also to remain quiet as regards his especial affairs till necessity shall prick him onward. Neverthe less, the world and individuals flourish upon a constant succession of blunders. The secret of English practical success lies in their characteristic faculty of shutting one eye, whereby they get so distinct and decided a view of what immediately concerns them that they go stumbling towards it over a hundred insurmountable obstacles, and achieve a magnificent triumph without ever being aware of half its difficulties. If General McClellan could but have shut his left eye, the right one would long ago have guided us into Richmond. Meanwhile, I have strayed far away from the Consulate, where, as I was about to say, I was compelled, in spite of my disinclination, to im part both advice and assistance in multifarious affairs that did not personally concern me, and presume that I effected about as little mischief as other men in similar contingencies. The duties of the office carried me to prisons, police-courts, hospitals, lunatic asylums, coroner a 38 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. inquests, death-beds, funerals, and brought me in contact with insane people, criminals, ruined speculators, wild adventurers, diplomatists, brother-consuls, and all manner of simpletons and unfortunates, in greater number and variety than I had ever dreamed of as pertaining to America; in addition to whom there was an equivalent multitude of English rogues, dexterously counterfeiting the genuine Yankee article. It required great discrim ination not to be taken in by these last-mentioned scoun drels ; for they knew how to imitate our national traits, had been at great pains to instruct themselves as regarded American localities, and were not readily to be caught by a cross-examination as to the topographical features, public institutions, or prominent inhabitants, of the places where they pretended to belong. The best shibboleth I ever hit upon lay in the pronunciation of the word " been," which the English invariably make to rhyme with " green," and we Northerners, at least, (in accord ance, I think, with the custom of Shakspeare s time,) uni versally pronounce " bin." All the matters that I have been treating of, however, were merely incidental, and quite distinct from the real business of the office. A great part of the wear and tear of mind and temper resulted from the bad relations between the seamen and officers of American ships. Scarcely a morning passed, but that some sailor came to show the marks of his ill-usage on shipboard. Often, it was a whole crew of them, each with his broken head or livid bruise, and all testifying with one voice to a constant series of savage outrages during the voyage ; or, it might be, they laid an accusation of actual murdor, perpetrated by the first or second officers ivith many blows of CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 39 feieel-knuckles, a rope s end, or a marline-spike, or by the captain, in the twinkling of an eye, with a shot of his pistol. Taking the seamen s view of the case, you would suppose that the gibbet was hungry for the murderers. Listening to the Captain s defence, you would seem to discover that he and his officers were the humanest of mortals, but were driven to a wholesome severity by tho mutinous conduct of the crew, who, moreover, had them selves slain their comrade in the drunken riot and confu sion of the first day or two after they were shipped. Looked at judicially, there appeared to be no right side to the matter, nor any right side possible in so thoroughly vicious a system as that of the American mercantile marine. The Consul could do little, except to take depositions, hold forth the greasy Testament to be pro faned anew with perjured kisses, and, in a few instances of murder or manslaughter, carry the case before an Eng lish magistrate, who generally decided that the evidence was too contradictory to authorize the transmission of the accused for trial in America. The newspapers all over England contained paragraphs, inveighing against the cruelties of American shipmasters. The British Parlia ment took up the matter, (for nobody is so humane as John Bull, when his benevolent propensities are to be gratified by finding fault with his neighbor,) and caused Lord John Russell to remonstrate with our Government on the outrages for which it was responsible before the world, and which it failed to prevent or punish. The American Secretary of State, old General Cass, responded, with perfectly astounding ignorance of the subject, to the effect that the statements of outrages had probably been exaggerated, that the present laws of the United States 40 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. were quite adequate to deal with them, and that the in terference of the British Minister was uncalled for. The truth is, that the state of affairs was really very horrible, and could be met by no laws at that tune (or I presume now) in existence. I once thought of writing a pamphlet on the subject, but quitted the Consulate before iinding time to effect my purpose ; and all that phase of my life immediately assumed so dreamlike a consistency that I despaired of making it seem solid or tangible to the public. And now it looks distant and dim, like troubles of a century ago. The origin of the evil lay in the character of the seamen, scarcely any of whom were American, but the offscourings and refuse of all the seaports of the world, such stuff as piracy is made of, together with a considerable intermixture of returning emigrants, and a sprinkling of absolutely kidnapped American citizens. Even with such material, the ships were very inadequately manned. The shipmaster found himself upon the deep, with a vast responsibility of prop erty and human life upon his hands, and no means of salvation except by compelling his inefficient and demor alized crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably be required of the same number of able seamen. By law he had been intrusted with no discretion of judicious punishment ; he therefore habitually left the whole mat ter of discipline to his irresponsible mates, men often of scarcely a superior quality to the crew. Hence ensued a great mass of petty outrages, unjustifiable assaults, shame ful indignities, and nameless cruelty, demoralizing alike to the perpetrators and the sufferers; these enormities fell into the ocean between the two countries, and could be punished in neither. Many miserable stories come CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 41 back upon my memory as I write ; wrongs that were immense, but for which nobody could be held responsible, and which, indeed, the closer you looked into them, the more they lost the aspect of wilful misdoing and assumed that of an inevitable calamity. It was the fault of a sys tem, the misfortune of an individual. Be that as it may, however, there will be no possibility of dealing effectually with these troubles as long as we deem it inconsistent vith our national dignity or interests to allow the Eng lish courts, under such restrictions as may seem fit, a jurisdiction over offences perpetrated on board our ves sels in mid-ocean. In such a life as this, the American shipmaster devel ops himself into a man of iron energies, dauntless cour age, and inexhaustible resource, at the expense, it must be acknowledged, of some of the higher and gentler traits which might do him excellent service in maintain ing his authority. The class has deteriorated of late years on account of the narrower field of selection, owing chiefly to the diminution of that excellent body of respect ably educated New England seamen, from the flower of whom the officers used to be recruited. Yet I found them, in many cases, very agreeable and intelligent companions, with less nonsense about them than landsmen usually have, eschewers of fine-spun theories, delighting in square and tangible ideas, but occasionally infested with preju dices that stuck to their brains like barnacles to a ship s bottom. I never could flatter myself that I was a gen eral favorite with them. One or two, perhaps, even now, would scarcely meet me on amicable terms. Endowed universally with a great pertinacity of will, they es pecially disliked the interference of a consul with their 42 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. management on shipboard; notwithstanding which 7 thrust in my very limited authority at every available opening, and did the utmost that lay in my power, though with lamentably small effect, towards enforcing a better kind of discipline. They thought, no doubt, (and on plausible grounds enough, but scarcely appreciating just that one little grain of hard New England sense, oddly thrown in among the flimsier composition of the Consul s character,) that he, a landsman, a bookman, and, as people said of him, a fanciful recluse, could not possibly understand anything of the difficulties or the necessities of a shipmaster s position. But their cold regards were rather acceptable than otherwise, for it is exceedingly awkward to assume a judicial austerity in the morning towards a man with whom you have been hobnobbing over night. With the technical details of the business of that great Consulate, (for great it then was, though now, I fear, wofully fallen off, and perhaps never to be revived in anything like its former extent,) I did not much interfere. They could safely be left to the treatment of two as faith ful, upright, and competent subordinates, both English men, as ever a man was fortunate enough to meet with, in a line of life altogether new and strange to him. I had come over with instructions to supply both their places with Americans, but, possessing a happy faculty of know ing my own interest and the public s, I quietly kept hold of them, being little inclined to open the consular doors to a spy of the State Department or an intriguer for my own office. The venerable Vice-Consul Mr. Pearce, had wit nessed the successive arrivals of a score of newly appointed Consuls, shadowy and short-lived dignitaries, and carried CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 43 his reminiscences back to the epoch of Consul Maury, who was appointed by Washington, and has acquired almost the grandeur of a mythical personage in the annals of the Consulate. The principal clerk, Mr. Wilding, who has since succeeded to the Vice- Consulship, was a man of English integrity not that the English are more honest than ourselves, but only there is a certain sturdy reliable ness common among them, which we do not quite so invariably manifest in just these subordinate positions of English integrity, combined with American acuteness of intellect, quick-wittedness, and diversity of talent. It seemed an immense pity that he should wear out his life at a desk, without a step in advance from year s end to year s end, when, had it been his luck to be born on our side of the water, his bright faculties and clear probity would have insured him eminent success in whatever path he might adopt. Meanwhile, it would have been a sore mischance to me, had any better fortune on his part deprived me of Mr. Wilding s services. A fair amount of common sense, some acquaintance with the United States Statutes, an insight into character, a tact of management, a general knowledge of the world, and a reasonable but not too inveterately decided preference for his own will and judgment over those of interested people, these natural attributes and moderate acquirements will enable a consul to perform many of his duties respectably, but not to dispense with a great variety of other qualifications, only attainable by long experience. Yet, I think, few consuls are so well accomplished. An appointment of whatever grade, in the diplomatic or con sular service of America, is too often what the English call a "job"; that is to say, it is made on private and 44 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. personal grounds, without a paramount eye to the public good or the gentleman s especial fitness for the position. It is not too much to say, (of course allowing for a brill iant exception here and there,) that an American never is thoroughly qualified for a foreign post, nor has time to make himself so, before the revolution of the political wheel discards him from his office. Our country wrongs itself by permitting such a system of unsuitable ap pointments, and, still more, of removals for no cause, just when the incumbent might be beginning to ripen into usefulness. Mere ignorance of official detail is of com paratively small moment ; though it is considered indis pensable, I presume, that a man in any private capacity shall be thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and operation of his business, and shall not necessarily lose his position on having attained such knowledge. But there are so many more important things to be thought of, in the qualifications of a foreign resident, that his technical dexterity or clumsiness is hardly worth men tioning. One great part of a consul s duty, for example, should consist in building up for himself a recognized position in the society where he resides, so that his local influence might be felt in behalf of his own country, and, so far as they are compatible (as they generally are to the utmost extent) for the interests of both nations. The foreign city should know that it has a permanent inhabitant and a hearty well-wisher in him. There are many conjunc tures (and one of them is now upon us) where a long- established, honored, and trusted American citizen, hold ing a public position under our Government in such a to\\n as Liverpool, might go far towards swaying and CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 45 directing the sympathies of the inhabitants. He might throw his own weight into the balance against mischief- makers ; he might have set his foot on the first little spark of malignant purpose, which the next wind may blow into a national war. But we wilfully give up all advantages of this kind. The position is totally beyond the attainment of an American ; there to-day, bristling all over with the porcupine quills of our Republic, and gone to-morrow, just as he is becoming sensible of the broader and more generous patriotism which might almost amal gamate with that of England, without losing an atom of its native force and flavor. In the changes that appear to await us, and some of which, at least, can hardly fail to be for good, let us hope for a reform in this matter. For myself, as the gentle reader would spare me the trouble of saying, I was not at all the kind of man to grow into such an ideal Consul as I have here suggested. I never in my life desired to be burdened with public influence. I disliked my office from the first, and never came into any good accordance with it. Its dignity, so far as it had any, was an incumbrance ; the attentions it drew upon me (such as invitations to Mayor s banquets and public celebrations of all kinds, where, to my horror, I found myself expected to stand up and speak) were as I may say, without incivility or ingratitude, because there is nothing personal in that sort of hospitality a bore! The official business was irksome, and often painful There was nothing pleasant about the whole affair except the emoluments ; and even those, never too bountifully reaped, were diminished by more than half in the second or third year of my incumbency. All this being true, I was quite prepared, in advance of the inauguration of 46 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. Mr. Buchanan, to send in my resignation. When my successor arrived, I drew the long, delightful breath which first made me thoroughly sensible what an unnatural life I had been leading, and compelled me to admire myself for having battled with it so sturdily. The new-comer proved to be a very genial and agreeable gentleman, an F. F. V., and, as he pleasantly acknowledged, a Southern Fire- Fater, an announcement to which I responded, with similar good-humor and self-complacency, by parading my descent from an ancient line of Massachusetts Puritans. Since our brief acquaintanceship, my fire-eating friend has had ample opportunities to banquet on his favorite diet, hot and hot, in the Confederate service. For myself, as soon as I was out of office, the retrospect began to look unreal. I could scarcely believe that it was I, that figure whom they called a Consul but a sort of Double Gauger, who had been permitted to assume my aspect, under which he went through his shadowy duties with a tolerable show of efficiency, while my real self had lain, as regarded my proper mode of being and acting, in a state of suspended animation. The same sense of illusion still pursues me. There is some mistake in this matter. I have been writing about another man s consular experiences, with which, through some mysterious medium of transmitted ideas, I find my- %elf intimately acquainted, but in which I cannot possibly have had a personal interest. Is it not a dream alto gether ? The figure of that poor Doctor of Divinity looks wonderfully lifelike ; so do those of the Oriental adven turer with the visionary coronet above his brow, and the moonstruck visitor of the Queen, and the poor old wan derer, seeking his native country through English high- CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 47 ways and by-ways for almost thirty years ; and so would a hundred others that I might summon up with similar distinctness. But were they more than shadows ? Surely, I think not. Nor are these present pages a bit of intrusive autobiography. Let not the reader wrong me by supposing it. I never should have written with half such unreserve, had it been a portion of this life congenial with my nature, which I am living now, instead of a series of incidents and characters entirely apart from my own concerns, and on which the qualities personally proper to me could have had no bearing. Almost the only real incidents, as I see them now, were the visits of a young English friend, a scholar and a liter ary amateur, between whom and myself there sprung up an affectionate, and, I trust, not transitory regard. He used to come and sit or stand by my fireside, talking viva ciously and eloquently with me about literature and life, his own national characteristics and mine, with such kindly endurance of the many rough republicanisms wherewith I assailed him, and such frank and amiable assertion of all sorts of English prejudices and mistakes, that I understood his countrymen infinitely the better for him, and was almost prepared to love the intensest Eng lishman of them all, for his sake. It would gratify my cherished remembrance of this dear friend, if I could manage, without offending him, or letting the public know it, to introduce his name upon my page. Bright was the illumination of my dusky little apartment, as often as he made his appearance there ! The English sketches which I have been offering to the public, comprise a few of the more external and therefore more readily manageable things that I tool/ 48 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. note of, in many escapes from the imprisonment of my consular servitude. Liverpool, though not very delight ful as a place of residence, is a most convenient and admirable point to get away from. London is only five hours off by the fast train. Chester, the most curious town in England, with its encompassing wall, its ancient rows, and its venerable cathedral, is close at hand. North Wales, with all its hills and ponds, its noble sea- scenery, its multitude of gray castles and strange old villages, may be glanced at in a summer day or two. The lakes and mountains of Cumberland and Westmore land may be reached before dinner-time. The haunted and legendary Isle of Man, a little kingdom by itself, lies within the scope of an afternoon s voyage. Edinburgh or Glasgow are attainable over-night, and Loch Lomond betimes in the morning. Visiting these famous localities, and a great many others, I hope that I do not compro mise my American patriotism by acknowledging that I was often conscious of a fervent hereditary attachment to the native soil of our forefathers, and felt it to be our own Old Home. LEAMINGTON SPA IN the course of several visits and stays of considerable length wo acquired a homelike feeling towards Leaming ton, and came back thither again and again, chiefly be cause we had been there before. Wandering and wayside people, such as we had long since become, retain a few of the instincts that belong to a more settled way of life, and often prefer familiar and commonplace objects (for the very reason that they are so) to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might be thought much better worth the seeing. There is a small nest of a place in Leamington at No. 10, Lansdowne Circus upon which, to this day, my reminiscences are apt to settle as one of the coziest nooks in England or in the world ; not that it had any special charm of its own, but only that we stayed long enough to know it well, and even to grow a little tired of it. In my opinion, the very tediousness of home and friends makes a part of what we love them for ; if it be not mixed in sufficiently with the other elements of life, there may be mad enjoyment, but no happiness. The modest abode to which I have alluded forms ono of a circular range of pretty, moderate-sized, two-story houses, all built on nearly the same plan, and each pro vided with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its tufts of box trimmed intc globes and other fantastic shapes, and its 4 50 LEAMINGTON SPA. verdant hedge? shutting the house in from the common drive and dividing it from its equally cozy neighbors. Coming out of the door, and taking a turn round the circle of sister-dwellings, it is difficult to find your way Lack by any distinguishing individuality of your own habitation. In the centre of the Circus is a space fenced in with iron railing, a small play-place and sylvan retreat for the children of the precinct, permeated by brief paths through the fresh English grass, and shadowed by vari ous shrubbery ; amid which, if you like, you may fancy yourself in a deep seclusion, though probably the mark of eye-shot from the windows of all the surrounding houses. But, in truth, with regard to the rest of the town and the world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclusion ; for the ordinary stream of life does not run through this little, quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabitants seem to be troubled with any business or outside activities. I used to set them down as half-pay officers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, and other people of re spectability, but small account, such as hang on the world s skirts rather than actually belong to it. The quiet of the place was seldom disturbed, except by the grocer and butcher, who came to receive orders, or by the cabs, hackney-coaches, and Bath-chairs, in which the ladies took an infrequent airing, or the livery-steed which the retired captain sometimes bestrode for a morning ride, or by the red-coated postman who went his rounds twice a day to deliver letters, and again in the evening, ringing a hand-bell, to take letters for the mail. In merely men tioning these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness, I seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of quiet that brooded over the spot ; whereas its impression LEAMINGTON SPA. 51 ipon me was. that the world had never found the way hither, or had forgotten it, and that the fortunate inhab itants were the only ones who possessed the spell-word of admittance. Nothing could have suited me better, at the time ; for I had been holding a position of public ser vitude, which imposed upon me (among a great many lighter duties) the ponderous necessity of being univer sally civil and sociable. Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of society, he might find it more readily in Leamington than in most other English towns. It is a permanent water ing-place, a sort of institution to which I do not know any close parallel in American life : for such places as Sara toga bloom only for the summer season, and offer a thou sand dissimilitudes even then ; while Leamington seems to be always in flower, and serves as a home to the homeless all the year round. Its original nucleus, the plausible excuse for the town s coming into prosperous existence, lies in the fiction of a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, groves, gardens, mansions, shops, and churches, and spread themselves along the banks of the little river Learn. This miracle accomplished, tho beneficent fountain has retired beneath a pump-room, and appears to have given up all pretensions to the remedial virtues formerly attributed to it. I know not whether its waters are ever tasted nowadays ; but not the less does Leamington in pleasant Warwickshire, at the very midmost point of England, in a good hunting neighbor hood, and surrounded by country-seats and castles con tinue to be a resort of transient visitors, and the mor<> permanent abode of a class of genteel, unoccupied 52 LEAMINGTON SPA. to-do, but not very wealthy people, such as are hardly known among ourselves. Persons who have no country- houses, and whose fortunes are inadequate to a Londor expenditure, find here, I suppose, a sort of town and country life in one. In its present aspect the town is of no great age. In contrast with the antiquity of many places in its neigh borhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems almost to smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn. Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old, if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during which it existed as a small village of thatched houses, clustered round a priory ; and it would still have been precisely such a rural village, but for a certain Doctor Jephson, who lived within the memory of man, and who found out the magic well, and foresaw what fairy wealth might be made to flow from it. A public garden has been laid out along the margin of the Learn, and called the Jephson Garden, in honor of him who created the prosperity of his native spot. A little way within the garden-gate there is a circular temple of Grecian architecture, be neath the dome of which stands a marble statue of the good Doctor, very well executed, and representing him with a face of fussy activity and benevolence : just the kind of man, if luck favored him, to build up the for tunes of those about him, or, quite as probably, to blight his whole neighborhood by some disastrous speculation. The Jephson Garden is very beautiful, like most other English pleasure-grounds ; for, aided by their moist cli mate and not too fervid sun, the landscape-gardeners excel in converting flat or tame surfaces into attractive scenery, chiefly through the skilful arrangement of treea LEAMINGTON SPA. 53 and shrubbery. An Englishman aims at this effect even in the little patches under the windows of a suburban villa, and achieves it on a larger scale in a tract of many acres. The Garden is shadowed with trees of a fine growth, standing alone, or in dusky groves and dense entanglements, pervaded by woodland paths ; and emerg ing from these pleasant glooms, we come upon a breadth of sunshine, where the green sward so vividly green that it has a kind of lustre in it is spotted with beds of gemlike flowers. Rustic chairs and benches are scat tered about, some of them ponderously fashioned out of the stumps of obtruncated trees, and others more artfully made with intertwining branches, or perhaps an imitation of such frail handiwork in iron. In a central part of the Garden is an archery-ground, where laughing maidens practise at the butts, generally missing their ostensible mark, but, by the mere grace of their action, sending an unseen shaft into some young man s heart. There is space, moreover, within these precincts, for an artificial lake, with a little green island in the midst of it ; both lake and island being the haunt of swans, whose aspect and movement in the water are most beautiful and stately, most infirm, disjointed, and decrepit, when, unadvisedly, they see fit to emerge, and try to walk upon dry land. In the latter case, they look like a breed of uncommonly ill-contrived geese ; and I record the matter here for the sake of the moral, that we should never pass judgment on the merits of any person or thing, unless we behold them in the sphere and circumstances to which they are specially adapted. In still another part of the Garden there is a labyrinthine maze, formed of an irtri- cacy of hedge-bordered walks, involving himself in which, 54 LEAMINGTON SPA. a man might wander for hours inextricably within a circuit of only a few yards. It seemed to me a sad emblem of the mental and moral perplexities in which we sometimes go astray, petty in scope, yet large enough to entangle a lifetime, and bewilder us with a weary movement, but no genuine progress. The Learn the " high complectioned Learn," as Drayton calls it after drowsing across the principal street of the town beneath a handsome bridge, skirts along the margin of the Garden without any perceptible flow. Heretofore I had fancied the Concord the laziest river in the world, but now assign that amiable distinc tion to the little English stream. Its water is by no means transparent, but has a greenish, goose-puddly hue, which, however, accords well with the other coloring and characteristics of the scene, and is disagreeable neither to sight nor smell. Certainly, this river is a perfect feature of that gentle picturesqueness in which England is so rich, sleeping, as it does, beneath a margin of willows that droop into its bosom, and other trees, of deeper ver dure than our own country can boast, inclining lovingly over it. On the Garden-side it is bordered by a shadowy, eecluded grove, with winding paths among its boskiness, affording many a peep at the river s imperceptible lapse and tranquil gleam ; and on the opposite shore stands the priory-church, with its churchyard full of shrubbery and tombstones. The business portion of the town clusters about the banks of the Learn, and is naturally densest around the well to which the modern settlement owes its existence. Here are the commercial inns, the post-office, the furni ture dealers, the ironmongers, and all the heavy and LEAMINGTON SPA. o5 homely establishments that connect themselves even with the airiest modes of human life ; while upward from the river, by a long and gentle ascent, rises the principal street, which is very bright and cheerful in its physiog nomy, and adorned with shop-fronts almost as splendid as those of London, though on a diminutive scale. There are likewise side-streets and cross-streets, many of which are bordered with the beautiful Warwickshire elm, a most unusual kind of adornment for an English town ; and spacious avenues, wide enough to afford room for stately groves, with foot-paths running beneath the lofty shade, and rooks cawing and chattering so high in the tree-tops that their voices get musical before reaching the earth. The houses are mostly built in blocks and ranges, in which every separate tenement is a repetition of its fellow, though the architecture of the different ranges is sufficiently various. Some of them are almost palatial in size and sumptuousness of arrangement. Then, on the outskirts of the town, there are detached villas, en closed within that separate domain of high stone fence and embowered shrubbery which an Englishman so loves to build and plant around his abode, presenting to the public only an iron gate, with a gravelled carriage-drive winding away towards the half-hidden mansion. Wheth er in street or suburb, Leamington may fairly be called beautiful, and, at some points, magnificent ; but by and by you become doubtfully suspicious of a somewhat unreal finery : it is pretentious, though not glaringly so ; it has been built, with malice aforethought, as a place of gentil ity and enjoyment. Moreover, splendid as the houses look, and comfortable as they often are, there is a name- iess something about them, betokening that they have not 56 LEAMINGTON SPA. grown out of human hearts, but are the creations of a skilfully applied human intellect : no man has reared any one of them, whether stately or humble, to be his life- long residence, wherein to bring up his children, who are to inherit it as a home. They are nicely contrived lodging- houses, one and all, the best as well as the shabbiest of them, and therefore inevitably lack some nameless property that a home should have. This was the case with our own little snuggery in Lansdowne Circus, as with all the rest ; it had not grown out of anybody s in dividual need, but was built to let or sell, and was there fore like a ready-made garment, a tolerable fit, but only tolerable. All these blocks, ranges, and detached villas are adorned with the finest and most aristocratic names that I have found anywhere in England, except, perhaps, in Bath, which is the great metropolis of that second-class gentility with which watering-places are chiefly popu lated. Lansdowne Crescent, Lansdowne Circus, Lans downe Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick Street, Claren don Street, the Upper and Lower Parade: such are a few of the designations. Parade, indeed, is a well-chosen name for the principal street, along which the population of the idle town draws itself out for daily review and dis play. I only wish that my descriptive powers would enable me to throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny noontide, individualizing each character with a touch : the great people alighting from their carriages at the principal shop-doors ; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian officers drawn along in Bath-chairs ; the comely, rather than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milk- LEAMINGTON SPA. 57 moid than for a lady; the moustached gentlemen with frogged surtouts and a military air ; the nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier than our own, and scampering on slenderer legs ; the sturdy figure of John Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but ever with the stamp of authenticity somewhere about him. To say the truth, I have been holding the pen over my paper, purposing to write a descriptive paragraph or two about the throng on the principal Parade of Leamington, so arranging it as to present a sketch of the British out-of- door aspect on a morning walk of gentility ; but I find no personages quite sufficiently distinct and individual in my memory to supply the materials of such a panorama. Oddly enough, the only figure that comes fairly forth to my mind s eye is that of a dowager, one of hundreds whom I used to marvel at, all over England, but who have scarcely a representative among our own ladies of autumnal life, so thin, careworn, and frail, as age usually makes the latter. I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late period of life ; but (not to suggest that an American eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than anything that we Western people class under the name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow ; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. 58 LEAMINGTON SPA. When she walks, her advance is elephantine. When she sits down it is on a great round space of her Maker s footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but because it seems to express so much well-founded self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles, and dan gers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a seventy-four gun-ship in time of peace ; for, while you assure yourself that there is no real dan ger, you cannot help thinking how tremendous would be her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold nay, a hundred-fold better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and haggard womankind ; but I have not found reason to suppose that the English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Mor ally, she is strong, I suspect, only in society, and in the common routine of social affairs, and would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy outside of the conventionalities amid which she has grown up. You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a LEAMINGTON SPA. 59 ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding develop ment, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an over-blown cabbage-roso as this. Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown ; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for ! Is it not a sounder view of the case, that the matrimonial bond can not be held to include the three fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And as a matter of conscience and good morals, ought not an English married pair to insist upon the celebra tion of a Silver Wedding at the end of twenty-five years in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that cor poreal growth of which both parties have individually come into possession since they were pronounced one flesh? The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Learning- 60 LEAMINGTON SPA. ton lay in rural walks about the neighborhood, and in jaunts to places of note and interest, which are particu larly abundant in that region. The high-roads are made pleasant to the traveller by a border of trees, and often afford him the hospitality of a wayside bench beneath a comfortable shade. But a fresher delight is to be found in the foot-paths, \\hich go wandering away from style to style, along hedges, and across broad fields, and through wooded parks, leading you to little hamlets of thatched cottages, ancient, solitary farm-houses, picturesque old mills, streamlets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unex pected, yet strangely familiar features of English scenery that Tennyson shows us in his idyls and eclogues. These bypaths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of intrusive- ness. He has a right to go whithersoever they lead him ; for, with all their shaded privacy, they are as much the property of the public as the dusty high-road itself, and even by an older tenure. Their antiquity probably ex ceeds that of the Roman ways; the footsteps of the aboriginal Britons first wore away the grass, and the natural flow of intercourse between village and village has kept the track bare ever since. An American farmer would plough across any such path, and obliter ate it with his hills of potatoes and Indian corn ; but here it is protected by law, and still more by the sacred ness that inevitably springs up, in this soil, along th well-defined footprints of centuries. Old associations are sure to be fragrant herbs in English nostrils : we pull them up as weeds. I remember such a path, the access to which i* from Lovers Grove, a range of tall old oaks and elm or u LEAMINGTON SPA. 61 high hill-top, whence there is a view of "Warwick Castle, and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful, though be- dimmed with English mist. This particular foot-path, however, is not a remarkably good specimen of its kind, since it leads into no hollows and seclusions, and soon terminates in a high road. It connects Leamington by a short cut with the small neighboring village of Lillington, a place which impresses an American observer with its many points of contrast to the rural aspects of his own country. The village consists chiefly of one row of con tiguous dwellings, separated only by party-walls, but ill- matched among themselves, being of different heights, and apparently of various ages, though all are of an an tiquity which we should call venerable. Some of the windows are leaden-framed lattices, opening on hinges. These houses are mostly built of gray stone ; but others, in the same range, are of brick, and one or two are in a very old fashion, Elizabethan, or still older, having a ponderous framework of oak, painted black, and filled in with plastered stone or bricks. Judging by the patches of repair, the oak seems to be the more durable part of the structure. Some of the roofs are covered with earth- ern tiles ; others (more decayed and poverty-stricken) with thatch, out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation of grass, house-leeks, and yellow flowers. What es pecially strikes an American is the lack of that insulated space, the intervening gardens, grass-plots, orchards broad-spreading shade-trees, which occur between our own village-houses. These English dwellings have no such separate surroundings ; they all grow together, like the cells of a honey-comb. Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it by 62 LEAMINGTON SPA. a turn of the road, there was another row (or block, as we should call it) of small old cottages, stuck one against another, with their thatched roofs forming a single con tiguity. These, I presume, were the habitations of the poorest order of rustic laborers ; and the narrow precincts of each cottage, as well as the close neighborhood of the whole, gave the impression of a stifled, unhealthy atmos phere among the occupants. It seemed impossible that there should be a cleanly reserve, a proper self-respect among individuals, or a wholesome unfamiliarity between families, where human life was crowded and massed into such intimate communities as these. Nevertheless, not to look beyond the outside, I never saw a prettier rural scene than was presented by this range of contiguous huts. For in front of the whole row was a luxuriant and well-trimmed hawthorn hedge, and belonging to each cottage was a little square of garden-ground, separated from its neighbors by a line of the same verdant fence. The gardens were chockfull, not of esculent vegetables, but of flowers, familiar ones, but very bright-colored, and shrubs of box, some of which were trimmed into artistic shapes ; and I remember, before one door, a representa tion of Warwick Castle, made of oyster-shells. The cottagers evidently loved the little nests in which they dwelt, and did their best to make them beautiful, and succeeded more than tolerably well, so kindly did Nature help their humble efforts with its verdure, flow ers, moss, lichens, and the green things that grew out of the thatch. Through some of the open doorways wo saw plump children rolling about on the stone floors, and th^ir mothers, by no means very pretty, but as happy- looking as mothers generally are ; and while we gazed at LEAMINGTON SPA. 6,1 these domestic matters, an old woman rushed wildly out of one of the gates, upholding a shovel, on which she clanged and clattered with a key. At first we fancied that she intended an onslaught against ourselves, but soon discovered that a more dangerous enemy was abroad ; for the old lady s bees had swarmed, and the air was full of them, whizzing by our heads like bullets. Not far from these two rows of houses and cottages, a green lane, overshadowed with trees, turned aside from the main road, and tended towards a square, gray tower, the battlements of which were just high enough to be visible above the foliage. Wending our way thitherward, we found the very picture and ideal of a country church and churchyard. The tower seemed to be of Norman architecture, low, massive, and crowned with battlements. The body of the church was of very modest dimensions, and the eaves so low that I could touch them with my walking-stick. We looked into the windows and beheld the dim and quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable with the consecration of many centuries, and keeping its sanctity as entire and inviolate as that of a vast cathedral. The nave was divided from the side aisles of the church by pointed arches resting on very sturdy pillars : it was good to see how solemnly they held themselves to their age-long task of supporting that lowly roof. There was a small organ, suited in size to the vaulted hollow, which it weekly filled with religious sound. On the opposite wall of the church, between two windows, was a mural tablet of white marble, with an inscription in black let ters, the only such memorial that I could discern, although many dead people doubtless lay beneath the floor, and had paved it with their ancient tombstones, aa 64 LEAMINGTON SPA. is customary in old English churches. There were no modern painted windows, flaring with raw colors, nor other gorgeous adornments, such as the present taste for mediaeval restoration often patches upon the decorous simplicity of the gray village-church. It is probably the worshipping-place of no more distinguished a congrega tion than the farmers and peasantry who inhabit the houses and cottages which I have just described. Had the lord of the manor been one of the parishioners, there would have been an eminent pew near the chancel, walled high about, curtained, and softly cushioned," warmed by a fireplace of its own, and distinguished by hereditary tab lets and escutcheons on the enclosed stone pillar. A well-trodden path led across the churchyard, and the gate being on the latch, we entered, and walked round among the graves and monuments. The latter were chiefly head-stones, none of which were very old, so far as was discoverable by the dates; some, indeed, in so ancient a cemetery, were disagreeably new, with inscrip tions glittering like sunshine, in gold letters. The ground must have been dug over and over again, innumerable times, until the soil is made up of what was once human clay, out of which have sprung successive crops of grave stones, that flourish their allotted time, and disappear, like the weeds and flowers in their briefer period. The English climate is very unfavorable to the endurance of memorials in the open air. Twenty years of it suffice to give as much antiquity of aspect, whether to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred years of our own drier atmos phere, so soon do the drizzly rains and constant mois ture corrode the surface of marble or freestone. Sculp tured edges lose their sharpness in a year or two ; yellow LEAMINGTON SPA. 65 lichens overspread a beloved name, and obliterate it while it is yet fresh upon some survivor s heart. Time gnaws an English gravestone with wonderful appetite ; and when the inscription is quite illegible, the sexton takes the useless slab away, and perhaps makes a hearthstone of it, and digs up the unripe bones which it ineffectually tried to memorialize, and gives the bed to another sleeper. In the Charter-Street burial-ground at Salem, and in the old graveyard on the hill at Ipswich, I have seen more ancient gravestones, with legible inscriptions on them, than in any English churchyard. And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it gen erally is to the long remembrance of departed people, has sometimes a lovely way of dealing with the records on certain monuments that lie horizontally in the open air. The rain falls into the deep incisions of the letters, and has scarcely time to be dried away before another shower sprinkles the flat stone again, and replenishes those little reservoirs. The unseen, mysterious seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered furrows, and are made to ger minate by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of the English sky ; and by and by, in a year, or two years, or many years, behold the complete inscription Usetij tlje and all the rest of the tender falsehood beautifully embossed in raised letters of living green, a bas-relief of velvet moss on the marble slab ! It becomes more legible, under the skyey influences, after the world has forgotten the deceased, than when it was fresh from the Bt one-cutter s hands. It outlives the grief of friends. T first saw an example of this in Bebbington church- 66 LEAMINGTON SPA. yard, in Cheshire, and thought that Nature must needs have had a special tenderness for the person (no noted man, however, in the world s history) so long ago laid beneath that stone, since she took such wonderful pains to " keep his memory green." Perhaps the proverbial phrase just quoted may have had its origin in the natural phenomenon here described. While we rested ourselves on a horizontal monument, which was elevated just high enough to be a convenient seat, I observed that one of the gravestones lay very close to the church, so close that the droppings of the eaves would fall upon it. It seemed as if the inmate of that grave had desired to creep under the church-wall. On closer inspection, we found an almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and with difficulty made out this forlorn verse : " Poorly lived, And poorly died, Poorly buried, And no one cried." It would be hard to compress the story of a cold and luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or more impressive ones ; at least, we found them impressive, per haps because we had to re-create the inscription by scraping away the lichens from the faintly traced letters. The grave was on the shady and damp side of the church, endwise towards it, the head-stone being within about three feet of the foundation-wall ; so that, unless the poor innn was a dwarf, he must have been doubled up to fit him into his final resting-place. No wonder that his epitaph murmured against so poor a burial as this ! His name, as well as I could make it out, was Treeo, Joh LEAMINGTON SPA. C7 Treeo, I think, and he died in 1810, at the age of sev enty-four. The gravestone is so overgrown with grass and weeds, so covered with unsightly lichens, and so crumbly with time and foul weather, that it is question able whether anybody will ever be at the trouble of de ciphering it again. But there is a quaint and sad kind of enjoyment in defeating (to such slight degree as mj pen may do it) the probabilities of oblivion for poor John Treeo, and asking a little sympathy for him, half a cen tury after his death, and making him better and more widely known, at least, than any other slumberer in Lil- lington churchyard : he having been, as appearances go, the outcast of them all. You find similar old churches and villages in all the neighboring country, at the distance of every two or three miles ; and I describe them, not as being rare, but be cause they are so common and characteristic. The vil lage of Whitnash, within twenty minutes walk of Leam ington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as little disturbed by the fashions of to-day, as if Dr. Jephson had never developed all those Parades and Crescents out of his magic well. I used to wonder whether the inhabitants had ever yet heard of railways, or, at their slow rate of progress, had even reached the epoch of stage-coaches. As you approach the village, while it is yet unseen, you observe a tall, overshadowing canopy of elm-tree tops, beneath which you almost hesitate to follow the public road, on account of the remoteness that seems to exist between the precincts of this old-world community and the thronged modern street out of which you have so recently emerged. Venturing onward, however, you soon find yourself in the heart of Whitnash, and see 68 LEAMINGTON SPA. an Irregular ring of ancient rustic dwellings surrounding the village-green, on one side of which stands the church, with its square Norman tower and battlements, while close adjoining is the vicarage, made picturesque by peaks and gables. At first glimpse, none of the houses appear to be less than two or three centuries old, and they are of the ancient, wooden-framed fashion, with thatched roofs, which give them the air of birds nests, thereby assimilating them closely to the simplicity of Nature. The church-tower is mossy and much gnawed by time ; it has narrow loopholes up and down its front and sides, and an arched window over the low portal, set with small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and irregular, through which a bygone age is peeping out into the daylight. Some of those old, grotesque faces, called gargoyles, are seen on the projections of the architecture. The churchyard is very small, and is encompassed by a gray stone fence that looks as ancient as the church itself. In front of the tower, on the village-green, is a yew-tree of incalculable age, with a vast circumference of trunk, but a very scanty head of foliage ; though its boughs still keep some of the vitality which perhaps \vas in its early prime when the Saxon invaders founded Whitnash. A thousand years is no extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a yew. Wo were pleasantly startled, however, by discovering an exuberance of more youthful life than we had thought possible in so old a tree ; for the faces of two children laughed at us out of an opening in the trunk, which had become hollow with long decay. On one side of the yew stood a framework of worm-eaten timber, the use and meaning of which puzzled me exceedingly, till I LEAMINGTON SPA. 69 made it out to be the village-stocks : a public institution that, in its day, had doubtless hampered many a pair of shank-bones, now crumbling in the adjacent churchyard. It is not to be supposed, however, that this old-fashioned mode of punishment is still in vogue among the good people of Whitnash. The vicar of the parish has anti quarian propensities, and had probably dragged the stocks out of some dusty hiding-place, and set them up on their former site as a curiosity. I disquiet myself in vain with the effort to hit upon some characteristic feature, or assemblage of features, that shall convey to the reader the influence of hoar antiquity lingering into the present daylight, as I so often felt it in these old English scenes. It is only an American who can feel it ; and even he begins to find himself growing insensible to its effect, after a long residence in England. But while you are still new in the old country, it thrills you with strange emotion to think that this little church of Whitnash, humble as it seems, stood for ages under the Catholic faith, and has not materially changed since Wick- cliffe s days, and that it looked as gray as now in Bloody Mary s time, and that Cromwell s troopers broke off the stone noses of those same gargoyles that are now grinning in your face. So, too, with the immemorial yew-tree : you Bee its great roots grasping hold of the earth like gigantic claws, clinging so sturdily that no effort of time can wrench them away ; and there being life in the old tree, you feel all the more as if a contemporary witness were telling you of the things that have been. It has lived among men, and been a familiar object to them, and seen them brought to be christened and married and buried in the neighboring church and churchyard, through so many 70 LEAMINGTON SPA. centuries, that it knows all about our race, so far as fifty generations of the Whitnash people can supply such knowledge. And, after all, what a weary life it must have been for the old tree ! Tedious beyond imagination ! Such, I think, is the final impression on the mind of an American visitor, when his delight at finding something permanent begins to yield to his Western love of change, and he becomes sensible of the heavy air of a spot where the forefathers and foremothers have grown up together, intermarried, and died, through a long succession of lives, without any intermixture of new elements, till family features and character are all run in the same inevitable mould. Life is there fossilized in its greenest leaf. The man who died yesterday or ever so long ago walks the village-street to-day, and chooses the same wife that he married a hundred years since, and must be buried again to-morrow under the same kindred dust that has already covered him half a score of times. The stone threshold of his cottage is worn away with his hob-nailed footsteps, shuffling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our rest less countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend always towards " fresh woods and pastures new." Rather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a vil lage-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listening to the parson s drone lengthened through centuries in the gray Norman church, let us welcome whatever change may come, change of place, social customs, political institu tions, modes of worship, trusting, that, if all present things shall vanish, they will but make room for better systems, and for a higher type of man to clothe his life in them, and to fling them off in turn. LEAMINGTON SPA. 71 Nevertheless, while an American willingly accepts growth and change as the *aw of his own national and private existence, he has ? singular tenderness for the stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The reason may be (though I should pre er a more generous explanation) that he recognires the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wr^n^hed away from an old wall in England. Yet change if at work, even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent visit, looking more critically at the irregular circle of dwellings that surround the yew-tree and confront the church, I perceived that some of the houses must have beer built within no long time, although the thatch, the quaixit gables, and the old oaken framework of the others diffused an air of antiquity over the whole assemblage. The church itself was un dergoing repair and restoration, which is but another name for change. Masons were making patch-work on the front of the tower, and were saw?ng a slab of stone and piling up bricks to strengthen the side-wall, or pos sibly to enlarge the ancient edifice by an additional aisle. Moreover, they had dug an immense pit in the church yard, long and broad, and fifteen feet de^p, two thirds of which profundity were discolored by human decay, and mixed up with crumbly bones. What tbb excavation was intended for I could nowise imagine, unless it were the very pit in which Longfellow bids the " Dead Past bury its Dead," and Whitnash, of all places i*\ the world, were going to avail itself of our poet s suggestion. If so, it must needs be confessed that many pictu**s^ue and delightful things would be thrown into the hole- r-i.J covered out of sight forever. 72 LEAMINGTON SPA. The article which I am writing has taker, its own course, and occupied itself almost wholly with country churches ; whereas I had purposed to attempt a descrip tion of some of the many old towns "Warwick, Coven try, Kenil worth, Stratford-on-Avon which lie within an easy scope of Leamington. And still another church presents itself to my remembrance. It is that of Hatton, on which I stumbled in the course of a forenoon s ramble, and paused a little while to look at it for the sake of old Dr. Parr, who was once its vicar. Hatton, so far as I could discover, has no public-house, no shop, no con tiguity of roofs, (as in most English villages, however small,) but is merely an ancient neighborhood of farm houses, spacious, and standing wide apart, each within its own precincts, and offering a most comfortable aspect of orchards, harvest-fields, barns, stacks, and all manner of rural plenty. It seemed to be a community of old set tlers, among whom everything had been going on prosper ously since an epoch beyond the memory of man ; and they kept a certain privacy among themselves, and dwelt on a cross-road at the entrance of which was a barred- gate, hospitably open, but still impressing me with a sense of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After all, in some shady nook of those gentle Warwickshire slopes there may have been a denser and more populous settlement, styled Hatton, which I never reached. Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one that crossed it at right angles and led to Warwick, I espied the church of Dr. Parr. Like the others which I have described, it had a low stone tower, square, and buttlemented at its summit : for all these little churches seem to have been built on the same model, and nearly LEAMINGTON SPA. 73 at the same measurement, and have even a greater family-likeness than the cathedrals. As I approached, the bell of the tower (a remarkably deep-toned bell, con sidering how small it was) flung its voice abroad, and told me that it was noon. The church stands among its graves, a little removed from the wayside, quite apart from any collection of houses, and with no signs of a vicarage ; it is a good deal shadowed by trees, and not wholly desti tute of ivy. The body of the edifice, unfortunately, (and it is an outrage which the English churchwardens are fond of perpetrating,) has been newly covered with a yellowish plaster or wash, so as quite to destroy the aspect of antiquity, except upon the tower, which wears the dark gray hue of many centuries. The chancel-win dow is painted with a representation of Christ upon the Cross, and all the other windows are full of painted or stained glass, but none of it ancient, nor (if it be fair to judge from without of what ought to be seen within) possessing any of the tender glory that should be the inheritance of this branch of Art, revived from med iaeval times. I stepped over the graves, and peeped in at two or three of the windows, and saw the snug interior of the church glimmering through the many- colored panes, like a show of commonplace objects under the fantastic influence of a dream : for the floor was covered with modern pews, very like what we may see in a New England meeting-house, though, I think, a little more favorable than those would be to the quiet slumbers of the Hatton farmers and their families. Those who slept under Dr. Parr s preaching now prolong their nap, I suppose, in the churchyard round about, and caii scarcely have drawn much spiritual benefit from any 74 LEAMINGTON SI A. truths that lie contrived to tell them in their lifetime. It struck me as a rare example (even where examples are numerous) of a man utterly misplaced, that this enormouft scholar, great in the classic tongues, and inevitably con verting his own simplest vernacular into a learned Ian guage, should have been set up in this homely pulpit, and ordained to preach salvation to a rustic audience, to whom it is difficult to imagine how he could ever have Bpoken one available word. Almost always, in visiting such scenes as I have been attempting to describe, I had a singular sense of having been there before. The ivy-grown English churches (even that of Bebbington, the first that I beheld) were quite as familiar to me, when fresh from home, as the old wooden meeting-house in Salem, which used, on wintry sabbaths, to be the frozen purgatory of my child hood. Tliis was a bewildering, yet very delightful emo tion, fluttering about me like a faint summer-wind, and filling my imagination with & thousand half-remembran ces, which looked as vivid as sunshine, at a side-glance, but faded quite away whenever I attempted to grasp and define them. Of course, the explanation of the mystery was, that history, poetry, and fiction, books of travel, and the talk of tourists, had given me pretty accurate precon ceptions of the common objects of English scenery, and these, being long ago vivified by a youthful fancy, had insensibly taken their places among the images of things actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, that I almost doubted whether such airy remembrances might not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a recollec tion in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with fainter and fainter impress through several descents, to my own. I LEAMINGTON SPA. 75 felt, indeed, like the stalwart progenitor in person, return ing to the hereditary haunts after more than two hundred years, and finding the church, the hall, the farm-house, the cottage, hardly changed during his long absence, the same shady by-paths and hedge-lanes, the same veiled sky, and green lustre of the lawns and fields, while his own affinities for these things, a little obscured by disuse, were reviving at every step. An American is not very apt to love the English peo ple, as a whole, on whatever length of acquaintance. I fancy that they would value our regard, and even recip rocate it in their ungracious way, if we could give it to them in spite of all rebuffs ; but they are beset by a curi ous and inevitable infelicity, which compels them, as it were, to keep up what they seem to consider a whole some bitterness of feeling between themselves and all other nationalities, especially that of America, They will never confess it; nevertheless, it is as essential a tonic to them as their bitter ale. Therefore and pos sibly, too, from a similar narrowness in his own character an American seldom feels quite as if he were at home among the English people. If he do so, he has ceased to be an American. But it requires no long residence to make him love their island, and appreciate it as thor oughly as they themselves do. For my part, I used to wish that we could annex it, transferring their thirty millions of inhabitants to some convenient wilderness in the great West, and putting half or a quarter as many of ourselves into their places. The change would be bene ficial to both parties. We, in our dry atmosphere, are petting too nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenuated, un substantial, theoretic, and need to be made grosser. John 70 LEAMINGTON SPA. Bull, on the other hand, has grown bulbous, long-bodied, short-legged, heavy-witted, material, and, in a word, too intensely English. In a few more centuries he will be the earthliest creature that ever the earth saw. Hereto fore Providence has obviated such a result by timely intermixtures of alien races with the old English stock ; so that each successive conquest of England has proved a victory by the revivification and improvement of its native nanhood. Cannot America and England hit upon some ^cheme to secure even greater advantages to both nations ? ABOUT WARWICK. BETWEEN bright, new Leamington, the growth of the present century, and rusty Warwick, founded by King Cymbeline in the twilight ages, a thousand years before the mediaeval darkness, there are two roads, either of which may be measured by a sober-paced pedestrian in less than half an hour. One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the smart parades and crescents of the former town, along by hedges and beneath the shadow of great elms, past stuccoed Elizabethan villas and way-side ale-houses, and through a hamlet of modern aspect, and runs straight into the principal thoroughfare of Warwick. The battle- mented turrets of the castle, embowered half-way up in foliage, and the tall, slender tower of St. Mary s Church, rising from among clustered roofs, have been visible almost from the commencement of the walk. Near the entrance of the town stands St. John s School-House, a picturesque old edifice of stone, with four peaked gables in a row, alternately plain and ornamented, and wide, projecting windows, and a spacious and venerable porch, all overgrown with moss and ivy, and shut in from the world by a high stone fence, not less mossy than the gabled front. There is an iron gate, through the rusty }pen-work of which you see a grassy lawn, and almost 78 ABOUT WARWICK. expect to meet the shy, curious eyes of the little boys of ~ast generations, peeping forth from their infantile an tiquity into the strangeness of our present life. I find a peculiar charm in these long-established English schools, where the school-boy of to-day sits side by side, as it were, with his great-grandsire, on the same old benches, and often, I believe, thumbs a later, but unimproved edi tion of the same old grammar or arithmetic. The new fangled notions of a Yankee Bchool-committee would madden many a pedagogue, and shake down the roof of many a time-honored seat of learning, in the mothe r . country. At this point, however, we will turn back, in order to "ollow up the other road from Leamington, which was the )ne that I loved best to take. It pursues a straight and evel course, bordered by wide gravel- walks and overhung )y the frequent elm, with here a cottage and there a villa, >n one side a wooded plantation, and on the other a rich field of grass or grain, until, turning at right angles, it brings you to an arched bridge over the Avon. Its para pet is a balustrade carved out of freestone, into the soft substance of which a multitude of persons have engraved their names or initials, many of them now illegible, while others, more deeply cut, are illuminated with fresh green moss. These tokens indicate a famous spot ; and casting our eyes along the smooth gleam and shadow of the quiet stream, through a vista of willows that droop on eithei "side into the water, we behold the gray magnificence of Warwick Castle, uplifting itself among stately trees, and rearing its turrets high above their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think the scene real, so completely do those machicolated towers, the long line of battlements, the ABOUT WARWICK. 79 massive buttresses, the high-windowed walls, shape out our indistinct ideas of the antique time. It might rather seem as if the sleepy river (being Shakspeare s Avon, and often, no doubt, the mirror of his gorgeous visions) were dreaming now of a lordly residence that stood hue many centuries ago ; and this fantasy is strengthened, when you observe that the image in the tranquil water lias all the distinctness of the actual structure. Either might be the reflection of the other. Wherever Time has gnawed one of the stones, you see the mark of his tooth just as plainly in the sunken reflection. Each is so perfect, that the upper vision seems a castle in the air, and the lower one an old stronghold of feudalism, mirac ulously kept from decay in an enchanted river. A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from the bank a little on the hither side of the castle, has the effect of making the scene appear more entirely apart from the every-day world, for it ends abruptly in the middle of the stream, so that, if a cavalcade of the knights and ladies of romance should issue from the old walls, they could never tread on earthly ground, any more than we, ap proaching from the side of modern realism, can overleap the gulf between our domain and theirs. Yet, if we seek to disenchant ourselves, it may readily be done. Crossing the bridge on which we stand, and passing a Ht le farther on, we come to the entrance of the castle, abutting on the highway, and hospitably open at certain .ours to all curious pilgrims who choose to disbuise half n crown or so toward the support of the earl s domestics. The sight of that long series of historic rooms, full of such splendors and rarities as a great English family neces sarily gathers about itself, in its hereditary abode, and in 80 ABOUT WARWICK. the lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten tines as much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could be reckoned in money s-worth. But after the attendant has hurried you from end to end of the edifice, repeating a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each successive hall of its poetic glamor and witchcraft by the mere tone in which he talks about it, you will make the doleful discov ery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing at Caesar s Tower and Guy s Tower in the dim English sunshine above, and in the placid Avon below, and still keep them as thoughts in your own mind, than climb to their summits, or touch even a stone of their actual sub stance. They will have all the more reality for you, aa stalwart relics of immemorial time, if you are reverent enough to leave them in the intangible sanctity of a poetic vision. From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in front of the castle-gate, and soon enters the principal street of Warwick, a little beyond St. John s School- House, already described. Chester itself, most antique of English towns, can hardly show quainter architectural shapes than many of the buildings that border this street. They are mostly of the timber-and-plaster kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a whole chronology of various patchwork in their walls; their low-browed door-ways open upon a sunken floor; their projecting stories peep, as it were, over one another s shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of peaked gables ; they have curi ous windows, breaking out irregularly all over the house, some even in the roof, set in their own little peaks, open ing lattice-wise, and furnished with twenty small panes ABOUT WARWICK. 8 . or lozenge-shaped glass. The architecture of these edi fices (a visible oaken framework, showing the whoh skeleton of the house, as if a man s bones should bw arranged on his outside, and his flesh seen through the interstices) is often imitated by modern builders, and with sufficiently picturesque effect. The objection is, that such houses, like all imitations of by-gone styles, have an air o affectation ; they do not seem to be built in earnest ; they are no better than playthings, or over grown baby-houses, in which nobody should be expected to encounter the serious realities of either birth or death. Besides, originating nothing, we leave no fashions for another age to copy, when we ourselves shall have grown antique. Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has over brimmed, as it were, from the original settlement, being outside of the ancient wall. The street soon runs under an arched gateway, with a church or some other vener able structure above it, and admits us into the heart of the town. At one of my first visits, I witnessed a mili tary display. A regiment of Warwickshire militia, prob ably commanded by the Earl, was going through its drill in the market-place ; and on the collar of one of the officers was embroidered the Bear and Ragged Staff, which has been the cognizance of the Warwick earldom from time immemorial. The soldiers were sturdy young men, with the simple, stolid, yet kindly, faces of English rustics, looking exceedingly well in a body, but slouching into a yeoman-like carriage and appearance, the moment they were dismissed from drill. Squads of them weri, distributed everywhere about the streets, and sentinels were posted at various points ; and I saw a sergeant, 82 ABOUT WARWICK. with a great key in his hand, (big enough tc have the key of the castle s main entrance when the gate was thickest and heaviest,) apparently setting a guard. Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this modern regiment. The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned aspect than the suburbs through which we approach it ; and the High Street has shops with modern plate-glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as few pro jections to hang a thought or sentiment upon as if an architect of to-day had planned them. And, indeed, so far as their surface goes, they are perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an American street ; but behind these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of ex pression, there is probably the substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem of England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate adaptation of what such a people as ourselves would destroy. The new things are based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive a massive strength from their deep and im memorial foundations, though with such limitations and impediments as only an Englishman could endure. But he likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back ; and, moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him has taken root in his being, and has grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable ABOUT WARWICK. 83 ander the mouldy accretion, he had bettor stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a spectacle which is by no means without its charm for a disinter ested and unincumbered observer. When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or in stitution, appears in its pristine form, without any attempt at intermarrying it with modern fashions, an American cannot but admire the picturesque effect produced by the sudden cropping up of an apparently dead-and-buried state of society into the actual present, of which he is liimself a part. We need not go far in Warwick without encountering an instance of the kind. Proceeding west ward through the town, we find ourselves confronted by a huge mass of natural rock, hewn into something like arcliitectural shape, and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have been one of King Cymbeline s original gateways ; and on the top of the rock, over the archway, sits a small, old church, communicating with an ancient edifice, or assemblage of edifices, that look down from a similar elevation on the side of the street. A range of trees half hides the latter establishment from the sun. It presents a curious and venerable speci men of the timber-and-plaster style of building, in which some of the finest old houses in England are constructed; the front projects into porticos and vesti bules, and rises into many gables, some in a row, and others crowning semi-detached portions of the struc ture ; the windows mostly open on hinges, but show a delightful irregularity of shape and position ; a multi plicity of chimneys break through the roof at their own will, or, at least, without any settled purpose of the archr tect. The whole affair looks very old, FO old. indeed 81 ABOUT WARWICK. that the front bulges forth, as if the timber framework were a little weary, at last, of standing erect so long ; but the state of repair is so perfect, and there is such an indescribable aspect of continuous vitality within the sys tem of this aged house, that you feel confident that there may be safe shelter yet, and perhaps for centuries to come, under its time-honored roof. And on a bench, sluggishly enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street of Warwick as from a life apart, a few old men are generally to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks, on which you may detect the glistening of a silver badge represent ing the Bear and Ragged Staff. These decorated worthies are some of the twelve brethren of Leicester s Hospital, a community which subsists to-day under the identical modes that were established for it in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of course retains many features of a social life that has vanished almost everywhere else. The edifice itself dates from a much older period than the charitable institution of which it is now the home. It was the seat of a religious fraternity far back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry VIII. turned all the priesthood of England out-of-doors, and put the most unscrupulous of his favorites into their vacant abodes. In many instances, the old monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so well, and built them on such a broad system of beauty and convenience, that their lay-occupants found it easy to convert them into stately and comfortable homes ; and as such they still exist, with something of the antique reverence lingering about them. The structure now before us seems to have been first granted to Sir Nicholas Lestrange, who per haps intended, like other men. to establish his household ABOUT WARWICK. &* gods m the niches whence he had thrown down the im ages of saints, and to lay his hearth where an altar had stood. But there was probably a natural reluctance in those days (when Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must needs have retained an influence over all but the most obdurate characters) to bring one s hopes of domestic >rosperity and a fortunate lineage into direct hostility with the awful claims of the ancient religion. At all events, there is still a superstitious idea, betwixt a fantasy and a belief, that the possession of former Church-prop erty has drawn a curse along with it, not only among the posterity of those to whom it was originally granted, but wherever it has subsequently been transferred, even if honestly bought and paid for. There are families, now inhabiting some of the beautiful old abbeys, who appear to indulge a species of pride in recording the strange deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that have occurred among their predecessors, and may be supposed likely to dog their own pathway down the ages of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas Lestrange, in the beef-eating days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was a nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this kind, I cannoi tell ; but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils of the Church, and that, within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became the property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of Warwick. He devoted the ancient religious precinct to a charitable use, endowing it with an ample revenue, and making it the perpetual home of twelve poor, honest, and war-broken soldiers, mostly his own retainers, and natives either of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans, or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish 8G ABOUT WARWICK. dormitories and haunt the time-darkened corridors and galleries of the hospital, leading a life of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges which the Earl of Leicester ga\ e to the original twelve. He is said to have been a bad man in his day; but he has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what was to him a distant future. On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, there is the date, 1571, and several coats-of-arms, either the Earl s or those of his kindred, and immediately above the ioor-way a stone sculpture of the Bear and Ragged Staff. Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quad rangle, or enclosed court, such as always formed the cen tral part of a great family residence in Queen Elizabeth s time, and earlier. There can hardly be a more perfect specimen of such an establishment than Leicester s Hos pital. The quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall, to which there is convenient access from all parts of the house. The four inner fronts, with their high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look into it from antique windows, and through open corridors and galleries along the sides ; and there seems to be a richer display of architectural devices and ornaments, quainter can-ings in oak, and more fantastic shapes of the timber framework, than on the side toward the street. On the wall opposite the arched entrance are the following inscriptions, comprising such moral rules, I presume, as were deemed most essen tial for the daily observance of the community: " &)OU- or all Jttcn" "jFeac <crtr" "ftonor tije Stllfi " " Hot)? tlje JSCOtfjerfjOOtl " ; and again, as if tliis latter injunction needed emphasis and repeti tion among a household of aged people soured with tho ABOUT WARWICK. 87 fiar<l fortune of their previous lives, u 330 lit lift 1 1> affeCtt OllCft 0110 tO another." One sentence, over a door communicating with the Master s side of the house, is addressed to that dignitary, " Jfyt tljflt tUlttf) OfceC men mUSt fie jUSt." All these are charac tered in old English letters, and form part of the elabo- rate ornamentation of the house. Everywhere on the walls, over windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But especially is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over, and over again and again, in a great variety of attitudes, at full- length and half-length, in paint and in oaken sculpture, in bas-relief and rounded image. The founder of the hospital was certainly disposed to reckon his own benefi cence as among the hereditary glories of his race ; and had he lived and died a half-century earlier, he would have kept up an old Catholic custom by enjoining the twelve bedesmen to pray for the welfare of his soul. At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated on the bench outside of the edifice, looking down into the street ; but they did not vouchsafe me a word, and seemed FO estranged from modern life, so enveloped in antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, that to converse with them would have been like shouting across the gulf be tween our age and Queen Elizabeth s. So I passed into the quadrangle, and found it quite solitary, except that a plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing it. 88 ABOUT WARWICK. will an aspect of business and carefulness that bespoke her JL woman of this world, and not merely a shadow of the past. Asking her if I could come in, she answered very readily and civilly that I might, and said that I was free to look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I would not open the private doors of the brotherhood, as some visitors were in the habit of doing. Under hei guidance, I went into what was formerly the great hall of the establishment, where King James I. had once been feasted by an Earl of Warwick, as is commemorated by an inscription on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. It is a very spacious and barn-like apartment, with a brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters of which are oaken beams, wonderfully carved, but hardly visible in the duski ness that broods aloft. The hall may have made a splen did appearance, when it was decorated with rich tapestry, and illuminated with chandeliers, cressets, and torches glistening upon silver dishes, where King James sat at supper among his brilliantly dressed nobles; but it has come to base uses in these latter days, being improved, in Yankee phrase, as a brewery and wash-room, and as a cellar for the brethren s separate allotments of coal. The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned into the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very handsome, in its own obsolete style, and must be an exceedingly comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, when the inclement winds render it inexpedient to walk abroad There are shrubs against the wall, on one side ; and on another h a cloistered walk, adorned with stags heads and antlers, and running beneath a covered gallery, up to which ascends a balustraded staircase. In the portion of the edifice opposite the entrance-arch are the apartment?, ABOUT WARWICK. 3 V J of the Master ; and looking into the window, (as the old woman, at no request of mine, had specially informed me that I might,) I saw a low, but vastly comfortable parlor, very handsomely furnished, and altogether a luxurious place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up in such a way that the modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me, that, among these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of modern ingenu ity, the Master might lead a not unenviable life. On the cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels made the enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained window reddened by a great blaze from within, and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something doubtless very nice and succulent that was being cooked at the kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or two of the savory fragrance reached my nostrils ; at all events, the impression grew upon me that Leicester s Hospital is one of the jolliest old domiciles in England. I was about to depart, when another old woman, very plainly dressed, but fat, comfortable, and with a cheerful twinkle in her eyes, came in through the arch, and looked curiously at me. This repeated apparition of the gentle sex (though by no means under its loveliest guise) had still an agreeable effect in modifying my ideas of an institution which I had supposed to be of a stern and monastic character. She asked whether I wished to see the hospital, and said that the porter, whose office it was to attend to visitors, was dead, and would be buried that $0 ABOUT WARWICK. very day, so that the whole establishment could not con* veniently be shown me. She kindly invited me, how ever, to visit the apartment occupied by her husband and herself; so I followed her up the antique staircase, along the gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor, where sat an old man in a long blue garment, who arose and saluted me with mch courtesy. He seemed a very quiet person, and yet had a look of travel and adventure, and gray experience, such as I could have fancied in a palmer of ancient times, who might likewise have worn a similar costume. The little room was carpeted and neatly fur nished ; a portrait of its occupant was hanging on the wall ; and. on a table were two swords crossed, one, probably, his own battle-weapon, and the other, which I drew half out of the scabbard, had an inscription on the blade, purporting that it had been taken from the field of Waterloo. My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all the particulars of their housekeeping, and led me into the bedroom, which was in the nicest order, with a snow- white quilt upon the bed; and in a little intervening room was a washing and bathing apparatus, a conven ience (judging from the personal aspect and atmosphere of such parties) seldom to be met with in the humbler ranks of British life. The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of some body to talk with ; but the good woman availed herself of the privilege far more copiously than the veteran him- Boif, insomuch that he felt it expedient to give her an occasional nudge with his elbow in her well-padded ribs. " Don t you be so talkative ! " quoth he ; and, indeed, he could hardly .find space for a word, and quite as little after his admonition as before. Her nimble tongue ran ABOUT WARWICK. #1 ovei the whole system of life in the hospital. The breth ren, she said, had a yearly stipend, (the amount of which she did not mention,) and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, free ; and, instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine to gether at a great table, they could manage their little household matters as they liked, buying their own din ii(:rs, and having them cooked in the general kitchen, and eating them snugly in their own parlors. "And," added dhe, rightly deeming this the crowning privilege, " with the Master s permission, they can have their wives to take care of them ; and no harm comes of it ; and what more can an old man desire ? " It was evident enough that the good dame found herself in what she considered very rich clover, and, moreover, had plenty of small occu pations to keep her from getting rusty and dull ; but the veteran impressed me as deriving far less enjoyment from the monotonous ease, without fear of change or hope of improvement, that had followed upon thirty years of peril and vicissitude. I fancied, too, that, while pleased with the novelty of a stranger s visit, he was still a little shy of becoming a spectacle for the stranger s curiosity ; for, if he chose to be morbid about the matter, the establish ment was but an almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned magnificence, and his fine blue cloak only a pauper s gar ment, with a silver badge on it that perhaps galled h shoulder. In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb though quite in accordance with the manners of the Eau of Leicester s age, are repugnant to modern prejudices, and might fitly and humanely be abolished. A year or two afterwards I paid another visit to tho hospital, and found a new porter established in office, and 92 ABOUT WARWICK. already capable of talking like a guide-book about the history, antiquities, and present condition of the charity. He informed me that the twelve brethren are selected from among old soldiers of good character, whose other resources must not exceed an income of five pounds thus excluding all commissioned officers, whose half-pay would of course be more than that amount. They recehe from the hospital an annuity of eighty pounds each, be sides their apartments, a garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abundance of ale, and a privilege at the kitchen- fire ; so that, considering the class from which they are taken, they may well reckon themselves among the for tunate of the earth. Furthermore, they are invested with political rights, acquiring a vote for member of Par liament in virtue either of their income or brotherhood. On the other hand, as regards their personal freedom or conduct, they are subject to a supervision which the Mas ter of the hospital might render extremely annoying, were he so inclined ; but the military restraint under which they have spent the active portion of their lives makes it easier for them to endure the domestic discipline here imposed upon their age. The porter bore his testi mony (whatever were its value) to their being as con tented and happy as such a set of old people could possibly be, and affirmed that they spent much time n burnishing their silver badges, and were as proud of them as a nobleman of his star. These badges, by-the- by, except one that was stolen and replaced in Queen Anne s time, are the very same that decorated the orig inal twelve brethren. I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend the porter. He appeared to take a genuine interest in ABOUT WARWICK. 93 the peculiarities of the establishment, and yet had an existence apart from them, so that he could the better estimate what those peculiarities were. To be sure, his knowledge and observation were confined to external things, but, so far, had a sufficiently extensive scope. He led me up the staircase and exhibited portions of the timber framework of the edifice that are reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, and are still neither worm-eaten nor decayed ; and traced out what had been a great hall, in the days of the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now filled up with the apartments of the twelve brethren ; and pointed to ornaments of sculptured oak, done in an ancient religious style of art, but hardly vis ible amid the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we went to the chapel the Gothic church which I noted several pages back surmounting the gateway that stretches half across the street. Here the brethren attend daily prayer, and have each a prayer-book of the finest paper, with a fair, large type for their old eyes. The interior of the chapel is very plain, with a picture of no merit for an altar-piece, and a single old pane of painted glass in the great eastern window, rep resenting no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such cases but that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. Nevertheless, amid so many tangible proofs of his human sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the Earl could liMve been such a hardened reprobate, after all. We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked down between its battlements into the street, a hundred feet below us ; while clambering half-way up were fox glove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of grass, that had rooted themselves into the roughnesses of the stone 94 ABOUT WARWICK. foundation. Far around us lay a rich and lovely English landscape, with many a church-spire and noble country- seat, and several objects of high historic interest. Edge Hill, where the Puritans defeated Charles L, is in sight on the edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house where Cromwell lodged on tho night before the battle. Right under our eyes, and half-enveloping the town with its high-shouldering wall, so that all the closely compacted streets seemed but a precinct of the estate, was the Earl of Warwick s delightful park, a wide extent of sunny lawns, interspersed with broad contiguities of forest-shade. Some of the cedars of Leb anon were there, a growth of trees in which the War wick family take an hereditary pride. The two highest towers of the castle heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage, and look down in a lordly manner upon the plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are slate-cov ered, (these are the modern houses,) and a part are coated with old red tiles, denoting the more ancient edifices. A hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, a great fire destroyed a considerable portion of the toAvn, and doubtless annihilated many structures of a remote antiquity ; at least, there was a possibility of very old houses in the long past of Warwick, which King Cymbeline is said to have founded in the year ONE of the Christian era ! And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it may be, brings to mind a more indestructible reality than any tiling else that has occurred within the present field of our vision; though this includes the scene of Guy of Warwick s legendary exploits, and some of those of the Round Table, to say nothing of the Battle of Edge Hill. ABOUT WARWICK. 95 For perhaps it was in the landscape now under our eyes that Posthumus wandered with the King s daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen, the ten- derest and womanliest woman that Shakspeare ever made immortal in the world. The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by the gray castle, may have held their images in its bosom. The day, though it began brightly, had long been over cast, and the clouds now spat down a few spiteful drops upon us, besides that the east-wind was very chill; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and went next into the garden, one side of which is shut in by almost the only remaining portion of the old city-wall. A part of the garden-ground is devoted to grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel- walks, in the centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase of Egyptian sculpture, that for merly stood on the top of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar for measuring the rise and fall of the River Nile. On the pedestal is a Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his vicarage of Hatton being so close at hand) was probably often the Master s guest, and smoked his interminable pipe along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden, which lies adjacent, the lion s share is appropriated to the Master, and twelve small, separate patches to the individual brethren, who cultivate them at their own judgment and by their own labor ; and their beans and cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt not, than if they had received them directly from the dead hand of the Earl of Leicester, like the rest of their food. In the farther part of the garden is an arbor for the old men s pleasure and convenience, and I should like well to sit down among them there, and find out what is really 90 ABOUT WARWICK. the bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen themselves, they put me queerly in mind of the Salem Custom-House, and the venerable personages whom I found so quietly at anchor there. The Master s residence, forming one entire side of the quadrangle, fronts on the garden, and wears an aspect at once stately and homely. It can hardly have undergone any perceptible change within three centuries; but the garden, into which its old windows look, has probably put off a great many eccentricities and quaintnesses, in the way of cunningly clipped shrubbery, since the gar dener of Queen Elizabeth s reign threw down his rusty shears and took his departure. The present Master s name is Harris; he is a descendant of the founder s family, a gentleman of independent fortune, and a clergy man of the Established Church, as the regulations of the hospital require him to be. I know not what are his official emoluments ; but, according to all English pre cedent, an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held directly for the behoof of those who administer it, and perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the nominal beneficiaries; and, in the case before us, the twelve brethren being so comfortably provided for, the Master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a distant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of whom I really know nothing, except that the people under his charge bear all possible tokens of being tended and cared for as sedu lously as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter bustling round the hearth to make ready his porridge and his titbits. It is delightful to Ihink of the good life which a suitable man, in the ABOUT WARWICK. 07 Master s position, has an opportunity to lead, linked to time-honored customs, welded in with an ancient sys tem, never dreaming of radical change, and bringing all the mellowness and richness of the past down into these railway-days, which do not compel him or his community to move a whit quicker than of yore. Everybody can appreciate the advantages of going ahead ; it might be well, sometimes, to think whether there is* not a word 01 two to be said in favor of standing still, or going to sleep. From the garden we went into the kitchen, where the fire was burning hospitably, and diffused a genial warmth far and wide, together with the fragrance of some old English roast-beef, which, I think, must at that moment have been done nearly to a turn. The kitchen is a lofty, spacious, and noble room, partitioned off round the fire place, by a sort of semicircular oaken screen, or rather, an arrangement of heavy and high-backed settles, with an ever open entrance between them, on either side of which is the omnipresent image of the Bear and Ragged Staff, three feet high, and excellently carved in oak, now black with time and unctuous kitchen-smoke. The pon derous mantel-piece, likewise of carved oak, towers high towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty breadth to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of the fireplace being positively so immense that I could compare it to nothing but the city gateway. Above its cavernous open ing were crossed two ancient halberds, the weapons, pos sibly, of soldiers who had fought under Leicester in the Low Countries ; and elsewhere on the walls were dis played several muskets, which some of the present in mates of the hospital may have levelled against the French. Another ornament of the mantel-piece was a 7 98 ABOUT WARWICK. square of silken needlework or embroidery, faded nearly white, but dimly representing that wearisome Bear and Ragged Staff, which we should hardly look twice at, only that it was wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy Robsart, and beautifully framed in oak from Kenil worth Castle, at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of our own. Certainly, no Englishman would be capable of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally, the kitchen-fire light glistens on a splendid display of copper flagons, all of generous capacity, and one of them about as big as a half-barrel; the smaller vessels contain the customary allowance of ale, and the larger one is filled with that foaming liquor on four festive occasions of the year, and emptied amain by the jolly brotherhood. I should be glad to see them do it ; but it would be an exploit fitter for Queen Elizabeth s age than these degenerate times. The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren. In the daytime, they bring their little messes to be cooked here, and eat them in their own parlors ; but after a certain hour, the great hearth is cleared and swept, and the old men assemble round its blaze, each with his tank ard and his pipe, and hold high, converse through the evening. If the Master be a fit man for his office, me- thinks he will sometimes sit down sociably among them ; for there is an elbow-chair by the fireside which it would not demean his dignity to fill, since it was occupied by King James at the great festival of nearly three centuries ago. A sip of the ale and a whiff of the tobacco-pipe would put him in friendly relations with his venerable household ; and then we can fancy him instructing them by pithy apothegms and religious texts which were first uttered here by some Catholic p/iest and have impreg- ABOUT WARWICK. 99 nated the atmosphere ever since. If a joke goes round, it shall be of an elder coinage than Joe Miller s, as old as Lord Bacon s collection, or as the jest-book that Master Slender asked for when he lacked small-talk for sweet Anne Page. No news shall be spoken of, later than the drifting ashore, on the northern coast, of some stern-post or figure-head, a barnacled fragment of one of the great galleons of the Spanish Armada. What a tremor would pass through the antique group, if a damp newspaper should suddenly be spread to dry before the fire ! They would feel as if either that printed sheet or they them selves must be an unreality. What a mysterious awe, if the shriek of the railway-train, as it reaches the Warwick station, should ever so faintly invade their ears ! Move ment of any kind seems inconsistent with the stability of such an institution. Nevertheless, I trust that the ages will carry it along with them ; because it is such a pleasant kind of dream for an American to find his way thither, and behold a piece of the sixteenth century set into our prosaic times, and then to depart, and think of its arched door-way as a spell-guarded entrance which will never be accessible or visible to him any more. Not far from the market-place of Warwick stands the great church of St. Mary s : a vast edifice, indeed, and almost worthy to be a cathedral. People who pretend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor style of architecture, though designed (or, at least, extensively restored) by Sir Christopher Wren ; but I thought it very striking, with its wide, high, and elaborate windows, its tall towers, its immense length, and (for it was long before I outgrew thif Americanism, the love of an old thing merely for the sake of its age) the tinge of gray 100 ABOUT WARWICK. antiquity over the whole. Once, while I stood gazing up at the tower, the clock struck twelve with a very deep intonation, and immediately some chimes began to play, and kept up their resounding music for five minutes, as measured by the hand upon the dial. It was a very delightful harmony, as airy as the notes of birds, and seemed a not unbecoming freak of half-sportive fancy in Ihe huge, ancient, and solemn church ; although I have seen an old-fashioned parlor-clock that did precisely the same thing, in its small way. The great attraction of this edifice is the Beauchamp (or, as the English, who delight in vulgarizing their fine old Norman names, call it, the Beechum) Chapel, where the Earls of Warwick and their kindred have been buried, from four hundred years back till within a recent period. It is a stately and very elaborate chapel, with a large window of ancient painted glass, as perfectly pre served as any that I remember seeing in England, and remarkably vivid in its colors. Here are several monu ments with marble figures recumbent upon them, repre senting the Earls in their knightly armor, and their dames in the ruffs and court-finery of their day, looking hardly stiffer in stone than they must needs have been in their starched linen and embroidery. The renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen Elizabeth s time, the bene factor of the hospita!, reclines at full length on the tablet of one of these tombs, side by side with his Countess, not Amy Robsait, but a lady who (unless I have confused the story with some other mouldy scandal) is said to have avenged poor Amy s murder by poisoning the Earl him self. Be that as it may, both figures, and especially the Earl, look like the very types of ancient Honor and Con- ABOUT WARWICK. 10} jugal Faith. In consideration of his long-enduring kinct ness to the twelve brethren, I cannot consent to believe him as wicked as he is usually depicted ; and it seems a marvel, now that so many well-established historical ver- diote have been reversed, why some enterprising writer does not make out Leicester to have been the pattern lObleman of his age. In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent memo rial of its founder, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of War wick in the time of Henry VI. On a richly ornamented altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze figure of a knight in gilded armor, most admirably executed : for the sculptors of those days had wonderful skill in *heir own style, and could make so life-like an image of a warrior, in brass or marble, that, if a trumpet were sounded over his tomb, you would expect him to start up and handle his sword. The Earl whom we now speak of, however, has slept soundly in spite of a more serious disturbance than any blast of a trumpet, unless it were the final one. Some centuries after his death, th floor of the chapel fell down and broke open the Ftone coffin in which he was buried ; and among the fragment* appeared the anciently entombed Earl of Warwick, with the color scarcely faded out of his cheeks, his eyes a little sunken, but in other respects looking as natural as if he had died yesterday. But exposure to the atmosphere appeared to begin and finish the long-delayed process of decay in a moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble ; so that, almost before there had been time to wonder ot him, there was nothing left of the stalwart Earl save hia hair. This sole relic the ladies of Warwick made prize of, and braided it into rings and brooches for their own 102 ABOUT WARWICK. adornment; and thus, with, a chapel and a ponderous tomb built on purpose to protect his remains, this great nobleman could not help being brought untimely to the light of day, nor even keep his lovelocks on his skull after he had so long done with love. There seems to be a fatality that disturbs people in their sepulchres, when they have been over-careful to render them magnificent and impregnable, as witness the builders of the Pyra mids, and Hadrian, Augustus, and the Scipios, and most other personages whose mausoleums have been conspicu ous enough to attract the violator ; and as for dead men s hair, I have seen a lock of King Edward the Fourth s, of a reddish-brown color, which perhaps was once twisted round the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore. The direct lineage of the renowned characters that lie buried in this splendid chapel has long been extinct. The earldom is now held by the Grevilles, descendants of the Lord Brooke who was slain in the Parliamentary War ; and they have recently (that is to say, within a century) built a burial-vault on the other side of the church, cal culated (as the sexton assured me, with a nod as if he were pleased) to afford suitable and respectful ac commodation to as many as fourscore coffins. Thank Heaven, the old man did not call them " CASKETS " ! a vile modern phrase, which compels a person of sense and good taste to shrink more disgustfully than ever before from the idea of being buried at all. But a? regards those eighty coffins, only sixteen have as yet been contributed ; and it may be a question with some minds, not merely whether the Grevilles will hold the earldom of Warwick until the full number shall be made up, but whether earldoms and all manner of lordships ABOI T WARWICK. 103 mil not have faded out of England long before those many generations shall have passed from the castle to ihe vault. I hope not. A titled and landed aristocracy, if anywise an evil and an incumbrance, is so only to the nation which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders ; and an American, whose sole relation to it is to admire its picturesque effect upon society, ought to be the last mar to quarrel with what affords him so much gratuitous en joyment. Nevertheless, conservative as England is, and though I scarce ever found an Englishman who seemed really to desire change, there was continually a dull sound in my ears as if the old foundations of things were crumbling away. Some time or other, by no irrever ent effort of violence, but, rather, in spite of all pious efforts to uphold a heterogeneous pile of institutions that will have outlasted their vitality, at some unexpected moment, there must come a terrible crash. The sole reason why I should desire it to happen in my day is, that I might be there to see ! But the ruin of my own country is, perhaps, all that I am destined to witness ; and that immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the faith that there is a national lifetime of a thousand years in us yet) would serve any man well enough as his final spectacle on earth. If the visitor is inclined to carry away any little me morial of Warwick he had better go to an Old Curi osity Shop in the High Street, where there is a vast quantity of obsolete gewgaws, great and small, and many of them so pretty and ingenious that you wonder how they came to be thrown aside and forgotten. As regards its minor tastes, the world changes, but does not improve it appears to me, indeed, that there have been epochs of 101 ABOUT WARWICK. far more exquisite fancy than the present one, in matters of personal ornament, and such delicate trifles as we put upon a drawing-room table, a mantel-piece, or a what not. The shop in question is near the East Gate, but ig hardly to be found without careful search, being denoted only by the name of " REDFERN," painted not very con spicuously in the top-light of the door. Immediately on entering, we find ourselves among a confusion of old rub bish and valuables, ancient armor, historic portraits, ebony cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly clocks, hideous old china, dim looking-glasses in frames of tarnished magnifi cence, a thousand objects of strange aspect, and others that almost frighten you by their likeness in unlikeness to things now in use. It is impossible to give an idea of the variety of articles, so thickly strewn about that we can scarcely move without overthrowing some great curi osity with a crash, or sweeping away some small one hitched to our sleeves. Three stories of the entire house are crowded in like manner. The collection, even as we see it exposed to view, must have been got together at great cost ; but the real treasures of the establishment lie in secret repositories, whence they are not likely to be drawn forth at an ordinary summons ; though, if a gentleman with a competently long purse should call for them, I doubt not that the signet-ring of Joseph s friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva s leading-staff, or the dag ger that killed the Duke of Buckingham, (all of which I have seen,) or any other almost incredible thing, might make its appearance. Gold snuff-boxes, antique gems, jewelled goblets, Venetian wine-gla,sses, (which burst when poison is poured into them, and therefore must not be used for modern wine-drinking.) jasper-handled knives, ABOUT WARWICK. 103 painted Sevres tea-cups, in short, there are all sorts of things that a virtuoso ransacks the world to discover. It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in Mr. Redfern s shop than to keep the money in one s pocket ; but, for my part, I contented myself with buying a little old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantastically shaped, and got it at all the more reasonable rate because there hap pened to be no legend attached to it. I could supply any deficiency of that kind at much less expense than regilding the spoon! RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. FROM Leamington to Stratford-on-Avon the distance is eight or nine miles, over a road that seemed to me most beautiful. Not that I can recall any memorable peculiarities ; for the country, most of the way, is a suc cession of the gentlest swells and subsidences, affording wide and far glimpses of champaign scenery here and there, and sinking almost to a dead level as we draw near Stratford. Any landscape in New England, even the tamest, has a more striking outline, and besides would have its blue eyes open in those lakelets that we encoun ter almost from mile to mile at home, but of which the Old Country is utterly destitute ; or it would smile in our faces through the medium of the wayside brooks that vanish under a low stone arch on one side of the road, and sparkle out again on the other. Neither of these pretty features is often to be found in an English scene. The charm of the latter consists in the rich verdure of the fields, in the stately wayside trees and carefully kept plantations of wood, and in the old and high cultivation that has humanized the very sods by mingling so much of man s toil and care among them. To an American there is a kind of sanctity even in an English turnip- lield, when he thinks how long that small square of ground has been known and recognized as a possession. RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 107 transmitted from father to son, trodden often by memora ble feet, and utterly redeemed from savagery by old ac quaintanceship with civilized eyes. The wildest things in England are more than half tame. The trees, for instance, whether in hedge-row, park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about them. They are never ragged ; there is a certain decorous restraint in the freest outspread of their branches, though they spread wider than any self-nurturing tree ; they are tall, vigorous, bulky, with a look of age-long life, and a promise of more years to come, all of which will bring them into closer kindred with the race of man. Somebody or other has known them from the sapling upward ; and if they en dure long enough, they grow to be traditionally observed and honored, and connected with the fortunes of old fami lies, till, like Tennyson s Talking Oak, they babble with a thousand leafy tongues to ears that can understand them. An American tree, however, if it could grow in fair competition with an English one of similar species, would probably be the more picturesque object of the two. The Warwickshire elm has not so beautiful a shape as those that overhang our village street ; and as for the redoubta ble English oak, there is a certain John Bullism in its figure, a compact rotundity of foliage, a lack of irregular and various outline, that make it look wonderfully like a gigantic cauliflower. Its leaf, too, is much smaller than that of most varieties of American oak ; nor do I mean to doubt that the latter, with free leave to grow, reverent care and cultivation, and immunity from the axe, would live out its centuries as sturdily as its English brother, and prove far the nobler and more majestic specimen of 103 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. a tree at the end of them. Still, however one s Yankee patriotism may struggle against the admission, it must be owned that the trees and other objects of an English landscape take hold of the observer by numberless minute tendrils, as it were, which, look as closely as we choose, we never find in an American scene. The parasitic growth is so luxuriant, that the trunk of the tree, so gray and dry in our climate, is better worth observing than the boughs and foliage ; a verdant mossiness coats it all over ; so that it looks almost as green as the leaves ; and often, moreover, the stately stem is clustered about, high upward, with creeping and twining shrubs, the ivy, and sometimes the mistletoe, close-clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture and never too fervid sunshine, and sup porting themselves by the old tree s abundant strength. We call it a parasitical vegetation ; but, if the phrase imply any reproach, it is unkind to bestow it on this beautiful affection and relationship which exist in Eng land between one order of plants and another : the strong tree being always ready to give support to the trailing shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out of its own heart, if it crave such food ; and the shrub, on its part, repaying its foster-father with an ample luxuriance of beauty, and adding Corinthian grace to the tree s lofty strength. No bitter winter nips these tender little sympathies, no hot sun burns the life out of them ; and therefore they out last the longevity of the oak, and, if the woodman per mitted, would bury it in a green grave, when all is over. Should there be nothing else along the road to look at, an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the eyes, and, to a depth beyond what he would suppose, the heart of an American. We often set out hedv}s in our own RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 109 soil, but might as well set out figs or pine -apples and ex pect to gather fruit of them. Something grows, to be sure, which we choose to call a hedge ; but it lacks the dense, luxuriant variety of vegetation that is accumulated into the English original, in which a botanist would find u thousand shrubs and gracious herbs that the hedge- maker never thought of planting there. Among them, growing wild, are many of the kindred blossoms of the very flowers which our pilgrim fathers brought from Eng land, for the sake of their simple beauty and home-like associations, and which we have ever since been cultivat ing in gardens. There is not a softer trait to be found in the character of those stern men than that they should have been sensible of these flower-roots clinging among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and have felt the neces sity of bringing them over sea and making them heredi tary in the new land, instead of trusting to what rarer beauty the wilderness might have in store for them. Or, if the roadside has no hedge, the ugliest stone fence (such as, in America, would keep itself bare and unsympathizing till the end of time) is sure to be covered with the small handiwork of Nature ; that careful mother lets nothing go naked there, and, if she cannot provide clothing, gives at least embroidery. No sooner is the fence built than she adopts and adorns it as a part of her original plan, treating the hard, uncomely construction as if it had all along been a favorite idea >f her own. A little sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the side of the low wall and clinging fast with its many feet to the rough surface ; a tuft of grass roots itself between two of the stones, where a pinch or two of wayside dust has been moistened into nutritious soil for it : a small bunch 110 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. of fern grows in another crevice ; a deep, soft, verdant moss spreads itself along the top and over all the availa ble inequalities of the fence ; and where nothing else will grow, lichens stick tenaciously to the bare stones and va riegate the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red. Finally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters along the base of the stone wall, and takes away the hardness of its out line ; and in due time, as the upshot of these apparently aimless or sportive touches, we recognize that the benefi cent Creator of all things, working through His hand maiden whom we call Nature, has deigned to mingle a charm of divine gracefulness even with so earthly an in stitution as a boundary fence. The clown who wrought at it little dreamed what fellow-laborer he had. The English should send us photographs of portions of the trunks of trees, the tangled and various products of a hedge, and a square foot of an old wall. They can hardly send anything else so characteristic. Their artists, especially of the later school, sometimes toil to depict such subjects, but are apt to stiffen the lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed better, with Tennyson at their head, and often produce ravishing effects by dint of a tender minuteness of touch, to which the genius of the soil and climate artfully impels them : for, as regards grandeur, there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England can show ; but, for the picturesque- ness of the smallest object that lies under its gentle gloom and sunshine, there is no scenery like it anywhere. In the foregoing paragraphs I have strayed away to a long distance from the road to Stratford-on-Avon ; for I remember no such stone fences as I have been speaking t>f in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in England, except RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. Ill among the Lakes, or in Yorkshire, and the rough and hilly countries to the north of it. Hedges there were along my road, however, and broad, level fields, rustic hamlets, and cottages of ancient date, from the roof of one of which the occupant was tearing away the thatch, and showing what an accumulation of dust, dirt, mouldi- ness, roots of weeds, families of mice, swallows nests, and hordes of insects, had been deposited there since that old straw was new. Estimating its antiquity from these tokens, Shakspeare himself, in one of his morning ram bles out of his native town, might have seen the thatch laid on ; at all events, the cottage-walls were old enough to have known him as a guest. A few modern villas were also to be seen, and perhaps there were mansions of old gentility at no great distance, but hidden among trees ; for it is a point of English pride that such houses seldom allow themselves to be visible from the high-road. In short, I recollect nothing specially remarkable along the way, nor in the immediate approach to Stratford; and yet the picture of that June morning has a glory in my memory, owing chiefly, I believe, to the charm of the English summer-weather, the really good days of which are the most delightful that mortal man can ever hope to be favored with. Such a genial warmth ! A little too warm, it might be, yet only to such a degree as to assure an American (a certainty to which he seldom attains till attempered to the customary austerity of an English sum mer-day) that he was quite warm enough. And after all, there was an unconquerable freshness in the atmos phere, which every little movement of a breeze shook over me like a dash of the ocean-spray. Such days need bring us no other happiness than their own light 112 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. and temperature. No doubt, I could not have enjoyed it so exquisitely, except that there must be still latent in us Western wanderers (even after an absence of two cen turies and more), an adaptation to the English climate which makes us sensible of a motherly kindness in its scantiest sunshine, and overflows us with delight at its more lavish smiles. The spire of Shakspeare s church the Church of (he Holy Trinity begins to show itself among the trees at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-looking houses of modern date ; and the streets being quite level, you are struck and surprised by nothing so much as the tameness of the general scene ; as if Shakspeare s genius were vivid enough to have wrought pictorial splendors in the town where he was born. Here and there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, endowed with the individuality that belongs only to the domestic architecture of times gone by ; the house seems to have grown out of some odd quality in its inhabitant, as a sea- shell is moulded from within by the character of its inmate ; and having been built in a strange fashion, generations ago, it has ever since been growing stranger and quainter, as old humorists are apt to do. Here, too, (as so often impressed me in decayed English towns,) there appeared to be a greater abundance of aged people wearing small-clothes and leaning on sticks than you could assemble on our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and proclaiming a reward for the most vener able. I tried to account for this phenomenon by several theories : as, for example, that our new towns are uu wholesome for age and kill it off unseasonably ; or that RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 113 our old men have a subtile sense of fitness, and die of their own accord rather than Jwe in an unseemly contrast with youth and novelty : but the secret may be, after all, that hair-dyes, false teeth, modern arts of dress, and other contrivances of a skin-deep youthfulness, have not crept into these antiquated English towns, and so people grow old without the weary necessity of seeming younger than they are. After wandering through two or three streets, I found my way to Shakspeare s birthplace, which is almost a smaller and humbler house than any description can pre pare the visitor to expect ; so inevitably does an august inhabitant make his abode palatial to our imaginations, receiving his guests, indeed, in a castle hi the air, until we unwisely insist on meeting him among the sordid lanes and alleys of lower earth. The portion of the edi fice with which Shakspeare had anything to do is hardly large enough, in the basement, to contain the butcher s stall that one of his descendants kept, and that still re mains there, windowless, with the cleaver-cuts in its hacked counter, which projects into the street under a little penthouse-roof, as if waiting for a new occupant. The upper half of the door was open, and, on my rap ping at it, a young person in black made her appearance and admitted me : she was not a menial, but remarkably genteel (an American characteristic) for an English girl, and was probably the daughter of the old gentlewoman who takes care of the house. This lower room has pavement of gray slabs of stone, which may have been rudely squared when the house was new, but are now aV cracked, broken, and disarranged in a most unaccountable way. One does not see how any ordinary usage, fo? J14 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. whatever length of time, should have so smashed these heavy stones ; it is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down again. The room is whitewashed and very clean, but wofully shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and such as the most poetical imagination would find it diffi cult to idealize. In the rear of this apartment is the kitchen, a still smaller room, of a similar rude aspect ; it has a great, rough fireplace, with space for a large family imder the blackened opening of the chimney, and an im mense passage-way for the smoke, through which Shak- speare may have seen the blue sky by day and the stars glimmering down at him by night. It is now a dreary spot where the long-extinguished embers used to be. A glowing fire, even if it covered only a quarter part of the hearth, might still do much towards making the old kitchen cheerful. But we get a depressing idea of the stifled, poor, sombre kind of life that could have been lived in such a dwelling, where this room seems to have been the gathering-place of the family, with no breadth or scope, no good retirement, but old and young, huddling together cheek by jowl. What a hardy piant was Shak- speare s genius, how fatal its development, since it could not be blighted in such an atmosphere ! It only brought human nature the closer to him, and put more unctuous earth about his roots. Thence I was ushered up-stairs to the room in which Shakspeare is supposed to have been born : though, if you peep too curiously into the matter, you may find the shadow of an ugly doubt on this, as well as most other points of his mysterious life. It is the chamber over the butcher s shop, and is lighted by one broad window con- RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 115 talning a great many small, irregular panes of glass. The floor is made of planks, very rudely hewn, and fit ting together with little neatness ; the naked beams and rafters, at the sides of the room and overhead, bear the original marks of the builder s broad-axe, with no evi dence of an attempt to smooth off the job. Again we have to reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the spac< enclosed by these illustrious -- walls, a circumstance more difficult to accept, as regards places that we have heard, read, thought, and dreamed much about, than any other disenchanting particular of a mistaken ideal. A few paces perhaps seven or eight take us from end to end of it. So low it is, that I could easily touch tho ceiling, and might have done so without a tiptoe-stretch, had it been a good deal higher ; and this humility of the chamber has tempted a vast multitude of people to write their names overhead in pencil. Every inch of the side- walls, even into the obscurest nooks and corners, is covered with a similar record ; all the window-panes, moreover, are scrawled with diamond signatures, among which is said to be that of Walter Scott; but so many persons have sought to immortalize themselves in close vicinity to his name that I really could not trace him out. Me- thinks it is strange that people do not strive to forget their forlorn little identities, in such situations, instead of thrusting them forward into the dazzle of a great renown, where, if noticed, they cannot but be deemed impertinent. This room, and the entire house, so far as I saw it, are whitewashed and exceedingly clean; nor is there the aged, musty smell with which old Chester first made me acquainted, and which goes far to cure an Ameri can of his excessive predilection for antique residences. 116 RECOI LECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. An old lady, who took charge of me up-stairs, had the manners and aspect of a gentlewoman, and talked with somewhat formidable knowledge and appreciative in telligence about Shakspeare. Arranged on a table and in chairs were various prints, views of houses and scenes connected with Shakspeare s memory, together with edi tions of his works and local publications about his home and haunts, from the sale of which this respectable lady perhaps realizes a handsome profit. At any rate, I bought a good many of them, conceiving that it might be the civillest way of requiting her for her instructive conversation and the trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady like girl who had admitted me ; but I swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she di gested hers, so far as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any person with whom he has occasion to speak a word in England. I should consider it unfair to quit Shakspeare s house without the frank acknowledgment that I was conscious of not the slightest emotion while viewing it, nor any quickening of the imagination. This has often happened to me in my visits to memorable places. Whatever pretty and apposite reflections I may have made upon the subject had either occurred to me before I ever saw Stratford, or have been elaborated since. It is pleasant, nevertheless, to think that I have seen the place ; and I believe that I can form a more sensible and vivid idea of Shakspeare as a flesh-and-blood individual now that I have stood on the kitchen-hearth arid in the birth RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 117 chamber ; but I am not quite certain that this power of realization is altogether desirable in reference to a great poet. The Shakspeare whom I met there took various guises, but had not his laurel on. He was successively the roguish boy, the youthful deer-stealer the com rade of players, the too familiar friend of Davenant mother, the careful, thrifty, thriven man of property who came back from London to lend money on bond, and occupy the best house in Stratford, the mellow, red nosed, autumnal boon-companion of John a Combe and finally, (or else the Stratford gossips belied him,) the victim of convivial habits who met his death by tumbling into a ditch on his way home from a drinking-bout, and left his second-best bed to his poor wife. I feel, as sensibly as the reader can, what horrible im piety it is to remember these things, be they true or false. In either case, they ought to vanish out of sight on the distant ocean-line of the past, leaving a pure, white mem ory, even as a sail, though perhaps darkened with many stains, looks snowy white on the far horizon. But I draw a moral from these unworthy reminiscences and this embodiment of the poet, as suggested by some of the grimy actualities of his life. It is for the high in terests of the world not to insist upon finding out that its greatest men are, in a certain lower sense, very much the same kind of men as the rest of us, and often a little worse ; because a common mind cannot properly digest such a discovery, nor ever know the true proportion of the great man s good and evil, nor how small a part of him it was that touched our muddy or dusty earth. Thence comes moral bewilderment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to what is best of |iim. When Shakspearo 118 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, he perhaps meant the larger share of it for him or them who should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects or even the merits of the character that he wore in Strat ford, when he had left mankind so much to muse upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from incurring any part of the anathema in requital for the irreverent sentences above written ! From Shakspeare s house, the next step, of course, is to visit his burial-place. The appearance of the church is most venerable and beautiful, standing amid a great green shadow of lime-trees, above which rises the spire, while the Gothic battlements and buttresses and vast arched windows are obscurely seen through the boughs. The Avon loiters past the churchyard, an exceedingly sluggish river, which might seem to have been consider ing which way it should flow ever since Shakspeare left off paddling in it and gathering the large forget-me-nots that grow among its flags and water-weeds. An old man in small-clothes was waiting at the gate ; and inquiring whether I wished to go in, he preceded me to the church-porch, and rapped. I could have done it quite as effectually for myself; but it seems, the old peo ple of the neighborhood haunt about the churchyard, in spite of the frowns and remonstrances of the sexton, who grudges them the half-eleemosynary sixpence which they sometimes get from visitors. I was admitted into the church by a respectable-looking and intelligent man in black, the parish-clerk, I suppose, and probably holding a richer incumbency than his vicar, if all the fees which he handles remain in his own pocket. He was already exhibitii g the Shakspeare monuments to two or three RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 119 visitors, and several other parties came in while I was there. The poet and his family are in possession of what may be considered the very best burial-places that the church af fords. They lie in a row, right across the breadth of the chancel, the foot of each gravestone being close to the ele vated floor on which the altar stands. Nearest to the side- wall, beneath Shakspeare s bust, is a slab bearing a Latin inscription addressed to his wife, and covering her re mains ; then his own slab, with the old anathematizing stanza upon it ; then that of Thomas Nash, who married his grand-daughter ; then that of Dr. Hall, the husband of his daughter Susannah ; and, lastly, Susannah s own. Shakspeare s is the commonest-looking slab of all, being just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in Salem used to be paved with, when I was a boy. Moreover, unless my eyes or recollection deceive me, there is a crack across it, as if it had already undergone some such violence as the inscription deprecates. Unlike the other monuments of the family, it bears no name, nor am I acquainted with the grounds or authority on which it is absolutely determined to he Shakspeare s ; although, being in a range with those of his wife and children, it might naturally be attributed to him. But, then, why does his wife, who died afterwards, take precedence of him and occupy the place next his bust? And where are the graves of another daughter and a son, who have a better right in the family-row than Thomas Nash, his grand- son-in-law ? Might not one or both of them have been laid under the nameless stone ? But it is dangerous trifling with Shakspeare s dust ; so I forbear to meddle further with the grave, (though the prohibition makes it 120 RECOIJ/F.CTIONS OF A Gil IED WOMAN". tempting,) and shall let whatever bones be in it rest in peace. Yet I must needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to imply that Shakspeare s grava was directly underneath it. The poet s bust is affixed to the northern jyall of the church, the base of it being about a man s height, or rather more, above the floor of the chancel. The fea tures of this piece of sculpture are entirely uiJike any portrait of Shakspeare that I have ever seen, and compel me to take down the beautiful, lofty-browed, and noble picture of him which has hitherto hung in my mental portrait gallery. The bust cannot be said to represent a beautiful face or an eminently noble head ; but it clutches firmly hold of one s sense of reality and insists upon your accepting it, if not as Shakspeare the poet, yet as the wealthy burgher of Stratford, the friend of John a* Combe, who lies yonder in the corner. I know not what the phrenologists say to the bust. The forehead is but moderately developed, and retreats somewhat, the upper part of the skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are prom inent almost beyond the penthouse of the brow ; the upper lip is so long that it must have been almost a deformity, unless the sculptor artistically exaggerated its length, in consideration, that, on the pedestal, it must be foreshortened by being looked at from below. On the whole, Shakspeare must have had a singular rather than a prepossessing face ; and it is wonderful how, with this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted in maintain ing an erroneous notion of his appearance, allowing paint ers and sculptors to foist their idealized nonsense on ua all, instead of the genuine man. For my part, the Shak speare of my mind s eye is henceforth to be a personage RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN". 121 of a ruddy English complexion, with a reasonably capa cious brow, intelligent and quickly observant eyes, a nose curved slightly outward, a long, queer upper-lip, with the mouth a little unclosed beneath it, and cheeks con siderably developed in the lower part and beneath the chin. But when Shakspeare was himself, (for nine-tentha of the time, according to all appearances, he was but the burgher of Stratford,) he doubtless shone through this dull mask and transfigured it into the face of an angel. Fifteen or twenty feet behind the row of Shakspeare gravestones is the great east-window of the church, now brilliant with stained glass of recent manufacture. On one side of this window, under a sculptured arch of marble, lies a full-length marble figure of John a Combe, clad in what I take to be a robe of municipal dignity, and holding its hands devoutly clasped. It is a sturdy Eng lish figure, with coarse features, a type of ordinary man whom we smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque material of poets and heroes ; but the prayerful attitude encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, after all, have had that grim reception in the other world which Shakspeare s squib foreboded for him. By-the-by, till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pro nunciation, I never understood that the point of those ill-natured lines was a pun. " l Oho ! quoth the Devil, t is my John a Combe I " that is, " My John has Close to the poet s bust is a nameless, oblong, cubic tomb, supposed to be that of a clerical dignitary of the fourteenth century. The church has other mural monu ments and altar tombs, one or two of the latter uphold ing the recumbent figures of knights in armor and their 122 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. dames, very eminent and worshipful personages in their day, no doubt, but doomed to appear forever intrusive and impertinent within the precincts which Shakspeare has made his own. His renown is tyrannous, and suffers nothing else to be recognized within the scope of its material presence, unless illuminated by some side-ray from himself. The clerk informed me that interments lao longer take place in any part of the church. And it ;. is better so ; for methinks a person of delicate individu ality, curious about his burial-place, and desirous of six feet of earth for himself alone, could never endure to lie buried near Shakspeare, but would rise up at midnight and grope his way out of the church-door, rather than sleep in the shadow of so stupendous a memory. I should hardly have dared to add another to the innu merable descriptions of Stratford-on-Avon, if it had not seemed to me that this would form a fitting framework to some reminiscences of a very remarkable womaii. Her labor, while she lived, was of a nature and purpose outwardly irreverent to the name of Shakspeare, yet, by its actual tendency, entitling her to the distinction of being that one of all his worshippers who sought, though she knew it not, to place the richest and stateliest diadem upon his brow. We Americans, at least, in the scanty annals of our literature, cannot afford to forget her high and conscientious exercise of noble faculties, which, in deed, if you look at the matter in one way, evolved only a miserable error, but, more fairly considered, produced a result worth almost what it cost her. Her faith in her own ideas was so genuine, that, erroneous as they were, it transmuted them to gold, or, at all events, interfused a large proportion of that precious and indestructible sub- RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 123 stance among the waste material from whicn it can read ily be sifted. The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon was in London, where she had lodgings in Spring Street, Sussex Gar dens, at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle-aged, civil, and friendly man, who, as well as his wife, appeared 10 feel a personal kindness towards their lodger. I was ushered up two (and I rather believe three) pair of stairs into a parlor somewhat humbly furnished, and told that Miss Bacon would come soon. There were a number of books on the table, and, looking into them, I found that every one had some reference, more or less immediate, to her Shakspearian theory, a volume of Raleigh s " History of the World," a volume of Montaigne, a volume of Lord Bacon s letters, a volume of Shak- speare s plays ; and on another table lay a large roll of manuscript, which I presume to have been a portion of her work. To be sure, there was a pocket-Bible among the books, but everything else referred to the one des potic idea that had got possession of her mind ; and as it had engrossed her whole soul as well as her intellect, I have no doubt that she had established subtile connec tions between it and the Bible likewise. As is apt to be the case with solitary students, Miss Bacon probably read late and rose late ; for I took up Montaigne (it was Haz- litt s translation) and had been reading his journey t< Italy a good while before she appeared. I had expected (the more shame for me, having no other ground of such expectation than that she was a literary woman) to see a very homely, uncouth, elderly personage, and was quite agreeably disappointed by her aspect. She was rather uncommonly tall, and had a 124 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which shone with an inward light as soon as she began to speak, and by-and-by a color came into her cheeks and made her look almost young. Not that she really was so ; she must have been beyond middle-age : and there was no imkindness in coming to that conclusion, because, making allowance for years and ill-health, I could suppose her to have been handsome and exceedingly attractive once. Though wholly estranged from society, there was little or no restraint or embarrassment in her manner : lonely people are generally glad to give utterance to their pent- up ideas, and often bubble over with them as freely as children with their new-found syllables. I cannot tell how it came about, but we immediately found ourselves taking a friendly and familiar tone together, and began to talk as if we had known one another a very long while. A little preliminary correspondence had indeed smoothed the way, and we had a definite topic in the contemplated publication of her book. She was very communicative about her theory, and would have been much more so had I desired it ; but, being conscious within myself of a sturdy unbelief, I deemed it fair and honest rather to repress than draw her out upon the subject. Unquestionably, she was a monomaniac ; these overmastering ideas about the au thorship of Shakspeare s plays, and the deep political philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had completely thrown her off her balance ; but at the same time they had wonderfully developed her intellect, and made her what she could not otherwise have become. It was a very singular phenomenon : a system of philosophy growing up in this woman s mind without her volition, RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 125 contrary, in fact, to the determined resistance of her voli tion, and substituting itself in the place of every tiling that originally grew there. To have based such a sys tem on fancy, and unconsciously elaborated it for herself, was almost as wonderful as really to have found it in the plays. But, in a certain sense, she did actually find it there. Shakspeare has surface beneath surface, to an Immeasurable depth, adapted to the plummet-line of every reader ; his works present many phases of truth, each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely dis cover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting the various interpretation of his symbols ; and a thousand years hence, a world of new readers will possess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these vol umes old already. I had half a mind to suggest to Miss Bacon this explanation of her theory, but forbore, be cause (as I could readily perceive) she had as princely i spirit as Queen Elizabeth herself, and would at once have motioned me from the room. I had heard, long ago, that she believed that the ma terial evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, to gether with the key of the new philosophy, would be found buried in Shakspeare s grave. Recently, as I understood her, this notion had been somewhat modified, and was now accurately defined and fully developed in her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. In Lord Bacon s letters, on which she laid her finger as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clue to the whole mystery. There were definite and minute instructions how to find a will and other documents relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, which were con- 126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. ceaJed (when and by whom she did not inform me) in a hollow space in the under surface of Shakspeare s grave stone. Thus the terrible prohibition to remove the stone was accounted for. The directions, she intimated, went completely and precisely to the point, obviating all diffi culties in the way of coming at the treasure, and even, cf I remember right, were so contrived as to ward off iny troublesome consequences likely to ensue from he interference of the parish-officers. All that Miss Hacon now remained in England for indeed, the object bi which she had come hither, and which had kept her Aere for three years past was to obtain possession of ihese material and unquestionable proofs of the authen ticity of her theory. Sh<5 communicated all this strange matter in a low, i]uiet tone ; while, on my part, I listened as quietly, and without any expression of dissent. Controversy against a faith so settled would have shut her up at once, and chat, too> without in the least weakening her belief in the uxistenct, of those treasures of the tomb ; and had it been l <)ssible to convince her of their intangible nature, I ap prehend that there would have been nothing left for the poor enthusiast save to collapse and die. She frankly confessed that she could no longer bear the society of those who did not at least lend a certain sympathy to her views, if not fully share in them ; and meeting little sym pathy or none, she had now entirely secluded herself from v^e world. In all these years, she had seen Mrs. Fariar a few limes, but had long ago given her up, Carlyle vince or twice, but not of late, although he had received Aei Kmcny; Mr. Buchanan, while minister in England, kwA imw called on her, and General Campbell, RECOLLECTIONS OF A Gil TED WOMAN. 127 our Consul in London, had met her two or three times on business. With these exceptions which she marked so scrupulously that it was perceptible what epochs they were in the monotonous passage of her days, she had lived in the profoundest solitude. She never walked out ; she suffered much from ill-health ; and yet, she assured me, she was perfectly happy. I could well conceive it ; for Miss Bacon imagined herself to have received (what is certainly the greatest boon ever assigned to mortals) a high mission in the world, with adequate powers for its accomplishment ; and lest even these should prove insufficient, she had faith that special interpositions of Providence were forwarding her human efforts. This idea was continually coming to the surface, during our interview. She believed, for example, that she had been providentially led to her lodging-house and put in relations with the good-natured grocer and his family ; and, to say the truth, considering what a savage and stealthy tribe the London lodging- house keepers usually are, the honest kindness of this man and his household appeared to have been little less than miraculous. Evidently, too, she thought that Prov idence had brought me forward a man somewhat con nected with literature at the critical juncture when she needed a negotiator with the booksellers ; and, on my part, though little accustomed to regard myself as a divine minister, and though I might even have preferred that Providence should select some other instrument, I had no scruple in undertaking to do what I could for her. Her book, as I could see by turning it over, was a very remarkable one, and worthy of being offered to the pub lic, which, if wise enough to appreciate it, would be 128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED TfOMAX. thankful for what was good in it and merciful to its faults. It was founded on a prodigious error, but was "juilt up from that foundation with a good many prodig ious truths. And, at all events, whether I could aid her literary views or no, it would have been both rash and impertinent in me to attempt drawing poor Miss Bacon out of her delusions, which were the condition on which she lived in comfort and joy, and in the exercise of great intellectual power. So I left her to dream as she pleased about the treasures of Shakspeare s tombstone, and to form whatever designs might seem good to herself for obtaining possession of them. I was sensible of a lady like feeling of propriety in Miss Bacon, and a New- England orderliness in her character, and, in spite of her bewilderment, a sturdy common-sense, which I trusted \vould begin to operate at the right time, and keep her from any actual extravagance. And as regarded this matter of the tombstone, so it proved. The interview lasted above an hour, during which she flowed out freely, as to the sole auditor, capable of any degree of intelligent sympathy, whom she had met with in a very long while. Her conversation was remarkably suggestive, alluring forth one s own ideas and fantasies from the shy places where they usually haunt. She \\ as indeed an admirable talker, considering how long she had held her tongue for lack of a listener, pleasant, sunny and shadowy, often piquant, and giving glimpses of all a woman s various and readily changeable moods a -id humors ; and beneath them all there ran a deep and powerful under-current of earnestness, which did not fail to produce in the listener s mind something like a tem porary faith in what she herself believed so fervently. RECOI LECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 129 Bat the streets of London are not favorable to enthusi asm? of this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish anywhere in the English atmosphere ; so that, long be fore reaching Paternoster Row, I felt that it would be a difficult and doubtful matter to advocate the publication of Miss Bacon s book. Nevertheless, it did finally get published. Months before that happened, however, Miss Bacon had taken up her residence at Stratford-on-Avon, drawn thither by the magnetism of those rich secrets which she supposed to have been hidden by Raleigh, or Bacon, or I know not whom, in Shakspeare s grave, and protected thcie by a curse, as pirates used to bury their gold in the guardianship of a fiend. She took a humble lodging and began to haunt the churcn like a ghost. But she did not condescend to any stratagem or underhand at tempt to violate the grave, which, had she been capable of admitting such an idea, might possibly have been ac complished by the aid of a resurrection-man. As her first step, she made acquaintance with the clerk, and be gan to sound him as to the feasibility of her enterprise and his own willingness to engage in it. The clerk ap parently listened with not unfavorable ears ; but, as his situation (which the fees of pilgrims, more numerous than at any Catholic shrine, render lucrative) would have been forfeited by any malfeasance in office, he stipulated for liberty to consult the vicar. Miss Bacon requested to tell her own story to the reverend gentle man, and seems to have been received by him with the utmost kindness, and even to have succeeded in making a certain impression on his mind as to the desirability of the search. As their interview had been under the seal 9 130 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. of secrecy, he asked permission to consult a friend, who, aa Miss Bacon either found out or surmised, was a prac titioner of the law. What the legal friend advised she did not learn ; but the negotiation continued, and cer tainly was never broken off by an absolute refusal on the vicar s part. He, perhaps, was kindly temporizing with our poor countrywoman, whom an Englishman of ordi nary mould woul d have sent to a lunatic asylum at once. I cannot help fancying, however, that her fa miliarity with the events of Shakspeare s life, and of his death and burial, (of which she would speak as if she had been present at the edge of the grave,) and all the history, literature, and personalities of the Elizabethan age, together with the prevailing power of her own belief, and the eloquence with which she knew how to enforce it, had really gone some little way toward making a con vert of the good clergyman. If so, I honor him above all the hierarchy of England. The affair certainly looked very hopeful. However erroneously, Miss Bacon had understood from the vicar that no obstacles would be interposed to the investiga tion, and that he himself would sanction it with his pres ence. It was to take place after nightfall ; and all pre liminary arrangements being made, the vicar and clerk professed to wait only her word in order to set abou ifting the awful stone from the sepulchre. So, at least Miss Bacon believed ; and as her bewilderment was en tirely in her own thoughts, and never disturbed her per ception or accurate remembrance of external things, I see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of ab surdity in the fact. But, in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own convictions began to faltei. A RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 131 doubt stole into her mind whether she might not ha\e mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of those historic treasures; and after once admitting the doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone and finding nothing. She examined the surface of the gravestone, and endeavored, without stirring it, to estimate whether it were of such thick ness as to be capable of containing the archives of the Elizabethan club. She went over anew the proofs, the clues, the enigmas, the pregnant sentences, which she had discovered in Bacon s letters and elsewhere, and now was frightened to perceive that they did not point so definitely to Shakspeare s tomb as she had hereto fore supposed. There was an unmistakably distinct ref erence to a tomb, but it might be Bacon s, or Raleigh s, or Spenser s ; and instead of the " Old Player," as she profanely called him, it might be either of those three illustrious dead, poet, warrior, or statesman, whose ashes, in Westminster Abbey, or the Tower burial- ground, or wherever they sleep, it was her mission to dis turb. It is very possible, moreover, that her acute mind may always have had a lurking and deeply latent dis trust of its own fantasies, and that this now became strong enough to restrain her from a decisive step. But she continued to hover around the church, and seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the day time, and special license, on one occasion at least, at a late hour of the night. She went thither with a dark- lantern, which could but twinkle like a glow-worm through the volume of obscurity that filled the great dusky edifice. Groping her way up the aisle and tow ards the chancel, she sat down on the elevated part of 132 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. the pavement above Shakspeare s grave. If the divine poet really wrote the inscription there, and cared as much about the quiet of his bones as its deprecatory earnest ness would imply, it was time for those crumbling relics to bestir themselves under her sacrilegious feet. But they were safe. She made no attempt to disturb them ; though, I believe, she looked narrowly into the crevices between Shakspeare s and the two adjacent stones, and in .some way satisfied herself that her single strength would suffice to lift the former, in case of need. She threw the feeble ray of her lantern up towards the bust, but could not make it visible beneath the darkness of the vaulted roof. Had she been subject to superstitious terrors, it is impossible to conceive of a situation that could better entitle her to feel them, for, if Shakspeare s ghost would rise at any provocation, it must have shown itself then ; but it is my sincere belief, that, if his figure had ap peared within the scope of her dark-lantern, in his slashed doublet and gown, and with his eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just as we see him in the bust, she would have met him fearlessly and controverted his claims to the authorship of the plays, to his very face. She had taught herself to contemn " Lord Leicester s groom " (it was one of her disdainful epithets for the world s incomparable poet) so thoroughly, that even his disembodied spirit would hardly have found civil treat ment at Miss Bacon s hands. Her vigil, though it appears to have had no definite object, continued far into the night. Several times she heard a low movement in the aisles : a stealthy, dubious foot-fall prowling about in the darkness, now here, now there, among ,he pillars and ancient tombs, as if some RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 133 restless inhabitant of the latter had crept forth to peep at the intruder. By-and-by the clerk made his appear ance, and confessed that he had been watching her ever since she entered the church. About this time it was that a strange sort of weariness seems to have fallen upon her : her toil was all but done, her great purpose, as she believed, on the very point of accomplishment, when she began to regret that so stu pendous a mission had been imposed on the fragility of a woman. Her faith in the new philosophy was as mighty as ever, and so was her confidence in her own adequate development of it, now about to be given to the world ; yet she wished, or fancied so, that it might never have been her duty to achieve this unparalleled task, and to stagger feebly forward under her immense burden of re sponsibility and renown. So far as her personal concern in the matter went, she would gladly have forfeited the reward of her patient study and labor for so many years, her exile from her country and estrangement from her family and friends, her sacrifice of health and all other interests to this one pursuit, if she could only find her self free to dwell in Stratford and be forgotten. She liked the old slumberous town, and awarded the only praise that ever I knew her to bestow on Shakspeare, the individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in a resi dence was good, and that he knew how to choose a suit able retirement for a person of shy, but genial tempera ment. And at this point, I cease to possess the meara of tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any farther. In consequence of some advice which I fancied it my duty to tender, as being the only confidant whom she now had in the world, I fell under Miss Bacon s most severe and 134: RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. passionate displeasure, and was cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye. It was a misfortune to which her friends were always particularly liable ; but I think that none of them ever loved, or even respected, her most ingenuous and noble, but likewise most sensitive and tumultuous character, the less for it. At that time her book was passing through the press. Without prejudice to her literary ability, it must be allowed that Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to prepare her own work for publication, because, among many other reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest to know what to leave out. Every leaf and line was sacred, for all had been written under so deep a conviction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A prac tised book-maker, with entire control of her materials, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume full of elo quent and ingenious dissertation, criticisms which quite take the color and pungency out of other people s critical remarks on Shakspeare, philosophic truths which she imagined herself to have found at the roots of his concep tions, and which certainly come from no inconsiderable depth somewhere. There was a great amount of rubbish, which any competent editor would have shovelled out of the way. But Miss Bacon thrust the whole bulk of in spiration and nonsense into the press in a lump, and there tumbled out a ponderous octavo volume, which fell with a dead thump at the feet of the public, and has never l>een picked up. A few persons turned over one or two of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed to kick the vol ume deeper into the mud ; for they were the hack critics of the minor periodical press in London, than whom, I suppose, though excellent fellows in their way, there are RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 135 no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in a book, or less likely to recognize an author s heart in it, or more utterly careless about bruising, if they do recog< nize it. It is their trade. They could not do otherwise. I never thought of blaming them. It was not for such an Englishman as one of these to get beyond the idea that an assault was meditated on England s greatest poet. From the scholars and critics of her own country, indeed, Miss Bacon might have looked for a worthier apprecia tion, because many of the best of them have higher culti vation, and finer and deeper literary sensibilities than all but the very profoundest and brightest of Englishmen. But they are not a courageous body of men ; they dare not think a truth that has an odor of absurdity, lest they should feel themselves bound to speak it out. If any American ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss Bacon never knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at once repub- lished some of the most brutal vituperations of the Eng lish press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman with stolen mud, without even waiting to know whether the ignominy was deserved. And they never have known it, to this day, nor ever will. The next intelligence that I had of Miss Bacon was by a letter from the mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. He was a medical man, and wrote both in his official and professional character, telling me that an American lady, who had recently published what the mayor called a * Shakspeare book," was afflicted with insanity. In a lucid interval she had referred to me, as a person who had some knowledge of her family and affairs. What she may have suffered before her intellect gave way, we had better not try to imagine. No author had ever i36 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. hoped so confidently as she ; none ever failed more ut terly. A superstitious fancy might suggest that the anathema on Shakspeare s tombstone had fallen heavily on her head in requital of even the unaccomplished pur pose of disturbing the dust beneath, and that the " Old Player" had kept so quietly in his grave, on the night of her vigil, because he foresaw how soon and terribly he would be avenged. But if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance of such things now, he has surely re quited the injustice that she sought to do him the high justice that she really did by a tenderness of love and pity of which only he could be capable. What matters it, though she called him by some other name ? He had wrougK a greater miracle on her than on all the world besides. This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a depth in the man whom she decried, which scholars, critics, and learned societies, devoted to the elucidation of his unrivalled scenes, had never imagined to exist there. She had paid him the loftiest honor that all these ages of renown have been able to accumulate upon his memory. And when, not many months after the out ward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the better world, I know not why we should hesitate to be lieve that the immortal poet may have met her on the threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly and comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a smile of gentle humor in his eyes at the thought of certain mistaken speculations) for having interpreted him to mankind so well. I believe that it has been the fate of this remarkable book never to have had more than a single reader. I myself am acquainted with it only in insulated chapters RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 137 and scattered pagp& and paragraphs. But, since my re turn to America, a young man of genius and enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read the book from beginning to end, and is completely a convert to its doc trines. It belongs to him, therefore, and not to me, whom, in almost the last letter that I received from her she declared unworthy to meddle with her work, it belongs surely to this one individual, who has done her so much justice as to know what she wrote, to place Miss Bacon in her due position before the public and posterity. This has been too sad a- story. To lighten the recol lection of it, I will think of my stroll homeward past Charlecote Park, where I beheld the most stately elms, singly, in clumps, and in groves, scattered all about in the sunniest, shadiest, sleepiest fashion ; so that I could not but believe in a lengthened, loitering, drowsy enjoy, ment which these trees must have in their existence. Diffused over slow-paced centuries, it need not be keen nor bubble into thrills and ecstasies, like the momentary delights of short-lived human beings. They were civil ized trees, known to man and befriended by him for ages past. There is an indescribable difference as I believe I have heretofore endeavored to express between the tamed, but by no means effete (on the contrary, the richer and more luxuriant) Nature of England, and the rude, shaggy, barbarous Nature which offers us its raciei companionship in America. No less a change has been wrought among the wildest creatures that inhabit what the English call their forests. By-and-by, among those refined and venerable trees, I saw a large herd of deer, mostly reclining, but some standing in picturesque groups, while the stags threw their large antlers aloft, as if the} 138 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. had been taught to make themselves tributary to the scenic effect. Some were running fleetly about, vanish ing from light into shadow and glancing forth again, with here and there a little fawn careering at its mother s heels. These deer are almost in the same relation to the wild, natural state of their kind that the trees of an English park hold to the rugged growth of an American forest. They have held a certain intercourse with man for immemorial years ; and, most probably, the stag that Shakspeare killed was one of the progenitors of this very nerd, and may himself have been a partly civilized and humanized deer, though in a less degree than these re mote posterity. They are a little wilder than sheep, bvit they do not snuff the air at the approach of human beings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty close proximity; although if you continue to advance, they toss their heads and take to their heels in a kind of mimic terror, or something akin to feminine skittishness, with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it were, of their having come of a wild stock. They have so long been fed and protected by man, that they must have lost many of their native instincts, and, I suppose, could not live comfortably through even an English winter without human help. One is sensible of a gentle scorn at them for such dependency, but feels none the less kindly dis posed towards the half-domesticated race ; and it may have been his observation of these tamer characteristics in the Charlecote herd that suggested to Shakspeare the tender and pitiful description of a wounded stag, in " As You Like It." At a distance of some hundreds of yards from Charle cote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees between it and RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 139 the roadside, is an old brick archway and porter s lodge. In connection with this entrance there appears to have been a wall and an ancient moat, the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, grassy scoop along the base of an embankment of the lawn. About fifty yards within the gateway stands the house, forming three sides of a square with three gables in a row on the front, and on each of the two wings ; and there are several towers and turrets at the angles, together with projecting windows, antique balconies, and other quaint ornaments suitable to the half- Gothic taste in which the edifice was built. Over the gateway is the Lucy coat-of-arms, emblazoned in its proper colors. The mansion dates from the early days of Elizabeth, and probably looked very much the same as now when Shakspeare was brought before Sir Thomas Lucy for outrages among his deer. The impression is not that of gray antiquity, but of stable and time-honored gentility, still as vital as ever. It is a most delightful place. All about the house and domain there is a perfection of comfort and domestic taste, an amplitude of convenience, which could have been brought about only by the slow ingenuity and labor of many successive generations, intent upon adding all possible improvement to the home where years gone by and years to come give a sort of permanence to the in tangible present. An American is sometimes tempted to fancy that only by this long process can real homes be produced. One man s lifetime is not enough for the ac complishment of such a work of Art and Nature, almost the greatest merely temporary one that is confided to him; too little, at any rate, yet perhaps too long when he is discouraged by the idea that he must make 140 RKCOLLECTIOXS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. his house warm and delightful for a miscellaneous race of successors, of whom the one thing certain is, that his own grandchildren will not be among them. Such re- pinings as are here suggested, however, come only from the fact, that, bred in English habits of thought, as most of us are, we have not yet modified our instincts to the lecessities of our new forms of life. A lodging in a wig warn or under a tent has really as many advantages, when we come to know them, as a home beneath the roof-tree of Charlecote Hall. But, alas ! our philosophers have not yet taught us what is best, nor have our poets sung us what is beautifullest, in the kind of life that we must lead ; and therefore we still read the old English wisdom, and harp upon the ancient strings. And thence it happens, that, when we look at a time-honored hall, it seems more possible for men who inherit such a home, than for ourselves, to lead noble and graceful lives, quietly doing good and lovely things as their daily work, and achieving deeds of simple greatness when circumstances require them. I sometimes apprehend that our institutions may perish before we shall have discovered the most precious of the possibilities which they involve. LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. AFTER my first visit to Leamington Spa, I went by an indirect route to Lichfield, and put up at the Black Swan. Had I known where to find it, I would much rather have established myself at the inn formerly kept by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous for his ale in Farquhar s time. The Black Swan is an old-fashioned hotel, its street-front being penetrated by an arched pas sage, in either side of which is an entrance-door to the different parts of the house, and through which, and over the large stones of its pavement, all vehicles and horse men rumble and clatter into an enclosed court-yard, with a thunderous uproar among the contiguous rooms and chambers. I appeared to be the only guest of the spa cious establishment, but may have had a few fellow-lodgers hidden in their separate parlors, and utterly eschewing that community of interests which is the characteristic feature of life in an American hotel. At any rate, I had the great, dull, dingy, and dreary coffee-room, with its heavy old mahogany chairs and tables, all to myself, an not a soul to exchange a word with, except the waiter, who, like most of his class in England, had evidently left his conversational abilities uncultivated. No former practice of solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor well-tested self-dependence for occupation of mind and 112 LICH FIELD AND UTTOXETER. amusement, can quite avail, as I now proved, to dissipate the ponderous gloom of an English coffee-room under such circumstances as these, with no book at hand save the county-directory, nor any newspaper but a torn local journal of five days ago. So I buried myself, betimes, in a huge heap of ancient feathers, (there is no other kind of bed in these old inns,) let my head sink into an unsub stantial pillow, and slept a stifled sleep, infested with such a fragmentary confusion of dreams that I took them to be a medley, compounded of the night-troubles of all ruy predecessors in that same unrestful couch. And when 1 awoke, the musty odor of a by-gone century was in my nostrils a faint, elusive smell, of which I never had any conception before crossing the Atlantic. In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of chic- cory in the dusky coffee-room, I went forth and bewildered myself a little while among the crooked streets, in quest of one or two objects that had chiefly attracted me to the spot. The city is of very ancient date, and its name in the old Saxon tongue, has a dismal import that would apply well, in these days and forever henceforward, to many an unhappy locality in our native land. Lichfield signifies "The Field of the Dead Bodies" an epithet, however, which the town did not assume in remembrance of a battle, but which probably sprung up by a natural process, like a sprig of rue or other funereal weed, out of the graves of two princely brethers, sons of a pagan king of Mercia, who were converted by Saint Chad, and after wards martyred for their Christian faith. Nevertheless, I was but little interested in the legends of the remote antiquity of Lichfield, being drawn thither partly to see its beautiful cathedral, and still more, I believe, because L1CHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 143 it was the birthplace of Dr. Johnson, with whose sturdy English character I became acquainted, at a very early period of my life, through the good offices of Mr. Boswell. In truth, he seems as familiar to my recollection, and almost as vivid in his personal aspect to my mind s eye, as the kindly figure of my own grandfather. It is only a solitary child left much to such wild modes of cul ture as he chooses for himself while yet ignorant what culture means, standing on tiptoe to pull down books from no very lofty shelf, and then shutting himself up, as it were, between the leaves, going astray through the volume at his own pleasure, 1 and comprehending it rather by his sensibilities and affections than his intellect that child is the only student that ever gets the sort of inti macy which I am now thinking of, with a literary per sonage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about any of the stalwart Doctor s grandiloquent produc tions, except his two stern and masculine poems, " Lon don," and " The Vanity of Human Wishes " ; it was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly than I do now, though never seeking to put my instinctive perception of his character into language. Beyond all question, I might have had a wiser friend than he. The atmosphere in which alone he breathed was dense ; his awful dread of death showed how much muddy imperfection was to be cleansed out of him, before he could be capable of spiritual existence ; ho meddled only with the surface of life, and never cared to penetrate farther than to ploughshare depth ; his very sense and sagacity were but a one-eyed clear-sighted ness. I laughed at him, sometimes, standing beside hia 144 LICHFIELD AXD UTTOXETER. knee. And yet, considering that my native propensities were towards Fairy Land, and also how much yeast is generally mixed up with the mental sustenance of a New Englander, it may not have been altogether amiss, in those childish and boyish days, to keep pace with this heavy-footed traveller and feed on the gross diet that he carried in his knapsack. It is wholesome food even now. And, then, how English ! Many of the latent sympathies that enabled me to enjoy the Old Country so well, and that so readily amalgamated themselves with the Amer ican ideas that seemed most adverse to them, may have been derived from, or fostered and kept alive by, the great English moralist. Never was a descriptive epithet more nicely appropriate than that ! Dr. Johnson s mor ality was as English an article as a beefsteak. The city of Lichfield (only the cathedral-towns are called cities, in England) stands on an ascending site. It has not so many old gabled houses as Coventry, for example, but still enough to gratify an American appetite for the antiquities of domestic architecture. The people, too, have an old-fashioned way with them, and stare at the passing visitor, as if the railway had not yet quite ac customed them to the novelty of strange faces moving along their ancient sidewalks. The old women whom I met, in several instances, dropt me a courtesy ; and as they were of decent and comfortable exterior, and kept quietly on their way without pause or further greeting, it cer tainly was not allowable to interpret their little act of respect as a modest method of asking for sixpence ; so that I had the pleasure of considering it a remnant of the reverential and hospitable manners of elder times, when the rare presence of a stranger might be deemed worth LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETKR. Ii5 a general acknowledgment. Positively, coming from such humble sources, I took it all the more as a welcome on behalf of the inhabitants, and would not have ex changed it for an invitation from the mayor and magis trates to a public dinner. Yet I wish, merely for the experiment s sake, that I could have emboldened myself to hold out the aforesaid sixpence to at least one of the old ladies. In my wanderings about town, I came to an artificial piece of water, called the Minster Pool. It fills the im mense cavity in a ledge of rock, whence the building materials of the cathedral were quarried out a great many centuries ago. I should never have guessed the little lake to be of man s creation, so very pretty and quietly picturesque an object has it grown to be, with its green banks, and the old trees hanging over its glassy surface, in which you may see reflected some of the bat tlements of the majestic structure that once lay here in unshaped stone. Some little children stood on the edge of the Pool, angling with pin-hooks ; and the scene re minded me (though really to be quite fair with the reader, the gist of the analogy has now escaped me,) of that mysterious lake in the Arabian Nights, which had once been a palace and a city, and where a fisherman used to pull out the former inhabitants in the guise of enchanted fishes. There is no need of fanciful associa tions to make the spot interesting. It was in the porch of one of the houses, in the street that runs beside the Minster Pool, that Lord Brooke was slain, in the time of the Parliamentary war, by a shot from the battle ments of the cathedral, which was then held by the Royalists as a fortress. The incident is commemorated 10 U6 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. by an inscription on a stone, inlaid into the wall of the Louse. I know not what rank the Cathedral of Lichfield holds among its sister edifices in England, as a piece ot magnificent architecture. Except that of Chester, (the grim and simple nave of which stands yet unrivalled in my memory,) and one or two small ones in North Wales, hardly worthy of the name of cathedrals, it was the first that I had seen. To my uninstructed vision, it seemed the object best worth gazing at in the whole world ; and now, after beholding a great many more, I remember it with less prodigal admiration only because others are as magnificent as itself. The traces remaining in my memory represent it as airy rather than massive. A multitude of beautiful shapes appeared to be compre liended within its single outline ; it was a kind of kalei doscopic mystery, so rich a variety of aspects did it assume from each altered point of view, through tho presentation of a different face, and the rearrangement of its peaks and pinnacles and the three battlemented towers, with the spires that shot heavenward from all three, but one loftier than its fellows. Thus it im pressed you, at every change, as a newly created struc ture of the passing moment, in which yet you lovingly recognized the half-vanished structure of the instant before, and felt, moreover, a joyful faith in the inde structible existence of all this cloudlike vicissitude. A Gothic cathedral is surely the most wonderful work which mortal man has yet achieved, so vast, so intricate, and so profoundly simple, with such strange, delightful recesses in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend within one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ulti- LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 147 mately draws the beholder and his universe into its har mony. It is the only thing in the world that is vast enough and rich enough. Not that I felt, or was worthy to feel, an unmingled enjoyment in gazing at this wonder. I could not elevate myself to its spiritual height, any more than I cduld have climbed from the ground to the summit of one of its pin nacles. Ascending but a little way, I continually fell back and lay in a kind of despair, conscious that a flood of uncomprehended beauty was pouring down upon me, of which I could appropriate only the minutest portion. After a hundred years, incalculably as my higher sympa thies might be invigorated by so divine an employment, I should still be a gazer from below and at an awful distance, as yet remotely excluded from the interior mystery. But it was something gained, even to have that painful sense of my own limitations, ancl that half- smothered yearning to soar beyond them. The cathedral showed me how earthly I was, but yet whispered deeply of immortality. After all, this was probably the best lesson that it could bestow, and, taking it as thoroughly as possible home to my heart, I was fain to be content. If the truth must be told, my ill-trained enthusiasm soon flagged, and I began to lose the vision of a spiritual or ideal edifice behind the time-worn and weather-stained front of the actual structure. Whenever that is the case, it is most reverential to look another way ; but the mood disposes one to minute investigation, and I took advan tage of it to examine the intricate and multitudinous adorn ment that was lavished on the exterior wall of this great church. Everywhere, there were empty niches where statues had been thrown down, and here ancl there a 148 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. statue still lingered in its niche ; and over the chief en trance, and extending across the whole breadth of the building, was a row of angels, sainted personages, martyrs, and kings, sculptured in reddish stone. Being much cor roded by the moist English atmosphere, during four or fivo hundred winters that they had stood there, these benign and majestic figures perversely put me in mind of the appearance of a sugar image, after a child has been holding it in his mouth. The venerable infant Time has evidently found them sweet morsels. Inside of the minster there is a long and lofty nave, transepts of the same height, and side-aisles and chapels, dim nooks of holiness, where in catholic times the lamps were continually burning before the richly decorated shrines of saints. In the audacity of my ignorance, as I humbly acknowledge it to have been, I criticised this great interior as too much broken into compartments, and shorn of half its rightful impressiveness by the interposi tion of a screen betwixt the nave and chancel. It did not spread itself in breadth but ascended to the roof in lofty narrowness. One large body of worshippers might have knelt down in the nave, others in each of the transepts, and smaller ones in the side-aisles, besides an indefinite number of esoteric enthusiasts in the mysterious sanctities beyond the screen. Thus it seemed to typify the exclu- siveness of sects rather than the world-wide hospitality of genuine religion. I had imagined a cathedral with a scope more vast. These Gothic aisles, with their groined arches overhead, supported by clustered pillars in long vistas up and down, were venerable and magnificent, but included too much of the twilight of that monkish gloom out of which they grew. It is no matter whether I ever came LICHFIEuD AXD UTTOXETER. 149 to a more satisfactory appreciation of this kind of archi tecture ; the only value of ray strictures being to show the folly of looking at noble objects in the wrong mood, and the absurdity of a new visitant pretending to hold any opinion whatever oh such subjects, instead of sur rendering himself to the old builder s influence with liildlike simplicity. A great deal of white marble decorates the old stone work of the aisles, in the shape of altars, obelisks, sar cophagi, and busts. Most of these memorials are com memorative of people locally distinguished, especially the deans and canons of the cathedral, with their relatives and families ; and I found but two monuments of per sonages whom I had ever heard of, one being Gilbert Walmesley, and the other Lady Mary Wortley Mon tague, a literary acquaintance of my boyhood. It was really pleasant to meet her there ; for after a friend has lain in the grave far into the second century, she would be unreasonable to require any melancholy emotions in a chance interview at her tombstone. It adds a rich charm to sacred edifices, this time-honored custom of burial in churches, after a few years, at least, when the mortal remains have turned to dust beneath the pave ment, and the quaint devices and inscriptions still speak to you above. The statues, that stood or reclined in several recesses of the Cathedral, had a kind of life, and I regarded them with an odd sort of deference, as if they were privileged denizens of the precinct. It was singular, too, how the memorial of the latest buried per son, the man whose features were familiar in the streets of Lichfield only yesterday, seemed precisely as much at home here as his mediaeval predecessors. Henceforward 150 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. ho belonged to the cathedral like one of its original pillar? Methought this impression in ray fancy might be the shadow of a spiritual fact. The dying melt into the great multitude of the Departed as quietly as a drop of water into the ocean, and, it may be, are conscious of no unfamiliarity with their new circumstances, but immedi ately become aware of an insufferable strangeness in the world which they have quitted. Death has not taken them away, but brought them home. The vicissitudes and mischances of sublunary affairs, however, have not ceased to attend upon these marble inhabitants; for I saw the upper fragment of a sculp tured lady, in a very old-fashioned garb, the lower half of whom had doubtless been demolished by Cromwell s soldiers when they took the Minster by storm. And there lies the remnant of this devout lady on her slab, ever since the outrage, as for centuries before, with a countenance of divine serenity and her hands clasped in prayer, symbolizing a depth of religious faith which no earthly turmoil or calamity could disturb. Another piece of sculpture (apparently a favorite subject in the middle ages, for I have seen several like it in other Ca thedrals), was a reclining skeleton, as faithfully repre senting an open-work of bones as could well be ex pected in a solid block of marble, and at a period, more over, when the mysteries of the human frame were rather to be guessed at than revealed. Whatever the anatomical defects of his production, the old sculptor had succeeded in making it ghastly beyond measure. How much mischief has been wrought upon us by this in variable gloom of the Gothic imagination ; flinging itself like a death-scented pall over our conceptions of the LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 151 future state, smothering our hopes, hiding our sky, and inducing dismal efforts to raise the harvest of immor tality out of what is most opposite to it, the grave! The Cathedral service is performed twice every day : at ten o clock and at four. When I first entered, the choristers (young and old, but mostly, I think, boys, with voices inexpressibly sweet and clear, and as fresh as bird- notes) were just winding up their harmonious labors, and soon came thronging through a side-door from the chan cel into the nave. They were all dressed in long, white robes, and looked like a peculiar order of beings, created on purpose to hover between the roof and pavement of that dim, consecrated edifice, and illuminate it with divine melodies, reposing themselves, meanwhile, on the heavy grandeur of the organ-tones like cherubs on a golden cloud. All at once, however, one of the cherubic multitude pulled off his white gown, thus transforming himself before my very eyes into a commonplace youth of the day, in modern frock-coat and trousers of a de cidedly provincial cut. This absurd little incident, I verily believe, had a sinister effect in putting me at odds with the proper influences of the Cathedral, nor could I quite recover a suitable frame of mind during my stay there. But, emerging into the open air, I began to be sensible that I had left a magnificent interior behind me, and I have never quite lost the perception and enjoyment of it in these intervening years. A large space in the immediate neighborhood of the Cathedral is called the Close, and comprises beautifully kept lawns and a shadowy walk, bordered by the dwell ings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the diocese. All this row of episcopal, canonical, and clerical residences, 152 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. has an air of the deepest quiet, repose, and well-pro tected, though not inaccessible seclusion. They seemed capable of including everything that a saint could desire, and a great many more things than most of us sinners generally succeed in acquiring. Their most marked fea ture is a dignified comfort, looking as if no disturbance or vulgar intrusiveness could ever cross their thresholds, encroach upon their ornamented lawns, or straggle into me beautiful gardens that surround them with flower- oeds and rich clumps of shrubbery. The episcopal palace is a stately mansion of stone, built somewhat in the Italian style, and bearing on its front the figures 1687, as the date of its erection. A large edifice of brick, which, if I remember, stood next to the palace, I took to be the residence of the second dignitary of the Cathedral ; and, in that case, it must have been the youthful home of Addison, whose father was Dean of Lichfield. I tried to fancy his figure on the delightful walk that extends in front of those priestly abodes, from which and the interior lawns it is separated by an open work iron fence, lined with rich old shrubbery, and over arched by a minster-aisle of venerable trtes. This path is haunted by the shades of famous personages who have formerly trodden it. Johnson must have teen familiar with it, both as a boy, and in his subsequent visits to Lich field, an illustrious old man. Miss Seward, connected with so many literary reminiscences, lived in one of the adjacent houses. Tradition says that it was a favorite spot of Major Andre, who used to pace to and fro under these trees, waiting, perhaps, to catch a last angel-glimpse of Honoria Sneyd, before he crossed the ocean to en counter his dismal doom from an American court-martial LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 153 David Garrick, no doubt, scampered along the palh in his boyish days, and, if he was an early student of the drama, must often have thought of those two airy char acters of the " Beaux Stratagem," Archer and Aimwell, who, on this very ground, after attending service at tho Cathedral, contrive to make acquaintance with the ladies of the comedy. These creatures of mere fiction have a.* positive a substance now as the sturdy old figure of John son himself. They live, while realities have died. The shadowy walk still glistens with their gold-embroidered memories. Seeking for Johnson s birthplace, I found it in St. Mary s Square, which is not so much a square as the mere widening of a street. The house is tall aad thin, of three stories, with a square front and a roof rising steep and high. On a side-view, the building looks as if it had been cut in two in the midst, there being no slope of the roof on that side. A ladder slanted against the wall, and a painter was giving a livelier hue to the plaster. In a corner-room of the basement, where old Michael Johnson may be supposed to have sold books, is now what we should call a dry-goods store, or, accord ing to the English phrase, a mercer s and haberdasher s shop. The house has a private entrance on a cross- street, the door being accessible by several much worn stone-steps, which are bordered by an iron balustrade. I set my foot on the steps and laid my hand on the balus trade, where Johnson s hand and foot must many a time have been, and ascending to the door, I knocked once, and again, and again, and got no admittance. Going round to the shop-entrance, I tried to open it, but found it as fast bolted as the gate of Paradise. It is mortify- 154 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. ing to be so balked in one s little enthusiasms ; but look ing round in quest of somebody to make inquiries of, 1 was a good deal consoled by the sight of Dr. Johnson himself, who happened, just at that moment, to be sitting at his ease nearly in the middle of St. Mary s Square, with his face turned towards his father s house. Of course, it being almost fourscore years since the doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh, together with the ponderous melancholy that had so long weighed him down, the intelligent reader will at once comprehend that he was marble in his substance, and seated in a marble chair, on an elevated stone-pedestal. In short, it was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, and placed here in 1838, at the expense of Dr. Law, the reverend chancel lor of the Diocese. The figure is colossal (though perhaps not much more so than the mountainous doctor himself) and looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity of aspect, very like in feature to Sir Joshua Reynolds s portrait of John son, but calmer and sweeter in expression. Several big books are piled up beneath his chair, and, if I mistake not, he holds a volume in his hand, thus blinking forth at the world out of his learned abstraction, owl-like, yet benevolent at heart. The statue is immensely massive, vast ponderosity of stone, not finely spiritualized, nor, indeed, fully humanized, but rather resembling a great gtone-boulder than a man. You must look with the eyes of faith and sympathy, or possibly, you might lose the human being altogether, and find only a big stone within your mental grasp. On the pedestal are three bas-reliefs. In the first, Johnson is represented as hardly more than LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 155 a baby, bestriding an old man s shoulders, resting his chin on the bald head which he embraces with his little arms, and listening earnestly to the high-church eloquence of Dr. Sacheverell. In the second tablet, he is seen rid ing to school on the shoulders of two of his comrades, while another boy supports him in the rear. The third bas-relief possesses, to my mind, a great deal of pathos, to which my appreciative faculty is probably the more alive, because I have always been profoundly impressed by the incident here commemorated, and long ago tried to tell it for the behoof of childish readers. It shows Johnson in the market-place of Uttoxeter, doing penance for an act of disobedience to his father, com mitted fifty years before. He stands bare-headed, a venerable figure, and a countenance extremely sad and woe-begone, with the wind and rain driving hard against him, and thus helping to suggest to the spectator the gloom of his inward state. Some market-people and children gaze awe-stricken into his face, and an aged man and woman, with clasped and uplifted hands, seem to be praying for him. These latter personages (whose introduction by the artist is none the less effective, be cause, in queer proximity, there are some commodities of market-day in the shape of living ducks and dead poultry,) I interpreted to represent the spirits of John son s father and mother, lending what aid they could t lighten his half-century s burden of remorse. I had never heard of the above-described piece of sculpture before ; it appears to have no reputation as a work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves any. For me, however, it did as much as sculpture could, un der the circumstances, even if the artist of the Libyan 156 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my interest in the sturdy old Englishman, and particularly by freshening my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic ten derness in the incident of the penance. So, the next day, I left Lichfield for Uttoxeter, on one of the few purely sentimental pilgrimages that I ever undertook, to see the very spot where Johnson had stood. Boswell, I think, speaks of the town (its name is pronounced Yute- oxeter) as being about nine miles off from Lichfield, but the county-map would indicate a greater distance ; and by rail, passing from one line to another, it is as much as eighteen miles. I have always had an idea of old Michael Johnson sending his literary merchandise by carrier s wagon, journeying to Uttoxeter a-foot on mar ket-day morning, selling books through the busy hours, and returning to Lichfield at night. This could not pos sibly have been the case. Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects that I saw, with a green field or two between them and me, were the tower and gray steeple of a church, rising among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. A very short walk takes you from the station up into the town. It had been my previous impression that the market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately roundabout the church; and, if I remember the narrative aright, Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes his father s book-stall as standing in the market-place, close beside the sacred edifice. It is impossible for me to say what changes may have occurred in the topography of the town, during almost a century and a half since Michael Johnson retired from business, and ninety years, at least, since his son s penance was performed. But the church LICHF1ELD AND UTTOXETER. 157 has now merely a street of ordinary width passing around it, while the market-place, though near at hand, neither forms a part of it nor is really contiguous, nor would its throng and bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and surge against the churchyard and the old gray tower. Nevertheless, a walk of a minute or two brings a person from the centre of the market-place to the church-door ; and Michael Johnson might very conveniently have located his stall and laid out his literary ware in the corner at the tower s base ; better there, indeed, than in the busy centre of an agricultural market. But the pic turesque arrangement and full impressiveness of the story absolutely require that Johnson shall not have done his penance in a corner, ever so little retired, but shall have been the very nucleus of the crowd the midmost man of the market-place a central image of Memory and Remorse, contrasting with and overpowering the petty materialism around him. He himself, having the force to throw vitality and truth into what persons differently constituted might reckon a mere external ceremony, and an absurd one, could not have failed to see this necessity. I am resolved, therefore, that the true site of Dr. Johnson s penance was in the middle of the market place. That important portion of the town is a rather spacious and irregularly shaped vacuity, surrounded by houses and shops, some of them old, with red-tiled roofs, others wearing a pretence of newness, but probably as old in their inner substance as the rest. The people of Uttox eter seemed very idle in the warm summer-day, and were scattered in little groups along the side-walks, leisurely chatting with one another, and often turning 108 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. about to take a deliberate stare at my humble self msomuch that I felt as if my genuine sympathy for the illustrious penitent, and my many reflections about him, must have imbued me with some of his own singularity of mien. If their great-grandfathers were such redoubt able starers in the Doctor s day, his penance was no light one. This curiosity indicates a paucity of visitors to tho little town, except for market purposes, and I question if Uttoxeter ever saw an American before. The only other thing that greatly impressed me was the abundance of public-houses, one at every step or two: Red Lions, White Harts, Bulls Heads, Mitres, Cross Keys, and 1 know not what besides. These are probably for the accommodation of the farmers and peasantry of the neighborhood on market-day, and content themselves with a very meagre business on other days of the week. At any rate, I was the only guest in Uttoxeter at the period of my visit, and had but an infinitesimal portion of patronage to distribute among such a multitude of inns. The reader, however, will possibly be scandalized to learn what was the first, and, indeed, the only impor tant affair that I attended to, after coming so far to indulge a solemn and high emotion, and standing now on the very spot where my pious errand should have been consummated. I stepped into one of the rustic hostle- ries and got my dinner, bacon and greens, some mutton- chops, juicier and more delectable than all America could serve up at the President s table, and a gooseberry pud ding : a sufficient meal for six yeomen, and good enough for a prince, besides a pitcher of foaming ale, the whole at the pitiful small charge of eighteenpence ! Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me, for nobody had LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 159 a heartier faith in beef and mutton than himself. And as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my dinner, it was the wisest thing I had done that day. A sensible man had better not let himself be betrayed into these attempts to realize the things which he has dreamed about, and which, when they cease to be purely ideal in his mind, will have lost the truest of their truth, the lofti est and profoundest part of their power over his sym pathies. Facts, as we really find them, whatever poetry they may involve, are covered with a stony excrescence of prose, resembling the crust on a beautiful sea-shell, and they never show their most delicate and divinest colors until we shall have dissolved away their grosser actualities by steeping them long in a powerful men struum of thought. And seeking to actualize them again, we do but renew the crust. If this were other wise if the moral sublimity of a great fact depended in any degree on its garb of external circumstances, things which change and decay it could not itself be immortal and ubiquitous, and only a brief point of time and a little neighborhood would be spiritually nourished by its grandeur and beauty. Such were a few of the reflections which I mingled with my ale, as I remember to have seen an old quaffer of that excellent liquor stir up his cup with a sprig of some bitter and fragrant herb. Meanwhile I found my self still haunted by a desire to get a definite result out of my visit to Uttoxeter. The hospitable inn was called the Nag s Head, and standing beside the market-place, was as likely as any other to have entertained old Michael Johnson in the days when he used to come hither to sell books. He, perhaps, had dined on bacon 160 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. and g7TPns, and drunk his ale, and smoked his pipe, in the very room where I now sat, which was a low, ancient room, c^**tainly much older than Queen "Anne s time, with a red-brick floor, and a white-washed ceiling, trav ersed by bare, rough beams, the whole in the rudest fashion, but extremely neat. Neither did it lack orna ment, the walls being hung with colored engravings of prize oxen and other pretty prints, and the mantel-piece adorned with earthenware figures of shepherdesses in the Arcadian taste of long ago. Michael Johnson s eyes might have rested on that self-same earthen image, to ex amine which more closely I had just crossed the brick pavement of the room. And, sitting down again, still as I sipped my ale, I glanced through the open window into the sunny market-place, and wished that I could hon estly fix on one spot rather than another, as likely to have been the holy site where Johnson stood to do his penance. How strange and stupid it is that tradition should not have marked and kept in mind the very place ! How shameful (nothing less than that) that there should be no local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and touchmg a passage as can be cited out of any human life ! No inscription of it, almost as sacred as a verse of Scripture on the wall of the church ! No statue of the venerable and illustrious penitent in the market-place to throw a wholesome awe over its earthliness, its frauds and petty wrongs of which the benumbed fingers of conscience can make no record, its selfish competition of each man with his brother or his neighbor, its traffic of soul-substance for a little worldly gain ! Such a statue, if the piety of the people did not rai*e H, nuVh* almost have been ex- LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 161 pected to grow up out of the pavement of its own accord on the spot that had been watered by the rain that dripped from Johnson s garments, mingled with his re morseful tears. Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was told that there were individuals in the town who could have shown me the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson performed his penance. I was assured, moreover, that sufficient inter est was felt in the subject to have induced certain local discussions as to the expediency of erecting a memorial. With all deference to my polite informant, I surmise that there is a mistake, and decline, without further and pre cise evidence, giving credit to either of the above state ments. The inhabitants know nothing, as a matter of general interest, about the penance, and care nothing for the scene of it. If the clergyman of the parish, for ex ample, had ever heard of it, would he not have used the theme, time and again, wherewith to work tenderly and profoundly on the souls committed to his charge ? - If parents were familiar with it, would they not teach it to their young ones at the fireside, both to insure reverence to their own gray hairs, and to protect the children from such unavailing regrets as Johnson bore upon his heart for fifty years ? If the site were ascertained, would not the pavement thereabouts be worn with reverential foot steps ? Would not every town-born child be able to direct the pilgrim thither? While waiting at the sta tion, before my departure, I asked a boy who stood near me, an intelligent and gentlemanly lad, twelve or thir teen years old, whom I should take to be a clergyman s son. I asked him if he had ever heard the story of T>r. Johnson, how he stood an hour doing penance near 11 162 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. that church, the spire of which rose before us. The boy stared and answered, No!" " Were you bora in Uttoxeter ? " " Yes." I inquired if no circumstance such as I had mentioned was known or talked about among the inhabitants. " No," said the boy ; " not that I ever heard of." Just think of the absurd little town, knowing nothing of the only memorable incident which ever happened within its boundaries since the old Britons built it, this Bad and lovely story, which consecrates the spot (for I found it holy to my contemplation, again, as soon as it lay behind me) in the heart of a stranger from three thou sand miles over the sea ! It but confirms what I have been saying, that sublime and beautiful facts are best un derstood when ethereplvwl by PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. WE set out at a little past eleven, and made our first Btage to Manchester. We were by this time sufficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright and sunny one ; although the May sunshine was mingled with water, as it were, and distempered with a very bitter east wind. Lancashire is a dreary county, (all, at least, except its liilly portions,) and I have never passed through it with out wishing myself anywhere but in that particular spot where 1 then happened to be. A few places along our route were historically interesting ; as, for example, Bol- ton, wliich was the scene of many remarkable events in the Parliamentary War, and in the market-square of which one of the Earls of Derby was beheaded. We saw, along the wayside, the never-failing green fields, hedges, and other monotonous features of an ordinary English landscape. There were little factory villages, too, or larger towns, with their tall chimneys, and their pennons of black smoke, their ugliness of brick-work, and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, whicl seems to be the only kind of stuff which Nature cannot take back to herself and resolve into the elements, when man has thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and effete mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of iron mongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are hardly made decent with a little grass. 164 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Shef field and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather better than that through which we had hitherto passed, though still by no means very striking; for (except in the show-districts, such as the Lake country, or Derby shire) English scenery is not particularly well worth ooking at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. It has a real, homely charm of its own, no doubt ; and the rich verdure, and the thorough finish added by human art, are perhaps as attractive to an American eye as any stronger feature could be. Our journey, however, between Man chester and Sheffield was not through a rich tract of country, but along a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending straight as a rampart, and across black moor lands with here and there a plantation of trees. Some times there were long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, and desolate, conveying the very impression which the reader gets from many passages of Miss Bronte s novels, and still more from those of her two sisters. Old stone or brick farm-houses, and, once in a while, an old church- tower, were visible: but these are almost too common objects to be noticed in an English landscape. On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the country is seen quite amiss, because it was never intended to be looked at from any point of view in that straight ine ; so that it is like looking at the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and footpaths were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the physiognomy of the country ; and, furthermore, every object within view of them had some subtile reference to their curves and un dulations : but the line of a railway is perfectly artificial, PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 165 and puts all precedent things at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the cause what it may, there is seldom any thing worth seeing within the scope of a railway travel ler s eye ; and if there were, it requires an alert marks man to take a flying shot at the picturesque. At one of the stations (it was near a village of ancient aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide Yorkshire moor) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed to have just alighted from the train. She caught my atten tion by a singular movement of the head, not once only, but continually repeated, and at regular intervals, as if she were making a stern and solemn protest against some action that developed itself before her eyes, and were foreboding terrible disaster, if it should be persisted in. Of course, it was nothing more than a paralytic or ner vous affection ; yet one might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gentlewoman s presence, either against herself or somebody whom she loved still better. Her features had a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep them quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to paralytic move ment. The slow, regular, and inexorable character of the motion her look of force and self-control, which had the appearance of rendering it voluntary, while yet it was so fateful have stamped this poor lady s face and gesture into my memory; so that, some dark day or other, I am afraid she will reproduce herself in a dis mal romance. The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous town of razors 106 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its own diffusing My impressions of it are extremely vague and misty, or, rather, smoky: for Sheffield seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or Birmingham, smokier than all England besides, unless Newcastle be the ex ception. It might have been Pluto s own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor; and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the Valley of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth of a mountainous hill. After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sher wood Forest, not consisting, however, of thousand- year oaks, extant from Robin Hood s days, but of young and thriving plantations, which will require a century or two of slow English growth to give them much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam s property lies in this neigh borhood, and probably his castle was hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off. Farther onward the country grew quite level around us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lincolnshire ; and shortly after six o clock we caught the first glimpse of the Cathedral towers, though they loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived idea of them. But, as we drew nearer, the great edifice began to assert itself, making us ac knowledge it to be larger than our receptivity could take in. At the railway-station we found no cab, (it being an unknown vehicle in Lincoln,) but only an omnibus be longing to the Saracen s Head, which the driver recom mended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 167 accordingly, Tt received us hospitably, and looked com fortable enough ; though, like the hotels of most old Eng lish towns, it had a musty fragrance of antiquity, such as I have smelt in a seldom-opened London church where the broad-aisle is paved with tombstones. The house was of an ancient fashion, the entrance into its interior court-yard being through an arch, in the side of which ia the door of the hotel. There are long corridors, an in tricate arrangement of passages, and an up-and-down meandering of staircases, amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who had g< no astray a hundred years ago, and was still seeking for his bedroom while the rest of his generation were in their graves. There is no exaggerating the confusion of mhid that seizes upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of a great old-fashioned English inn. This hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln, and within a very short distance of one of the ancient city-gates, which is arched across the public way, with a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either side ; the whole, a gray, time-gnawn, ponderous, shadowy struc ture, through the dark vista of which you look into the Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains many antique peculiarities ; though, unquestionably, Eng lish domestic architecture has lost its most impressive features, in the course of the last century. In this re spect, there are finer old towns than Lincoln : Chester, for instance, and Shrewsbury, which last is unusually rich in those quaint and stately edifices where the gentry of the shire used to make their winter-abodes, in a pro vincial metropolis. Almost everywhere, nowadays, there is a monotony of modern brick 01 stuccoed fronts, hid 108 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. ing houses that are older than ever, but obliterating the picturesque antiquity of the street. Between seven and eight o clock (it being still broad daylight in these long English days) we set out to pay a preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathedral. Pass ing through the Stone Bow, as the city-gate close by is called, we ascended a street which grew steeper and nar rower as we advanced, till at last it got to be the steepest street I ever climbed, so steep that any carriage, if left to itself, would rattle downward much faster than it could possibly be drawn up. Being almost the only hill in Lin colnshire, th<3 inhabitants seem disposed to make the most of it. The houses on each side had no very remarkable aspect, except one with a stone portal and carved orna ments, which is now a dwelling-place for poverty stricken people, but may have been an aristocratic abode in the days of the Norman kings, to whom its style of architec ture dates back. This is called the Jewess s House, hav ing been inhabited by a woman of that faith who was hanged six hundred years ago. And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Cer tainly, the Bishop and clergy of Lincoln ought not to be fat men, but of very spiritual, saint-like, almost angelic habit, if it be a frequent part of their ecclesiastical duty to climb this hill ; for it is a real penance, and was prob ably performed as such, and groaned over accordingly, ir monkish times. Formerly, on the day of his installation the Bishop used to ascend the hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invigorated by looking upward to the grandeur that was to console him for the humility of his approach. We, likewise, were beckoned onward by glimpses of the Cathedral towers, and, finally, attaining PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 169 an open square on the summit, we saw an old Gothic gateway to the left hand, and another to the right. Tho latter had apparently been a part of the exterior defences of the Cathedral, at a time when the edifice was fortified The west front rose behind. We passed through one oi the side-arches of the Gothic portal, and found ourselves in the Cathedral Close, a wide, level space, where the great old Minster has fair room to sit, looking down on the ancient structures that surround it, all of which, in former days, were the habitations of its dignitaries and officers. Some of them are still occupied as such, though others are in too neglected and dilapidated a state to seem worthy of so splendid an establishment. Unless it bo Salisbury Close, however, (which is incomparably rich as regards the old residences that belong to it,) I remem ber no more comfortably picturesque precincts round any other cathedral. But, in truth, almost every cathedral close, in turn, has seemed to ine the loveliest, cosiest, safest, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most en joyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of mortal man contrived for himself. How delightful, ta combine all this with the service of the temple ! Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown-stone, which appears either to have been largely restored, or else does not assume the hoary, crumbly surface that gives such a venerable aspect to most of the ancient churches and castles in England. In many parts, the recent restorations are quite evident; but other, and much the larger portions, can scarcely have been touched for centuries : for there are still the gargoyles, perfect, or with broken noses, as the case may be, but showing that variety and fertility of grotesque extravagance which no 170 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. modern imitation can effect. There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all over the walls : most of them empty, but a few containing the lamentable rem nants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved images, insomuch that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads ! Jn spite of all dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, be ing covered from massive base to airy summit with the minutest details of sculpture and carving : at least, it was so once ; and even now the spiritual impression of its beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have seen a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so minutely that it must have cost him half a lifetime of labor ; and this cathedral front seems to have been elaborated in a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. Not that the re sult is in the least petty, but miraculously grand, and all the more so for the faithful beauty of the smallest de tails. An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and called to in quire if we wished to go into the Cathedral ; but as (here would have been a dusky twilight beneath its roof, like the antiquity that has sheltered itself within, we de clined for the present. So we merely walked round the exterior, and thought it more beautiful than that of York ; though, on recollection, I hardly deem it so majes tic and mighty as that. It is vain to attempt a descrip- PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 171 tion, 3r seek even to record the feeling which the edifice inspires. It does not impress the beholder as an inani mate object, but as something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring life of its own, a creation which man did not build, though in some way or other it is con nected with him, and kindred to human nature. In short, I fall straightway to talking nonsense, when I try to ex press my inner sense of this and other cathedrals. While we stood in the close, at the eastern end of the Minster, the clock chimed the quarters ; and then Great Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it was eight o clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest accents that I ever heard from any bell, slow, and solemn, and allow ing the profound reverberations of each stroke to die away before the next one fell. It was still broad day light in that upper region of the town, and would be so for some time longer ; but the evening atmosphere was getting sharp and cool. We therefore descended the steep street, our younger companion running before us, and gathering such headway that I fully expected him to break his head against some projecting wall. In the morning we took a fly, (an English term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle,) and drove up to the Min ster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger ; but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, especially beneath the great central tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a profess edly architectural description, there is but one set of 172 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. phrases in which to talk of all the cathedrals in "England and elsewhere. They are alike in their great features an acre or two of stone flags for a pavement ; rows of vast columns supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky height ; great windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with ancient or modern stained glass ; and an elaborately carved screen between the nave and chancel, breaking the vista that might else be of such glorious length, and which is fur ther choked up by a massive organ, in spite of which obstructions, you catch the broad, variegated glimmer of the painted east window, where a hundred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. Behind the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop s throne, the pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out the Holy of Holies. Nor must we for get the range of chapels, (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which have now lost their individual consecra tion,) nor the old monuments of kings, warriors, and prel ates, in the side-aisles of the chancel. In close conti guity to the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter- House, which, here at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is sup ported by one central pillar rising from the floor, and putting forth branches like a tree, to hold up the roof. Adjacent to the Chapter-House are the cloisters, extend ing round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered tomb stones, the more antique of which have had their inscrip tions half obliterated by the feet of monks taking their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, five hundred years ago. Some of these old burial-stones, although with ancient crosses engraved upon them, have been made to serve as memorials to dead people of very recent date. PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 173 111 the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bishops and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone purporting to be the monument of Catherine Swineferd, wife of John of Gaunt ; also, here was the shrine of the little Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled to have been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The Cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments ; for it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at the Reformation and in Cromwell s time. This latter iconoclast is in especially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of most of the old churches which I have visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures, and the ancestral me morials of great families, quite at their wicked and ple beian pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most ex quisite and marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, anil grape-vines, and miracles of stone-work twined about arches, as if the material had been as soft as wax in the cunning sculptor s hands, the leaves being represented with all their veins, so that you would almost think it petrified Nature, for which he sought to steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were those grotesque faces which al ways grin at you from the projections of monkish archi tecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless per mitted to throw in something ineffably absurd. Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to the utmost degree of lustre ; nor is it unreasonable to think that the artists would have taken these further pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor in working out their conceptions to the extremest point. 174 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. But, at present, the whole interior of the Cathedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the very meanest hue imaginable, and for which somebody s soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo. In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which the rloisters perambulate is a small, mean, brick building, with a locked door. Our guide, I forgot to say that we had been captured by a verger, in black, and with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect, our guide unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of steps. At the bottom appeared what I should have taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded oil-carpeting, which might originally have been painted of a rather gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessellated pavement, made of small colored bricks, or pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered here, and has not been med dled with, further than by removing the superincumbent earth and rubbish. Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded about the interior of the Cathedral, except that we saw a place where the stone pavement had been worn away by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as they knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin. Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of more venerable appearance than we had heretofore seen, bordered with houses, the high, peaked roofs of which were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us to a Ro man arch, which was once the gateway of a fortification, and has been striding across the English street ever since the latter was a faint village-path, and for centuries be fore. The arch is about four hundred yards from the Cathedral ; and it is to be noticed that there are Roman PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 175 remains in all this neighborhood, some above ground, and doubtless innumerable more beneath it ; for, as in ancient Rome itself, an inundation of accumulated soil seems to have swept over what was the surface of that earlier day. The gateway which I am speaking about is probably buried to a third of its height, and perhaps has as perfect a Roman pavement (if sought for at the origi nal depth) as that which runs beneath the Arch of Titus. It is a rude and massive structure, and seems as stalwart now as it could have been two thousand years ago ; and though Timj has gnawed it externally, he has made what amends he could by crowning its rough and broken sum mit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts of yellow flowers on the projections up and down the sides. There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the Conqueror, in pretty close proximity to the Cathedral ; but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door of wood, and we were denied admittance because some part of the precincts are used as a prison. We now rambled about on the broad back of the hill, which, besides the Minster and ruined castle, is the site of some stately and queer old houses, and of many mean little hovels. I sus pect that all or most of the life of the present day has subsided into the lower town, and that only priests, poor people, and prisoners dwell in these upper regions. In the wide, dry moat at the base of the castle-Tvall are clustered whole colonies of small houses, some of brick, Out the larger portion built of old stones which once made part of the Norman keep, or of Roman structures that existed before the Conqueror s castle was ever dreamed about. They are like toadstools that spring up irom the mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are. 176 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. they add wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the scene being quite as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other flowering plants, in which its foundations were completely hidden. After walking quite round the castle, I made an ex cursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleasant and level road bordered with dwellings of various char acter. One or two were houses of gentility, with de lightful and shadowy lawns before them; many had those high, red-tiled roofs, ascending into acutely pointed ga bles, which seem to belong to the same epoch as some of the edifices in our own earlier towns ; and there were pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and rural, with hedges so dense and high, fencing them in, as almost to hide them up to the eaves of their thatched roofs. In front of one of these I saw various images, crosses, and relics of antiquity, among which were fragments of old Catholic tombstones, disposed by way of ornament. We now went home to the Saracen s Head ; and as the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself re leased from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at rest ; so at length I found myself compelled to climb the hill again, between daylight and dusk. A mist was now hovering about the upper height of the great central tower, so as to dim and half obliterate its battlements and pinnacles, even while I stood in the close beneath it. It was the most impressive view that I had had. The PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 177 whole lower part of the structure was seen \\ith perfect distinctness ; but at the very summit the mist was so dense as to form an actual cloud, as well defined as ever I saw resting on a mountain-top. Really and literally, here was a " cloud-capt tower." The entire Cathedral, too, transfigured itself into a richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever. The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exterior is certainly far more beautiful than that of York Min ster ; and its finer effect is due, I think, to the many peaks in which the structure ascends, and to the pinnacles which, as it were, repeat and reecho them into the sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square and angular in its general effect ; but in this at Lincoln there is a con tinual mystery of variety, so that at every glance you are aware of a change, and a disclosure of something new, yet working an harmonious development of what you have heretofore seen. The west front is unspeakably grand, and may be read over and over again forever, and still show undetected meanings, like a great, broad page of marvel lous writing in black-letter, so many sculptured orna ments there are, blossoming out before your eyes, and gray statues that have grown there since you looked last, and empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies beneath which carved images used to be, and where they will show themselves again, if you gaze long enough. But I will not say another word about the Cathedral. We spent the rest of the day within the sombre pre cincts of the Saracen s Head, reading yesterday s "Times," " The Guide-Book of Lincoln," and " The Directory of the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the weather was, the street beneath our window was enlivened with a great 12 !78 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. bustle and turmoil of people all the evening, because It was Saturday night, and they had accomplished their week s toil, received their wages, and were making their small purchases against Sunday, and enjoying themselves as well as they knew how. A band of music passed to and fro several times, with the rain-drops falling into the mouth of the brazen trumpet and pattering on the bass- drum ; a spirit-shop, opposite the hotel, had a vast run of custom ; and a coffee-dealer, in the open air, found occasional vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold water that dripped into the cups. The whole breadth of the street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge across the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and humming with human life. Observing in the Guide Book that a steamer runs on the River Witham between Lincoln and Boston, I in quired of the waiter, and learned that she was to start on Monday at ten o clock. Thinking it might be an inter esting trip, and a pleasant variation of our customary mode of travel, we determined to make the voyage. The Witham flows through Lincoln, crossing the main street under an arched bridge of Gothic construction, a little below the Saracen s Head. It has more the appearance of a canal than of a river, in its passage through the town, being bordered with hewn stone masonwork on each side, and provided with one or two locks. The eteamer proved to be small, dirty, and altogether incon venient The early morning had been bright ; but the sky now lowered upon us with a sulky English temper, and we had not long put off before we felt an ugly wind from the German Ocean blowing right in our teeth. There were a number of passengers on board, country- PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 179 people, such as travel by third class on the railway , for, I suppose, nobody but ourselves ever dreamt of voyaging by the steamer for the sake of what he might happen upon in the way of river scenery. We bothered a good while about getting through a preliminary lock ; nor, when fairly under way, did we ever accomplish, I think, six miles an hour. Constant delays were caused, moreover, by stopping to take up passengers and freight, not at regular landing-places, but anywhere along the green banks. The scenery was identical with that of the railway, because the latter runs along by the riverside through the whole distance, or nowhere departs from it except to make a short cut across some sinuosity ; so that our only advantage lay in the drawling, snail-like slothfulness of our progress, which allowed us time enough and to spare for the ob jects along the shore. Unfortunately, there was nothing, or next to nothing, to be seen, the country being one unvaried level over the whole thirty miles of our voyage, not a hill in sight, either near or far, except that soli tary one on the summit of which we had left Lincoln Cathedral. And the Cathedral was our landmark for four hours or more, and at last rather faded out than was hidden by any intervening object. It would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough, if the rough and bitter wind had not blown directly in our faces, and chilled us through, in spite of the sunshine that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain. These English east-winds, which prevail from February till June, are greater nuisances than the east-wind of our own Atlantic coast, although they do not bring mist and etorm, as with us, but some of the sumiest weather that 180 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. Englid sees. Under their influence, the sky smiles and is villanous. The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had an English character that was abundantly worth our look ing at. A green luxuriance of early grass; old, high- roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone barns and ricks of hay and grain ; ancient villages, with the square gray tower of a church seen afar over the level country, amid the cluster of red roofs ; here and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees, surrounding what was perhaps an Elizabethan hall, though it looked more like the abode of some rich yeoman. Once, too, we saw the tower of a medieval castle, that of Tattershall, built by a Crom well, but whether of the Protector s family I cannot tell. But the gentry do not appear to have settled multitu- dinously in this tract of country ; nor is it to be won dered at, since a lover of the picturesque would as soon think of settling in Holland. The river retains its canal- like aspect all along ; and only in the latter part of its course does it become more than wide enough for the little steamer to turn itself round, at broadest, not more than twice that width. The only memorable incident of our voyage happened when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves that lashed the banks on either side. I saw the immi nence of the catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the boat to witness its consummation, since I could not pos sibly avert it. The poor ducklings had uttered their baby-quacks, and striven with all their tiny might to escape : four of them, I believe, were washed aside and PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 181 t/nown off unhurt from the steamer s prow ; but the fifth must have gone under the whole length of the keel, and never could have come up alive. At last, in mid-afternoon, we beheld the tall tower of Saint Botolph s Church (three hundred feet high, the same elevation as the tallest tower of Lincoln Cathedral) looming in the distance. At about half-past four we cached Boston, (which name has been shortened, in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly English pro nunciation, from Botolph s town,) and were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market-place. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor one enough ; and we were shown into a small, stifled parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale tobacco-smoke, tobacco-smoke two days old, for the waiter assured us that the room had not more recently been fumigated. An exceedingly grim waiter he was, apparently a genuine descendant of the old Puritans of this English Boston, and quite as sour as those who people the daughter-city in New England. Our parlor had the one recommendation of looking into the market-place, and affording a sidelong glimpse of the tall spire and noble old church. Tn my first ramble about the town, chance led me to the riverside, at that quarter where the port is situated. Here were long buildings of an old-fashioned aspect, seemingly warehouses, with windows in the high, steep roofs. The Custom-House found ample accommodation within an ordinary dwelling-house. Two or three large schooners were moored along the river s brink, which had here a stone margin; another large and handsome schooner was evidently just finished, rigged and equipped for her first voyage ; the rudiments of another were on J82 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. the stocks, in a shipyard bordering on the river. Still another, while I was looking on, came up the stream, and lowered her mainsail, from a foreign voyage. An old man on the bank hailed her and inquired about her cargo ; but the Lincolnshire people have such a queer way of talking English that I could not understand the reply. Farther down the river, I saw a brig, approach ing rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd impression of bustle, and sluggishness, and decay, and a remnant of wholesome life ; and I could not but contrast it with the mighty and populous activity of our own Bos ton, which was once the feeble infant of this old English town ; the latter, perhaps, almost stationary ever since that day, as if the birth of such an offspring had taken away its own principle of growth. I thought of Long Wharf, and Faneuil Hall, and Washington Street, and the Great Elm, and the State House, and exulted lustily, but yet began to feel at home in this good old town, for its very name s sake, as I never had before felt, in England. The next morning we came out in the early sunshine, (the sun must have been shining nearly four hours, how ever, for it was after eight o clock,) and strolled about the streets, like people who had a right to be there. The market-place of Boston is an irregular square, into one end of which the chancel of the church slightly projects. The gates of the churchyard were open and free to all passengers, and the common footway of the towns-people seems to lie to and fro across it. It is paved, according to English custom, with flat tomb stones ; and there are also raised or altar tombs, some of which have armorial bearings on them. One clergy man has caused himself and his wife to be b iried right PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 183 in the middle of the stone-bordered path that traverses the churchyard; so that not an individual of the thou sands who pass along this public way can help trampling over him or her. The scene, nevertheless, was very cheerful in the morning sun : people going about their business in the day s primal freshness, which was just as fresh here as in younger villages ; children, with milk- pails, loitering over the burial-stones ; school-boys play ing leap-frog with the altar-tombs ; the simple old town preparing itself for the day, which would be like myriads of other days that had passed over it, but yet would be worth living through. And down on the churchyard, where were buried many generations whom it remem bered in their time, looked the stately tower of Saint Botolph ; and it was good to see and think of such an age-long giant, intermarrying the present epoch with a distant past, and getting quite imbued with human nature by being so immemorially connected with men s familiar knowledge and homely interests. It is a noble tower ; and the jackdaws evidently have pleasant homes in their hereditary nests among its topmost windows, and live de lightful lives, flitting and cawing about its pinnacles and flying buttresses. I should almost like to be a jackdaw myself, for the sake of living up there. In front of the church, not more than twenty yards off, and with a low brick wall between, flows the River \Vitham. On the hither bank a fisherman was washing his boat ; and another skiff, with her sail lazily half- twisted, lay on the opposite strand. The stream, at this point, is about of such width, that, if the tall tower were to tumble over flat on its face, its top-stone might per- baps reach to the middle of the channel. On the farther 184 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON- shore there is a line of antique-looking houses, with roofs of red tile, and windows opening out of them, some of these dwellings being so ancient, that the Rev erend Mr. Cotton, subsequently our first Boston minister, must have seen them with his own bodily eyes, when he used to issue from the front-portal after service. Indeed, there must be very many houses here, and even some streets, that bear much the aspect that they did when the Puritan divine paced solemnly among them. In our rambles about town, we went into a booksel ler s shop to inquire if he had any description of Boston for sale. He offered me (or, rather, produced for in spection, not supposing that I would buy it) a quarto his tory of the town, published by subscription, nearly forty years ago. The bookseller showed himself a well-in formed and affable man, and a local antiquary, to whom a party of inquisitive strangers were a godsend. He had met with several Americans, who, at various times, had come on pilgrimages to this place, and he had been in corres pondence with others. Happening to have heard the name of one member of our party, he showed us great courtesy and kindness, and invited us into his inner domicile, where, as he modestly intimated, he kept a few articles which it might interest us to see. So we went with him through the shop, up-stairs, into the private part of his establishment ; and, really, it was one of the rarest ad ventures I ever met with, to stumble upon this treasure of a man, with his treasury of antiquities and curiosities, veiled behind the unostentatious front of a bookseller s shop, in a very moderate line of village business. The two up-stair rooms into which he introduced us were so crowded ^ith inestimable articles, that we were almost PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 185 afraid to stir, for fear of breaking some fragile thing that had been accumulating value for unknown centuries. The apartment was hung round with pictures and old engravings, many of which were extremely rare. Pre mising that he was going to show us something very curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room and re turned with a counterpane of fine linen, elaborately em broidered with silk, which so profusely covered the linen that the general effect was as if the main texture were silken. It was stained, and seemed very old, and had an ancient fragrance. It was wrought all over with birds and flowers in a most delicate style of needlework, and among other devices, more than once repeated, was the cipher, M. S., being the initials of one of the most un happy names that ever a woman bore. This quilt was embroidered by the hands of Mary Queen of Scots, dur ing her imprisonment at Fotheringay Castle ; and having evidently been a work of years, she had doubtless shed many tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts and abortive schemes into its texture, along with the birds and flowers. As a counterpart to this most pre cious relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork of a former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Cap tain Cook : it was a bag, cunningly made of some deli cate vegetable stuff, and ornamented with feathers. Next, he brought out a green silk waistcoat of very antique fashion, trimmed about the edges and pocket- holes with a rich and delicate embroidery of gold and silver. This (as the possessor of the treasure proved, by tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands) was once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth s Lord Burleigh : but that great statesman must have been a person of very 186 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. moderate girth in the chest and waist ; for the garment was hardly more than a comfortable fit for a boy of eleven, the smallest American of our party, who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat. Then, Mr. Porter produced some curiously engraved drinking-glasses, with a view of Saint Botolph s steeple on one of them, and other Boston edi fices, public or domestic, on the remaining two, very ad mirably done. These crystal goblets had been a present, long ago, to an old master of the Free School from his pupils ; and it is very rarely, I imagine, that a retired schoolmaster can exhibit such trophies of gratitude and affection, won from the victims of his birch rod. Our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected and wholly unexpectable thing after another, as if he were a magician, and had only to fling a private signal into the air, and some attendant imp would hand forth any strange relic we might choose to ask for. He was especially rich in drawings by the Old Masters, producing two or three, of exquisite delicacy, by Raphael, one by Salvator, a head by Rembrandt, and others, in chalk or pen-and-ink, by Giordano, Benvenuto Cellini, and hands almost as fa mous ; and besides what were shown us, there seemed to be an endless supply of these art-treasures in reserve. On the wall hung a crayon-portrait of Sterne, never en graved, representing him as a rather young man, bloom ing, and not uncomely : it was the worldly face of a man fond of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, odd expression that we see in his only engraved portrait. The picture is an original, and must needs be very valu able ; and we wish it might be prefixed to some new and worthier biography of a writer whose character the world has always treated with singular harshness, considering PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 187 how much it owes him. There was likewise a crayon- portrait of Sterne s wife, looking so haughty and un- amiable, that the wonder is, not that he ultimately left her, hut how he ever contrived to live a week with such an awful woman. After looking at these, and a great many more things than I can rememher, above stairs, we went down to a parlor, where tlu s wonderful bookseller opened an old cabinet, containing numberless drawers, and looking just fit to be the repository of such knick-knacks as were stored up in it. He appeared to possess more treasures than he himself knew of, or knew where to find ; but, rummaging here and there, he brought forth things new and old : rose-nobles, Victoria crowns, gold angels, double- sovereigns of George IV., two-guinea pieces of George II. ; a marriage-medal of the first Napoleon, only forty- five of which were ever struck off, and of which even the British Museum does not contain a specimen like this, in gold ; a brass medal, three or four inches in diameter, of a Roman emperor ; together with buckles, bracelets, amulets, and I know not what besides. There was a green silk tassel from the fringe of Queen Mary s bed at ITolyrood Palace. There were illuminated mis sals, antique Latin Bibles, and (what may seem of es pecial interest to the historian) a Secret-Book of Queen Elizabeth, in manuscript, written, for aught I know, by her own hand. On examination, however, it proved to contain, not secrets of state, but recipes for dishes, drinks, medicines, washes, and all such matters of house wifery, the toilet, and domestic quackery, among which we were horrified by the title of one of the nostrums, " How to kill a Fellow quickly " ! We never doubted 188 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. that bloody Queen Bess might often have had occasion for such a recipe, but wondered at her frankness, and at her attending to these anomalous necessities in such a methodical way. The truth is, we had read amiss, and the Queen had spelt amiss : the word was " Fellon," a Bort of whitlow, not " Fellow." Our hospitable friend now made us drink a glass of wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his cabinet ; and while sipping it, we ungratefully tried to excite hi* envy, by telling of various things, interesting to an an tiquary and virtuoso, which we had seen in the course of our travels about England. We spoke, for instance, of a missal bound in solid gold and set around with jewels, but of such intrinsic value as no setting could enhance, for it was exquisitely illuminated, throughout, by the hand of Raphael himself. We mentioned a little silver rase which once contained a portion of the heart of Louis XIV. nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner s horror and astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told about the black-letter prayer-book of King Charles the Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking which into our hands, it opened of itself at the Communion Service ; and there, on the left-hand page, appeared a spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yellowish or brownish hue : a drop of the King s blood had fallen there. Mr. Porter now accompanied us to the church, but first leading us to a vacant spot of ground where old John Cotton s vicarage had stood till a very short time since. According to our friend s description, it was a humble habitation, of the cottage order, built of brick, with a thatched roof. The site is now rudely fenced in, and PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 189 cultivated as a vegetable garden. In the right-hand aisle of the church there is an ancient chapel, which, at the time of our visit, was in process of restoration, and was to be dedicated to Mr. Cotton, whom these English peo ple consider as the founder of our American Boston. It would contain a painted memorial-window, in honor of the old Puritan minister. A festival in commemoration of the event was to take place in the ensuing July, to which I had myself received an invitation, but I knew too well the pains and penalties incurred by an invited guest at public festivals in England to accept it. It ought to be recorded, (and it seems to have made a very kindly impression on our kinsfolk here,) that five hun dred pounds had been contributed by persons in the United States, principally in Boston, towards the cost of the memorial-window, and the repair and restoration of the chapel. After we emerged from the chapel, Mr. Porter ap proached us with the vicar, to whom he kindly introduced us, and then took his leave. May a stranger s benedic tion rest upon him ! He is a most pleasant man ; rather, I imagine, a virtuoso than an antiquary ; for he seemed to value the Queen of Otaheite s bag as highly as Queen Mary s embroidered quilt, and to have an omnivorous appetite for everything strange and rare. Would that we could fill up his shelves and drawers (if there are any vacant spaces left) with the choicest trifles that have dropped out of Time s carpet-bag, or give him the carpet bag itself, to take out what he will ! The vicar looked about thirty years old, a gentleman, evidently assured of his position, (as clergymen of the Established Church invariably are,) comfortable and 190 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. well-to-do, a scholar and a Christian, and fit to be a bishop, knowing how to make the most of life without prejudice to the life to come. I was glad to see such a model English priest so suitably accommodated with an old English church. He kindly and courteously did the honors, showing us quite round the interior, giving us nil the information that we required, and then leaving us to the quiet enjoyment of what we came to see. The interior of Saint Botolph s is very fine and satis factory, as stately, almost, as a cathedral, and has been repaired so far as repairs were necessary in a chaste and noble style. The great eastern window is of modern painted glass, but is the richest, mellowest, and tenderest modern window that I have ever seen : the art of paint ing these glowing transparencies in pristine perfection being one that the world has lost. The vast, clear space of the interior church delighted me. There was no screen, nothing between the vestibule and the altar to break the long vista ; even the organ stood aside, though it by and by made us aware of its presence by a melodious roar. Around the walls there were old engraved brasses, and a stone coffin, and an alabaster knight of Saint John, and an alabaster lady, each recumbent at full length, as large as life, and in perfect preservation, except for 9 slight modern touch at the tips of their noses. In the chancel we saw a great deal of oaken work, quaintly and admirably carved, especially about the seats formerly ap propriated to the monks, which were so contrived as to tumble down with a tremendous crash, if the occupant happened to fall asleep. We now essayed to climb into the upper regions. Tip we went, winding and still winding round the circular PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 191 stairs, till we came to the gallery beneath the stone roof of the tower, whence we could look down and see the raised Font, and my Talma lying on one of the steps> and looking about as Dig as a pocket-handkerchief. Then up again, up, up, up, through a yet smaller staircase, till we emerged into another stone gallery, above the jack daws, and far above the roof beneath which we had be fore made a halt. Then up another flight, which led U3 into a pinnacle of the temple, but not the highest ; so, re tracing our steps, we took the right turret this time, and emerged into the loftiest lantern, where we saw level Lincolnshire, far and near, though with a haze on the distant horizon. There were dusty roads, a river, and canals, converging towards Boston, which a congrega tion of red-tiled roofs lay beneath our feet, with pigmy people creeping about its narrow streets. We were three hundred feet aloft, and the pinnacle on which we stood is a landmark forty miles at sea. Content, an*d weary of our elevation, we descended the corkscrew stairs and left the church ; the last object that we noticed in the interior being a bird, which appeared to be at home there, and responded with its cheerful notes to the swell of the organ. Pausing on the church- steps, we observed that there were formerly two statues, one on each side of the doorway ; the canopies still re maining, and the pedestals being about a yard from the ground. Some of Mr. Cotton s Puritan parishioners are probably responsible for the disappearance of these stone saints. This doorway at the base of the tower is now much dilapidated, but must once have been very rich and of a peculiar fashion. It opens its arch through a great square tablet of stone, reared against the front of the 192 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. tower. On most of the projections, whether on the tower or about the body of the church, there are gar goyles of genuine Gothic grotesqueness, fiends, beasts, angels, and combinations of all three; and where por tions of the edifice are restored, the modern sculptors have tried to imitate these wild fantasies, but with veiy poor success. Extravagance and absurdity have still their law, and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the primmest things on earth. In our further rambles about Boston, we crossed the river by a bridge, and observed that the larger part of the town seems to lie on that side of its navigable stream. The crooked streets and narrow lanes reminded me much of Hanover Street, Ann Street, and other portions of the North End of our American Boston, as I remember that picturesque region in my boyish days. It is not un reasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollec tions of the first settlers may have had some influence on the physical character of the streets and houses in the New England metropolis ; at any rate, here is a similar intricacy of bewildering lanes, and numbers of old peaked and projecting-storied dwellings, such as I used to see there. It is singular what a home-feeling and sense of kindred I derived from this hereditary connection and fancied physiognomical resemblance between the old town and its well-grown daughter, and how reluctant I was, after chill years of banishment, to leave this hos pitable place, on that account. Moreover, it recalled some of the features of another American town, my own dear native place, when I saw the seafaring people lean ing against posts, and sitting on planks, under the lee of warehouses. or lolling on long-boats, drawn up high PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 193 and dry, ins sailors and old wharf-rats are accustomed to do, in seaports of little business. In other respects, the English town is more village-like than either of the American ones. The women and budding girls chat to gether at their doors, and exchange merry greetings with young men ; children chase one another in the summer twilight ; school-boys sail little boats on the river, or play at marbles across the flat tombstones in the church yard ; and ancient men, in breeches and long waistcoats, wander slowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity of deportment, as if each one were everybody s grand father. I have frequently observed, in old English towns, that Old Age comes forth more cheerfully and genially into the sunshine than among ourselves, where the rush, stir, bustle, and irreverent energy of youth are so preponderant, that the poor, forlorn grandsires begin to doubt whether they have a right to breathe in such a world any longer, and so hide their silvery heads in soli tude. Speaking of old men, I am reminded of the scholars of the Boston Charity-School, who walk about in antique, long-skirted blue coats, and knee-breeches, and with bands at their necks, perfect and grotesque pictures of the costume of three centuries ago. On the morning of our departure, I looked from the parlor-window of the Peacock into the market-place, and beheld its irregular square already well covered with booths, and more in process of being put up, by stretch ing tattered sail-cloth on poles. It was market-day The dealers were arranging their commodities, consist ing chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there was a much greater varietj of merchandise : basket-work, both for 13 104 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. fancy and use ; twig-brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic attire ; all sorts of things, in short, that are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and found that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in another part of the town. A crowd of towns-people and Lincolnshire yeo men elbowed one another in the square ; Mr. Punch was squeaking in one corner, and a vagabond juggler tried to find space for his exhibition in another : so that my final glimpse of Boston was calculated to leave a livelier im pression than my former ones. Meanwhile the tower of Saint Botolph s looked benignantly down ; and I fancied it was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two or three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its venerable height, and the ^ town beneath it, to the people, of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to some of the dust that lies in its churchyard. One thing more. They have a Bunker Hill in the vicinity of their town ; and (what could hardly be ex pected of an English community) seem proud to think that their neighborhood has given name to our first and most widely celebrated and best remembered battle* Beld. NEAR OXFORD. ON a fine morning in September, we set out on an excursion to Blenheim, the sculptor and myself being seated on the box of our four-horse carriage, two more of the party in the dicky, and the others less agreeably accommodated inside. We had no coachman, but two postilions in short scarlet jackets and leather breeches with top-boots, each astride of a horse ; so that, all the way along, when not otherwise attracted, we had the interesting spectacle of their up-and-down bobbing in the saddle. It was a sunny and beautiful day, a speci men of the perfect English weather, just warm enough for comfort, indeed, a little too warm, perhaps, in the noontide sun, yet retaining a mere spice or suspicion of austerity, which made it all the more enjoyable. The country between Oxford and Blenheim is not par ticularly interesting, being almost level, or undulating very slightly; nor is Oxfordshire, agriculturally, a rich part of England. We saw one or two hamlets, and I espe cially remember a picturesque old gabled house at a turnpike-gate, and, altogether, the wayside scenery had an aspect of old-fashioned English life ; but there was nothing very memorable till we reached Woodstock, and Btopped to water our horses at the Black Bear. This neighborhood is called New Woodstock, but has by no means the brand-new appearance of an American 196 NEAR OXFORD. town, being a large village of stone houses, most of them pretty well time-worn and weather-stained. The Blck Bear is an ancient inn, large and respectable, with balus- traded staircases, and intricate passages and corridors, and queer old pictures and engravings hanging in the entries and apartments. We ordered a lunch (the most delightful of English institutions, next to dinner) to be ready against our return, and then resumed our drive tc Blenheim. The park-gate of Blenheim stands close to the end of the village-street of "Woodstock. Immediately on pass ing through its portals, we saw the stately palace in the distance, but made a wide circuit of the park before ap proaching it. This noble park contains three thousand acres of land, and is fourteen miles in circumference. Having been, in part, a royal domain before it was granted to the Marlborough family, it contains many trees of unsurpassed antiquity, and has doubtless been the haunt of game and deer for centuries. We saw pheasants in abundance, feeding in the open lawns and glades ; and the stags tossed their antlers and bounded away, not affrighted, but only shy and gamesome, as we drove by. It is a magnificent pleasure-ground, not too tamely kept, nor rigidly subjected within rule, but vast enough to have lapsed back into Nature again, after all the pains that the landscape-gardeners of Queen Anne s time bestowed on it, when the domain of Blenheim was scientifically laid out. The great, knotted, slanting trunks of the old oaks do not now look as if man had much intermeddled with their growth and postures. The trees of later date, that were set out in the Great Duke a time, are arranged on the plan of the order of battle in NEAR OXFORD. 197 which the illustrious commander ranked his troops at Blenheim ; but the ground covered is so extensive, and the trees now so luxuriant, that the spectator is not dis- agreeably conscious of their standing in military array, i\s if Orpheus had summoned them together by beat of drum. The effect must have been very formal a hundred and fifty years ago, but has ceased to be so, although the trees, I presume, have kept their ranks with even more fidelity than Marlborough s veterans did. One of the park-keepers, on horseback, rode beside our carriage, pointing out the choice views, and glimpses at the palace, as we drove through the domain. There is a very large artificial lake, (to say the truth, it seemed to me fully worthy of being compared with the Welsh lakes, at least, if not with those of Westmoreland,) which was created by Capability Brown, and fills the basin that he scooped for it, just as if Nature had poured these broad waters into one of her own valleys. It is a most beautiful object at a distance, and not less so on its imme diate banks ; for the water is very pure, being supplied by a small river, of the choicest transparency, which was turned thitherward for the purpose. And Blenheim owes not merely this water-scenery, but almost all its other beauties, to the contrivance of man. Its natural features are not striking ; but Art has effected such wonderful things that the uninstructed visitor would never guess that nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought of a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gardener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monoto nous surface of Blenheim, making the most of every undulation, flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth 108 NEAR OXFORD. out of a giant s hand, wherever it was needed, putting in beauty as often as there was a niche for it, opening vistas to every point that deserved to be seen, and throw ing a veil of impenetrable foliage around what ought to be hidden ; and then, to be sure, the lapse of a cen tury has softened the harsh outline of man s labors, and has given the place back to Nature again with the addi tion of what consummate science could achieve. After driving a good way, we came to a battlemented tower and adjoining house, which used to be the residence of the Ranger of Woodstock Park, who held charge of the property for the King before the Duke of Marl- borough possessed it. The keeper opened the door for us, and in the entrance-hall we found various things that had to do with the chase and woodland sports. We mounted the staircase, through several stories, up to the top of the tower, whence there was a view of the spires of Oxford, and of points much farther off, very indis tinctly seen, however, as is usually the case with the misty distances of England. Returning to the ground- floor, we were ushered into the room in which died Wil- mot, the wicked Earl of Rochester, who was Ranger of the Park in Charles II. s time. It is a low and bare little room, with a window in front, and a smaller one behind ; and in the contiguous entrance-room there are the re mains of an old bedstead, beneath the canopy of which, perhaps, Rochester may have made the penitent end that Bishop Burnet attributes to him. I hardly know what it is, in this poor fellow s character, which affects us with greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other profligates of his day, who seem to have been neither better nor worse than himself. I rather suspect that he NEAR OXFORD. 199 had a human heart which never quite died out of him, and the warmth of which is still faintly perceptible amid the dissolute trash which he left behind. Methinks, if such good fortune ever befell a bookish man, 1 should choose this lodge for my own residence, with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and all the se clusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ramble in. There being no such possibility, we drove on, catching glimpsea of the palace in new points of view, and by and by came to Rosamond s Well. The particular tradition that con nects Fair Rosamond with it is not now in my memory ; but if Rosamond ever lived and loved, and ever had her abode in the maze of Woodstock, it may well be believed that she and Henry sometimes sat beside this spring. It gushes out from a bank, through some old stone-work, and dashes its little cascade (about as abundant as one might turn out of a large pitcher) into a pool, whence it steals away towards the lake, which is not far removed. The water is exceedingly cold, and as pure as the legen dary Rosamond was not, and is fancied to possess medicinal virtues, like springs at which saints have quenched their thirst. There were two or three old women and some children in attendance with tumblers, which they present to visitors, full of the consecrated water ; but most of us filled the tumblers for ourselves, and drank. Thence we drove to the Triumphal Pillar which was erected in honor of the Great Duke, and on the summit of which he stands, in a Roman garb, holding a winged figure of Victory in his hand, as an ordinary man might hold a bird. The column is I know not how many feet high, but lofty enough, at any rate, to elevate Marlbor- ough far above the rest of the world, and to be visible a 200 NEAR OXFORD. long way off ; and it is so placed in reference to other ob jects, that, wherever the hero wandered about his grounds, and especially as he issued from his mansion, he must in evitably have been reminded of his glory. In truth, until I came to Blenheim, I never had so positive and material an idea of what Fame really is of what the admiration of his country can do for a successful warrior as I carry away with me and shall always retain. Unless he had the moral force of a thousand men together, his egotism (beholding himself everywhere, imbuing the entire soil, growing in the woods, rippling and gleaming in the water, and pervading the very air with his greatness) must have been swollen within him like the liver of a Strasbourg goose. On the huge tablets inlaid into the pedestal of the column, the entire Act of Parliament, bestowing Blenheim on the Duke of Marlborough and his posterity, is engraved in deep letters, painted black on the marble ground. The pillar stands exactly a mile from the prin cipal front of the palace, in a straight line with the pre cise centre of its entrance-hall ; so that, as already said, it was the Duke s principal object of contemplation. We now proceeded to the palace-gate, which is a great pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and state, giving admittance into a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly, and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the cm- trance, and took possession of whatever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold of, in order to claim six pence on our departure. This had a somewhat ludicrous effect. There is much public outcry against the mean ness of the present Duke in his arrangements for the admission of visitors (chiefly, of course, his native country men) to view the magnificent palace which their fore- NEAR OXFORD. 201 fathers bestowed upon his own. In many cases, it seems hard that a private abode should be exposed to the in trusion of the public merely because the proprietor has inherited or created a splendor which attracts general curiosity ; insomuch that his home loses its sanctity and seclusion for the very reason that it is better than other men s houses. But in the case of Blenheim, the public iiave certainly an equitable claim to admission, both be cause the fame of its first inhabitant is a national pos session, and because the mansion was a national gift, one of the purposes of which was to be a token of gratitude and glory to the English people themselves. If a man chooses to be illustrious, he is very likely to incur some little inconveniences himself, and entail them on his pos- *erity. Nevertheless, his present Grace of Marlborough absolutely ignores the public claim above suggested, and (with a thrift of which even the hero of Blenheim him self did not set the example) sells tickets admitting six persons at ten shillings : if only one person enters the gate, he must pay for six ; and if there are seven in com pany, two tickets are required to admit them. The at tendants, who meet you everywhere in the park and palace, expect fees on their own private account, their noble master pocketing the ten shillings. But, to be sure, the visitor gets his money s worth, since it buys him the right to speak just as freely of the Duke of Marlborough as if he were the keeper of the Cremorne Gardens.* * The above was written two or three years ago, or more; and the Duke of that day has since transmitted his coronet to his successor, who, we understand, has adopted much more liberal arrangements. There is seldom anything to criticize or complain of, as regards th facility of obtaining admission to interesting private houses in En.pj- 202 NEAR OXFORD. Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of the quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic front of the palace, with its two projecting wings. We ascended the lofty steps of the portal, and were admitted into the entrance-hall, the height of which, from floor to ceiling, is not much less than seventy feet, being the entire elevation of the edifice. The hall is lighted by windows in the upper story, and, it being a clear, bright day, was very radiant with lofty sunshine, amid which a swallow was flitting to and fro. The ceiling was painted by Sir James Thornhill in some allegorical design, (doubtless commemorative of Marlborough s victories,) the purport of which I did not take the trouble to make out, contenting myself with the general effect, which was most splendidly and effec tively ornamental. We were guided through the show-rooms by a very civil person, who allowed us to take pretty much our own time in looking at the pictures. The collection is exceed ingly valuable, many of these works of Art having been presented to the Great Duke by the crowned heads of England or the Continent. One room was all aglow with pictures by Rubens ; and there were works of Ra phael, and many other famous painters, any one of which would be sufficient to illustrate the meanest house that might contain it. I remember none of them, however (not being in a picture-seeing mood,) so well as Van- dyck s large and familiar picture of Charles I. on horse back, with a figure and face of melancholy dignity such as never by any other hand was put on canvas. Yet, on considering this face of Charles (which I find often re peated in half-lengths) and translating it from the ideal into literalism, T doubt whether the unfortunate king was NEAR OXFORD. 203 really a handsome or impressive-looking man : a high thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, and reddish hail and beard, these are the literal facts. It is the paint er s art that has thrown such pensive and shadowy grace around him. On our passage through this beautiful suite of apart ments, we saw, through the vista of open doorways, a boy of ten or twelve years old coming towards us from the farther rooms. He had on a straw hat, a linen sack that had certainly been washed and re-washed for a summer or two, and gray trousers a good deal worn, a dress, in short, which an American mother in middle station would have thought too shabby for her darling school boy s ordinary wear. This urchin s face was rather pale, (as those of English children are apt to be, quite as often as our own,) but he had pleasant eyes, an intelli gent look, and an agreeable, boyish manner. It was Lord Sunderland, grandson of the present Duke, and heir though not, I think, in the direct line of the blood of the great Maryborough, and of the title and estate. After passing through the first suite of rooms, we were conducted through a corresponding suite on the opposite side of the entrance-hall. These latter apartments are most richly adorned with tapestries, wrought and pre sented to the first Duke by a sisterhood of Flemish nuns they look like great, glowing pictures, and completely cover the walls of the rooms. The designs purport to represent the Duke s battles and sieges ; and everywhere we see the hero himself, as large as life, and as gorgeous in scarlet and gold as the holy sisters could make him, with a three-cornered hat and flowing wig, reining in his horse, and extending his leading-staff in the attitude of 204 NEAR OXFORD. command. Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is the most prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, there can never have been anything more magnificent than these tapestries ; and, considered as works of Art, they have quite as much merit as nine pictures out of ten. One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the library, a most noble room, with a vast perspective length trom end to end. Its atmosphere is brighter and more cheerful than that of most libraries : a wonderful contrast to the old college-libraries of Oxford, and perhaps less sombre and suggestive of thoughtfulness than any large library ought to be ; inasmuch as so many studious brains as have left their deposit on the shelves cannot have con spired without producing a very serious and ponderous result. Both walls and ceiling are white, and there arft elaborate doorways and fireplaces of white marble. Th& floor is of oak, so highly polished that our feet slipped upon it as if it had been New-England ice. At one end of the room stands a statue of Queen Anne in her royal robes, which are so admirably designed and exquisitely wrought that the spectator certainly gets a strong concep tion of her royal dignity ; while the face of the statue, fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys a suitable idea of hei personal character. The marble of this work, long as it has stood there, is as white as snow just fallen, and must have required most faithful and religious care to keep it BO. As for the volumes of the library, they are wired within the cases and turn their gilded backs upon the visitor, keeping their treasures of wit and wisdom just as intangible as if still in the unwrought mines of human thought. I remember nothing else in the palace, except the NEAR OXFORD. 205 chapel, to which we were conducted last, and where we saw a splendid monument to the first Duke and Duchess, sculptured by Rysbrach, at the cost, it is said, of forty thousand pounds. The design includes the statues of the deceased dignitaries, and various allegorical flourishes, fantasies, and confusions; and beneath sleep the great Duke and his proud wife, their veritable bones and dust, md probably all the Marlboroughs that have since died. It is not quite a comfortable idea, that these mouldy an cestors still inhabit, after their fashion, the house where their successors spend the passing day ; but the adulation lavished upon the hero of Blenheim could not have been consummated, unless the palace of his lifetime had be come likewise a stately mausoleum over his remains, and such we felt it all to be, after gazing at his tomb. The next business was to see the private gardens. An old Scotch under-gardener admitted us and led the way, and seemed to have a fair prospect of earning the fee all by himself; but by and by another respectable Scotch man made his appearance and took us in charge, proving to be the head-gardener in person. He was extremely intelligent and agreeable, talking both scientifically and lovingly about trees and plants, of which there is every variety capable of English cultivation. Positively, the Garden of Eden cannot have been more beautiful than this private garden of Blenheim. It contains three hundred acres, and by the artful circumlocution of the paths, and the undulations, and the skilfully interposed clumps of trees, is made to appear limitless. The sylvan delights of a whole country are compressed into this space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to the concoction of an ounce of precious attar. The world within that garden-fence 206 NEAR OXFORD. is riot the same weary and dusty world with which we outside mortals are conversant; it is a finer, lovelier, more harmonious Nature ; and the Great Mother lends herself kindly to the gardener s will, knowing that he will make evident the half-obliterated traits of her pris tine and ideal beauty, and allow her to take all the credit and praise to herself. I doubt whether there is ever any winter within that precinct, any clouds, except the fleecy ones of summer. The sunshine that I saw there rests upon my recollection of it as if it were eternal. The lawns and glades are like the memory of places where one has wandered when first in love. What a good and happy life might be spent in a para dise like this ! And yet, at that very moment, the be sotted Duke (ah! I have let out a secret which I meant to keep to myself; but the ten shillings must pay for all) was in that very garden, (for the guide told us so, and cautioned our young people not to be uproarious,) and, if in a condition for arithmetic, was thinking of nothing nobler than how many ten-shilling tickets had that day been sold. Republican as I am, I should still love to think that noblemen lead noble lives, and that all this stately and beautiful environment may serve to elevate them a little way above the rest of us. If it fail to do so, the disgrace falls equally upon the whole race of mortals as on themselves ; because it proves that no more favorable conditions of existence would eradicate our vices and weaknesses. How sad, if this be so ! Even a herd of swine, eating the acorns under those magnificent oaks of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and of better habits than ordinary swine. Well, all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as a NEAR OXFORD. 207 description of Blenheim ; and I hate to lea re it without some more adequate expression of the noble edifice, with its rich domain, all as I saw them in that beautiful sun shine ; for, if a day had been chosen out of a hundred years, it could not have been a finer one. But I must give up the attempt ; only further remarking that the finest trees here were cedars, of which I saw one and there may have been many such immense in girth, and not less than three centuries old. I likewise saw a vast heap of laurel, two hundred feet in circumference, all growing from one root ; and the gardener offered to show us another growth of twice that stupendous size. If the Great Duke himself had been buried in that spot, his heroic heart could not have been the seed of a more plentiful crop of laurels. We now went back to the Black Bear, and sat down to a cold collation, of which we ate abundantly, and drank (in the good old English fashion) a due proportion of various delightful liquors. A stranger in England, in his rambles to various quarters of the country, may learn little in regard to wines, (for the ordinary English taste is simple, though sound, in that particular,) but he makes acquaintance with more varieties of hop and malt liquor than he previously supposed to exist. I remember a sort of foaming stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very vivacious, and appears to be a hybrid between ale and bottled cider. Another excellent tipple for warm weather is concocted by mixing brown-stout or bitter ale with ginger-beer, the foam of which stirs up the heavier liquor from its depths, forming a compound of singular vivacity and sufficient body. But of all things ever brewed from mail, (unless it be the Trinity Ale of Cambridge, which 208 NEAR OXFORD. I drank long afterwards, and which Barry Cornwall has celebrated in immortal verse,) commend me to the Arch deacon, as the Oxford scholars call it, in honor of the jovial dignitary who first taught these erudite worthies how to brew their favorite nectar. John Barleycorn has given his very heart to this admirable liquor ; it is a superior kind of ale, the Prince of Ales, with a richer flavor and a mightier spirit than you can find elsewhere in this weary world. Much have we been strengthened and encouraged by the potent blood of the Archdeacon A few days after our excursion to Blenheim, the same party set forth, in two flies, on a tour to some other places of interest in the neighborhood of Oxford. It was again a delightful day ; and, in truth, every day, of late, had been so pleasant that it seemed as if each must be the very last of such perfect weather ; and yet the long suc cession had given us confidence in as many more to come The climate of England has been shamefully maligned its sulkiness and asperities are not nearly so offensive a Englishmen tell us (their climate being the only attribute of their country which they never overvalue) ; and tht really good summer weather is the very kindest and sweetest that the world knows. We first drove to the village of Cumnor, about six miles from Oxford, and alighted at the entrance of thft church. Here, while waiting for the keys, we looked at an old wall of the churchyard, piled up of loose gray stones which are said to have once formed a portion of Cumnor Hall, celebrated in Mickle s ballad and Scott s romance. The hall must have been in very close vicinity to the church, not more than twenty yards off; and I waded through the long, dewy grass of the churchyard, NEAR OXFORD. 209 and tried to peep over the wall, in hopes to discover some tangible and traceable remains of the edifice. But the wall was just too high to be overlooked, and difficult to clamber over without tumbling down some of the stones ; so I took the word of one of our party, who had been here before, that there is nothing interesting on the other side. The churchyard is in rather a neglected state, and seems not to have been mown for the benefit of the par son s cow ; it contains a good many gravestones, of which I remember only some upright memorials of slate to in dividuals of the name of Tabbs. Soon a woman arrived with the key of the church- door, and we entered the simple old edifice, which has the pavement of lettered tombstones, the sturdy pillars and low arches, and other ordinary characteristics of an English country church. One or two pews, probably those of the gentlefolk of the neighborhood, were better furnished than the rest, but all in a modest style. Near the high altar, in the holiest place, there is an oblong, angular, ponderous tomb of blue marble, built against the wall, and surmounted by a carved canopy of the same material ; and over the tomb, and beneath the canopy, are two monumental brasses, such as we oftener see in laid into a church pavement. On these brasses are en graved the figures of a gentleman in armor and a lady in an antique garb, each about a foot high, devoutly kneeling in prayer ; and there is a long Latin inscription likewise cut into the enduring brass, bestowing the highest eulo gies on the character of Anthony Forster, who, with his virtuous dame, lies buried beneath this tombstone. His is the knightl} figure that kneels above ; and if Sir Wal ter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must have had an even 14 210 NEAR OXFORD. greater than common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to venture on depicting Anthony Forster in such hues as blacken him in the romance. For my part, I read the inscription in full faith, and believe the poor deceased gentleman to be a much-wronged individual, with good grounds for bringing an action of slander in the courts above. But the circumstance, lightly as we treat it, has its serious moral. What nonsense it is, this anxiety, which so worries us, about our good fame, or our bad fame, after death! If it were of the slightest real moment, our reputations would have been placed by Providence more in our own power, and less in other people s, than we now find them to be. If poor Anthony Forster happens to have met Sir Walter in the other world, I doubt whether he has ever thought it worth while to complain of the latter s misrepresentations. We did not remain long in the church, as it contains nothing else of interest ; and driving through the village, we passed a pretty large and rather antique-looking inn, bearing the sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff. It could not be so old, however, by at least a hundred years, as Giles Gosling s time ; nor is there any other object to remind the visitor of the Elizabethan age, unless it be a few ancient cottages, that are perhaps of still earlier date. Cumnor is not nearly so large a village, nor a place of such mark, as one anticipates from its romantic and legendary fame ; but, being still inaccessible by rail way, it has retained more of a sylvan character than we often find in English country towns. In this retired neighborhood the road is narrow and bordered with grass, and sometimes interrupted by gates ; the hedges grow in NEAR OXFORD. 2il unpruned luxuriance ; there is not that close-shaven neat ness and trimness that characterize the ordinary English landscape. The whole scene conveys the idea of seclu sion and remoteness. We met no travellers, whether on foot or otherwise. I cannot very distinctly trace out this day s peregrina tions ; but, after leaving Cumnor a few miles behind us I think we came to a ferry over the Thames, where an old woman served as ferryman, and pulled a boat across by means of a rope stretching from shore to shore. Our two vehicles being thus placed on the other side, we re sumed our drive, first glancing, however, at the old woman s antique cottage, with its stone floor, and the cir cular settle round the kitchen fireplace, which was quite in the mediaeval English style. We next stopped at Stanton Harcourt, where we were received at the parsonage with a hospitality which we should take delight in describing, if it were allowable to make public acknowledgment of the private and personal kindnesses which we never failed to find ready for our needs. An American in an English house will soon adopt the opinion that the English are the very kindest people on earth, and will retain that idea as long, at least, as he remains on the inner side of the threshold. Their mag netism is of a kind that repels strongly while you keep beyond a certain limit, but attracts as forcibly if you get within the magic line. It was at this place, if I remember right, that I heard a gentleman ask a friend of mine whether he was the author of " The Red Letter A " ; and, after some con sideration, (for he did not seem to recognize his own book, at first, under this improved title,) our countryman 212 NEAR OXFORD. responded, doubtfully, that he believed so. The gentle man proceeded to inquire whether our friend had spent much time in America, evidently thinking that he must have been caught young, and have had a tincture of English breeding, at least, if not birth, to speak the language so tolerably, and appear so much like other people. This insular narrowness is exceedingly queer, and of very frequent occurrence, and is quite as much a characteristic of men of education and culture as of clowns. Stan ton Harcourt is a very curious old place. It was formerly the seat of the ancient family of Harcourt, which now has its principal abode at Nuneham Courtney, a few miles off. The parsonage is a relic of the family man sion, or castle, other portions of which are close at hand ; for, across the garden, rise two gray towers, both of them picturesquely venerable, and interesting for more than their antiquity. One of these towers, in its entire capa city, from height to depth, constituted the kitchen of the ancient castle, and is still used for domestic purposes, although it has not, nor ever had, a chimney ; or we ight rather say, it is itself one vast chimney, with a hearth of thirty feet square, and a flue and aperture of the same size. There are two huge fireplaces within, and the interior walls of the tower are blackened with the smoke that for centuries used to gush forth from them and climb upward, seeking an exit through some wide air-holes in the conical roof, full seventy feet above. These lofty openings were capable of being so arranged, with reference to the wind, that the cooks are said to have been seldom troubled by the smoke ; and here, no d Dubt, they were accustomed to roast oxen whole, with as little NEAR OXFORD. 213 fuss and ado as a modern cook would roast a fowl. The inside of the tower is very dim and sombre, (being noth ing but rough stone walls, lighted only from the apertures above mentioned,) and has still a pungent odor of smoke and soot, the reminiscence of the fires and feasts of gen erations that have passed away. Methinks the extremest ange of domestic economy lies between an American jiooking-stove and the ancient, kitchen, seventy dizzy feet in height, and all one fireplace, of Stanton Harcourt. Now the place being without a parallel in England, and therefore necessarily beyond the experience of an American it is somewhat remarkable, that, while we stood gazing at this kitchen, I was haunted and perplexed by an idea that somewhere or other I had seen just this strange spectacle before. The height, the blackness, the dismal void, before my eyes, seemed as familiar as the decorous neatness of my grandmother s kitchen ; only my unaccountable memory of the scene was lighted up with an image of lurid fires blazing all round the dim interior circuit of the tower. I had never before had so per tinacious an attack, as I could not but suppose it, of that odd state of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly re member some previous scene or incident, of which the one now passing appears to be but the echo and redupli cation. Though the explanation of the mystery did not for some time occur to me, I may as well conclude the matter here. In a letter of Pope s, addressed to the Duke of Buckingham, there is an account of Stanton Harcourt, (as I now find, although the name is not mentioned,) where he resided while translating a part of the " Iliad." It is one of the most admirable pieces of description in the language, playful and picturesque, with fine 214 NEAR OXFORD. 4 touches of humorous pathos, and conveys as perfect a picture as ever was drawn of a decayed English country house ; and among other rooms, most of which have since crumbled down and disappeared, he dashes off the grim aspect of this kitchen, which, moreover, he peoples with witches, engaging Satan himself as head-cook, who stirs the infernal caldrons that seethe and bubble over the fires. This letter, and others relative to his abode hore, were very familiar to my earlier reading, and, remaining still fresh at the bottom of my memcry, caused the weird and ghostly sensation that came over me on beholding the real spectacle that had formerly ben made so vivid to iny imagination. Our next visit was to the church . which stands close by, and is quite as ancient as the remiants of the castle. In a chapel or side-aisle, dedicated to the Harcourts, are found some very interesting family monuments, and among them, recumbent on a tombstone, the figure of an armed knight of the Lancastrian party, who was slain in the Wars of the Roses. His features, dress, and armor are painted in colors, still wonderfully frosh, and there still blushes the symbol of the Red Rose, denoting the faction for which he fought and died. His be?d restr on a marble or alabaster helmet ; and on the tomb lies th<3 veritable helmet, it is to be presumed, which he wore i* battle, a ponderous iron case, with the visor complete, and remnants of the gilding that once covered it. The west is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood. Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adorn ment of his tomb ; and, indeed, it seems strange that it has not been stolen before now, especially in Cromwell s time, when knightly tombs were little respected, arid NEAR OXFORD. 215 when armor was in request. However, it is needless to dispute with the dead knight about the identity of his iron pot, and we may as well allow it to be the very same that so often gave him the headache in his lifetime Leaning against the wall, at the foot of the tomb, is the shaft of a spear, with a wofully tattered and utterly faded banner appended to it, the knightly banner beneath which he marshalled his followers in the field. As it was absolutely falling to pieces, I tore off one little bit, no bigger than a finger-nail, and put it into my waistcoat- pocket; but seeking it subsequently, it was not to bo found. On the opposite side of the little chapel, two or threo yards from this tomb, is another monument, on which lie, side by side, one of the same knightly race of Harcourts, and his lady. The tradition of the family is, that this knight was the standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond in the Battle of Bosworth Field ; and a banner, sup posed to be the same that he carried, now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless silk rag as the one already described. The knight has the order of the Garter on his knee, and the lady wears it on her left arm, an odd place enough for a garter ; but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not be decorously visible. The complete preservation and good condition of these Btatues, even to the minutest adornment of the sculpture, and their very noses, the most vulnerable part of a marble man, as of a living one, are miraculous. Ex cept in Westminster Abbey, among the chapels of the kings, I have seen none so well preserved. Perhaps they owe it to the loyalty of Oxfordshire, diffused throughout its neighborhood by the influence of the 216 NEAR OXFORD. University, during the great Civil War and the rule of the Parliament. It speaks well, too, for the upright and kindly character of this old family, that the peasantry, among whom they had lived for ages, did not desecrate their tombs, when it might have been done with im punity. There are other and more recent memorials of the Harcourts, one of which is the tomb of the last lord, who died about a hundred years ago. His figure, like those of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, clad, not in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The title is now extinct, but the family survives in a younger branch, and still holds this patrimonial estate, though they hav^ long since quitted it as a residence. We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds appertain ing to the mansion, and which used to be of vast dietary importance to the family in Catholic times, and when fish was not otherwise attainable. There are two or three, or more, of these reservoirs, one of \vhich is of very respectable size, large enough, indeed, to be really a picturesque object, with its grass-green borders, and the trees drooping over it, and the towers of the castle and the church reflected within the weed-grown depths of its smooth mirror. A sweet fragrance, as it were, of ancient time and present quiet and seclusion was breathing all around ; the sunshine of to-day had a mellow charm of antiquity in its brightness. These ponds are said still to breed abundance of such fish as love deep and quiet waters : but I saw only some minnows, and one or two snakes, which \vere lying among the weeds on the top of the water, sunning and bathing themselves at once. I mentioned that there were two towers remaining of NEAR OXFORD. 217 the old castle : the one containing the kitchen we have already visited ; the other, still more interesting, is next to be described. It is some seventy feet high, gray and reverend, but in excellent repair, thougli I could not perceive that anything had been done to renovate it The basement story was once the family chapel, and is, of course, still a consecrated spot. At one corner of tho tower is a circular turret, within which a narrow stair case, with worn steps of stone, winds round and round as ft climbs upward, giving access to a chamber on each floor, and finally emerging on the battlemented roof. Ascending this turret-stair, and arriving at the third story, we entered a chamber, not large, though occupy ing the whole area of the tower, and lighted by a win dow on each side. It was wainscoted from floor to ceil ing with dark oak, and had a little fireplace in one of the corners. The window-panes were small and set in lead. The curiosity of this room is, that it was once the resi dence of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part of the translation of Homer, and likewise, no doubt, tho admirable letters to which I have referred above. The room once contained a record by himself, scratched with a diamond on one of the window-panes, (since removed for safekeeping to Nuneham Courtney, where it was shown me,) purporting that he had here finished the fifth book of the " Iliad " on such a day. A poet has a fragrance about him, such as no other human being is gifted withal ; it is indestructible, and clings forevermore to everything that he has touched. I was not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense that the mighty Duke still haunted the palace that was created for him -, but here, after a century and a half, we are still con- 218 NEAR OXFORD. scions of the presence of that decrepit little figure of Queen Anne s time, although he was merely a casual guest in the old tower, during one or two summer months. How ever brief the time and slight the connection, his spirit cannot be exorcised so long as the tower stands. In my mind, moreover, Pope, or any other person with an avail able claim, is right in adhering to the spot, dead or alive for I never saw a chamber that I should like better to inhabit, so comfortably small, in such a safe and .inac cessible seclusion, and with a varied landscape from each window. One of them looks upon the church, close at hand, and down into the green churchyard, extending almost to the foot of the tower ; the others have views wide and far, over a gently undulating tract of country. If desirous of a loftier elevation, about a dozen more steps of the turret-stair will bring the occupant to the summit of the tower, where Pope used to come, no doubt, in the summer evenings, and peep poor little shrimp that he was ! through the embrasures of the battlement. From Stanton Harcourt we drove I forget how far to a point where a boat was waiting for us upon the Thames, or some other stream ; for I am ashamed to con fess my ignorance of the precise geographical wherea bout. We were, at any rate, some miles above Oxford, and, I should imagine, pretty near one of the sources of England s mighty river. It was little more than wide enough for the boat, with extended oars, to pass, shal low, too, and bordered with bulrushes and water-weeds, which, in some places, quite overgrew the surface of the river from bank to bank. The shores were flat and meadow-like, and sometimes, the boatman told us, are NEAR OXFORD. 219 ovtrflcwed by the rise of the stream. The water looked clean aiid pure, but not particularly transparent, though enough so to show us that the bottom is very much weed- grown ; and I was told that the weed is an American production, brought to England with importations of timber, and now threatening to choke up the Thames and other English rivers. 1 wonder it does not try its obstructive powers upon the Merrimack, the Connecticut, or the Hudson, not to speak of the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi ! It was an open boat, with cushioned seats astern, com fortably accommodating our party; the day continued sunny and warm, and perfectly still ; the boatman, well trained to his business, managed the oars skilfully and vigorously ; and we went down the stream quite as swiftly as it was desirable to go, the scene being so pleasant, and the passing hours so thoroughly agreeable. The river grew a little wider and deeper, perhaps, as we glided on, but was still an inconsiderable stream : for it had a good deal more than a hundred miles to meander through before it should bear fleets on its bosom, aid reflect pal aces and towers and Parliament houses and dingy and sordid piles of various structure, as it rolled to and fro with the tide, dividing London asunder. Not, in truth, that I ever saw any edifice whatever reflected in its tur bid breast, when the sylvan stream, as we beheld it now is swollen into the Thames at London. Once, on our voyage, we had to land, while the boat^ man and some other persons drew our skiff round some rapids, which we could not otherwise have passed ; an other time, the boat went through a lock. We, mean while, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old 220 NEAR OXFORD. nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair Rosamond seoluded herself, after being separated from her royal lover There is a long line of ruinous wall, and a shattered tower at one of the angles ; the whole much ivy-grown, brim ming over, indeed, with clustering ivy, which is rooted inside of the walls. The nunnery is now, I believe, held in lease by the city of Oxford, which has converted its precincts into a barnyard. The gate was under lock and key, so that we could merely look at the outside, and soon resumed our places in the boat. At three o clock, or thereabouts, (or sooner or later, for I took little heed of time, and only wished that these delightful wanderings might last forever,) we reached Folly Bridge, at Oxford. Here we took possession of a spacious barge, with a house in it, and a comfortable dining-room or drawing-room within the house, and a level roof, on which we could sit at ease, or dance, if so inclined. These barges are common at Oxford, some very splendid ones being owned by the students of the different colleges, or by clubs. They are drawn by horses, like canal-boats ; and a horse being attached to our own barge, he trotted off at a reasonable pace, and we slipped through the water behind him, with a gentle and pleasant motion, which, save for the constant vicissi tude of cultivated scenery, was like no motion at all. It was life without the trouble of living ; nothing was ever more quietly agreeable. In this happy state of mind and body we gazed at Christ-Church meadows, as we passed, and at the receding spires and towers of Oxford, and on a good deal of pleasant variety along the banks: young men rowing or fishing ; troops of naked boys bathing, as if this were Arcadia, in the simplicity of the NEAR OXFORD. 221 Golden Age ; country houses, cottages, water-side inns, all with something fresh about them, as not being sprin kled with the dust of the highway. We were a large, party now ; for a number of additional guests had joined us at Folly Bridge, and we comprised poets, novelists, scholars, sculptors, painters, architects, men and women of renown, dear friends, genial, outspoken, open-hearted Englishmen, all voyaging onward together, like tho wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I remember not a sin gle annoyance, except, indeed, that a swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of the po matum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble the one little flaw in our day s felicity, to put us in mind that we were mortal. Meanwhile a table had been laid in the interior of our barge, and spread with cold ham, cold fowl, cold pigeon- pie, cold beef, and other substantial cheer, such as the English love, and Yankees too, besides tarts, and cakes, and pears, and plums, not forgetting, of course, a goodly provision of port, sherry, and champagne, and bitter ale, which is like mother s milk to an Englishman, and soon grows equally acceptable to his American cousin. By the time these matters had been properly attended to, we had arrived at that part of the Thames which passes by Nuneham Courtney, a fine estate be longing to the Harcourts, and the present residence of the family. Here we landed, and, climbing a steep slope from the riverside, paused a moment or two to look at an architectural object, called the Carfax, the purport of which I do not well understand. Thence we proceeded 222 NEAR OXFORD. onward, through the loveliest park and woodland scenery I ever saw, and under as beautiful a declining sunshine as heaven ever shed over earth, to the stately mansion- house. As we here cross a private threshold, it is not alloAv- able to pursue my feeble narrative of this delightful day with the same freedom as heretofore ; so, perhaps, I may as well bring it to a close. I may mention, however, that I saw the library, a fine, large apartment, hung round with portraits of eminent literary men, principally of the last century, most of whom were familiar guests of the Harcourts. The house itself is about eighty years old, and is built in the classic style, as if the family had been anxious to diverge as far as possible from the Gothic picturesqueness of their old abode at Stanton Harcourt. The grounds were laid out in part by Capability Brown, and seemed to me even more beautiful than those of Blenheim. Mason the poet, a friend of the house, gave the design of a portion of the garden. Of the whole place I will not be niggardly of my rude Transatlantic praise, but be bold to say that it appeared to me as per fect as anything earthly can be, utterly and entirely finished, as if the years and generations had done all that the hearts and minds of the successive owners could con trive for a spot they dearly loved. Such homes as Nune- ham Courtney are among the splendid results of long hereditary possession ; and we Republicans, whose house holds melt away like new-fallen snow in a spring morn ing, must content ourselves with our many counterbalan cing advantages, for this one, so apparently desirable to the far-projecting selfishness of our nature, we are certain never to attain. NEAR OXFORD. 223 It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Nuneham Courtney is one of the great show-places of England. It is merely a fair specimen of the better class of country- seats, and has a hundred rivals, and many superiors, in the features of beauty, and expansive, manifold, redun dant comfort, which most impressed me. A moderate man might be content with such a home, that is all. And now I take leave of Oxford without even ao attempt to describe it, there being no literary faculty, attainable or conceivable by me, which can avail to put it adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper. It must remain its own sole expression ; and those whose sad for tune it may be never to behold it have no better resource than to dream about gray, weather-stained, ivy-grown edifices, wrought with quaint Gothic ornament, and stand ing around grassy quadrangles, where cloistered walks liave echoed to the quiet footsteps of twenty generations, lawns and gardens of luxurious repose, shadowed with canopies of foliage, and lit up with sunny glimpses through archways of great boughs, spires, towers, and turrets, each with its history and legend, dimly mag- wificent chapels, with painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly diversified hues, creating an atmosphere of richest gloom, vast college-halls, high-windowed, oaken- panelled, and hung round with portraits of the men, in every age, whom the University has nurtured to be illustrious, long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved, kitch ens, (we throw in this feature by way of ballast, and because it would not be English Oxford without its beef and beer,) with huge fireplaces, capable of roasting a hundred joints at once, and cavernous cellars, where 224 NEAR OXFORD. rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume with that mighty malt-liquor which is the true milk of Alma Ma ter : make all these things vivid in your dream, and you will never know nor believe how inadequate is the result to represent even the merest outside of Oxford. We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this article without making our grateful acknowledgments, by name, to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness was the main condition of all our sight-seeings and enjoyments. De lightful as will always be our recollection of Oxford and its neighborhood, we partly suspect that it owes much of its happy coloring to the genial medium through which the objects were presented to us, to the kindly magic of a hospitality unsurpassed, within our experience, in the quality of making the guest contented with his host, with himself, and everything about him. He has insep arably mingled his image with our remembrance of the Spires of Oxford. SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS, WE left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within the half-hour were at Gretna Green. Thence we rushed onward into Scotland through a flat and dreary tract of country, consisting mainly of desert and bog, where prob ably the moss-troopers were accustomed to take refuge after their raids into England. Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view, occasionally attaining a height which might almost be called mountainous. In about two hours we reached Dumfries, and alighted at the station there. Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we found it an awfully hot day, not a whit less so than the day before ; but we sturdily adventured through the burn ing sunshine up into the town, inquiring our way to the residence of Burns. The street leading from the station is called Shakspeare Street ; and at its farther extremity we read " Burns Street" on a corner-house, the avenue thus designated having been formerly known as " Mill Hole Brae." It is a vile lane, paved with small, hard stones from side to side, and bordered by cottages or mean houses of whitewashed stone, joining one to an other along the whole length of the street. With not a tree, of course, or a blade of glass between the paving- stones, the narrow lane was as hot as Tophet, and reeked 226 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. with a genuine Scotch odor, being infested with unwashed children, and altogether in a state of chronic filth ; al though some women seemed to be hopelessly scrubbing the thresholds of their wretched dwellings. I never saw an outskirt of a town less fit for a poet s residence, or in which it would be more miserable for any man of cleanly predilections to spend his days. We asked for Burns s dwelling; and a woman pointed across the street to a two-story house, built of stone, and whitewashed, like its neighbors, but perhaps of a little more respectable aspect than most of them, though I hesitate in saying so. It was not a separate structure, but under the same continuous roof with the next. There was an inscription on the door, bearing no refer ence to Burns, but indicating that the house was now occupied by a ragged or industrial school. On knocking, we were instantly admitted by a servant-girl, who smiled intelligently when we told our errand, and showed us into a low and very plain parlor, not more than twelve or fifteen feet square. A young woman, who seemed to be a teacher in the school, soon appeared, and told us that this had been Burns s usual sitting-room, and that he had written many of his songs here. She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little bed chamber over the parlor. Connecting with it, there is a very small room, or windowed closet, which Burns used us a study ; and the bedchamber itself was the ope where he slept in his later lifetime, and in which he died at last. Altogether, it is an exceedingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and rural poet to live or die in, even more unsatisfactory than Shakspeare s house, which has a certain homely picturesqueness that contrasts favor SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS 227 ably with the suburban sordidness of the abode before us. The narrow lane, the paving-stones, and the contiguity of wretched hovels are depressing to remember ; and the steam of them (such is our human weakness) might almost make the poet s memory less fragrant. As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day. After leaving the house, we found our way into the prin cipal street of the town, which, it may be fair to say, ia of very different aspect from the wretched outskirt above described. Entering a hotel, (in which, as a Dumfries guide-book assured us, Prince Charles Edward had once spent a night,) we rested and refreshed ourselves, and then set forth in quest of the mausoleum of Burns. Coming to St. Michael s Church, we saw a man dig ging a grave , and, scrambling out of the hole, he let us into the churchyard, which was crowded full of monu ments. Their general shape and construction are pecu liar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet of marble or other stone, within a framework of the same material, somewhat resembling the frame of a looking-glass ; and, all over the churchyard, these sepulchral memorials rise to the height of ten, fifteen, or twenty feet, forming quite an imposing collection of monuments, but inscribed with names of small general significance. It was easy, indeed, to ascertain the rank of those who slept below ; for in Scotland it is the custom to put the occupation of the buried personage (as " Skinner," " Shoemaker," " Flesh- er") on his tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives are buried under their maiden names, instead of those of their husbands ; thus giving a disagreeable impression that the married pair have bidden each other an eternal farewell on the edge of the grave. 228 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. There was a footpath through this crowded church yard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave of Burns ; but a woman followed behind us, who, it ap peared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was privi leged to show it to strangers. The monument is a sort of Grecian temple, with pilasters and a dome, covering a space of about twenty feet square. It was formerly open to all the inclemencies of the Scotch atmosphere, but is now protected and shut in by large squares of rough glass, each pane being of the size of one whole side of the structure. The woman unlocked the door, and ad mitted us into the interior. Inlaid into the floor of the mausoleum is the gravestone of Burns, the very same that was laid over his grave by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. Displayed against the surrounding wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough, with the Genius of Caledonia summoning the ploughman to turn poet. Methought it was not a very successful piece of work ; for the plough was better sculptured than the man, and the man, though heavy and cloddish, was more effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us that an old man of ninety, who knew Burns, certifies this statue to be very like the original. The bones of the poet, and of Jean Armour, and of some of their children, lie in the vault over which we stood. Our guide (who was intelligent, in her own plain way, and very agreeable to talk withal) said that the vault was opened about three weeks ago, on occasion of the burial of the eldest son of Burns. The poet s bones were disturbed, and the dry skull, once so brimming over with powerful thought and bright and tender fantasies, was taken away, and kept for several days by a Dumfries SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BIJRXS. 229 doctor. It has since been deposited in a new leaden coffin, and restored to the vault. We learned that there is a surviving daughter of Burns s eldest son, and daugh ters likewise of the two younger sons, and, besides these, an illegitimate posterity by the eldest son, who appears to have been of disreputable life in his younger days. He inherited his father s failings, with some faint shadow, I have also understood, of the great qualities which have made the world tender of his father s vices and weaknesses. We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it robbed the poet s memory of some of the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same tendency and effect as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visit ing just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and picturing his outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one does not so much wonder that the people of that day should have failed to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a dis reputable, drunken, shabbily clothed, and shabbily housed man, consorting with associates of damaged character, and, as his only ostensible occupation, gauging the whiskey, which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world a little justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet when his fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of marble than when the actual man comes staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned so brightly while he was still living. There must have been something very grand in his im 230 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. mediate presence, some strangely impressive characteris tic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod so soon. As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a spot where nearly four hundred inhabitants of Dumfries were buried during the cholera year ; and also some curi ous old monuments, with raised letters, the inscriptions on which were not sufficiently legible to induce us to puzzle them out ; but, I believe, they mark the resting-places of old Covenanters, some of whom were killed by Cluver- house and his fellow-ruffians. St. Michael s Church is of red freestone, and was built about a hundred years ago, on an old Catholic foundation. Our guide admitted us into it, and showed us, in the porch, a very pretty little marble figure of a child asleep, with a drapery over the lower part, from beneath which appeared its two baby feet. It was truly a sweet little statue ; and the woman told us that it represented a child of the sculptor, and that the baby (here still in its marble infancy) had died more than twenty-six years ago. " Many ladies," she said, " especially such as had ever lost a child, had shed tears over it." It was very pleasant to think of the sculptor bestowing the best of his genius and art to re-create his tender child in stone, and to make the representation as soft and sweet as the original ; but the conclusion of the story has something that jars with our awakened sensibilities. A gentleman from London had Been the statue, and was so much delighted with it that he bought it of the father-artist, after it had lain above a quarts of a century in the church-porch. So this was not the real, tender image that came out of the Other s heart; he had sold that truest one for a him- SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 231 cL \ guineas, and 3ctilptored this mere copy to replace it. Tkc first figure was entirely naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence. The copy, as I have said above, has a drapery over the lower limbs. But, after all, if wo come to the truth of the matter, the sleeping baby may be as fitly reposited in the drawing-room of a connoisseur as in a cold and dreary church-porch. We went into the church, and found it very plain and naked, without altar-decorations, and having its floor quite covered with unsightly wooden pews. The woman led us to a pew cornering on one of the side-aisles, and, telling us that it used to be Burns s family-pew, showed us his seat, which is in the corner by the aisle. It is so situated, that a sturdy pillar hid him from the pulpit, and from the minister s eye ; " for Robin was no great friends with the ministers," said she. This touch his seat behind the pillar, and Burns himself nodding in sermon-time, or keenly observant of profane things brought him before us to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right before Burns, and not more than two feet off, sat the young lady on whom the poet saw that unmentionable parasite which he has immortalized in song. We were ungenerous enough to ask the lady s name, but the good woman could not tell it. This was the last thing which we saw in Dumfries worthy of record ; and it ought to be noted that our guide refused some money which my companion offered her, because I had already paid her what she deemed sufficient. At the railway station we spent more than a weary hour, waiting for the train, which at last came up, and took us to Mauchline. We got into an omnibus, the only wnveyance to be had, and drove about a mile to the vit xM2 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. lage, where we established ourselves at the Loudoun Hotel, one of the veriest country inns which we have found in Great Britain. The town of Mauchline, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any other, consists of a street or two of contiguous cottages, mostly white washed, and with thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate village, and is as ugly a place u mortal man could contrive to make, or to render uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion of paving the village street, and patching one shabby house on the gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness ; but, I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used to be in Burns s time, and long before, than this of Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the Btreet, and is built of red freestone, very simple in its architecture, with a square tower and pinnacles. In this sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene of one of Burns s most characteristic productions, "The Holy Fair." Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village street, stands Posie Nansie s inn, where the " Jolly Beg gars " congregated. The latter is a t\vo-story, red-stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old-fashioned windows, and may well have stood for centuries, though, seventy or eighty years ago, when Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it might have been something better than a beggars alehouse. The whole town of Mauchline looks rusty and time-worn, even the newer houses, of which there are several, being shad owed and darkened by the general aspect of the plae*?. SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS . 233 When we arrived, all the wretched little dwellings seemed to have belched forth their inhabitants into the warm Bummer evening ; everybody was chatting with every body, on the most familiar terms ; the bare-legged chil dren gambolled or quarrelled uproariously, and came freely, moreover, and looked into the window of our par lor. When we ventured out, we were followed by the gaze of the old town : people standing in their doorways, old women popping their heads from the chamber-win dows, and stalwart men idle on Saturday at e en, after their week s hard labor clustering at the street-corners, merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except in Borne remote little town of Italy, (where, besides, the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of beggary,) I have never been honored with nearly such an amount of public notice. The next forenoon my companion put me to shame by attending church, after vainly exhorting me to do the like ; and, it being Sacrament Sunday, and my poor friend be ing wedged into the farther end of a closely filled pew, he was forced to stay through the preaching of four sev eral sermons, and came back perfectly exhausted and des perate. He was somewhat consoled, however, on finding that he had witnessed a spectacle of Scotch manners identical with that of Burns s " Holy Fair," on the very spot where the poet located that immortal description. By way of further conformance to the customs of the country, we ordered a sheep s head and the broth, and did penance accordingly ; and at five o clock we took a fly, and set out for Burns s farm of Moss Giel. Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, and the road extends over a high ridge of land, with ji 234: SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. view of far hills and green slopes on either side. Just before we reached the farm, the driver stopped to point out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which he said was Burns s " Lousie Thorn ; " and I devoutly plucked a branch, although I have really forgotten where or how this illustrious shrub has been celebrated. We then turned into a rude gateway, and almost immediately came to the farm-house of Moss Giel, standing some fifty yards removed from the high-road, behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and considerably overshadowed by trees. The house is a whitewashed stone cottage, like thousands of others in England and Scotland, with a thatched roof, on which grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, though alien growth. There is a door and one window in front, besides another little window that peeps out among the thatch. Close by the cottage, and extending back at right angles from it, so as to inclose the farm yard, are two other "mildings of the same size, shape, and general appearance as the house : any one of the three looks just as fit for a human habitation as the two others, and all three look still more suitable for donkey-stables and pigsties. As we drove into the farm-yard, bounded on three sides by these three hovels, a large dog began to bark at us ; and some women and children made their appearance, but seemed to demur about admitting us, because the master and mistress were very religious people, and had not yet come back from the Sacrament at Mauchline. However, it would not do to be turned back from the very threshold of Robert Burns ; and as the women permed to be merely straggling visitors, and nobody, at all events, had a right to send us away, we went into the SOME OF T1IZ HAUNTS OF BURNS. 235 back-door, and, turning to the right, entered a kitchen. It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely neatness, and in it there were three or four children, one of whom, a girl eight or nine years old, held a baby in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of the people of the house, and gave us what leave she could to look about us. Thence we stepped across the narrow mid-passage of the cottage into the only other apartment below-stairs, a sitting-room, where we found a young man eating bread and cheese. He informed us that he did not live there, and had only called in to refresh himself on his way home from church. This room, like the kitchen, was a noticeably poor one, and, besides being all that the cottage had to show for a parlor, it was a sleeping-apartment, having two beds, which might be curtained off, on occasion. The young man allowed us liberty (so far as in him lay) to go up stairs. Up we crept, accordingly ; and a few steps brought us to the top of the staircase, over the kitchen, where we found the wretchedest little sleeping-chamber in the world, with a sloping roof under the thatch, and two beds spread upon the bare floor. This, most prob ably, was Burns s rh amber ; or, perhaps, it may have been that of his mother s servant-maid ; and, in either case, this rude floor, at one time or another, must have creaked beneath the poet s midnight tread. On the oppo site side of the passage was the door of another atti chamber, opening which, I saw a considerable numbei of cheeses on the floor. The whole house was pervaded with a frowzy smell, and also a dunghill odor ; and it is not easy to understand now the atmosphere of such a dwelling can be any more o* salubrious morally than it appeared to bo 236 .SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. physically. No virgin, surely, could keep a holy awe about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy with coarse- natured rustics into this narrowness and filth. Such a habitation is calculated to make beasts of men and women ; and it indicates a degree of barbarism which I did not Imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad fields, ii*e the former of Mauchline, should have his abode in a pigsty. It is sad to think of anybody not to say a poet, but any human being sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and spending all his home-life in this miser able hovel ; but, methinks, I never in the least knew how to estimate the miracle of Burns s genius, nor his heroic merit for being no worse man, until I thus learned the squalid hindrances amid which he developed himself. Space, a free atmosphere, and cleanliness have a vast deal to do with the possibilities of human virtue. The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as being damp and unwholesome ; but I do not see why, outside of the cottage walls, it should possess so evil a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge, enjoying, surely, what ever benefit can come of a breezy site, and sloping far downward before any marshy soil is reached. The high hedge, and the trees that stand beside the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect enough to one who does not know the grimy secrets of the interior ; and the summer afternoon was now so bright that I shall remember the scene witli a great deal of sunshine over it. Leaving the cottage, we drove through a field, which the driver told us was that in which Burns turned up the mouse s nest. It is the inclosure nearest to the cottage and seems now to be a pasture, and a rathor remark SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 237 ably unfertile one. A little farther on, the ground waa whitened with an immense number of daisies, daisies, daisies everywhere ; and in answer to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field where Burns ran his ploughshare over the daisy. If so, the soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies by the song which he bestowed on that first immortal one. I alighted, and plucked a whole handful of these "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers," which will be precious to many friends in our own country as coming from Burns s farm, and being of the same race and lineage as that daisy which he turned into an amaranthine flower while seeming to de stroy it. From Moss Giel we drove through a variety of pleas ant scenes, some of which were familiar to us by their connection with Burns. We skirted, too, along a portion of the estate of Auchinleck, which still belongs to the Boswell family, the present possessor being Sir James Boswell,* a grandson of Johnson s friend, and son of the Sir Alexander who was killed in a duel. Our driver spoke of Sir James as a kind, free-hearted man, but addicted to horse-races and similar pastimes, and a little too familiar with the wine-cup ; so that poor Bozzy s booziness would appear to have become hereditary in his ancient line. There is no male heir to the estate of Auchinleck. The portion of the lands which we saw is covered with wood and much undermined wit! rabbit-warrens ; nor, though the territory extends over a large number of acres, is the income very consider able. By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw Miss * Sir James Boswell is now dead. 238 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. Alexander, the Lass of Ballochmyle. It was on a bridge, which (or, more probably, a bridge that has succeeded to the old one, and is made of iron) crosses from bank to bank, high in air, over a deep gorge of the road ; so that the young lady may have appeared to Burns like a crea ture between earth and sky, and compounded chiefly of celestial elements But, in honest truth, the great charm of a woman, in Burns s eyes, was always her womanhood, and not the angelic mixture which other poets find in her. Our driver pointed out the course taken by the Lass of Ballochmyle, through the shrubbery, to a rock on the banks of the Lugar, where it seems to be the tradition that Burns accosted her. The song implies no such inter view. Lovers, of whatever condition, high or low, could desire no lovelier scene in which to breathe their vows : the river flowing over its pebbly bed, sometimes gleaming into the sunshine, sometimes hidden deep in verdure, and here and there eddying at the foot of high and precipitous cliffs. This beautiful estate of Ballochmyle is still held by the family of Alexanders, to whom Burns s song has given renown on cheaper terms than any other set of people ever attained it. How slight the tenure seems ! A young lady happened to walk out, one summer after noon, and crossed the path of a neighboring farmer, who celebrated the little incident in four or five warm, rude, at least, not refined, though rather ambitious, and Bomcwlmt ploughman-like verses. Burns has written hundreds of better things ; but henceforth, for centuries, that maiden has free admittance into the dream-land of Beautiful AYomen, and she and all her race are famous . I should like to know the present head of the family, and SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 239 ascertain what value, if any, the members of it put upon the celebrity thus won. We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as " the clean village of Scotland." Certainly, as regards the point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of Mauch- line, whither we now returned without seeing anything else worth writing about. There was a rain-storm during the night, and. in the morning, the rusty, old, sloping street of Mauchline was glistening with wet, while frequent showers came spatter ing down. The intense heat of many days past was ex changed for a chilly atmosphere, much more suitable to a stranger s idea of what Scotch temperature ought to be. We found, after breakfast, that the first train northward had already gone by, and that we must wait till nearly two o clock for the next. I merely ventured out once, during the forenoon, and took a brief walk through the village, in which I have left little to describe. Its chief business appears to be the manufacture of snuff-boxes. There are perhaps five or six shops, or more, including those licensed to sell only tea and tobacco ; the best of them have the characteristics of village stores in the United States, dealing in a small way with an extensive variety of articles. I peeped into the open gateway of the churchyard, and saw that the ground was absolutely stuffed with dead people, and the surface crowded with gravestones, both perpendicular and horizontal. All Burns s old Mauchline acquaintance are doubtless there, and the Armours among them, except Bonny Jean, who sleeps by her poet s side. The family of Armour is now extinct in Mauchline. Arriving at the railway station, we found a tall, elderly, 240 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. comely gentleman walking to and fro and waiting for the train. He proved to be a Mr. Alexander, it may fairly be presumed the Alexander of Ballochmyle, a blood rela tion of the lovely lass. Wonderful efficacy of a poet s verse, that could shed a glory from Long Ago on this old gentleman s white hair ! These Alexanders, by the by, are not an old family on the Ballochmyle estate ; the father of the lass having made a fortune in trade, and established himself as the first landed proprietor of his name in these parts. The original family was named Whitefoord. Our ride to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable ; and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish off the scenery, and causes a woful diminution in the beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove to the King s Arms Hotel. In the intervals of showers I took peeps at the town, which appeared to have many modern or modern-fronted edifices ; although there are likewise tall, gray, gabled, and quaint-looking houses in the by-streets, here and there, betokening an ancient place. The town lies on both sides .of the Ayr, which is hero broad and stately, and bordered with dwellings that look from their windows directly down into the passing tide. I crossed the river by a modern and handsome stone bridge, and recrossed it, at no great distance, by a vener able structure of four gray arches, which must have be stridden the stream ever since the early days of Scottish history. These are the " Two Briggs of Ayr," whose midnight conversation was overheard by Burns, while SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 241 other auditors were aware only of the rush and nimble of the wintry stream among the arches. The ancient bridge is steep and narrow, and paved like a street, and defended by a parapet of red freestone, except at the two ends, where some mean old shops allow scanty room for the pathway to creep between. Nothing else im pressed me hereabouts, unless I mention, that, during the rain, the women and girls went about the streets of Ayr barefooted to save their shoes. The next morning wore a lowering aspect, as if it felt itself destined to be one of many consecutive days of storm. After a good Scotch breakfast, however, of fresh herrings and eggs, we took a fly, and started at a little past ten for the banks of the Doon. On our way, at about two miles from Ayr, we drew up at a roadside cot tage, on which was an inscription to the effect that Robert Burns was born within its walls. It is now a public- house ; and, of course, we alighted and entered its little sitting-room, which, as we at present see it, is a neat apartment, with the modern improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much overscribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden door of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the other wood-work of the room, is cut and carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having received a coat of varnish over the inscrip tions, form really curious and interesting articles of fur niture. I have seldom (though I do not personally adopt this mode of illustrating my humble name) felt inclined to ridicule the natural impulse of most people thus to record themselves at the shrines of poets and heroes. On a pane 1 Jet into the wall in a corner of the room, ia 16 242 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture bj Nasmyth. The floor of this apartment is of boards, which are probably a recent substitute for the ordinary flag-stones of a peasant s cottage. There is but one other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of Robert Burns : it is the kitchen, into which we now went. It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than those of Shak- gpeare s house, though, perhaps, not so strangely cracked and broken as the latter, over which the hoof of Satan himself might seem to have been trampling. A new window has been opened through the wall, towards the road ; but on the opposite side is the little original win dow, of only four small panes, through which came the first daylight that shone upon the Scottish poet. At the side of the room, opposite the fireplace, is a recess, con taining a bed, which can be hidden by curtains. In that humble nook, of all places in the world, Providence was pleased to deposit the germ of the richest human life which mankind then had within its circumference. These two rooms, as I have said, make up the whole sum and substance of Burns s birthplace : for there were no chambers, nor even attics ; and the thatched roof formed the only ceiling of kitchen and sitting-room, the height of which was that of the whole house. The cot tage, however, is attached to another edifice of the same size and description, as these little habitations often are ; and, moreover, a splendid addition has been made to it, since the poet s renown began to draw visitors to the way side ale-house. The old woman of the house led us through an entry, and showed a vaulted hall, of no vast dimensions, to be sure, but marvellously large and splen did as compared with what might be anticipated from the SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 243 Dut-vvard aspect of the cottage. It contained a bust of Burns, and \vas hung round with pictures and engravings, principally illustrative of his life and poems. In this part of the house, too, there is a parlor, fragrant with tobacco-smoke ; and, no doubt, many a noggin of whiskey is here quaffed to the memory of the bard, who professed to draw so much inspiration from that potent liquor. We bought some engravings of Kirk Alloway, the Bridge of Doon, and the monument, and gave the old woman a fee besides, and took our leave. A very short drive farther brought us within sight of the monument, and to the hotel, situated close by the entrance of the ornamental grounds within which the former is enclosed. We rang the bell at the gate of the enclosure, but were forced to wait a considerable time ; because the old man, the regular superintendent of the spot, had gone to assist at the laying of the corner-stone of a new kirk. Pie appeared anon, and admitted us, but immediately hurried uway to be present at the concluding ceremonies, leaving us locked up with Burns. The enclosure around the monument is beautifully laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly provided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with loving care. The monument stands on an elevated site, and consists of a massive basement-story, three-sided, above which rises a light and elegant Grecian temple, a mere dome, supported on Corinthian pillars, and open to all the winds. The edifice is beautiful in itself; though I know not what peculiar appropriateness it may have, as the memorial of a Scottish rural poet. The door of the basement story stood open ; and, en lering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche, looking keener, 244. SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled as his pictures usually do. I think the likeness cannot be good. In the centre of the room stood a glass case, in which were reposited the two volumes of the little Pocket- Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, when they pledged their troth to one another. It is poorly printed, on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is written within the cover of each volume, in the poet s own hand ; and fastened to one of the covers is a lock of Highland Mary s golden hair. This Bible had been carried to America by one of her relatives, but was sent back to be fitly treasured here. There is a staircase within the monument, by which we ascended to the top, and had a view of both Briggs of Doon ; the scene of Tarn O Shanter s misadventure being close at hand. Descending, we wandered through the enclosed garden, and came to a little building in a corner, on entering which, we found the two statues of Tarn and Sutor Wat, ponderous stone-work enough, yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living warmth and jovial hilarity. From this part of the garden, too, we again beheld the old Brigg of Doon, over which Tarn galloped in such imminent and awful peril. It is a beautiful object in the landscape, with one high, graceful arch, ivy-grown, and shadowed all over and around with foliage. "When we had waited a good while, the old gardener came, telling us that he had heard an excellent prayer at laying the corner-stone of the new kirk. He now gave us some roses and sweetbrier, and let us out from his pleasant garden. We immediately hastened to Kirk SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 245 Alloway, whic*? is withiu two or three minutes walk of Hie monument A few steps ascend from the roadside, through a gate, mto the old graveyard, in the midst of which stands tho kirk. The edifice is wholly roofless, but the side-wall* and gable-ends are quite entire, though portions of thpm are evidently modem restorations. .Never was there a plainer little church, or one with mailer architectural pretension ; no New England meet ing-house has more simplicity in its very self, though poetry and fun hare clambered and clustered so wildly over Kirk Alloway *\iat it is difficult to see it as it actu ally exists. By the by, I do not understand why Satan and an assembly of witches should hold their revels within a consecrated precinct ; but the weird scene has BO established itself in the world s imaginative faith that it must be accepted $>s an authentic incident, in spite of rule and reason to the contrary. Possibly, some carnal minister, some priest of pious aspect and hidden infidelity, had dispelled the consecration of the holy edifice by his pretence of prayer, and thus made it the resort of unhappy ghosts and sorcerers and devils. The interior of the kirk, even now, is applied to quitf as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the witches used it as a dancing-hall ; for it is divided in the midsf by a wall of stone masonry, and each compartment ha been converted into a family burial-place. The name on one of the monuments is Crawfurd ; the other bore no inscription. It is impossible not to feel that the^e good people, whoever they way be, had no business ir\ thrus\ their prosaic bones into a spot that belongs to the world, and where their presence jars with the emotions, be they sad or gay, which the pilgrim brings thither. They shut 246 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. us out from our own precincts, too, from that inalien able, possession which Burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind, by taking it from the actual earth and annexing it to the domain of imagination. And here these wretched squatters have lain down to their long sleep, after barring each of the two doorways of the kirk with an iron grate ! May their rest be troubled, till they rise and let us in ! Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, considering how large a space it fills in our imagination before we see it, I paced its length, outside of the wall, and found it only seventeen of my paces, and not more than ten of them in breadth. There seem to have been but very few windows, all of which, if I rightly remember, are now blocked up with mason-work of stone. One mullioned window, tall and narrow, in the eastern gable, might have been seen by Tarn O Shanter, blazing with dev ilish light, as he approached along the road from Ayr ; and there is a small and square one, on the side nearest the road, into which he might have peered, as he sat on horseback. Indeed, I could easily have looked through it, standing on the ground, had not the opening been walled up. There is an odd kind of belfry at the peak of one of the gables, with the small bell still hanging in it. And this is all that I remember of Kirk Alloway, except that the stones of its material are gray and irregular. The road from Ayr passes Alloway Kirk, and crosses the Doon by a modern bridge, without swerving much from a straight line. To reach the old bridge, it appears to have made a bend, shortly after passing the kirk, and then to have turned sharply towards the river. The new bridge is within a minute s walk of the monument ; and wo went thither, and leaned over its parapet to admire SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 247 the, beautiful Doon, flowing wildly and sweetly between its deep and wooded banks. I never saw a lovelier scene ; although this might have been even lovelier, if a kindly sun had shone upon it. The ivy-grown, ancient bridge, with its high arch, through which we had a pic ture of the river and the green banks beyond, was abso lutely the most picturesque object, in a quiet and gentle way, that ever blessed my eyes. Bonny Doon, with its wooded banks, and the boughs dipping into the water ! The memory of them, at this moment, affects me like the song of birds, and Burns crooning some verses, simple and wild, in accordance with their native melody. It u as impossible to depart without crossing the very bridge of Tarn s adventure ; so we went thither, over a now disused portion of the road, and, standing on the centre of the arch, gathered some ivy-leaves from that sacred spot. This done, we returned as speedily as might be to Ayr, whence, taking the rail, we soon beheld Ailsa Craig rising like a pryamid out of the sea. Drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben Lomond hove in sight, with a dome-like summit, supported by a shoulder on each side. But a man is better than a mountain ; and we had been holding intercourse, if not with the reality, at least with the stalwart ghost of one of Earth s memorable sons, amid the scenes where he lived and sung. We shall appreciate him better as a poet, hereafter ; for there is no writer whose life, as a man, has so much to do with his fame, and throws such a necessary light upon what ever he has produced. Henceforth, there will be a per sonal warmth for us in everything that he wrote ; and, like his countrymen, we shall know him in a kind of personal way, as if we had shaken hands with him, and felt the tlirill of his actual voice. A LONDON SUBURB. ONE of our English summers looks, in the retrospect, as if it had been patched with more frequent sunshine than the sky of England ordinarily affords ; but I be lieve that it may be only a moral effect, a " light that never was on sea nor land," caused by our having found a particularly delightful abode in the neighborhood of London. In order to enjoy it, however, I was compelled to solve the problem of living in two places at once, an impossibility which I so far accomplished as to vanish, at frequent intervals, out of men s sight and knowledge on one side of England, and take my place in a circle of familiar faces on the other, so quietly that I seemed to have been there all along. It was the easier to get accustomed to our new residence, because it was not only rich in all the material properties of a home, but had also the home-like atmosphere, the household element, which is of too intangible a character to be let even with the most thoroughly furnished lodging-house. A friend had given us his suburban residence, with all its conven iences, elegances, and snuggeries, its drawing-rooma and library, still warm and bright with the recollection of the genial presences that we had known there, its closets, chambers, kitchen, and even its wine-cellar, if wo could have availed ourselves of so dear and delicate a A LONDON SUBURB. 249 trust, its lawn and cosey garden-nooks, and whatever else makes up the multitudinous idea of an English home, he had transferred it all to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that we might rest and take our ease during his summer s absence on the Continent. We had long been dwelling in tents, as it were, and morally shiv ering by hearths which, heap the bituminous coal upon them as we might, no blaze could render cheerful. I remember, to this day, the dreary feeling with which I sat by our first English fireside, and watched tne chill and rainy twilight of an autumn day darkening down upon the garden ; while the portrait of the preceding occupant of the house (evidently a most unamiable j><srsonage in his lifetime) scowled inhospitably from above the mantel piece, as if indignant that an American should try to make himself at home there. Possibly it may appease his sulky shade to know that I quitted his abode as much a stranger as I entered it. But now, at last, we were in a genuine British home, where refined and warm-hearted people had just been living their daily life, and had left us a summer s inheritance of slowly ripened days, such as a stranger s hasty opportunities so seldom permit him to enjoy. "Within so trifling a distance of the central spot of all the world, (which, as Americans have at present no cen tre of their own, we may allow to be somewhere in the vicinity, we will say, of St. Paul s Cathedral,) it might have seemed natural that I should be tossed about by the turbulence of the vast London whirlpool. But I had drifted into a still eddy, where conflicting movements made a repose, and, wearied with a good deal of uncon genial activity, I found the quiet of my temporary haveu 250 A LONDON SUBURB. more attractive than anything that the great town could offer. I already knew London well ; that is to say, I had long ago satisfied (so far as it was capable of satis faction) that mysterious yearning the magnetism of millions of hearts operating upon one which impels every man s individuality to mingle itself with the im- mensest mass of human life within his scope. Day after day, at an earlier period, I had trodden the thronged thoroughfares, the broad, lonely squares, the lanes, alleys, and strange labyrinthine courts, the parks, the gardens and enclosures of ancient studious societies, so retired and silent amid the city-uproar, the markets, the foggy streets along the riverside, the bridges, I had sought all parts of the metropolis, in short, with an unweariable and in- discriminating curiosity ; until few of the native inhab itants, I fancy, had turned so many of its corners as myself. These aimless wanderings (in which my prime purpose and achievement were to lose my way, and so to tind it the more surely) had brought me, at one time or another, to the sight and actual presence of almost all the objects and renowned localities that I had read about, and which had made London the dream-city of my youth. I had found it better than my dream ; for there is noth ing else in life comparable (in that species of enjoyment, I mean) to the thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight which an American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether to call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of Lon don. The result was, that I acquired a home-feeling there, as nowhere else in the world, though afterwards I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in regard :o Rome ; and as long as either of those two great cities shall exist, the cities of the Past and of the Present, a A LONDON SUBURB. 251 man s native soil may crumble beneath his feet without leaving him altogether homeless upon earth. Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I was in a manner free of the city, and could approach or keep away from it as I pleased. Hence it happened, that, liv ing within a quarter of an hour s rush of the London Bridge Terminus, I was oftener tempted to spend a whole summer-day in our garden than to seek anything new or old, wonderful or commonplace, beyond its pre cincts. It was a delightful garden, of no great extent, but comprising a good many facilities for repose and enjoyment, such as arbors and garden-seats, shrubbery, flower-beds, rose-bushes in a profusion of bloom, pinks, poppies, geraniums, sweet-peas, and a variety of other scarlet, yellow, blue, and purple blossoms, which I did not trouble myself to recognize individually, yet had al ways a vague sense of their beauty about me. The dim sky of England has a most happy effect on the coloring of flowers, blending richness with delicacy in the same texture ; but in this garden, as everywhere else, the ex uberance of English verdure had a greater charm than any tropical splendor or diversity of hue. The hunger for natural beauty might be satisfied with grass and green leaves forever. Conscious of the triumph of England in this respect, and loyally anxious for the credit of my own country, it gratified me to observe what trouble and pains the English gardeners are fain to throw away in pro ducing a few sour plums and abortive pears and apples -- as, for example, in this very garden, where a row of un happy trees were spread out perfectly flat against a brick wall, looking as if impaled alive, or crucified, with a cruel and unattainable purpose of compelling them to produce 252 A LONDON SUBURB. rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never ate an Eng lish fruit, raised in the open air, that could compare in flavor with a Yankee turnip. The garden included that prime feature of English do mestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, carefully shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on which wo sometimes essayed to practise the time-honored game of bowls, most unskilfully, yet not without a perception that it involves a very pleasant mixture of exercise and ease, as is the case with most of the old English pastimes. Our little domain was shut in by the house on one side, and in other directions by a hedge-fence and a brick wall, which last was concealed or softened by shrubbery and the impaled fruit-trees already mentioned. Over all the outer region, beyond our immediate precincts, there was an abundance of foliage, tossed aloft from the near or distant trees with which that agreeable suburb is adorned. The effect was wonderfully sylvan and rural, insomuch that we might have fancied ourselves in the depths of a wooded seclusion ; only that, at brief intervals, we could hear the galloping sweep of a railway train passing within a quarter of a mile, and its discordant screech, moder ated by a little farther distance, as it reached the Black- heath Station. That harsh, rough sound, seeking me out so inevitably, was the voice of the great world summon ing me forth. I know not whether I was the more paine*. or pleased to be thus constantly put in mind of the neigh borhood of London ; for, on the one hand, my conscience stung me a little for reading a book, or playing with chil dren in the grass, when there were so many better things for an enlightened traveller to do, while, at the same time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idleness, A LONDON SUBURB. 253 to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. On the whole, however, I do not repent of a single wasted hour, and only wish that I could have spent twice as many in the same way ; for the impression on my memory is, that I was as happy in that hospitable garden as the English summer-day was long. One chief condition of my enjoyment was the weather. Italy has nothing like it, nor America. There never was Buch weather except in England, where, in requital of a vast amount of horrible east-wind between February and June, and a brown October and black November, and a wet, chill, sunless winter, there are a few weeks of in comparable summer, scattered through July and August, and the earlier portion of September, small in quantity, but exquisite enough to atone for the whole year s atmos pherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent sombre- ness may have brought out those sunny intervals in such high relief, that I see them, in my recollection, brighter than they really were : a little light makes a glory for people who live habitually in a gray gloom. The Eng lish, however, do not seem to know how .enjoyable the momentary gleams of their summer are ; they call it broiling weather, and hurry to the seaside with red, per spiring faces, in a state of combustion and deliquescence ; and I have observed that even their cattle have similar susceptibilities, seeking the deepest shade, or standing mid-leg deep in pools and streams to cool themselves, at temperatures which our own cows would deem little more than barely comfortable. To myself, after the summer heats of my native land had somewhat effervesced out of my blood and memory, it was the weather of Paradise itself. It might be a little too wftrm; but it was that 254 A LONDON SUBURB. modest and inestimable superabundance which constitutes a bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly enough. During my first year in England, residing in perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom, I could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the hearth ; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendliness, shy, but some times almost tender, in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smil ing summer ; and in the succeeding years whether that I had renewed my fibre with English beef and re plenished niy blood with English ale, or whatever were the cause I grew content with winter and especially in love with summer, desiring little more for happiness than merely to breathe and bask. At the midsummer which we are now speaking of, I must needs confess that the noontide sun came down more fervently than I found al together tolerable ; so that I was fain to slvft my position with the shadow of the shrubbery, making myself the movable index of a sundial that reckoned up the hours of an almost interminable day. For each day seemed endless, though never wearisome. As far as your actual experience is concerned, the English summer-day has positively no beginning and no end. When you awake, at any reasonable hour, the sun is already shining through the curtains ; you live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath quietude, with a calm variety of incident softly etched upon their tranquil lapse ; and at length you become conscious that it is bedtime again, while there is still enough daylight in the sky to make the pages of your book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such season, hangs down a trans parent veil through which the by-gone day beholds ite A LONDON SUBURB. 255 successor ; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London, it may be soberly affirmed of the more northern parts of the island, that To-morrow is born before its Yesterday ia dead. They exist together in the golden twilight, where the decrepit old day dimly discerns the face of the omi nous infant ; and you, though a mere mortal, may simul taneously touch them both, with one finger of recollection and another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day might be, nor how many of them. I had earned this repose by a long course of irksome toil and perturba tion, and could have been content never to stray out of the limits of that suburban villa and its garden. If I lacked anything beyond, it would have satisfied me well enough to dream about it, instead of struggling for its actual possession. At least, this was the feeling of the moment ; although the transitory, flitting, and irrespon sible character of my life there was perhaps the most enjoyable element of all, as allowing me much of the comfort of house and home without any sense of their weight upon my back. The nomadic life has great ad vantages, if we can find tents ready pitched for us at every stage. So much for the interior of our abode, a spot of deepest quiet, within reach of the intensest activity. But, even when we stepped beyond our own gate, we were not shocked with any immediate presence of the great world. We were dwelling in one of those oases that have grown up (in comparatively recent years, I be lieve) on the wide waste of Blackheath, which otherwise otters a vast extent of unoccupied ground in singular proximity to the metropolis. As a general thing, the proprietorship of the soil seems to exist in everybody 256 A. LONDON SUBURB. and nobody ; but exclusive rights have been obtained, here and there, chiefly by men whose daily concerns link them with London, so that you find their villas or boxes standing along village streets which have often more of an American aspect than the elder English settlements. The scene is semi-rural. Ornamental trees overshadow the sidewalks, and grassy margins border the wheel* tracks. The houses, to be sure, have certain points of difference from those of an American village, bearing tokens of architectural design, though seldom of indi vidual taste ; and, as far as possible, they stand aloof from the street, and separated each from its neighbor by- hedge or fence, in accordance with the careful exclusive- ness of the English character, which impels the occupant, moreover, to cover the front of his dwelling with as much concealment of shrubbery as his limits will allow. Through the interstices, you catch glimpses of well-kept lawns, generally ornamented with flowers, and with what the English call rock- work, being heaps of ivy-grown stones and fossils, designed for romantic effect in a small way. Two or three of such village streets as are here described take a collective name, as, for instance, Black- heath Park, and constitute a kind of community of residents, with gateways, kept by a policeman, and a semi-privacy, stepping beyond which, you find yourself O-i the breezy heath. On this great, bare, dreary common I often went astray, us I afterwards did on the Campagna of Rome, and drew the air (tainted with London smoke though it might be) into my lungs by deep inspirations, with a strange and unexpected sense of desert freedom. The misty atmos phcre helps you to fancy a remoteness that perhaps does A LONDON SUBURB. 257 not quite exist. During the little time that it lasts, the solitude is as impressive as that of a Western prairie or forest ; but soon the railway shriek, a mile or two away, insists upon informing you of your whereabout ; or you recognize in the distance some landmark that you may have known, an insulated villa, perhaps, with its gar den wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new settlement which is sprouting on this otherwise barren soil. Half a century ago, the most frequent token of man s beneficent contiguity might have been a gibbet, and the creak, like a tavern sign, of a murderer swinging to and fro in irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen and footpads, was dangerous in those days ; and even now, for aught I know, the Western prairie may still compare favorably with it as a safe region to go astray in. When I was acquainted with Blackheath, the ingenious device of garroting had recently come into fashion ; and I can remember, while crossing those waste places at midnight, and hearing footsteps behind me, to have been sensibly encouraged by also hearing, not far off, the clinking hoof- tramp of one of the horse-patrols who do regular duty there. About sunset, or a little later, was the time when the broad and somewhat desolate peculiarity of the heath seemed to me to put on its utmost impressiveness. At that hour, finding myself on elevated ground, I once had a view of immense London, four or five miles off, with the vast Dome in the midst, and the towers of the two Houses of Parliament rising up into the smoky * canopy, the thinner substance of which obscured a mass of things, and hovered about the objects that were rxiost distinctly visible, a glorious and sombre picture, dusky, awful, but irresistibly attractive, like a young man s dream 17 258 A LONDON SUBURB. of the great world, foretelling at that distance a grandeur never to be fully realized. While I lived in that neighborhood, the tents of two or three sets of cricket-players were constantly pitched on Blackheath, and matches were going forward that seemed to involve the honor and credit of communities or coun ties, exciting an interest in everybody but myself, who (tared not what part of England might glorify itself at the expense of another. It is necessary to be born an Englishman, I believe, in order to enjoy this great na tional game ; at any rate, as a spectacle for an outside observer, I found it lazy, lingering, tedious, and utterly devoid of pictorial effects. Choice of other amusements was at hand. Butts for archery were established, and bows and arrows were to be let, at so many shots for a penny, there being abundance of space for a farther flight-shot than any modern archer can lend to his shaft. Then there was an absurd game of throwing a stick at ciockery ware, which I have witnessed a hundred times, and personally engaged in once or twice, without ever having the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery. In other spots you found donkeys for children to ride, and ponies of a very meek and patient spirit, on which the Cockney pleasure seekers of both sexes rode races and made wonderful displays of horsemanship. By way of refreshment there was gingerbread, (but, as a true patriot, I must pronounce it greatly inferior to our native dainty,) and ginger-beer, and probably stancher liquor among the booth-keeper s hidden stores. The frequent railway trains, as well as the numerous steamers to Green wich, have made the vacant portions of Blackheath a play ground and breathing-place for the Londoners, readily and A LONDON SUBURB. 259 very cheaply accessible ; so that, in view of this broader use and enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts that have been filched away, so to speak, and individualized by thriving citizens. One sort of visitors especially interested me : they were schools of little boys or girls, under the guardianship of their instructors, charity schools, as I often surmised from their aspect, collected among dark alleys and squalid courts ; and hither they were brought to spend a summer afternoon, these pale little progeny of the sunless nooks of London, who had never known that the sky was any broader than that narrow and vapory strip above their native lane. I fancied that they took but a doubtful pleasure, being half affrighted at the wide, empty space overhead and round about them, finding the air too little medicated with smoke, soot, and graveyard exhalations, to be breathed with comfort, and feeling shel terless and lost because grimy London, their slatternly and disreputable mother, had suffered them to stray out of her arms. Passing among these holiday people, we come to one of the gateways of Greenwich Park, opening through an old brick wall. It admits us from the bare heath into a scene of antique cultivation and woodland orna ment, traversed in all directions by avenues of trees, many of which bear tokens of a venerable age. These broad and well-kept pathways rise and decline over the elevations and along the bases of gentle hills which diversify the whole surface of the Park. The loftiest 1 and most abrupt of them (though but of very moderate height) is one of the earth s noted summits, and may hold up its head with Mont Blanc and Chimborazo, as being the site of Greenwich Observatory, where, if all nations 260 A LONDON SUBURB. will consent to say so, the longitude of our great globe begins. I used to regulate my watch by the broad dial- plate against the Observatory wall, and felt it pleasant to be standing at the very centre of Time and Space. There are lovelier parks than this in the neighborhood of London, richer scenes of greensward and cultivated trees ; and Kensington, especially, in a summer after noon, has seemed to me as delightful as any place can 01 ought to be, in a world which, some time or other, we must quit. But Greenwich, too, is beautiful, a spot where the art of man has conspired with Nature, as if lie and the great mother had taken counsel together how to make a plea-sant scene, and the longest liver of the, two had faithfully carried out their mutual design. It has, likewise, an additional charm of its own, because, to all appearance, it is the people s property and play-ground in a much more genuine way than the aristocratic resorts in closer vicinity to the metropolis. It affords one of the instances in which the monarch s property is actually the people s, and shows how much m^re natural is their relation to the sovereign than to the nobility, which pre tends to hold the intervening opace between the two : for u nobleman makes a paradise only for himself, and fills it with his own pomp and pride ; whereas the people are sooner or later the legitimate inheritors of whatever beauty kings and queens create, as now of Greenwich Park. On Sundays, when the sun shone, and even on those grim and sombre days when, if it do not actually rain, the English persist in calling it fine weather, it was too good to see how sturdily the plebeians trod under their own oaks, and what fulness of simple enjoyment they evidently found there They were the people, not the A LONDON SUBURB. 261 populace, specimens of a class whose Sunday clothes are a distinct kind of garb from their week-day ones ; and this, in England, implies wholesome habits of life, daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest. I longed to be acquainted with them, in order to investigate what man ner of folks they were, what sort of households they kept, their politics, their religion, their tastes, and whether they were as narrow-minded as their betters. There can be v r ery little doubt of it : an Englishman is English, in whatever rank of life, though no more intensely so, I should imagine, as an artisan or petty shopkeeper, than as a member of Parliament. The English character, as I conceive it, is by no means a very lofty one ; they seem to have a great deal of earth and grimy dust clinging about them, as was probably the case with the stalwart and quarrelsome people who sprouted up out of the soil, after Cadmus had sown the dragon s teeth. And yet, though the individual English man is sometimes preternaturally disagreeable, an ob server standing aloof has a sense of natural kindness towards them in the lump. They adhere closer to the original simplicity in which mankind was created than we ourselves do ; they love, quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn their actual selves inside out, with greater freedom than any class of Americans would consider decorous. It was often so with these holiday folks in Greenwich Park ; and, ridiculous as it may sound, I fancy myself to have caught very satisfactory glimpses of Arcadian life among the Cockneys there, hardly beyond the scope of Bow- Bells, picnicking in the grass, uncouthly gambolling on the broad slopes, or straying in motley groups or by sin gle pairs of lovemaking youths and maidens, along the 262 A LONDON SUBURB. sun-streaked avenues. Even the omnipresent policemen or park-keepers could not disturb the beatific impression on my mind. One feature, at all events, of the Golden Age was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered you in the somewhat remoter recesses of the Park, and were readily prevailed upon to nibble a bit of bread out of your hand. But, though no wrong had ever been done them, and no horn had sounded nor hound bayed at the heels of themselves or their antlered progenitors, for centuries past, there was still an apprehensiveness linger ing in their hearts ; so that a slight movement of the hand or a step too near would send a whole squadron of them scampering away, just as a breath scatters the winged seeds of a dandelion. The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all those fes tal people wandering through it, resembled that of the Borghese Gardens under the walls of Rome, on a Sunday or Saint s day ; but, I am not ashamed to say, it a little disturbed whatever grimly ghost of Puritanic strictness might be lingering in the sombre depths of a New Kng- land heart, among severe and sunless remembrances of the Sabbaths of childhood, and pangs of remorse for ill- gotten lessons in the catechism, and for erratic fantasies or hardly suppressed laughter in the middle of long ser mons. Occasionally, I tried to take the long-hoarded sdng out of these compunctious smarts by attending divine service in the open air. On a cart outside of the Park-wall (and, if 1 mistake not, at two or three corners and secluded spots within the Park itself) a Methodist preacher uplifts his voice and speedily gathers a congre gation, his zeal for whose religious welfare impels the good man to such earnest vociferation and toilsome ges- A LONDON SUBURB. 203 ture that hig perspiring face is quickly in a stew. His inward flame conspires with the too fervid sun and makes a positive martyr of him, even in the very exercise of hia pious labor ; insomuch that he purchases every atom of spiritual increment to his hearers by loss of his own cor poreal solidity, and, should his discourse last long enough, must finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at him, be it understood, it is not in scorn ; he performs his sacred Dffice more acceptably than many a prelate. These way side services attract numbers who would not otherwise listen to prayer, sermon, or hymn, from one year s end to another, and who, for that very reason, are the auditors most likely to be moved by the preacher s eloquence. Yonder Greenwich pensioner, too, in his costume of three-cornered hat, and old-fashioned, brass-buttoned blue coat with ample skirts, which makes him look like a con temporary of Admiral Benbow, that tough old mariner may hear a word or two which will go nearer his heart than anything that the chaplain of the Hospital can be expected to deliver. I always noticed, moreover, that a considerable proportion of the audience were soldiers, who came hither with a day s leave from Woolwich, hardy veterans in aspect, some of whom wore as many as four or five medals, Crimean or East-Indian, on the breasts of their scarlet coats. The miscellaneous congre gation listen with every appearance of heartfelt interest ; and, for my own part, I must frankly acknowledge that I never found it possible to give five minutes attention to any other English preaching : so cold and commonplace are the homilies that pass for such, under the aged roofs of churches. And as for cathedrals, the sermon is an exceedingly diminutive and unimportant part of the relig- 264 A LONDON SUBURB. ious services, if, indeed, it be considered a part,- among the pompous ceremonies, the intonations, and the resounding and lofty-voiced strains of the choristers. The magnificence of the setting quite dazzles out what we Puritans look upon as the jewel of the whole affair ; for I presume that it was our forefathers, the Dissenters in England and America, who gave the sermon its present prominence in the Sabbath exercises. The Methodists are probably the first and only English men who have worshipped in the open air since the an cient Britons listened to the preaching of the Druids ; and it reminded me of that old priesthood, to see certain memorials of their dusky epoch not religious, however, but warlike in the neighborhood of the spot where the Methodist was holding forth. These were some ancient barrows, beneath or within which are supposed to lie buried the slain of a forgotten or doubtfully remembered battle, fought on the site of Greenwich Park as long ago as two or three centuries after the birth of Christ. What ever may once have been their height and magnitude, they have now scarcely more prominence in the actual scene than the battle of which they are the sole monu ments retains in history, being only a few mounds side by side, elevated a little above the surface of the ground, ten or twelve feet in diameter, with a shallow depression in their summits. When one of them was opened, not long since, no bones, nor armor, nor weapons were dis covered, nothing but some small jewels, and a tuft of hair, perhaps from the head of a valiant general, who, dying on the field of his victory, bequeathed this lock, together with his indestructible fame, to after ages. The hair and jewels are probably in the British Museum, where the A LONDON SUBURB. 265 potsherds and rubbish of innumerable generations make the visitor wish that each passing century could carry off ail its fragments and relics along with it, instead of add ing them to the continually accumulating burden which human knowledge is compelled to lug upon its back. Aa for the fame, I know not what has become of it. After traversing the Park, we come into the neighbor hood of Greenwich Hospital, and will pass through one of its spacious gateways for the sake of glancing at an establishment which does more honor to the heart of Eng land than anything else that I am acquainted with, of a public nature. It is very seldom that we can be sensible of anything like kindliness in the acts or relations of such an artificial thing as a National Government. Our own Government, I should conceive, is too much an abstraction ever to feel any sympathy for its maimed sailors and sol diers, though it will doubtless do them a severe kind of justice, as chilling as the touch of steel. But it seemed to me that the Greenwich pensioners are the petted chil dren of the nation, and that the Government is their dry- nurse, and that the old men themselves have a childlike consciousness of their position. Very likely, a better sort of life might have been arranged, and a wiser care be stowed on them ; but, such as it is, it enables them to spend a sluggish, careless, comfortable old age, grumbling, growling, gruff, as if all the foul weather of their past years were pent up within them, yet not much more dis contented than such weather-beaten and battle-battered fragments of human kind must inevitably be. Their home, in its outward form, is on a very magnificent plan. Its germ was a royal palace, the full expansion of which has resulted in a series of edifices externally more beauti. 2GG A LONDON SUBURB. ful than any English palace that I have seen, consisting of several quadrangles of stately architecture, united by colonnades and gravel walks, and enclosing grassy squares, with statues in the centre, the whole extending along the Thames. It is built of marble, or very light-colored stone, in the classic style, with pillars and porticos, which (to my own taste, and, I fancy, to that of the old sailors) produce but a cold and shivery effect in the English cli mate. Had I been the architect, I would have studied the characters, habits, and predilections of nautical people in AVapping, Rotherhithe, and the neighborhood of the Tower, (places which I visited in affectionate remem brance of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, and other actual or mythological navigators,) and would have built the hospi tal in a kind of ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark, ugly, and inconvenient, but snug and cozy homeliness of the sailor boarding-houses there. There can be no ques tion that all the above attributes, or enough of them to satisfy an old sailor s heart, might be reconciled with architectural beauty and the wholesome contrivances of modern dwellings, and thus a novel and genuine style of building be given to the world. But their countrymen meant kindly by the old fellows in assigning them the ancient royal site where Elizabeth held her court and Charles II. began to build his palace. So far as the locality went, it was treating them like so many kings ; and, with a discreet abundance of grog, beer, and tobacco, there was perhaps little more to be accomplished in behalf of men whose whole previous lives have tended to unfit them for old age. Their chief discomfort is prob ably for lack of something to do or think about. But, judging by the few whom I saw, a listless habil seems to A LONDON SUBURB. 267 have crept over them, a dim dreaminess of mood, in which they sit between asleep and awake, and find the long day wearing towards bedtime without its having made any distinct record of itself upon their consciousness. Sitting on stone benches in the sunshine, they subside into slum ber, or nearly so, and start at the approach of footsteps echoing under the colonnades, ashamed to be caught nap ping, and rousing themselves in a hurry, as formerly on the midnight watch at sea. In their brightest mo ments, they gather in groups and bore one another with endless sea-yarns about their voyages under famous ad mirals, and about gale and calm, battle and chase, and all that class of incident that has its sphere on the deck and in the hollow interior of a ship, where their world has exclusively been. For other pastime, they quarrel among themselves, comrade with comrade, and perhaps shake paralytic fists in furrowed face? If inclined for a little exercise, they can bestir their \\ ooden legs on the long esplanade that borders by the Thames, criticizing the rig of passing ships, and firing off volleys of male diction at the steamers, which have made the sea another element than that they used to be acquainted with. All this is but cold comfort for the evening of life, yet may compare rather favorably with the preceding portions of it, comprising little save imprisonment on shipboard, in the course of which they have been tossed all about the world and caught hardly a glimpse of it, forgetting what grass and trees are, and never finding out what woman is, though they may have encountered a painted spectre which they took for her. A country owes much to human beings whose bodies she has worn out and whose immor tal part she has left undeveloped or debased, as we find 268 A LONDON SUBURB. them here ; and having wasted an idle paragraph upon them, let me now suggest that old men have a kind of susceptibility to moral impressions, and even (up to an advanced period) a receptivity of truth, which often ap pears to come to them after the active time of life is past. The Greenwich pensioners might prove better subjects br true education now than in their school-boy days ; but ;hen where is the Normal School that could educate in structors for such a class ? There is a beautiful chapel for the pensioners, in the classic style, over the altar of which hangs a picture by West. I never could look at it long enough to make out its design ; for this artist (though it pains me to say it of so respectable a countryman) had a gift of frigidity, a knack of grinding ice into his paint, a power of stupefying the spectator s perceptions and quelling his sympathy, beyond any other limner that ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportu nity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence upon the poor, blame less man, for the sake of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion of frosty fury, that used to be a bugbear to me in the Athenaeum Exhibition. Would fire burn it, I wonder ? The principal thing that they have to show you, at Greenwich Hospital, is the Painted Hall. It is a splendid and spacious room, at least a hundred feet long and half as high, with a ceiling painted in fresco by Sir Jamea Thornhill. As A work of art, I presume, this frescoed canopy has little merit, though it produces an exceedingly rich effect by its brilliant coloring and as a specimen of magnificent upholstery. The walls of the grand apart ment are entirely covered with pictures, many of them representing battles and other naval ihcidonts that were A LONDON SUBURB. 269 once fresher in the world s memory than now, but chiefly portraits of old admirals, comprising the whole line of heroes who have trod the quarter-decks of British ships for more than two hundred years back. Next to a tomb in Westminster Abbey, which was Nelson s most elevated object of ambition, it would seem to be the highest meed of a naval warrior to have his portrait hung up in the Painted Hall ; but, by dint of victory upon victory, these illustrious personages have grown to be a mob, and by no means a very interesting one, so far as regards the char acter of the faces here depicted. They are generally commonplace, and often singularly stolid ; and I have observed (both in the Painted Hall and elsewhere, and not only in portraits, but in the actual presence of such renowned people as I have caught glimpses of) that the countenances of heroes are not nearly so impressive as those of statesmen, except, of course, in the rare in stances where warlike ability has been but the one-sided manifestation of a profound genius for managing the world s affairs. Nine tenths of these distinguished admi rals, for instance, if their faces tell truth, must needs have been blockheads, and might have served better, one would imagine, as wooden "figure-heads for their own ships than to direct any difficult and intricate scheme of action from the quarter-deck. It is doubtful whether the same kind of men will hereafter meet with a similar degree of success ; for they were victorious chiefly through the old English hardihood, exercised in a field of which modem science had not yet got possession. Rough valor has lost something of its value, since their days, and must continue to sink lower and lower in the comparative estimate of warlike qualities. In the next naval war, as between 270 A LONDON SUBURB. England and France, I would bet, methinks, upon the Frenchman s head. It is remarkable, however, that the great naval hero of England the greatest, therefore, in the world, and of all time had none of the stolid characteristics that be long to his class, and cannot fairly be accepted as their representative man. Foremost in the roughest of pro fessions, he was as delicately organized as a woman, and as painfully sensitive as a poet. More than any other Englishman he won the love and admiration of his coun try, but won them through the efficacy of qualities that are not English, or, at all events, were intensified in his case and made poignant and powerful by something mor bid in the man, which put him otherwise at cross-pur poses with life. He was a man of genius ; and genius in an Englishman (not to cite the good old simile of a pearl in the oyster) is usually a symptom of a lack of balance in the general making-up of the character ; as we may satisfy ourselves by running over the list of their poets, for example, and observing how many of them have been sickly or deformed, and how often their lives have been darkened by insanity. An ordinary Englishman is the healthiest and wholesomest of human beings ; an extraor dinary one is almost always, in one way or another, a sick man. It was so with Lord Nelson. The wonderful con trast or relation between his personal qualities the posi tion which he held, and the life that he lived, makes him as interesting a personage as all history has to show and it is a pity that Southey s biography so good in its superficial way, and yet so inadequate as regards arny real delineation of the man should have taken the subject aut of the hands of some writer endowed with more deli- A LONDON SUBURB. 271 catc appreciation and deeper insight than that genuine Englishman possessed. But Southey accomplished his own purpose, which, apparently, was to present his hero as a pattern for England s young midshipmen. But the English capacity for hero-worship is full to the brim with what they are able to comprehend of Lord Nelson s character. Adjoining the Painted Hall is a smaller room, the walls of which are completely and ex clusively adorned with pictures of the great Admiral s exploits. We see the frail, ardent man in all the most noted events of his career, from his encounter with a Polar bear to his death at Trafalgar, quivering here and there about the room like a blue, lambent flame. No Briton ever enters that apartment without feeling the beef and ale of his composition stirred to its depths, and finding himself changed into a hero for the nonce, how ever stolid his brain, however tough his heart, however unexcitable his ordinary mood. To confess the truth, I myself, though belonging to another parish, have been deeply sensible to the sublime recollections there aroused, acknowledging that Nelson expressed his life in a kind of symbolic poetry which I had as much right to under stand as these burly islanders. Cool and critical observer as I sought to be, I enjoyed their burst of honest indigna tion when a visitor (not an American, I am glad to say) thrust his walking-stick almost into Nelson s face, in one of the pictures, by way of pointing a remark ; and the bystanders immediately glowed like so many hot coals, nnd would probably have consumed the offender in their wrath, had he not effected his retreat. But the most sa cred objects of all are two of Nelson s coats, under sepa rate glass cases. One is that which he wore at the Battle 272 A LONDON SUBURB. of the Nile, and it is now sadly injured by moths, which will quite destroy it in a few years, unless its guardians preserve it as we do Washington s military suit, by occa sionally baking it in an oven. The other is the coat in which he received his death-wound at Trafalgar. On its breast are sewed three or four stars and orders of knight hood, now much dimmed by time and damp, but which glittered brightly enough on the battle-day to draw th6 fatal aim of a French marksman. The bullet-hole i* visible on the shoulder, as well as a part of tne golden tassels of an epaulet, the rest of which was fchot away. Over the coat is laid a white waistcoat with a great olood- stain on it, out of which all the redness has uuexly faded, leaving it of a dingy yellow hue, in the thre^acurb year* since that blood gushed out. Yet it was onco cne reddest blood in England, Nelson s blood ! The hospital stands close adjacent to the town of Green wich, which will always retain a kind of fei.ial aspect in my memory, in consequence of my having first become acquainted with it on Easter Monday. T il a few years ago, the first three days of Easter were a t arnival season in this old town, during which the idle ai d disreputable part of London poured itself into the .streets like an inundation of the Thames, as unclean as that turbid mixture of the offscourings of the vast city, and over flowing with its grimy pollution whatever rural innocence, if any, might be found in the suburban neighborhood. This festivity was called Greenwich Fair, the final one of which, in an immemorial succession, it was my fortune to behold. If I had bethought myself of going through the fair with a note-book and pencil, jotting down all the promi- A LONDON SUBURB. 273 nent objects, I doubt not that the result might ha\ e been a sketch of English life quite as characteristic and worthy of historical preservation as an account of the Roman Carnival. Having neglected to do so, I remember little more than a confusion of unwashed and shabbily dressed people, intermixed with some smarter figures, but, on the whole, presenting a mobbish appearance such as we never see in our own country. It taught me to understand why Shakspeare, in speaking of a crowd, so often alludes to its attribute of evil odor. The common people of Eng land, I am afraid, have no daily familiarity with even so necessary a thing as a wash-bowl, not to mention a bath ing-tub. And furthermore, it is one mighty difference between them and us, that every man and woman on our side of the water has a working-day suit and a holiday suit, and is occasionally as fresh as a rose, whereas, in the good old country, the griminess of his labor or squalid habits clings forever to the individual, and gets to be a part of his personal substance. These are broad facts, involving great corollaries and dependencies. There are really, if you stop to think about it, few sadder spectacles in the world than a ragged coat, or a soiled and shabby gown, at a festival. This unfragrant crowd was exceedingly dense, being welded together, as it were, in the street through which we strove to make our way. On either side were oys ter-stands, stalls of oranges, (a very prevalent fruit in England, where they give the withered ones a guise of freshness by boiling them,) and booths covered with old sail-cloth, in which the commodity that most attracted the bye was gilt gingerbread. It was so completely envel- in Dutch gilding that I did not at first recognize an 18 274 A LONDON SUBURB. Did acquaintance, but wondered what those golden crowns and images could be. There were likewise drums and other toys for small children, and a variety of showy and worthless articles for children of a larger growth ; though it perplexed me to imagine who, in such a mob, could have the innocent taste to desire playthings, or the money to pay for them. Not that I have a right to accuse the mob, on my own knowledge, of being any less innocent than a set of cleaner and better dressed people might have been ; for, though one of them stole my pocket- handkerchief, I could not but consider it fair game, under the circumstances, and was grateful to the thief for spar ing me my purse. They were quiet, civil, and remark ably good-humored, making due allowance for the national gruffness ; there was no riot, no tumultuous swaying to and fro of the mass, such as I have often noted in an American crowd, no noise of voices, except frequent bursts of laughter, hoarse or shrill, and a widely diffused, inarticulate murmur, resembling nothing so much as the rumbling of the tide among the arches of London Bridge. What immensely perplexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle, in all quarters, far off and close at hand, and sometimes right at my own back, where it sounded as if the stout fabric of my English surtout had been ruth lessly rent in twain ; and everybody s clothes, all over the fair, were evidently being torn asunder in the same way. By and by, I discovered that this strange nois^ was produced by a little instrument called " The Fun ol the Fair," a sort of rattle, consisting of a wooden wheel, the cogs of which turn against a thin slip of wood, and so produce a rasping sound when drawn smartly against a person s back. The ladies draw their rattlt* A LONDON SUBURB. 275 ugainst the backs of their male friends, (aiid everybody passes for a friend at Greenwich Fair,) and the young men return the compliment on the broad British backs of the ladies ; and all are bound by immemorial custom to take it in good part and be merry at the joke. As it was one of rny prescribed official duties to give an ac count of such mechanical contrivances as might be un known in my own country, I have thought it right to be thus particular in describing the Fun of the Fair. But this was far from being the sole amusement. There were theatrical booths, in front of which were pictorial representations of the scenes to be enacted within ; and anon a drummer emerged from one of them, thumping on a terribly lax drum, and followed by the entire dramatis persona, who ranged themselves on a wooden platform in front of the theatre. They were dressed in character, but wofully shabby, with very dingy and wrinkled white tights, threadbare cotton-velvets, crumpled silks, and crushed muslin, and all the gloss and glory gone out of their aspect and attire, seen thus in the broad daylight and after a long series of perform ances. They sang a song together, and withdrew intc the theatre, whither the public were invited to follow them at the inconsiderable cost of a penny a ticket. Be fore another booth stood a pair of brawny fighting-men, displaying their muscle, and soliciting patronage for an exhibition of the noble British art of pugilism. There were pictures of giants, monsters, and outlandish beasts, most prodigious, to be sure, and worthy of all admiration, unless the artist had gone incomparably beyond his sub ject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles which they were prepared to work ; and posture-makers dislocated 276 A LONDON SUBURB. every joint of their bodies and tied their limbs into inex tricable knots, wherever they could find space to spread a little square of carpet on the ground. In the midst of the confusion, while everybody was treading on his neighbor s toes, some little boys were very solicitous to brush your boots. These lads, I believe, are a product of modern society, at least, no older than the time of Gay, who celebrates their origin in his " Trivia " ; but in most other respects the scene reminded me of Bunyan s description of Vanity Fair, nor is it at all improbable that the Pilgrim may have been a merry-maker here, in his wild youth. It seemed very singular though, of course, I imme diately classified it as an English characteristic to see a great many portable weighing-machines, the owners of which cried out continually and amain, " Come, know your weight ! Come, come, know your weight to-day ! Come, know your weight ! " and a multitude of people, mostly large in the girth, were moved by this vocifera tion to sit down in the machines. I know not whether they valued themselves on their beef, and estimated their standing as members of society at so much a pound ; but I shall set it down as a national peculiarity, and a symbol of the prevalence of the earthly over the spiritual ele ment, that Englishmen are wonderfully bent on knowing how solid and physically ponderous they are. On the whole, having an appetite for the brown bread mid the tripe and sausages of life, as well as for its nicer cates and dainties, I enjoyed the scene, and was amused at the sight of a gruff old Greenwich pensioner, who, for getful of the sailor-frolics of his young days, stood look ing with grim disapproval at all these vanities. Thug A. LONDON SUBURB. 277 we squeezed our way through the mob-jammed town, and emerged into the Park, where, likewise, we met a great many merry-makers, but with freer space for their gambols than in the streets. We soon found ourselves the targets for a cannonade with oranges, (most of them in a decayed condition,) which went humming past our ears from the vantage-ground of neighboring hillocks, sometimes hitting our sacred persons with an inelastic thump. This was one of the privileged freedoms of the time, and was nowise to be resented, except by returning the salute. Many persons were running races, hand in hand, down the declivities, especially that steepest one on the summit of which stands the world-central Obser vatory, and (as in the race of life) the partners were usually male and female, and often caught a tumble to gether before reaching the bottom of the hill. Here abouts we were pestered and haunted by two young girls, the eldest not more than thirteen, teasing us to buy matches ; and finding no market for their commodity, the taller one suddenly turned a somerset before our faces, and rolled heels over head from top to bottom of the hill on which we stood. Then, scrambling up the acclivity, the topsy-turvy trollop offered us her matches again, as demurely as if she had never flung aside her equilibrium ; so that, dreading a repetition of the feat, we gave her sixpence and an admonition, and enjoined her nevei to do so any more. The most curious amusement that we witnessed here or anywhere else, indeed was an ancient and hereditary pastime called " Kissing in the King." I shall describe the sport exactly as I saw it, although an English friend assures me that there are certain ceremonies with a hand- 278 A LONDON SUBURB. kerchief, which make it much more decorous and grace ful. A handkerchief, indeed ! There was no such thing in the crowd, except it were the one which they had just filched out of my pocket. It is one of the simplest kinds of games, needing little or no practice to make the player altogether perfect ; and the manner of it is this. A ring is formed, (in the present case, it was of large circum ference and thickly gemmed around with faces, mostly on the broad grin,) into the centre of which steps an ad venturous youth, and, looking round the circle, selects whatever maiden may most delight his eye. He pre sents his hand, (which she is bound to accept,) leads her into the centre, salutes her on the lips, and retires, taking his stand in the expectant circle. The girl, in her turn, throws a favorable regard on some fortunate young man, offers her hand to lead him forth, makes him happy with a maidenly kiss, and withdraws to hide her blushes, if any there be, among the simpering faces in the ring ; while the avored swain loses no time in transferring her Balute to the prettiest and plumpest among the many mouths that are primming themselves in anticipation. And thas the thing goes on, till all the festive throng are inwree^hed and intertwined into an endless and inex tricable chain of kisses ^ though, indeed, it smote me with compassion to reflect that some forlorn pair of lips might be left out, and never know the triumph of a salute, after throwing aside so many delicate reserves for the sake of winning it. If the young men had any chivalry, there was a fair chance to display it by kissing the li >meliest lamsel in the circle. To be frank, however, at the first glance, and to my A-nierican eye, they looked all homely alike, and the A LONDON SUBUKB. 279 chivalry that I suggest is more than I could have been capable of, at any period of my life. They seemed to be country-lasses, of sturdy and wholesome aspect, with coarse-grained, cabbage-rosy cheeks, and, I am willing to suppose, a stout texture of moral principle, such as would bear a good deal of rough usage without suffering much detriment. But how unlike the trim little damsels of my native land ! I desire above all things to be cour teous ; but, sinne the plain truth must be told, the soil and climate of England produce feminine beauty as rarely as they do delicate fruit, and though admirable specimens of both are to be met with, they are the hot-house ameli orations of refined society, and apt, moreover, to relapse into the coarseness of the original stock. The men are man-like, but the women are not beautiful, though the female Bull be well enough adapted to the male. To return to the lasses of Greenwich Fair, their charms were few, and their behavior, perhaps, not altogether commendable ; and yet it was impossible not to feel a degree of faith in their innocent intentions, with such a half-bashful zest and entire simplicity did they keep up their part of the game. It put the spectator in good- humor to look at them, because there was still something of the old Arcadian life, the secure freedom of the an tique age, in their way of surrendering their lips to strangers, as if there were no evil or impurity in the world. As for the young men, they were chiefly speci mens of the vulgar sediment of London life, often shab bily genteel, rowdyish, pale, wearing the unbrushed coat, unshifted linen, and unwashed faces of yesterday, as well as the haggardness of last night s jollity in a gin-shop. Gathering their character from these tokens, I wondered 280 A LONDON SUBURB. whether there were any reasonable prospect of their faif partners returning to their rustic homes with as much in nocence (whatever were its amount or quality) as they brought to Greenwich Fair, in spite of the perilous fa miliarity established by Kissing in the Ring. The manifold disorders resulting from the fair, at which a vast city was brought into intimate relations with a comparatively rural district, have at length led to its suppression ; this was the very last celebration of it, and brought to a close the broad-mouthed merriment of many hundred years. Thus my poor sketch, faint as its colors are, may acquire some little value in the reader s eyes from the consideration that no observer of the coming time will ever have an opportunity to give a better. I should find it difficult to believe, however, that the queer pastime just described, or any moral mischief to which that and other customs might pave the way, can have led to the overthrow of Greenwich Fair; for it has often seemed to me that Englishmen of station and respecta bility, unless of a peculiarly philanthropic turn, have neither any faith in the feminine purity of the lower orders of their countrywomen, nor the slightest value for it, allowing its possible existence. The distinction of ranks is so marked, that the English cottage damsel holds a position somewhat analogous to that of the negro girl in our Southern States. Hence comes inevitable detri ment to the moral condition of those men themselves, who forget that the humblest woman has a right and a duty to hold herself in the same sanctity as the highest. The subject cannot well be discussed in these pages ; but I offer it as a serious conviction, from what I have been able to observe, that the England of to-day is the un- A LONDON SUB .TIB. 281 scrupulous old England of Tom Jones and Joseph An drews, Humphrey Clinker and Roderick Random ; and in our refined era, just the same as at that more free- spoken epoch, this singular people has a certain con tempt for any fine-strained purity, any special squeamish- ness, as they consider it, on the part of an ingenuous youth. They appear to look upon it as a suspicious phenomenon in the masculine character. Nevertheless, I by no means take upon me to affirm that English morality, as regards the phase here alluded to, is really at a lower point than our own. Assuredly, I hope so, because, making a higher pretension, or, at all events, more carefully hiding whatever may be amiss, we are either better than they, or necessarily a great deal worse. It impressed me that their open avowal and rec ognition of immoralities served to throw the disease to the surface, where it might be more effectually dealt with, and leave a sacred interior not utterly profaned, in stead of turning its poison back among the inner vitali ties of the character, at the imminent risk of corrupting them all. Be that as it may, these Englishmen are cer tainly a franker and simpler people than ourselves, from peer to peasant ; but if we can take it as compensatory on our part, (which I leave to be considered), that they owe those noble and manly qualities to a coarser grain in their nature, and that, with a finer one in ours, we shall ultimately acquire a marble polish of which they are in susceptible, I believe that this may be the truth. UP THE THAMES. THE upper portion of Greenwich (where my last urli* cle left me loitering) is a cheerful, comely, old-fashioned town, the peculiarities of which, if there be any, have passed out of my remembrance. As you descend towards the Thames, the streets get meaner, and the shabby and sunken houses, elbowing one another for frontage, bear the sign-boards of beer-shops and eating-rooms, with especial promises of whitebait and other delicacies in the fishing line. You observe, also, a frequent announcement of " Tea Gardens " in the rear ; although, estimating the ca pacity of the premises by their external compass, the en tire sylvan charm and shadowy seclusion of such blissful resorts must be limited within a small back-yard. These places of cheap sustenance and recreation depend for support upon the innumerable pleasure parties who come from London Bridge by steamer, at a fare of a few pence, and who get as enjoyable a meal for a shilling a head as the Ship Hotel would afford a gentleman for a guinea. The steamers, which are constantly smoking their pipe up and down the Thames, offer much the most agreeable mode of getting to London. At least, it might be exceed ingly agreeable, except for the myriad floating particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the heavy heat of mid summer sunshine on the unsheltered deck, or the chill, misty air-draught of a cloudy day, and the spiteful little LT THE THAMES. 283 showers of rain that may spatter down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise of the sky ; besides which there is some slight inconvenience from the inexhaustible throng of passengers, who scarcely allow you standing- room, nor so much as a breath of unappropriated air, and never a chance to sit down. If these difficulties, added to the possibility of getting your pocket picked, weigl little with you, the panorama along the shores of the mem orable river, and the incidents and shows of passing life upon its bosom, render the trip far preferable to the brief, yet tiresome shoot along the railway track. On one such voyage, a regatta of wherries raced past us, and at once involved every soul on board our steamer in the tremen dous excitement of the struggle. The spectacle was but a moment within our view, and presented nothing more than a few light skiffs, in each of which sat a single rower, bare-armed, and with little apparel, save a shirt and drawers, pale, anxious, with every muscle on the stretch, and plying his oars in such fashion that the boat skimmed along with the aerial celerity of a swallow. I wondered at myself for so immediately catching an interest in the affair, which seemed to contain no very exalted rivalship of manhood ; but, whatever the kind of battle or the prize of victory, it stirs one s sympathy immensely, and is even awful, to behold the rare sight of a man thoroughly in earnest, doing his best, putting forth all there is in him, and staking his very soul (as these rowers appeared willing to do) on the issue of the contest. It was the seventy- fourth annual regatta of the Free Watermen of Green wich, and announced itself as under the patronage of the Lord Mayor and other distinguished individuals, at whose experse, I suppose, a prize-boat was offered to the con* 284 LP THE THAMES. queror, and some small amounts of money to the inferio* competitors. The aspect of London along the Thames, below Bridge, as it is called, is by no m^ms so impressive as it ought to be, considering what peculiar advantages are offered for the display of grand and stately architecture by the pas sage of a river through the midst of a great city. It seems, indeed, as if the heart of London had been clell open for the mere purpose of showing how rotten and drearily mean it had become. The shore is lined with the shabbiest, blackest, and ugliest buildings that can be imagined, decayed warehouses with blind windows, and wharves that look ruinous ; insomuch that, had I known nothing more of the world s metropolis, I might have fancied that it had already experienced the downfall which I have heard commercial and financial prophets predict for it, within the century. And the muddy tide of the Thames, reflecting nothing, and hiding a million of un clean secrets within its breast, a sort of guilty con science, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of sin that constantly flow into it, is just the dismrvl stream to glide by such a city. The surface, to be sure, displays no lack of activity, being fretted by the passage of a hun dred steamers and covered with a good deal of shipping, but mostly of a clumsier build than I had been accus tomed to see in the Mersey : a fact which I complacently attributed to the smaller number of American clippers in the Thames, and the less prevalent influence of American example in refining away the broad-bottomed capacity of the old Dutch or English models. About midway between Greenwich and London Bridg* at a rude landing-place on the left bank of the river, th UP THE THAMES. 285 Bleamer rings its bell and makes a momentary pause in front of a large circular structure, where it may be worth our while to scramble ashore. It indicates the locality of one of those prodigious practical blunders that would sup ply John Bull with a topic of inexhaustible ridicule, if his cousin Jonathan had committed them, but of which he himself perpetrates ten to our one in the mere wantonness of wealth that lacks better employment. The circular building covers the entrance to the Thames Tunnel, and is surmounted by a dome of glass, so as to throw daylight down into the great depth at which the passage of the river commences. Descending a wearisome succession of staircases, we at last find ourselves, still in the broad noon, standing before a closed door, on opening which we behold the vista of an arched corridor that extends into everlasting midnight. In these days, when glass has been applied to so many new purposes, it is a pity that the architect had not thought of arching portions of his abor tive tunnel with immense blocks of the lucid substance, over which the dusky Thames would have flowed like a cloud, making the sub-fluvial avenue only a little gloomier than a street of upper London. At present, it is illuminated at regular intervals by jets of gas, not very brilliantly, yet with lustre enough to show the damp plaster of the ceiling and walls, and the massive stone pavement, the crevices of which are oozy with moisture, not from the incumbent river, but from hidden springs in the earth s deeper heart. There are two paral lel corridors, with a wall between, for the separate accom modation of the double throng of foot-passengers, eques trians, and vehicles of all kinds, which was expected to roll and reverberate continually through the Tunnel. 286 UP THE THAMES. Only one of them has ever been opened, and its echoes are but feebly awakened by infrequent footfalls. Yet there seem to be people who spend their lives here, and who probably blink like owls, when, once or twice a year, perhaps, they happen to climb into the sunshine. All along the corridor, which I believe to be a mile in extent, we see stalls or shops in little alcoves, kept prin cipally by women ; they were of a ripe age, I was glad to observe, and certainly robbed England of none of its very moderate supply of feminine loveliness by their deeper than tomb-like interment. As you approach, (and they are so accustomed to the dusky gaslight that they read all your characteristics afar off,) they assail you with hun gry entreaties to buy some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire spar, with a magnify ing-glass at one end to make the vista more effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jew elry, sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for sixpence, and diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at a not much heavier cost, together with a multifarious trumpery which has died out of the upper world to reappear in this Tar tarean bazaar. That you may fancy yourself still in the realms of the living, they urge you to partake of cakes, candy, ginger-beer, and such small refreshment, more suitable, however, for the shadowy appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy stomachs of Englishmen. The most capa cious of the shops contains a dioramic exhibition of cities and scenes in the daylight world, with a dreary glimmer of gas among them all ; so that they serve well enough to represent the dim, unsatisfactory remembrances that dend people might be supposed to retain from their past lives, mixing them up with the ghastliness of their unsubstan- UP THE THAMES. 287 tial state. I dwell the more upon these trifles, and do my best to give them a mockery of importance, because, if these are nothing, then all this elaborate contrivance and mighty piece of work has been wrought in vain. The Englishman has burrowed under the bed of his great river, and set ships of two or three thousand tons a-rolling Dver his head, only to provide new sites for a few old women to sell cakes and ginger-beer ! Yet the conception was a grand one ; and though it has proved an absolute failure, swallowing an immensity of toil and money, with annual returns hardly sufficient to keep the pavement free from the ooze of subterranean springs, yet it needs, I presume, only an expenditure three or four (or, for aught I know, twenty) times as large, to make the enterprise brilliantly successful. The descent is so great from the bank of the river to its surface, and the Tunnel dips so profoundly under the river s bed, that the approaches on either side must commence a long way off, in order to render the entrance accessible to horsemen or vehicles ; so that the larger part of the cost of the whole affair should have been expended on its margins. It has turned out a sublime piece of folly ; and when the New Zealander of distant ages shall have moralized sufficiently among the ruins of London Bridge, he will bethink himself that somewhere thereabout was the marvellous Tunnel, the very existence of which will seem to him as incredible as that of the hanging gardens of Babylon. But the Thames will long ago have broken through the mas sive arch, and choked up the corridors with mud and sand and with the large stones of the structure itself, intermixed with skeletons of drowned people, the rusty iron-work of sunken vessels, and the great many such 288 UP THE THAMES. precious and curious things as a river always contrives to hide in its bosom ; the entrance will have been obliterated, and its very site forgotten beyond the memory of twenty generations of men, and the whole neighborhood be held a dangerous spot on account of the malaria; insomuch that the traveller will make but a brief and careless in quisition for the traces of the old wonder, and will stake his credit before the public, in some Pacific Monthly of that day, that the story of it is but a myth, though en riched with a spiritual profundity which he will proceed to unfold. Yet it is impossible (for a Yankee, at least) to see so much magnificent ingenuity thrown away, without try ing to endow the unfortunate result with some kind of usefulness, though perhaps widely different from the pur pose of its original conception. In former ages, the mile- long corridors, with their numerous alcoves, might have been utilized as a series of dungeons, the fittest of all possible receptacles for prisoners of state. Dethroned monarchs and fallen statesmen would not have needed to remonstrate against a domicile so spacious, so deeply secluded from the world s scorn, and so admirably in ac cordance with their thenceforward sunless fortunes. An alcove here might have suited Sir Walter Raleigh better than that darksome hiding-place communicating with the great chamber in the Tower, pacing from end to end of which he meditated upon his " History of the World." His track would here have been straight and narrow, in deed, and would therefore have lacked somewhat of the freedom that his intellect demanded ; and yet tl e length to which his footsteps might have travelled forth and retraced themselves would partly have harmonized his UP THE THAMES. 289 physical movement with the grand curves and planetary returns of his thought, through cycles of majestic peri ods. Having it in his mind to compose the world s his tory, methinks he could have asked no better retirement than such a cloister as this, insulated from all the seduc tions of mankind and womankind, deep beneath their mysteries and motives, down into the heart of things, full of personal reminiscences in order to the comprehensh e measurement and verification of historic records, seeing into the secrets of human nature, secrets that daylight never yet revealed to mortal, but detecting their whole scope and purport with the infallible eyes of unbroken solitude and night. And then the shades of the old mighty men might have risen from their still profounder abodes and joined him in the dim corridor, treading be side him with an antique stateliness of mien, telling him in melancholy tones, grand, but always melancholy, of the greater ideas and purposes which their most renowned performances so imperfectly carried out, that, magnificent successes in the view of all posterity, they were but fail ures to those who planned them. As Raleigh was a navigator, Noah would have explained to him the pecu liarities of construction that made the ark so seaworthy ; as Raleigh was a statesman, Moses would have discussed with him the principles of laws and government ; as Raleigh was a soldier, Cassar and Hannibal would have held debate in his presence, with this martial student for their umpire ; as Raleigh was a poet, David, or whatever most illustrious bard he might call up, would have touched his harp, and made manifest all the true significance of the past by means of song and the subtle intelligences of music. 19 290 UP THE THAMES. Meanwhile, T had forgotten that Sir Walter Raleigh s century knew^ nothing of gaslight, and that it would re quire a prodigious and wasteful expenditure of tallow candles to illuminate the Tunnel sufficiently to discern even a ghost. On this account, however, it would be all the more suitable place of confinement for a metaphysi cian, to keep him from bewildering mankind with his shadowy speculations ; and, being shut off from external converse, the dark corridor would help him to make rich discoveries in those cavernous regions and mysterious by-paths of the intellect, which he had so long accus tomed himself to explore. But how would every succes sive age rejoice in so secure a habitation for its reformers, and especially for each best and wisest man that happened to be then alive ! He seeks to burn up our whole system of society, under pretence of purifying it from its abuses ! Away with him into the Tunnel, and let him begin by setting the Thames on fire, if he is able ! If not precisely these, yet akin to these were some of the fantasies that haunted me as I passed under the river : for the place is suggestive of such idle and irre sponsible stuff by its own abortive character, its lack of whereabout on upper earth, or any solid foundation of realities. Could I have looked forward a few years, I might have regretted that American enterprise had not provided a similar tunnel, under the Hudson or the Poto mac, for the convenience of our National Government in times hardly yet gone by. It would be delightful to clap up all the enemies of our peace and Union in the dark together, and there let them abide, listening to the monotonous roll of the river above their heads, or per haps in a state of miraculously suspended animation, T P THE THAMES. 29 1 nntil, be it after months, years, or centuries, when the turmoil shall be all over, the Wrong washed away in blood, (since that must needs be the cleansing fluid,) and the Ri<rht firmly rooted in the soil which that blood will O J have enriched, they might crawl forth again and catch a single glimpse at their redeemed country, and feel it to be a better land than they deserve, and die ! I was not sorry when the daylight reached me after a much briefer abode in the nether regions than, I fear, would await the troublesome personages just hinted at. Emerging on the Surrey side of the Thames, I found myself in Rotherhithe, a neighborhood not unfamiliar to the readers of old books of maritime adventure. There being a ferry hard by the mouth of the Tunnel, I re- crossed the river in the primitive fashion of an open boat, which the conflict of wind and tide, together with the swash and swell of the passing steamers, tossed high and low rather tumultuously. This inquietude of our frail skiff (which, indeed, bobbed up and down like a cork) so much alarmed an old lady, the only other pas senger, that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. " Never fear, mother ! " grumbled one of them, " we ll make the river as smooth as we can for you. We ll get a plane and plane down the waves ! " The joke may not read very brilliantly ; but I make bold to record it as the only specimen that reached my ears of the old, rough water- wit for which the Thames used to be so celebrated, Passing directly along the line of the sunken Tunnel, we landed in Wapping, which I should have presupposed to be the most tarry and pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old salts, and full of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, und cheerful life. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a 292 UP THE THAMES. cold and torpid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and unpio turesque, both as to its buildings and inhabitants : the latter comprising (so far as was visible to me t not a single unmistakable sailor, though plenty of land- sharks, who get a half dishonest livelihood by business connected with the sea. Ale and spirit vaults (as petty drinking establishments are styled in England, pretending to con tain vast cellars full of liquor within the compass of ten feet square above ground) were particularly abundant, together with apples, oranges, and oysters, the stalls of fishmongers and butchers, and slop-shops, where blue jackets and duck trousers swung and capered before the doors. Everything was on the poorest scale, and the place bore an aspect of unredeemable decay. From this remote point of London, I strolled leisurely towards the heart of the city ; while the streets, at first but thinly occupied by man or vehicle, got more and more thronged with foot-passengers, carts, drays, cabs, and the all-per vading and all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack courage, and feel that I should lack perseverance, as the gentlest reader would lack . patience, to undertake a descriptive stroll through London streets ; more espe cially as there would be a volume ready for the printer before we could reach a midway resting-place at Char ing Cross. It will be the easier course to step aboard another passing steamer, and continue our trip up the Thames. The next notable group of objects is an assemblage of ancient walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the midst of which rises prominently one great square tower, of a grayish hue, bordered with white stone, and having a small turret at each corner of the roof. This central UP THE THAMES. 293 structure is the White Tower, and the whole circuit of ramparts and enclosed edifices constitutes what is known in English history, and still more widely and impressively in English poetry, as the Tower. A crowd of river- craft are generally moored in front of it ; but if we look sharply at the right moment under the base of the ram part, we may catch a glimpse of an arched water- entrance, half submerged, past which the Thames glides as indifferently as if it were the mouth of a city-kennel. Nevertheless, it is the Traitor s Gate, a dreary kind of triumphal passage-way, (now supposed to be shut up and barred forever,) through which a multitude of noble and illustrious personages have entered the Tower, and found it a brief resting-place on their way to heaven. Passing it many times, I never observed that anybody glanced at this shadowy and ominous trap-door, save myself. It is well that America exists, if it were only that her vagrant children may be impressed and affected by the historical monuments of England in a degree of which the native inhabitants are evidently incapable. These matters are too familiar, too real, and too hopelessly built in amongst and mixed up with the common objects and affairs of life, to be easily susceptible of imaginative coloring in their minds ; and even their poets and romancers feel it a toil, and almost a delusion, to extract poetic material out of what seems embodied poetry itself to an American. An Englishman cares nothing about the Tower, which to us is a haunted castle in dreamland. That honest and excel lent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P. R. James, (whose mechanical ability, one might have supposed, would nour ish itself by devouring every old stone of such a struct ure,) once assured me that he had never in his lifo 294 UP THE THAMES. set eyes upon the Tower, though for years an historic novelist in London. Not to spend a whole summer s day upon the voyage, we will suppose ourselves to have reached London Bridge, and thence to have taken another steamer for a farther passage up the river. But here the memorable objects succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare but a single sentence even for the great Dome, though I deem it more picturesque, in that dusky atmosphere, than St. Peter s in its clear blue sky. I must mention, however, (since everything connected with royalty is especially in teresting to my dear countrymen,) that I once saw a large and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded and ornamented, and overspread with a rich covering, lying at the pier nearest to St. Paul s Cathedral ; it had the royal banner of Great Britain displayed, besides being decorated with a number of other flags ; and many footmen (who are universally the grandest and gaudiest objects to be seen in England at this day, and these were regal ones, in a bright scarlet livery bedizened with gold lace, and white silk stockings) were in attendance. I know not what festive or ceremonial occasion may have drawn out this pageant ; after all, it might have been merely a city- spectacle, appertaining to the Lord Mayor ; but the sight had its value in bringing vividly before me the grand old times when the sovereign and nobles were accustomed to use the Thames as the high street of the metropolis, and join in pompous processions upon it ; whereas, the desuetude of such customs, nowadays, has caused the whole show of river-life to consist in a multitude of gmoke-begrimed steamers. An analogous change has taken place in the streets, where cabs and the omnibus UP THE THAMES. 295 hare crowded out a rich variety of vehicles ; and thus life gets more monotonous in hue from age to age, and appears to seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of ita gold lace among the wealthier classes, and to make itself decent in the lower ones. Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now wearing as decorous a face as any other portion of Lon Jon ; and, adjoining it, the avenues and brick squares of the Temple, with that historic garden, close upon the riverside, and still rich in shrubbery and flowers, where the partisans of York and Lancaster plucked the fatal roses, and scattered their pale and bloody petals over so many English battlefields. Hard by, we see the long white front or rear x of Somerset House, and, farther on, rise the two new Houses of Parliament, with a huge unfinished tower already hiding its imperfect summit in the smoky canopy, the whole vast and cumbrous edifice a specimen of the best that modern architecture can effect, elaborately imitating the masterpieces of those simple ages when men " builded better than they knew." Close by it, w r e have a glimpse of the roof and upper towers of the holy Abbey ; while that gray, ancestral pile on the opposite side of the river is Lambeth Palace, a venerable group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of brick, but with at least one large tower of stone. In our course, we have passed beneath half a dozen bridges, and, emerging out of the black heart of London, shall soon reach a cleanly suburb, where old Father Thames, if I remember, begins to put on an aspect of unpolluted inno cence. And now we look back upon the mass of innu merable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers, columns, <md the great crowning Dome. look back, in short. 296 UP THE THAMES. upon that mystery of the world s proudest city, amid which a man so longs and loves to be : not, perhaps, be cause it contains much that is positively admirable and enjoyable, but because, at all events, the world has noth ing better. The cream of external life is there ; and whatever merely intellectual or material good we fail to find perfect in London, we may as well content ourselves to seek that unattainable thing no farther on this earth. The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old town endowed with a prodigious number of pot-houses, and some famous gardens, called the Cremorne, for public amusement. The most noticeable thing, however, is Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Greenwich, was founded, I believe, by Charles II., (whose bronze statue, in the guise of an old Roman, stands in the centre of the quadrangle,) and appropriated as a home for aged and infirm soldiers of the British army. The edifices are of three stories with windows in the high roofs, and are built of dark, sombre brick, with stone edgings and fac ings. The effect is by no means that of grandeur, (which is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich Hos pital,) but a quiet and venerable neatness. At each ex tremity of the street-front there is a spacious and hospi tably open gateway, lounging about which I saw some gray veterans in long scarlet coats of an antique fashion, and the cocked hats of a century ago, or occasionally a modern foraging-cap. Almost all of them moved with a rheumatic gait, two or three stumped on wooden legs, and here and there an arm was missing. Inquiring of one of these fragmentary heroes whether a stranger could be admitted to see the establishment, he replied most cordi ally, " yes, Sir, anywhere ! Walk in and go where UP THE THAMES. 297 yen please, up-stairs, or anywhere!" So I entered, and, passing along the inner side of the quadrangle, came to the door of the chapel, which forms a part of the con tiguity of edifices next the street. Here another pen sioner, an old warrior of exceedingly peaceable and Chris tian demeanor, touched his three-cornered hat and asked if I wished to see the interior ; to which I assenting, he unlocked the door, and we went in. The chapel consists of a great hall with a vaulted roof, and over the altar is a large painting in fresco, the subject of which I did not trouble myself to make out. More appropriate adornments of the place, dedicated as well to martial reminiscences as religious worship, are the long ranges of dusty and tattered banners that hang from their staves all round the ceiling of the chapel. They are trophies of battles fought and won in every quarter of the world, comprising the captured flags of all the nations with whom the British lion has waged war since James II. s time, French, Dutch, East Indian, Prussian, Rus sian, Chinese, and American, collected together in this consecrated spot, not to symbolize that there shall be no more discord upon earth, but drooping over the aisle in sullen, though peaceable humiliation. Yes, I said " American " among the rest ; for the good old pensioner mistook me for an Englishman, and failed not to point out (and, methought, with an especial emphasis of tri umph) some flags that had been taken at Bladensburg and Washington. I fancied, indeed, that they hung a little higher and drooped a little lower than any of their companions in disgrace. It is a comfort, however, that their proud devices are already indistinguishable, or nearly BO, owing to dust and tatters and the kind offices of tf*0 298 UP THE THAMES. moths, and that they will soon rot from the banner-staves and be swept out in unrecognized fragments from the chapel-door. It is a good method of teaching a man how imperfectly cosmopolitan he is. to show him his country s flag occupy ing a position of dishonor in a foreign land. But, in truth, the whole system of a people crowing over its military triumphs had far better be dispensed with, both on ac count of the ill-blood that it helps to keep fermenting among the nations, aad because it operates as an accumu lative inducement to future generations to aim at a kind of glory, the gain of which has generally proved more ruinous than its loss. I heartily wish that every trophy of victory might crumble away, and that every reminis cence or tradition of a hero, from the beginning of the world to this day, could pnss out of all men s memories at once and forever. I might feel very differently, to be sure, if we Northerners had anything especially valuable to lose by the fading of those illumniated names. I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may have been a little affectation in it) a magnificent guerdon of all the silver I had in my pocket, to requite him for hav ing unintentionally stirred up my patriotic susceptibilities. He was a meek -looking, kindly old man, with a humble freedom and affability of manner that made it pleasant to converse with him. Old soldiers, I know not why, eeem to be more accostable than old sailors. One is apt to hear a growl beneath the smoothest courtesy of the latter. The mild veteran, with his peaceful voice, and gentle, reverend aspect, told me that he had fought at a cannon all through the Battle of Waterloo, and escaped unhurt ; he had now been in the hospital four or five UP THE THAMES. 299 years, and was married, but necessarily underwent a sepa ration from his wife, who lived outside of the gates. To my inquiry whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable and happy, he answered, with great alacrity, " O yes, Sir ! " qualifying his evidence, after a moment s considera tion, by saying, in an undertone, " There are some people, your Honor knows, who could not be comfortable any where." I did know it, and fear that the system of Chel sea Hospital allows too little of that wholesome care ano regulation of their own occupations and interests which might assuage the sting of life to those naturally uncom fortable individuals by giving them something external to think about. But my old friend here was happy in the hospital, and by this time, very likely, is happy in heaven, in spite of the bloodshed that he may have caused by touching off a cannon at Waterloo. Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of Chelsea, I remember seeing a distant gleam of the Crys tal Palace, glimmering afar in the afternoon sunshine like an imaginary structure, an air-castle by chance de scended upon earth, and resting there one instant before it vanished, as we sometimes see a soap-bubble touch un harmed on the carpet, a thing of only momentary visi bility and no substance, destined to be overburdened and crushed down by the first cloud-shadow that might fall upon that spot. Even as I looked, it disappeared. Shall I attempt a picture of this exhalation of modern inge nuity, or what else shall I try to paint ? Everything in London and its vicinity has been depicted innumerable times, but never once translated into intelligible images ; it is an " old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. While writing these reminiscences, I am continually inv 300 UP THE THAMES. pressed with the futility of the effort to give any creative truth to my sketch, so that it might produce such pictures in the reader s mind as would cause the original scenes to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have other writers often been more successful in representing definite objects prophetically to my own mind. In truth, 1 believe that the chief delight and advantage of this kind of literature is not for any real information that it supplies to untravelled people, but for reviving the recol lections and reawakening the emotions of persons already acquainted with the scenes described. Thus I found an exquisite pleasure, the other day, in reading Mr. Tucker- man s " Month in England," a fine example of the way in which a refined and cultivated American looks at the Old Country, the things that he naturally seeks there, and the modes of feeling and reflection which they excite. Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though truth of coloring may be somewhat more efficacious. Impressions, however, states of mind produced by interesting and re markable objects, these, if truthfully and vividly recorded, may work a genuine effect, and, though but the result of what we see, go farther towards representing the actual scene than any direct effort to paint it. Give the emo tions that cluster about it, and, without being able to ana lyze the spell by which it is summoned up, you get some thing like a simulachre of the object in the midst of them. From some of the above reflections I draw the comfortable inference, that, the longer and better known a thing may be, so much the more eligible is it as the subject of a descriptive sketch. On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side-en trance in the time-blackened wall of a place of worship. UP THE THAMES. 301 nnd found myself among a congregation assembled in one of the transepts and the immediately contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, spacious enough, within the extent covered by its pillared roof and over spread by its stone pavement, to accommodate the whole of church-going London, and with a far wider and loftier concave than any human power of lungs could fill with audible prayer. Oaken benches were arranged in the transept, on one of which I seated myself, and joined, as well as I knew how, in the sacred business that was going forward. But when it came to the sermon, the voice of the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts, and both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, where he and all of us were bodily included within a sublime act of religion, which could be seen above and around us and felt beneath our feet. The structure itself was the worship of the devout men of long ago, miraculously pre served in stone without losing an atom of its fragrance and fervor ; it was a kind of anthem-strain that they had sung and poured out of the organ in centuries gone by ; and being so gran-d and sweet, the Divine benevolence had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors unborn. I therefore came to the conclusion, that, in my individual case, it would be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander about the edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts on the evidently uninspired mortal who was venturing and felt it no venture at all to speak here above his breath. The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader recognized it, no doubt, the moment we entered) is built of rich brown stone ; and the whole of it the lofty roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed arches 302 UP THE THAMES. appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where decay lias laid its finger, the structure is clamped with iron, or otherwise carefully protected ; and being thus watched over, whether as a place of ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, or an object of national interest and pride, it may reasonably be expected to survive for as many ages as have passed over it already. It was sweet to feel its venerable quietude, its long-endur ing peace, and yet to observe how kindly and even cheer fully it received the sunshine of to-day, which fell from the great windows into the fretted aisles? and arches that laid aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it. Sunshine always seems friendly to old abbeys, churches, and castles, kissing them, as it were, with a more affec tionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it accords to edifices of later date. A square of golden light lay on the sombre pavement of the nave, afar off, falling through the grand western entrance, the folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded glimpses of people passing to and fro in the outer world, while we sat dimly envel oped in the solemnity of antique devotion. In the south transept, separated from us by the full breadtli of the minster, there were painted glass windows, of which the uppermost appeared to be a great orb of many-colored radiance, being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels whose glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole emanating from a cross in the midst. These windows are modern, but combine softness with wonderful bril liancy of effect. Through the pillars and arches, I saw that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were almost wholly incrusted with marble, now grown yellow with time, no blank, unlettered slabs, but memorials of UP THE THAMES. 303 *& men as their respective generations deemed wisest JL ) bravest. Some of them were commemorated merely by iu/uiptions on mural tablets, others by sculptured bas- relibfe, others (once famous, but now forgotten generals or admiral*, these) by ponderous tombs that aspired towards the roof of the aisle, or partly curtained the immense arch of a winnow. These mountains of marble were peopled with the rflsterhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and classic figures in full-bottomed wigs ; but it was strange to observe ho\ the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself by what womcc elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test ut Gothic sublimity to overpower the ridic ulous without deigning to hide it ; and these grotesque monuments of the last century answer a similar purpose with the grinning faces which the old architects scattered among their most solemn conceptions. From these distant wanderings, (it was my first visit to Westminster Abbey, and I would gladly have taken it all in at a glance,) my eyes came back and began to in vestigate what was immediately about me in the transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal of Canning s statue. Next beyond it was a massive tomb, on the spacious tab let of which reposed the full-length figures of a marble lord and lady, whom an inscription announced to be the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, the historic Duke of Charles I. s time, and the fantastic Duchess, tradition ally remembered by her poems and plays. She was of a family, as the record on her tomb proudly informed us, of which all the brothers had been valiant and All the sisters virtuous. A recent statue of Sir John Malcolm, the new marble as white as snow, held the next place * 304 UP THE THAMES. and near by was a mural monument and bust of Sir Peter Warren. The round visage of this old British admiral has a certain interest for a New Englander, be cause it was by no merit of his own, (though he took care to assume it as such,) but by the valor and warlike enterprise of our colonial forefathers, especially the stout men of Massachusetts, that he won rank and renown and a tomb in Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a huge mass of marble done into the guise of a judicial gown and wig, with a stern face in the midst of the lat ter, sat on the other side of the transept ; and on the pedestal beside him was a figure of Justice, holding forth, instead of the customary grocer s scales, an actual pair of brass steelyards. It is an ancient and classic instru ment, undoubtedly ; but I had supposed that Portia (when Shylock s pound of flesh was to be weighed) was the only judge that ever really called for it in a court of justice. Pitt and Fox were in the same distinguished company ; and John Kemble, in Roman costume, stood not far off, but strangely shorn of the dignity that is said to have enveloped him like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the evanescent majesty of the stage is incom patible with the long endurance of marble and the sol emn reality of the tomb ; though, on the other hand, almost every illustrious personage here represented has been invested with more or less of stage-trickery by his sculptor. In truth, the artist (unless there be a divine efficacy in his touch, making evident a heretofore hidden dignity in the actual form) feels it an imperious law to remove his subject. as far from the aspect of ordinary life as may be possible without sacrificing every trace of re semblance. The absurd effect of the contrary course is UP THE THAMES. 305 very remarkable in the statue of Mr. Wilberforce, whose actual self, save for the lack of color, I seemed to behold, seated just across the aisle. This excellent man appears to have sunk into himself in a sitting posture, with a thin leg crossed over his knee, a book in one hand, and a finger of the other under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side of his nose, or to some equally familiar purpose ; while his exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, held a little on one side, twin kles at you with the shrewdest complacency, as if he were looking right into your eyes, and twigged something there which you had half a mind to conceal from him. He keeps this look so pertinaciously that you feel it to be insufferably impertinent, and bethink yourself what com mon ground there may be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you to resent it. I have no doubt that the statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one pea .to an other, and you might fancy, that, at some ordinary mo ment, when he least expected it, and before he had time to smooth away his knowing complication of wrinkles, he had seen the Gorgon s head, and whitened into marble, not only his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes, down to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. The ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing the age-long duration of marble upon small, characteristic individualities, such as might come within the province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give perma nence to the figure of a great man in his mood of broad and grand composure, which would obliterate all mean peculiarities ; for, if the original were unaccustomed to such a mood, or if his features were incapable of assum ing the guise, it seems questionable whether he could 20 UP THE THAMES. really have been entitled to a marble immortality. In point of fact, however, the English face and form are eeldom statuesque, however illustrious the individual. It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this mood of half-jocose criticism in describing my first visit to Westminster Abbey, a spot which I had dreamed about more reverentially, from my childhood upward, than any other in the world, and which I then beheld, and now look back upon, with profound gratitude to the men who built it, and a kindly interest, I may add, in the humblest personage that has contributed his little all to its impressiveness, by depositing his dust or his memory there. But it is a characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits you to smile as freely under the roof of its central nave as if you stood beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. Break into laughter, if you feel in clined, provided the vergers do not hear it echoing among the arches. In an ordinary church you would keep your countenance for fear of disturbing the sanctities or pro prieties of the place ; but you need leave no honest and decorous portion of your human nature outside of these benign and truly hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the general impression, when you come to be sensible that many of the monuments are ridiculous, and commemorate a mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves, and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from posterity. You acknowledge the force of Sir Godfrey Kneller s objection to being buried in Westminster Ab bey, because " they do bury fools there ! " Nevertheless, these grotesque carvings of marble, that break out in dingy -white blotches on the old freestone of the interior UP THE THAMES. 307 walls, have come there by as natural a process as might cause mosses and ivy to cluster about the external edifice ; for they are the historical and biographical record of each successive age, written with its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable mistakes, and none the less solemn for the occasional absurdity. Though you en tered the Abbey expecting to see the tombs only of th illustrious, you are content at last to read many names, both in literature and history, that have now lost the reverence of mankind, if indeed they ever really pos sessed it. Let these men rest in peace. Even if you miss a name or two that you hoped to find there, they may well be spared. It matters little a few more or less or whether Westminster Abbey contains or lacks any one man s grave, so long as the Centuries, each with the crowd of personages that it deemed memorable, have chosen it as their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves down under its pavement. The inscriptions and devices on the walls are rich with evidences of the fluctuating tastes, fashions, manners, opinions, prejudices, follies, wisdoms of the past, and thus they combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead times than any in dividual epitaph-maker ever meant to write. When the services were over, many of the audience seemed inclined to linger in the nave or wander away among the mysterious aisles ; for there is nothing in this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which always invites you deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast revelations and shadowy concealments. Through the open-work screen that divides the nave from the chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam of a marvellous window, but were debarred from entrance into that more 808 UP THE THAMES. eacred precinct of the Abbey by the vergers. Thess vigilant officials (doing their duty all the more strenu ously because no fees could be exacted from Sunday visitors) flourished their staves, and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock of sheep. Lingering through one of the aisles, I happened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar exclamation, * rare Ben Jonson ! " and remembered the story of stout old Ben s burial in that spot, standing upright, not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but because standing-room was all that could reasonably be demanded for a poet among the slumberous notabilities of his age. It made me weary to think of it ! such a prodigious length of time to keep one s feet ! apart from the honor of the thing, it would certainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself at ease in some country- churchyard. To this day, however, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed up with the admiration which the higher classes of English society profess for their literary men. Another day in truth, many other days I sought out Poets Corner, and found a sign-board and pointed finger, directing the visitor to it, on the corner house of a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey. The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south transept, and it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the only free mode of access to the building. It is no spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing through which, and push ing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceed ingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the Abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at you from the VIP THE THAMES. 309 otherwise bare stonework of the walls. Great poets, too ; for Ben Joiison is right behind the door, and Spen ser s tablet is next, and Butler s on the same side of the transept, and Milton s (whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to one of his portraits, though older, more wrinkled, and sadder than that) is close by, and a profile- medallion of Gray beneath it. A window high aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on these and many other sculptured marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that cover the three walls of the nook up to an elevation of about twenty feet above the pavement. It seemed to me that I had always been familiar with the spot. Enjoying a humble intimacy and how much of my life had else been a dreary solitude ! with many of its inhabitants, I could not feel myself a stranger there. It was delight ful to be among them. There was a genial awe, mingled with a sense of kind and friendly presences about me ; and I was glad, moreover, at finding so many of them there together, in fit companionship, mutually recognized and duly honored, all reconciled now, whatever distant generations, whatever personal hostility or other miser able impediment, had divided them far asunder while they lived. I have never felt a similar interest in any other tombstones, nor have I ever been deeply moved by the imaginary presence of other famous dead people. A poet s ghost is the only one that survives for his fellow- mortals, after his bones are in the dust, and he not ghostly, but cherishing many hearts with his own warmth in the chillest atmosphere of life. What other fame is worth aspiring for ? Or, let me speak it more boldly, what other long-enduring fame can exist ? We neither remember nor care anything for the past, except as the 310 UP THE THAMES. poet has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to our comprehension. The shades of the mighty have no sub stance ; they flit ineffectually about the darkened stage where they performed their momentary parts, save when the poet has thrown his own creative soul into them, and imparted a more vivid life than ever they were able to manifest to mankind while they dwelt in the body. And therefore though he cunningly disguises himself in their jirmor, their robes of state, or kingly purple it is not the statesman, -the warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe all that they now are or have, a name ! In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been be trayed into a flight above or beyond the customary level that best agrees with me ; but it represents fairly enough the emotions with which I passed from Poets Comer into the chapels, which contain the sepulchres of kings and great people. They are magnificent even now, and must have been inconceivably so when the marble slabs and pillars wore their new polish, and the statues retained the brilliant colors with which they were originally painted, and the shrines their rich gilding, of which the sunlight still shows a glimmer or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks tarnished with antique dust. Yet this recondite portion of the Abbey presents few memo rials of personages whom we care to remember. The shrine of Edward the Confessor has a certain interest, because it was so long held in religious reverence, and because the very dust that settled upon it was formerly worth gold. The helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn at Agincourt, and now suspended above his tomb, UP THE THAMES. 311 are memorable objects, but more for Shakspeare s sake than the victor s own. Rank has been the general pass port to admission here. Noble and regal dust is as cheap as dirt under the pavement. I wn glad to recollect, indeed, (and it is too characteristic of the right English spirit not to be mentioned,) one or tv r o gigantic statues of great mechanicians, who contributed largely to the mate rial welfare of England, sitting familiarly in their marble chairs among forgotten kings and queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of the earlier monuments, and the antique beauty of some of them, are what chiefly gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison is buried among the men of rank ; not on the plea of his literary fame, however, but because he was connected with nobility by marriage, and had been a Secretary of State. His gravestone is inscribed with a resounding verse from Tickell s lines to his memory, the only lines by which Tickell himself is now remembered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) he mainly filched from an obscure versifier of somewhat earlier date. Returning to Poets Corner, I looked again at the walls, and wondered how the requisite hospitality can be shown to poets of our o^rn and the succeeding ages. There is hardly a foot of r-pace left, although room has lately been found for a bust of Southey ard a full-length statue >f Campbell. At bert, only a little portion of the Abbey is dedicated to poets, lUerary men, musical composers and others of the gentle artist b^eed, and even into tJ^at small nook of sanctity men of other pursuits have thought it decent to intrude themselves. Metb.ink^ the tuneful throng, being at home here, should reo^ltect how thev were treated in their lifetime, and turr* tbe cold shoulder 312 UP THE THAMES. looking askance at nobles and official personages, however worthy of honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it shows aptly and truly enough what portion of the world s regard and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary emi nence in comparison with other modes of greatness, this dimly lighted corner (nor even that quietly to them selves) in the vast minster, the walls of which are sheathed and hidden under marble that has been wasted upon the illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it may not be worth while to quarrel with the world on this account ; for, to confess the very truth, their own little nook con tains more than one poet whose memory is kept alive by his monument, instead of imbuing the senseless stone with a spiritual immortality, men of whom you do not ask, " Where is he ? " but " Why is he here ? " I esti mate that all the literary people who really make an essential part of one s inner life, including the period since English literature first existed, might have ample elbow-room to sit down and quaff their draughts of Cas- taly round Chaucer s broad, horizontal tombstone. These divinest poets consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected glory over the humblest of their companions. And as for the latter, it is to be hoped that they may have long outgrown the characteristic jealousies and morbid sensi bilities of their craft, and have found out the little value (probably not amounting to sixpence in immortal cur rency) of the posthumous renown which they once as pired to win. It would be a poor compliment to a dead poet to fancy him leaning out of the sky and snuffing up the impure breath of earthly praise. Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion that those who have bequeathed us the inheritance of an un- UP THE THAMES. b.5 dying song would fain be conscious of its endless reverbe rations in the hearts of mankind, and would delight, among sublimer enjoyments, to see their names emblaz oned in such a treasure-place of great memories as West minster Abbey. There are some men, at all events, true and tender poets, moreover, and fully deserving of the honor, whose spirits, I feel certain, would linger a little while about Poets Corner for the sake of witnessing their own apotheosis among their kindred. They have had a strong natural yearning, not so much for applause as sympathy, which the cold fortune of their lifetime did but scantily supply ; so that this unsatisfied appetite may make itself felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate and retentive, even a step or two beyond the grave. Leigh Hunt, for example, would be pleased, even now, if he could learn that his bust had been reposited in the midst of the old poets whom he admired and loved ; though there is hardly a man among the authors of to-day and yesterday whom the judgment of Englishmen would be less likely to place there. He deserves it, however, if not for his verse, (the value of which I do not estimate, never having been able to read it,) yet for his delightful prose, his unmeasured poetry, the inscrutable happiness of his touch, working soft miracles by a life-process like the growth of grass and flowers. As with all such gentle writers, his page sometimes betrayed a vestige of affecta tion, but, the next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance overgrew and buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since, Heaven be praised, few English celebrities whom I chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen by their decease, and as I assume no liberties with living 814 UP THE THAMES- men) I will conclude this rambling article by sketching my first interview with Leigh Hunt. He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very plain and shabby little house, in a contiguous range of others like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly village street, and certainly nothing to gratify his craving for a tasteful environment, inside or out. A slatternly maid-servant opened the door for us, and he himself stood in the entry, a beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and most naturally courteous manner. He ushered us into his little study, or parlor, or both, a very forlorn room, with poor paper- hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I remem ber, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch distinctly upon these external blemishes and this nudity of adorn ment, not that they would be worth mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable persons, but because Leigh Hunt was born with such a faculty of enjoying all beautiful things that it seemed as if Fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying them as in withholding a suffi ciency of vital breath from ordinary men. All kinds of mild magnificence, tempered by his taste, would have become him well ; but he had not the grim dignity that assumes nakedness as the better robe. I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth, I never saw a finer countenance, either as to the mould of features or the expression, nor any that showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child s face in this respect. At my first glimpse of him, when he met us in the entry, I discerned that he was old, his long hair being white and UP THE THAMES. 315 his wrinkles many ; it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at all expected to see, in spite of dates, be cause his books talk to the reader with the tender vivacity of youth. But when he began to speak, and as he grew more earnest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his age ; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened through the gleam which his sprightly thoughts diffused about his face, but then another flash of youth came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transformation, be fore or since ; and, to this day, trusting only to my recol lection, I should find it difficult to decide which was his genuine and stable predicament, youth or age. I have met no Englishman whose manners seemed to me so agreeable, soft, rather than polished, wholly unconven tional, the natural growth of a kindly and sensitive dis position without any reference to rule, or else obedient to some rule so subtile that the nicest observer could not detect the application of it. His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delightful voice accompanied their visible language like music. He appeared to be exceedingly appreciative of whatever was passing among those who surrounded him, and especially of the vicissitudes in the consciousness of the person to whom he happened to be addressing himself at the mo ment. I felt that no effect upon my mind of what ha uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, es caped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate ; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the 316 UP THE THAMES. inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence tc extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feeling, and within a certain depth, you might spare /ourself the trouble of utterance, because he already knew what you wanted to say, and perhaps a little more than you would have spoken. His figure was full of gentle movement, though, somehow, without disturbing its quietude ; and as he talked, he kept folding his hands nervously, and betokened in many ways a fine and imme diate sensibility, quick to feel pleasure or pain, though scarcely capable, I should imagine, of a passionate expe rience in either direction. There was not an English trait in him from head to foot, morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale, or stout, brandy, or port-wine, en tered not at all into his composition. In his earlier life, he appears to have given evidences of courage and sturdy principle, and of a tendency to fling himself into the rough struggle of humanity on the liberal side. It would be taking too much upon myself to affirm that this was merely a projection of his fancy world into the actual, and that he never could have hit a downright blow, and was altogether an unsuitable person to receive one. I beheld him not in his armor, but in his peacefulest robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion merely from what I saw, it would have occurred to me that his main defi ciency was a lack of grit. Though anything but a timid man, the combative and defensive elements were not prom inently developed in his character, and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fineness of his nature generally, that the English appreciated him no better and left this sweet fmd deli- UP THE THAMES. 317 cate poet poor, and with scanty laurels in his declining sige. It was not, I think, from his American blood that Leigh Hunt derived either his amiability or his peaceful incli nations ; at least, I do not see how we can reasonably claim the former quality as a national characteristic, though the latter might have been fairly inherited from his ancestors on the mother s side, who were Pennsylvania Quakers. But the kind of excellence that distinguished him his fineness, subtilty, and grace was that which the richest cultivation has heretofore tended to develop in the happier examples of American genius, and which (though I say it a little reluctantly) is perhaps what our future intellectual advancement may make general among us. His person, at all events, was thoroughly American, and of the best type, as were likewise his man ners ; for we are the best as well as the worst mannered people in the world. Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to say, he desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, and perhaps profited by it as much in the richer depth of coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In response to all that we ventured to express about his writings, (and, fo? my part, I went quite to the extent of my conscience, which was a long way, and there left the matter to a lady and a young girl, who happily were with me,) his face ehone, and he manifested great delight, with a perfect, and yet delicate, frankness for which I loved him. He could not tell us, he said, the happiness that such appre ciation gave him ; it always took him by surprise, he re marked, for perhaps because he cleaned his own boots, and performed other little ordinary offices for himself 818 UP THE THAMES. he never had been conscious of anything wonderful in hia own person. And then he smiled, making himself and all the poor little parlor about him beautiful thereby. It is usually the hardest thing in the world to praise a raan to his face ; but Leigh Hunt received the incense with such gracious satisfaction, (feeling it to be sympathy, not vulgar praise,) that the only difficulty was to keep the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up while we were talking ; the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and the thunder broke ; but I hope, and have great pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice that he most favora bly inclined his ear, but to those of my companions. Women are the fit ministers at such a shrine. He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and enjoyed keenly, keeping his emotions so much upon the surface as he seemed to do, and convenient for everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful temperament, happiness had probably the upperhand. His was a light, mildly joyous nature, gentle, graceful, yet seldom attaining to that deepest grace which results from power ; for beauty, like woman, its human representative, dallies with the gentle, but yields its consummate favor only to the strong. I imagine that Leigh Hunt may have been more beautiful when I met him, both in person and character, than in hi? earlier days. As a young man, I could conceive of his being finical in certain moods, but not now, when the gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him. I re joiced to hear him say that he was favored with most confident and cheering anticipations in respect to a future life ; and there were abundant proofs, throughout our in- UP THE THAMES. 319 tcrview, of an unrepining spirit, resignation, quiet relin- quishment of the worldly benefits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward into the dusk, all of which gave a reverential cast to the feeling with which we parted from him. I wish that he could have had one full draught of prosperity before he died. As a matter of artistic propriety, it would have been delightful to see him inhabiting a beautiful house of his own, in an Italian climate, with all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegances about him, and a succession of tender and lovely women to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night. I hardly know whether it is my fault, or the effect of a weakness in Leigh Hunt s character, that I should be sensible of a regret of this nature, when, at the same time, I sincerely believe that he has found an infinity of better things in the world whither he has gone. At our leave-taking, he grasped me warmly by both hands, and seemed as much interested in our whole party as if he had known us for years. All this was genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his heart, which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and rare varieties, not acorns, but a true heart, nevertheless. Several years afterwards I met him for the last time at a London din ner-party, looking sadly broken down by infirmities ; and my final recollection of the beautiful old man presents him arm in arm with, nay, if I mistake not, partly em braced and supported by, another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel-name, since he has a week day one for his personal occasions, I will venture to speak. It was Harry Cornwall, whose kind introduction had first made me known to Leigh Hunt. OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. BECOMING an inhabitant of a great English tcwr. I often turned aside from the prosperous thoroughfares, (where the edifices, the shops, and the bustling crowd differed not so much from scenes with which I was fam- *liar in my own country,) and went designedly astray among precincts that reminded me of some of Dickens s grimiest pages. There I caught glimpses of a people and a mode of life that were comparatively new to my obser vation, a sort of sombre phantasmagoric spectacle, exceed ingly undelightful to behold, yet involving a singular interest and even fascination in its ugliness. Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough all over the world, being the symbolic accompaniment of the foul incrustation which began to settle over and bedim all earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple ; ever since which hapless epoch, her daughters have chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of the Atlan tic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is incon ceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the great advantage, that the brightness and dryness of our atmos phere keep everything clean that the suu shines upon, converting the larger portion of our impurities into tran- OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 321 sitory dust which the next wind can sweep away, in con trast with the damp, adhesive grime that incorporates itseH with all surfaces (unless continually and painfully cleansed) in the chill moisture of the English air. Then the all-pervading smoke of the city, abundantly inter mingled with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal, hovering overhead, descending, and alighting on pave ments and rich architectural fronts, on the snowy muslin of the ladies, and the gentlemen s starched collars and shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets in a half- mourning garb. It is beyond the resources of Wealth to keep the smut away from its premises or its own fingers ends ; and as for Poverty, it surrenders itself to the dark influence without a struggle. Along with disastrous cir cumstances, pinching need, adversity so lengthened out as to constitute the rule of life, there comes a certain chill depression of the spirits which seems especially to shudder at cold water. In view of so wretched a state of things, we accept the ancient Deluge not merely as an insulated phenomenon, but as a periodical necessity, and acknowl edge that nothing less than such a general washing-day could suffice to cleanse the slovenly old world of its moral and material dirt. Gin-shops, or what the English call spirit-vaults, are numerous in the vicinity of these poor streets, and are set off with the magnificence of gilded door-posts, tarnished by contact with the unclean customers who haunt there. Kagged children come thither with old shaving-mugs, or broken-nosed teapots, or any such make-shift receptacle, to get a little poison or madness for their parents, who deserve no better requital at their hands for having engen dered them. Inconceivably sluttish women enter at nooi) 21 322 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. day and stand at the counter among boon-companion? bl both sexes, stirring up misery and jollity in a bumper together, and quaffing off the mixture with a relish. As for the men, they lounge there continually, drinking till they are drunken, drinking as long as they have a half penny left, and then, as it seemed to me, waiting for a sixpenny miracle to be wrought in their pockets, so as to enable them to be drunken again. Most of these estab lishments have a significant advertisement of " Beds," doubtless for the accommodation of their customers in the interval between one intoxication and the next. I never could find it in my heart, however, utterly to condemn these sad revellers, and should certainly wait till I had some better consolation to offer before depriving them of their dram of gin, though death itself were in the glass ; for methought their poor souls needed such fiery stimu lant to lift them a little way out of the smothering squalor of both their outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and suggestions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual existence that limited their present misery. The temperance-reformers unquestionably derive their commission from the Divine Beneficence, but have never been taken fully into its counsels. All may not be lost, though those good men fail. Pawn-brokers establishments, distinguished by th mystic symbol of the three golden balls, were conven /ently accessible ; though what personal property these wretched people could possess, capable of being estimated in silver or copper, so as to afford a basis for a loan, was a problem that still perplexes me. Old clothesmen, like wise, dwelt hard by, and hang out ancient garments to dangle in the wind, rhtie were butchers shops, too, of OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 323 a class adapted to the neighborhood, presenting no such generously fattened carcasses as Englishmen love to gaze at in the market, no stupendous halves of mighty beeves, no dead hogs or muttons ornamented with carved bas- reliefs of fat on their ribs and shoulders, in a peculiarly British style of art, not these, but bits and gobbets of lean meat, selvages snipt off from steaks, tough and stringy morsels, bare bones smitten away from joints by tho cleaver, tripe, liver, bullocks feet, or whatever else was cheapest and divisible into the smallest lots. I am afraid that even such delicacies came to many of their tables hardly oflener than Christmas. In the windows of other little shops you saw half a dozen wizened herrings, some eggs in a basket, looking so dingily antique that your imagination smelt them, fly-speckled biscuits, segments of a hungry cheese, pipes and papers of tobacco. Now and then a sturdy milk-woman passed by with a wooden yoke over her shoulders, supporting a pail on either side, filled with a whitish fluid, the composition of which was water and chalk and the milk of a sickly cow, who gave the best she had, poor thing ! but could scarcely make it rich or wholesome, spending her life in some close city- nook and pasturing on strange food. I have seen, once or twice, a donkey coming into one of these streets with panniers full of vegetables, and departing with a return cargo of what looked like- rubbish and street-sweepings. No other commerce seemed to exist, except, possibly, a girl might offer you a pair of stockings or a worked collar, or a man whisper something mysterious about wonder fully cheap cigars. And yet I remember seeing female hucksters in those regions, with their wares on the edge of the sidewalk and their own seat right in the carriage- S24 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. way, pretending to sell half-decayed oranges and apples, toffy, Ormskirk cakes, combs and cheap jewelry, the coarsest kind of crockery, and little plates of oysters, knitting patiently all day long, and removing their un- diminished stock in trade at nightfall. All indispensable importations from other quarters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive scale : for example, the wealthier inhabitants purchased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck-measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal- cart happened to pass through the street and drop a handful or two of its burden in the mud, to see half a dozen women and children scrambling for the treasure- trove, like a flock of hens and chickens gobbling up some spilt corn. In this connection I may as well mention a commodity of boiled snails (for such they appeared to me, though probably a marine production) which used to be peddled from door to door, piping hot, as an article of cheap nutriment. The population of these dismal abodes appeared to consider the sidewalks and middle of the street as theii common hall. In a drama of low life, the unity of place might be arranged rigidly according to the classic rule, and the street be the one locality in which every scene and incident should occur. Courtship, quarrels, plot and counterplot, conspiracies for robbery and murder, family difficulties or agreements, all such matters, I doubt not are constantly discussed or transacted in this sky-roofed saloon, so regally hung with its sombre canopy of coal- smoke. Whatever the disadvantages of the English climate, the only comfortable or wholesome part of life, for the city poor, must be spent in the open air. Tha OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 325 stifled and squalid rooms where they lie down at night, whole families and neighborhoods together, or sulkily elbow one another in the daytime, when a settled rain drives them within doors, are worse horrors than it is worth while (without a practical object in view) to admit into one s imagination. No wonder that they creep forth from the foul mystery of their interiors, stumble down from their garrets, or scramble up out of their cellars, on the upper step of which you may see the grimy house wife, before the shower is ended, letting the raindrops gutter down her visage ; while her children (an impish progeny of cavernous recesses below the common sphere of humanity) swarm into the daylight and attain all that they know of personal purification in the nearest mud- puddle. It might almost make a man doubt the existence of his own soul, to observe how Nature has flung these little wretches into the street and left them there, so evidently regarding them as nothing worth, and how all mankind acquiesce in the great mother s estimate of her offspring. For, if they are to have no immortality, what superior claim can I assert for mine ? And how difficult to believe that anything so precious as a germ of immor tal growth can have been buried under this dirt-heap, plunged into this cesspool of misery and vice ! As often as I beheld the scene, it affected me with surprise and loathsome interest, much resembling, though in a far intenser degree, the feeling with which, when a boy, I used to turn over a plank or an old log that had long lain on the damp ground, and found a vivacious multitude of unclean and devilish-looking insects scampering to and fro beneath it. Without an infinite faith, there seemed as much prospect of a blessed futurity for those hideoua 320 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. bugs and many-footed worms as for these brethren of our humanity and co-heirs of all our heavenly inheritance. Ah, what a mystery ! Slowly, slowly, as after groping at the bottom of a deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my hope struggles upward to the surface, bearing the half-drowned body of a child along with it, and heaving it aloft for its life, and my own life, and all our lives. Unless these glime-clogged nostrils can be made capable of inhaling celestial air, I know not how the purest and most intel lectual of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a breath of it. The whole question of eternity is staked there. If a single one of those helpless little ones be lost, the world is lost ! The women and children greatly preponderate in such places ; the men probably wandering abroad in quest of that daily miracle, a dinner and a drink, or perhaps slum bering in the daylight that they may the better follow out their cat-like rambles through the dark. Here are women with young figures, but old, wrinkled, yellow faces, tanned and blear-eyed with the smoke which they cannot spare from their scanty fires, it being too precious for its warmth to be swallowed by the chimney. Some of them sit on the door-steps, nursing their unwashed babies at bosoms which we will glance aside from, for the sake of our mothers and all womanhood, because the fairest spec tacle is here the foulest. Yet motherhood, in these dark abodes, is strangely identical with what we have all known it to be in the happiest homes. Nothing, as I re member, smote me with more grief and pity (all the more poignant because perplexingly entangled with an inclina tion to smile) than to hear a gaunt and ragged mother priding herself on the pretty ways of her ragged and OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 327 skinny infant, just as a young matron might, when she invites her lady friends to admire her plump, white-robed darling in the nursery. Indeed, no womanly character istic seemed to have altogether perished out of these poor souls. It was the very same creature whose tender tor ments make the rapture of our young days, whom we love, cherish, and protect, and rely upon in life and death, and whom we delight to see beautify her beauty with rich robes and set it off with jewels, though now fantastically masquerading in a garb of tatters, wholly unfit for her to handle. I recognized her, over and over again, in the groups round a door-step or in the descent of a cellar, chatting with prodigious earnestness about intangible trifles, laughing for a little jest, sympathizing at almost the same instant with one neighbor s sunshine and an other s shadow, wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet easily perturbed, and breaking into small feminine ebullitions of spite, wrath, and jealousy, tornadoes of a moment, such as vary the social atmosphere of her silken-skirted sisters, though smothered into propriety by dint of a well- bred habit. Not that there was an absolute deficiency of good breeding, even here. It often surprised me to wit ness a courtesy and deference among these ragged folks, which, having seen it, I did not thoroughly believe in, wondering whence it should have come. I am persuaded, however, that there were laws of intercourse which they never violated, a code of the cellar, the garret, the common staircase, the door-step, and the pavement, which perhaps had as deep a foundation in natural fitness as the code of the drawing-room. Yet again I doubt whether I may not have been utter ing folly in the last two sentences, when I reflect how 328 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. rude and rough these specimens of feminine character generally were. They had a readiness with their hands that reminded me of Molly Seagrim and other heroines* in Fielding s novels. For example, I have seen a woman meet a man in the street, and, for no reason perceptible to me, suddenly clutch him by the hair and cuff his ears, an infliction which he bore with exemplary patience, only snatching the very earliest opportunity to take to his heels. Where a sharp tongue will not serve the purpose they trust to the sharpness of their finger-nails, or incar nate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a re sounding slap, or the downright blow of a doubled fist. All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a fai greater degree than ourselves by this simple and honest tendency, in cases of disagreement, to batter one another s persons ; and whoever has seen a crowd of English ladiey (for instance, at the door of the Sistine Chapel, in Holy Week) will be satisfied that their belligerent propensities are kept in abeyance only by a merciless rigor on thu part of society. It requires a vast deal of refinement to spiritualize their large physical endowments. Such being the case with the delicate ornaments of the drawing- room, it is the less to be wondered at that women who live mostly in the open air, amid the coarsest kind of companionship and occupation, should carry on the inter course of life with a freedom unknown to any class of American females, though still, I am resolved to think, compatible with a generous breadth of natural propriety. It shocked me, at first, to see them (of all ages, even elderly, as well as infants that could just toddle across the street alone) going about in the mud and mire, or through the dusky snow and slosh of a severe week in winter, OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 329 with petticoats high uplifted above bare, red feet and legs ; but I was comforted by observing that both shoes and stockings generally reappeared with better weather, having been thriftily kept out of the damp for the con venience of dry feet within doors. Their hardihood was wonderful, and their strength greater than could ha\e been expected from such spare diet as they probably lived upon. I have seen them carrying on their heads gicat burdens under which they walked as freely as if they were fashionable bonnets ; or sometimes the burden was huge enough almost to cover the whole person, looked at from behind, as in Tuscan villages you may see the girls coming in from the country with great bundles of green twigs upon their backs, so that they resemble loco motive masses of verdure and fragrance. But these poor English women seemed to be laden with rubbish, incon gruous and indescribable, such as bones and rags, the sweepings of the house and of the street, a merchandise gathered up from what poverty itself had thrown away, a heap of filthy stuff analogous to Christian s bundle of gin. Sometimes, though very seldom, I detected a certain gracefulness among the younger women that was alto gether new to my observation. It was a charm proper to the lowest class. One girl I particularly remember, in a garb none of the cleanest and nowise smart, and her self exceedingly coarse in all respects, but yet endowed with a sort of witchery, a native charm, a robe of simple beauty and suitable behavior that she was born in and had never been tempted to throw off, because she had really nothing else to put on. Eve herself could not have been more natural. Nothing was affected, nothing 330 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. imitative ; no proper grace was vulgarized by tin effort to assume the manners or adornments of another sphere This kind of beauty, arrayed in a fitness of its own, is probably vanishing out of the world, and will certainly never be found in America, where all the girls, whether daughters of the upper-tendom, the mediocrity, the cot tage, or the kennel, aim at one standard of dress and deportment, seldom accomplishing a perfectly triumphant hit or an utterly absurd failure. Those words, " genteel * and " ladylike," are terrible ones and do us infinite mis chief, but it is because (at least, I hope so) we are in a transition state, and shall emerge into a higher mode of simplicity than has ever been known to past ages. In such disastrous circumstances as I have been at tempting to describe, it was beautiful to observe what a mysterious efficacy still asserted itself in character. A woman, evidently poor as the poorest of her neighbors, would be knitting or sewing on the door-step, just as fifty other women were ; but round about her skirts (though wofully patched) you would be sensible of a certain sphere of decency, which, it seemed to me, could not have been kept more impregnable in the cosiest little sitting-room, where the tea-kettle on the hob was humming its good old song of domestic peace. Maidenhood had a similar power. The evil habit that grows upon us in this harsh world makes me faithless to my own better perceptions and yet I have seen girls in these wretched streets, on whose virgin purity, judging merely from their impression on my instincts as they passed by, I should have deemed it safe, at the moment, to stake my life. The next mo ment, however, as the surrounding flood of moral unclean- ness surged over their footsteps, I would not have staked a OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 331 ipike of thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the miracle was within the scope of Providence, which is equally wise and equally beneficent, (even to those poor girls, though I acknowledge the fact without the remotest comprehension of the mode of it,) whether they were pure or what we fellow-sinners call vile. Unless your faith be deep-rooted and of most vigorous growth, it is the safer way not tc turn aside into this region so suggestive of miserable doubt. It was a place " with dreadful faces thronged," wrinkled and grim with vice and wretchedness ; and, thinking over the line of Milton here quoted, I come to the conclusion that those ugly lineaments which startled Adam and Eve, as they looked backward to the closed gate of Paradise, were no fiends from the pit, but the more terrible foreshadowings of what so many of their descendants were to be. God help them, and us likewise, their brethren and sisters ! Let me add, that, forlorn, ragged, care-worn, hopeless, dirty, haggard, hungry, as they were, the most pitiful thing of all was to see the sort of patience with which they accepted their lot, as if they had been born into the world for that and nothing else. Even the little children had this characteristic in as perfect development as their grandmothers. The children, in truth, were the ill-omened blossoms from which another harvest of precisely such dark fruitage as I saw ripened around me was to be produced. Of course you would imagine these to be lumps of crude iniquity tiny vessels as full as they could hold of naughtiness ; nor can I say a great deal to the contrary. Small proof of parental discipline could I discern, save when a mother (drunken, I sincerely hope) snatched her own imp out of a group of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions that 332 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. were playing and squabbling together in the mud, turned up its tatters, brought down her heavy hand on its poo little tenderest part, and let it go again with a shake. If the child knew what the punishment was for, it was wis^r than 1 pretend to be. It yelled, and went back to its playmates in the mud. Yet let me bear testimony to what was beautiful, and more touching than anything that I ever witnessed in the intercourse of happier children. I allude to the superintendence which some of these small people (too small, one would think, to be sent into the street alone, had there been any other nursury for them) exer cised over still smaller ones. Whence they derived such a sense of duty, unless immediately from God, I cannot tell ; but it was w r onderful to observe the expression of responsibility in their deportment, the anxious fidelity with which they discharged their unfit office, the tender patience with which they linked their less pliable impulses to the wayward footsteps of an infant, and let it guide them whithersoever it liked. In the hollow-cheeked, large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw giving a cheerless oversight to her baby-brother, I did not so much marvel at it. She had merely come a little earlier than usual to the perception of what was to be her business in life. But I admired the sickly-looking little boy, who did vio lence to his boyish nature by making himself the servant }f his little sister, she too small to walk, and he too small to take her in his arms, and therefore working a kind of miracle to transport her from one dirt-heap to an other. Beholding such works of love and duty, I Cook heart again, and deemed it not so impossible, after all, for these neglected children to find a path through the squalor and e^ il of their circumstances up to the gate of heaven. OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 333 Perhaps there was this latent good in all of them, though generally they looked brutish, and dull even in their sports ; there was little mirth among them, nor even a fully awakened spirit of blackguardism. Yet sometimes, again, I saw, with surprise and a sense as if I had been asleep and dreaming, the bright, intelligent, merry face of a child whose dark eyes gleamed with vivacious ex pression through the dirt that incrusted its skin, like suu- Bhine struggling through a very dusty window-pane. In these streets the belted and blue-coated policeman appears seldom in comparison with the frequency of his occurrence in more reputable thoroughfares. I used to think that the inhabitants would have ample time to murder one another, or any stranger, like myself, who might violate the filthy sanctities of the place, before the law could bring up its lumbering assistance. Neverthe less, there is a supervision ; nor does the watchfulness of authority permit the populace to be tempted to any out break. Once, in a time of dearth, I noticed a ballad- singer going through the street hoarsely chanting some discordant strain in a provincial dialect, of which I could only make out that it addressed the sensibilities of the auditors on the score of starvation ; but by his side stalked the policeman, offering no interference, but watch ful to hear what this, rough minstrel said or sang, and silence him, if his effusion threatened to prove too soul- stirring. In my judgment, however, there is little or no danger of that kind : they starve patiently, sicken pa tiently, die patiently, not through resignation, but a dis eased flaccidity of hope. If ever they should do mischief to those above them, it will probably be by the communi cation of some destructive pestilence ; for, so the medical 334 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. men affirm, they suffer all the ordinary diseases witX a degree of virulence elsewhere unknown, and keep among themselves traditionary plagues that have long ceased to afflict more fortunate societies. Charity herself gathers her robe about her to avoid their contact. It would be a dire revenge, indeed, if they were to prove their claims to be reckoned of one blood and nature with the noblest and wealthiest by compelling them to inhale death through the diffusion of their own poverty-poisoned atmosphere. A true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has an unconquerable dislike to poverty and beggary. Beggars have heretofore been so strange to an American that lie is apt to become their prey, being recognized through his national peculiarities, and beset by them in the streets. The English smile at him, and say that there are amplfi public arrangements for every pauper s possible need, that street charity promotes idleness and vice, and that yonder personification of misery on the pavement will lay up a good day s profit, besides supping more luxuri ously than the dupe who gives him a shilling. By and by the stranger adopts their theory and begins to prac tise upon it, much to his own temporary freedom from annoyance, but not entirely without moral detriment or sometimes a too late contrition. Years afterwards, it may be, his memory is still haunted by some vindictive wretch whose cheeks were pale and hunger-pinched, \vhrse rags fluttered in the east wind, whose right arm was paralyzed and his left leg shrivelled into a mere nerveless stick, but whom he passed by remorselessly be cause an Englishman chose to say that the fellow s misery looked too perfect, was too artistically got up, to be gen uine. Even allowing this to be true, (as, a hundred OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 335 cLances to one, it was,) it would still have been a clear case of economy to buy him off with a little loose silver, so that his lamentable figure should not limp at the heels of your conscience all over the world. To own the truth, I provided myself with several such imaginary persecu tors in England, and recruited their number with at least one sickly-looking wretch whose acquaintance I first made at Assisi, in Italy, and, taking a dislike to something sin ister in his aspect, permitted him to beg early and late, .ind all day long, without getting a single baiocco. At my latest glimpse of him, the villain avenged himself, not by a volley of horrible curses, as any other Italian beggar would, but by taking an expression so grief stricken, want-wrung, hopeless, and withal resigned, that I could paint his life-like portrait at this moment. Were I to go over the same ground again, I would listen to no man s theories, but buy the little luxury of beneficence at a cheap rate, instead of doing myself a moral mischief by exuding a stony incrustation over whatever natural sensibility I might possess. On the other hand, there were some mendicants whose utmost efforts I even now felicitate myself on having withstood. Such was a phenomenon abridged of his lower half, who beset me for two or three years together and, in spite of his deficiency of locomotive members had some supernatural method of transporting himself (simultaneously, I believe) to all quarters of the city He wore a sailor s jacket, (possibly, because skirts would have been a superfluity to his figure,) and had a remark ably broad-shouldered and muscular frame, surmounted by a large, fresh-colored face, which was full of power and intelligence. His dress and linen were the perfec 336 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. tion of neatness. Once a day, at least, wherever I wei.t, I suddenly became aware of this trunk of a man on the path before me, resting on his base, and looking as if he had just sprouted out of the pavement, and would sink into it again and reappear at some other spot the instant you left him behind. The expression of his eye was perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding your own us by fascination, never once winking, never wavering from its point-blank gaze right into your face, till you were completely beyond the range of his battery of one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of soliciting nlms ; and he reminded mo of the old beggar who ap pealed so touchingly to the charitable sympathies of Gil Bias, taking aim at him from the roadside with a long- barrelled musket. The intentness and directness of his silent appeal, his close and unrelenting attack upon your individuality, respectful as it seemed, was the very flower of insolence ; or, if you give it a possibly truer interpre tation, it was the tyrannical effort of a man endowed with great natural force of character to constrain your reluctant will to his purpose. Apoarently, he had staked his salvation upon the ultimate success of a daily strug gle between himself and me. the triumph of which would compel me to become a tributary to the hat that lay on the pavement b^-side him. Man or fiend, however, there was a stubbornness in his intended victim which this mas- sive fragment of a mighty personality had not altogether reckoned upon, and by its aid I was enabled to pass him t my customary pace hundreds of times over, quietly meeting his terribly respectful eye, and allowing him tht Cair chance which I felt to be his due, to subjugate me, if Ve really had the strength for it. He never succeeded, OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 337 ut, on the other hand, never gave up the contest ; and should I ever walk those streets again, I am certain that the truncated tyrant will sprout up through the pave ment and look me fixedly in the eye, and perhaps get the victory. I should think all the more highly of myself, if I had shown equal heroism in resisting another class of beg garly depredators, who assailed me on my weaker side and won an easy spoil. Such was the sanctimonious clergyman, with his white cravat, who visited me with a subscription-paper, which he himself had drawn up, in a case of heart-rending distress ; the respectable and ruined tradesman, going from door to door, shy and silent in his own person, but accompanied by a sympathizing friend, who bore testimony to his integrity, and stated the unavoidable misfortunes that had crushed him down ; or the delicate and prettily dressed lady, who had been bred in affluence, but was suddenly thrown upon the perilous charities of the world by the death of an indul gent, but secretly insolvent father, or the commercial catastrophe and simultaneous suicide of the best of hus bands ; or the gifted, but unsuccessful author, appeal ing to my fraternal sympathies, generously rejoicing in some small prosperities which he was kind enough to term my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claim ing to have largely contributed to them by his unbought notices in the public journals. England is full of such people, and a hundred other varieties of peripatetic trick sters, higher than these, and lower, who act their parts tolerably well, but seldom with an absolutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs, almost without an exception, rats that 838 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. nibble at the honest bread and cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty pilferings, yet often gave them what they asked, and privately owned myself a simpleton. There is a decorum which restrains you (un less you happen to be a police-constable) from breaking through a crust of plausible respectability, even when jou are certain that there is a knave beneath it. \ After making myself as familiar as I decently could with the poor streets, I became curious to see what kind of a home was provided for the inhabitants at the public expense, fearing that it must needs be a most comfortless one, or else their choice (if choice it were) of so miser able a life outside was truly difficult to account for. Ac cordingly, I visited a great almshouse, and was glad to observe how unexceptionably all the parts of the establish ment were carried on, and what an orderly life, full-fed, sufficiently reposeful, and undisturbed by the arbitrary exercise of authority, seemed to be led there. Possibly, indeed, it was that very orderliness, and the cruel neces sity of being neat and clean, and even the comfort result ing from these and other Christian-like restraints and regulations, that constituted the principal grievance on the part of the poor, shiftless inmates, accustomed to a life-long luxury of dirt and harum-scarumness. The wild life of the streets has perhaps as unforgetable a charm, to those who have once thoroughly imbibed it, as the life of the forest or the prairie. But I conceive rather that there must be insuperable difficulties, for the majority of the poor, in the way of getting admittance to the almshouse, than that a merely aesthetic preference for the street would incline the pauper-class to fare OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 330 scantily and precariously, and expose their raggedness to the rain and snow, when such a hospitable door stood wide open for their entrance. It might be that the rough est and darkest side of the matter was not shown me, there being persons of eminent station and of both sexes in the party which I accompanied; and, of course, a properly trained public functionary would have deemed it a monstrous rudeness, as well as a great shame, to ex hibit anything to people of rank that might too painfully shock their sensibilities. The women s ward was the portion of the establish ment which we especially examined. It could not be questioned that they were treated with kindness as well as care. No doubt, as has been already suggested, some of them felt the irksomeness of submission to general rules of orderly behavior, after being accustomed to that perfect freedom from the minor proprieties, at least, which is one of the compensations of absolutely hopeless pov erty, or of any circumstances that set us fairly below the decencies of life. I asked the governor of the house whether he met with any difficulty in keeping peace and order among his inmates ; and he informed me that his troubles among the women were incomparably greater than with the men. They were freakish, and apt to be quarrelsome, inclined to plague and pester one another n ways that it was impossible to lay hold of, and to thwart his own authority by the like intangible methods. lie said this with the utmost good-nature, and quite won my regard by so placidly resigning himself to the in evitable necessity of letting the women throw dust into his eyes. They certainly looked peaceable and sisterly enough, as I saw them, though still it might be faintly d40 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY". perceptible that some of them were consciously playing their parts before the governor and his distinguished visitors. This governor seemed to me a man thoroughly fit for his position. An American, in an office of similar re sponsibility, would doubtless be a much superior person, better educated, possessing a far wider range of thought, more naturally acute, with a quicker tact of external ob servation and a readier faculty of dealing with difficult cases. The women would not succeed in throwing half so much dust into his eyes. Moreover, his black coat, and thin, sallow visage, would make him look like a scholar, and his manners would indefinitely approximate to those of a gentleman. But I cannot help question ing, whether, on the whole, these higher endowments would produce decidedly better results. The English man was thoroughly plebeian both in aspect and be havior, a bluff, ruddy-faced, hearty, kindly, yeoman-like personage, with no refinement whatever, nor any super fluous sensibility, but gifted with a native wholesomeness of character which must have been a very beneficial element in the atmosphere of the almshouse. He spoke to his pauper family in loud, good-humored, cheerful tones, and treated them with a healthy freedom that probably caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they were free and healthy likewise. If he had understood them a little better, he would not have treated them half so wisely. We are apt to make sickly people more mor bid, and unfortunate people more miserable, by endeavor ing to adapt our deportment to their especial and indi vidual needs. They eagerly accept our well-meant efforts ; but it is like returning their own sick breath OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 311 back upon themselves, to be breathed over and over again, intensifying the inward mischief at every repe tition. The sympathy that would really do them good is of a kind that recognizes their sound and healthy parrs, and ignores the part affected by disease, which will thrive under the eye of a too close observer like a poison ous weed in the sunshine. My good friend the governor tad no tendencies in the latter direction, and abundance of them in the former, and was consequently as whole some and invigorating as the west wind with a little spice of the north in it, brightening the dreary visages that encountered us as if he had carried a sunbeam in his hand. He expressed himself by his whole being and personality, and by works more than words, and had the not unusual English merit of knowing what to do much better than how to talk about it. The women, I imagine, must have felt one imperfec tion in their state, however comfortable otherwise. They were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning themselves ; all were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their heads as English ser vants wear. Generally, too, they had one dowdy Eng lish aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these absolutely unilluminated faces among our native American population, individuals of whom must be singularly unfortunate, if, mixing as we do, no drop of gentle blood has contributed to refine the turbid element, no gleam of hereditary intelligence has lighted up the stolid eyes, which their forefathers brought from the Old Country. Even in this English almshouse, * 342 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. however, there was at least one person who claimed to be intimately connected with rank and wealth. The gov ernor, after .suggesting that this person would probably be gratified by our visit, ushered us into a small parlor, which was furnished a little more like a room in a private dwelling than others that we entered, and had a row of religious books and fashionable novels on the mantel piece. An old lady sat at a bright coal fire, reading a romance, and rose to receive us with a certain pomp of manner and elaborate display of ceremonious courtesy, which, in spite of myself, made me inwardly question the genuineness of her aristocratic pretensions. But, at any rate, she looked like a respectable old soul, and was evi dently gladdened to the very core of her frost-bitten heart by the awful punctiliousness with which we re sponded to her gracious and hospitable, though unfa miliar welcome. After a little polite conversation, we retired ; and the governor, with a lowered voice and- an air of deference, told us that she had been a lady of quality, and had ridden in her own equipage, not many years before, and now lived in continual expectation that some of her rich relatives would drive up in their car riages to take her away. Meanwhile, he added, she was treated with great respect by her fellow-paupers. I could not help thinking, from a few criticisable peculiarities in her talk and manner, that there might have been a mis- fake on the governor s part, and perhaps a venial exag geration on the old lady s, concerning her former position in society ; but what struck me was the forcible instance of that most prevalent of English vanities, the preten sion to aristocratic connection, on one side, and the sub- missi :>n and reverence with which it was accepted by the OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 343 governor and his household, on the other. Among our selves, I think, when wealth and eminent position have taken their departure, they seldom leave a pallid ghost behind them, or, if it sometimes stalks abroad, few recognize it. We went into several other rooms, at the doors of which, pausing on the outside, we could hear the voli.- bility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the female in habitants within, but invariably found silence and peace when we stepped over the threshold. The women were grouped together in their sitting-rooms, sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number, classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, and all busied, so far as I can remember, with the one occupation of knitting coarse yarn stockings. Hardly any of them, I am sorry to say, had a brisk or cheerful air, though it often stirred them up to a momentary vivacity to be accosted by the gover nor, and they seemed to like being noticed, however slightly, by the visitors. The happiest person whom I saw there (and, running hastily through my experiences, I hardly recollect to have seen a happier one in my life, if you take a careless flow of spirits as happiness) was an old woman that lay in bed among ten or twelve heavy- looking females, who plied their knitting-work round about her. She laughed, when we entered, and imme diately began to talk to us, in a thin, little, spirited quaver, claiming to be more than a century old ; and the governor (in whatever way he happened to be cognizant of the fact) confirmed her age to be a hundred and four. Her jauntiness and cackling merriment were really won derful. It was as if she had got through with all her actual business in life two or three generations ago, and 344 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. now, freed from every responsibility for herself or others, had only to keep up a mirthful state of mind till the short time, or long time, (and, happy as she was, she appeared not to care whether it were long or short,) before Death, who had misplaced her name in his list, might remember to take her away. She had gone quite round the circle of human existence, and come back to the play-ground again. And so she had grown to be a "kind of miraculous old pet, the -plaything of people seventy or eighty years younger than herself, who talked and laughed with her as if she were a child, finding great delight in her way ward and strangely playful responses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed a gibe that caused their ears tc tingle a little. She had done getting out of bed in this world, and lay there to be waited upon like a queen or a baby. In the same room sat a pauper who had once been an actress of considerable repute, but was compelled to give up her profession by a softening of the brain. The dis ease seemed to have stolen the continuity out of her life, and disturbed all healthy relationship between the thoughts within her and the world without. On our first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us, and showed herself ready to engage in conversation ; but suddenly, while we were talking with the century-old crone, the poor actress began to weep, contorting her face with extravagant stage-grimaces, and wringing her hands for some inscru table sorrow. It might have been a reminiscence of actual calamity in her past life, or, quite as probably, it was but a dramatic woe, beneath which she had stag gered and shrieked and wrung her hands with hundreds of repetitions in the sight of crowded theatres, and been OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 315 as often comforted by thunders of applause. But my idea of the mystery was, that she had a sense of wrong in seeing the aged woman (whose empty vivacity was like the rattling of dry peas in a bladder) chosen as tho central object of interest to the visitors, while she her self, who had agitated thousands of hearts with a breath, sat starving for the admiration that was her natural food. I appeal to the whole society of artists of the Beautiful and tho Imaginative, poets, romancers, painters, sculp tors, actors, whether or no this is a grief that may be felt even amid the torpor of a dissolving brair ! We looked into a good many sleeping -chambers, where were rows of beds, mostly calculated for two oc cupants, and provided with sheets and pillow-cases that resembled sackcloth. It appeared to me that the sense of beauty was insufficiently regarded in all the arrange ments of the almshouse ; a little cheap luxury for the eye, at least, might do the poor folks a substantial good. But, at all events, there was the beauty of perfect neat ness and orderliness, which, being heretofore known to few of them, was perhaps as much as they could well digest in the remnant of their lives. We were invited into the laundry, where a great washing and drying were in process, the whole atmosphere being hot and vaporous with the steam of wet garments and bedclothes. This atmosphere was the pauper-life of the past week or fort night resolved into a gaseous state, and breathing it, how ever fastidiously, we were forced to inhale the strange element into our inmost being. Had the Queen been there, I know not how she could have escaped the neces sity. What an intimate brotherhood is this in which we dwell, do what we may to put an artificial remoteness S4G OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. between the high creature and the low one ! A pool man s breath, borne on the vehicle of tobacco-smoke, floats into a palace-window and reaches the nostrils of a monarch. It is but an example, obvious to the sense, of the innumerable and secret channels by which, at every moment of our lives, the flow and reflux of a common humanity pervade us all. How superficial are the nice ties of such as pretend to keep aloof! Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or woman of us all can be clean. By and by we came to the ward where the children were kept, on entering which, we saw, in the first place, several unlovely and unwholesome little people lazily playing together in a courtyard. And here a singular incommodity befell one member of our party. Among the children was a wretched, pale, half-torpid little thing, (about six years old, perhaps, but I know not whether a girl or a boy,) with a humor in its eyes and face, which the governor said was the scurvy, and which appeared to bedim its powers of rision, so that it toddled about grop ingly, as if in quest of it did not precisely know what. This child this sickly, wretched, humor-eaten infant, the offspring of unspeakable sin and sorrow, whom it must have required several generations of guilty progenitors to render so pitiable an object as we beheld it imme diately took an unaccountable fancy to the gentleman just hinted at. It prowled about him like a pet kitten, rubbing against his legs, following everywhere at his heels, pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps under OCTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 347 ivitted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in his face. a sort of woful gleam was that smile, through the Bicklv blotches that covered its features, and found means to express such a perfect confidence that it was going to be fondled and made much of, that there was no possibility in a human heart of balking its expectation. It was as if God had promised the poor child this favor on behalf of that individual, and he was bound to fuliil the contract, or else no longer call himself a man among men. Nevertheless, it could be no easy thing for him to do, he being a person burdened with more than an Eng lishman s customary reserve, shy of actual contact with human beings, afflicted with a peculiar distaste for what ever was ugly, and, furthermore, accustomed to that habit of observation from an insulated stand-point which is said (but, I hope, erroneously) to have the tendency of put ting ice into the blood. So I watched the struggle in his mind with a good deal of interest, and am seriously of opinion that he did an heroic act, and effected more than he dreamed of towards his final salvation, when he took up the loathsome child and caressed it as tenderly as if he had been its father. To be sure, we all smiled at him, at the time, but doubt less would have acted pretty much the same in a similar stress of circumstances. The child, at any rate, appeared to be satisfied with his behavior ; for when he had held i a considerable time, and set it down, it still favored hin with its company, keeping fast hold of his forefinger till we reached the confines of the place. And on our return through the courtyard, after visiting another part of the establishment, here again was this same little Wretched ness waiting for its victim, with a smile of joyful, and yer 848 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. dull recognition about its scabby mouth and in its rheumy eyes. No doubt, the child s mission in reference to our friend was to remind him that he was responsible, in his degree, for all the sufferings and misdemeanors of the world in which he lived, and was not entitled to look upon a particle of its dark calamity as if it were none of his concern : the offspring of a brother s iniquity being his own blood-relation, and the guilt, likewise, a burden on him, unless he expiated it by better deeds. All the children in this ward seemed to be invalids, and, going up-stairs, we found more of them in the same or a worse condition than the little creature just described, with their mothers (or more probably other women, for the infants were mostly foundlings) in attendance as nurses. The matron of the ward, a middle-aged woman, remarkably kind and motherly in aspect, was walking to and fro across the chamber on that weary journey in which careful mothers and nurses travel so continually and so far, and gain never a step of progress with an, unquiet baby in her arms. She assured us that she en joyed her occupation, being exceedingly fond of children ; and, in fact, the absence of timidity in all the little peo ple was a sufficient proof that they could have had no experience of harsh treatment, though, on the other hand, none of them appeared to be attracted to one in dividual more than another. In this point they differed widely from the poor child below-stairs. They seemed to recognize a universal motherhood in womankind, and cared not which individual might be the mother of the ynoment. I found their tameness as shocking as did Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of his else solitary kingdom. It was a sort of tame familiarity, a OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 319 perfect indifference to the approach of strangers, such as I never noticed in other children. I accounted for it partly by their nerveless, unstrung state of body, incapa ble of the quick thrills of delight and fear which play upon the lively harp-strings of a healthy child s nature, and partly by their wofui lack of acquaintance with a private home, and their being therefore destitute of tha sweet homebred shyness, which is like the sanctity of heaven about a mother-petted child. Their condition was like that of chickens hatched in an oven, and grow ing up without the especial guardianship of a matron- hen: both the chicken and the child, methinks, must needs want something that is essential to their respec tive characters. In this chamber (which was spacious, containing a large number of beds) there was a clear fire burning on the hearth, as in all the other occupied rooms ; and directly in front of the blaze sat a woman holding a baby, which, beyond all reach of comparison, was the most horrible object that ever afflicted my sight. Days afterwards nay, even now, when I bring it up vividly before my mind s eye it seemed to lie upon the floor of my heart, polluting my moral being with the sense of something grievously amiss in the entire conditions of hu manity. The holiest man could not be otherwise than full of wickedness, the chastest virgin seemed impure, ii a world where such a babe was possible. The governo whispered me, apart, that, like nearly all the rest of them it was the child of unhealthy parents. Ah, yes ! There was the mischief. This spectral infant, a hideous mock ery of the visible link which Love creates between man and woman, was born of disease and sin. Diseased Sin 350 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. was its father, and Sinful Disease its mother, and their off spring lay in the woman s arms like a nursing Pestilence, which, could it live and grow up, would make the world a more accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank Heaven, it could not live ! This baby, if we must give it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months old, but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might have been considerably older. It was all covered with blotches, and preternaturally dark and discolored ; it was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless; it breathed only amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned painfully at every gasp. The only comfort in reference to it was the evident impossibility of its surviving to draw many more of those miserable, moaning breaths ; and it would have been infinitely less heart-depressing to see it die, right before my eyes, than to depart and carry it alive in my remembrance, still suffering the incalculable torture of its little life. I can by no means express how horrible this infant was, neither ought I to attempt it. And yet I must add one final touch. Young as the poor little creature was, its pain and misery had endowed it with a premature intelligence, insomuch that its eyes seemed to stare at the by-standers out of their sunken sockets knowingly and appealingly, as if summoning us one and all to witness the deadly wrong of its existence. At least, I so interpreted its look, when it positively met and re sponded to my own awe-stricken gaze, and therefore I lay the case, as far as I am able, before mankind, on whom God has imposed the necessity to suffer in soul and body till this dark and dreadful wrong be righted. Thence we went to the school-rooms, which were un derneath the chapel. The pupils, like the children whom OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 351 we liacl just seen, were, in large proportion, foundlings. Almost without exception, they looked sickly, with marks of eruptive trouble in their doltish faces, and a general tendency to diseases of the eye. Moreover, the poor little wretches appeared to be uneasy within their skins, and screwed themselves about on the benches in a dis agreeably suggestive way, as if they had inherited the evil habits of their parents as an innermost garment of the same texture and material as the shirt of Nessus, and must wear it with unspeakable discomfort as long as they lived. I saw only a single child that looked healthy ; and on my pointing him out, the governor informed me that this little boy, the sole exception to the miserable aspect of his school-fellows, was not a foundling, nor properly a work-house child, being born of respectable parentage, and his father one of the officers of the insti tution. As for the remainder, the hundred pale abor tions to be counted against one rosy-cheeked boy, what shall we say or do ? Depressed by the sight of so much misery, and uninventive of remedies for the evils that force themselves on my perception, I can do little more than recur to the idea already hinted at in the early part of this article, regarding the speedy necessity of a new deluge. So far as these children are concerned, at any rate, it would be a blessing to the human race, which they will contribute to enervate and corrupt, a greater blessing to themselves, who inherit no patrimony but dis ease and vice, and in whose souls if there be a spark of God s life, this seems the only possible mode of keeping it aglow, if every one of them could be drowned to night, by their best friends, instead of being put tenderly to bed. This heroic method of treating human maladiea, 3o2 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. moral and material, is certainly beyond the scope of man ; r discretionary rights, and probably will not be adopted by Divine Providence until the opportunity of milder refor mation shall have been offered us, again and again, through a series of future ages. It may be fair to acknowledge that the humane and excellent governor, as well as other persons better ac quainted with the subject than myself, took a less gloomy view of it, though still so dark a one as to involve scanty consolation. They remarked that individuals of the male sex, picked up in the streets and nurtured in the work house, sometimes succeed tolerably well in life, because they are taught trades before being turned into the world, and, by dint of immaculate behavior and good luck, are not unlikely to get employment and earn a livelihood. The case is different with the girls. They can only go to service, and are invariably rejected by families of re spectability on account of their origin, and for the better reason of their unfitness to fill satisfactorily even the meanest situations in a well-ordered English household. Their resource is to take service with people only a step or two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and pre carious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, through which, in their best estate, they do but pick their slimy way on stepping-stones. From the schools we went to the bake-house, and tho brew-house, (for such cruelty is not harbored in the heart of a true Englishman as to deny a pauper his daily allow ance of beer,) and through the kitchens, where we be held an immense pot over the fire, surging and walloping with some kind of a savory stew that filled it up to its OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 353 brim. We also visited a tailor s shop, and a shoemaker s shop, in both of which a number of men, and pale, dimin utive apprentices, were at work, diligently enough, though seemingly with small heart in the business. Finally, the governor ushered us into a shed, inside of which was piled ap an immense quantity of new coffins. They were of the plainest description, made of pine boards, probably of American growth, not very nicely smoothed by the plane, aeither painted nor stained with black, but provided with a. loop of rope at either end for the convenience of lifting the rude box and its inmate into the cart that shall carry them to the burial-ground. There, in holes ten feet deep, the paupers are buried one above another, mingling their relics indistinguishably. In another world may they re sume their individuality, and find it a happier one than here! As we departed, a character came under our notice which I have met with in all almshouses, whether of the city or village, or in England or America. It was the familiar simpleton, who shuffled across the courtyard, clattering his wooden-soled shoes, to greet us with a howl or a laugh, I hardly know which, holding out his hand for a penny, and chuckling grossly when it was given him. All underwitted persons, so far as my experience goes, have this craving for copper coin, and appear to estimate its value by a miraculous instinct, which is one of the earliest gleams of human intelligence while the nobler faculties are yet in abeyance. There may come a time, even in this world, when we shall all understand that our tendency to the individual appropriation of gold and broad acres, fine houses, and such good and beautiful things as are equally enjoyable by a multitude, is but a 354 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. trait of imperfectly developed intelligence, like the sim pleton s cupidity of a penny. When that day dawns, and probably not till then, I imagine that there will be no more poor streets nor need of almshouses. I was once present at the wedding of some poor Eng lish people, and was deeply impressed by the spectacle, though by no means with such proud and delightful emo tions as seem to have affected all England on the recent occasion of the marriage of its Prince. It was in tho Cathedral at Manchester, a particularly black and grim old structure, into which I had stepped to examine some ancient and curious wood-carvings within the choir. The woman in attendance greeted me with a smile, (which always glimmers forth on the feminine visage, I know not why, when a wedding is in question,) and asked me to take a seat in the nave till some poor parties were married, it being the Easter holidays, and a good time for them to marry, because no fees would be demanded by the clergyman. I sat down accordingly, and soon the parson and his clerk appeared at the altar, and a con siderable crowd of people made their entrance at a side- door, and ranged themselves in a long, huddled line across the chancel. They were my acquaintances of the poor streets, or persons in a precisely similar condition of life and were now come to their marriage-ceremony in jus such garbs as I had always seen them wear : the men in their loafers coats, out at elbows, or their laborers jackets, defaced with grimy toil ; the women drawing their shabby shawls tighter about their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath ; all of them unbrushed, un shaven, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury and care ; nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor hopeful OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 355 or energetic in the bridegrooms ; they were, in short, the mere rags and tatters of the human race, whom some east-wind of evil omen, howling along the streets, had chanced to sweep together into an unfragrant heap. Each and all of them, conscious of his or her individual misery, had blundered into the strange miscalculation of supposing that they could lessen the sum of it by multi plying it into the misery of another person. All the couples (and it was difficult, in such a confused crowd, to compute exactly their number) stood up at once, and had execution done upon them in the lump, the clergyman addressing only small parts of the service to each indi vidual pair, but so managing the larger portion as to in clude the whole company without the trouble of repe tition. By this compendious contrivance, one would apprehend, he came dangerously near making every man and woman the husband or wife of every other nor, perhaps, would he have perpetrated much additional mischief by the mistake ; but, after receiving a bendic- tion in common, they assorted themselves in their own fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to the gar rets, or the cellars, or the unsheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon and subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled decorously, the clerk and the sexton grinned broadly, the female attendant tittered al most aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see something exceedingly funny in the affair ; but for my part, though generally apt enough to be tickled by a joke, I laid it away in my memory as one of the saddest sights I ever looked upon. Not very long afterwards, I happened to be passing the *~ \ie venerable Cathedral, and heard a clang of joyful 356 OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. bells, and beheld a bridal party coming down the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a portly coach man and two postilions, that waited at the gate. One parson and one service had amalgamated the wretched ness of a score of paupers ; a Bishop and three or four clergymen had combined their spiritual might to forge the golden links of this other marriage-bond. The bride groom s mien had a sort of careless and kindly Eng lish pride ; the bride floated along in her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate that it was a luxury to see her, and a pity that her silk slippers should touch anything so grimy as the old stones of the churchyard avenue. The crowd of ragged people, who always clus ter to witness what they may of an aristocratic wedding, broke into audible admiration of the bride s beauty and the bridegroom s manliness, and uttered prayers and ejaculations (possibly paid for in alms) for the happiness of both. If the most favorable of earthly conditions could make them happy, they had every prospect of it. They were going to live on their abundance in one of those stately and delightful English homes, such as no other people ever created or inherited, a hall set far and safe within its own private grounds, and surrounded with venerable trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and trim mest pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended hat summer rendered it a paradise, and even winter would hardly disrobe it of its beauty ; and all this fair property seemed more exclusively and inalienably their own, because of its descent through many forefathers, each of whom had added an improvement or a charm, and thus transmitted it with a stronger stamp of rightful possession to his heir. And is it possible, after all, that OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 357 there may be a flaw in the title-deeds ? Is, or is not, the system wrong that gives one married pair so immense a superfluity of luxurious home, and shuts out a million others from any home, whatever ? One day or another safe as they deem themselves, and safe as the hereditary temper of the people really tends to make them, the gentlemen of England will be compelled to face thia uestion. CIVIC BANQUET S. IT has often perplexed me to imagine how an English man will be able to reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take his appetite along with him, (which it seems to me hardly possible to believe, since this endowment is so essential to his com position,) the immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during which he will be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not an absolute re pugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself among his highest and deepest characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with Church and State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, Death, instead of putting the final touch to his perfection, would leave him in finitely less complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy. Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which his som bre little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjecture that a provision may have been made, in this particular, for the Englishman s exceptional neces sities. It strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here CIVIC BANQUETS. 359 suggested, and may have intended to throw out a delight ful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he represents the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at Adam s dinner-table, and con fining himself to fruit and vegetables only because, iu those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more acceptable viands to set before him. Milton, indeed, had a true English taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately implied in the refection in Paradise, arid more substantially, though still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to " Lau rence, of virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in midwinter ; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which, elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen-ranges of Tartarus. Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon the table ; so that, if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such reckless devourers as ourselves do not often find in our richest abundance. It is good to see how stanch they are after fifty or sixty years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and indulging a vigorous ap petite ; whereas an American has generally lost the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the earliest decline of life ; and thenceforward he makes little account of his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it scarcely too much to affirm, that on this side of the water, people never dine. At any SCO CIVIC BANQUETS. rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most of the material requisites, the highest possible dinner ha3 never yet been eaten in America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement; and our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of culture which we have attained. It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cul tivated Englishmen know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often present at good men s feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which, while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal enjoyment, because, out of the very per fection of that lower bliss, there had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the master pieces of painting and poetry, there was a something in tangible, a final deliciousness that only fluttered about vour comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to letain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith ..atb^T than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of <ense, were requisite, and had been partly supplied, for the special fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the U.Me (only eight in number) were becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by the delicate .influ ences of what they ate and drank, as to be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. And there was that gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very CIVIC BANQUETS. 3G1 summit of our most exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety through which it keeps breathing its undertone. In the present case, it was worth a heavier sigh, to reflect that such a festal achieve ment, the production of so much art, skill, fancy, in- rention, and perfect taste, the growth of all the ages, vhich appeared to have been ripening for this hour, since nan first began to eat and to moisten his food with wine, --must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment, uen other beautiful things can be made a joy forever. \ ev a dinner like this is no better than we can get, any day, at the rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-House, unless the \rnole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready to appicciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch of well-according minds, that nothing snaUt jar rudely against the guest s thoroughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and especially our part of it, bein^c the rough, ill-assorted, and tumultuous place we find it, v beefsteak is about as good as any other dinner. The foregoibg reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main object of my sketch, in which I pur posed to give a slight idea of those public, or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly pre vails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon, in matters of peace or war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor are these fes tivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient times appear to have been as familiar with 862 CIVIC BANQUETS. them as the Englishmen of to-day. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic hall or chamber in which the Mayor and other authorities of the place have long held their sessions ; and always, in con venient contiguity, there is a dusky kitchen, with an im mense fireplace where an ox might lie roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern cookery may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St. Mary s Hall, m Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient banqueting-room, that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to the description of it. In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael s Church, one of the three famous spires of Coventry, you behold a mediaeval edifice, in the basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have above alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low stone pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt, of a cathedral. Passing up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained glass, on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another window at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient panes constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazonries. Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though it was noonday when I- last saw it, the panelling of black oak, and some faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy * iult of the roof above, made a gloom, which the richnesr v- ^ CIVIC BANQUETS. 363 illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry ib wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI. s time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is regarded by anti quaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in history. They are as colorless as ghosts, how ever, and vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of their substance when you try to make them out. Coats-of- arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them or by women with dishclouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and spiders webs. Full- length portraits of several English kings, Charles IT. being the earliest, hang on the walls ; and on the dais, or elevated part of the floor, stands an antique chair of state, which several royal characters are traditionally said to have occupied while feasting here with their loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a person of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable, reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned New England kitchens. Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, with out the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a barn, with ill the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. At the re mote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that they are carved with figures of angels and doubtless many other devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness that has so long been brood ing there. Over the entrance rf the hall, opposite tli great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which 364 CIVIC BANQUETS. glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallerj foi minstrels ; and a row of ancient suits of armor is sus pended from its balustrade. It impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing un touched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady s hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference of the scene from my own mind to the reader s. It gave me a most vivid idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with ; insomuch that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the doorway, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels gallery, while the rusty armor re sponded with a hollow ringing sound beneath, why, I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary s Hall than I, a stranger from a far country which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing description is to show how tena ciously this love of pompous dinners, this reverence for dinner as a sacred institution, has caught hold of the Eng lish character ; since, from the earliest recognizable pe riod, we find them building their civic banqueting-halls aa magnificently as their palaces or cathedrals. I know not whether the hall just described is now used CITiC BANQUETS. 365 for festive purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor still are. For example, there is Barber Sur geons Hall, in London, a very fine old room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on the ceiling and walls. Jt is also enriched with Holbein s masterpiece, representing a grave assemblage of barbers and sur geons, all portraits, (with such extensive beards that methinks one half of the company might have been profitably occupied in trimming the other,) kneeling be fore King Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have a perfect fac-simile painted in. The room has many other pictures of distinguished members of the company in long-past times, and of some of the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but dark ened into such ripe magnificence as only age could be stow. It is not my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall-painting on the reader ; but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts, where there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by respectable citizens who would never dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside of their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for the warden and junior warden of the company, caps of silver (real coronets or crowns, indeed, for these city-grandees) wrought in open-work and lined with crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the hall, there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet-table, com prising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch bowl, the gift of some jolly king or other, and ? besides a 366 CIVIC BANQUETS. multitude of less noticeable vessels, two loving-cups, very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., the other by Charles II. These cups, in cluding the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, although the bowl-part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which, when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected to drink off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand adown a long table of compotators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may hereafter have occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a lib erty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large Eng- ligh seaport where I spent several years. The Mayor s dinner-parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and, inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his Worship probably assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year s incumbency, and very much, no doubt, to the pro motion of good feeling among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their dif ferences of opinion being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves Liberals or what not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political hostility that it may not be dis solved in a glass or two of wine, without making the good liquor any more dry 01 bitter than accords with English taste. CIVIC BANQUETS. 3G7 The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor lv> be present took place during assize-time, and included among the guests the judges and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the Town Hall at seven o clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the reception-room, los ing all resemblance to the original sound in the course of these transmissions ; so that I had the advantage of making my entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company, but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly recognized me, and put me on speaking-terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very affable, and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of my nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost invariably be to an in dividual American, without ever bating a jot of his preju dice against the American character in the lump. My new acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease ; and, in requital of their good-nature, I soon began to look round at the general company in a critical spirit, making my crude observations apart, and drawing silent inferences, of the correctness of which I should not have been half so well satisfied a year afterwacds as at that moment. There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the mercantile class, and among them was a ship-owner from Nova Scotia, wi;h whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same sky over our heads, and an unbroken 368 CIVIC BANQUETS. continuity of soil between his abode and mine. Them was one old gentleman, whose character I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a rapier at his side ; otherwise, with the exception of the military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of official costume. It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had seen, my honest impression about them was, that they were a heavy and homely set of people, with a remark able roughness of aspect and behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity with the na tional character than I then possessed always to detect the good breeding of a gentleman. Being generally mid dle-aged, or still farther advanced, they were by no meanj graceful in figure ; for the comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, his body ap pearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and his stomach to assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to that metropolis of his system. His face (what with the acridity of the atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance of succu lent food) gets red and mottled, and develop. at least one additional chin, with a promise of more ; so that, finally, a stranger recognizes his animal part at the most super ficial glance, but must take time and a little pains to dis cover the intellectual. Comparing him with an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me, moreover, that the Eng lish tailor had not done so much as he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on wilfully exag gerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their gar- CIVIC BANQUETS. 369 menta ; he had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned to think that this aforesaid tailor has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit being to the charac ter rather than the form. If you make an Englishman smart, (unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few,) you make him a monster ; his best aspect is that of ponderous respectability. To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied that not merely the Suffolk bar, but the bar of any in land county in New England, might show a set of thin- visaged men, looking wretchedly worn, sallow, deeply wrinkled across the forehead, and grimly furrowed about the mouth, with whom these heavy-cheeked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they must needs be, would stand very little chance in a professional con test. How that matter might turn out, I am unquali fied to decide. But I state these results of my earliest glimpses at Englishmen, not for what they are worth, but because I ultimately gave them up as worth little or nothing. In course of time, I came to the conclusion that Englishmen of all ages are a rather good-looking people, dress in admirable taste from their own point of view, and, under a surface never silken to the touch, have a refinement of manners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a separate endowment, that is to say, if the individual himself be a man of station, and has had gentlemen for his father and grandfather. The sturdy Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the 24 370 CIVIC BANQUETS. third generation. The tradesmen, too, and all othei classes, have their own proprieties. The only value of my criticisms, therefore, lay in their exemplifying the proneness of a traveller to measure one people by the distinctive characteristics of another, as English writers invariably measure us, and take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly, instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we may be in conformity. In due time we were summoned to the table, and went thither in no solemn procession, but with a good deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and scrambling for places when we reached our destination. The legal gentlemen, I sus pect, were responsible for this indecorous zeal, which I never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The dining-hall was of noble size, and, like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously painted and gilded and bril liantly illuminated. There was a splendid table-service, and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain clothes, and others wearing the town-livery, richly deco rated with gold lace, and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming young manhood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was certainly an agreeable spectacle to look up and down the long vista of earnest faces, and behold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an important business in hand, and so determined to be equal to the occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I hardly know what can be prettier than a snow-white table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decora tion, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an artistically folded napkin at each plate, all that airy portion of a ban quet, in short, that comes before the first mouthful, the CIVIC BANQUETS. 371 whole illuminated by a blaze of artificial light, without which a dinner of made-dishes looks spectral, and the simplest viands are the best. Printed bills-of-fare were distributed, representing an abundant feast, no part of which appeared on the table until called for in separate plates. I have entirely forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there is a pervading com monplace and identicalness in the composition of exten sive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supply big a hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. It was suggested to me that certain juicy old gen tlemen had a private understanding what to call for, and that it would be good policy in a stranger to follow in their footsteps through the feast. I did not care to do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza s dip out of Cama- cho s caldron, any sort of potluck at such a table would be sure to suit my purpose ; so I chose a dish or two on my own judgment, and, getting through my labors be times, had great pleasure in seeing the Englishmen toil onward to the end. They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely ; for I observed that they seldom took Hock, and let the Cham pagne bubble slowly away out of the goblet, solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however, did not seem so exquisite, and certainly was not so various, as that to which many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate acquaintance with rare vin tages does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his life-long friends, seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a moment, and reaping the reward of his con- 72 CIVIC BANQUETS. Btancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout as he deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass too often. Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate habit ual imprudences of that kind, though, in my opinion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could carry off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three- bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous dis appearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman tell ing me (in illustration of the very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the memory of men not yet old) that he had seen a certain magis trate, Sir John Linkwater, or Drinkwater, but I think the jolly old knight could hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last, while sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to the clerk. " Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the most indifferent fact in the world, " I was drunk last night. There are my five shillings." During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant con versation with the gentlemen on either side of me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with great unction on the pocial standing of the judges. Representing the dignity and authority of the Crown, they take precedence, during assize-time, of the highest military men in the kingdom, of the Lord-Lieutenant of the county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes, and even of the Prince of Wales. CIVIC BANQUETS. 37J For the nonce, they are the greatest men in England. With a glow of professional complacency that amounted to enthusiasm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal dinner, a judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm and take the Queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company with some )f these elevated personages, on subsequent occasions, it xppeared to me that the judges are fully conscious of their paramount claims to respect, and take rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if it be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a similar characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with his nature from its orig inal germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it obtru sively in the faces of innocent bystanders. My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle- aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn visage, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold within itself the ma chinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and let slip few opportunities of imbibing what ever liquids happened to be passing by. I was meditat ing in what way this grisly featured table-fellow might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me with a Burly sort of kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then began a conversation that abounded, on his part, with sturdy sense, and, somehow or other, brought me closer to him than I had yet stood to an Englishman. I should hardly have taken him to be an educated man, certainly not a scholar of accurate training ; and yet he 374 CIVIC BANQUETS. seemed to have all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at command. My fresh Americanism, and watchful observation of English characteristics, ap peared either to interest or amuse him, or perhaps both. Under the mollifying influences of abundance of meat and drink, he grew very gracious, (not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe his evidently genuine good-will,) and by and by expressed a wish for further acquaintance, asking me to call at his rooms in London and inquire for Sergeant Wilkins, throwing out the name forcibly, as if he had no occasion to be ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift s retort to Sergeant Bettesworth on a similar announcement, " Of what regiment, pray, Sir ? " and fancied that the same question might not have been quite amiss, if applied to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard of him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English bar, a rough customer, and a terribly strong champion in criminal cases ; and it caused me more re gret than might have been expected, on so slight an ac quaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death announced in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qual ities, he possessed, I think, the most attractive one of all, thorough manhood. After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decan ters were set before the Mayor, who sent them forth on their outward voyage, full freighted with Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent liquors, me- thought, the latter found least acceptance among the guests. When every man had filled his glass, his Wor- ehip stood up and proposed a toast. It was, of course, " Our gracious Sovereign," or words to that effect ; and immediately a band of musicians, whose preliminary CIVIC BANQUETS. 375 toolings and thrummings I had already heard behind me, struck up " God save the Queen," and the whole company rose with one impulse to assist in singing that famous na tional anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen a body of men, or even a single man, under the active influence of the sentiment of Loyalty ; for, though we call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions, and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring that puts in motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman s sys tem, a force similar to that of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of human hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood, at present, in the flesh and blood of a woman, and manages to com bine love, awe, and intellectual reverence, all in one emo tion, and to embody his mother, his wife, his children, the whole idea of kindred, in a single person, and make her the representative of his country and its laws. We Americans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor s table ; and yet, I fancy, we lose some very agreeable titillations of the heart in consequence of our proud prerogative of caring no more about our President than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in a cornfield. But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather ludicrously, to see this party of stout middle-aged and elderly gentlemen, in the fulness of meat and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening with wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old stanzas from the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which two organs, in the English interior arrangement, lie closer together than in ours. The song seemed to me the rud- 376 CIVIC BANQUETS. est old ditty in the world ; but I could not wonder at its universal acceptance and indestructible popularity, con sidering how inimitably it expresses the national faith and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness of England, the Almighty s consequent respect and partial ity for that redoubtable little island, and His presumed readiness to strengthen its defence against the contuma cious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English to the very last prejudice, could not write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding that the entire dinner- table struck in, with voices of every pitch between rolling thunder and the squeak of a cart-wheel, and that the strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of them, I determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to the first Lady in the land, whose guest, in the largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly, my first tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I purpose not to sing any more, unless it be " Hail Columbia " on the restoration of the Union) were poured freely forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant smiled like tho carved head of a Swiss nut-cracker, and the other gen tlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinc ed grave approbation of so suitable a tribute to English superiority ; and we finished our stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind. Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions and interests of the country, and speeches in response to each were made by individuals whom the Mayor desig nated or the company called for. None of them im pressed me with a very high idea of English postprandial CIVIC BANQUETS. 377 oratory. It is inconceivable, indeed, what ragged and shapeless utterances most Englishmen are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there> and ultimately getting out what they want to say, and generally with a result of sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that this was almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious of public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his countrymen distrust him. They dislike smart ness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of commonplace running through them ; and any rough, yet never vulgar force of expression, such as would knock an opponent down, if it hit him, only it must not be too personal, is altogether to their taste ; but a studied neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, they cannot abide. They do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of malice aforethought, that is, unless he be a nobleman, (as, for example, Lord Stanley, of the Derby family,) who, as an hereditary legislator and necessarily a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, and, if I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as likely to applaud theirs as our own. When an English speaker sits down, you feel that you have been listening to a real man, and not to an actor ; his sentiments have a wholesome earth-smell in them, though, very likely, this apparent naturalness is as much an art as what we ex pend in rounding a sentence or elaborating a peroration. It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that no- S78 CIVIC BANQUETS. body in England seems to feel any shyness about shovel* ling the untrimmed and untrimmable ideas out of hi* mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, nobody did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little Major of Artillery, who responded for the Army in s thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesitating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not, would rather have been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have said a word. Not his own mouth, but the cannon s, was this poor Major s proper organ of utterance. While I was thus amiably occupied in criticising my fellow-guests, the Mayor had got up to propose another toast ; and listening rather inattentively to the first sen tence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in his Worship s remarks that made me glance apprehensively towards Sergeant Wilkins. " Yes," grumbled that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port towards me, " it is your turn next " ; and seeing in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpractised orator, he kindly added, " It is nothing. A mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. The less you say, the better they will like it." That being the case, I suggested that per haps they would like it best if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook his head. Now, on first receiving the Mayor s invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might possibly be brought into my present predica ment ; but I had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from my disposition and character that Fate surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before I need rise to speak. Yet here CIVIC BANQUETS 379 was the Major getting on inexorably, and, indeed, J heartily wished that he might got on and on forever, and of his wordy wanderings find no end. If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest con fidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it does concert another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not J, in my proper and natural self, that sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak. At the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I should unhesitat ingly have taken the latter alternative. I had really nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal worse, any flowing words or embroidered sen tences in which to dress out that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time pressed ; the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the United States and highly complimentary to their distinguished representative at that table, to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering ; and the band struck up " Hail Columbia," I believe, though it might have been " Old Hundred," or " God save the Queen " over again, for anything that I should have known or cared. When the music ceased, there was an intensely disagree able instant, during which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose, still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a speech. The guests rattled on the table, and cried, " Hear ! " most vociferously, as if now, at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous world, had come the long-expected moment 380 CIVIC BANQUETS. when one golden word wa. to be spoken; and in that imminent crisis, I caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of international sentiment, which it might, and must, and should do to utter. Well ; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech : a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the cir cumstances ! I went on without the slightest embarrass ment, and sat down amid great applause, wholly unde served by anything that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak at all. " It was handsomely done ! " quoth Sergeant Wilkins ; and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under fire. I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and there forever, but was often placed in a similar or worse position, and compelled to meet it as I best might ; for this was one of the necessities of an office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part, but could not shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture, I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of Providence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The CiVJ . BANQUETS. 381 Drtsence ** any considerable proportion of personal ^vieids generlly dumbfounded me. I would rather have Miked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I ^vas much embarrassed by a small audience, and suc ceeded better with a large one, the sympathy of a multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality and tosses him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I had little or nothing to say ; where?*, if I came to the charge in perfect de spair, and at a c f is when failure would have been horri ble, it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties, and enabled me to give definite *ind vigorous expression to sentiments which an ins^n* before looked as vague and far off as the clouds in the -.atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own suc cess may have been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the chief requisite of ora torical power, and may develop many of the others, if he deems it worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and pains on an object which the most accomplished ora tors, I suspect, have rot found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it must be a re markably true man who can keep his own elevated con ception of truth when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him, when by adulterat ing it a little, or a good deal, he knows that he may make it ten times as acceptable to the audience. 382 CIVIC BANQUETS. THIS slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted description of a Lord Mayor s dinner at the Mansion House in London. I should have preferred the annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good fortune to wit ness it. Once, however, I was honored with an invita tion to one of the regular dinners, and gladly accepted it, taking the precaution, nevertheless, though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the City-King, through a mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence, and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to open my mouth, except for the reception of his Lordship s bountiful hospitality. .The reply was gracious and acquiescent ; so that I presented myself in the great entrance-hall of the Mansion House, at half-past six o clock, in a state of most enjoyable free dom from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tor mented me at such times. The Mansion House was built in Queen Anne s days, in the very heart of old London, and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed, however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth s Industrious Apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of life-long integrity was a seat in the Lord Mayor s chair. People nowadays say that the real dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do, sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only second-rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this ; for the original emigrants of New England had CIVIC BANQUETS. 383 strong sympathies with the people of London, who were mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarisms in poli tics, in the early days of our country ; so that the Lord Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions in the estima tion of our forefathers, and held to be hardly second to the prime minister of the throne. The true great men of the city now appear to have aims beyond city greatness, connecting themselves with national politics, and seeking to be identified with the aristocracy of the country. In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of foot me n dressed in a livery of blue coats and buff breeches, in which they looked wonderfully like American Revolu tionary generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There were likewise two very im posing figures, whom I should have taken to be military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver epaulets ; but they turned out to be officers of the Lord Mayor s household, and were now employed in assigning to the guests the places which they were respectively to oc cupy at the dinner-table. Our names (for I had included myself in a little group of friends) were announced ; and ascending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the door way of the first reception-room, where, also, we had the advantage of a presentation to the Lady Mayoress. As this distinguished couple retired into private life at the emanation of their year of office, it is inadmissible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, on the manners Mnd bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position of respectable mediocrity into one of preeminent dignity within their own sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to the full size of 384 CIVIC BANQUETS. their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater than that of the Mayoralty, though invested with nothing like the outward magnificence that gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have been correctly informed, the Lord Mayor s salary is exactly double that of the President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate to his necessary expenditure. There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by the opening of wide folding-doors ; and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be venerable, they are re markably handsome apartments, lofty as well as spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splen did fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculp tured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The company were about three hundred, many of them celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I recollect none pre eminently distinguished in either department. But it is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of litera ture, for example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face to face, thus to bring them together, under genial auspices, in connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be the Lord Mayor s mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor whether, during his official term, he can proffer his hospi tality to every man of noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor, in fine, whether his Lordship s invitation is much sought for or valued ; but it seemed to me that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among different sorts of people. Like CIVIC BANQUETS. 385 most other distinctions of society, however, I presume that the Lord Mayor s card does not often seek out modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the bore, and doubtful about the honor. One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met with at any other public or partially public dinner, was the presence of ladies. No doubt, they were principally the wives and daughters of city magnates ; and if we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and satiri cal poems, the city of London has always been famous for the beauty of its women and the reciprocal attractions between them and the men of quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither and thither through those crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying certain heterodox opinions which I had imbibed, in my Transatlantic newness and rawness, as regarded the deli cate character and frequent occurrence of English beauty. To state the entire truth, (being, at this period, some years old in English life,) my taste, I fear, had long since begun to be deteriorated by acquaintance with other models of feminine loveliness than it was my happiness to know in America. I often found, or seemed to find, if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagreness, (Heaven forbid that I should call it scrawni- ness !) a deficiency of physical development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material make, a pale ness of complexion, a thinness of voice, all of which characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because I was sometimes driven to a half-acknowl edgment, that the English ladies, looked at from a lowei 25 386 CIVIC BANQUETS. point of \iew, were perhaps a little finer animals than they. The advantages of the latter, if any they could really be said to have, were all comprised in a few addi tional lumps of clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in exchange foi half a hundred- weight of human clay ! At a given signal we all found our way into an im mense room, called the Egyptian Hall, I know not why, except that the architecture was classic, and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the Pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we entered, and a brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables, extending the whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between them, occupying nearly its en tire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accompaniments of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the Lord Mayor s chaplain implored a blessing on the food, a ceremony which the English never omit, at a great dinner or a small one, yet consider, I fear, not so much a religious rite as a sort of preliminary relish before the soup. The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of which, in accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls, in spite of the otherwise im mitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I surmised that there was no practical limit, except the appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup-tureens. Nol being fond of this civic dainty, I partook of it but once, and then only in accordance with the wise maxim, al CIVIC BANQUETS. 387 way* to taste a fruit, a wine, or a celebrated dish, at its indigenous site ; and the very fountain-head of turtle- soup, I suppose, is in the Lord Mayor s dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox customs which people follow for half a century without knowing why, to drink a sip of rum-punch, in a very small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently well-brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for the sake of sipping the punch. The rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill-of- fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque border of green and gold. It looked very good, not only in the English and French names of the numerous dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes them selves, which were all set on the table to be carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effu sion of gravy, yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes, instead of a shadowy promise in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of look ing at prize-oxen in the shape of butcher s-meat, do not generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism of de vouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before pro ceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic appetite and widest stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away wholly unsatisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have bidden him, a red mullet, a plate 888 CIVIC BANQUETS. of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and part of a ptarmi* gan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but feeding high up towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor very superior tc that of the artificially nurtured English game-fowl. All the other dainties have vanished from my memory as completely as those of Prospero s banquet after Ariel ha* clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals inspiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen supplied from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed with little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a to morrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case, a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner. Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the table sat a young lady in white, whom I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because not only the superemi- ence of her beauty, but its peculiar character, would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be drawn. I hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a picture-frame, or the covers of a romance : not that I had ever met with her resem blance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to gleam out upon my page with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom 1 remember only a hard outline of the nose and forehead CIVIC BANQUETS. 389 and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. Then, indeed, YOU suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child would have recognized them at a glance. It was Blue beard and a new wife (the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow) travelling in their honey-moon, and dining, among other distinguished strangers, at the Lord Mayor s table. After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife and fork came the dessert ; and at the point of the festi val where finger-glasses are usually introduced, a large silver basin was carried round to the guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped the ends of our napkins and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of that heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems to be an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the Lord Mayor s table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar. During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient custom, the origin or purport of which I do not remember to have heard, there stood a man in armor, with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship s chair. When the after-din ner wine was placed on the table, still another official per sonage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous proclamation, (in which he enu merated the principal guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several baronets, and plenty of generals, mem bers of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the il lustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my 390 CIVIC BANQUETS. ears,) ending in some such style as this : " and other gen tlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all in a loving-cup," giving a sort of sentimental twang to the two words, " and sends it round among you ! " And forthwith the loving-cup several of them, indeed, on each side of the tables came slowly down with all the antique ceremony. The fashion of it is thus. The Lord Mayor, standing up and taking the covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his elbow, who likewise rises, and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which being success fully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and re ceives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a draught, after which the third per son goes through a similar manoeuvre with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find themselves inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one complicated chain of love. When the cup came to my hands, I ex amined it critically, both inside and out, and perceived it to be an antique and richly ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about a quart of wine. Considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of wine being still in the goblet, i eeemed doubtful whether any of the company had men than barely touched the silver rim before passing it t( their neighbors, a degree of abstinence that might bi accounted for by a fastidious repugnance to so many com potators in one cup, or possibly by a disapprobation :>f thi liquor. Being curious to know all about these important CIVIC BANQUETS. 391 matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving-cup, and had no occasion for another, ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor original quality, largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened. It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial drink, and could never have been intended for any better purpose. The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of table-eloquence which had hereto fore delighted me. As preparatory to each new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of state, gave awful notice that the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor was about to propose a toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof, together with some accompany ing remarks, the band played an appropriate tune, and the herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such or such a nobleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or what not, was going to respond to the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor s toast ; then, if I mis take not, there was another prodigious flourish of trum pets and twanging of stringed instruments ; and finally the doomed individual, waiting all this while to be de capitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of him self. A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got every word by heart, (even including, however he man aged it, the most seemingly casual improvisations of the moment,) he really spoke like a book, and made incom parably the smoothest speech I ever heard in England. The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only OD 892 CIVIC BANQUETS. this occasion, but all similar ones, was what impressed ma as most extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into a most enjoyable state of quietude with copious liba tions of Sherry and old Port, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so refreshing ? If the Champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of these effusions, or if the generous Port had shone through their substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups, and should. undoubtedly have betn glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt nor im pulse of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audi ence. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too ear nest utilitarianism, of modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid, in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to come to them, a few hundred years ago, for the sake of being jolly ; they come now with an odd notion of pour ing sober wisdom into their wine by way of wormwood bitters, and thus make such a mess of it that the w r ine and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another. Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast, and very much interrupted my own CIVIC BANQUETS. 393 fk/ther enjoyment of it. Up to this time, my condition had been exceedingly felicitous, both on account of the brilliancy of the scene, and because I was in close prox imity with three very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write it ; an other, a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste, kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, camp, and country, which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the kind of help a stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not had a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt safer or cosier at anybody s fireside, even my own, than at the dinner-table of the Lord Mayor. Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His Lord ship got up and proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon " the literary and commercial " I ques tion whether those two adjectives were ever before mar ried by a copulative conjunction, and they certainly would not live together in illicit intercourse, of their own accord " the literary and commercial attainments of an emi nent gentleman there present," and then went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between Grea Britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman s native country. Those bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great nations, through out all history, and his Lordship felt assured that thai whole honorable company would join him in the expres- 394 CIVIC BANQUETS. fiion of a fervent wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both sides of the Atlantic, now and forever. Then came the same wearisome old toast, dry and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text of nearly all the oratory of my public career. The herald sonorously announced that Mr. So-and-so Av^uld now respond to his Right Honorable Lordship s toast and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flourish for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause, and finally a deep silence sank upon the festivi hall. All tliis was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord Mayor s part, after beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe-conduct ; and it seemed very strange that lie could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the Mansion House wine, and go away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship had sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the matter to have been somewhat as follows. All England, just then, was in one of those singular fits of panic excitement, (not fear, though as sensitive and tremulous as that emotion,) which, in consequence of the homogeneous character of the people, their intense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and un reasoning than any similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American public in a state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of it. Our excitements are not impulsive, like theirs, but, right CIVIC BANQUETS. 395 or wrong, are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North, at the commencement of this war, bore the aspect of impulse and passion only because it was so universal, and necessarily done in a moment, iust as the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thou Band people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to tlu. end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is nothing which the English find it so difficult to understand in us as this characteristic. They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers of international law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the world, with themselves at the head, to combine for the purpose of putting us into a stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so powerful, (and when one man feels it, a million do,) that it resembles the passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you see the whole crop bending and swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate stalk tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad com panions. At such periods all Englishmen talk with a ter rible identity of sentiment and expression. You have the whole country in each man ; and not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a reason able ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the world our own country and France that can put England into this singular state. It is the united sensi tiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, careful of their country s honor, most anxious for the preservation of the 396 CIVIC BANQUETS. cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and incompetent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and their habit of trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion) to judge when that prosperity is really threatened. If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign side of any international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that there was veiy little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from the simple circum stance that their own Government had positively not an inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a justification for incur ring war. It was no such perilous juncture as exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sus tainable or plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the first cannon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplo matic squabble, in which the British ministers, with the politic generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an in defensible proceeding; and the American Government (for God had not denied us an administration of States men then) had retaliated with stanch courage and ex- juisite skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them with no pretence whatever for active resentment. Now the Lord Mayor, like any other Englishman, probably fancied that War was on the western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an Ameri can as myself, who might be made to harp on the rusty CIVIC BANQUETS. 397 old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace where there was no peace, in however weak an utterance. And possibly his Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and far-famed dinner-table, might have an appre ciable influence on the grand result. Thus, when the Lord Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser Curtius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of discord between England and America, and, on my ignominious demur, had resolved to shove me in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I forgive his Lordship. He meant well by all parties, himself, who would share the glory, and me, who ought to have de sired nothing better than such an heroic opportunity, his own country, which would continue to get cotton and breadstuffs, and mine, which would get everything that men work with and wear. As soon as the Lord Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas. I never thought of listening to the speech, because I knew it all before hand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned to one of my three friends, a gentle man whom I knew to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and obtested him, by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and, once afloat, I would trust to my guardian-angeJ 398 CIVIC BANQUETS. for enabling me to flounder ashore again. He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to the Lord Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his office was held at least, my friend thought that there would be no harm in giving his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or no was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers. Thence, if I liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily slide off into the momen tous subject of the relations between England and Amer ica, to which his Lordship had made such weighty al lusion. Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to close these Sketches, leaving myself still erect in so heroic an attitude. THK EMD. SEPTIMIUS FKI/TON. See page 70. SEPTIMITTS FELTON; OR, THE ELIXIR OF LIFE. PREFACE. THE following story is the last written by my father. It is printed as it was found among his manuscripts. I believe it is a striking specimen of the peculiarities and charm of his style, and that it will have an added interest for brother artists, and for those who care to study the method of his composition, from the mere fact of its not having received his final revision. In any case, I feel sure that the retention of the passages within brackets (e. g. p. 30), which show how my father intended to amplify some of the descriptions and develop more fully one or two of the character studies, will not be regretted by appreciative readers. My earnest thanks are due to Mr. Eobert Browning for his kind assistance and advice in interpreting the manuscript, other wise so difficult to me. UNA HAWTHORNE. SEPTIMIUS FELTON; OB, THE ELIXIR OF LIFE. IT was a day in early spring 5 and as that sweet, genial time of year and atmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground, beautiful flowers, or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow and decay, so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people, who sat on a sunny hillside enjoying the warm day and one another. For they were all friends : two of them young men, and playmates from boyhood ; the third, a girl who, two or three years younger than them selves, had been the object of their boy-love, their little rustic, childish gallantries, their budding affec tions ; until, growing all towards manhood and woman hood, they had ceased to talk about such matters, perhaps thinking about them the more. These three young people were neighbors children, dwelling in houses that stood by the side of the great Lexington road, along a ridgy hill that rose abruptly behind them, its brow covered with a wood, and which stretched, with one or two breaks and inter- 4 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. ruptions, into the heart of the village of Concord, the county town. It was in the side of this hill that, according to tradition, the first settlers of the village had burrowed in caverns which they had dug out for their shelter, like swallows and woodchucks. As its slope was -towards the south, and its ridge and crown ing woods defended them from the northern blasts and snow-drifts, it was an admirable situation for the fierce New England winter ; and the temperature was milder, by several degrees, along this hillside than on the unprotected plains, or by the river, or in any other part of Concord. So that here, during the hun dred years that had elapsed since the first settlement of the place, dwellings had successively risen close to the hill s foot, and the meadow that lay on the other side of the road a fertile tract had been culti vated; and these three young people were the chil dren s children s children of persons of respectability who had dwelt there, Rose Garfield, in a small house, the site of which is still indicated by the cavity of a cellar, in which I this very past summer planted some sunflowers to thrust their great disks out from the hollow and allure the bee and the humming-bird ; Robert Hagburn, in a house of some what more pretension, a hundred yards or so nearer to the village, standing back from the road in the broader space which the retreating hill, cloven by a gap in that place, afforded ; where some elms intervened between it and the road, offering a site which some person of a natural taste for the gently picturesque had seized upon. Those same elms, or their successors, SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 5 still flung a noble shade over the same old house, which the magic hand of Alcott has improved by the touch that throws grace, amiableness, and natural beauty over scenes that have little pretension in themselves. Now, the other young man, Septimius Felton, dwelt in a small wooden house, then, I suppose, of some score of years standing, a two-story house, gabled before, but with only two rooms on a floor, crowded upon by the hill behind, a house of thick walls, as if the projector had that sturdy feeling of permanence in life which incites people to make strong their earthly habitations, as if deluding themselves with the idea that they could still inhabit them ; in short, an ordinary dwelling of a well-to-do New England farmer, such as his race had been for two or three generations past, although there were traditions of ancestors who had led lives of thought and study, and possessed all the erudition that the universities of England could bestow. Whether any natural turn for study had descended to Septimius from these worthies, or how his tendencies came to be different from those of his family, who, within the memory of the neighborhood, had been content to sow and reap the rich field in front of their homestead, so it was, that Septimius had early manifested a taste for study. By the kind aid of the good minister of the town he had been fitted for college ; had passed through Cambridge by means of what little money his father had left him and by his own exertions in school-keeping; and was now a recently decorated baccalaureate, with, as was understood, a purpose to 6 SEPTIMUS FELTON. devote himself to the ministry, under the auspices of that reverend and good friend whose support and instruction had already stood him in such stead. Now here were these young people, on that beauti ful spring morning, sitting on the hillside, a pleasant spectacle of fresh life, pleasant, as if they had sprouted like green things under the influence of the warm sun. The girl was very pretty, a little freckled, a little tanned, but with a face that glimmered and gleamed with quick and cheerful expressions; a slender form, not very large, with a quick grace in its movements ; sunny hair that had a tendency to curl, which she probably favored at such moments as her household occupation left her ; a sociable and pleasant child, as both of the young men evidently thought. Robert Hagburn, one might suppose, would have been the most to her taste ; a ruddy, burly young fellow, handsome, and free of manner, six feet high, famous through the neighborhood for strength and athletic skill, the early promise of what was to be a man fit for all offices of active rural life, and to be, in mature age, the selectman, the deacon, the representative, the colonel. As for Septimius, let him alone a mo ment or two, and then they would see him, with his head bent down, brooding, brooding, his eyes fixed on some chip, some stone, some common plant, any com monest thing, as if it were the clew and index to some mystery ; and when, by chance startled out of these meditations, he .lifted his eyes, there would be a kind of perplexity, a dissatisfied, foiled look in them, as if of his speculations he found no end. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 7 Such was now the case, while Robert and the girl were running on with a gay talk about a serious sub ject, so that, gay as it was, it was interspersed With little thrills of fear on the girl s part, of excitement on Robert s. Their talk was of public trouble. " My grandfather says," said Rose Garfield, " that we shall never be able to stand against old England, because the men are a weaker race than he remembers in his day, weaker than his father, who came from England, and the women slighter still ; so that we are dwindling away, grandfather thinks ; only a little sprightlier, he says sometimes, looking at me." " Lighter, to be sure," said Robert Hagburn ; " there is the lightness of the Englishwomen compressed into little space. I have seen them and know. And as to the men, Rose, if they have lost one spark of courage and strength that their English forefathers brought from the old land, lost any one good quality without having made it up by as good or better, then, for my part, I don t want the breed to exist any longer* And this war, that they say is coming on, will be a good opportunity to test the matter. Septimius ! don t you think so 1 " " Think what 1 " asked Septimius, gravely, lifting up his head. " Think ! why, that your countrymen are worthy to live," said Robert Hagburn, impatiently. "For there is a question on that point." " It is hardly worth answering or considering," said Septimius, looking at him thoughtfully. " We live so little while, that (always setting aside the effect on a 8 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. future existence) it is little matter whether we live or no." " Little matter ! " said Rose, at first bewildered, then laughing, " little matter ! when it is such a comfort to live, so pleasant, so sweet ! " "Yes, and so many things to do," said Robert; " to make fields yield produce ; to be busy among men, and happy among the women-folk; to play, work, fight, and be active in many ways." "Yes; but so soon stilled, before your activity has come to any definite end," responded Septimius, gloomily. " I doubt, if it had been left to my choice, whether I should have taken existence on such terms ; so much trouble of preparation to live, and then no life at all ; a ponderous beginning, and nothing more." "Do you find fault with Providence, Septimius 1" asked Rose, a feeling of solemnity coming over her cheerful and buoyant nature. Then she burst out a-laughing. " How grave he looks, Robert ; as if he had lived two or three lives already, and knew all about the value of it. But I think it was worth while to be born, if only for the sake of one such pleasant spring morning as this ; and God gives us many and better things when these are past." " We hope so," said Septimius, who was again look ing on the ground. " But who knows ? " " I thought you knew," said Robert Hagburn. "You have been to college, and have learned, no doubt, a great many things. You are a student of theology, too, and have looked into these matters. Who should know, if not you 1 ?" SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 9 " Rose and you have just as good means of ascer taining these points as I," said Septimius; "all the certainty that can be had lies on the surface, as it should, and equally accessible to every man or woman. If we try to grope deeper, we labor for naught, and get less wise while we try to be more so. If life were long enough to enable us thoroughly to sift these matters, then, indeed ! but it is so short ! " " Always this same complaint," said Robert. " Sep- timius, how long do you wish to live 1 " " Forever ! " said Septimius. " It is none too long for all I wish to know." "Forever 1 ?" exclaimed Rose, shivering doubtfully. "Ah, there would come many, many thoughts, and after a while we should want a little rest." "Forever]" said Robert Hagburn. "And what would the people do who wish to fill our places? You are unfair, Septimius. Live and let live ! Turn about ! Give me my seventy years, and let me go, my seventy years of what this life has, toil, enjoy ment, suffering, struggle, fight, rest, only let me have my share of what s going, and I shall be content." " Content with leaving everything at odd ends ; content with being nothing, as you were before ! " " No, Septimius, content with heaven at last," said Rose, who had come out of her laughing mood into a sweet seriousness. " dear ! think what a worn and ugly thing one of these fresh little blades of grass would seem if it were not to fade and wither in its time, after being green in its time." " Well, well, my pretty Rose," said Septimius apart, 10 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. " an immortal weed is not verj lovely to think of, that is true j but I should be content with one thing, and that is yourself, if you were immortal, just as you are at seventeen, so fresh, so dewy, so red-lipped, so golden-haired, so gay, so frolicsome, so gentle." "But I am to grow old, and to be brown and wrinkled, gray-haired and ugly," said Rose, rather sadly, as she thus enumerated the items of her decay, "and then you would think me all lost and gone. But still there might be youth underneath, for one that really loved me to see. Ah, Septimius Felton ! such love as would see with ever-new eyes is the true love." And she ran away and left him suddenly, and Robert Hagburn departing at the same time, this little knot of three was dissolved, and Septimius went along the wayside wall, thoughtfully, as was his wont, to his own dwelling. He had stopped for some moments on the threshold, vaguely enjoying, it is probable, the light and warmth of the new spring day and the sweet air, which was somewhat unwonted to the young man, because he was accustomed to spend much of his day in thought and study within doors, and, indeed, like most studious young men, was overfond of the fireside, and of making life as artificial as he could, by fireside heat and lamplight, in order to suit it to the artificial, intellectual, and moral atmosphere which he derived from books, instead of living healthfully in the open air, and among his fellow-beings. Still he felt the pleasure of being warmed through by this natural heat, and though blinking a little from its superfluity, could not but confess an enjoyment and cheerfulness SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 11 in this flood of morning light that came aslant the hillside. While he thus stood, he felt a friendly hand laid upon his shoulder, and looking up, there was the minister of the village, the old friend of Septimius, to whose advice and aid it was owing that Septimius had followed his instincts by going to college, instead of spending a thwarted and dissatisfied life in the field that fronted the house. He was a man of middle age, or little beyond, of a sagacious, kindly aspect; the experience, the lifelong, intimate acquaintance with many concerns of his people being more apparent in him than the scholarship for which he had been early distinguished. A tanned man, like one who labored in his own grounds occasionally ; a man of homely, plain address, which, when occasion called for it, he could readily exchange for the polished manner of one who had seen a more refined world than this about him. " Well, Septimius," said the minister, kindly, " have you yet come to any conclusion about the subject of which we have been talking 1 " " Only so far, sir," replied Septimius, " that I find myself every day less inclined to take up the profes sion which I have had in view so many years. I do not think myself fit for the sacred desk." " Surely not ; no one is," replied the clergyman ; "but if I may trust my own judgment, you have at least many of the intellectual qualifications that should adapt you to it. There is something of the Puritan character in you, Septimius, derived from holy men among your ancestors ; as, for instance, a deep, brood- 12 SEPTIMIUS FELT ON. ing turn, such as befits that heavy brow ; a dis position to meditate on things hidden ; a turn for meditative inquiry ; all these things, with grace to boot, mark you as the germ of a man who might do God service. Your reputation as a scholar stands high at college. You have not a turn for worldly business." "Ah, but, sir," said Septimius, casting down his heavy brows, " I lack something within." "Faith, perhaps," replied the minister; "at least, you think so." " Cannot I know it 1 " asked Septimius. " Scarcely, just now," said his friend. " Study for the ministry ; bind your thoughts to it ; pray ; ask a belief, and you will soon find you have it. Doubts may occasionally press in; and it is so with every clergyman. But your prevailing mood will be faith." "It has seemed to me," observed Septimius, "that it is not the prevailing mood, the most common one, that is to be trusted. This is habit, formality, the shallow covering which we close over what is real, and seldom suffer to be blown aside. But it is the snake- like doubt that thrusts out its head, which gives us a glimpse of reality. Surely such moments are a hun dred times as real as the dull, quiet moments of faith, or what you call such." "I am sorry for you," said the minister; "yet to a youth of your frame of character, of your ability I will say, and your requisition for something profound in the grounds of your belief, it is not unusual to meet this trouble. Men like you have to fight for their SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 13 faith. They fight in the first place to win it, and ever afterwards to hold it. The Devil tilts with them daily, and often seems to win." "Yes; but," replied Septimius, "he takes deadly weapons now. If he meet me with the cold pure steel of a spiritual argument, I might win or lose, and still not feel that all was lost ; but he takes, as it were, a great clod of earth, massive rocks and mud, soil and dirt, and flings it at me overwhelmingly; so that I am buried under it." " How is that ? " said the minister. " Tell me more plainly." " May it not be posssible," asked Septimius, " to have too profound a sense of the marvellous con trivance and adaptation of this material world to require or believe in anything spiritual ? How won derful it is to see it all alive on this spring day, all growing, budding ! Do we exhaust it in our little life 1 Not so ; not in a hundred or a thousand lives. The whole race of man, living from the beginning of time, have not, in all their number and multiplicity and in all their duration, come in the least to know the world they live in ! And how is this rich world thrown away upon us, because we live in it such a moment ! What mortal work has ever been done since the world began ! Because we have no time. No lesson is taught. We are snatched away from our study before we have learned the alphabet. As the world now exists, I confess it to you frankly, my dear pastor and instructor, it seems to me all a failure, because we do not live long enough." 4J 14 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. " But the lesson is carried on in another state of being!" " Not the lesson that we begin here," said Sep timius. " We might as well train a child in a primeval forest, to teach him how to live in a European court. No, the fall of man, which Scripture tells us of, seems to me to have its operation in this grievous short ening of earthly existence, so that our life here at all is grown ridiculous." " Well, Septimius," replied the minister, sadly, yet not as one shocked by what he had never heard before, "I must leave you to struggle through this form of unbelief as best you may, knowing that it is by your own efforts that you must come to the other side of this slough. We will talk fur ther another time. You are getting worn out, my young friend, with much study and anxiety. It were well for yon to live more, for the present, in this earthly life that you prize so highly. Cannot you interest yourself in the state of this country, in this coming strife, the voice of which now sounds so hoarsely and so near us 1 Come out of your thoughts and breathe another air." " I will try," said Septimius. " Do," said the minister, extending his hand to him, " and in a little time you will find the change." He shook the young man s hand kindly, and took his leave, while Septimius entered his house, and turning to the right sat down in his study, where, before the fireplace, stood the table with books and papers. On the shelves around the low-studded walls SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 15 were more books, few in number but of an erudite appearance, many of them having descended to him from learned ancestors, and having been brought to light by himself after long lying in dusty closets ; works of good and learned divines, whose wisdom he had happened, by help of the Devil, to turn to mis chief, reading them by the light of hell-fire. For, indeed, Septimius had but given the clergyman the merest partial glimpse of his state of mind. He was not a new beginner in doubt ; but, on the con trary, it seemed to him as if he had never been other than a doubter and questioner, even in his boyhood ; believing nothing, although a thin veil of reverence had kept him from questioning some things. And now the new, strange thought of the sufficiency of the world for man, if man were only sufficient for that, kept recurring to him ; and with it came a cer tain sense, which he had been conscious of before, that he, at least, might never die. The feeling was not peculiar to Septimius. It is an instinct, the meaning of which is mistaken. We have strongly within us the sense of an undying principle, and we transfer that true sense to this life and to the body, instead of interpreting it justly as the promise of spiritual immortality. So Septimius looked up out of his thoughts, and said proudly : " Why should I die 1 I cannot die, if worthy to live. What if I should say this moment that I will not die, not till ages hence, not till the world is exhausted 1 Let other men die, if they choose or yield ; let him that is strong enough live ! " 16 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. After this flush of heroic mood, however, the glow subsided, and poor Septimius spent the rest of the day, as was his wont, poring over his books, in which all the meanings seemed dead and mouldy, and like pressed leaves (some of which dropped out of the books as he opened them), brown, brittle, sapless ; so even the thoughts, which when the writers had gathered them seemed to them so brightly colored and full of life. Then he began to see that there must have been some principle of life left out of the book, so that these gathered thoughts lacked something that had given them their only value. Then he suspected that the way truly to live and answer the purposes of life was not to gather up thoughts into books, where they grew so dry, but to live and still be going about, full of green wisdom, ripening ever, not in maxims cut and dry, but a wisdom ready for daily occasions, like a living foun tain ; and that to be this, it was necessary to exist long on earth, drink in all its lessons, and not to die on the attainment of some smattering of truth; but to live all the more for that ; and apply it to mankind, and increase it thereby. Everything drifted towards the strong, strange eddy into which his mind had been drawn : all his thoughts set hitherward. So he sat brooding in his study until the shrill- voiced old woman an aunt, who was his house keeper and domestic ruler called him to dinner, a frugal dinner, and chided him for seeming inat tentive to a dish of early dandelions which she had SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 17 gathered for him ; but yet tempered her severity with respect for the future clerical rank of her nephew, and for his already being a bachelor of arts. The old woman s voice spoke outside of Septimius, ram bling away, and he paying little heed, till at last dinner was over, and Septimius drew back his chair, about to leave the table. "Nephew Septimius," said the old woman, "you began this meal to-day without asking a blessing, you get up from it without giving thanks, and you soon to be a minister of the Word." " God bless the meat," replied Septimius (by way of blessing), " and make it strengthen us for the life he means us to bear. Thank God for our food," he added (by way of grace), " and may it become a portion in us of an immortal body." " That sounds good, Septimius," said the old lady. " Ah ! you 11 be a mighty man in the pulpit, and worthy to keep up the name of your great-grand father, who, they say, made the leaves wither on a tree with the fierceness of his blast against a sin. Some say, to be sure, it was an early frost that helped him." " I never heard that before, Aunt Keziah," said Septimius. "I warrant you no," replied his aunt. "A man dies, and his greatness perishes as if it had never been, and people remember nothing of him only when they see his gravestone over his old dry bones, and say he was a good man in his day." "What truth there is in Aunt Keziah s words!" B 18 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. exclaimed Septimius, " And how I hate the thought and anticipation of that contemptuous appreciation of a man after his death ! Every living man tri umphs over every dead one, as he lies, poor and helpless, under the mould, a pinch of dust, a heap of bones, an evil odor ! I hate the thought ! It shall not be so ! " It was strange how every little incident thus brought him back to that one subject which was taking so strong hold of his mind; every avenue led thitherward ; and he took it for an indication that nature had intended, by innumerable ways, to point out to us the great truth that death was an alien misfortune, a prodigy, a monstrosity, into which man had only fallen by defect ; and that even now, if a man had a reasonable portion of his original strength in him, he might live forever and spurn death. Our story is an internal one, dealing as little as possible with outward events, and taking hold of these only where it cannot be helped, in order by means of them to delineate the history of a mind bewildered in certain errors. We would not willingly, if we could, give a lively and picturesque surrounding to this delineation, but it is necessary that we should advert to the circumstances of the time in which this inward history was passing. We will say, therefore, that that night there was a cry of alarm passing all through the succession of country towns and rural communities that lay around Boston, and dying away towards the coast and the wilder forest borders. Horsemen gal loped past the line of farm-houses shouting alarm ! SEPTIMIUS FEiTON. 19 alarm ! There were stories of marching troops com ing like dreams through the midnight. Around the little rude meeting-houses there was here and there the beat of a drum, and the assemblage of farmers with their weapons. So all that night there was marching, there was mustering, there was trouble ; and, on the road from Boston, a steady march of soldiers feet onward, onward into the land whose last warlike disturbance had been when the red Indians trod it. Septimius heard it, and knew, like the rest, that it was the sound of coming war. "Fools that men are ! " said he, as he rose from bed and looked out at the misty stars; "they do not live long enough to know the value and purport of life, else they would combine together to live long, instead of throwing away the lives of thousands as they do. And what matters a little tyranny in so short a life? What matters a form of government for such ephemeral creatures 1 " As morning brightened, these sounds, this clamor,. or something that was in the air and caused the clamor, grew so loud that Septimius seemed to feel it even in his solitude. It was in the atmosphere, storm, wild excitement, a coming deed. Men hur ried along the usually lonely road in groups, with weapons in their hands, the old fowling-piece of seven-foot barrel, with which the Puritans had shot ducks, on the river and Walden Pond; the heavy harquebus, which perhaps had levelled one of King Philip s Indians ; the old King gun, that blazed away 20 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. at the French of Louisburg or Quebec, hunter, hus bandman, all were hurrying each other. It was a good time, everybody felt, to be alive, a nearer kin dred, a closer sympathy between man and man ; a sense of the goodness of the world, of the sacredness of country, of the excellence of life ; and yet its slight account compared with any truth, any principle ; the weighing of the material and ethereal, and the finding the former not worth considering, when, nevertheless, it had so much to do with the settlement of the crisis. The ennobling of brute force ; the feeling that it had its godlike side ; the drawing of heroic breath amid the scenes of ordinary life, so that it seemed as if they had all been transfigured since yesterday. 0, high, heroic, tremulous juncture, when man felt himself almost an angel; on the verge of doing deeds that outwardly look so fiendish ! 0, strange rapture of the coming battle ! We know something of that time now ; we that have seen the muster of the village soldiery on the meeting-house green, and at railway stations ; and heard the drum and fife, and seen the farewells; seen the familiar faces that we hardly knew, now that we felt them to be heroes ; breathed higher breath for their sakes; felt our eyes moist ened ; thanked them in our souls for teaching us that nature is yet capable of heroic moments ; felt how a great impulse lifts up a people, and every cold, pas sionless, indifferent spectator, lifts him up into re ligion, and makes him join in what becomes an act of devotion, a prayer, when perhaps he but half approves. Septimius could not study on a morning like this. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 21 He tried to say to himself that he had nothing to do with this excitement ; that his studious life kept him away from it ; that his intended profession was that of peace ; but say what he might to himself, there was a tremor, a bubbling impulse, a tingling in his ears, the page that he opened glimmered and dazzled before him. " Septimius ! Septimius ! " cried Aunt Keziah, look ing into the room, "in Heaven s name, are you going to sit here to-day, and the redcoats coming to burn the house over our heads? Must I sweep you out with the broomstick ? For shame, boy ! for shame ! " " Are they coming, then, Aunt Keziah 1 " asked her nephew. " Well, I am not a fighting-man." "Certain they are. They have sacked Lexington, and slain the people, and burnt the meeting-house. That concerns even the parsons; and you reckon yourself among them. Go out, go out, I say, and learn the news!" Whether moved by these exhortations, or by his own stifled curiosity, Septimius did at length issue from his door, though with that reluctance which hampers and impedes men whose current of thought and interest runs apart from that of the world in general; but forth he came, feeling strangely, and yet with a strong impulse to fling himself headlong into the emotion of the moment. It was a beautiful morning, spring-like and summer-like at once. If there had been nothing else to do or think of, such a morning was enough for life only to breathe its air and be conscious of its inspiring influence. 22 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. Septimius turned along the road towards the vil lage, meaning to mingle with the crowd on the green, and there learn all he could of the rumors that vaguely filled the air, and doubtless were shaping themselves into various forms of fiction. As he passed the small dwelling of Rose Garfield, she stood on the doorstep, and bounded forth a little way to meet him, looking frightened, excited, and yet half pleased, but strangely pretty ; prettier than ever before, owing to some hasty adornment or other, that she would never have succeeded so well in giving to herself if she had had more time to do it in. " Septimius Mr. Feltou," cried she, asking infor mation of him who, of all men in the neighborhood, knew nothing of the intelligence afloat ; but it showed a certain importance that Septimius had with her. f( Do you really think the redcoats are coming 1 Ah, what shall we do 1 What shall we do 1 But you are not going to the village, too, and leave us all alone 1 " " I know not whether they are coming or no, Rose," said Septimius, stopping to admire the young girl s fresh beauty, which made a double stroke upon him by her excitement, and, moreover, made her twice as free with him as ever she had been before ; for there is nothing truer than that any breaking up of the ordinary state of things is apt to shake women out of their proprieties, break down barriers, and bring them into perilous proximity with the world. "Are you alone here ? Had you not better take shelter in the villager "And leave my poor, bedridden grandmother!" SEPTIMIUS FELTQN. 23 cried Rose, angrily. "You know I can t, Septimius. But I suppose I am in no danger. Go to the village, if you like." " Where is Robert Hagbura ? " asked Septimiue. " Gone to the village this hour past, with his grand father s old firelock on his shoulder," said Rose ; " he was running bullets before daylight." " Rose, I will stay with you," said Septimms. " gracious, here they come, I m sure ! " cried Rose, "Look yonder at the dust. Mercy! a man at a gallop ! " In fact, along the road, a considerable stretch of which was visible, they heard the clatter of hoofs and saw a little cloud of dust approaching at the rate of a gallop, and disclosing, as it drew near, a hatless countryman in his shirt-sleeves, who, bending over his horse s neck, applied a cart-whip lustily to the animal s flanks, so as to incite him to most unwonted speed, At the same time, glaring upon Rose and Septimius, he lifted up his voice and shouted in a strange, high tone, that communicated the tremor and excitement of the shouter to each auditor : " Alarum ! alarum ! alarum ! The redcoats ! The redcoats ! To arms ! alarum ! " And trailing this sound far wavering behind him like a pennon, the eager horseman dashed onward to the village. " dear, what shall we do 1 " cried Rose, her eyes full of tears, yet dancing with excitement. " They are coming I they are coming I I hear the drum and fife," 24 SEPTIMIUS HELTON. " I really believe they are," said Septimius, his cheek flushing and growing pale, not with fear, but the inevitable tremor, half painful, half pleasurable, of the moment. "Hark! there was the shrill note of a fife. Yes, they are coming ! " He tried to persuade Rose to hide herself in the house ; but that young person would not be per suaded to do so, clinging to Septimius in a way that flattered while it perplexed him. Besides, with all the girl s fright, she had still a good deal of courage, and much curiosity too, to see what these redcoats were of whom she heard such terrible stories. "Well, well, Rose," said Septimius; "I doubt not we may stay here without danger, you, a woman, and I, whose profession is to be that of peace and good-will to all men. They cannot, what ever is said of them, be on an errand of massacre. We will stand here quietly ; and, seeing that we do not fear them, they will understand that we mean them no harm." They stood, accordingly, a little in front of the door by the well-curb, and soon they saw a heavy cloud of dust, from amidst which shone bayonets ; and anon, a military band, which had hitherto been silent, struck up, with drum and fife, to which the tramp of a thousand feet fell in regular order ; then came the column, moving massively, and the red coats who seemed somewhat wearied by a long night- march, dusty, with bedraggled gaiters, covered with sweat which had run down from their powdered locks. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 25 Nevertheless, these ruddy, lusty. Englishmen marched stoutly, as men that needed only a half-hour s rest, a good breakfast, and a pot of beer apiece, to make them ready to face the world. Nor did their faces look anywise rancorous; but at most, only heavy, cloddish, good-natured, and humane. " heavens, Mr. Felton ! " whispered Rose, " why should we shoot these men, or they us 1 they look kind, if homely. Each of them has a mother and sisters, I suppose, just like our men." "It is the strangest thing in the world that we can think of killing them," said Septimius. " Human life is so precious." Just as they were passing the cottage, a halt was called by the commanding officer, in order that some little rest might get the troops into a better condi tion and give them breath before entering the village, where it was important to make as imposing a show as possible. During this brief stop, some of the sol diers approached the well-curb, near which Rose and Septimius were standing, and let down the bucket to satisfy their thirst. A young officer, a petulant boy, extremely handsome, and of gay and buoyant deportment, also came up. " Get me a cup, pretty one," said he, patting Rose s cheek with great freedom, though it was somewhat and indefinitely short of rudeness ; " a mug, or some thing to drink out of, and you shah 1 have a kiss for your pains." " Stand off, sir ! " said Septimius, fiercely ; "it is a coward s part to insult a woman." 26 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. "I intend no insult in this," replied the handsome young officer, suddenly snatching a kiss from Rose, before she could draw back. " And if you think it fio, my good friend, you had better take your weapon and get as much satisfaction as you can, shooting at me from behind a hedge." Before Septimius could reply or act, and, in truth, the easy presumption of the young Englishman made it difficult for him, an inexperienced recluse as he was, to know what to do or say, the drum beat a little tap, recalling the soldiers to their rank and to order. The young officer hastened back, with a laughing glance at Rose and a light, contemptuous look of defiance at Septimius, the drums rattling out in full beat, and the troops marched on. " What impertinence ! " said Rose, whose indignant color made her look pretty enough almost to excuse the offence. It is not easy to see how Septimius could have shielded her from the insult ; and yet he felt incon ceivably outraged and humiliated at the thought that this offence had occurred while Rose was under his protection, and he responsible for her. Besides, somehow or other, he was angry with her for having undergone the wrong, though certainly most unrea sonably , for the whole thing was quicker done than said. "You had better go into the house now, Rose," said he, " and see to your bedridden grandmother." " And what will you do, Septimius ? " asked she. " Perhaps I will house myself, also," he replied. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 27 " Perhaps take yonder proud redcoat s counsel, and shoot him behind a hedge." " But not kill him outright ; I suppose he has a mother and a sweetheart, the handsome young offi cer," murmured Rose pityingly to herself. Septimius went into his house, and sat in his study for some hours, in that unpleasant state of feeling which a man of brooding thought is apt to experience when the world around him is in a state of intense action, which he finds it impossible to sympathize with. There seemed to be a stream rushing past him, by which, even if he plunged into the midst of it, he could not be wet. He felt himself strangely ajar with the human race, and would have given much either to be in full accord with it, or to be separated from it forever. " I am dissevered from it. It is my doom to be only a spectator of life ; to look on as one apart from it. Is it not well, therefore, that, sharing none of its pleasures and happiness, I should be free of its fatal ities, its brevity? How cold I am now, while this whirlpool of public feeling is eddying around me. It is as if I had not been born of woman ! " Thus it was, that, drawing wild inferences from phenomena of the mind and heart common to people who, by some morbid action within themselves, are set ajar with the world, Septimius continued still to come round to that strange idea of undyingness which had recently taken possession of him. And yet he was wrong in thinking himself cold, and that he felt no sympathy in the fever of patriotism that was 28 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. throbbing through his countrymen. He was restless as a flame ; he could not fix his thoughts upon his book ; he could not sit in his chair, but kept pacing to and fro, while through the open window came noises to which his imagination gave diverse interpre tation. Now it was a distant drum ; now shouts ; by and by there came the rattle of musketry, that seemed to proceed from some point more distant than the village ; a regular roll, then a ragged volley, then scattering shots. Unable any longer to preserve this unnatural indifference, Septimius snatched his gun, and, rushing out of the house, climbed the abrupt hillside behind, whence he could see a long way towards the village, till a slight bend hid the uneven road. It was quite vacant, not a passenger upon it. But there seemed to be confusion in that direction ; an unseen and inscrutable trouble, blowing thence towards him, intimated by vague sounds, by no sounds. Listening eagerly, however, he at last fancied a mustering sound of the drum ; then it seemed as if it were coming towards him ; while in advance rode another horseman, the same kind of headlong mes senger, in appearance, who had passed the house with his ghastly cry of alarum ; then appeared scattered countrymen, with guns in their hands, straggling across fields. Then he caught sight of the regular array of British soldiers, filling the road with their front, and marching along as firmly as ever, though at a quick pace, while he fancied that the officers looked watchfully around. As he looked, a shot rang sharp from the hillside towards the village ; the smoke SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 29 curled up, and Septimius saw a man stagger and fall in the midst of the troops. Septimius shuddered ; it was so like murder that he really could not tell the difference ; his knees trembled beneath him ; his breath grew short, not with terror, but with some new sensation of awe. Another shot or two came almost simultaneously from the wooded height, but without any effect that Septimius could perceive. Almost at the same mo ment a company of the British soldiers wheeled from the main body, and, dashing out of the road, climbed the hill, and disappeared into the wood and shrubbery that veiled it. There were a few straggling shots, by whom fired, or with what effect, was invisible, and meanwhile the main body of the enemy proceeded along the road. They had now advanced so nigh that Septimius was strangely assailed by the idea that he might, with the gun in his hand, fire right into the midst of them, and select any man of that now hostile band to be a victim. How strange, how strange it is, this deep, wild passion that nature has implanted in us to be the death of our fellow-creatures, and which coexists at the same time with horror ! Septimius levelled his weapon, and drew it up again ; he marked a mounted officer, who seemed to be in chief com mand, whom he knew that he could kill. But no ! he had really no such purpose. Only it was such a temptation. And in a moment the horse would leap, the officer would fall and lie there in the dust of the road, bleeding, gasping, breathing in spasms, breathing no more. 30 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. While the young man, in these unusual circum stances, stood watching the marching of the troops, he heard the noise of rustling boughs, and the voices of men, and soon understood that the party, which he had seen separate itself from the main body and ascend the hill, was now marching along on the hill-top, the long ridge which, with a gap or two, extended as much as a mile from the village. One of these gaps occurred a little way from where Sep- timius stood. They were acting as flank guard, to prevent the uproused people from coming so close to the main body as to fire upon it. He looked and saw that the detachment of British was plunging down one side of this gap, with intent to ascend the other, so that they would pass directly over the spot where he stood ; a slight removal to one side, among the small bushes, would conceal him. He stepped aside accord ingly, and from his concealment, not without drawing quicker breaths, beheld the party draw near. They were more intent upon the space between them and the main body than upon the dense thicket of birch- trees, pitch-pines, sumach, and dwarf oaks, which, scarcely yet beginning to bud into leaf, lay on the other side, and in which Septimius lurked. [Describe how their faces affected him, passing so near; how strange they seemed J\ They had all passed, except an officer who brought up the rear, and who had perhaps been attracted by some slight motion that Septimius made, some rustle in the thicket; for he stopped, fixed his eyes piercingly towards the spot where he stood, and SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 31 levelled a light fusil which he carried. " Stand out, or I shoot," said he. Not to avoid the shot, but because his manhood felt a call upon it not to skulk in obscurity from an open enemy, Septimius at once stood forth, and con fronted the same handsome young officer with whom those fierce words had passed on account of his rudeness to Rose Garfield. Septimius s fierce Indian blood stirred in him, and gave a murderous excite ment. " Ah, it is you ! " said the young officer, with a haughty smile. " You meant, then, to take up with my hint of shooting at me from behind a hedge? This is better. Come, we have in the first place the great quarrel between me a king s soldier, and you a rebel ; next our private affair, on account of yonder pretty girl. Come, let us take a shot on either score ! " The young officer was so handsome, so beautiful, in budding youth ; there was such a free, gay petulance in his manner ; there seemed so little of real evil in him; he put himself on equal ground with the rustic Septimius so generously, that the latter, often so morbid and sullen, never felt a greater kind ness for fellow-man than at this moment for this youth. "I have no enmity towards you," said he; "go in peace." " No enmity ! " replied the officer. " Then why were you here with your gun amongst the shrubbery ? But I have a mind to do my first deed of arms on 32 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. you ; so give up your weapon, and come with me as prisoner." " A prisoner ! " cried Septimius, that Indian fierce ness that was in him arousing itself, and thrusting up its malign head like a snake. " Never ! If you would have me, you must take my dead body." " Ah, well, you have pluck in you, I see, only it needs a considerable stirring. Come, this is a good quarrel of ours. Let us fight it out. Stand where you are, and I will give the word of command. Now ; ready, aim, fire ! " As the young officer spoke the three last words, in rapid succession, he and his antagonist brought their firelocks to the shoulder, aimed and fired. Sep timius felt, as it were, the sting of a gadfly passing across his temple, as the Englishman s bullet grazed it ; but, to his surprise and horror (for the whole thing scarcely seemed real to him), he saw the officer give a great start, drop his fusil, and stagger against a tree, with his hand to his breast. He endeavored to support himself erect, but, failing in the effort, beckoned to Septimius. " Come, my good friend," said he, with that play ful, petulant smile flitting over his face again. " It is my first and last fight. Let me down as softly as you can on mother earth, the mother of both you and me ; so we are brothers ; and this may be a brotherly act, though it does not look so, nor feel so. Ah ! that was a twinge indeed ! " Good God !" exclaimed Septimius. "I had no thought of this, no malice towards you in the least ! " SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 33 " Nor I towards you," said the young man. " It was boy s play, and the end of it is that I die a boy, instead of living forever, as perhaps I otherwise might." " Living forever ! " repeated Septimius, his atten tion arrested, even at that breathless moment, by words that rang so strangely on what had been his brooding thought. " Yes ; but I have lost my chance," said the young officer. Then, as Septimius helped him to lie against the little hillock of a decayed and buried stump, "Thank you; thank you. If you could only call back one of my comrades to hear my dying words. But I forgot. You have killed me, and they would take your life." In truth, Septimius was so moved and so astonished, that he probably would have called back the young man s comrades, had it been possible ; but, marching at the swift rate of men in peril, they had already gone far onward, in their passage through the shrub bery that had ceased to rustle behind them. " Yes ; I must die here ! " said the young man, with a forlorn expression, as of a school-boy far away from home, "and nobody to see me now but you, who have killed me. Could you fetch me a drop of water 1 ? I have a great thirst." Septimius, in a dream of horror and pity, rushed down the hillside ; the house was empty, for Aunt Keziah had gone for shelter and sympathy to some of the neighbors. He filled a jug with cold water, and hurried back to the hill-top, finding the young 2* C 34 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. officer looking paler and more deathlike within those few moments. " I thank you, my enemy that was, my friend that is," murmured he, faintly smiling. " Methinks, next to the father and mother that gave us birth, the next most intimate relation must be with the man that slays us, who introduces us to the mysterious world to which this is but the portal. You and I are singularly connected, doubt it not, in the scenes of the unknown world." " 0, believe me," cried Septimius, " I grieve for you like a brother ! " " I see it, my dear friend," said the young officer; "and though my blood is on your hands, I forgive you freely, if there is anything to forgive. But I am dying, and have a few words to say, which you must hear. You have slain me in fair fight, and my spoils, according to the rules and customs of warfare, belong to the victor. Hang up my sword and fusil over your chimney-place, and tell your children, twenty years hence, how they Were won. My purse, keep it or give it to the poor. There is something here, next my heart, which I would fain have sent to the address which I will give you." Septimius, obeying his directions, took from his breast a miniature that hung round it ; but, on examination, it proved that the bullet had passed directly through it, shattering the ivory, so that the woman s face it represented was quite destroyed. " Ah ! that is a pity," said the young man ; and yet Septimius thought that there was something light and SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 35 contemptuous mingled with the pathos in his tones. " Well, but send it ; caus6 it to be transmitted, according to the address," He gave Septimius, and made him take down on a tablet which he had about him, the name of a hall in one of the midland counties of England. " Ah, that old place," said he, " with its oaks, and its lawn, and its park, and its Elizabethan gables ! I little thought I should die here, so far away, in this barren Yankee land. Where will you bury me 1 " As Septimius hesitated to answer, the young man continued : "I would like to have lain in the little old church at Whitnash, which comes up before me now, with its low, gray tower, and the old yew-tree in front, hollow with age, and the village clustering about it, with its thatched houses. I would be loath to lie in one of your Yankee graveyards, for I have a distaste for them, though I love you, my slayer. Bury me here, on this very spot. A soldier lies best where he falls." " Here, in secret 1 " exclaimed Septimius. " Yes ; there is no consecration in your Puritan burial-grounds," said the dying youth, some of that queer narrowness of English Church ism coming into his mind. " So bury me here, in my soldier s dress. Ah ! and my watch ! I have done with time, and you, perhaps, have a long lease of it ; so take it, not as spoil, but as my parting gift. And that reminds me of one other thing. Open that pocket-book which you have in your hand." Septimius did so, and by the officer s direction took 36 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. from one of its compartments a folded paper, closely written in a crabbed hand ; it was considerably worn in the outer folds, but not within. There was also a small silver key in the pocket-book. " I leave it with you," said the officer ; " it was given me by an uncle, a learned man of science, who intended me great good by what he there wrote. Reap the profit, if you can. Sooth to say, I never read beyond the first lines of the paper." Septimius was surprised, or deeply impressed, to see that through this paper, as well as through the min iature, had gone his fatal bullet, straight through the midst ; and some of the young man s blood, saturating his dress, had wet the paper all over. He hardly thought himself likely to derive any good from what it had cost a human life, taken (however uncrim- inally) by his own hands, to obtain. " Is there anything more that I can do for you ] " asked he, with genuine sympathy and sorrow, as he knelt by his fallen foe s side. "Nothing, nothing, I believe," said he. "There was one thing I might have confessed ; if there were a holy man here, I might have confessed, and asked his prayers; for though I have lived few years, it has been long enough to do a great wrong. But I will try to pray in my secret soul. Turn my face towards the trunk of the tree, for I have taken my last look at the world. There, let me be now." Septimius did as the young man requested, and then stood leaning against one of the neighboring pines, watching his victim with a tender concern r,i?at SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 37 made him feel as if the convulsive throes that passed through his frame were felt equally in his own. There was a murmuring from the youth s lips which seemed to Septimius swift, soft, and melancholy, like the voice of a child when it has some naughtiness to confess to its mother at bedtime ; contrite, pleading, yet trusting. So it continued for a few minutes; then there was a sudden start and struggle, as if he were striving to rise ; his eyes met those of Septimius with a wild, troubled gaze, but as the latter caught him in his arms, he was dead. Septimius laid the body softly down on the leaf-strewn earth, and tried, as he had heard was the custom with the dead, to compose the features distorted by the dying agony. He then flung himself on the ground at a little dis tance, and gave himself up to the reflections suggested by the strange occurrences of the last hour. He had taken a human life; and, however the circumstances might excuse him, might make the thing even something praiseworthy, and that would be called patriotic, still, it was not at once that a fresh country youth could see anything but horror in the blood with which his hand was stained. It seemed so dreadful to have reduced this gay, animated, beau tiful being to a lump of dead flesh for the flies to settle upon, and which in a few hours would begin to decay ; which must be put forthwith into the earth, lest it should be a horror to men s eyes ; that de licious beauty for woman to love ; that strength and courage to make him famous among men, all come to nothing ; all probabilities of life in one so gifted ; 38 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. the renown, the position, the pleasures, the profits, the keen ecstatic joy, this never could be made up, all ended quite ; for the dark doubt descended upon Septimius, that, because of the very fitness that was in this youth to enjoy this world, so much the less chance was there of his being Jit for any other world. What could it do for him there, this beau tiful grace and elegance of feature, where there was no form, nothing tangible nor visible ] what good that readiness and aptness for associating with all created things, doing his part, acting, enjoying, when, under the changed conditions of another state of being, all this adaptedness would fail 1 ? Had he been gifted with permanence on earth, there could not have been a more admirable creature than this young man ; but as his fate had turned out, he was a mere grub, an illusion, something that nature had held out in mock ery, and then withdrawn. A weed might grow from his dust now ; that little spot on the barren hill-top, where he had desired to be buried, would be greener for some years to come, and that was all the differ ence. Septimius could not get beyond the earth iness ; his feeling was as if, by an act of violence, he had for ever cut off a happy human existence. And such was his own love of life and clinging to it, peculiar to dark, sombre natures, and which lighter and gayer ones can never know, that he shuddered at his deed, and at himself, and could with difficulty bear to be alone with the corpse of his victim, trembled at the thought of turning his face towards him. Yet he did so, because he could not endure the SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 39 imagination that the dead youth was turning his eyes towards him as he lay ; so he came and stood beside him, looking down into his white, upturned face. But it was wonderful ! What a change had come over it since, only a few moments ago, he looked at that death-contorted countenance ! Now there was a high and sweet expression upon it, of great joy and sur prise, and yet a quietude diffused throughout, as if the peace being so very great was what had surprised him. The expression was like a light gleaming and glowing within him. Septimius had often, at a cer tain space of time after sunset, looking westward, seen a living radiance in the sky, the last light of the dead day, that seemed just the counterpart of this death-light in the young man s face. It was as if the youth were just at the gate of heaven, which, swinging softly open, let the inconceivable glory of the blessed city shine upon his face, and kindle it up with gentle, undisturbing astonishment and purest joy. It was an expression contrived by God s providence to comfort ; to overcome all the dark auguries that the physical ugli ness of death inevitably creates, and to prove, by the divine glory on the face, that the ugliness is a delusion. It was as if the dead man himself showed his face out of the sky, with heaven s blessing on it, and bade the afflicted be of good cheer, and believe in immortality. Septimius remembered the young man s injunctions to bury him there, on the hill, without uncovering the body ; and though it seemed a sin and shame to cover up that beautiful body with earth of the grave, and give it to the worm, yet he resolved to obey. 40 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. Be it confessed that, beautiful as the dead form looked, and guiltless as Septimius must be held in causing his death, still he felt as if he should be eased when it was under the ground. He hastened down to the house, and brought up a shovel and a pickaxe, and began his unwonted task of grave-digging, delving earnestly a deep pit, sometimes pausing in his toil, while the sweat-drops poured from him, to look at the beautiful clay that was to occupy it. Sometimes he paused, too, to listen to the shots that pealed in the far distance, towards the east, whither the battle had long since rolled out of reach and almost out of hear ing. It seemed to have gathered about itself the whole life of the land, attending it along its bloody course in a struggling throng of shouting, shooting men, so still and solitary was everything left behind it. It seemed the very midland solitude of the world where Septimius was delving at the grave. He and his dead were alone together, and he was going to put the body under the sod, and be quite alone. The grave was now deep, and Septimius was stoop ing down into its depths among dirt and pebbles, levelling off the bottom, which he considered to be profound enough to hide the young man s mystery forever, when a voice spoke above him; a solemn, quiet voice, which he knew well. " Septimius ! what are you doing here 1 " He looked up and saw the minister. " I have slain a man in fair fight," answered he, " and am about to bury him as he requested. I am glad you are come. You, reverend sir, can fitly say a SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 41 prayer at his obsequies. I am glad for my own sake ; for it is very lonely and terrible to be here." He climbed out of the grave, and, in reply to the minister s inquiries, communicated to him the events of the morning, and the youth s strange wish to be buried here, without having his remains subjected to the hands of those who would prepare it for the grave. The minister hesitated. " At an ordinary time," said he, " such a singular request would of course have to be refused. Your own safety, the good and wise rules that make it necessary that all things relating to death and burial should be done publicly and in order, would forbid it." " Yes," replied Septimius ; " but, it may be, scores of men will fall to-day, and be flung into hasty graves without funeral rites ; without its ever being known, perhaps, what mother has lost her son. I cannot but think that I ought to perform the dying request of the youth whom I have slain. He trusted in me not to uncover his body myself, nor to betray it to the hands of others." " A singular request," said the good minister, gazing with deep interest at the "beautiful dead face, and .graceful, slender, manly figure. "What could have been its motive ? But no matter. I think, Septimius, that you are bound to obey his request; indeed, having promised him, nothing short of an impossi bility should prevent your keeping your faith. Let us lose no time, then." With few but deeply solemn rites the young stran ger was laid by the minister and the youth who slew 42 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. him in his grave. A prayer was made, and then Septimius, gathering some branches and twigs, spread them over the face that was turned upward from the bottom of the pit, into which the sun gleamed down ward, throwing its rays so as almost to touch it. The twigs partially hid it, but still its white shone through. Then the minister threw a handful of earth upon it, and, accustomed as he was to burials, tears fell from his eyes along with the mould. "It is sad," said he, this poor young man, com ing from opulence, no doubt, a dear English home, to die here for no end, one of the first-fruits of a bloody war, so much privately sacrificed. But let him rest, Septimius. I am sorry that he fell by your hand, though it involves no shadow of a crime. But death is a thing too serious not to melt into the nature of a man like you." " It does not weigh upon my conscience, I think," said Septimius; "though I cannot but feel sorrow, and wish my hand were as clean as yesterday. It is, indeed, a dreadful thing to take human life." " It is a most serious thing," replied the minister ; " but perhaps we are apt to over-estimate the im portance of death at any particular moment. If the question were whether to die or to live forever, then, indeed, scarcely anything should justify the putting a fellow-creature to death. But since it only shortens his earthly life, and brings a little forward a change which, since God permits it, is, we may conclude, as fit to take place then as at any other time, it alters the case. I often think that there are many things SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 43 that occur to us in our daily life, many unknown crises, that are more important to us than this mys terious circumstance of death, which we deem the most important of all. All we understand of it is, that it takes the dead person away from our knowl edge of him, which, while we live with him, is so very scanty." " You estimate at nothing, it seems, his earthly life, which might have been so happy." " At next to nothing," said the minister ; " since, as I have observed, it must, at any rate, have closed so soon." Septimius thought of what the young man, in his last moments, had said of his prospect or opportunity of living a life of interminable length, and which pros pect he had bequeathed to himself. But of this he did not speak to the minister, being, indeed, ashamed to have it supposed that he would put any serious weight on such a bequest, although it might be that the dark enterprise of his nature had secretly seized upon this idea, and, though yet sane enough to be influenced by a fear of ridicule, was busy incorporating it with his thoughts. So Septimius smoothed down the young stranger s earthy bed, and returned to his home, where he hung up the sword over the mantel-piece in his study, and hung the gold watch, too, on a nail, the first time he had ever had possession of such a thing. Nor did he now feel altogether at ease in his mind about keep ing it, the time-measurer of one whose mortal life he had cut off. A splendid watch it was, round as a 44 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. turnip. There seems to be a natural right in one who has slain a man to step into his vacant place in all respects ; and from the beginning of man s dealings with man this right has been practically recognized, whether among warriors or robbers, as paramount to every other. Yet Septimius could not feel easy in availing himself of this right. He therefore resolved to keep the watch, and even the sword and fusil, which were less questionable spoils of war, only till he should be able to restore them to some repre sentative of the young officer. The contents of the purse, in accordance with the request of the dying youth, he would expend in relieving the necessities of those whom the war (now broken out, and of which no one could see the limit) might put in need of it. The miniature, with its broken and shattered face, that had so vainly interposed itself between its wearer and death, had been sent to its address. But as to the mysterious document, the written paper, that he had laid aside without unfolding it, hut with a care that betokened more interest in it than in either gold or weapon, or even in the golden representative of that earthly time on which he set so high a value. There was something tremulous in his touch of it ; it seemed as if he were afraid of it by the mode in which he hid it away, and secured himself from it, as it were. This done, the air of the room, the low-ceilinged eastern room where he studied and thought, became too close for him, and he hastened out ; for he was full of the unshaped sense of all that had befallen, SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 45 and the perception of the great public event of a broken-out war was intermixed with that of what he had done personally in the great struggle that was beginning. He longed, too, to know what was the news of the battle that had gone rolling onward along the hitherto peaceful country road, converting every where (this demon of war, we mean), with one blast of its red sulphurous breath, the peaceful husband man to a soldier thirsting for blood. He turned his steps, therefore, towards the village, thinking it proba ble that news must have arrived either of defeat or victory, from messengers or fliers, to cheer or sadden the old men, the women, and the children, who alone perhaps remained there. But Septimius did not get to the village. As he passed along by the cottage that has been already described, Rose Garfield was standing at the door, peering anxiously forth to know what was the issue of the conflict, as it has been woman s fate to do from the beginning of the world, and is so still. Seeing Septimius, she forgot the restraint that she had hitherto kept herself under, and, flying at him like a bird, she cried out, " Septimius, dear Septimius, where have you been 1 What news do you bring ] You look as if you had seen some strange and dread ful thing." " Ah, is it so 1 Does my face tell such stories 1 " exclaimed the young man. " I did not mean it should. Yes, Rose, I have seen and done such things as change a man in a moment." " Then you have been in this terrible fight," said Rose. 46 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. "Yes, Rose, I have had my part in it," answered Septimius. He was on the point of relieving his overburdened mind by telling her what had happened no farther off than on the hill above them; but, seeing her excitement, and recollecting her own momentary in terview with the young officer, and the forced intimacy and link that had been established between them by the kiss, he feared to agitate her further by telling her that that gay and beautiful young man had since been slain, and deposited in a bloody grave by his hands. And yet the recollection of that kiss caused a thrill of vengeful joy at the thought that the perpe trator had since expiated his offence with his life, and that it was himself that did it, so deeply was Sep- timius s Indian nature of revenge and blood incorpo rated with that of more peaceful forefathers, although Septimius had grace enough to chide down that bloody spirit, feeling that it made him, not a patriot, but a murderer. "Ah," said Rose, shuddering, "it is awful when we must kill one another ! And who knows where it will end?" " With me it will end here, Rose," said Septimius. " It may be lawful for any man, even if he have devoted himself to God, or however peaceful his pur suits, to fight to the death when the enemy s step is on the soil of his home ; but only for that perilous juncture, which passed, he should return to his own way of peace. I have done a terrible thing for once, dear Rose, one that might well trace a dark line SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 4T through all my future life ; but henceforth I cannot think it my duty to pursue any further a work for which my studies and my nature unfit me." "0 no! no ! " said Rose; "never! and you a minister, or soon to be one. There must be some peacemakers left in the world, or everything will turn to blood and confusion ; for even women grow dread fully fierce in these times. My old grandmother laments her bedriddenness, because, she says, she cannot go to cheer on the people against the enemy. But she remembers the old times of the Indian wars, when the women were as much in danger of death as the men, and so were almost as fierce as they, and killed men sometimes with their own hands. But women, nowadays, ought to be gentler; let the men be fierce, if they must, except you, and such as you, Septimius." "Ah, dear Rose," said Septimius, "I have not the kind and sweet impulses that you speak of. I need something to soften and warm my cold, hard life ; something to make me feel how dreadful this time of warfare is. I need you, dear Rose, who are all kind ness of heart and mercy." And here Septimius, hurried away by I know not what excitement of the time, the disturbed state of the country, his own ebullition of passion, the deed he had done, the desire to press one human being close to his life, because he had shed the blood of another, his half-formed purposes, his shapeless impulses; in short, being affected by the whole stir of his nature, *poke to Rose of love, and with an energy that, 48 SEPTIMIUS FfcLTON. indeed, there was no resisting when once it broke bounds. And Rose, whose maiden thoughts, to say the truth, had long dwelt upon this young man, admiring him for a certain dark beauty, knowing him familiarly from childhood, and yet having the sense, that is so bewitching, of remoteness, intermixed with intimacy, because he was so unlike herself; having a woman s respect for scholarship, her imagination the more impressed by all in him that she could not com prehend, Rose yielded to his impetuous suit, and gave him the troth that he requested. And yet it was with a sort of reluctance and drawing back ; her whole nature, her secretest heart, her deepest woman hood, perhaps, did not consent. There was something in Septimius, in his wild, mixed nature, the nion- strousness that had grown out of his hybrid race, the black infusions, too, which melancholic men had left there, the devilishness that had been symbolized in the popular regard about his family, that made her shiver, even while she came the closer to him for that very dread. And when he gave her the kiss of betrothment her lips grew white. If it had not been in the day of turmoil, if he had asked her in any quiet time, when Rose s heart was in its natural mood, it may well be that, with tears and pity for him, and half-pity for herself, Rose would have told Septimius that she did not think she could love him well enough to be his wife. And how was it with Septimius 1 Well ; there was a singular correspondence in his feelings to those of Rose Garfield. At first, carried away by a passion SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 49 that seized him all unawares, and seemed to develop itself all in a moment, he felt, and so spoke to Rose, so pleaded his suit, as if his whole earthly happiness depended on her consent to be his brida. It seemed to him that her love would be the sunshine in the gloomy dungeon of his life. But when her bashful, downcast, tremulous consent was given, then imme diately came a strange misgiving into his mind. He felt as if he had taken to himself something good and beautiful doubtless in itself, but which might be the exchange for one more suited to him, that he must now give up. The intellect, which was the prominent point in Septimius, stirred and heaved, crying out vaguely that its own claims, perhaps, were ignored in this contract. Septimius had perhaps no right to love at all; if he did, it should have been a woman of another make, who could be his intellectual compan ion and helper. And then, perchance, perchance, there was destined for him some high, lonely path, in which, to make any progress, to come to any end, he must walk unburdened by the affections. Such thoughts as these depressed and chilled (as many men have found them, or similar ones, to do) the moment of success that should have been the most exulting in the world. And so, in the kiss which these two lovers had exchanged there was, after all, something that repelled ; and when they parted they wondered at their strange states of mind, but would not ac knowledge that they had done a thing that ought not to have been done. Nothing is surer, however, than that, if we suffer ourselves to be drawn into too close 3 D 50 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. proximity with people, if we over-estimate the degree of our proper tendency towards them, or theirs to wards us, a reaction is sure to follow. Septimius quitted Rose, and resumed his walk towards the village. But now it was near sunset, and there began to be straggling passengers along the road, some of whom came slowly, as if they had received hurts; all seemed wearied. Among them one form appeared which Rose soon found that she recognized. It was Robert Hagburn, with a shattered firelock in his hand, broken at the but, and his left arm bound with a fragment of hia shirt, and sus pended in a handkerchief; and he walked weariedly, but brightened up at sight of Rose, as if ashamed to let her see how exhausted and dispirited he was. Perhaps he expected a smile, at least a more earnest reception than he met; for Rose, with the restraint of what had recently passed drawing her back, merely went gravely a few steps to meet him, and said, " Rob ert, how tired and pale you look ! Are you hurt 1 " " It is of no consequence," replied Robert Hagburn ; "a scratch on my left arm from an officer s sword, with whose head my gunstock made instant acquaint ance. It is no matter, Rose ; you do not care for it, nor do I either." " How can you say so, Robert 1 " she replied. But without more greeting he passed her, and went into his own house, where, flinging himself into a chair, he remained in that despondency that men generally feel after a fight, even if a successful one. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 51 Septimius, the next day, lost no time in writing a letter to the direction given him by the young officer, conveying a brief account of the latter s death and burial, and a signification that he held in readiness to give up certain articles of property, at any future time, to his representatives, mentioning also the amount of money contained in the purse, and his intention, in compliance with the verbal will of the deceased, to expend it in alleviating the wants of prisoners. Having so done, he went up on the hill to look at the grave, and satisfy himself that the scene there had not been a dream ; a point which he was inclined to question, in spite of the tangible evi dence of the sword and watch, which still hung ovei the mantel-piece. There was the little mound, how ever, looking so incontrovertibly a grave, that it seemed to him as if all the world must see it, and wonder at the fact of its being there, and spend their wits in conjecturing who slept within ; and, indeed, it seemed to give the affair a questionable character, this secret burial, and he woncfered and wondered why the young man had been so earnest about it. Well ; there was the grave ; and, moreover, on the leafy earth, where the dying youth had lain, there were traces of blood, which no rain had yet washed away. Septimius wondered at the easiness with which the acquiesced in this deed ; in fact, he felt in a slight degree the effects of that taste of blood, which makes the slaying of men, like any other abuse, sometimes become a passion. Perhaps it was his Indian trait stirring in him again ; at any rate, it is not delightful 52 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. to observe how readily man becomes a blood-shedding animal. Looking down from the hill-top, he saw the little dwelling of Rose Garfield, and caught a glimpse of the girl herself, passing the windows or the door, about her household duties, and listened to hear the singing which usually broke out of her. But Rose, for some reason or other, did not warble as usual this morn ing. She trod about silently, and somehow or other she was translated out of the ideality in which Sep- timius usually enveloped her, and looked little more than a New England girl, very pretty indeed, but not enough so perhaps to engross a man s life and higher purposes into her own narrow circle ; so, at least, Septimius thought. Looking a little farther, down into the green recess where stood Robert Hagburn s house, he saw that young man, looking very pale, with his arm in a sling, sitting listlessly on a half- chopped log of wood, which was not likely soon to be severed by Robert s axe. Like other lovers, Septimius had not failed to be aware that Robert Hagburn was sensible to Rose Garfield s attractions ; and now, as he looked down on them both from his elevated posi tion, he wondered if it would not have been better for Rose s happiness if her thoughts and virgin fancies had settled on that frank, cheerful, able, wholesome young man, instead of on himself, who met her on so few points ; and, in relation to whom, there was perhaps a plant that had its root in the grave, that would entwine itself around his whole life, overshadowing it with dark, rich foliage and fruit that he alone could feast upon. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 53 For the sombre imagination of Septimius, though he kept it as much as possible away from the subject, still kept hinting and whispering, still coming back to the point, still secretly suggesting that the event of yesterday was to have momentous consequences upon his fate. He had not yet looked at the paper which the young man bequeathed to him ; he had laid it away unopened ; not that he felt little interest in it, but, on the contrary, because he looked for some blaze of light which had been reserved for him alone. The young officer had been only the bearer of it to him, and he had come hither to die by his hand, because that was the readiest way by which he could deliver his message. How else, in the infinite chances of human affairs, could the document have found its way to its destined possessor? Thus mused Septimius, pacing to and fro on the level edge of his hill-top, apart from the world, looking down occasionally into it, and seeing its love and interest away from him ; while Rose, it might be looking iipward, saw occasion ally his passing figure, and trembled at the nearness and remoteness that existed between them ; and Rob ert Hagburn looked too, and wondered what manner of man it was who, having won Rose Garfield (for his instinct told him this was so), could keep that dis tance between her and him, thinking remote thoughts. Yes; there was Septimius, treading a path of his own on the hill-top ; his feet began only that morning to wear it in his walking to and fro, sheltered from the lower world, except in occasional glimpses, by the 54 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. birches and locusts that threw up their foliage from the hillside. But many a year thereafter he continued to tread that path, till it was worn deep with his foot steps and trodden down hard; and it was believed by some of his superstitious neighbors that the grass and little shrubs shrank away from his path, and made it wider on that account ; because there was something in the broodings that urged him to and fro along the path alien to nature and its productions. There was another opinion, too, that an invisible fiend, one of his relatives by blood, walked side by side with him, and so made the pathway wider than his single footsteps could have made it. But all this was idle, and was, indeed, only the foolish babble that hovers like a mist about men who withdraw themselves from the throng, and involve themselves in unintelligible pursuits and interests of their own. For the present, the small world, which alone knew of him, considered Septimius as a studious young man, who was fitting for the ministry, and was likely enough to do credit to the ministerial blood that he drew from his ancestors, in spite of the wild stream that the Indian priest had contributed ; and perhaps none the worse, as a clergy man, for having an instinctive sense of the nature of the Devil from his traditionary claims to partake of his blood. But what strange interest there is in tracing out the first steps by which we enter on a career that influences our life ; and this deep-worn pathway on the hill-top, passing and repassing by a grave, seemed to symbolize it in Septimius s case. I suppose the morbidness of Septimius s disposition SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 55 was excited by the circumstances which had put the paper into his possession. Had he received it by post, it might not have impressed him ; he might possibly have looked over it with ridicule, and tossed it aside. But he had taken it from a dying man, and he felt that his fate was in it ; and truly it turned out to be so. He waited for a fit opportunity to open it and read it ; he put it off as if he cared noth ing about it; but perhaps it was because he cared so much. Whenever he had a happy time with Rose (and, moody as Septimius was, such happy moments came), he felt that then was not the time to look into the paper, it was not to be read in a happy mood. Once he asked Rose to walk with him on the hill top. " Why, what a path you have worn here, Sep timius ! " said the girl. " You walk miles and miles on this one spot, and get no farther on than when you started. That is strange walking ! " "I don t know, Rose; I sometimes think I get a little onward. But it is sweeter yes, much sweeter, I find to have you walking on this path here than to be treading it alone." " I am glad of that," said Rose ; "for sometimes, when I look up here, and see you through the branches, with your head bent down and your hands clasped behind you, treading, treading, treading, al ways in one way, I wonder whether I am at all in your mind. I don t think, Septimius," added she, looking up in his face and smiling, " that ever a girl had just such a young man for a lover." 56 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. " No young man ever had such a girl, I am sure," said Septimius ; " so sweet, so good for him, so prolific of good influences ! " "Ah, it makes me think well of myself to bring such a smile into your face ! But, Septimius, what is this little hillock here so close to our path ? Have you heaped it up here for a seat 1 Shall we sit down upon it for an instant 1 for it makes me more tired to walk backward and forward on one path than to go straight forward a much longer distance." " Well ; but we will not sit down on this hillock," said Septimius, drawing her away from it. " Farther out this way, if you please, Rose, where we shall have a better view over the wide plain, the valley, and the long, tame ridge of hills on the other side, shutting it in like human life. It is a landscape that never tires, though it has nothing striking about it ; and I am glad that there are no great hills to be thrusting themselves into my thoughts, and crowding out bet ter things. It might be desirable, in some states of mind, to have a glimpse of water, to have the lake that once must have covered this green valley, because water reflects the sky, and so is like religion in life, the spiritual element." " There is the brook running through it, though we do not see it," replied Rose ; " a torpid little brook, to be sure ; but, as you say, it has heaven in its bosom, like Walden Pond, or any wider one." As they sat together on the hill-top, they could look down into Robert Hagburn s enclosure, and they saw him, with his arm now relieved from the sling, SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 57 walking about, in a very erect manner, with a middle- aged man by his side, to whom he seemed to be talking and explaining some matter. Even at that distance Septimius could see that the rustic stoop and uncouthness had somehow fallen away from Robert, and that he seemed developed. " What has come to Robert Hagburn 1 " said he. " He looks like another man than the lout I knew a few weeks ago." " Nothing," said Rose Garfield, " except what comes to a good many young men nowadays. He has en listed, and is going to the war. It is a pity for his mother." "A great pity," said Septimius. "Mothers are greatly to be pitied all over the country just now, and there are some even more to be pitied than the mothers, though many of them do not know or suspect anything about their cause of grief at pres ent." k " Of whom do you speak ] " asked Rose. " I mean those many good and sweet young girls," said Septimius, " who would have been happy wives to the thousands of young men who now, like Robert Hagburn, are going to the war. Those young men many of them, at least will sicken and die in camp, or be shot down, or struck through with bayonets on battle-fields, and turn to dust and bones ; while the girls that would have loved them, and made happy f.resides for them, will pine and wither, and tread along many sour and discontented years, and at last go out of life without knowing what life is. So you see, 3* 58 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. Rose, every shot that takes effect kills two at least, or kills one and worse than kills the other." " No woman will live single on account of poor Robert Hagburn being shot," said Rose, with a change of tone ; " for he would never be married were he to stay at home and plough the field." " How can you tell that, Rose 1 " asked Septimius. Rose did not tell how she came to know so much about Robert Hagburn s matrimonial purposes; but after this little talk it appeared as if something had risen up between them, a sort of mist, a medium, in which their intimacy was not increased ; for the flow and interchange of sentiment was balked, and they took only one or two turns in silence along Septimius s trodden path. I don t know exactly what it was ; but there are cases in which it is inscrutably revealed to persons that they have made a mistake in what is of the highest concern to them; and this truth often comes in the shape of a vague depression of the spirit, like a vapor settling down on a land scape ; a misgiving, coming and going perhaps, a lack of perfect certainty. Whatever it was, Rose and Septimius had no more tender and playful words that day; and Rose soon went to look after her grandmother, and Septimius went and shut himself up in his study, after making an arrangement to meet Rose the next day. Septimius shut himself up, and drew forth the document which the young officer, with that singular smile on his dying face, had bequeathed to him as SEPTLMIUS FELTON. 59 the reward of his death. It was in a covering of folded parchment, right through which, as aforesaid, was a bullet-hole and some stains of blood. Sep- timius unrolled the parchment cover, and found in side a manuscript, closely written in a crabbed hand ; so crabbed, indeed, that Septimius could not at first read a word of it, nor even satisfy himself in what language it was written. There seemed to be Latin words, and some interspersed ones in Greek char acters, and here and there he could doubtfully read an English sentence ; but, on the whole, it was an unintelligible mass, conveying somehow an idea that it was the fruit of vast labor and erudition, emanating from a mind very full of books, and grinding and pressing down the great accumulation of grapes that it had gathered from so many vineyards, and squeez ing out rich viscid juices, potent wine, with which the reader might get drunk. Some of it, moreover, seemed, for the further mystification of the officer, to be written in cipher ; a needless pre caution, it might seem, when the writer s natural chirography was so full of puzzle and bewilderment. Septimius looked at this strange manuscript, and it shook in his hands as he held it before his eyes, so great was his excitement. Probably, doubtless, it was in a great measure owing to the way in which it came to him, with such circumstances of tragedy and mystery ; as if so secret and so important was it it could not be within the knowledge of two per sons at once, and therefore it was necessary that one should die in the act of transmitting it to the hand of 60 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. another, the destined possessor, inheritor, profiter by it. By the bloody hand, as all the great possessions in this world have been gained and inherited, he had succeeded to the legacy, the richest that mortal man ever could receive. He pored over the inscrutable sentences, and wondered, when he should succeed in reading one, if it might summon up a subject-fiend, appearing with thunder and devilish demonstrations. And by what other strange chance had the document come into the hand of him who alone was fit to receive it ? It seemed to Septimius, in his enthusias tic egotism, as if the whole chain of events had been arranged purposely for this end; a difference had come between two kindred peoples ; a war had broken out ; a young officer, with the traditions of an old family represented in his line, had marched, and had met with a peaceful student, who had been incited from high and noble motives to take his life; then came a strange, brief intimacy, in which his victim made the slayer his heir. All these chances, as they seemed, all these interferences of Providence, as they doubtless were, had been necessary in order to put this manuscript into the hands of Septimius, who now pored over it, and could not with certainty read one word ! But this did not trouble him, except for the mo mentary delay. Because he felt well assured that the strong, concentrated study that he would bring to it would remove all difficulties, as the rays of a lens melt stones ; as the telescope pierces through densest light of stars, and resolves them into their individual SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 61 brilliancies. He could afford to spend years upon it, if it were necessary ; but earnestness and application should do quickly the work of years. Amid these musings he was interrupted by his Aunt Kezlah ; though generally observant enough of her nephew s studies, and feeling a sanctity in them, both because of his intending to be a minister and because she had a great reverence for learning, even if heathenish, this good old lady summoned Septimius somewhat peremptorily to chop wood for her domestic purposes. How strange it is, the way in which we are summoned from all high purposes by these little homely necessities; all symbolizing the great fact that the earthly part of us, with its demands, takes up the greater portion of all our available force. So Septimius, grumbling and groaning, went to the wood shed and exercised himself for an hour as the old lady requested and it was only by instinct that he worked, hardly conscious what he was doing. The whole of passing life seemed impertinent ; or if, for an instant, it seemed otherwise, then his lonely speculations and plans seemed to become impalpable, and to have only the consistency of vapor, which his utmost concentra tion succeeded no further than to make into the like ness of absurd faces, mopping, mowing, and laughing at him. But that sentence of mystic meaning shone out before him like a transparency, illuminated in the darkness of his mind ; he determined to take it for his motto until he should be victorious in his quest. When he took his candle, to retire apparently to bed, 62 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. he again drew forth the manuscript, and, sitting down by the dim light, tried vainly to read it ; but he could not as yet settle himself to concentrated and regular effort ; he kept turning the leaves of the manuscript, in the hope that some other illuminated sentence might gleam out upon him, as the first had done, and shed a light on the context around it ; and that then another would be discovered, with similar effect, until the whole document would thus be illuminated with separate stars of light, converging and concentring in one radiance that should make the whole visible. But such was his bad fortune, not another word of the manuscript was he able to read that whole evening ; and, moreover, while Ke had still an inch of candle left, Aunt Keziah, in her nightcap, as witch-like a figure as ever went to a wizard meeting in the forest with Septimius s ancestor, appeared at the door of the room, aroused from her bed, and shaking her finger at him. "Septimius," said she, "you keep me awake, and you will ruin your eyes, and turn your head, if you study till midnight in this manner. You 11 never live to be a minister, if this is the way you go on." "Well, well, Aunt Keziah," said Septimius, cover ing his manuscript with a book, "I am just going to bed now." "Good night, then," said the old woman; "and God bless your labors." Strangely enough, a glance at the manuscript, as he hid it from the old woman, had seemed to Septimius to reveal another sentence, of which he had imperfectly SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 63 caught the purport ; and when she had gone, he in vain sought the place, and vainly, too, endeavored to recall the meaning of what he had read. Doubtless his fancy exaggerated the importance of the sentence, and he felt as if it might have vanished from the book forever. In fact, the unfortunate young man, excited and tossed to and fro by a variety of unusual impulses, was got into a bad way, and was likely enough to go mad, unless the balancing portion of his mind proved to be of greater volume and effect than as yet appeared to be the case. The next morning he was up, bright and early, poring over the manuscript with the sharpened wits of the new day, peering into its night, into its old, blurred, forgotten dream; and, indeed, he had been dreaming about it, and was fully possessed with the idea that, in his dream, he had taken up the inscruta ble document, and read it off as glibly as he would the page of a modern drama, in a continual rapture with the deep truth that it made clear to his compre hension, and the lucid way in which it evolved the mode in which man might be restored to his originally undying state. So strong was the impression, that when he unfolded the manuscript, it was with almost the belief that the crabbed old handwriting would be plain to him. Such did riot prove to be the case, however ; so far from it, that poor Septimius in vain turned over the yellow pages in quest of the one sen tence which he had been able, or fancied he had been able, to read yesterday. The illumination that had 64 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. brought it out was now faded, and all was a blur, an inscrutableness, a scrawl of unintelligible characters alike. So much did this affect him, that he had almost a mind to tear it into a thousand fragments, and scatter it out of the window to the west-wind, that was then blowing past the house ; and if, in that summer season, there had been a fire on the hearth, it is possible that easy realization of a destructive im pulse might have incited him to fling the accursed scrawl into the hottest of the flames, and thus re turned it to the Devil, who, he suspected, was the original author of it. Had he done so, what strange and gloomy passages would I have been spared the pain of relating ! How different would have been the life of Septimius, a thoughtful preacher of God s word, taking severe but conscientious views of man s state and relations, a heavy-browed walker and worker on earth, and, finally, a slumberer in an honored grave, with an epitaph bearing testimony to his great usefulness in his generation. But, in the mean time, here was the troublesome day passing over him, and pestering, bewildering, and tripping him up with its mere sublunary troubles, as the days will all of us the moment we try to do any thing that we flatter ourselves is of a little more importance than others are doing. Aunt Keziah tor mented him a great while about the rich field, just across the road, in front of the house, which Septim ius had neglected the cultivation of, unwilling to spare the time to plough, to plant, to hoe it himself, but hired a lazy lout of the village, when he might just SEPTIMIUS FELTON, 65 as well have employed and paid wages to the scarecrow which Aunt Keziah dressed out in ancient habiliments, and set up in the midst of the corn. Then came an old codger from the village, talking to Septimius about the war, a theme of which he was weary : telling the rumor of skirmishes that the next day would prove to be false, of battles that were imme diately to take place, of encounters with the enemy in which our side showed the valor of twenty-fold heroes, but had to retreat; babbling about shells and mor tars, battalions, manosuvres, angles, fascines, and other items of military art ; for war had filled the whole brain of the people, and enveloped the whole thought of man in a mist of gunpowder. In this way, sitting on his doorstep, or in the very study, haunted by such speculations, this wretched old man would waste the better part of a summer afternoon, while Septimius listened, returning ab stracted monosyllables, answering amiss, and wishing his persecutor jammed into one of the cannons he talked about, and fired off, to end his interminable babble in one roar ; [talking] of great officers coming from France and other countries; of overwhelming forces from England, to put an end to the war at once ; of the unlikelihood that it ever should be ended ; of its hopelessness ; of its certainty of a good and speedy end. Then came limping along the lane a disabled sol dier, begging his way home from the field, which, a little while ago, he had sought in the full vigor of rustic health he was never to know again ; with whom 66 SEPT1MIUS FELTON. Septimius had to talk, and relieve his wants as far as he could (though not from the poor young officer s deposit of English gold), and send him on his way. Then came the minister, to talk with his former pupil, about whom he had latterly had much medita tion, not understanding what mood had taken posses sion of him; for the minister was a man of insight, and from conversations with Septimius, as searching as he knew how to make them, he had begun to doubt whether he were sufficiently sound in faith to adopt the clerical persuasion. Not that he supposed him to be anything like a confirmed unbeliever; but he thought it probable that these doubts, these strange, dark, disheartening suggestions of the Devil, that so surely infect certain temperaments and meas ures of intellect, were tormenting poor Septimius, and pulling him back from the path in which he was capable of doing so much good. So he came this afternoon to talk seriously with him, and to advise him, if the case were as he supposed, to get for a time out of the track of the thought in which he had so long been engaged ; to enter into active life ; and by and by, when the morbid influences should have been overcome by a change of mental and moral religion, he might return, fresh and healthy, to his original design. " What can I do, " asked Septimius, gloomily, "what business take up, when the whole land lies waste and idle, except for this war?" " There is the very business, then," said the minis ter. " Do you think God s work is not to be done in SEPTLMIUS FELTON. 67 the field as well as in the pulpit 1 ? You are strong, Septimius, of a bold character, and have a mien and bearing that gives you a natural command among men. Go to the wars, and do a valiant part for your country, and come back to your peaceful mission when the enemy has vanished. Or you might go as chaplain to a regiment, and use either hand in battle, pray for success before a battle, help win it with sword or gun, and give thanks to God, kneeling on the bloody field, at its close. You have already stretched one foe on your native soil." Septimius could not but smile within himself at this warlike and bloody counsel j and, joining it with some similar exhortations from Aunt Keziah, he was inclined to think that women and clergymen are, in matters of war, the most uncompromising and blood thirsty of the community. However, he replied, coolly, that his moral impulses and his feelings of duty did not exactly impel him in this direction, and that he was of opinion that war was a business in which a man could not engage with safety to his conscience, unless his conscience actually drove him into it ; and that this made all the difference between heroic battle and murderous strife. The good minister had nothing very effectual to answer to this, and took his leave, with a still stronger opinion than before that there was something amiss in his pupil s mind. By this time, this thwarting day had gone On through its course of little and great impediments to his pursuit, the discouragements of trifling and earthly business, of purely impertinent interruption, 68 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. of severe and disheartening opposition from the pow erful counteraction of different kinds of mind, until the hour had come at which he had arranged to meet Rose Garfield. I am afraid the poor thwarted youth did not go to his love-tryst in any very amiable mood ; but rather, perhaps, reflecting how all things earthly and immortal, and love among the rest, whichever category, of earth or heaven, it may belong to, set themselves against man s progress in any pursuit that he seeks to devote himself to. It is one struggle, the moment he undertakes such a thing, of everything else in the world to impede him. However, as it turned out, it was a pleasant and happy interview that he had with Rose that after noon. The girl herself was in a happy, tuneful mood, and met him with such simplicity, threw such a light of sweetness over his soul, that Septimius almost forgot all the wild cares of the day, and walked by her side with a quiet fulness of pleasure that was new to him. She reconciled him, in some secret way, to life as it was, to imperfection, to decay ; without any help from her intellect, but through the influence of her character, she seemed, not to solve, but to smooth away, problems that troubled him ; merely by being, by womanhood, by simplicity, she interpreted God s ways to him ; she softened the stoniness that was gathering about his heart. And so they had a delight ful time of talking, and laughing, and smelling to flowers ; and when they were parting, Septimius said to her, " Rose, you have convinced me that this is a most SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 69 happy world, and that Life has its two children, Birth and Death, and is bound to prize them equally ; and that God is very kind to his earthly children ; and that all will go well." "And have I convinced you of all this?" replied Rose, with a pretty laughter. " It is all true, no doubt, but I should not have known how to argue for it. But you are very sweet, and have not frightened me to-day." "Do I ever frighten you then, Rose 1 ?" asked Sep- timius, bending his black brow upon her with a look of surprise and displeasure. " Yes, sometimes," said Rose, facing him with cour age, and smiling upon the cloud so as to drive it away; "when you frown upon me like that, I am a little afraid you will beat me, all in good time." "Now," said Septimius, laughing again, "you shall have your choice, to be beaten on the spot, or suffer another kind of punishment, which 1 " So saying, he snatched her to him, and strove to kiss her, while Rose, laughing and struggling, cried out, "The beating! the beating!" But Septimius relented not, though it was only Rose s cheek that he succeeded in touching. In truth, except for that first one, at the moment of their plighted troths, I doubt whether Septimius ever touched those soft, sweet lips, where the smiles dwelt and the little pouts. He now returned to his study, and questioned with himself whether he should touch that weary, ugly, yellow, blurred, unintelligible, bewitched, mysterious, bullet- penetrated, blood-stained manuscript again. There 70 SEPTiMIUS FELTON. was an undefinable reluctance to do so, and at the same time an enticement (irresistible, as it proved) drawing him towards it. He yielded, and taking it from his desk, in which the precious, fatal treas ure was locked up, he plunged into it again, and this time with a certain degree of success. He found the line which had before gleamed out, and vanished again, and which now started out in strong relief; even as when sometimes we see a certain arrangement of stars in the heavens, and again lose it, by not seeing its individual stars in the same relation as before ; even so, looking at the manuscript in a different way, Septimius saw this fragment of a sen tence, and saw, moreover, what was necessary to give it a certain meaning. " Set the root in a grave, and wait for what shall blossom. It will be very rich, and full of juice." This was the purport, he now felt sure, of the sentence he had lighted upon ; and he took it to refer to the mode of producing something that was essential to the thing to be concocted. It might have only a moral being ; or, as is generally the case, the moral and physical truth went hand in hand. While Septimius was busying himself in this way, the summer advanced, and with it there appeared a new character, making her way into our pages. This was a slender and pale girl, whom Septimius was once startled to find, when he ascended his hill-top, to take his walk to and fro upon the accustomed path, which he had now worn deep. What was stranger, she sat down close beside the grave, which none but he and the minister knew to be SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 71 a grave; that little hillock, which he had levelled a little, and had planted with various flowers and shrubs ; which the summer had fostered into richness, the poor young man below having contributed what he could, and tried to render them as beautiful as he might, in remembrance of his own beauty. Septimius wished to conceal the fact of its being a grave : not that he was tormented with any sense that he had done wrong in shooting the young man, which had been done in fair battle ; but still it was not the pleasantest of thoughts, that he had laid a beautiful human creature, so fit for the enjoyment of life, there, when his own dark brow, his own troubled breast, might better, he could not but acknowledge, have been covered up there. [Perhaps there might some times be something fantastically gay in the language and behavior of the girl.~\ Well ; but then, on this flower and shrub disguised grave, sat this unknown form of a girl, with a slender, pallid, melancholy grace about her, simply dressed in a dark attire, which she drew loosely about her. At first glimpse, Septimius fancied that it might be Rose ; but it needed only a glance to undeceive him; her figure was of another character from the vigorous, though slight and elastic beauty of Rose ; this was a drooping grace, and when he came near enough to see her face, he saw that those large, dark, melancholy eyes, with which she had looked at him, had never met his gaze before. " Good morrow, fair maiden," said Septimius, with such courtesy as he knew how to use (which, to say 72 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. truth, was of a rustic order, his way of life having brought him little into female society). " There is a nice air here on the hill-top, this sultry morning below the hill ! " As he spoke, he continued to look wonderingly at the strange maiden, half fancying that she might be some thing that had grown up out of the grave ; so unex pected she was, so simply unlike anything that had before come there. The girl did not speak to him, but as she sat by the grave she kept weeding out the little white blades of faded autumn grass and yellow pine-spikes, peering into the soil as if to see what it was all made of, and everything that was growing there; and in truth, whether by Septimius s care or no, there seemed to be several kinds of flowers, those little asters that abound everywhere, and golden flowers, such as au tumn supplies with abundance. She seemed to be in quest of something, and several times plucked a leaf and examined it carefully ; then threw it down again, and shook her head. At last she lifted up her pale face, and, fixing her eyes quietly on Septimius, spoke : " It is not here ! " A very sweet voice it was, plaintive, low, and she spoke to Septimius as if she were familiar with him, and had something to do with him. He was greatly interested, not being able to imagine who the strange girl was, or whence she came, or what, of all things, could be her reason for coming and sitting down by this grave, and apparently botanizing upon it, in quest of some particular plant. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 73 "Are you in search of flowers 1" asked Septimius. " This is but a barren spot for them, and this is not a good season. In the meadows, and along the margin of the watercourses, you might find the fringed gen tian at this time. In the woods there are several pretty flowers, the side-saddle flower, the anemone ; violets are plentiful in spring, and make the whole hillside blue. But this hill-top, with its soil strewn over a heap of pebble-stones, is no place for flowers." " The soil is fit," said the maiden, " but the flower has not sprung up." "What flower do you speak of?" asked Septimius. "One that is not here," said the pale girl. "No matter. I will look for it again next spring." "Do you, then, dwell hereabout]" inquired Sep timius. " Surely," said the maiden, with a look of surprise ; " where else should I dwell ] My home is on this hill-top." It not a little startled Septimius, as may be sup posed, to find his paternal inheritance, of which he and his forefathers had been the only owners since the world began (for they held it by an Indian deed), claimed as a home and abiding-place by this fair, pale, strange-acting maiden, who spoke as if she had as much right there as if she had grown up out of the soil like one of the wild, indigenous flowers which she had been gazing at and handling. However that might be, the maiden seemednow about to depart, rising, giving a farewell touch or two to the little verdant hillock, which looked much the neater for her ministrations. 4 74 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. "Are you going 1" said Septimius, looking at her in wonder. " For a time," said she. " And shall I see you again ? " asked he. " Surely," said the maiden, " this is my walk, along the brow of the hill." It again smote Septimius with a strange thrill of surprise to find the walk which he himself had made, treading it, and smoothing it, and beating it down with the pressure of his continual feet, from the time when the tufted grass made the sides all uneven, until now, when it was such a pathway as you may see through a wood, or over a field, where many feet pass every day, to find this track and exemplification of his own secret thoughts and plans and emotions, this writing of his body, impelled by the struggle and movement of his soul, claimed as her own by a strange girl with melancholy eyes and voice, who seemed to have such a sad familiarity with him. " You are welcome to come here," said he, endeavor ing at least to keep such hold on his own property as was implied in making a hospitable surrender of it to another. "Yes," said the girl, "a person should always be welcome to his own." A faint smile seemed to pass over her face as she said this, vanishing, however, immediately into the melancholy of her usual expression. She went along Septimius s path, while he stood gazing at her till she reached the brow where it sloped towards Robert Hag- burn s house ; then she turned, and seemed to wave a SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 75 slight farewell towards the young man, and began to descend. When her figure had entirely sunk behind the brow of the hill, Septimius slowly followed along the ridge, meaning to watch from that elevated station the course she would take ; although, indeed, he would not have been surprised if he had seen nothing, no trace of her in the whole nearness or distance ; in short, if she had been a freak, an illusion, of a hard working mind that had put itself ajar by deeply brooding on abstruse matters, an illusion of eyes that he had tried too much by poring over the inscrutable manuscript, and of intellect that was mystified and bewildered by trying to grasp things that could not be grasped. A thing of witchcraft, a sort of fungus- growth out of the grave, an unsubstantiality alto gether ; although, certainly, she had weeded the grave with bodily fingers, at all events. Still he had so much of the hereditary mysticism of his race in him, that he might have held her supernatural, only that on reaching the brow of the hill he saw her feet approach the dwelling of Robert Hagburn s mother, who, moreover, appeared at the threshold beckoning her to come, with a motherly, hospitable air, that denoted she knew the strange girl, and recognized her as human. It did not lessen Septimius s surprise, however, to think that such a singular being was established in the neighborhood without his knowledge ; considered as a real occurrence of this world, it seemed even more unaccountable than if it had been a thing of ghostology and witchcraft. Continually through the 76 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. day the incident kept introducing its recollection among his thoughts and studies ; continually, as he paced along his path, this form seemed to hurry along by his side on the track that she had claimed for her own, and he thought of her singular threat or promise, whichever it were to be held, that he should have a companion there in future. In the decline of the day, when he met the schoolmistress coming home from her little seminary, he snatched the first opportunity to mention the apparition of the morning, and ask Rose if she knew anything of her. "Very little," said Rose, "but she is flesh and blood, of that you may be quite sure. She is a girl who has been shut up in Boston by the siege ; perhaps a daughter of one of the British officers, and her health being frail, she requires better air than they have there, and so permission was got for her, from General Washington, to come and live in the country ; as any one may see, our liberties have nothing to fear from this poor brain-stricken girl. And Robert Hag- burn, having to bring a message from camp to the selectmen here, had it in charge to bring the girl, whom his mother has taken to board." " Then the poor thing is crazy 1 " asked Septimius. " A little brain-touched, that is all," replied Rose, " owing to some grief that she has had ; but she is quite harmless, Robert was told to say, and needs little or no watching, and will get a kind of fantastic happiness for herself, if only she is allowed to ramble about at her pleasure. If thwarted, she might be very wild and miserable." SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 77 " Have you spoken with her 1 " asked Septimius. "A word or two this morning, as I was going to my school," said Rose. " She took me by the hand, and smiled, and said we would be friends, and that I should show her where the flowers grew ; for that she had a little spot of her own that she wanted to plant with them. And she asked me if the Sanguined san- guinissima grew hereabout. I should not have taken her to be ailing in her wits, only for a kind of free- spokenness and familiarity, as if we had been ac quainted a long while ; or as if she had lived in some country where there are no forms and impediments in people s getting acquainted." * Did you like her 1 " inquired Septimius. " Yes ; almost loved her at first sight," answered Rose, " and I hope may do her some little good, poor thing, being of her own age, and the only companion, hereabouts, whom she is likely to find. But she has been well educated, and is a lady, that is easy to see." "It is very strange," said Septimius, " but I fear I shall be a good deal interrupted in my thoughts and studies, if she insists on haunting my hill-top as much as she tells me. My meditations are perhaps of a little too much importance to be shoved aside for the sake of gratifying a crazy girl s fantasies," " Ah, that is a hard thing to say ! " exclaimed Rose, shocked at her lover s cold egotism, though not giving it that title. " Let the poor thing glide quietly along in the path, though it be yours. Perhaps, after a while, she will help your thoughts." "My thoughts," said Septimius, "are of a kind 78 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. that can have no help from any one ; if from any, it would only be from some wise, long-studied, and experienced scientific man, who could enlighten me as to the bases and foundation of things, as to mystic writings, as to chemical elements, as to the mysteries of language, as to the principles and system on which we were created. Methinks these are not to be taught me by a girl touched in the wits." " I fear," replied Rose Garfield with gravity, and drawing imperceptibly apart from him, "that no woman can help you much. You despise woman s thought, and have no need of her affection." Septimius said something soft and sweet, and in a measure true, in regard to the necessity he felt for the affection and sympathy of one woman at least the one now by his side to keep his life warm and to make the empty chambers of his heart comfortable. But even while he spoke, there was something that dragged upon his tongue ; for he felt that the solitary pursuit in which he was engaged carried him apart from the sympathy of which he spoke, and that he was concentrating his efforts and interest entirely upon himself, and that the more he succeeded the more remotely he should be carried away, and that his final triumph would be the complete seclusion of himself from all that breathed, the converting him, from an interested actor, into a cold and disconnected spectator of all mankind. s warm and sympathetic life. So, as it turned out, this interview with Rose was one of those in which, coming no one knows from .whence, a nameless cloud springs up between SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 79 two lovers, and keeps them apart from one another by a cold, sullen spell. Usually, however, it requires only one word, spoken out of the heart, to break that spell, and compel the invisible, unsympathetic medium which the enemy of love has stretched cunningly between them, to vanish, and let them come closer together than ever ; but, in this case, it might be that the love was the illusive state, and the estrangement the real truth, the disenchanted verity. At all events, when the feeling passed away, in Rose s heart there was no reaction, no warmer love, as is generally the case. As for Septimius, he had other things to think about, and when he next met Rose Garfield, had for gotten that he had been sensible of a little wounded feeling, on her part, at parting. By dint of continued poring over the manuscript, Septimius now began to comprehend that it was written in a singular mixture of Latin and ancient English, with constantly recurring paragraphs of what he was convinced was a mystic writing ; and these recurring passages of complete unintelligibility seemed to be necessary to the proper understanding of any part of the document. What was discoverable was quaint, curious, but thwarting and perplexing, because it seemed to imply some very great purpose, only to be brought out by what was hidden. Septimius had read, in the old college library during his pupilage, a work on ciphers and cryptic writing, but being drawn to it only by his curiosity respecting whatever was hidden, and not expecting ever to use his knowledge, he had obtained only the barest idea 80 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. of what was necessary to the deciphering a secret passage. Judging by what he could pick out, he would have thought the whole essay was upon the moral conduct ; all parts of that he could make out seeming to refer to a certain ascetic rule of life ; to denial of pleasures ; these topics being repeated and insisted on everywhere, although without any dis coverable reference to religious or moral motives ; and always when the author seemed verging towards a definite purpose, he took refuge in his cipher. Yet withal, imperfectly (or not at all, rather) as Sep- timius could comprehend its purport, this strange writing had a mystic influence, that wrought upon his imagination, and with the late singular incidents of his life, his continual thought on this one subject, his walk on the hill-top, lonely, or only interrupted by the pale shadow of a girl, combined to set him outside of the living world. Rose Garfield perceived it, knew and felt that he was gliding away from her, and met him with a reserve which she could not overcome. It was a pity that his early friend, Robert Hag- burn, could not at present have any influence over him, having now regularly joined the Continental Army, and being engaged in the expedition of Arnold against Quebec. Indeed, this war, in which the coun try was so earnestly and enthusiastically engaged, had perhaps an influence on Septimius s state of mind, for it put everybody into an exaggerated and un natural state, united enthusiasms of all sorts, height ened everybody either into its own heroism or into SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 81 the peculiar madness to which each person was in clined ; and Septimius walked so much the more wildly on his lonely course, because the people were going enthusiastically on another. In times of revo lution and public disturbance all absurdities are more unrestrained ; the measure of calm sense, the habits, the orderly decency, are partially lost. More people become insane, I should suppose; offences against public morality, female license, are more numerous ; suicides, murders, all ungovernable outbreaks of men s thoughts, embodying themselves in wild acts, take place more frequently, and with less horror to the lookers-on. So [with] Septimius ; there was not, as there would have been at an ordinary time, the same calmness and truth in the public observation, scru tinizing everything with its keen criticism, in that time of seething opinions and overturned principles ; a new time was coming, and Septimius s phase of novelty attracted less attention so far as it was known. So he continued to brood over the manuscript in his study, and to hide it under lock and key in a recess of the wall, as if it were a secret of murder; to walk, too, on his hill-top, where at sunset always came the pale, crazy maiden, who still seemed to watch the little hillock with a pertinacious care that was strange to Septimius. By and by came the winter and the deep snows ; and even then, unwilling to give up his habitual place of exercise, the mo- notonousness of which promoted his wish to keep before his mind one subject of thought, Septimius 4* F 82 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. wore a path through the snow, and still walked there. Here, however, he lost for a time the companionship of the girl; for when the first snow came, she shiv ered, and looked at its white heap over the hillock, and said to Septimius, " I will look for it again in spring." [Septimius is at the point of despair for want of a guide in his studies.] The winter swept over, and spring was just begin ning to spread its green flush over the more favored exposures of the landscape, although on the north side of stone walls, and the northern nooks of hills, there were still the remnants of snow-drifts. Sep- timius s hill-top, which was of a soil which quickly rid itself of moisture, now began to be a genial place of resort to him, and he was one morning taking his walk there, meditating upon the still insurmountable difficulties which interposed themselves against the interpretation of the manuscript, yet feeling the new gash of spring bring hope to him, and the energy and elasticity for new effort. Thus pacing to and fro, he was surprised, as he turned at the extremity of his walk, to see a figure advancing towards him ; not that of the pale maiden whom he was accustomed to see there, but a figure as widely different as possible. [lie sees a spider dangling from his web, and examines him minutely.] It was that of a short, broad, some what elderly man, dressed in a surtout that had a half-military air, the cocked hat of the period, well worn, and having a fresher spot in it, whence, per haps, a cockade had been recently taken off; and SEPTIMIUS FELT ON. 83 this personage carried a well-blackened German pipe in his hand, which, as he walked, he applied to his lips, and puffed out volumes of smoke, filling the pleasant western breeze with the fragrance of some excellent Virginia. He came slowly along, and Sep- timius, slackening his pace a little, came as slowly to meet him, feeling somewhat indignant, to be sure, that anybody should intrude on his sacred hill ; until at last they met, as it happened, close by the memo rable little hillock, on which the grass and flower- leaves also had begun to sprout. The stranger looked keenly at Septimius, made a careless salute by putting his hand up, and took the pipe from his mouth. " Mr. Septimius Felton, I suppose 1 " said he. " That is my name," replied Septimius. " I am Doctor Jabez Portsoaken," said the stranger, " late surgeon of his Majesty s sixteenth regiment, which I quitted when his Majesty s army quitted Boston, being desirous of trying my fortunes in your country, and giving the people the benefit of my scientific knowledge ; also to practise some new modes of medical science, which I could not so well do in the army." " I think you are quite right, Doctor Jabez Port soaken," said Septimius, a little confused and bewil dered, so unused had he become to the society of strangers. " And as to you, sir," said the doctor, who had a very rough, abrupt way of speaking, " I have to thank you for a favor done me." 84 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. "Have you, sir?" said Septimius, who was quite sure that he had never seen the doctor s uncouth fig ure before. " 0, ay, me," said the doctor, puffing coolly, "me, in the person of my niece, a sickly, poor, nervous little thing, who is very fond of walking on your hill-top, and whom you do not send away." "You are the uncle of Sybil DacyT said Sep timius. " Even so, her mother s brother," said the doctor, with a grotesque bow. " So, being on a visit, the first that the siege allowed me to pay, to see how the girl was getting on, I take the opportunity to pay my respects to you ; the more that I understand you to be a young man of some learning, and it is not often that one meets with such in this country." " No," said Septimius, abruptly, for indeed he had half a suspicion that this queer Doctor Portsoaken was not altogether sincere, that, in short, he was making game of him. " You have been misinformed. I know nothing whatever that is worth knowing." " Oho ! " said the doctor, with a long puff of smoke out of his pipe. " If you are convinced of that, you are one of the wisest men I have met with, young as you are. I must have been twice your age before I got so far; and even now, I am sometimes fool enough to doubt the only thing I was ever sure of knowing. But come, you make me only the more earnest to collogue with you. If we put both our shortcomings together, they may make up an item of positive knowledge." SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 85 " What use can one make of abortive thoughts 1 " said Septimius. " Do your speculations take a scientific turn 1 " said Doctor Portsoaken. " There I can meet you with as much false knowledge and empiricism as you can bring for the life of you. Have you ever tried to study spiders 1 there is my strong point now ! I have hung my whole interest in life on a spider s web." "I know nothing of them, sir," said Septimius, "except to crush them when I see them running across the floor, or to brush away the festoons of their webs when they have chanced to escape my Aunt Keziah s broom." " Crush them ! Brush away their webs ! " cried the doctor, apparently in a rage, and shaking his pipe at Septimius. " Sir, it is sacrilege ! Yes, it is worse than murder. Every thread of a spider s web is worth more than a thread of gold ; and before twenty years are passed, a housemaid will be beaten to death with her own broomstick if she disturbs one of these sacred animals. But, come again. Shall we talk of botany, the virtues of herbs ? " " My Aunt Keziah should meet you there, doctor," said Septimius. "She has a native and original ac quaintance with their virtues, and can save and kill with any of the faculty. As for myself, my studies have not turned that way." " They ought ! they ought ! " said the doctor, look ing meaningly at him. " The whole thing lies in the blossom of an herb. Now, you ought to begin with what lies about you ; on this little hillock, for in- 86 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. stance " ; and looking at the grave beside which they were standing, he gave it a kick which went to Sep- timius s heart, there seemed to be such a spite and scorn in it. " On this hillock I see some specimens of plants which would be worth your looking at." Bending down towards the grave as he spoke, he seemed to give closer attention to what he saw there ; keeping in his stooping position till his face began to get a purple aspect, for the erudite doctor was of that make of man who has to be kept right side uppermost with care. At length he raised himself, muttering, " Very curious ! very curious ! " "Do you see anything remarkable there]" asked Septimius, with some interest. " Yes," said the doctor, bluntly. " No matter what ! The time will come when you may like to know it." " Will you come with me to my residence at the foot of the hill, Doctor Portsoaken 1 " asked Septimius. " I am not a learned man, and have little or no title to converse with one, except a sincere desire to be wiser than I am. If you can be moved on such terms to give me your companionship, I shall be thankful." " Sir, I am with you," said Doctor Portsoaken. " I will tell you what I know, in the sure belief (for I will be frank with you) that it will add to the amount of dangerous folly now in your mind, and help you on the way to ruin. Take your choice, therefore, whether to know me further or not." " I neither shrink nor fear, neither hope much/ said Septimius, quietly. "Anything that you can SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 87 communicate if anything you can I shall fearlessly receive, and return you such thanks as it may be found to deserve." So saying, he led the way down the hill, by the steep path that descended abruptly upon the rear of his bare and unadorned little dwelling; the doctor following with much foul language (for he had a terri ble habit of swearing) at the difficulties of the way, to which his short legs were ill adapted. Aunt Keziah met them at the door, and looked sharply at the doc tor, who returned the gaze with at least as much keenness, muttering between his teeth, as he did so ; and to say the truth, Aunt Keziah was as worthy of being sworn at as any woman could well be, for what ever she might have been in her younger days, she was at this time as strange a mixture of an Indian squaw and herb doctress, with the crabbed old maid, and a min gling of the witch-aspect running through all, as could well be imagined ; and she had a handkerchief over her head, and she was of hue a dusky yellow, and she looked very cross. As Septimius ushered the doctor into his study, and was about to follow him, Aunt Keziah drew him back. " Septimius, who is this you have brought here 1 " asked she. "A man I have met on the hill," answered her nephew ; " a Doctor Portsoaken he calls himself, from the old country. He says he has knowledge of herbs and other mysteries ; in your own line, it may be. If you want to talk with him, give the man his dinner, and find out what there is in him." 88 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. " And what do you want of him yourself, Septim ius ?" asked she. " 1 1 Nothing ! that is to say, I expect nothing," said Septimius. "But I am astray, seeking every where, and so I reject no hint, no promise, no faintest possibility of aid that I may find anywhere. I j udge this man to be a quack, but I judge the same of the most learned man of his profession, or any other ; and there is a roughness about this man, that may indicate a little more knowledge than if he were smoother. So, as he threw himself in my way, I take him in." " A grim, ugly-looking old wretch, as ever I saw," muttered Aunt Keziah. "Well, he shall have hi dinner ; and if he likes to talk about yarb-dishes, I m with him." So Septimius followed the doctor into his study, where he found him with the sword in his hand, which he had taken from over the mantel-piece, and was holding it drawn, examining the hilt and blade with great minuteness ; the hilt being wrought in open work, with certain heraldic devices, doubtless belong ing to the family of its former wearer. " I have seen this weapon before," said the doctor. " It may well be," said Septimius. " It was onca worn by a person who served in the army of you* king." " And you took it from him ? " said the doctor. " If I did, it was in no way that I need be ashamed of, or afraid to tell, though I choose rather not to speak of it," answered Septimius. " Have you, then, no desire nor interest to know SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 89 the family, the personal history, the prospects, of him who once wore this sword, and who will never draw sword again 1 ?" inquired Doctor Portsoaken. "Poor Cyril Norton ! There was a singular story attached to that young man, sir, and a singular mystery he carried about with him, the end of which, perhaps, is not yet." Septimius would have been, indeed, well enough pleased to learn the mystery which he himself had seen that there was about the man whom he slew ; but he was afraid that some question might be thereby started about the secret document that he had kept possession of ; and he therefore would have wished to avoid the whole subject. " I cannot be supposed to take much interest in English family history. It is a hundred and fifty years, at least, since my own family ceased to be English," he answered. " I care more for the present and future than for the past." "It is all one," said the doctor, sitting down, taking out a pinch of tobacco, and refilling his pipe. It is unnecessary to follow up the description of the visit of the eccentric doctor through the day. Suf fice it to say that there was a sort of charm, or rather fascination, about the uncouth old fellow, in spite of his strange ways ; in spite of his constant puffing of tobacco ; and in spite, too, of a constant imbibing of strong liquor, which he made inquiries for, and of which the best that could be produced was a certain decoction, infusion, or distillation, pertaining to Aunt Keziah, and of which the basis was rum, be it said, 90 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. done up with certain bitter herbs of the old lady s own gathering, at proper times of the moon, and which was a well-known drink to all who were favored with Aunt Keziah s friendship ; though there was a story that it was the very drink which used to be passed round at witch-meetings, being brewed from the Dev il s own recipe. And, in truth, judging from the taste (for I once took a sip of a draught prepared from the same ingredients, and in the same way), I should think this hellish origin might be the veritable one. [" I thought" quoth the doctor, "I could drink any thing, but " ] But the valiant doctor sipped, and sipped again, and said with great blasphemy that it was the real stuff, and only needed henbane to make it perfect. Then, taking from his pocket a good-sized leathern- covered flask, with a silver lip fastened on the muzzle, he offered it to Septimius, who declined, and to Aunt Keziah, who preferred her own decoction, and then drank it off himself, with a loud smack of satisfaction, declaring it to be infernally good brandy. Well, after this Septimius and he talked ; and I know not how it was, but there was a great deal of imagination in this queer man, whether a bodily or spiritual influence it might be hard to say. On the other hand, Septimius had for a long while held little intercourse with men ; none whatever with men who could comprehend him ; the doctor, too, seemed to bring the discourse singularly in apposition with what his host was continually thinking about, for he con versed on occult matters, on people who had had the SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 91 art of living long, and had only died at last by acci dent, on the powers and qualities of common herbs, which he believed to be so great, that all around our feet growing in the wild forest, afar from man, or following the footsteps of man wherever he fixes his residence, across seas, from the old homesteads whence he migrated, following him everywhere, and offering themselves sedulously and continually to his notice, while he only plucks them away from the compara tively worthless things which he cultivates, and flings them aside, blaspheming at them because Providence has sown them so thickly grow what we call weeds, only because all the generations, from the beginning of time till now, have failed to discover their wondrous virtues, potent for the curing of all diseases, potent for procuring length of days. "Everything good," said the doctor, drinking an other dram of brandy, " lies right at our feet, and all we need is to gather it up." " That s true," quoth Keziah, taking just a little sup of her hellish preparation; "these herbs were all gathered within a hundred yards of this very spot, though it took a wise woman to find out their vir tues." The old woman went off about her household duties, and then it was that Septimius submitted to the doc. tor the list of herbs which he had picked out of the old document, asking him, as something apposite to the subject of their discourse, whether he was ac quainted with them, for most of them had very queer names, some in Latin, some in English. 92 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. The bluff doctor put on his spectacles, and looked over the slip of yellow and worn paper scrutinizingly, puffing tobacco-smoke upon it in great volumes, as if thereby to make its hidden purport come out ; he mumbled to himself, he took another sip from his flask ; and then, putting it down on the table, ap peared to meditate. " This infernal old document," said he, at length, " is one that I have never seen before, yet heard of, nevertheless ; for it was my folly in youth (and wheth er I am any wiser now is more than I take upon me to say, but it was my folly then) to be in quest of certain kinds of secret knowledge, which the fathers of science thought attainable. Now, in several quar ters, amongst people with whom my pursuits brought me in contact, I heard of a certain recipe which had been lost for a generation or two, but which, if it could be recovered, would prove to have the true life-giving potency in it. It is said that the ancestor of a great old family in England was in possession of this secret, being a man of science, and the friend of Friar Bacon, who was said to have concocted it himself, partly from the precepts of his master, partly from his own experi ments, and it is thought he might have been living to this day, if he had not unluckily been killed in the wars of the Roses ; for you know no recipe for long life would be proof against an old English arrow, or a leaden bullet from one of our own firelocks." " And what has been the history of the thing after his death ? " asked Septimius. "It was supposed to be preserved in the family," SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 93 said the doctor, " and it has always been said, that the head and eldest son of that family had it at his option to live forever, if he could only make up his mind to it. But seemingly there were difficulties in the way. There was probably a certain diet and regimen to be observed, certain strict rules of life to be kept, a cer tain asceticism to be imposed on the person, which was not quite agreeable to young men ; and after the period of youth was passed, the human frame became incapable of being regenerated from the seeds of decay and death, which, by that time, had become strongly developed in it. In short, while young, the possessor of the secret found the terms of immortal life too hard to be accepted, since it implied the giving up of most of the things that made life desirable in his view ; and when he came to a more reasonable mind, it was too late. And so, in all the generations since Friar Bacon s time, the Nortons have been born, and en joyed their young days and worried through their manhood, and tottered through their old age (unless taken off sooner by sword, arrow, ball, fever, or what not), and died in their beds, like men that had no such option \ and so this old yellow paper has done not the least good to any mortal. Neither do I see how it can do any good to you, since you know not the rules, moral or dietetic, that are essential to its effect. But how did you come by it 1 " " It matters not how," said Septimius, gloomily. " Enough that I am its rightful possessor and inheri tor. Can you read these old characters 1 " "Most of them," said the doctor ; "but let me tell 94 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. you, my young friend, I have no faith whatever in this secret ; and, having meddled with such things myself, I ought to know. The old physicians and chemists had strange ideas of the virtues of plants, drugs, and minerals, and equally strange fancies as to the way of getting those virtues into action. They would throw a hundred different potencies into a caldron together, and put them on the fire, and expect to brew a poten cy containing all their potencies, and having a differ ent virtue of its own. Whereas, the most likely result would be that they would counteract one another, and the concoction be of no virtue at all ; or else some more powerful ingredient would tincture the whole." He read the paper again, and continued : " I see nothing else so remarkable in this recipe, as that it is chiefly made up of some of the commonest things that grow ; plants that you set your foot upon at your very threshold, in your garden, in your wood- walks, wherever you go. I doubt not old Aunt Keziah knows them, and very likely she has brewed them up in that hell-drink, the remembrance of which is still rankling in my stomach. I thought I had swallowed the Devil himself, whom the old woman had been boiling down. It would be curious enough if the hideous decoction was the same as old Friar Bacon and his acolyte discovered by their science ! One ingredient, however, one of those plants, I scarce ly think the old lady can have put into her pot of Devil s elixir ; for it is a rare plant, that does not grow in these parts." " And what is that 1 " asked Septimius. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 95 " Sanguined sanguinissima," said the doctor ; " it has no vulgar name ; but it produces a very beautiful flower, which I have never seen, though some seeds of it were sent me by a learned friend in Siberia. The others, divested of their Latin names, are as common as plantain, pig-weed, and burdock ; and it stands to reason that, if vegetable Nature has any such wonderfully efficacious medicine in store for men, and means them to use it, she would have strewn it everywhere plentifully within their reach." " But, after all, it would be a mockery on the old dame s part," said the young man, somewhat bitterly, " since she wxmld thus hold the desired thing seem ingly within our reach ; but because she never tells us how to prepare and obtain its efficacy, we miss it just as much as if all the ingredients were hidden from sight and knowledge in the centre of the earth. We are the playthings and fools of Nature, which she amuses herself with during our little lifetime, and then breaks for mere sport, and laughs in our faces as she does so." " Take care, my good fellow," said the doctor, with his great coarse laugh. "I rather suspect that you have already got beyond the age when the great medicine could do you good ; that speech indicates a great toughness and hardness and bitterness about the heart that does not accumulate in our tender years." Septimius took little or no notice of the raillery of the grim old doctor, but employed the rest of the time in getting as much information as he could out of his guest ; and though he could not bring himself 96 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. to show him the precious and sacred mamiscript, yet he questioned him as closely as possible without be traying his secret, as to the modes of finding out cryptic writings. The doctor was not without the perception that his dark-browed, keen-eyed acquaint ance had some purpose not openly avowed in all these pertinacious, distinct questions ; he discovered a central reference in them all, and perhaps knew that Septimius must have in his possession some writing in hieroglyphics, cipher, or other secret mode, that con veyed instructions how to operate with the strange recipe that he had shown him. " You had better trust me fully, my good sir," said he. " Not but what I will give you all the aid I can without it; for you have done me a greater benefit than you are aware of, beforehand. No you will not 1 Well, if you can change your mind, seek me out in Boston, where I have seen fit to settle in the practice of my profession, and I will serve you accord ing to your folly ; for folly it is, I warn you." Nothing else worthy of record is known to have passed during the doctor s visit ; and in due time he disappeared, as it were, in a whiff of tobacco-smoke, leaving an odor of brandy and tobacco behind him, and a traditionary memory of a wizard that had been there. Septimius went to work with what items of knowledge he had gathered from him ; but the inter view had at least made him aware of one thing, which was, that he must provide himself with, all possible quantity of scientific knowledge of botany, and per haps more extensive knowledge, in order to be able SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 97 to concoct the recipe. It was the fruit of all the scientific attainment of the age that produced it (so said the legend, which seemed reasonable enough), a great philosopher had wrought his learning into it ; and this had been attempered, regulated, improved, by the quick, bright intellect of his scholar. Perhaps, thought Septimius, another deep and earnest intelli gence added to these two may bring the precious recipe to still greater perfection. At least it shall be tried. So thinking, he gathered together all the books that he could find relating to such studies ; he spent one day, moreover, in a walk to Cambridge, where he searched the alcoves of the college library for such works as it contained ; and borrowing them from the war-disturbed institution of learning, he betook himself homewards, and applied himself to the study with an earnestness of zealous application that perhaps has been seldom equalled in a study of so quiet a character. A month or two of study, with practice upon such plants as he found upon his hill top, and along the brook and in other neighboring localities, sufficed to do a great deal for him. In this pursuit he was assisted by Sybil, who proved to have great knowledge in some botanical departments, especially among flowers; and in her cold and quiet way, she met him on this subject and glided by his side, as she had done so long, a companion, a daily observer and observed of him, mixing herself up with his pur suits, as if she were an attendant sprite upon him. But this pale girl was not the only associate of his studies, the only instructress, whom Septimius found. 5 o 98 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. The observation which Doctor Portsoaken made about the fantastic possibility that Aunt Keziah might have inherited the same receipt from her Indian ancestiy which had been struck out by the science of Friar Bacon and his pupil had not failed to impress Sep- timius, and to remain on his memory. So, not long after the doctor s departure, the young man took occasion one evening to say to his aunt that he thought his stomach was a little out of order with too much application, and that perhaps she could give him some herb-drink or other that would be good for him. " That I can, Seppy, my darling," said the old woman, " and I m glad you have the sense to ask for it at last. Here it is in this bottle ; and though that foolish, blaspheming doctor turned up his old brandy nose at it, I 11 drink with him any day and come off better than he." So saying, she took out of the closet her brown jug, stopped with a cork that had a rag twisted round it to make it tighter, filled a mug half full of the con coction, and set it on the table before Septimius. " There, child, smell of that ; the smell merely will do you good ; but drink it down, and you 11 live the longer for it." " Indeed, Aunt Keziah, is that so 1 " asked Sep timius, a little startled by a recommendation which in some measure tallied with what he wanted in a medicine. " That s a good quality." He looked into the mug, and saw a turbid, yellow concoction, not at all attractive to the eye ; he smelt of it, and was partly of opinion that Aunt Keziah had SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 99 mixed a certain imfragrant vegetable, called skunk- cabbage, with the other ingredients of her witch- drink. He tasted it; not a mere sip, but a good, genuine gulp, being determined to have real proof of what the stuff was in all respects. The draught seemed at first to burn in his mouth, unaccustomed to any drink but water, and to go scorching all the way down into his stomach, making him sensible of the depth of his inwards by a track of fire, far, far down ; and then, worse than the fire, came a taste of hideous bitterness and nauseousriess, which he had not previously conceived to exist, and which threat ened to stir up his bowels into utter revolt; but knowing Aunt Keziah s touchiness with regard to this concoction, and how sacred she held it, he made an effort of real heroism, squelched down his agony, and kept his face quiet, with the exception of one strong convulsion, which he allowed to twist across it for the sake of saving his life. " It tastes as if it might have great potency in it, Aunt Keziah," said this unfortunate young man ; "I wish you would tell me what it is made of, and how you brew it ; for I have observed you are very strict and secret about it." " Aha ! you have seen that, have you 1 " said Aunt Keziah, taking a sip of her beloved liquid, and grin ning at him with a face and eyes as yellow as that she was drinking. In fact, the idea struck him, that in temper, and all appreciable qualities, Aunt Keziah was a good deal like this drink of hers, having prob ably become saturated by them while she drank of it. 100 SEPTIMUS FELTON. And then, having drunk, she gloated over it, and tasted, and smelt of the cup of this hellish wine, as a wine-bibber does of that which is most fragrant and delicate. "And you want to know how I make it? But first, child, tell me honestly, do you love this drink of mine 7 Otherwise, here, and at once, we stop talking about it." " I love it for its virtues," said Septimius, tem porizing with his conscience, " and would prefer it on that account to the rarest wines." "So far good," said Aunt Keziah, who could not well conceive that her liquor should be otherwise than delicious to the palate. "It is the most vir tuous liquor that ever was; and therefore one need not fear drinking too much of it. And you want to know what it is made ofl Well; I have often thought of telling you, Seppy, my boy, when you should come to be old enough ; for I have no other inheritance to leave you, and you are all of my blood, unless I should happen to have some far-off uncle among the Cape Indians. But first, you must know how this good drink, and the faculty of making it, came down to me from the chiefs, and sachems, and Peow-wows, that were your ancestors and mine, Sep timius, and from the old wizard who was my great grandfather and yours, and who, they say, added the fire-water to the other ingredients, and so gave it the only one thing that it wanted to make it perfect." And so Aunt Keziah, who had now put herself into a most comfortable and jolly state by sipping again, and after pressing Septimius to mind his SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 101 draught (who declined, on the plea that one dram at a time was enough for a new beginner, its virtues being so strong, as well as admirable), the old woman told him a legend strangely wild and uncouth, and mixed up of savage and civilized life, and of the super stitions of both, but which yet had a certain analogy, that impressed Septimius much, to the story that the doctor had told him. She said that, many ages ago, there had been a wild sachem in the forest, a king among the Indians, and from whom, the old lady said, with a look of pride, she and Septimius were lineally descended, and were probably the very last who inherited one drop of that royal, wise, and warlike blood. The sachem had lived very long, longer than anybody knew, for the Indians kept no record, and could only talk of a great number of moons ; and they said he was as old, or older, than the oldest trees ; as old as the hills almost, and could remember back to the days of godlike men, who had arts then forgotten. He was a wise and good man, and could foretell as far into the future as he could remember into the past; and he continued to live on, till his people were afraid that he would live forever, and so disturb the whole order of nature ; and they thought it time that so good a man, and so great a warrior and wizard, should be gone to the happy hunting-grounds, and that so wise a counsellor should go and tell his experience of life to the Great Father, and give him an account of matters here, and perhaps lead him to make some changes in the conduct of the lower 102 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. world. And so, all these things duly considered, they very reverently assassinated the great never- dying sachem ; for though safe against disease, and undecayable by age, he was capable of being killed by violence, though the hardness of his skull broke to fragments the stone tomahawk with which they at first tried to kill him. So a deputation of the best and bravest of the tribe went to the great sachem, and told him their thought, and reverently desired his consent to be put out of the world ; and the undying one agreed with them that it was better for his own comfort that he should die, and that he had long been weary of the world, having learned all that it could teach him, and having, chiefly, learned to despair of ever making the red race much better than they now were. So he cheerfully consented, and told them to kill him if they could ; and first they tried the stone hatchet, which was broken against his skull ; and then they shot arrows at him, which could not pierce the toughness of his skin ; and finally they plastered up his nose and mouth (which kept uttering wisdom to the last) with clay and set him to bake in the sun ; so at last his life burnt out of his breast, tearing his body to pieces, and he died. [Make this legend grotesque, and express the weariness of the tribe at the intolerable control the undying one had of them ; his always bringing up precepts from his own experience, never consenting to anything new, and so im peding progress ; his habits hardening into him, his as cribing to himself all wisdom, and depriving everybody of SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 103 his right to successive command; his endless talk, and dwelling on the past, so that the world could not bear him. Describe his ascetic and severe habits, his rigid calmness, <c.] But before the great sagamore died he imparted to a chosen one of his tribe, the next wisest to him self, the secret of a potent and delicious drink, the constant imbibing of which, together with his absti nence from luxury and passion, had kept him alive so long, and would doubtless have compelled him to live forever. This drink was compounded of many ingredients, all of which were remembered and handed down in tradition, save one, which, either because it was nowhere to be found, or for some other reason, was forgotten ; so that the drink ceased to give immortal life as before. They say it was a beautiful purple flower. \JPerhaps the Devil taught him the drink, or else the Great Spirit, doubtful which.~\ But it still was a most excellent drink, and conducive to health, and the cure of all diseases ; and the Indians had it at the time of the settlement by the English ; and at one of those wizard meetings in the forest, where the Black Man used to meet his red children and his white ones, and be jolly with them, a great Indian wizard taught the secret to Septimius s great-grandfather, who was a wizard, and died for it; and he, in return, taught the Indians to mix it with rum, thinking that this might be the very ingredient that was missing, and that by adding it he might give endless life to himself and all his Indian friends, among whom he had taken a wife. 104 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. "But your great-grandfather, you know, had not a fair chance to test its virtues, having been hanged for a wizard ; and as for the Indians, they probably mixed too much fire-water with their liquid, so that it burnt them up, and they all died ; and my mother, and her mother, who taught the drink to me, and her mother afore her, thought it a sin to try to live longer than the Lord pleased, so they let themselves die. And though the drink is good, Septimius, and toothsome, as you see, yet I sometimes feel as if I were getting old, like other people, and may die in the course of the next half-century; so perhaps the rum was not just the thing that was wanting to make up the recipe. But it is very good ! Take a drop more of it, dear." " Not at present, I thank you, Aunt Keziah," said Septimius, gravely ; " but will you tell me what the ingredients are, and how you make it 1 ?" " Yes, I will, my boy, and you shall write them down," said the old woman ; " for it s a good drink, and none the worse, it may be, for not making you live forever. I sometimes think I had as lief go to heaven as keep on living here." Accordingly, making Septimius take pen and ink, she proceeded to tell him a list of plants and herbs, and forest productions, and he was surprised to find that it agreed most wonderfully with the recipe con tained in the old manuscript, as he had puzzled it out, and as it had been explained by the doctor. There were a few variations, it is true ; but even here there was a close analogy, plants indigenous to Amer- SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 105 ica being substituted for cognate productions, the growth of Europe. Then there was another difference in the mode of preparation, Aunt Keziah s nostrum being a concoction, whereas the old manuscript gave a process of distillation. This similarity had a strong effect on Septimius s imagination. Here was, in ono case, a drink suggested, as might be supposed, to a primitive people by something similar to that instinct by which the brute creation recognizes the medica ments suited to its needs, so that they mixed up fra grant herbs for reasons wiser than they knew, and made them into a salutary potion ; and here, again, was a drink contrived by the utmost skill of a great civilized philosopher, searching the whole field of science for his purpose ; and these two drinks proved, in all essential particulars, to be identically the same. " 0, Aunt Keziah," said he, with a longing earnest ness, "are you sure that you cannot remember that one ingredient 1 " " No, Septimius, I cannot possibly do it," said she. "I have tried many things, skunk-cabbage, wormwood, and a thousand things ; for it is truly a pity that the chief benefit of the thing should be lost for so little. But the only effect was, to spoil the good taste of the stuff, and, two or three times, to poison myself, so that I broke out all over blotches, and once lost the use of my left arm, and got a dizziness in the head, and a rheumatic twist in my knee, a hardness of hear ing, and a dimness of sight, and the trembles ; all of which I certainly believe to have been co,used by my 5* 106 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. putting something else into this blessed drink besides the good New England rum. Stick to that, Seppy, my dear." So saying, Aunt Keziah took yet another sip of the beloved liquid, after vainly pressing Septimius to do the like ; and then lighting her old clay pipe, she sat down in the chimney-corner, meditating, dreaming, muttering pious prayers and ejaculations, and some times looking up the wide flue of the chimney, with thoughts, perhaps, how delightful it must have been to fly up there, in old times, on excursions by midnight into the forest, where was the Black Man, and the Puritan deacons and ladies, and those wild Indian an cestors of hers ; and where the wildness of the forest was so grim and delightful, and so unlike the com- monplaceness in which she spent her life. For thus did the savage strain of the woman, mixed up as it was with the other weird and religious parts of her composition, sometimes snatch her back into bar barian life and its instincts ; and in Septimius, though further diluted, and modified likewise by higher culti vation, there was the same tendency. Septimius escaped from the old woman, and was glad to breathe the free air again ; so much had he been wrought upon by her wild legends and wild character, the more powerful by its analogy with his own ; and perhaps, too, his brain had been a little bewildered by the draught of her diabolical concoc tion which she had compelled him to take. At any rate, he was glad to escape to his hill-top, the free air of which had doubtless contributed to keep him SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 107 in health through so long a course of morbid thought and estranged study as he had addicted himself to. Here, as it happened, he found both Rose Garneld and Sybil Dacy, whom the pleasant summer evening had brought out. They had formed a friendship, or at least society ; and there could not well be a pair more unlike, the one so natural, so healthy, so fit to live in the world ; the other such a morbid, pale thing. So there they were, walking arm in arm, with one arm round each other s waist, as girls love to do. They greeted the young man in their several ways, and be gan to walk to and fro together, looking at the sunset as it came on, and talking of things on earth and in the clouds. " When has Robert Hagburn been heard from 1 " asked Septimius, who, involved in his own pursuits, was altogether behindhand in the matters of the war, shame to him for it ! " There came news, two days past," said Rose, blushing. " He is on his way home with the remnant of General Arnold s command, and will be here soon." " He is a brave fellow, Robert," said Septimius, carelessly, "and I know not, since life is so short, that anything better can be done with it than to risk it as he does." " I truly think not," said Rose Garfield. composedly. "What a blessing it is to mortals," said Sybil Dacy, " what a kindness of Providence, that life is made so uncertain ; that death is thrown in among the possibilities of our being ; that these awful mys teries are thrown around us, into which we may 108 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. vanish ! For, without it, how would it be possible to be heroic, how should we plod along in common places forever, never dreaming high things, never risking anything 1 For my part, I think man is more favored than the angels, and made capable of higher heroism, greater virtue, and of a more excellent spirit than they, because we have such a mystery of grief and terror around us ; whereas they, being in a cer tainty of God s light, seeing his goodness and his pur poses more perfectly than we, cannot be so brave as often poor weak man, and weaker woman, has the opportunity to be, and sometimes makes use of it. God gave the whole world to man, and if he is left alone with it, it will make a clod of him at last ; but, to remedy that, God gave man a grave, and it redeems all, while it seems to destroy all, and makes an immor tal spirit of him in the end." " Dear Sybil, you are inspired," said Rose, gazing in her face. " I think you ascribe a great deal too much potency to the grave," said Septimius, pausing involuntarily alone by the little hillock, whose contents he knew so well. " The grave seems to me a vile pitfall, put right in our pathway, and catching most of us, all of us, causing us to tumble in at the most inconvenient op portunities, so that all human life is a jest and a farce, just for the sake of this inopportune death ; for I ob serve it never waits for us to accomplish anything : we may have the salvation of a country in hand, but we are none the less likely to die for that. So that, being a believer, on the whole, in the wisdom and SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 109 graciousuess of Providence, I am convinced that dying is a mistake, and that by and by we shall overcome it. I say there is no use in the grave." " I still adhere to what I said," answered Sybil Dacy ; " and besides, there is another use of a grave which I have often observed in old English grave yards, where the moss grows green, and embosses the letters of the gravestones; and also graves are very good for flower-beds." Nobody ever could tell when the strange girl was going to say what was laughable, when what was melancholy ; and neither of Sybil s auditors knew quite what to make of this speech. Neither could Septimius fail to be a little startled by seeing her, as she spoke of the grave as a flower-bed, stoop down to the little hillock to examine the flowers, which, indeed, seemed to prove her words by growing there in strange abundance, and of many sorts ; so that, if they could all have bloomed at once, the spot would have looked like a bouquet by itself, or as if the earth were richest in beauty there, or as if seeds had been lavished by some florist. Septimius could not account for it, for though the hillside did pro duce certain flowers, the aster, the golden-rod, the violet, and other such simple and common things, yet this seemed as if a carpet of bright colors had been thrown down there, and covered the spot. " This is very strange," said he. " Yes," said Sybil Dacy, " there is some strange richness in this little spot of soil." " Where could the seeds have come from 1 that 110 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. is the greatest wonder," said Rose. " You might al most teach me botany, methinks, on this one spot." "Do you know this plant?" asked Sybil of Sep- timius, pointing to one not yet in flower, but of singular leaf, that was thrusting itself up out of the ground, on the very centre of the grave, over where the breast of the sleeper below might seem to be. "I think there is no other here like it." Septimius stooped down to examine it, and was convinced that it was unlike anything he had seen of the flower kind ; a leaf of a dark green, with purple veins traversing it, it had a sort of question able aspect, as some plants have, so that you w r ould think it very likely to be poison, and would not like to touch or smell very intimately, without first in quiring who would be its guarantee that it should do no mischief. That it had some richness or other, either baneful or beneficial, you could not doubt. " I think it poisonous," said Rose Garfield, shud dering, for she was a person so natural she hated poisonous things, or anything speckled especially, and did not, indeed, love strangeness. "Yet I should not wonder if it bore a beautiful flower by and by. Nevertheless, if I were to do just as I feel inclined, I should root it up and fling it away." " Shall she do so 1 " said Sybil to Septimius. " Not for the world," said he, hastily. " Above all things, I desire to see what will come of this plant." "Be it as you please," said Sybil. "Meanwhile, if you like to sit down here and listen to me, I will tell you a story that happens to come into my mind SEPTIMIUS FELTON. Ill just now, I cannot tell why. It is a legend of an old hall that I know well, and have known from my childhood, in one of the northern counties of Eng land, where I was born. Would you like to hear it, Rose?" " Yes, of all things," said she. " I like all stories of hall and cottage in the old country, though now we must not call it our country any more." Sybil looked at Septimius, as if to inquire whether he, too, chose to listen to her story, and he made answer : "Yes, I shall like to hear the legend, if it is a genuine one that has been adopted into the popular belief, and came down in chimney-corners with the smoke and soot that gathers there ; and incrusted over with humanity, by passing from one homely mind to another. Then, such stories get to be true, in a certain sense, and indeed in that sense may be called true throughout, for the very nucleus, the fic tion in them, seems to have come out of the heart of man in a way that cannot be imitated of malice aforethought. Nobody can make a tradition ; it takes a century to make it." " I know not whether this legend has the character you mean," said Sybil, "but it has lived much more than a century ; and here it is. " On the threshold of one of the doors of Hall there is a bloody footstep impressed into the doorstep, and ruddy as if the bloody foot had just trodden there ; and it is averred that, on a certain 112 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. night of the year, and at a certain hour of the night, if you go and look at that doorstep you will see the mark wet with fresh blood. Some have pretended to say that this appearance of blood was but dew; but can dew redden a cambric handkerchief] Will it crimson the finger-tips when you touch it 1 And that is what the bloody footstep will surely do when the appointed night and hour come round, this very year, just as it would three hundred years ago. " Well ; but how did it come there ] I know not precisely in what age it was, but long ago, when light was beginning to shine into what was called the dark ages, there was a lord of Hall who applied himself deeply to knowledge and science, under the guidance of the wisest man of that age, a man so wise that he was thought to be a wizard; and, indeed, he may have been one, if to be a wizard consists in having command over secret powers of nature, that other men do not even suspect the existence of, and the control of which enables one to do feats that seem as wonderful as raising the dead. It is needless to tell you all the strange stories that have survived to this day about the old Hall; and how it is believed that the master of it, owing to his ancient science, has still a sort of residence there, and control of the place ; and how, in one of the chambers, there is still his antique table, and his chair, and some rude old instruments and machinery, and a book, and everything in readiness, just as if he might still come back to finish some experiment. What it is important to say is, that one of the chief SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 113 things to which the old lord applied himself was to discover the means of prolonging his own life, so that its duration should be indefinite, if not infinite ; and such was his science, that he was believed to have attained this magnificent and awful purpose. " So, as you may suppose, the man of science had great joy in having done this thing, both for the pride of it, and because it was so delightful a thing to have before him the prospect of endless time, which he might spend in adding more and more to his science, and so doing good to the world ; for the chief obstruction to the improvement of the world and the growth of knowledge is, that mankind can not go straightforward in it, but continually there have to be new beginnings, and it takes every new man half his life, if not the whole of it, to come up to the point where his predecessor left off. And so this noble man this man of a noble purpose spent many years in finding out this mighty secret ; and at last, it is said, he succeeded. But on what terms ] "Well, it is said that the terms were dreadful and horrible; insomuch that the wise man hesitated whether it were lawful and desirable to take advan tage of them, great as was the object in view. "You see, the object of the lord of Hall was to take a life from the course of Nature, and Nature did not choose to be defrauded ; so that, great as was the power of this scientific man over her, she would not consent that he should escape the necessity of dying at his proper time, except upon condition of 114 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. sacrificing some other life for his; and this was to be done once for every thirty years that he chose to live, thirty years being the account of a generation of man ; and if in any way, in that time, this lord could be the death of a human being, that satisfied the requisition, and he might live on. There is a form of the legend which says, that one of the in gredients of the drink which the nobleman brewed by his science was the heart s blood of a pure young boy or girl. But this I reject, as too coarse an idea ; and, indeed, I think it may be taken to mean sym bolically, that the person who desires to engross to himself more than his share of human life must do it by sacrificing to his selfishness some dearest interest of another person, who has a good right to life, and may be as useful in it as he. " Now, this lord was a just man by nature, and if he had gone astray, it was greatly by reason of his earnest wish to do something for the poor, wicked, struggling, bloody, uncomfortable race of man, to which he belonged. He bethought himself whether he would have a right to take the life of one of those creatures, without their own consent, in order to prolong his own ; and after much arguing to and fro, he came to the conclusion that he should not have the right, unless it were a life over which he had control, and which was the next to his own. He looked round him ; he was a lonely and ab stracted man, secluded by his studies from human affections, and there was but one human being whom he cared for ; that was a beautiful kinswoman, an SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 115 orphan, whom his father had brought up, and, dying, left her to his care. There was great kindness and affection as great as the abstracted nature of his pursuits would allow on the part of this lord towards the beautiful young girl; but not what is called love, at least, he never acknowledged it to himself. But, looking into his heart, he saw that she, if any one, was to be the person whom the sacrifice demanded, and that he might kill twenty others without effect, but if he took the life of this one, it would make the charm strong and good. "My friends, I have meditated many a time on this ugly feature of my legend, and am unwilling to take it in the literal sense ; so I conceive its spirit ual meaning (for everything, you know, has its spiritual meaning, which to the literal meaning is what the soul is to the body), its spiritual meaning was, that to the deep pursuit of science we must sacrifice great part of the joy of life; that nobody can be great, and do great things, without giving up to death, so far as he regards his enjoyment of it, much that he would gladly enjoy ; and in that sense I choose to take it. But the earthly old legend will have it, that this mad, high-minded, heroic, murder ous lord did insist upon it with himself that he must murder this poor, loving, and beloved child. " I do not wish to delay upon this horrible matter, and to tell you how he argued it with himself; and how, the more and more he argued it, the more reasonable it seemed, the more absolutely necessary, the more a duty that the terrible sacrifice should be 116 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. made. Here was this great good to be done to mankind, and all that stood in the way of it was one little delicate life, so frail that it was likely enough to be blown out, any day, by the mere rude blast that the rush of life creates, as it streams along, or by any slightest accident; so good and pure, too, that she was quite unfit for this world, and not capable of any happiness in it ; and all that was asked of her was to allow herself to be trans ported to a place where she would be happy, and would find companions fit for her, which he, her only present companion, certainly was not. In fine, he resolved to shed the sweet, fragrant blood of this little violet that loved him so. " Well ; let us hurry over this part of the story as fast as we can. He did slay this pure young girl; he took her into the wood near the house, an old wood that is standing yet, with some of its magnifi cent oaks; and then he plunged a dagger into her heart, after they had had a very tender and loving talk together, in which he had tried to open the matter tenderly to her, and make her understand, that though he was to slay her, it was really for the very reason that he loved her better than any thing else in the world, and that he would far rather die himself, if that would answer the purpose at all. Indeed, he is said to have offered her the alternative of slaying him, and taking upon herself the burthen of indefinite life, and the studies and pursuits by which he meant to benefit mankind. But she, it is said, this noble, pure, loving child, she looked up SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 117 into his face and smiled sadly, and then snatching the dagger from him, she plunged it into her own heart. I cannot tell whether this be true or whether she waited to be killed by him; but this I know, that in the same circumstances I think I should have saved my lover or my friend the pain of killing me. There she lay dead, at any rate, and he buried her in the wood, and returned to the house; and, as it happened, he had set his right foot in her blood, and his shoe was wet in it, and by some miraculous fate, it left a track all along the wood-path, and into the house, and on the stone steps of the threshold, and up into his chamber, all along ; and the servants saw it the next day, and wondered, and whispered, and missed the fair young girl, and looked askance at their lord s right foot, and turned pale, all of them, as death. " And next, the legend says, that Sir Forrester was struck with horror at what he had done, and could not bear the laboratory where he had toiled so long, and was sick to death of the object that he had pursued, and was most miserable, and fled from his old Hall, and was gone full many a day* But all the while he was gone there was the mark of a bloody footstep impressed upon the stone doorstep of the Hall. The track had lain all along through the wood-path, and across the lawn, to the old Gothic door of the Hall ; but the rain, the English rain that is always falling, had come the next day, and washed it all away. The track had lain, too, across the, broad hall, and up the stairs, and into the lord s 118 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. study ; but there it had lain on the rushes that were strewn there, and these the servants had gathered carefully up, and thrown them away, and spread fresh ones. So that it was only on the threshold that the mark remained. " But the legend says, that wherever Sir Forrester went, in his wanderings about the world, he left a bloody track behind him. It was wonderful, and very inconvenient, this phenomenon. When he went into a church, you would see the track up the broad aisle, and a little red puddle in the place where he sat or knelt. Once he went to the king s court, and there being a track up to the very throne, the king frowned upon him, so that he never came there any more. Nobody could tell how it happened; his foot was not seen to bleed, only there was the bloody track behind him, wherever he went ; and he was a horror-stricken man, always looking behind him to see the track, and then hurrying onward, as if to escape his own tracks; but always they followed him as fast. u ln the hall of feasting, there was the bloody track to his chair. The learned men whom he con sulted about this strange difficulty conferred with one another, and with him, who was equal to any of them, and pished and pshawed, and said, 0, there is nothing miraculous in this ; it is only a natural infirmity, which can easily be put an end to, though, perhaps, the stoppage of such an evacuation will cause damage to other parts of the frame. Sir Forrester always said, Stop it, my SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 119 learned brethren, if you can; no matter what the consequences. And they did their best, but without result ; so that he was still compelled to leave his bloody track on their college-rooms and combination- rooms, the same as . elsewhere ; and in street and in wilderness ; yes, and in the battle-field, they say, his track looked freshest and reddest of all. So, at last, finding the notice he attracted inconvenient, this unfortunate lord deemed it best to go back to his own Hall, where, living among faithful old servants born in the family, he could hush the matter up better than elsewhere, and not be stared at continu ally, or, glancing round, see people holding up their hands in terror at seeing a bloody track behind him. And so home he came, and there he saw the bloody track on the doorstep, and dolefully went into the hall, and up the stairs, an old servant ushering him into his chamber, and half a dozen others following behind, gazing, shuddering, pointing with quivering fingers, looking horror-stricken in one another s pale faces, and the moment he had passed, running to get fresh rushes, and to scour the stairs. The next day, Sir Forrester went into the wood, and by the aged oak he found a grave, and on the grave he beheld a beautiful crimson flower ; the most gorgeous and beautiful, surely, that ever grew ; so rich it looked, so full of potent juice. That flower he gathered; and the spirit of his scientific pursuits coming upon him, he knew that this was the flower, produced out of a human life, that was essential to the perfection of his recipe for immortality ; and he made the drink, 120 SEPTIMIUS FKLTON, and drank it, and became immortal in woe and agony, still studying, still growing wiser and more wretched in every age. By and by he vanished from the old Hall, but not by death ; for from generation to gen eration, they say that a bloody track is seen around that house, and sometimes it is tracked up into the chambers, so freshly that you see he must have passed a short time before ; and he grows wiser and wiser, and lonelier and lonelier, from age to age. And this is the legend of the bloody footstep, which I myself have seen at the Hall door. As to the flower, the plant of it continued for several years to grow out of the grave ; and after a while, perhaps a century ago, it was transplanted into the garden of Hall, and preserved with great care, and is so still. And as the family attribute a kind of sacred- ness, or cursedness, to the flower, they can hardly be prevailed upon to give any of the seeds, or allow it to be propagated elsewhere, though the king should send to ask it. It is said, too, that there is still in the family the old lord s recipe for immortality, and that several of his collateral descendants have tried to concoct it, and instil the flower into it, and so give indefinite life; but unsuccessfully, because the seeds of the flower must be planted in a fresh grave of bloody death, in order to make it ef fectual." So ended Sybil s legend ; in which Septimius was struck by a certain analogy to Aunt Keziah s Indian legend, both referring tQ a flower growing out of SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 121 a grave ; and also he did not fail to be impressed with the wild coincidence of this disappearance of an ancestor of the family long ago, and the appear ance, at about the same epoch, of the first known ancestor of his own family, the man with wizard s attributes, with the bloody footstep, and whose sud den disappearance became a myth, under the idea that the Devil carried him away. Yet, on the whole, this wild tradition, doubtless becoming wilder in Sybil s wayward and morbid fancy, had the effect to give him a sense of the fantasticalness of his present pursuit, and that in adopting it, he had strayed into a region long abandoned to superstition, and where the shadows of forgotten dreams go when men are done with them; where past worships are; where great Pan went when he died to the outer world; a limbo into which living men sometimes stray when they think themselves sensiblest and wisest, and whence they do not often find their way back into the real world. Visions of wealth, visions of fame, visions of philanthropy, all visions find room here, and glide about without jostling. When Septimius came to look at the matter in his present mood, the thought occurred to him that he had perhaps got into such a limbo, and that Sybil s legend, which looked so wild, might be all of a piece with his own present life ; for Sybil herself seemed an illusion, and so, most strangely, did Aunt Keziah, whom he had known all his life, with her homely and quaint char acteristics ; the grim doctor, with his brandy and his German pipe, impressed him in the same way ; and 6 122 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. these, altogether, made his homely cottage by the wayside seem an unsubstantial edifice, such as castles in the air are built of, and the ground he trod on unreal ; and that grave, which he knew to contain the decay of a beautiful young man, but a fictitious swell formed by the fantasy of his eyes. All unreal ; all illusion ! Was Rose Garfield a deception too, with her daily beauty, and daily cheerfulness, and daily worth? In short, it was such a moment as I suppose all men feel (at least, I can answer for one), when the real scene and picture of life swims, jars, shakes, seems about to be broken up and dispersed, like the picture in a smooth pond, when we disturb its tranquil mirror by throwing in a stone ; and though the scene soon settles itself, and looks as real as before, a haunting doubt keeps close at hand, as long as we live, asking, "Is it stable 1 Am I sure of it ] Am I certainly not dreaming 1 See ; it trembles again, ready to dissolve." Applying himself with earnest diligence to his at tempt to decipher and interpret the mysterious man uscript, working with his whole mind and strength, Septimius did not fail of some flattering degree of success. A good deal of the manuscript, as has been said, was in an ancient English script, although so uncouth and shapeless were the characters, that it was not easy to resolve them into letters, or to believe that they were anything but arbitrary and dismal blots and scrawls upon the yellow paper ; without meaning, vague, like SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 123 the misty and undefined germs of thought as they ex ist in our minds before clothing themselves in words. These, however, as he concentrated his mind upon them, took distincter shape, like cloudy stars at the power of the telescope, and became sometimes English, sometimes Latin, strangely patched together, as if, so accustomed was the writer to use that language in which all the science of that age was usually embodied, that he really mixed it unconsciously with the ver nacular, or used both indiscriminately. There was some Greek, too, but not much. Then frequently came in the cipher, te the study of which Septimius had applied himself for some time back, with the aid of the books borrowed from the college library, and not without success. Indeed, it appeared to him, on close observation, that it had not been the intention of the writer really to conceal what he had written from any earnest student, but rather to lock it up for safety in a sort of coffer, of which diligence and insight should be the key, and the keen intelligence with which the meaning was sought should be the test of the seeker s being entitled to possess the secret treasure. Amid a great deal of misty stuff, he found the document to consist chiefly, contrary to his suppo sition beforehand, of certain rules of life ; he would have taken it, on a casual inspection, for an essay of counsel, addressed by some great and sagacious man to a youth in whom he felt an interest, so secure and good a doctrine of life was propounded, such excellent maxims there were, such wisdom in all 124 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. matters that came within the writer s purview. It was as much like a digested synopsis of some old philosopher s wise rules of conduct, as anything else. But on closer inspection, Septimius, in his unsophis ticated consideration of this matter, was not so well satisfied. True, everything that was said seemed not discordant with the rules of social morality ; not unwise : it was shrewd, sagacious ; it did not appear to infringe upon the rights of mankind ; but there was something left out, something unsatis factory, what was it 1 There was certainly a cold spell in the document; a magic, not of fire, but of ice ; and Septimius the more exemplified its power, in that he soon began to be insensible of it. It affected him as if it had been written by some greatly wise and worldly-experienced man, like the writer of Ecclesiastes ; for it was full of truth. It was a truth that does not make men better, though perhaps calmer ; and beneath which the buds of happiness curl up like tender leaves in a frost. What was the matter with this document, that the young man s youth perished out of him as he read 1 What icy hand had written it, so that the heart was chilled out of the reader 1 Not that Septimius was sensible of this character ; at least, not long, for as he read, there grew upon him a mood of calm satisfaction, such as he had never felt before. His mind seemed to grow clearer ; his perceptions most acute ; his sense of the reality of things grew to be such, that he felt as if he could touch and handle all his thoughts, feel round about all their outline SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 125 and circumference, and know them with a certainty, as if they were material things. Not that all this was in the document itself; but by studying it so earnestly, and, as it were, creating its meaning anew for himself, out of such illegible materials, he caught the temper of the old writer s mind, after so many ages as that tract had lain in the mouldy and musty manuscript. He was magnetized with him ; "a power ful intellect acted powerfully upon him ; perhaps, even, there was a sort of spell and mystic influence imbued into the paper, and mingled with the yellow ink, that steamed forth by the effort of this young man s earnest rubbing, as it were, and by the action of his mind, applied to it as intently as he pos sibly could ; and even his handling the paper, his bending over it, and breathing upon it, had its effect. It is not in our power, nor in our wish, to produce the original form, nor yet the spirit, of a production which is better lost to the world : because it was the expression of a human intellect originally greatly gifted, and capable of high things, but gone utterly astray, partly by its own subtlety, partly by yielding to the temptations of the lower part of its nature, by yielding the spiritual to a keen sagacity of lower things, until it was quite fallen ; and yet fallen in such a way, that it seemed not only to itself, but to mankind, not fallen at all, but wise and good, and fulfilling all the ends of intellect in such a life as ours, and proving, moreover, that earthly life was good, and all that the development of our nature 126 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. demanded. All this is better forgotten ; better burnt ; better never thought over again ; and all the more, because its aspect was so wise, and even praiseworthy. But what we must preserve of it were certain rules of life and moral diet, not exactly expressed in the document, but which, as it were, on its being duly received into Septimius s mind, were precipitated from the rich solution, and crys tallized into diamonds, and which he found to be the moral dietetics, so to speak, by observing which he was to achieve the end of earthly immortality, whose physical nostrum was given in the recipe which, with the help of Doctor Portsoaken and his Aunt Keziah, he had already pretty satisfactorily made out. " Keep thy heart at seventy throbs in a minute ; all more than that wears away life too quickly. If thy respiration be too quick, think with thyself that thou hast sinned against natural order and moderation. " Drink not wine nor strong drink ; and observe that this rule is worthiest in its symbolic meaning. " Bask daily in the sunshine, and let it rest on thy heart. " Run not ; leap not ; walk at a steady pace, and count thy paces per day. " If thou feelest, at any time, a throb of the heart, pause on the instant, and analyze it ; fix thy mental eye steadfastly upon it, and inquire why such com motion is. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. . 127 " Hate ngt any man nor woman ; be not angry, un less at any time thy blood seem a little cold and tor pid ; cut out all rankling feelings, they are poisonous to thee. If, in thy waking moments, or in thy dreams, thou hast thoughts of strife or unpleasantness with any man, strive quietly with thyself to forget him. " Have no friendships with an imperfect man, with a man in bad health, of violent passions, of any characteristic that evidently disturbs his own life, and so may have disturbing influence on thine. Shake not any man by the hand, because thereby, if there be any evil in the man, it is likely to be com municated to thee. " Kiss no woman if her lips be red ; look not upon her if she be very fair. Touch not her hand if thy finger-tips be found to thrill with hers ever so little. On the whole, shun woman, for she is apt to be a disturbing influence. If thou love her, all is over, and thy whole past and remaining labor and pains will be in vain. " Do some decent degree of good and kindness in thy daily life, for the result is a slight pleasurable sense that will seem to warm and delectate thee with felicitous self-laud ings ; and all that brings thy thoughts to thyself tends to invigorate that central principle by the growth of which thou art to give thyself indefinite life. " Do not any act manifestly evil ; it may grow upon thee, and corrode thee in after-years. Do not any foolish good act ; it may change thy wise habits. 128 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. "Eat no spiced meats. Young chickens, new-fallen lambs, fruits, bread four days old, milk, freshest butter, will make thy fleshy tabernacle youthful. "From sick people, maimed wretches, afflicted people, all of whom show themselves at variance with things as they should be, from people beyond their wits, from people in a melancholic mood, from people in extravagant joy, from teething children, from dead corpses, turn away thine eyes and depart elsewhere. " If beggars haunt thee, let thy servants drive them away, thou withdrawing out of ear-shot. " Crying and sickly children, and teething children, as aforesaid, carefully avoid. Drink the breath of wholesome infants as often as thou conveniently canst, it is good for thy purpose ; also the breath of buxom maids, if thou mayest without undue dis turbance of the flesh, drink it as a morning-draught, as medicine; also the breath of cows as they return from rich pasture at eventide. " If thou seest human poverty, or suffering, and it trouble thee, strive moderately to relieve it, seeing that thus thy mood will be changed to a pleasant self- laudation. "Practise thyself in a certain continual smile, for its tendency will be to compose thy frame of being, and keep thee from too much wear. " Search not to see if thou hast a gray hair ; scruti nize not thy forehead to find a wrinkle \ nor the cor ners of thy eyes to discover if they be corrugated. Such things, being gazed at, daily take heart and grov/. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 129 "Desire nothing too fervently, not even life; yet keep thy hold upon it mightily, quietly, unshakably, for as long as thou really art resolved to live, Death, with all his force, shall have no power against thee. "Walk not beneath tottering ruins, nor houses being put up, nor climb to the top of a mast, nor approach the edge of a precipice, nor stand in the way of the lightning, nor cross a swollen river, nor voyage at sea, nor ride a skittish horse, nor be shot at by an arrow, nor confront a sword, nor put thy self in the way of violent death ; for this is hateful, and breaketh through all wise rules. "Say thy prayers at bedtime, if thou deemest it will give thee quieter sleep; yet let it not trouble thee if thou forgettest them. "Change thy shirt daily; thereby thou castest off yesterday s decay, and imbibest the freshness of the morning s life, which enjoy with smelling to roses, and other healthy and fragrant flowers, and live the longer for it. Roses are made to that end. " Read not great poets ; they stir up thy heart ; and the human heart is a soil which, if deeply stirred, is apt to give out noxious vapors." Such were some of the precepts which Septimiug gathered and reduced to definite form out of this wonderful document ; and he appreciated their wis dom, and saw clearly that they must be absolutely essential to the success of the medicine with which they were connected. In themselves, almost, they seemed capable of prolonging life to an indefinite 6* i 130 SEPTIMUS FELTON. period, so wisely were they conceived, so well did they apply to the causes which almost invariably wear away this poor, short life of men, years and years before even the shattered constitutions that they received from their forefathers need compel them to die. He deemed himself well rewarded for all his labor and pains, should nothing else follow but his reception and proper appreciation of these wise rules; but continually, as he read the manu script, more truths, and, for aught I know, pro- founder and more practical ones, developed them selves; and, indeed, small as the manuscript looked, Septimius thought that he should find a volume as big as the most ponderous folio in the college library too small to contain its wisdom. It seemed to drip and distil with precious fragrant drops, whenever he took it out of his desk ; it diffused wisdom like those vials of perfume which, small as they look, keep diffusing an airy wealth of fragrance for years and years together, scattering their virtue in incal culable volumes of invisible vapor, and yet are none the less in bulk foV all they give; whenever he turned over the yellow leaves, bits of gold, diamonds of good size, precious pearls, seemed to drop out from between them. And now ensued a surprise which, though of a happy kind, was almost too much for him to bear; for it made his heart beat considerably faster than the wise rules of his manuscript prescribed. Going up on his hill-top, as summer wore away (he had not been there for some time), and walking by the little SEPTIMIUS FKLTON. 131 flowery hillock, as so many a hundred times before, what should he see there but a new flower, that during the time he had been poring over the manu script so sedulously had developed itself, blossomed, put forth its petals, bloomed into full perfection, and now, with the dew of the morning upon it, was waiting to offer itself to Septimius 1 He trembled as he looked at it, it was too much almost to bear ; it was so very beautiful, so very stately, so very rich, so very mysterious and wonderful. It was like a person, like a life ! Whence did it come 1 He stood apart from it, gazing in wonder ; tremulously taking in its aspect, and thinking of the legends he had heard from Aunt Keziah and from Sybil Dacy; and how that this flower, like the one that their wild traditions told of, had grown out of a grave, out of a grave in which he had lain one slain by himself. The flower was of the richest crimson, illuminated with a golden centre of a perfect and stately beauty. From the best descriptions that I have been able to gain of it, it was more like a dahlia than any other flower with which I have acquaintance; yet it does not satisfy me to believe it really of that species, for the dahlia is not a flower of any deep characteristics, either lively or malignant, and this flower, which Septimius found so strangely, seems to have had one or the other. If I have rightly understood, it had a fragrance which the dahlia lacks ; and there was something hidden in its centre, a mystery, even in its fullest bloom, not developing itself so openly as the heartless, yet not dishonest, dahlia. I remember 132 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. in England to have seen a flower at Eaton Hall, in Cheshire, in those magnificent gardens, which may have been like this, but my remembrance of it is not sufficiently distinct to enable me to describe it better than by saying that it was crimson, with a gleam of gold in its centre, which yet was partly hidden. It had many petals of great richness. Septimius, bending eagerly over the plant, saw that this was not to be the only flower that it would produce that season; on the contrary, there was to be a great abundance of them, a luxuriant harvest ; as if the crimson offspring of this one plant would cover the whole hillock, as if the dead youth be neath had burst into a resurrection of many crimson flowers ! And in its veiled heart, moreover, there was a mystery like death, although it seemed to cover something bright and golden. Day after day the strange crimson flower bloomed more and more abundantly, until it seemed almost to cover the little hillock, which became a mere bed of it, apparently turning all its capacity of produc tion to this flower; for the other plants, Septimius thought, seemed to shrink away, and give place to it, as if they were unworthy to compare with the richness, glory, and worth of this their queen. The fervent summer burned into it, the dew and the rain ministered to it; the soil was rich, for it was a human heart contributing its juices, a heart in its fiery youth sodden in its own blood, so that passion, unsatisfied loves and longings, ambition that never won its object, tender dreams and throbs, angers, SEPTIMIUS FELTOK. 133 lusts, hates, all concentrated by life, came sprouting in it, and its mysterious being, and streaks and shadows had some meaning in each of them. The two girls, when they next ascended the hill, saw the strange flower, and Rose admired it, and wondered at it, but stood at a distance, without showing an attractipn towards it, rather an unde fined aversion, as if she thought it might be a poison flower; at any rate she would not be inclined to wear it in her bosom. Sybil Dacy examined it closely, touched its leaves, smelt it, looked at it with a botanist s eye, and at last remarked to Rose, "Yes, it grows well in this new soil; methinks it looks like a new human life." " What is the strange flower 1 " asked Rose. "The Sanguinea sanguinissima" said Sybil. It so happened about this time that poor Aunt Keziah, in spite of her constant use of that bitter mixture of hers, was in a very bad state of health. She looked all of an unpleasant yellow, with blood shot eyes ; she complained terribly of her inwards. She had an ugly rheumatic hitch in her motion from place to place, and was heard to mutter many wishes that she had a broomstick to fly about upon, and she used to bind up her head with a dishclout, or what looked to be such, and would sit by the kitchen fire even in the warm days, bent over it, crouching as if she wanted to take the whole fire into her poor cold heart or gizzard, groaning regu larly with each breath a spiteful and resentful groan, 134 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. as if she fought womanfully with her infirmities; and she continually smoked her pipe, and sent out the breath of her complaint visibly in that evil odor ; and sometimes she murmured a little prayer, but somehow or other the evil and bitterness, acridity, pepperiness, of her natural disposition overcame the acquired grace which compelled her to pray, inso much that, after all, you would have thought the poor old woman was cursing with all her rheumatic might. All the time an old, broken-nosed, brown earthen jug, covered with the lid of a black teapot, stood on the edge of the embers, steaming forever, and sometimes bubbling a little, and giving a great puff, as if it were sighing and groaning in sympathy with poor Aunt Keziah, and when it sighed there came a great steam of herby fragrance, not particu larly pleasant, into the kitchen. And ever and anon, half a dozen times it might be, of an afternoon, Aunt Keziah took a certain bottle from a private receptacle of hers, and also a teacup, and likewise a little, old-fashioned silver teaspoon, with which she measured three teaspoonfuls of some spirituous liquor into the teacup, half filled the cup with the hot decoction, drank it off, gave a grunt of content, and for the space of half an hour appeared to find life tolerable. But one day poor Aunt Keziah found herself unable, partly from rheumatism, partly from other sickness or weakness, and partly from dolorous ill- spirits, to keep about any longer, so she betook her self to her bed; and betimes in the forenoon Sep- SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 135 timius heard a tremendous knocking on the floor of her bedchamber, which happened to be the room above his own. He was the only person in or about the house ; so, with great reluctance, he left his studies, which were upon the recipe, in respect to which he was trying to make out the mode of con coction, which was told in such a mysterious way that he could not well tell either the quantity of the ingredients, the mode of trituration, nor in what way their virtue was to be extracted and com bined. Running hastily up stairs, he found Aunt Keziah lying in bed, and groaning with great spite and bitterness; so that, indeed, it seemed not improvi dent ial that such an inimical state of mind towards the human race was accompanied with an almost inability of motion, else it would not be safe to be within a considerable distance of her. " Seppy, you good-for-nothing, are you going to see me lying here, dying, without trying to do any thing for mel" "Dying, Aunt Keziah 1" repeated the young man. " I hope not ! What can I do for you 1 Shall I go for Rose 1 or call a neighbor in 1 or the doctor 1 " " No, no, you fool ! " said the afflicted person. " You can do all that anybody can for me ; and that is to put my mixture on the kitchen fire till it steams, and is just ready to bubble ; then measure three teaspoonfuls or it may be four, as I am very bad of spirit into a teacup, fill it half full, or it may be quite full, for I am very bad, as I said 136 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. afore ; six teaspoonfuls of spirit into a cup of mix ture, and let me have it as soon as may be; and don t break the cup, nor spill the precious mixture, for goodness knows when I can go into the woods to gather any more. Ah me ! ah me ! it s a wicked, miserable world, and I am the most miserable crea ture in it. Be quick, you good-for-nothing, and do as I say ! " Septimius hastened down ; but as he went, a thought came into his head, which it occurred to him might result in great benefit to Aunt Keziah, as well as to the great cause of science and human good, and to the promotion of his own purpose, in the first place. A day or two ago, he had gathered several of the beautiful flowers, and laid them in the fervid sun to dry ; and they now seemed to be in about the state in which the old woman was accus tomed to use her herbs, so far as Septimius had observed. Now, if these flowers were really, as there was so much reason for supposing, the one ingredient that had for hundreds of years been missing out of Aunt Keziah s nostrum, if it was this which that strange Indian sagamore had mingled with his drink with such beneficial effect, why should not Sep timius now restore it, and if it would not make his beloved aunt young again, at least assuage the violent symptoms, and perhaps prolong her valuable life some years, for the solace and delight of her nu merous friends 1 Septimius, like other people of investigating and active minds, had a great tendency to experiment, and so good an opportunity as the SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 137 present, where (perhaps he thought) there was so little to be risked at worst, and so much to be gained, was not to be neglected ; so, without more ado, he stirred three of the crimson flowers into the earthen jug, set it on the edge of the fire, stirred it well, and when it steamed, threw up little scarlet bubbles, and was about to boil, he measured out the spirits, as Aunt Keziah had bidden him, and then filled the teacup. " Ah, this will do her good ; little does she think, poor old thing, what a rare and costly medicine is about to be given her. This will set her on her feet again." The hue was somewhat changed, he thought, from what he had observed of Aunt Keziah s customary decoction ; instead of a turbid yellow, the crimson petals of the flower had tinged it, and made it almost red \ not a brilliant red, however, nor the least inviting in appearance. Septimius smelt it, and thought he could distinguish a little of the rich odor of the flower, but was not sure. He consid ered whether to taste it ; but the horrible flavor of Aunt Keziah s decoction recurred strongly to his remembrance, and he concluded, that were he evi dently at the point of death, he might possibly be bold enough to taste it again ; but that nothing short of the hope of a century s existence, at least, would repay another taste of that fierce and nauseous bitterness. Aunt Keziah loved it ; and as she brewed, so let her drink. He went up stairs, careful not to spill a drop of 138 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. the brimming cup, and approached the old woman s bedside, where she lay, groaning as before, and breaking out into a spiteful croak the moment he was within ear-shot. " You don t care whether I live or die," said she. "You ve been waiting in hopes I shall die, and so save yourself further trouble." " By no means, Aunt Keziah," said Septimius. "Here is the medicine, which I have warmed, and measured out, and mingled, as well as I knew how; and I think it will do you a great deal of good." "Won t you taste it, Seppy, my dear?" said Aunt Keziah, mollified by the praise of her beloved mixture. " Drink first, dear, so that my sick old lips need not taint it. You look pale, Septimius ; it will do you good." " No, Aunt Keziah, I do not need it ; and it were a pity to waste your precious drink," said he. " It does not look quite the right color," said Aunt Keziah, as she took the cup in her hand. "You must have dropped some soot into it." Then as she raised it to her lips, " It does not smell quite right. But, woe s me ! how can I expect anybody but myself to make this precious drink as it should be 1 " She drank it off at two gulps; for she appeared to hurry it oif faster than usual, as if not tempted by the exquisiteness of its flavor to dwell upon it so long. "You have not made it just right, Seppy," said she in a milder tone than before, for she seemed to feel the customary soothing influence of the draught, SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 139 w but you 11 do better the next time. It had a queer taste, methought ; or is it that my mouth is getting out of taste? Hard times it will be for poor Aunt Kezzy, if she s to lose her taste for the medicine that, under Providence, has saved her life for so many years." She gave back the cup to Septimius, after looking a little curiously at the dregs. "It looks like bloodroot, don t it?" said she. " Perhaps it s my own fault after all. I gathered a fresh bunch of the yarbs yesterday afternoon, and put them to steep, and it may be I was a little blind, for it was between daylight and dark, and the moon shone on me before I had finished. I thought how the witches used to gather their poisonous stuff at such times, and what pleasant uses they made of it, but those are sinful thoughts, Seppy, sinful thoughts ! so I 11 say a prayer and try to go to sleep. I feel very noddy all at once." Septimius drew the bedclothes up about her shoulders, for she complained of being very chilly, and, carefully putting her stick within reach, went down to his own room, and resumed his studies, trying to make out from those aged hieroglyphics, to which he was now so well accustomed, what was the precise method of making the elixir of immor tality. Sometimes, as men in deep thought do, he rose from his chair, and walked to and fro, the four or five steps or so, that conveyed him from end to end of his little room. At one of these times he chanced to look in the little looking-glass that hung 140 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. between the windows, and was startled at the pale ness of his face. It was quite white, indeed. Sep- timius was not in the least a foppish young man ; careless he was in dress, though often his apparel took an unsought picturesqueness that set off his slender, agile figure, perhaps from some quality of spontaneous arrangement that he had inherited from his Indian ancestry. Yet many women might have found a charm in that dark, thoughtful face, with its hidden fire and energy, although Septimius never thought of its being handsome, and seldom looked at it. Yet now he was drawn to it by seeing how strangely white it was, and, gazing at it, he observed that since he considered it last, a very deep furrow, or corrugation, or fissure, it might almost be called, had indented his brow, rising from the commencement of his nose towards the centre of the forehead. And he knew it was his brooding thought, his fierce, hard determination, his intense concentrativeness for so many months, that had been digging that furrow ; and it must prove indeed a potent specific of the life- water that would smooth that away, and restore him all the youth and elasticity that he had buried in that profound grave. But why was he so pale 1 He could have supposed himself startled by some ghastly thing that he had just seen ; by a corpse in the next room, for in stance ; or else by the foreboding that one would soon be there ; but yet he was conscious of no tremor in his frame, no terror in his heart ; as why should there be any? Feeling his own pulse, he SEPTIMIUS FELTON. HI found the strong, regular beat that should be there. He was not ill, nor affrighted ; not expectant of any pain. Then why so ghastly pale 1 And why, more over, Septimius, did you listen so earnestly for any sound in Aunt Keziah s chamber 1 Why did you creep on tiptoe, once, twice, three times, up to the old woman s chamber, and put your ear to the key hole, and listen breathlessly ? Well ; it must have been that he was sub-conscious tha-t he was trying a bold experiment, and that he had taken this poor old woman to be the medium of it, in the hope, of course, that it would turn out well; yet with other views than her interest in the matter. What was the harm of that 1 Medical men, no doubt, are always doing so, and he was a medical man for the time. Then why was he so pale 1 He sat down and fell into a revery, which perhaps was partly suggested by that chief furrow which he had seen, and which we have spoken of, in his brow. He considered whether there was anything in this pursuit of his that used up life particularly fast ; so that perhaps, unless he were successful soon, he should be incapable of renewal ; for, looking within himself, and considering his mode of being, he had a singular fancy that his heart was gradually drying up, and that he must continue to get some moisture for it, or else it would soon be like a withered leaf. Supposing his pursuit were vain, what a waste he was making of that little treasure of golden days, which was his all ! Could this be called life, which he was leading now 1 How unlike that of other young men ! 14:2 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. How unlike that of Robert Hagburn, for example^. There had come news yesterday of his having per formed a gallant part in the battle of Monmouth, and being promoted to be a captain for his brave conduct. Without thinking of long life, he really lived in heroic actions and emotions ; he got much life in a little, and did not fear to sacrifice a lifetime of torpid breaths, if necessary, to the ecstasy of a glorious death ! [It appears from a written sketch by the author of this story, that he changed his first plan of making Septimius and Rose lovers, and she was to be represented as his half-sister, and in the copy for publication tJiis alteration would have been made. ED.] And then Robert loved, too, loved his sister Rose, and felt, doubtless, an immortality in that passion. Why could not Septimius love too 1 It was for bidden ! Well, no matter ; whom could he have loved*? Who, in all this world, would have been suited to his secret, brooding heart, that he could have let her into its mysterious chambers, and walked with her from one cavernous gloom to another, and said, " Here are my treasures. I make thee mistress of all these ; with all these goods I thee endow." And then, revealing to her his great secret and purpose of gaining immortal life, have said : " This shall be thine, too. Thou shalt share with me. We will walk along the endless path together, and keep one another s hearts warm, and so be content to live." Ah, Septimius ! but now you are getting beyond those rules of yours, which, cold as they are, have SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 143 been drawn out of a subtle philosophy, and might, were it possible to follow them out, suffice to do all that you ask of them ; but if you break them, you do it at the peril of your earthly immortality. Each warmer and quicker throb of the heart wears away so much of life. The passions, the affections, are a wine not to be indulged in. Love, above all, being in its essence an immortal thing, cannot be long contained in an earthly body, but would wear it out with its own secret power, softly invigorating as it seems. You must be cold, therefore, Septimius ; you must not even earnestly and passionately desire this immortality that seems so necessary to you. Else the very wish will prevent the possibility of its fulfilment. By and by, to call him out of these rhapsodies, came Rose home ; and finding the kitchen hearth cold, and Aunt Keziah missing, and no dinner by the fire, which was smouldering, nothing but the portentous earthen jug, which fumed, and sent out long, ill-flavored sighs, she tapped at Septimius s door, and asked him what was the matter. " Aunt Keziah has had an ill turn," said Septimius, " and has gone to bed." " Poor auntie ! " said Rose, with her quick sym pathy. " I will this moment run up and see if she needs anything." "No, Rose," said Septimius, "she has doubtless gone to sleep, and will awake as well as usual. It would displease her much were you to miss your afternoon school; so you had better set the table 144 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. with whatever there is ]eft of yesterday s dinner, and leave me to take care of auntie." "Well," said Rose, "she loves you best; but if she be really ill, I shall give up my school and nurse her." "No doubt," said Septimius, "she will be about the house again to-morrow." So Rose ate her frugal dinner (consisting chiefly of purslain, and some other garden herbs, which her thrifty aunt had prepared for boiling), and went away as usual to her school; for Aunt Keziah, as aforesaid, had never encouraged the tender ministra tions of Rose, whose orderly, womanly character, with its well-defined orb of daily and civilized duties, had always appeared to strike her as tame; and she once said to her, "You are no squaw, child, and you 11 never make a witch." Nor would she even so much as let Rose put her tea to steep, or do any thing whatever for herself personally ; though, cer tainly, she was not backward in requiring of her a due share of labor for the general housekeeping. Septimius was sitting in his room, as the afternoon wore away; because, for some reason or other, or quite as likely, for no reason at all, he did not air himself and his thoughts, as usual, on the hill; so he was sitting musing, thinking, looking into his mysterious manuscript, when he heard Aunt Keziah moving in the chamber above. First she seemed to rattle a chair ; then she began a slow, regular beat with the stick which Septimius had left by her bed side, and which startled him strangely, so that, SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 145 indeed, his heart beat faster than the five-and-seventy throbs to which he was restricted by the wise rules that he had digested. So he ran ^hastily up stairs, and behold, Aunt Keziah was sitting up in bed, looking very wild, so wild, that you would have thought she was going to fly up chimney the next minute ; her gray hair all dishevelled, her eyes star ing, her hands clutching forward, while she gave a sort of howl, what with pain and agitation. " Seppy ! Seppy ! " said she, " Seppy, my darling ! are you quite sure you remember how to make that precious drink 1 " "Quite well, Aunt Keziah," said Septimius, in wardly much alarmed by her aspect, but preserving a true Indian composure of outward mien. " I wrote it down, and could say it by heart besides. Shall I make you a fresh pot of it ? for I have thrown away the other." " That was well, Seppy," said the poor old woman, " for there is something wrong about it ; but I want no more, for, Seppy dear, I am going fast out of this world, where you and that precious drink were my only treasures and comforts. I wanted to know if you remembered the recipe ; it is all I have to leave you, and the more you drink of it, Seppy, the better. Only see to make it right ! " "Dear auntie, what can I do for you?" said Sep timius, in much consternation, but still calm. "Let me run for the doctor, for the neighbors 1 something must be done ! " The old woman contorted herself as if there were 7 . j 146 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. a fearful time in her insides; and grinned, and twisted the yellow ugliness of her face, and groaned, and howled ; and yet there was a tough and fierce kind of endurance with which she fought with her anguish, and would not yield to it a jot, though she allowed herself the relief of shrieking savagely at it, much more like a defiance than a cry for mercy. * No doctor ! no woman ! " said she ; " if my drink could not save me, what would a doctor s foolish pills and powders do ? And a woman ! If old Martha Denton, the witch, were alive, I would be glad to see her. But other women ! Pah ! Ah ! Ai ! Oh ! Phew ! Ah, Seppy, what a mercy it would be now if I could set to and blaspheme a bit, and shake my fist at the sky ! But I m a Christian woman, Seppy, a Christian woman ! " "Shall I send for the minister, Aunt Keziah?" asked Septimius. " He is a good man, and a wise one." "No minister for me, Seppy," said Aunt Keziah, howling as if somebody were choking her. "He may be a good man and a wise one, but he s not wise enough to know the way to my heart, and never a man as was ! Eh, Seppy, I m a Christian woman, but I m not like other Christian women ; and I m glad I m going away from this stupid world. I ve not been a bad woman, and I deserve credit for it, for it would have suited me a great deal better to be bad. 0, what a delightful time a witch must have had, starting off up chimney on her broomstick at midnight, and looking down from aloft in the sky on the sleeping village far below, SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 147 with its steeple pointing up at her, so that she might touch the golden weathercock ! You, meanwhile, in such an ecstasy, and all below you the dull, inno cent, sober humankind; the wife sleeping by her husband, or mother by her child, squalling with wind in its stomach ; the goodman driving up his cattle and his plough, all so innocent, all so stupid, with their dull days just alike, one after another. And you up in the air, sweeping away to some nook in the forest ! Ha ! What s that 1 A wizard ! Ha ! ha ! Known below as a deacon ! There is Goody Chickering ! How quietly she sent the young people to bed after prayers ! There is an Indian ; there a nigger ; they all have equal rights and privileges at a witch-meeting. Phew ! the wind blows cold up here ! Why does not the Black Man have the meeting at his own kitchen hearth 1 Ho ! ho ! dear me ! But I m a Christian woman and no witch ; but those must have been gallant times ! " Doubtless it was a partial wandering of the mind that took the poor old woman away on this old-witch flight ; and it was very curious and pitiful to witness the compunction with which she returned to herself and took herself to task for the preference which, in her wild nature, she could not help giving to harum- scarum wickedness over tame goodness. Now she tried to compose herself, and talk reasonably and godly. " Ah, Septimius, my dear child, never give way to temptation, nor consent to be a wizard, though the Black Man persuade you ever so hard. I know he will 148 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. try. He has tempted me, but I never yielded, never gave him his will ; and never do you, my boy, though you, with your dark complexion, and your brooding brow, and your eye veiled, only when it suddenly looks out with a flash of fire in it, are the sort of man he seeks most, and that afterward serves him. But don t do it, Septimius. But if you could be an Indian, me- thinks it would be better than this tame life we lead. T would have been better for me, at all events. 0, how pleasant t would have been to spend my life wan dering in the woods, smelling the pines and the hemlock all day, and fresh things of all kinds, and no kitchen work to do, not to rake up the fire, nor sweep the room, nor make the beds, but to sleep on fresh boughs in a wigwam, with the leaves still on the branches that made the roof! And then to see the deer brought in by the red hunter, and the blood streaming from the arrow-dart ! Ah ! and the fight too ! and the scalping ! and, perhaps, a woman might creep into the battle, and steal the wounded enemy away of her tribe and scalp him, and be praised for it ! Seppy, how I hate the thought of the dull life women lead ! A white woman s life is so dull ! Thank Heaven, I m done with it ! If I m ever to live again, may I be whole Indian, please my Maker ! " After this goodly outburst, Aunt Keziah lay quietly for a few moments, and her skinny claws being clasped together, and her yellow visage grinning, as pious an aspect as was attainable try her harsh and pain- distorted features, Septimius perceived that she was SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 149 in prayer. And so it proved by what followed, for the old woman turned to him with a grim tenderness on her face, and stretched out her hand to be taken in his own. He clasped the bony talon in both his hands. " Seppy, my dear, I feel a great peace, and I don t think there is so very much to trouble me in the other world. It won t be all house-work, and keeping decent, and doing like other people there. I suppose I need n t expect to ride on a broomstick, that would be wrong in any kind of a world, but there may be woods to wander in, and a pipe to smoke in the air of heaven ; trees to hear the wind in, and to smell of, and all such natural, happy things ; and by and by I shall hope to see you there, Seppy, my darling boy ! Come by and by ; t is n t worth your while to live forever, even if you should find out what s want ing in the drink I ve taught you. I can see a little way into the next world now, and I see it to be far better than this heavy and wretched old place. You 11 die when your time comes ; won t you, Seppy, my darling 1 " " Yes, dear auntie, when my time comes," said Septimius. "Very likely I shall want to live no longer by that time." "Likely not," said the old woman. "I m sure I don t. It is like going to sleep on my mother s breast to die. So good night, dear Seppy ! " " Good night, and God bless you, aunty ! " said Septimius, with a gush of tears blinding him, spite of his Indian nature. 150 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. The old woman composed herself, and lay quite still and decorous for a short time ; then, rousing herself a little, " Septimius," said she, " is there just a little drop of my drink left ? Not that I want to live any longer, but if I could sip ever so little, I feel as if I should step into the other world quite cheery, with it warm in my heart, and not feel shy and bashful at going among strangers." " Not one drop, auntie." " Ah, well, no matter ! It was not quite right, that last cup. It had a queer taste. What could you have put into it, Seppy, darling ? But no matter, no matter ! It s a precious stuff, if you make it right. Don t forget the herbs, Septimius. Something wrong had certainly got into it." These, except for some murmurings, some groanings and unintelligible whisperings, were the last utter ances of poor Aunt Keziah, who did not live a great while longer, and at last passed away in a great sigh, like a gust of wind among the trees, she having just before stretched out her hand again and grasped that of Septimius ; and he sat watching her and gazing at her, wondering, and horrified, touched, shocked by death, of which he had so unusual a terror, and by the death of this creature especially, with whom he felt a sympathy that did not exist with any other per son now living. So long did he sit, holding her hand, that at last he was conscious that it was growing cold within his own, and that the stiffening fingers clutched him, as if they were disposed to keep their hold, and not forego the tie that had been so peculiar. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 151 Then rushing hastily forth, he told the nearest available neighbor, who was Robert Hagburn s moth er ; and she summoned some of her gossips, and came to the house, and took poor Aunt Keziah in charge. They talked of her with no great respect, I fear, nor much sorrow, nor sense that the community would suffer any great deprivation in her loss ; for, in their view, she was a dram-drinking, pipe-smoking, cross- grained old maid, and, as some thought, a witch; and, at any rate, with too much of the Indian blood in her to be of much use ; and they hoped that now Rose Garfield would have a pleasanter life, and Septimius study to be a minister, and all things go well, and the place be cheerfuller. They found Aunt Keziah s bot tle in the cupboard, and tasted and smelt of it. " Good West Indjy as ever I tasted," said Mrs. Hagburn ; " and there stands her broken pitcher, on the hearth. Ah, empty ! I never could bring my mind to taste it ; but now I m sorry I never did, for I suppose nobody in the world can make any more of it." Septimius, meanwhile, had betaken himself to the hill-top, which was his place of refuge on all occa sions when the house seemed too stifled to contain him ; and there he walked to and fro, with a certain kind of calmness and indifference that he wondered at ; for there is hardly anything in this world so strange as the quiet surface that spreads over a man s mind in his greatest emergencies; so that he deems himself perfectly quiet, and upbraids himself with not feeling anything, when indeed he is passion- 152 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. stirred. As Septimius walked to and fro, he looked at the rich crimson flowers, which seemed to be blooming in greater profusion and luxuriance than ever before. He had made an experiment with these flowers, and he was curious to know whether that experiment had been the cause of Aunt Keziah s death. Not that he felt any remorse therefor, in any case, or believed himself to have committed a crime, having really intended and desired nothing but good. I suppose such things (and he must be a lucky physician, methinks, who has no such mis chief within his own experience) never weigh with deadly weight on any man s conscience. Something must be risked in the cause of science, and in des perate cases something must be risked for the patient s self. Septimius, much as he loved life, would not have hesitated to put his own life to the same risk that he had imposed on Aunt Keziah ; or if he did hesitate, it would have been only because, if the experiment turned out disastrously in his own person, he would not be in a position to make another and more successful trial; whereas, by trying it on oth ers, the man of science still reserves himself for new efforts, and does not put all the hopes of the world, so far as involved in his success, on one cast of the die. By and by he met Sybil Dacy, who had ascended the hill, as was usual with her, at sunset, and came towards him, gazing earnestly in his face. " They tell me poor Aunt Keziah is no more," said she. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 153 " She is dead," said Septimius. " The flower is a very famous medicine," said the girl, " but everything depends on its being applied in the proper way." "Do you know the way, then 1 ?" asked Septim ius. "No; you should ask Doctor Portsoaken about that," said Sybil. Doctor Portsoaken! And so he should consult him. That eminent chymist and scientific man had evidently heard of the recipe, and at all events would be acquainted with the best methods of getting the virtues out of flowers and herbs, some of which, Septimius had read enough to know, were poison in one phase and shape of preparation, and possessed of richest virtues in others; their poison, as one may say, serving as a dark and terrible safeguard, which Providence has set to watch over their preciousness ; even as a dragon, or some wild and fiendish spectre, is set to watch and keep hidden gold and heaped-up diamonds. A dragon always waits on everything that is very good. And what would deserve the watch and ward of danger of a dragon, or something more fatal than a dragon, if not this treasure of which Septimius was in quest, and the discovery and pos~ session of which would enable him to break down one of the strongest barriers of nature 1 It ought to be death, he acknowledged it, to attempt such a thing ; for how changed would be life if he should succeed ; how necessary it was that mankind should be de fended from such attempts on the general rule on 154 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. the part of all but him. How could Death be spared 1 then the sire would live forever, and the heir never come to his inheritance, and so he would at once hate his own father, from the perception that he would never be out of his way. Then the same class of powerful minds would always rule the state, and there would never be a change of policy. [Here several pages are missing. ED.] Through . such scenes Septimius sought out the direction that Doctor Portsoaken had given him, and came to the door of a house in the olden part of the town. The Boston of those days had very much the aspect of provincial towns in England, such as may still be seen there, while our own city has under gone such wonderful changes that little likeness to what our ancestors made it can now be found. The streets, crooked and narrow; the houses, many- gabled, projecting, with latticed windows and dia mond panes ; without sidewalks ; with rough pave ments. Septimius knocked loudly at the door, nor had long to wait before a serving-maid appeared, who seemed to be of English nativity ; and in reply to his request for Doctor Portsoaken bade him come in, and led him up a staircase with broad landing- places ; then tapped at the door of a room, and was responded to by a gruff voice saying, " Come in ! " The woman held the door open, and Septimius saw the veritable Doctor Portsoaken in an old, faded morning-gown, and with a nightcap on his head, his SEPIIMIUS FELTON. 155 German pipe in his mouth, and a brandy bottle, to the best of our belief, on the table by his side. "Come in, come in," said the gruff doctor, nodding to Septimius. "I remember you. Come in, man, and tell me your business." Septimius did come in, but was so struck by the aspect of Doctor Portsoaken s apartment, and his gown, that he did not immediately tell his business. In the first place, everything looked very dusty and dirty, so that evidently no woman had ever been admitted into this sanctity of a place ; a fact made all the more evident by the abundance of spiders, who had spun their webs about the walls and ceiling in the wildest apparent confusion, though doubtless each individual spider knew the cordage which he had lengthened out of his own miraculous bowels. But it was really strange. They had festooned their cordage on whatever was stationary in the room, making a sort of gray, dusky tapestry, that waved portentously in the breeze, and napped, heavy and dismal, each with its spider in the centre of his own system. And what was most marvellous was a spider over the doctor s head; a spider, I think of some South American breed, with a circumference of its many legs as big, unless I am misinformed, as a teacup, and with a body in the midst as large as a dollar; giving the spectator horrible qualms as to what would be the consequence if this spider should be crushed, and, at the same time, suggesting the poisonous danger of suffering such a monster to live. The monster, however, sat in the midst of 156 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. the stalwart cordage of his web, right over the doc tor s head ; and he looked, with all those compli cated lines, like the symbol of a conjurer or crafty politician in the midst of the complexity of his scheme ; and Septimius wondered if he were not the type of Doctor Portsoaken himself, who, fat and bloated as the spider, seemed to be the centre of some dark contrivance. And could it be that poor Septimius was typified by the fascinated fly, doomed to be entangled by the web? " Good day to you," said the gruff doctor, taking his pipe from his mouth. "Here I am, with my brother spiders, in the midst of my web. I told you, you remember, the wonderful efficacy which I had discovered in spiders webs ; and this is my laboratory, where I have hundreds of workmen con cocting my panacea for me. Is it not a lovely sight ? " " A wonderful one, at least," said Septimius. "That one above your head, the monster, is calcu lated to give a very favorable idea of your theory. What a quantity of poison there must be in him ! " " Poison, do you call it 1 " quoth the grim doctor. " That s entirely as it may be used. Doubtless his bite would send a man to kingdom come ; but, on the other hand, no one need want a better life-line than that fellow s web. He and I are firm friends, and I believe he would know my enemies by instinct. But come, sit down, and take a glass of brandy. No] Well, I ll drink it for you. And how is the old aunt yonder, with her infernal nostrum, the bitter- SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 157 ness and nauseousness of which my poor stomach has not yet forgotten 1 " " My Aunt Keziah is no more," said Septimius. " No more ! Well, I trust in heaven she has carried her secret with her," said the doctor. " If anything could comfort you for her loss, it would be that. But what brings you to Boston ? " " Only a dried flower or two," said Septimius, pro ducing some specimens of the strange growth of the grave. " I want you to tell me about them." The naturalist took the flowers in his hand, one of which had the root appended, and examined them with great minuteness and^ some surprise; two or three times looking in Septimius s face with a puzzled and inquiring air ; then examined them again. "Do you tell me," said he, "that the plant has been found indigenous in this country, and in your part of it ] And in what locality 1 " " Indigenous, so far as I know," answered Septimius. " As to the locality," - he hesitated a little, " it is on a small hillock, scarcely bigger than a molehill, on the hill-top behind my house." The naturalist looked steadfastly at him with red, burning eyes, under his deep, impending, shaggy brows ; then again at the flower. " Flower, do you call it ] " said he, after a re-exami nation. " This is no flower, though it so closely resem bles one, and a beautiful one, yes, most beautiful. But it is no flower. It is a certain very rare fungus, so rare as almost to be thought fabulous ; and there are the strangest superstitions, coming down 158 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. from ancient times, as to the mode of production. What sort of manure had been put into that hillock ? Was it merely dried leaves, the refuse of the forest, or something else ] " Septimius hesitated a little ; but there was no reason why he should not disclose the truth, as much of it as Doctor Portsoaken cared to know. " The hillock where it grew," answered he, " was a grave." " A grave ! Strange ! strange ! " quoth Doctor Portsoaken. " Now these old superstitions sometimes prove to have a germ of truth in them, which some philosopher has doubtless long ago, in forgotten ages, discovered and made known ; but in process of time his learned memory passes away, but the truth, undiscovered, survives him, and the people get hold of it, and make it the nucleus of all sorts of folly. So it grew out of a grave ! Yes, yes ; and probably it would have grown out of any other dead flesh, as well as that of a human being ; a dog would have answered the purpose as well as a man. You must know that the seeds of fungi are scattered so universally over the world that, only comply with the conditions, and you will produce them everywhere. Prepare the bed it loves, and a mushroom will spring up spontaneously, an excellent food, like manna from heaven. So superstition says, kill your deadliest ene my, and plant him, and he will come up in a delicious fungus, which I presume to be this ; steep him, or distil him, and he will make an elixir of life for you. I suppose there is some foolish symbolism or other about SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 159 the matter; but the fact I affirm to be nonsense. Dead flesh under some certain conditions of rain and sunshine, not at present ascertained by science, will produce the fungus, whether the manure be friend, or foe, or cattle." " And as to its medical efficacy 1 " asked Septimius. " That may be great for aught I know," said Port- soaken ; " but I am content with my cobwebs. You may seek it out for yourself. But if the poor fellow lost his life in the supposition that he might be a use ful ingredient in a recipe, you are rather an unscrupu lous practitioner." " The person whose mortal relics fill that grave," said Septimius, " was no enemy of mine (no private enemy, I mean, though he stood among the enemies of my country), nor had I anything to gain by his death. I strove to avoid aiming at his life, but he compelled me." " Many a chance shot brings down the bird," said Doctor Portsoaken. " You say you had no interest in his death. We shall see that in the end." Septimius did not try to follow the conversation among the mysterious hints with which the doctor chose to involve it ; but he now sought to gain some information from him as to the mode of preparing the recipe, and whether he thought it would be most efficacious as a decoction, or as a distillation. The learned chemist supported most decidedly the latter opinion, and showed Septimius how he might make for himself a simpler apparatus, with no better aids than Aunt Keziah s teakettle, and one or two trifling things, 160 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. which the doctor himself supplied, by which all might be done with every necessary scrupulousness. " Let me look again at the formula," said he* " There are a good many minute directions that appear trifling, but it is not safe to neglect any minutiae in the preparation of an affair like this ; because, as it is all mysterious and unknown ground together, we cannot tell which may be the important and efficacious part. For instance, when all else is done, the recipe is to be exposed seven days to the sun at noon. That does not look very important, but it may be. Then again, Steep it in moonlight dur ing the second quarter. That s all moonshine, one would think ; but there s no saying. It is singular, with such preciseness, that no distinct directions are given whether to infuse, decoct, distil, or what other way ; but my advice is to distil." " I will do it," said Septimius, " and not a direction shall be neglected." "I shall be curious to know the result," said Doctor Portsoaken, " and am glad to see the zeal with which you enter into the matter. A very valuable medicine may be recovered to science through your agency, and you may make your for tune by it ; though, for my part, I prefer to trust to my cobwebs. This spider, now, is not he a lovely object] See, he is quite capable of knowledge and affection." There seemed, in fact, to be some mode of commu nication between the doctor and his spider, for on some sign given by the former, imperceptible to SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 161 Septimius, the many-legged monster let himself down by a cord, which he extemporized out of his own bowels, and came dangling his huge bulk down before his master s face, while the latter lavished many epithets of endearment upon him, ludicrous, and not without horror, as applied to such a hideous produc tion of nature. " I assure you," said Doctor Portsoaken, " I run some risk from my intimacy with this lovely jewel, and if I behave not all the more prudently, your countrymen will hang me for a wizard, and annihi late this precious spider as my familiar. There would be a loss to the world j not small in my own case, but enormous in the case of the spider. Loot at him now, and see if the mere uninstructed obser vation does not discover a wonderful value in him." In truth, when looked at closely, the spider really showed that a care and art had been bestowed upon his make, not merely as regards curiosity, but abso lute beauty, that seemed to indicate that he must be a rather distinguished creature in the view of Provi dence ; so variegated was he with a thousand minute spots, spots of color, glorious radiance, and such a brilliance was attained by many conglomerated bril liancies; and it was very strange that all this care was bestowed on a creature that, probably, had never been carefully considered except by the two pair of eyes that were now upon it ; and that, in spite of its beauty and magnificence, could only be looked at with an effort to overcome the mysterious repulsive- ness of its presence ; for all the time that Septimius 162 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. looked and admired, he still hated the thing, and thought it wrong that it was ever born, and wished that it could be annihilated. Whether the spider was conscious of the wish, we are unable to say ; but cer tainly Septimius felt as if he were hostile to him, and had a mind to sting him; and, in faot, Doctor Portsoaken seemed of the same opinion. " Aha, my friend," said he, " I would advise you not to come too near Orontes ! He is a lovely beast, it is true; but in a certain recess of this splendid form of his he keeps a modest supply of a certain potent and piercing poison, which would produce a wonderful effect on any flesh to which he chose to apply it. A powerful fellow is Orontes ; and he has a great sense of his own dignity and importance, and will not allow it to be imposed on." Septimius moved from the vicinity of the spider, who, in fact, retreated, by climbing up his cord, and ensconced himself in the middle of his web, where he remained waiting for his prey. Septimius won dered whether the doctor were symbolized by the spider, and was likewise waiting in the middle of his web for his prey. As he saw no way, however, in which the doctor could make a profit out of himself, or how he could be victimized, the thought did not much disturb his equanimity. He was about to take his leave, but the doctor, in a derisive kind of way, bade him sit still, for he purposed keeping him as a guest, that night, at least. " I owe you a dinner," said he, " and will pay it with a supper and knowledge; and before we part SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 163 I have certain inquiries to make, of which you may not at first see the object, but yet are not quite pur poseless. My familiar, up aloft there, has whispered me something about you, and I rely greatly on his intimations." Septirnius, who was sufficiently common-sensible, and invulnerable to superstitious influences on every point except that to which he had surrendered himself, was easily prevailed upon to stay ; for he found the sin gular, charlatanic, mysterious lore of the man curious, and he had enough of real science to at least make him an object of interest to one who knew nothing of the matter; and Septimius s acuteness, too, was piqued in trying to make out what manner of man he really was, and how much in him was genuine science and self-belief, and how much quackery and preten sion and conscious empiricism. So he stayed, and supped with the doctor at a table heaped more bounti fully, and with rarer dainties, than Septimius had ever before conceived of; and in his simpler cogni zance, heretofore, of eating merely to live, he could not but wonder to see a man of thought caring to eat of more than one dish, so that most of the meal, on his part, was spent in seeing the doctor feed and hearing him discourse upon his food. " If man lived only to eat," quoth the doctor, " one life would not suffice, not merely to exhaust the pleasure of it, but even to get the rudiments of it." When this important business was over, the doctor and his guest sat down again in his laboratory, where the former took care to have his usual companion, the 164 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. black bottle, at his elbow, and filled his pipe, and seemed to feel a certain sullen, genial, fierce, brutal, kindly mood enough, and looked at Septimius with a sort of friendship, as if he had as lief shake hands with him as knock him down. " Now for a talk about business," said he. Septimius thought, however, that the doctor s talk began, at least, at a sufficient remoteness from any practical business ; for he began to question about his remote ancestry, what he knew, or what record had been preserved, of the first emigrant from England; whence, from what shire or part of England, that ancestor had come ; whether there were any memorial of any kind remaining of him, any letters, or written documents, wills, deeds, or other legal papers ; in short, all about him. Septimius could not satisfactorily see whether these inquiries were made with any definite purpose, or from a mere general curiosity to discover how a family of early settlement in America might still be linked with the old country; whether there were any tendrils stretching across the gulf of a hundred and fifty years, by which the American branch of the family was separated from the trunk of the family tree in England. The doctor partly explained this. "You must know," said he, "that the name you bear, Felton, is one formerly of much eminence and repute in my part of England, and, indeed, very recently possessed of wealth and station. I should like to know if you are of that race." Septimius answered with such facts and traditions SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 165 as had come to his knowledge respecting his family history; a sort of history that is quite as liable to be mythical, in its early and distant stages, as that of Rome, and, indeed, seldom goes three or four generations back without getting into a mist really impenetrable, though great, gloomy, and magnificent shapes of men often seem to loom in it, who, if they could be brought close to the naked eye, would turn out as commonplace as the descendants who wonder at and admire them. He remembered Aunt Keziah s legend, and said he had reason to believe that his first ancestor came over at a somewhat earlier date than the first Puritan settlers, and dwelt among the Indians, where (and here the young man cast down his eyes, having the customary American ab horrence for any mixture of blood) he had inter married with the daughter of a sagamore, and suc ceeded to his rule. This might have happened as early as the end of Elizabeth s reign, perhaps later. It was impossible to decide dates on such a matter. There had been a son of this connection, perhaps more than one, but certainly one son, who, on the arrival of the Puritans, was a youth, his father appear ing to have been slain in some outbreak of the tribe, perhaps owing to the jealousy of prominent chiefs, at seeing their natural authority abrogated or absorbed by a man of different race. He slightly alluded to the supernatural attributes that gathered round this predecessor, but in a way to imply that he put no faith in them ; for Septimius s natural keen sense and perception kept him from betraying his weaknesses to 166 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. % the doctor, by the same instinctive and subtle caution with which a madman can so well conceal his infirmity. On the arrival of the Puritans, they had found among the Indians a youth partly of their own blood, able, though imperfectly, to speak their language, having, at least, some early recollections of it, inheriting, also, a share of influence over the tribe on which his father had grafted him. It was natural that they should pay especial attention to this youth, consider it their duty to give him religious instruc tion in the faith of his fathers, and try to use him as a means of influencing his tribe. They did so, but did not succeed in swaying the tribe by his means, their success having been limited to winning the half-Indian from the wild ways of his mother s people, into a certain partial, but decent accommo dation to those of the English. A tendency to civilization was brought out in his character by their rigid training; at least, his savage wildness was broken. He built a house among them, with a good deal of the wigwam, no doubt, in its style of archi tecture, but still a permanent house, near which he established a corn-field, a pumpkin-garden, a melon- patch, and became farmer enough to be entitled to ask the hand of a Puritan maiden. He spent his life, with some few instances of temporary relapse into savage wildness, when he fished in the river Musquehannah, or in Walden, or strayed in the woods, when he should have been planting or hoeing ; but, on the whole, the race had been redeemed from barbarism in his person, and in the succeeding gen- SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 167 orations had been tamed more and more. The second generation had been distinguished in the Indian wars of the provinces, and then intermarried with the stock of a distinguished Puritan divine, by which means Septimius could reckon great and learned men, scholars of old Cambridge, among his ancestry on one side, while on the other it ran up to the early emigrants, who seemed to have been remarkable men, and to that strange wild lineage of Indian chiefs, whose blood was like that of persons not quite human, intermixed with civilized blood. " I wonder," said the doctor, musingly, " whether there are really no documents to ascertain the epoch at which that old first emigrant came over, and whence he came, and precisely from what English family. Often the last heir of some respectable name dies in England, and we say that the family is extinct; whereas, very possibly, it may be abun dantly flourishing in the New World, revived by the rich infusion of new blood in a new soil, instead of growing feebler, heavier, stupider, each year by sticking to an old soil, intermarrying ever and over again with the same respectable families, till it has made common stock of all their vices, weaknesses, madnesses. Have you no documents, I say, no muni ment deed?" "None," said Septimius. " No old furniture, desks, trunks, chests, cabi nets ? " " You must remember," said Septimius, " that my Indian ancestor was not very likely to have brought 168 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. such things out of the forest with him. A wander ing Indian does not carry a chest of papers with him. I do remember, in my childhood, a little old iron-bound chest, or coffer, of which the key was lost, and which my Aunt Keziah used to say came down from her great-great-grandfather. I don t know what has become of it, and my poor old aunt kept it among her own treasures." " Well, my friend, do you hunt up that old coffer, and, just as a matter of curiosity, let me see the contents." "I have other things to do," said Septimius. " Perhaps so," quoth the doctor, " but no other, as it may turn out, of quite so much importance as this. I 11 tell you fairly ; the heir of a great Eng lish house is lately dead, and the estate lies open to any well-sustained, perhaps to any plausible claimant. If it should appear from the records of that family, as I have some reason to suppose, that a member of it, who would now represent the older branch, dis appeared mysteriously and unaccountably, at a date corresponding with what might be ascertained as that of your ancestor s first appearance in this coun try; if any reasonable proof can be brought for ward, on the part of the representatives of that white sagamore, that wizard pow-wow, or however you call him, that he was the disappearing English man, why, a good case is made out. Do you feel no interest in such a prospect V " Very little, I confess," said Septimius. " Very little ! " said the grim doctor, impatiently. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 169 " Do not you see that, if you make good your claim, you establish for yourself a position among the Eng lish aristocracy, and succeed to a noble English estate, an ancient hall, where your forefathers have dwelt since the Conqueror ; splendid gardens, heredi tary woods and parks, to which anything America can show is despicable, all thoroughly cultivated and adorned, with the care and ingenuity of centu ries ; and an income, a month of which would be greater wealth than any of your American ancestors, raking and scraping for his lifetime, has ever got together, as the accumulated result of the toil and penury by which he has sacrificed body and soul 1 " " That strain of Indian blood is in me yet," said Septimius, " and it makes me despise, no, not de spise ; for I can see their desirableness for other peo ple, but it makes me reject for myself what you think so valuable. I do not care for these common aims. I have ambition, but it is for prizes such as other men cannot gain, and do not think of aspiring after. I could not live in the habits of English life, as I conceive it to be, and would not, for my part, be burthen ed with the great estate you speak of. It might answer my purpose for a time. It would suit me well enough to try that mode of life, as well as a hundred others, but only for a time. It is of no permanent importance." " I 11 tell you what it is, young man," said the doctor, testily, "you have something in your brain that makes you talk very foolishly ; and I have partly a suspicion what it is, only I can t think 8 170 SEPTIM1US FELTON. that a fellow who is really gifted with respectable sense, in other directions, should be such a con founded idiot in this." Septimius blushed, but held his peace, and the conversation languished after this ; the doctor grimly smoking his pipe, and by no means increasing the milkiness of his mood by frequent applications to the black bottle, until Septimius intimated that he would like to go to bed. The old woman was sum moned, and ushered him to his chamber. At breakfast, the doctor partially renewed the sub ject which he seemed to consider most important in yesterday s conversation. " My young friend," said he, " I advise you to look in cellar and garret, or wherever you consider the most likely place, for that iron-bound coffer. There may be nothing in it ; it may be full of musty love- letters, or old sermons, or receipted bills of a hundred years ago ; but it may contain what will be worth to you an estate of five thousand pounds a year. It is a pity the old woman with the damnable decoction is gone off. Look it up, I say." " Well, well," said Septimius, abstractedly, " when I can find time." So saying, he took his leave, and retraced his way back to his home. He had not seemed like himself during the time that elapsed since he left it, and it appeared an infinite space that he had lived through and travelled over, and he fancied it hardly possible that he could ever get back again. But now, with every step that he took, he found himself getting mis- SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 171 erably back into the old enchanted land. The mist rose up about him, the pale mist-bow of ghostly prom ise curved before him ; and he trod back again, poor boy, out of the clime of real effort, into the land of his dreams and shadowy enterprise. "How was it," said he, " that I can have been so untrue to my convictions ? Whence came that dark and dull despair that weighed upon me 1 Why did I let the mocking mood which I was conscious of in that brutal, brandy-burnt sceptic have such an influence on me 1 Let him guzzle ! He shall not tempt me from my pursuit, with his lure of an estate and name among those heavy English beef-eaters of whom he is a brother. My destiny is one which kings might envy, and strive in vain to buy with principalities and kingdoms." So he trod on air almost, in the latter parts of his journey, and instead of being wearied, grew more airy with the latter miles that brought him to his wayside home. So now Septimius sat down, and began in earnest his endeavors and experiments to prepare the medi cine, according to the mysterious terms of the recipe. It seemed not possible to do it, so many rebuffs and disappointments did he meet with. No effort would produce a combination answering to the description of the recipe, which propounded a brilliant, gold-colored liquid, clear as the air itself, with a certain fragrance which was peculiar to it, and also, what was the more individual test of the correctness of the mixture, a cer tain coldness of the feeling, a dullness which was de- 172 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. scribed as peculiarly refreshing and invigorating. With all his trials, he produced nothing but turbid results, clouded generally, or lacking something in color, and never that fragrance, and never that coldness which was to be the test of truth. He studied all the books of chemistry which at that period were attainable, a period when, in the world, it was a science far unlike what it has since become ; and when Septimius had no instruction in this country, nor could obtain any beyond the dark, mysterious, charlatanic communica tions of Doctor Portsoaken. So that, in fact, he seemed to be discovering for himself the science through which he was to work. He seemed to do everything that was stated in the recipe, and yet no results came from it ; the liquid that he produced was nauseous to the smell, to taste it he had a horrible repugnance, turbid, nasty, reminding him in most respects of poor Aunt Keziah s elixir ; and it was a body without a soul, and that body dead. And so it went on ; and the poor, half-maddened Septimius began to think that his immortal life was preserved by the mere effort of seeking for it, but was to be spent in the quest, and was therefore to be made an eternity of abortive mis ery. He pored over the document that had so pos sessed him, turning its crabbed meanings every way, trying to get out of it some new light, often tempted to fling it into the fire which he kept under his retort, and let the whole thing go ; but then again, soon ris ing out of that black depth of despair, into a determi nation to do what he had so long striven for. With sucli intense action of mind as he brought to bear on SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 173 this paper, it is wonderful that it was not spiritually distilled ; that its essence did not arise, purified from all alloy of falsehood, from all turbidness of obscurity and ambiguity, and from a pure essence of truth and invigorating motive, if of any it were capable. In this interval, Septimius is said by tradition to have found out many wonderful secrets that were almost beyond the scope of science. It was said that old Aunt Keziah used to come with a coal of fire from un known furnaces, to light his distilling apparatus ; it was said, too, that the ghost of the old lord, whose in genuity had propounded this puzzle for his descend ants, used to come at midnight and strive to explain to him this manuscript ; that the Black Man, too, met him on the hill-top, and promised him an immediate release from his difficulties, provided he would kneel down and worship him, and sign his name in his book, an old, iron-clasped, much-worn volume, which he pro duced from his ample pockets, and showed him in it the names of many a man whose name has become historic, and above whose ashes kept watch an inscrip tion testifying to his virtues and devotion, old autographs, for the Black Man was the original autograph collector. But these, no doubt, were foolish stories, conceived and propagated in chimney-corners, while yet there were chimney-corners and firesides, and smoky flues. There was no truth in such things, I am sure ; the Black Man had changed his tactics, and knew better than to lure the human soul thus to come to him with his musty autograph-book. So Septimius fought with 174 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. his difficulty by himself, as many a beginner in science has done before him ; and to his efforts in this way are popularly attributed many herb-drinks, and some kinds of spruce-beer, and nostrums used for rheuma tism, sore throat, and typhus fever ; but I rather think they all came from Aunt Keziah ; or perhaps, like jokes to Joe Miller, all sorts of quack medicines, flocking at large through the community, are assigned to him or her. The people have a little mistaken the character and purpose of poor Septimius, and remem ber him as a quack doctor, instead of a seeker for a secret, not the less sublime and elevating because it happened to be unattainable. I know not through what medium, or by what means, but it got noised abroad that Septimius was engaged in some mysterious work; and, indeed, his seclusion, his absorption, his indifference to all that was going on in that weary time of war, looked strange enough to indicate that it must be some most impor tant business that engrossed him. On the few occa sions when he came out from his immediate haunts into the village, he had a strange, owl-like appearance, uncombed, unbrushed, his hair long and tangled ; his face, they said, darkened with smoke ; his cheeks pale ; the indentation of his brow deeper than ever before ; Rn earnest, haggard, sulking look ; and so he went hastily along the village street, feeling as if all eyes might find out what he had in his mind from his appearance ; taking by-ways where they were to be found, going long distances through woods and fields, rather than short ones where the way lay through the SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 175 frequented haunts of men. For he shunned the glances of his fellow-men, probably because he had learnt to consider them not as fellows, because he was seeking to withdraw himself from the common bond and destiny, because he felt, too, that on that ac count his fellow-men would consider him as a traitor, an enemy, one who deserted their cause, and tried to withdraw his feeble shoulder from under that great burthen of death which is imposed on all men to bear, and which, if one could escape, each other would feel his load proportionably heavier. With these beings of a moment he had no longer any common cause ; they must go their separate ways, yet apparently the same, they on the broad, dusty, beaten path, that seemed always full, but from which continually they so strange ly vanished into invisibility, no one knowing, nor long inquiring, what had become of them ; he on his lonely path, where he should tread secure, with no trouble but the loneliness which would be none to him. For a little while he would seem to keep them company, but soon they would all drop away, the minister, his accustomed townspeople, Robert Hagburn, Rose, Sybil Dacy, all leaving him in blessed unknownness to adopt new temporary relations, and take a new course. Sometimes, however, the prospect a little chilled him. Could he give them all up, the sweet sister ; the friend of his childhood ; the grave instructor of his youth ; the homely, life-known faces 1 Yes ; there were such rich possibilities in the future : for he would seek out the noblest minds, the deep est hearts in every age, and be the friend of human 176 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. time. Only it might be sweet to have one unchange able companion ; for, unless he strung the pearls and diamonds of life upon one unbroken affection, he sometimes thought that his life would have nothing to give it unity and identity ; and so the longest life would be but an aggregate of insulated frag ments, which would have no relation to one another. And so it would not be one life, but many un connected ones. Unless he could look into the same eyes, through the mornings of future time, opening and blessing him with the fresh gleam of love and ;joy ; unless the same sweet voice could melt his thoughts together; unless some sympathy of a life side by side with his could knit them into one ; looking back upon the same things, looking forward to the same ; the long, thin thread of an individual life, stretching onward and onward, would cease to be visible, cease to be felt, cease, by and by, to have any real bigness in proportion to its length, and so be virtually non-existent, except in the mere incon siderable Now. If a group of chosen friends, chosen out of all the world for their adaptedness, could go on in endless life together, keeping themselves mutu ally warm on the high, desolate way, then none of them need ever sigh to be comforted in the pitiable snuguess of the grave. If one especial soul might be his companion, then how complete the fence of mu tual arms, the warmth of close-pressing breast to breast ! Might there be one ! 0, Sybil Dacy ! Perhaps it could not be. Who but himself could undergo that great trial, and hardship, and self- SEPTIMIUS 1 ELTON. 177 denial, and firm purpose, never wavering, never sink ing for a moment, keeping his grasp on life like one who holds up by main force a sinking and drown ing friend] how could a woman do it ! He must then give up the thought. There was a choice, friendship, and the love of woman, the long life of immortality. There was something heroic and ennobling in choosing the latter. And so he walked with the mysterious girl on the hill-top, and sat down beside her on the grave, which still ceased not to redden, portentously beautiful, with that unnatu ral flower, and they talked together ; and Sep- timius looked on her weird beauty, and often said to himself, "This, too, will pass away; she is not capable of what I am, she is a woman. It must be a manly and courageous and forcible spirit, vastly rich in all three particulars, that has strength enough to live ! Ah, is it surely so 1 There is such a dark sympathy between us, she knows me so well, she touches my inmost so at unawares, that I could al most think I had a companion here. Perhaps not so soon. At the end of centuries I might wed one ; not now." But once he said to Sybil Dacy, "Ah, how sweet it would be sweet for me, at least if this inter course might last forever ! " " That is an awful idea that yu present," said Sybil, with a hardly perceptible, involuntary shudder ; " always on this hill-top, always passing and repassing this little hillock; always smelling these flowers! I always looking at this deep chasm in your brow ; you 178 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. always seeing my bloodless cheek! doing this till these trees crumble away, till perhaps a new forest grew up wherever this white race had planted, and a race of savages again possess the soil. I should not like it. My mission here is but for a short time, and will soon be accomplished, and then I go." " You do not rightly estimate the way in which the long time might be spent," said Septimius. " We would find out a thousand uses of this world, uses and enjoyments which now men never dream of, because the world is just held to their mouths, and then snatched away again, before they have time hardly to taste it, instead of becoming acquainted with the deliciousness of this great world-fruit. But you speak of a mission, and as if you were now in performance of it. Will you not tell me what it is?" " No," said Sybil Dacy, smiling on him. " But one day you shall know what it is, none sooner nor better than you, so much I promise you." "Are we friends]" asked Septimius, somewhat puz zled by her look. "We have an intimate relation to one another," replied Sybil. " And what is it 1 " demanded Septimius. " That will appear hereafter," answered Sybil, again smiling on him. He knew not what to make of this, nor whether to be exalted or depressed ; but, at all events, there seemed to be an accordance, a striking together, a mutual touch of their two natures, as if, somehow or SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 179 other, they were performing the same part of solemn music; so that he felt his soul thrill, and at the same time shudder. Some sort of sympathy there surely was, but of what nature he could not tell ; though often he was impelled to ask himself the same question he asked Sybil, "Are we friends ?" because of a sudden shock and repulsion that came between them, and passed away in a moment ; and there would be Sybil, smiling askance on him. And then he toiled away again at his chemical pursuits; tried to mingle things harmoniously that apparently were not born to be mingled ; discovering a science for himself, and mixing it up with ab surdities that other chemists had long ago flung aside ; but still there would be that turbid aspect, still that lack of fragrance, still that want of the peculiar temperature, that was announced as the test of the matter. Over and over again, he set the crystal vase in the sun, and let it stay there the appointed time, hoping that it would digest in such a manner as to bring about the desired result. One day, as it happened, his eyes fell upon the silver key which he had taken from the breast of the dead young man, and he thought within himself that this might have something to do with the seemingly unattainable success of his pursuit. He remembered, for the first time, the grim doctor s emphatic injunc tion to search for the little iron-bound box of which he had spoken, and which had come down with such legends attached to it ; as, for instance, that it held the Devil s bond with his great-great-grandfather, now 180 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. cancelled by the surrender of the latter s soul ; that it held the golden key of Paradise ; that it was full of old gold, or of the dry leaves of a hundred years ago ; that it had a familiar friend in it, who would be exorcised by the turning of the lock, but would otherwise remain a prisoner till the solid oak of the box mouldered, or the iron rusted away; so that between fear and the loss of the key, this curious old box had remained unopened, till itself was lost. But now Septimius, putting together what Aunt Keziah had said in her dying moments, and what Doc tor Portsoaken had insisted upon, suddenly came to the conclusion that the possession of the old iron box might be of the greatest importance to him. So he set himself at once to think where he had last seen it. Aunt Keziah, of course, had put it away in some safe place or other, either in cellar or garret, no doubt ; so Septimius, in the intervals of his other occupations, devoted several days to the search ; and not to weary the reader with the particulars of the quest for an old box, suffice it to say that he at last found it, amongst various other antique rubbish, in a corner of the garret. It was a very rusty old thing, not more than a foot in length, and half as much in height and breadth ; but most ponderously iron-bound, with bars, and corners, and all sorts of fortification; looking very much like an ancient alms-box, such as are to be seen in the older rural churches of England, and which seem to intimate great distrust of those to whom the funds are committed. Indeed, there might SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 181 be a shrewd suspicion that some ancient church- beadle among Septimius s forefathers, when emigrating from England, had taken the opportunity of bringing the poor-box along with him. On looking close, too, there were rude embellishments on the lid and sides of the box in long-rusted steel, designs such as the Middle Ages were rich in ; a representation of Adam and Eve, or of Satan and a soul, nobody could tell which ; but, at any rate, an illustration of great value and interest. Septimius looked at this ugly, rusty, ponderous old box, so worn and battered with time, and recollected with a scornful smile the legends of which it was the object ; all of which he despised and discredited, just as much as he did that story in the "Arabian Nights," where a demon comes out of a cop per vase, in a cloud of smoke that covers the sea shore ; for he was singularly invulnerable to all modes of superstition, all nonsense, except his own. But that one mode was ever in full force and operation with him. He felt strongly convinced that inside the old box was something that appertained to his destiny ; the key that he had taken from the dead man s breast, had that come down through time, and across the sea, and had a man died to bring and deliver it to him, merely for nothing 1 ? It could not be. He looked at the old, rusty, elaborated lock of the little receptacle. It was much flourished about with what was once polished steel; and certainly, when thus polished, and the steel bright with which it was hooped, defended, and inlaid, it must have 182 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. been a thing fit to appear in any cabinet; though now the oak was worm-eaten as an old coffin, and the rust of the iron came off red on Septimius s fingers, after he had been fumbling at it. He looked at the curious old silver key too, and fancied that he discovered in its elaborate handle some likeness to the ornaments about the box ; at any rate, this he determined was the key of fate, and he was just applying it to the lock, when somebody tapped famil iarly at the door, having opened the outer one, and stepped in with a manly stride. Septimius, inwardly blaspheming, as secluded men are apt to do when any interruption comes, and especially when it comes at some critical moment of projection, left the box as yet unbroached, and said, "Come in." The door opened, and Robert Hagburn entered; looking so tall and stately, that Septimius hardly knew him for the youth with whom he had grown up familiarly. He had on the Revolutionary dress of buff and blue, with decorations that to the initiated eye denoted him an officer, and certainly there was a kind of authority in his look and manner, indicating that heavy responsibilities, critical moments, had edu cated him, and turned the ploughboy into a man. "Is it you?" exclaimed Septimius. "I scarcely knew you. How war has altered you ! " "And I may say, Is it you? for you are much altered likewise, my old friend. Study wears upon you terribly. You will be an old man, at this rate, before you know you are a young one. You will kill yourself, as sure as a gun ! " SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 183 " Do you think so 1 " said Septimius, rather startled, for the queer absurdity of the position struck him, if he should so exhaust and wear himself as to die, just at the moment when he should have found out the secret of everlasting life. " But though I look pale, I am very vigorous. Judging from that scar, slanting down from your temple, you have been nearer death than you now think me, though in another way." "Yes," said Robert Hagburn; "but in hot blood, and for a good cause, who cares for death? And yet I love life; none better, while it lasts, and I love it in all its looks and turns and surprises ; there is so much to be got out of it, in spite of all that people say. Youth is sweet, with its fiery enter prise, and I suppose mature manhood will be just as much so, though in a calmer way, and age, quieter still, will have its own merits; the thing is only to do with Life what we ought, and what is suited to each of its stages ; do all, enjoy all, and I suppose these two rules amount to the same thing. Only catch real earnest hold of life, not play with it, and not defer one part of it for the sake of another, then each part of life will do for us what was intended. People talk of the hardships of military service, of the miseries that we undergo fighting for our country. I have undergone my share, I believe, hard toil in the wilderness, hunger, ex treme weariness, pinching cold, the torture of a wound, peril of death ; and really I have been as happy through it as ever I was at my mother s cosey fireside of a winter s evening. If I had died, 184 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. I doubt not my last moments would have been happy. There is no use of life, but just to find out what is fit for us to do ; and, doing it, it seems to be little matter whether we live or die in it. God does not want our work, but only our willingness to work ; at least, the last seems to answer all his purposes." " This is a comfortable philosophy of yours," said Septimius, rather contemptuously, and yet enviously. " Where did you get it, Robert 1 " " Where *? Nowhere ; it came to me on the march ; and though I can t say that I thought it when the bullets pattered into the snow about me, in those nar row streets of Quebec, yet, I suppose, it was in my mind then ; for, as I tell you, I was very cheerful and contented. And you, Septimius? I never saw such a discontented, unhappy-looking fellow as you are. You have had a harder time in peace than I in war. You have not found what you seek, whatever that may be. Take my advice. Give yourself to the next work that comes to hand. The war offers place to all of us ; we ought to be thankful, the most joyous of all the generations before or after us, since Provi dence gives us such good work to live for, or such a good opportunity to die. It is worth living for, just to have the chance to die so well as a man may in these days. Come, be a soldier. Be a chaplain, since your education lies that way ; and you will find that nobody in peace prays so well as we do, we soldiers ; and you shall not be debarred from fighting, too ; if war is holy work, a priest may lawfully do it, SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 185 as well as pray for it. Come with us, my old friend Septimius, be my comrade, and, whether you live or die, you will thank me for getting you out of the yellow forlornness in which you go on, neither living nor dying." Septimius looked at Robert Hagburn in surprise ; so much was he altered and improved by this brief experience of war, adventure, responsibility, which he had passed through. Not less than the effect pro duced on his loutish, rustic air and deportment, developing his figure, seeming to make him taller, setting free the manly graces that lurked within his awkward frame, not less was the effect on his mind and moral nature, giving freedom of ideas, simple perception of great thoughts, a free natural chivalry ; so that the knight, the Homeric warrior, the hero, seemed to be here, or possible to be here, in the young New England rustic ; and all that history has given, and hearts throbbed and sighed and gloried over, of patriotism and heroic feeling and action, might be repeated, perhaps, in the life and death of this famil iar friend and playmate of his, whom he had valued not over highly, Robert Hagburn. He had merely followed out his natural heart, boldly and singly, doing the first good thing that came to hand, and here was a hero. " You almost make me envy you, Robert," said he, sighing. " Then why not come with me 1 " asked Robert. " Because I have another destiny," said Septim ius. 186 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. " Well, you are mistaken ; be sure of that," said Robert. " This is not a generation for study, and the making of books ; that may come by and by. This great fight has need of all men to carry it on, in one way or another ; and no man will do well, even for himself, who tries to avoid his share in it. But I have said my say. And now, Septimius, the war takes much of a man, but it does not take him all, and what it leaves is all the more full of life and health thereby. I have something to say to you about this." " Say it then, Robert," said Septimius, who, having got over the first excitement of the interview, and the sort of exhilaration produced by the healthful glow of Robert s spirit, began secretly to wish that it might close, and to be permitted to return to his solitary thoughts again. " What can I do for you?" "Why, nothing," said Robert, looking rather con fused, " since all is settled. The fact is, my old friend, as perhaps you have seen, I have very long had an *ye upon your sister Rose ; yes, from the time we went together to the old school-house, where she now teaches children like what we were then. The war took me away, and in good time, for I doubt if Rose would ever have cared enough for me to be my wife, if I had stayed at home, a country lout, as I was getting to be, in shirt-sleeves and bare feet. But now, you see, I have come back, and this whole great war, to her wo man s heart, is represented in me, and makes me heroic, so to speak, and strange, and yet her old familiar lover. So I found her heart tenderer for me than it was ; and, in short, Rose has consented to be my wife, and we SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 187 mean to be married in a week ; my furlough permits little delay." u You surprise me," said Septimius, who, immersed in his own pursuits, had taken no notice of the grow ing affection between Robert and his sister. " Do you think it well to snatch this little lull that is allowed you in the wild striving of war to try to make a peace ful home 1 Shall you like to be summoned from it soon 1 Shall you be as cheerful among dangers after wards, when one sword may cut down two happi nesses 1 " " There is something in what you say, and I have thought of it," said Robert, sighing. "But I can t tell how it is ; but there is something in this uncer tainty, this peril, this cloud before us, that makes it sweeter to love and to be loved than amid all seeming quiet and serenity. Really, I think, if there were to be no death, the beauty of life would be all tame. So we take our chance, or our dispensation of Providence, and are going to love, and to be married, just as con fidently as if we were sure of living forever." " Well, old fellow," said Septimius, with more cor diality and outgush of heart than he had felt for a long while, " there is no man whom I should be happier to call brother. Take Rose, and all happiness along with her. She is a good girl, and not in the least like me. May you live out your threescore years and ten, and every one of them be happy." Little more passed, and Robert Hagburn took his leave with a hearty shake of Septimius s hand, too conscious of his own happiness to be quite sensible how 188 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. much the latter was self-involved, strange, anxious, separated from healthy life and interests ; and Sep- timius, as soon as Robert had disappeared, locked the door behind him, and proceeded at once to apply the silver key to the lock of the old strong box. The lock resisted somewhat, being rusty, as might well be supposed after so many years since it was opened ; but it finally allowed the key to turn, and Septiinius, with a good deal of flutter at his heart, opened the lid. The interior had a very different as pect from that of the exterior ; for, whereas the latter looked so old, this, having been kept from the air, looked about as new as when shut up from light and air two centuries ago, less or more. It was lined with ivory, beautifully carved in figures, according to the art which the mediaeval people possessed in great per fection ; and probably the box had been a lady s jewel- casket formerly, and had glowed with rich lustre and bright colors at former openings. But now there was nothing in it of that kind, nothing in keeping with those figures carved in the ivory representing some mythical subjects, nothing but some papers in the bottom of the box written over in an ancient hand, which Septimius at once fancied that he recognized as that of the manuscript and recipe which he had found on the breast of the young soldier. He eagerly seized them, but was infinitely disappointed to find that they did not seem to refer at all to the subjects treated by the former, but related to pedigrees and genealogies, and were in reference to an English family and some member of it who, two centuries before, had crossed SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 189 the sea to America, and who, in this way, had sought to preserve his connection with his native stock, so as to be able, perhaps, to prove it for himself or his de scendants ; and there was reference to documents and records in England in confirmation of the genealogy. Septimius saw that this paper had been drawn up by an ancestor of his own, the unfortunate man who had been hanged for witchcraft ; but so earnest had been his expectation of something different, that he flung the old papers down with bitter indifference. Then again he snatched them up, and contemptu ously read them, those proofs of descent through generations of esquires and knights, who had been re nowned in war ; and there seemed, too, to be running through the family a certain tendency to letters, for three were designated as of the colleges of Oxford or Cambridge ; and against one there was the note, " he that sold himself to Sathan " ; and another seemed to have been a follower of Wickliffe ; and they had mur dered kings, and been beheaded, and banished, and what not ; so that the age-long life of this ancient family had not been after all a happy or very prosper ous one, though they had kept their estate, in one or another descendant, since the Conquest. It was not wholly without interest that Septimius saw that this ancient descent, this connection with noble families, and intermarriages with names, some of which he rec ognized as known in English history, all referred to his "own family, and seemed to centre in himself, the last of a poverty-stricken line, which had dwindled down into obscurity, and into rustic labor and humble toil, 190 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. t reviving in him a little ; yet how little, unless he ful filled his strange purpose. Was it not better worth his while to take this English position here so strangely offered him 1 ? He had apparently slain unwittingly the only person who could have contested his rights, the young man who had so strangely brought him the hope of unlimited life at the same time that he was making room for him among his forefathers. What a change in his lot would have been here, for there seemed to be some pretensions to a title, too, from a barony which was floating about and occasionally mov ing out of abeyancy ! " Perhaps," said Septimius to himself, "I may here after think it worth while to assert my claim to these possessions, to this position amid an ancient aristocra cy, and try that mode of life for one generation. Yet there is something in my destiny incompatible, of course, with the continued possession of an estate. I must be, of necessity, a wanderer on the face of the earth, changing place at short intervals, disappearing suddenly and entirely ; else the foolish, short-lived multitude and mob of mortals will be enraged with one who seems their brother, yet whose countenance will never be furrowed with his age, nor his knees totter, nor his force be abated ; their little brevity will be rebuked by his age-long endurance, above whom the oaken roof-tree of a thousand years would crumble, while still he would be hale and strong. So that this house, or any other, would be but a resting- place of a day, and then I must away into another obscurity." SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 191 With almost a regret, he continued to look over the documents until he reached one of the persons record ed in the line of pedigree, a worthy, apparently, of the reign of Elizabeth, to whom was attributed a title of Doctor in ^Utriusque Juris; and against his name was a verse of Latin written, for what purpose Sep- timius knew not, for on reading it, it appeared to have no discoverable appropriateness ; but suddenly he re membered the blotted and imperfect hieroglyphical passage in the recipe. He thought an instant, and was convinced this was the full expression and out- writing of that crabbed little mystery ; and that here was part of that secret writing for which the Age of Elizabeth was so famous and so dexterous. His mind had a flash of light upon it, and from that moment he was enabled to read not only the recipe but the rules, and all the rest of that mysterious document, in a way which he had never thought of before ; to discern that it was not to be taken literally and simply, but had a hidden process involved in it that made the whole thing infinitely deeper than he had hitherto deemed it to be. His brain reeled, he seemed to have taken a draught of some liquor that opened infinite depths before him, he could scarcely refrain from giving a shout of triumphant exultation, the house could not contain him, he rushed up to his hill-top, and there, after walking swiftly to and fro, at length flung himself on the little hillock, and burst forth, as if ad dressing him who slept beneath. " brother, friend ! " said he, " I thank thee for thy matchless beneficence to me ; for all which I 192 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. rewarded thee with this little spot on my hill-top. Thou wast very good, very kind. It would not have been well for thee, a youth of fiery joys and passions, loving to laugh, loving the lightness and sparkling brilliancy of life, to take this boon to -thyself; for, brother ! I see, I see, it requires a strong spirit, capable of much lonely endurance, able to be sufficient to itself, loving not too much, dependent on no sweet ties of affection, to be capable of the mighty trial which now devolves on me. I thank thee, kins man ! Yet thou, I feel, hast the better part, who didst so soon lie down to rest, who hast done forever with this troublesome world, which it is mine to con template from age to age, and to sum up the meaning of it. Thou art disporting thyself in other spheres. 1 enjoy the high, severe, fearful office of living here, and of being the minister of Providence from one age to many successive ones." In this manner he raved, as never before, in a strain of exalted enthusiasm, securely treading on air, and sometimes stopping to shout aloud, and feeling as if he should burst if he did not do so ; and his voice came back to him again from the low hills on the other side of the broad, level valley, and out of the woods afar, mocking him ; or as if it were airy spirits, that knew how it was all to be, confirm ing his cry, saying, " It shall be so," " Thou hast found it at last," " Thou art immortal." And it seemed as if Nature were inclined to celebrate his triumph over herself; for above the woods that crowned the hill to the northward, there were shoots SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 193 and streams of radiance, a white, a red, a many- colored lustre, blazing up high towards the zenith, dancing up, flitting down, dancing up again ; so that it seemed as if spirits were keeping a revel there. The leaves of the trees on the hillside, all except the evergreens, had now mostly fallen with the autumn ; so that Septimius was seen by the few passers-by, in the decline of the afternoon, passing to and fro along his path, wildly gesticulating; and heard to shout so that the echoes came from all directions to answer him. After nightfall, too, in the harvest moonlight, a shadow was still seen passing there, waving its arms in shadowy triumph ; so, the next day, there were various goodly stories afloat and astir, coming out of successive mouths, more wondrous at each birth ; the simplest form of the story being, that Septimius Felton had at last gone raving mad on the hill-top that he was so fond of haunting ; and those who listened to his shrieks said that he was calling to the Devil ; and some said that by certain exorcisms he had caused the appear ance of a battle in the air, charging squadrons, cannon-flashes, champions encountering; all of which foreboded some real battle to be fought with the enemies of the country ; and as the battle of Mon- mouth chanced to occur, either the very next day, or about that time, this was supposed to be either caused or foretold by Septimius s eccentricities ; and as the battle was not very favorable to our arms, the patriot ism of Septimius suffered much in popular estimation. But he knew nothing, thought nothing, cared 9 M 194 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. nothing about his country, or his country s battles ; he was as sane as he had been for a year past, and was wise enough, though merely by instinct, to throw off some of his superfluous excitement by these wild gestures, with wild shouts, and restless activity; and when he had partly accomplished this he returned to the house, and, late as it was, kindled his fire, and began anew the processes of chemistry, now enlightened by the late teachings. A new agent seemed to him to mix itself up with his toil and to forward his purpose ; something helped him along ; everything became facile to his manipulation, clear to his thought. In this way he spent the night, and when at sunrise he let in the eastern light upon his study, the thing was done. Septimius had achieved it. That is to say, he had succeeded in amalgamating his materials so that they acted upon one another, and in accordance ; and had produced a result that had a subsistence in itself, and a right to be ; a something potent and substantial ; each ingredient contributing its part to form a new essence, which was as real and individual as any thing it was formed from. But in order to perfect it, there was necessity that the powers of nature should act quietly upon it through a month of sun shine ; that the moon, too, should have its part in the production ; and so he must wait patiently for this. Wait ! surely he would ! Had he not time for waiting? Were he to wait till old age, it would not be too much ; for all future time would have it in charge to repay him. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 195 So he poured the inestimable liquor into a glass vase, well secured from the air, and placed it in the sunshine, shifting it from one sunny window to another, in order that it might ripen ; moving it gently lest he should disturb the living spirit that he knew to be in it. And he watched it from day to day, watched the reflections in it, watched its lustre, which seemed to him to grow greater day by day, as if it imbibed the sunlight into it. Never was there anything so bright as this. It changed its hue, too, gradually, being now a rich purple, now A crimson, now a violet, now a blue; going through all these prismatic colors without losing any of its brilliance, and never was there such a hue as tho sunlight took in falling through it and resting on his floor. And strange and beautiful it was, too, to look through this medium at the outer world, and see how it was glorified and made anew, and did not look like the same world, although there were all its familiar marks. And then, past his window, seen through this, went the farmer and his wife, on saddle and pillion, jogging to meeting-house or market ; and the very dog, the cow coming home from pasture, the old familiar faces of his childhood, looked differ ently. And so at last, at the end of the month, it settled into a most deep and brilliant crimson, as if it were the essence of the blood of the young man whom he had slain ; the flower being now triumphant, it had given its own hue to the whole mass, and had grown brighter every day ; so that it seemed to have inher ent light, as if it were a planet by itself, a heart of crimson fire burning within it. 196 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. And when this had been done, and there -was no more change, showing that the digestion was perfect, then he took it and placed it where the changing moon would fall upon it ; and then again he watched it, covering it in darkness by day, revealing it to the moon by night; and watching it here, too, through more changes. And by and by he perceived that the deep crimson hue was departing, not fading ; we cannot say that, because of the prodigious lustre which still pervaded it, and was not less strong than ever; but certainly the hue became fainter, now a rose-color, now fainter, fainter still, till there was only left the purest whiteness of the moon itself; a change that somewhat disappointed and grieved Sep- timius, though still it seemed fit that the water of life should be of no one richness, because it must combine all. As the absorbed young man gazed through the lonely nights at his beloved liquor, he fancied sometimes that he could see wonderful things in the crystal sphere of the vase ; as in Doctor Dee s magic crystal used to be seen, which now lies in the British Museum; representations, it might be, of things in . the far past, or in the further future, scenes in which he himself was to act, persons yet unborn, the beautiful and the wise, with whom he was to be associated, palaces and towers, modes of hitherto unseen architecture, that old hall in England to which he had a hereditary right, with its gables, and its smooth lawn ; the witch-meetings in which his ancestor used to take part ; Aunt Keziah on her d3ath-bed ; and, flitting through all, the shade of SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 197 Sybil Dacy, eying him from secret nooks, or some remoteness, with her peculiar mischievous smile, beckoning him into the sphere. All such visions would he see, and then become aware that he had been in a dream, superinduced by too much watch ing, too intent thought ; so that living among so many dreams, he was almost afraid that he should find himself waking out of yet another, and find that the vase itself and the liquid it contained were also dream-stuff. But no ; these were real. There was one change that surprised him, although he accepted it without doubt, and, indeed, it did im ply a wonderful efficacy, at least singularity, in the newly converted liquid. It grew strangely cool in temperature in the latter part of his watching it. It appeared to imbibe its coldness from the cold, chaste moon, until it seemed to Septimius that it was colder than ice itself; the mist gathered upon the crystal vase as upon a tumbler of iced water in a warm room. Some say it actually gathered thick with frost, crystallized into a thousand fantastic and beautiful shapes, but this I do not know so well. Only it was very cold. Septimius pondered upon it, and thought he saw that life itself was cold, indi vidual in its being, a high, pure essence, chastened from all heats ; cold, therefore, and therefore invigo rating. Thus much, inquiring deeply, and with painful re search into the liquid which Septimius concocted, have I been able to learn about it, its aspect, itsf properties ; and now I suppose it to be quite perfect, 198 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. and that nothing remains but to put it to such use as he had so long been laboring for. But this, some how or other, he found in himself a strong reluctance to do ; he paused, as it were, at the point where his pathway separated itself from that of other men, and meditated whether it were worth while to give up everything that Providence had provided, and take instead only this lonely gift of immortal life. Not that he ever really had any doubt about it ; no, in deed ; but it was his security, his consciousness that he held the bright sphere of all futurity in his hand, that made him dally a little, now that he could quaff immortality as soon as he liked. Besides, now that he looked forward from the verge of mortal destiny, the path before him seemed so very lonely. Might he not seek some one own friend one single heart before he took the final step 1 There was Sybil Dacy ! 0, what bliss, if that pale girl might set out with him on his journey ! how sweet, how sweet, to wander with her through the places else so desolate ! for he could but half see, half know things, without her to help him. And perhaps it might be so. She must already know, or strongly suspect, that he was engaged in some deep, mysterious research ; it might be that, with her sources of mysterious knowledge among her legen dary lore, she knew of this. Then, 0, to think of those dreams which lovers have always had, when their new love makes the old earth seem so happy and glorious a place, that not a thousand nor an endless succession of years can exhaust it, all those SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 199 realized for him and her ! If this could not be, what should he do ? Would he venture onward into such a wintry futurity, symbolized, perhaps, by the cold ness of the crystal goblet 1 He shivered at the thought. Now, what had passed between Septimius and Sybil Dacy is not upon record, only that one day they were walking together on the hill-top, or sitting by the little hillock, and talking earnestly together. Sybil s face was a little flushed with some excite ment, and really she looked very beautiful ; and Sep- timius s dark face, too, had a solemn triumph in it that made him also beautiful ; so rapt he was after all those watchings, and emaciations, and the pure, unworldly, self-denying life that he had spent. They talked as if there were some foregone conclusion on which they based what they said. " Will you not be weary in the time that we shall spend together 1 " asked he. " no," said Sybil, smiling, " I am sure that it will be very full of enjoyment. "Yes," said Septimius, "though now I must re mould my anticipations ; for I have only dared, hith erto, to map out a solitary existence." " And how did you do that 1 " asked Sybil. " 0, there is nothing that would come amiss/ answered Septimius ; " for, truly, as I have lived apart from men, yet it is .really not because I have no taste for whatever humanity includes ; but I would fain, if I might, live everybody s life at once, or, since that may not be, each in succession. I would try 200 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. the life of power, ruling men ; but that might come later, after I had had long experience of men, and had lived through much history, and had seen, as a disinterested observer, how men might best be in fluenced for their own good. I would be a great traveller at first ; and as a man newly coming into possession of an estate, goes over it, and views each separate field and wood-lot, and whatever features it contains, so will I, whose the world is, because I possess it forever ; whereas all others are but tran sitory guests. So will I wander over this world of mine, and be acquainted with all its shores, seas, rivers, mountains, fields, and the various peoples who inhabit them, and to whom it is my purpose to be a benefactor ; for think not, dear Sybil, that I sup pose this great lot of mine to have devolved upon me without great duties, heavy and difficult to fulfil, though glorious in their adequate fulfilment. But for all this there will be time. In a century I shall partially have seen this earth, and known at least its boundaries, have gotten for myself the out line, to be filled up hereafter." " And I, too," said Sybil, " will have my duties and labors ; for while you are wandering about among men, I will go among women, and observe and con verse with them, from the princess to the peasant girl ; and will find out what is the matter, that woman gets so large a share of human misery laid on her weak shoulders. I will see why it is that, whether she be a royal princess, she has to be sacri ficed to matters of state, or a cottage girl, still some- SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 201 how the thing not fit for her is done ; and whether there is or no some deadly curse on woman, so that she has nothing to do, and nothing to enjoy, but only to be wronged by man, and still to love him, and despise herself for it, to be shaky in her revenges. And then if, after all this investigation, it turns out as I suspect that woman is not capable of being helped, that there is something in herent in herself that makes it hopeless to struggle for her redemption, then what shall I do 1 Nay, I know not, unless to preach to the sisterhood that they all kill their female children as fast as they are born, and then let the generations of men manage as they can ! Woman, so feeble and crazy in body, fair enough sometimes, but full of infirmities ; not strong, with nerves prone to every pain ; ailing, full of little weaknesses, more contemptible than great ones ! " " That would be a dreary end, Sybil," said Sep- timius. " But I trust that we shall be able to hush up this weary and perpetual wail of womankind on easier terms than that. Well, dearest Sybil, after we have spent a hundred years in examining into the real state of mankind, and another century in de vising and putting in execution remedies for his ills, until our maturer thought has time to perfect his cure, we shall then have earned a little play time, a century of pastime, in which we will search out whatever joy can be had by thoughtful people, and that childlike sportiveness which comes out of growing wisdom, and enjoyment of every kind. We will gather about us everything beautiful and stately, 9* 202 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. a great palace, for we shall then be so experienced that all riches will be easy for us to get ; with rich furniture, pictures, statues, and all royal ornaments ; and side by side with this life we will have a little cottage, and see which is the happiest, for this has always been a dispute. For this century we will neither toil nor spin, nor think of anything beyond the day that is passing over us. There is time enough to do all that we have to do." " A hundred years of play ! Will not that be tire some 1 " said Sybil. " If it is," said Septimius, " the next century shall make up for it ; for then we will contrive deep philosophies, take up one theory after another, and find out its hollowness and inadequacy, and fling it aside, the rotten rubbish that they all are, until we have strewn the whole realm of human thought with the broken fragments, all smashed up. And then, on this great mound of broken potsherds (like that great Monte Testaccio, which we will go to Rome to see), we will build a system that shall stand, and by which mankind shall look far into the ways of Providence, and find practical uses of the deepest kind in what it has thought merely specula tion. And then, when the hundred years are over, and this great work done, we will still be so free in mind, that we shall see the emptiness of our own theory, though men see only its truth. And so, if we like more of this pastime, then shall another and another century, and as many more as we like, be spent in the same way." SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 203 "And after that another play-day?" asked Sybil Dacy. " Yes," said Septiraius, " only it shall not be called so ; for the next century we will get ourselves made rulers of the earth ; and knowing men so well, and having so wrought our theories of government and what not, we will proceed to execute them, which will be as easy to us as a child s arrangement of its dolls. We will smile superior, to see what a facile thing it is to make a people happy. In our reign of a hundred years, we shall have time to extinguish errors, and make the world see the ab surdity of them ; to substitute other methods of government for the old, bad ones; to fit the people to govern itself, to do with little government, to do with none ; and when this is effected, we will vanish from our loving people, and be seen no more, but be reverenced as gods, we, meanwhile, being overlooked, and smiling to ourselves, amid the very crowd that is looking for us." " I intend," said Sybil, making this wild talk wilder by that petulance which she so often showed, "I intend to introduce a new fashion of dress when I am queen, and that shall be my part of the great reform which you are going to make. And for my crown, I intend to have it of flowers, in which that strange crimson one shall be the chief ; and when I vanish, this flower shall remain behind, and perhaps they shall have a glimpse of me wearing it in the crowd. Well, what next?" "After this," said Septimius, "having seen so 204 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. much of affairs, and having lived so many hundred years, I will sit down and write a history, such as histories ought to be, and never have been. And it shall be so wise, and so vivid, and so self-evidently true, that people shall be .convinced from it that there is some undying one among them, because only an eye-witness could have written it, or could have gained so much wisdom as was needful for it." " And for my part in the history," said Sybil, " I will record the various lengths of women s waists, and the fashion of their sleeves. What next 1 " "By this time," said Septimius, - "how many hundred years have we now lived 1 by this time, I shall have pretty well prepared myself for what I have been contemplating from the first. I will be come a religious teacher, and promulgate a faith, and prove it by prophecies and miracles ; for my long experience will enable me to do the first, and the acquaintance which I shall have formed with the mysteries of science will put the latter at my fingers ends. So I will be a prophet, a greater than Ma homet, and will put all man s hopes into my doctrine, and make him good, holy, happy ; and he shall put up his prayers to his Creator, and find them answered, because they shall be wise, and accompanied with ef fort. This will be a great work, and may earn me another rest and pastime." \He would see, in one age, the column raised in mem ory of some great deed of his in a former onel\ " And what shall that be T asked Sybil Dacy. "Why," said Septimius, looking askance at her, SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 205 and speaking with a certain hesitation, " I have learned, Sybil, that it is a weary toil for a man to be always good, holy, and upright. In my life as a sainted prophet, I shall have somewhat too much of this; it will be enervating and sickening, and I shall need another kind of diet. So, in the next hundred years, Sybil, in that one little century, methinks I would fain be what men call wicked. How can I know my brethren, unless I do that once 1 I would experience all. Imagination is only a dream. I can imagine myself a murderer, and all other modes of crime ; but it leaves no real impres sion on the heart. I must live these things." [The rampant unrestraint, which is the characteristic of wickedness^ "Good," said Sybil, quietly; "and I too." " And thou too ! " exclaimed Septimius. " Not so, Sybil. I would reserve thee, good and pure, so that there may be to me the means of redemption, some stable hold in the moral confusion that I will create around myself, whereby I shall by and by get back into order, virtue, and religion. Else all is lost, and I may become a devil, and make my own hell around me ; so, Sybil, do thou be good forever, and not fall nor slip a moment. Promise me!" " We will consider about that in some other cen tury," replied Sybil, composedly. "There is time enough yet. What next 1 " " Nay, this is enough for the present," said Sep timius. " New vistas will open themselves before us 206 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. continually, as we go onward. How idle to think that one little lifetime would exhaust the world ! After hundreds of centuries, I feel as if we might still be on the threshold. There is the material world, for instance, to perfect ; to draw out the powers of nature, so that man shall, as it were, give life to all modes of matter, and make them his minis tering servants. Swift ways of travel, by earth, sea, and air ; machines for doing whatever the hand of man now does, so that we shall do all but put souls into our wheel-work and watch-work j the modes of making night into day ; of getting control over the weather and the seasons ; the virtues of plants ; these are some of the easier things thou shalt help me do." " I have no taste for that," said Sybil, " unless I could make an embroidery worked of steel." " And so, Sybil," continued Septimius, pursuing his strain of solemn enthusiasm, intermingled as it was with wild, excursive vagaries, "we will go on as many centuries as we choose. Perhaps yet I think not so perhaps, however, in the course of lengthened time, we may find that the world is the same always, and mankind the same, and all pos sibilities of human fortune the same; so that by and by we shall discover that the same old scenery serves the world s stage in all ages, and that the story is always the same ; yes, and the actors always the same, though none but we can be aware of it ; and that the actors and spectators would grow weary of it, were they not bathed in forgetful sleep, SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 207 and so think themselves new made in each successive lifetime. We may find that the stuff of the world s drama, and the passions which seem to play in it, have a monotony, when once we have tried them ; that in only once trying them, and viewing them, we find out their secret, and that afterwards the show is too superficial to arrest our attention. As dramatists and novelists repeat their plots, so does man s life repeat itself, and at length grows stale. This is what, in my desponding moments, I have sometimes suspected. What to do, if this be so 1 " " Nay, that is a serious consideration," replied Sybil, assuming an air of mock alarm, " if you really think we shall be tired of life, whether or no." " I do not think it, Sybil," replied Septimius. " By much musing on this matter, I have convinced myself that man is not capable of debarring himself utterly from death, since it is evidently a remedy for many evils that nothing else would cure. This means that we have discovered of removing death to an indefinite distance is not supernatural ; on the contrary, it is the most natural thing in the world, the very perfection of the natural, since it consists in applying the powers and processes of Nature to the prolongation of the existence of man, her most per fect handiwork; and this could only be done by entire accordance and co-effort with nature. There fore Nature is not changed, and death remains as one of her steps, just as heretofore. Therefore, when we have exhausted the world, whether by going through its apparently vast variety, or by satisfying 208 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. ourselves that it is all a repetition of one thing, we will call death as the friend to introduce us to something new." [He ivould write a poem, or other great work, inap preciable at first, and live to see it famous, himself among his own posterity .] " 0, insatiable love of life ! " exclaimed Sybil, look ing at him with strange pity. " Canst thou not con ceive that mortal brain and heart might at length be content to sleep ? " " Never, Sybil ! " replied Septimius, with horror. "My spirit delights in the thought of an infinite eternity. Does not thine]" "One little interval a few centuries only of dreamless sleep," said Sybil, pleadingly. "Cannot you allow me that?" "I fear," said Septimius, "our identity would change in that repose ; it would be a Lethe between the two parts of our being, and with such discon nection a continued life would be equivalent to a new one, and therefore valueless." In such talk, snatching in the fog at the frag ments of philosophy, they continued fitfully; Sep timius calming down his enthusiasm thus, which otherwise might have burst forth in madness, affright ing the quiet little village with the marvellous things about which they mused. Septimius could not quite satisfy himself whether Sybil Dacy shared in his belief of the success of his experiment, and was confi dent, as he was, that he held in his control the means ~ unlimited life ; neither was he sure that she loved SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 209 him, loved him well enough to undertake with him the long march that he propounded to her, making a union an affair of so vastly more importance than it is in the brief lifetime of other mortals. But he deter mined to let her drink the invaluable draught along with him, and to trust to the long future, and the better opportunities that time would give him, and his outliving all rivals, and the loneliness which an undying life would throw around her, without him, as the pledges of his success. And now the happy day had come for the cele bration of Robert Hagburn s marriage with pretty Rose Garfield, the brave with the fair; and, as usual, the ceremony was to take place in the evening, and at the house of the bride : and preparations were made accordingly ; the wedding-cake, which the bride s own fair hands had mingled with her tender hopes, and seasoned it with maiden fears, so that its com position was as much ethereal as sensual; and the neighbors and friends were invited, and came with their best wishes and good-will. For Rose shared not at all the distrust, the suspicion, or whatever it was, that had waited on the true branch of Septimius s family, in one shape or another, ever since the mem ory of man; and all except, it might be, some dis appointed damsels who had hoped to win Robert Hagburn for themselves rejoiced at the approaching union of this fit couple, and wished them happiness. Septimius, too, accorded his gracious consent to the union, and while he thought within himself that 210 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. such a brief union was not worth the trouble and feel ing which his sister and her lover wasted on it, still he wished them happiness. As he compared their brevity with his long duration, he smiled at their little fancies of loves, of which he seemed to see the end ; the flower of a brief summer, blooming beau tifully enough, and shedding its leaves, the fragrance of which would linger a little while in his memory, and then be gone. He wondered how far in the coming centuries he should remember this wedding of his sister Rose ; perhaps he would meet, five hundred years hence, some descendant of the mar riage, a fair girl, bearing the traits of his sister s fresh beauty ; a young man, recalling the strength and manly comeliness of Robert Hagburn, and could claim acquaintance and kindred. He would be the guardian, from generation to generation, of this race ; their ever-reappearing friend at times of need; and meeting them from age to age, would find traditions of himself growing poetical in the lapse of time ; so that he would smile at seeing his features look so much more majestic in their fancies than in reality. So all along their course, in the history of the family, he would trace himself, and by his traditions he would make them acquainted with all their ancestors, and so still be warmed by kindred blood. And Robert Hagburn, full of the life of the moment, warm with generous blood, came in a new uniform, looking fit to be the founder of a race who should look back to a hero sire. He greeted Septimius as a brother. The minister, too, came, of course, and SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 211 mingled with the throng, with decorous aspect, and greeted Septimius with more formality than he had been wont ; for Septimius had insensibly withdrawn himself from the minister s intimacy, as he got deeper and deeper into the enthusiasm of his own cause. Besides, the minister did not fail to see that his once devoted scholar had contracted habits of study into the secrets of which he himself was not admitted, and that he no longer alluded to studies for the ministry ; and he was inclined to suspect that Septimius had unfortunately allowed infidel ideas to assail, at least, if not to overcome, that fortress of firm faith which he had striven to found and strengthen in his mind, a misfortune frequently befalling speculative and imagi native and melancholic persons, like Septimius, whom the Devil is all the time planning to assault, because he feels confident of having a traitor in the garrison. The minister had heard that this was the fashion of Septimius s family, and that even the famous divine, who, in his eyes, was the glory of it, had had his sea son of wild infidelity in his youth, before grace touched him ; and had always thereafter, throughout his long and pious life, been subject to seasons of black and sulphurous despondency, during which he disbelieved the faith which, at other times, he preached so powerfully. "Septimius, my young friend," said he, "are you yet ready to be a preacher of the truth ?" "Not yet, reverend pastor," said Septimius, smil ing at the thought of the day before, that the career of a prophet would be one that he should some time 212 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. assume. (i There will be time enough to preach the truth when I better know it." " You do not look as if you knew it so well as formerly, instead of better," said his reverend friend, looking into the deep furrows of his brow, and into his wild and troubled eyes. "Perhaps not," said Septimius. "There is time yet." These few words passed amid the bustle and mur mur of the evening, while the guests were assembling, and all were awaiting the marriage with that interest which the event continually brings with it, common as it is, so that nothing but death is commoner. Every body congratulated the modest Rose, who looked quiet and happy ; and so she stood up at the proper time, and the minister married them with a certain fervor and individual application, that made them feel they were married indeed. Then there ensued a sal utation of the bride, the first to kiss her being the minister, and then some respectable old justices and farmers, each with his friendly smile and joke. Then went round the cake and wine, and other good cheer, and the hereditary jokes with which brides used to be assailed in those days. I think, too, there was a dance, though how the couples in the reel found space to foot it in the little room, I cannot imagine ; at any rate, there was a bright light out of the windows, gleaming across the road, and such a sound of the babble of numerous voices and merriment, that travellers passing by, on the lonely Lexington road, wished they were of the party; and one or two of SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 213 them stopped and went in, and saw the new-made bride, drank to her health, and took a piece of the wedding-cake home to dream upon. [/ is to be observed that Rose had requested of her friend, Sybil Dacy, to act as one of her bridesmaids, of whom she had only the modest number of two ; and the strange girl declined, sayin.g that her intermeddling would bring ill-fortune to the marriage.] " Why do you talk such nonsense, Sybil 3 " asked Rose. " You love me, I am sure, and wish me well; and your smile, such as it is, will be the promise of prosperity, and I wish for it on my wedding-day." "I am an ill-fate, a sinister demon, Rose; a thing that has sprung out of a grave ; and you had better not entreat me to twine my poison tendrils round your destinies. You would repent it." " 0, hush, hush ! " said Rose, putting her hand over her friend s mouth. " Naughty one ! you can bless me, if you will, only you are wayward." " Bless you, then, dearest Rose, and all happiness on your marriage ! " Septimius had been duly present at the marriage, and kissed his sister with moist eyes, it is said, and a solemn smile, as he gave her into the keeping of Robert Hagburn; and there was something in the words he then used that afterwards dwelt on her mind, as if they had a meaning in them that asked to be sought into, and needed reply. "There, Rose," he had said, "I have made my self ready for my destiny. I have no ties any more, and may set forth on my path without scruple," 214 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. " Am I not your sister still, Septimius 1 " said she, shedding a tear or two. " A married woman is no sister ; nothing but a married woman till she becomes a mother ; and then what shall I have to do with you 1 " He spoke with a certain eagerness to prove his case, which Rose could not understand, but which was probably to justify himself in severing, as he was about to do, the link that connected him with his race, and making for himself an exceptional des tiny, which, if it did not entirely insulate him, would at least create new relations with all. There he stood, poor fellow, looking on the mirthful throng, not in exultation, as might have been supposed, but with a strange sadness upon him. It seemed to him, at that final moment, as if it were Death that linked to gether all ; yes, and so gave the warmth to all. Wed lock itself seemed a brother of Death ; wedlock, and its -sweetest hopes, its holy companionship, its mys teries, and all that warm mysterious brotherhood that is between men ; passing as they do from mystery to mystery in a little gleam of light ; that wild, sweet charm of uncertainty and temporariness, how lovely it made them all, how innocent, even the worst of them ; how hard and prosaic was his own situation in comparison to theirs. He felt a gushing tenderness for them, as if he would have flung aside his endless life, and rushed among them, saying, " Embrace me ! I am still one of you, and will not leave you ! Hold me fast ! " After this it was not particularly observed that SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 215 both Septimius and Sybil Dacy had disappeared from the party, which, however, went on no less merrily without them. In truth, the habits of Sybil Dacy were so wayward, and little squared by general rules, that nobody wondered or tried to account for them j and as for Septimius, he was such a studious man, so little accustomed to mingle with his fellow-citizens on any occasion, that it was rather wondered at that he should have spent so. large a part of a sociable evening with them, than that he should now retire. After they were gone the party received an un expected addition, being no other than the excellent Doctor Portsoaken, who came to the door, announcing that he had just arrived on horseback from Boston, and that, his object being to have an interview with Sybil Dacy, he had been to Robert Hagburn s house in quest of her; but, learning from the old grand mother that she was here, he had followed. Not finding her, he evinced no alarm, but was easily induced to sit down among the merry com pany, and partake of some brandy, which, with other liquors, Robert had provided in sufficient abundance ; and that being a day when man had not learned to fear the glass, the doctor found them all in a state of hilarious chat. Taking out his German pipe, he joined the group of smokers in the great chimney- corner, and entered into conversation with them, laughing and joking, and mixing up his jests with that mysterious suspicion which gave so strange a character to his intercourse. " It is good fortune, Mr. Hagburn," quoth he, 216 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. " that brings me here on this auspicious day. And how has been my learned young friend Doctor Sepr timius, for so he should be called, and how have flourished his studies of late? The scientific world may look for great fruits from that decoction of his." "He ll never equal Aunt Keziah for herb-drinks," said an old woman, smoking her pipe in the corner, "though I think likely he. 11 make a good doctor enough by and by. Poor Kezzy, she took a drop too much of her mixture, after all. I used to tell her how it would be; for Kezzy and I ever were pretty good friends once, before the Indian in her came out so strongly, the squaw and the witch, for she had them both in her blood, poor yellow Kezzy ! " " Yes I had she indeed ? " quoth the doctor ; " and I have heard an odd story, that if the Feltons chose to go back to the old country, they d find a home and an estate there ready for them." The old woman mused, and puffed at her pipe. " Ah, yes," muttered she, at length, " I remember to have heard something about that ; and how, if Felton chose to strike into the woods, he d find a tribe of wild Indians there, ready to take him for their saga more, and conquer the whites; and how, if he chose to go to England, there was a great old house all ready for him, and a fire burning in the hall, and a dinner-tafcle spread, and the tall-posted bed ready, with clean sheets, in the best chamber, and a man waiting at the gate to show him in. Only there was SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 217 a spell of a bloody footstep left on the threshold by the last that came out, so that none of his posterity could ever cross it again. But that was all non sense." " Strange old things one dreams in a chimney- corner," quoth the doctor. "Do you remember any more of this ? " " No, no ; I m so forgetful nowadays," said old Mrs. Hagburn ; " only it seems as if I had my memories in my pipe, and they curl up in smoke. I ve known these Feltons all along, or it seems as if I had ; for I m nigh ninety years old now, and I was two year old in the witch s time, and I have seen a piece of the halter that old Felton was hung with." Some of the company laughed. " That must have been a curious sight," quoth the doctor. "It is not well," said the minister seriously to the doctor, " to stir up these old remembrances, making the poor old lady appear absurd. I know not that she need to be ashamed of showing the weaknesses of the generation to which she belonged; but I do not like to see old age put at this disadvantage among the young." " Nay, my good and reverend sir," returned the doctor, " I mean no such disrespect as you seem to think. Forbid it, ye upper powers, that I should cast any ridicule on beliefs superstitions, do you call them 1 that are as worthy of faith, for aught I know, as any that are preached in the pulpit. If the old lady would tell me any secret of the old 10 218 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. Felton s science, I shall treasure it sacredly ; for 1 interpret these stories about his miraculous gifts as meaning that he had a great command over natural science, the virtues of plants, the capacities of the human body." While these things were passing, or before they passed, or some time in that eventful night, Septim- ius had withdrawn to his study, when there was a low tap heard at the door, and, opening it, Sybil Dacy stood before him. It seemed as if there had been a previous arrangement between them ; for Sep- timius evinced no surprise, only took her hand, and drew her in. " How cold your hand is ! " he exclaimed. " Noth ing is so cold, except it be the potent medicine. It makes me shiver." " Never mind that," said Sybil. "You look fright ened at me." "Do 1 1 " said Septimius. " No, not that ; but this is such a crisis ; and methinks it is not yourself. Your eyes glare on me strangely." " Ah, yes ; and you are not frightened at me 1 Well, I will try not to be frightened at myself. Time was, however, when I should have been." She looked round at Septimius s study, with its few old books, its implements of science, crucibles, retorts, and electrical machines; all these she no ticed little ; but on the table drawn before the fire, there was something that attracted her attention ; it was a vase that seemed of crystal, made in that old fashion in which the Venetians made their glasses, SEPTIMIUS FELT ON. 219 a most pure kind of glass, with a long stalk, within which was a curved elaboration of fancy-work, wreathed and twisted. This old glass was an heirloom of the Feltons, a relic that had come down with many tradi tions, bringing its frail fabric safely through all the perils of time, that had shattered empires ; and, if space sufficed, I could tell many stories of this curious vase, which was said, in its time, to have been the in strument both of the Devil s sacrament in the forest, and of the Christian in the village meeting-house. But, at any rate, it had been a part of the choice household gear of one of Septimius s ancestors, and was engraved with his arms, artistically done. " Is that the drink of immortality 1" said Sybil. " Yes, Sybil," said Septimius. " Do but touch the goblet ; see how cold it is." She put her slender, pallid fingers on the side of the goblet, and shuddered, just as Septimius did when he touched her hand. " Why should it be so cold ] " said she, looking at Septimius. " Nay, I know not, unless because endless life goes round the circle and meets death, and is just the same with it. Sybil, it is a fearful thing that I have accomplished. Do you not feel it so 1 What if this shiver should last us through eternity 1 " " Have you pursued this object so long," said Sybil, " to have these fears respecting it now ? In that case, methinks I could be bold enough to drink it alone, and look down upon you, as I did so, smiling at your fear to take the life offered you." 220 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. " I do not fear," said Septimius ; " but yet I ac knowledge there is a strange, powerful abhorrence in me towards this draughtj which I know not how to account for, except as the reaction, the revulsion of feeling consequent upon its being too long over strained in one direction. I cannot help it. The meannesses, the littlenesses, the perplexities, the general irksomeness of life, weigh upon me strangely. Thou didst refuse to drink with me. That being the case, methinks I could break the jewelled goblet now, untasted, and choose the grave as the wiser part." " The beautiful goblet ! What a pity to break it ! " said Sybil, with her characteristic malign and mys terious smile. " You cannot find it in your heart to do it." " I could, I can. So thou wilt not drink with me?" " Do you know what you ask *? " said Sybil. " I am a being that sprung up, like this flower, out of a grave ; or, at least, I took root in a grave, and, growing there, have twined about your life, until you cannot possibly escape from me. Ah, Septimius ! you know me not. You know not what is in my heart towards you. Do you remember this broken miniature 1 would you wish to see the features that were destroyed when that bullet passed 1 Then look at mine ! " " Sybil ! what do you tell me 1 Was it you were they your features which that young soldier kissed as he lay dying I" SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 221 " They were," said Sybil. " I loved him, and gave him that miniature, and the face they represented. I had given him all, and you slew him." " Then you hate me," whispered Septimius. "Do you call it hatred 1 ?" asked Sybil, smiling. " Have I not aided you, thought with you, encouraged you, heard all your wild ravings when you dared to tell no one else 1 kept up your hopes ; suggested ; helped you with my legendary lore to useful hints; helped you, also, in other ways, which you do not suspect 1 And now you ask me if I hate you. Does this look like it 1 " " No," said Septimius. " And yet, since first I knew you, there has been something whispering me of harm, as if I sat near some mischief. There is in me the wild, natural blood of the Indian, the instinctive, the animal nature, which has ways of warning that civilized life polishes away and cuts out ; and so, Sybil, never did I approach you, but there were reluctances, drawings back, and, at the same time, a strong impulse to come closest to you ; and to that I yielded. But why, then, knowing that in this grave lay the man you loved, laid there by my hand, why did you aid me in an object which you must have seen was the breath of my life ] " "Ah, my friend, my enemy, if you will have it so, are you yet to learn that the wish of a man s inmost heart is oftenest that by which he is ruined and made miserable 1 But listen to me, Septimius. No matter for my earlier life ; there is no reason 222 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. why I should tell you the story, and confess to you its weakness, its shame. It may be, I had more cause to hate the tenant of that" grave, than to hate you who unconsciously avenged my cause ; never theless, I came here in hatred, and desire of re venge, meaning to lie in wait, and turn your dear est desire against you, to eat into your life, and distil poison into it, I sitting on this grave, and drawing fresh hatred from it ; and at last, in the hour of your triumph, I meant to make the triumph mine." " Is this still so ? " asked Septimius, with pale lips ; " or did your fell purpose change 1 " " Septimius, I am weak, a weak, weak girl, . only a girl, Septimius ; only eighteen yet," exclaimed Sybil. " It is young, is it not 1 I might be forgiven much. You know not how bitter my purpose was to you. But look, Septimius, could it be worse than this ? Hush, be still ! Do not stir ! " She lifted the beautiful goblet from the table, put it to her lips, and drank a deep draught from it; then, smiling mockingly, she held it towards him. "See; I have made myself immortal before you. Will you drink 1 " He eagerly held out his hand to receive the goblet, but Sybil, holding it beyond his reach a moment, de liberately let it fall upon the hearth, where it shivered into fragments, and the bright, cold water of immor tality was all spilt, shedding its strange fragrance around. SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 223 " Sybil, what have you done 1 " cried Septimius in rage and horror. " Be quiet ! See what sort of immortality I win by it, then, if you like, distil your drink of eternity again, and quaff it." " It is too late, Sybil j it was a happiness that may never come again in a lifetime. I shall perish as a dog does. It is too late ! " " Septimius," said Sybil, who looked strangely beau tiful, as if the drink, giving her immortal life, had likewise the potency to give immortal beauty answer ing to it. "Listen to me. You have not learned all the secrets that lay in those old legends, about which we have talked so much. There were two recipes, discovered or learned by the art of the stu dious old Gaspar Felton. One was said to be that secret of immortal life which so many old sages sought for, and which some were said to have found ; though, if that were the case, it is strange some of them have not lived till our day. Its essence lay in a certain rare flower, which, mingled properly with other ingredients of great potency in themselves, though still lacking the crowning virtue till the flower was supplied, produced the drink of immor tality." "Yes, and I had the flower, which I found in a grave," said Septimius, " and distilled the drink, which you have spilt." "You had a flower, or what you called a flower," said the girl. " But, Septimius, there was yet another drink, in which the same potent ingredients were 224 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. used ; all but the last. In this, instead of the beau tiful flower, was mingled the semblance of a flower, but really a baneful growth out of a grave. This I sowed there, and it converted the drink into a poison, famous in old science, a poison which the Borgias used, and Mary do Medicis, and which has brought to death many a famous person, when it was desirable to his enemies. This is the drink I helped you to distil. It brings on death with pleasant and delight ful thrills of the nerves. Septimius, Septimius, it is worth while to die, to be so blest, so exhilarated as I am now." "Good God, Sybil, is this possible?" "Even so, Scptimius. I was helped by that old physician, Doctor Portsoaken, who, with some private purpose of his own, taught me what to do ; for he was skilled in all the mysteries of those old phy sicians, and knew that their poisons at least were efficacious, whatever their drinks of immortality might be. But the end has not turned out as I meant. A girl s fancy is so shifting, Septimius. I thought I loved that youth in the grave yonder ; but it was you I loved, and I am dying. Forgive me for my evil purposes, for I am dying." "Why hast thou spilt the drink?" said Septimius, bending his dark brows upon her, and frowning over her. " We might have died together." " No, live, Scptimius," said the girl, whose face appeared to grow bright and joyous, as if the drink of death exhilarated her like an intoxicating fluid. " I would not let you have it, not one drop. But to SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 225 think," and here she laughed, " what a penance, what months of wearisome labor thou hast had, and what thoughts, what dreams, and how I laughed in my sleeve at them all the time ! Ha, ha, ha ! Then thou didst plan out future ages, and talked poetry and prose to me. Did I not take it very demurely, and answer thee in the same style 1 ? and so thou didst love me, and kindly didst wish to take me with thee in thy immortality. Septimius, I should have liked it well! Yes, latterly, only, I knew how the case stood. 0, how I surrounded thee with dreams, and instead of giving thee immortal life, so kneaded up the little life allotted thee with dreams and vaporing stuff, that thou didst not really live even that. Ah, it was a pleasant pastime, and pleasant is now the end of it. Kiss me, thou poor Septimius, one kiss ! " [She gives the ridiculous aspect to his scheme, in an airy way.] But as Septimius, who seemed stunned, instinc tively bent forward to obey her, she drew back. " No, there shall be no kiss ! There may a little poison linger on my lips. Farewell ! Dost thou mean still to seek for thy liquor of immortality ? ah, ah ! It was a good jest. We will laugh at it when we meet in the other world." And here poor Sybil Dacy s laugh grew fainter, and dying away, she seemed to die with it ; for there she was, with that mirthful, half-malign ex pression still on her face, but motionless ; so that however long Septimius s life was likely to be, wheth- 10* o 226 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. er a few years or many centuries, he would still have her image in his memory so. And here she lay among his broken hopes, now shattered as completely as the goblet which held his draught, and as incapa ble of being formed again. The next day, as Septimius did not appear, there was research for him on the part of Doctor Port- soaken. His room was found empty, the bed un touched. Then they sought him on his favorite hill-top; but neither was he found there, although something was found that added to the wonder and alarm of his disappearance. It was the cold form of Sybil Dacy, which was extended on the hillock so often mentioned, with her arms thrown over it ; but, looking in the dead face, the beholders were aston ished to see a certain malign and mirthful expression, as if some airy part had been played out, some surprise, some practical joke of a peculiarly airy- kind had burst with fairy shoots of fire among the company. "Ah, she is dead! Poor Sybil Dacy," exclaimed Doctor Portsoaken. "Her scheme, then, has turned out amiss." This exclamation seemed to imply some knowledge of the mystery; and it so impressed the auditors, among whom was Robert Hagburn, that they thought it not inexpedient to have an investigation; so the learned doctor was not uncivilly taken into custody and examined. Several interesting particulars, some of which throw a certain degree of light on our nar- SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 227 rative, were discovered. For instance, that Sybil Dacy, who was a niece of the doctor, had been be guiled from her home and led over the sea by Cyril Norton, and that the doctor, arriving in Boston with another regiment, had found her there, after her lover s death. Here there was some discrepancy or darkness in the doctor s narrative. He appeared to have consented to, or instigated (for it was not quite evident how far his concurrence had gone) this poor girl s scheme of going and brooding over her lover s grave, and living in close contiguity with the man w r ho had slain him. The doctor had not much to say for himself on this point ; but there was found reason to believe that he was acting in the interest of some English claimant of a great estate that was left with out an apparent heir by the death of Cyril Norton ; and there was even a suspicion that he, with his fan tastic science and antiquated empiricism, had been at the bottom of the scheme of poisoning, which was so strangely intertwined with Septimius s notion, in which he went so nearly crazed, of a drink of immortality. It was observable, however, that the doctor such a humbug in scientific matters, that he had perhaps bewildered himself seemed to have a sort of faith in the efficacy of the recipe which had so strangely come to light, provided the true flower could be discovered ; but that flower, according to Doctor Port- soaken, had not been seen on earth for many centuries, and was banished probably forever. The flower, or fungus, which Septimius had mistaken for it, was a sort of earthly or devilish counterpart of it, and was greatly 228 SEPTIMIUS FELTON. in request among the old poisoners for its admirable uses in their art. In fine, no tangible evidence being found against the worthy doctor, he was permitted to depart, and disappeared from the neighborhood, to the scandal of many people, unhanged ; leaving be hind him few available effects beyond the web and empty skin of an enormous spider. As to Septimius, he returned no more to his cottage by the wayside, and none undertook to tell what had become of him ; crushed and annihilated, as it were, by the failure of his magnificent and most absurd dreams. Rumors there have been, however, at vari ous times, that there had appeared an American claimant, who had made out his right to the great estate of Smithell s Hall, and had dwelt there, and left posterity, and that in the subsequent generation an ancient baronial title had been revived in favor of the son and heir of the American. Whether this was our Septimius, I cannot tell ; but I should be rather sorry to believe that after such splendid schemes as he had entertained, he should have been content to settle down into the fat substance and reality of Eng lish life, and die in his due time, and be buried like any other man. A few years ago, while in England, I visited Smithell s Hall, and was entertained there, not know ing at the time that I could claim its owner as my countryman by descent; though, as I now re member, I was struck by the thin, sallow, American cast of his face, and the lithe slenderness of his figure, and seem now (but this may be my fancy) to SEPTIMIUS FELTON. 229 recollect a certain Indian glitter of the eye, and cast of feature. As for the Bloody Footstep, I saw it with my own eyes, and will venture to suggest that it was a mere natural reddish stain in the stone, converted by super stition into a Bloody Footstep. THE END. Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & C*. o.o 65