/ GATHERED LEAVES : OR MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS BY MISS HANNAH F. GOULD And in each branch there was a budding gem, And in each gem there was a hidden stem, And in each stem, a leafy diadem. And every branch of that prophetic tree Was emblem of some mightier mystery. THE MOUITTAIW HOMK BOSTON: WILLIAM J. KEYNOLDS, 20 CORNHILL. 1846. 10AN STACK Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by BY MISS H. F. GOULD, In the Clerk s office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Boston: Printed by S. N. Dickinson & Cc 52 Washington St. 752 Q CONTENTS. Page. INTRODUCTION, 5 PITY, . . 7 THE GRAVE BENEATH THE THORN-TREE, 17 THE PAINTER S LAST TOUCH, 54 THE BROKEN PRISM, 82 THE OLD ELM OP LEXINGTON, 86 THE HAUNTED FOREST, 100 THE GRAVE or L. E. L 120 THE CEMETERY OP THE EAST, MONT Louis, OR PERE LA CHAISE, 124 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER ; 147 SAINT ROSALIA, . . . , , 157 958 4 CONTENTS. THE ANGEL OF THE LEAVES, . . . . . ..;, . 185 THE SISTER THERESE, 191 BLANCHE AND ISABEL, 203 LANCASTER, . . f . _ . . .V. ". ;. . 251 ST. BERNARD, 260 THE HUMMING-BIRD. 284 THE LINDEN LEAF, 298 THE SARRACENIA PURPUREA, . 301 INTRODUCTION. GATHERED LEAVES! said a friend, on hear ing the title of the present volume ; What kind of leaves do you mean those of trees and flowers, or written leaves ? . Just that kind which your taste and imagina tion may dictate, as most likely to be acceptable and useful to you, I replied. I would now propose the same freedom of interpretation to each inquirer under whose no tice the work may fall. There is, however, one sense in which I would be more explicit, lest it be taken for mere compilation. Most of what constitutes the following pages, is now published for the first time. A few, and only a few, of the articles have appeared in type before. And these were re ceived in a manner to encourage the belief, that they would be welcomed in a form more perma nent than that of fugitive, papers. To the reader, b INTRODUCTION. the contents will show how they were gathered ; that is, at different times, in various moods, and their subject matter, from scenes widely separate. Farther than what seems needful explanation, I dislike preface. To a good book it is super fluous ; a bad one should not be ; and, to a dull one, prefatory apology can only add dullness, and the kind of merit thus implied : The modest speaker is ashamed and grieved To engross a moment s notice 5 and yet begs Begs a propitious ear to his poor thoughts, However trivial all that he conceives. Sweet bashfulness ; it claims at least this praise The dearth of information and good sense That it foretells us, always comes to pass. H. F. G. PITY ANNA had strayed from her companions while making an excursion. She was walking alone by the wild sea-side, on an uninhabited island, contemplating the unmarred, primal beauty and magnificence of the scene. There lay the restless, mysterious, never- silent, everlasting ocean rolling, roaring and foaming before her, unfathomed and trackless as it was in the beginning, when the waters were gathered together and called seas, and the dry land appeared. And over it hung the glo rious firmament, unfaded by time, untouched by decay, and unmarked by the spoiling hand of art, as at first, when He, who < sitteth on the circle of the heavens, made the two great lights, and the stars also, and set them there. Not the note of a bird, nor the hum of an insect, was heard in contrast to the voice of the PITY. waters ; nor was the wing of either seen lifted, as a speck, beneath the cerulean vault. On that lonely shore, where Anna walked, there was no lirm gravelly beach, no hard peb bly strand, whereon she might loiter ; nor rock beneath whose shadow she could rest, to sur vey and meditate on the view. Her foot sunk at every step, in a wide bed of loose reddish sand, that hemmed in the waves, and spread back to the distance, where it was abruptly ter minated and walled by a high bank, mainly of the same unstable earth, plumed at its height with a few scattered tufts of long, coarse grass and stinted shrubs, that waved in the wind against the blue sky. Musing as she went, on the grandeur of the ocean and the solitude of the shore, Anna per ceived, close to the water s edge, and almost beneath her falling foot, a little lonely traveller, heavy-laden, and apparently far from home ; all unconscious of its danger from the next wave, diligently pursuing its way, as if confi dent that the mighty element would respect its impotence, and hastening on to some impor tant end. It was but a lowly one, with name unhonored, arid in presence spurned by man PITY. 9 a solitary caterpillar, .that the wind had whirled down from its native tuft of herbage on the bank, and sprinkled the coarse grains of sand upon its back, till the weight was as much as it could bear, and run beneath it, while speeding forward it knew not whither. Poor thing ! said Anna, ; thy helplessness and the danger thou art in give thee an impor tance, which else thou hadst never possessed. Thou art but a worm, yet not without a pur pose, since thou art here, a little well-finished motive part in the grand system the univer sal plan of the great Designer and Maker of all. Nor art thou, all feeble as thou art, and insignificant as thou mayst seem, without thy power, being able to touch the human heart and awaken its compassion. And thus mak ing the most of thy time and strength, and the least of thy burden, thou hast in a moment given me a lesson which a philosopher could not have taught. Yet, at the touch of the com ing wave, thou wouldst cease to be even a caterpillar. It would quench thy minute spark of life, and give the rest of thee to some hun gry little child of the sea. My lifted foot had well nigh crushed thee out of being ; and 10 PITY. shouldst thou attempt to reach thy distant home on the height, by crossing this Sahara, the wind would bury thee alive in the sand, as it sometimes does the camel in the desert, and leave thee to perish alone in an unknown grave. Thus, from three points at once has death aimed at thee, whilst thou, all uncon scious of the perils that beset thee, dost still, patient and untiring, hold on thy way thou knowest not whither. Thy home in the rough herbage is but a poor one ; still it is thy home, and as such, dear to thee. Thy life may be nought to any other creature, yet it is thy life ~ as great perhaps to thee as mine to me ; and it would in nowise avail me to look on and see it destroyed ; it will cost me nothing to save thee. And though in thy littleness thou mayst be of no farther use in this immensity, thou wilt at least have secured to me one honey- drop in earth s wilderness the sweet indul gence of a feeling of mercy and compassion, free from the under-motive of hope in a reward to follow. For, the act is in behalf of an hum ble worm, that hath no favor to show, no recompense to bestow, no voice to thank me, or to sound my praise abroad. And now I PITY. 11 will make thee a life-boat of this little pearly shell, and restore thee to safety. She took up the white shell from among the brown sand, and, sliding it under the feet of the caterpillar, raised him from his perilous course, and carried him up the bank to his knot of grass ; where, relieved of his scattered burden, he walked, or rested on the green airy blade, with the seeming delight of an exile re turned to his country and his home. In doing this, Anna fancied that she heard a voice, yet she saw no speaker. She looked forward, but he was not there ; and backward, but she could not perceive him. She beheld him not on the waters, she saw him not on the land. Then, said she, < It is a spirit ! the angel of Him who, unseen, fills all space ! And the voice spake : t Sweet is compassion in its after-uses, as well as in its present indulgence. Rich is the reward it returns into the bosom whence it proceeds. Every act of it shall en large the capacity of that bosom to enjoy ; and its enjoyment, increase the desire and the habit of repeating them. The object of its exercise may be small, and of no moment ; but the exer cise will revert to the agent in effects great and 12 PITY. blessed. The heart, whence the holy waters of pity and benevolence flow, may find that, like the new-opened fountain in its first free gush, they leap forward, repelling and throwing out. the fragments of the rock that was broken for their release. But afterwards, they will well up sweet and clear, and play off in streams re freshing and beautifying to all around it, and whatsoever they may reach ! It is now a sultry summer s day, and not long since Anna s solitary walk on the strand. A pleasure-boat is seen gliding smoothly down the blue bosom of the stream that is lost in the open ocean, near that sandy island. It shoots out at the mouth of the river, and dances off upon the sparkling billows of the briny deep, like a careless sea-gull, with its white sail filled by the breeze and flashing to the sun, as if it could mount and fly, should an aerial course be chosen as a change. And all the hearts of that boat s company are more buoyant than their skiff, and brighter than the face of the waters it bears them over. But there comes a change. Suddenly the thunder-storm shoves up the tops of his black wings above the horizon. They rise and un- PITY. 13 furl themselves with a fearful rapidity, and stretch gloomily across the heavens, curtaining! the shining arch with a moving darkness. The deep reflects the upper blackness, and the pow ers of air, pressed down into an under sphere of action, heap up the frowning waters, and roll them over in sable masses, while the light ning descends, as to bind them in bundles with its fiery chain, or to transfix them with ,the point of its terrible fork. The billows hiss and are astonished, as the bolt falls on them ; and the crash of the thunder sounds as if the heavens were breaking down upon the flood. The boat is far out at sea. Her sail has taken a sombre, ashy hue, and is dropped ; while the faces within her are pale as her sheet ; and she floats about at the mercy of the menacing elements, where one toss of the wave, one stroke of the blast, or a touch of the lightning s point may consign her awe-struck company to the cold bosom of the deep. Anna is in that boat ; and a still, small voice whispers to her soul, Remember the sea of Galilee! Be not afraid; it is I. And she- looks ; and lo ! a fisherman in his homelier and heavier craft, heaves in view from behind a 14 PITY. far-off watery hill. His boat, made for useful service, is steady, and moves on soberly and self-possessed, to the relief of the light-keeled skiff. The fisherman has been out to serve the wants of life, and now he is at hand to save it from impending death. He makes haste to the rescue ; and soon the whole com pany are safe on shore, on the island, and near the j}lace where Anna lately walked. The heavy masses of dark vapor that ob scured the skies, begin to fall asunder. They thin off, scatter, and pass away. The cloud that held the shower, let fall only a few drops, by way of salutation, as it moved over the un housed heads of the glad company, and is gone to pour down its cataract in the distance. The heavens are recovering their recent bright ness. At length, only a few downy fragments of cloud remain, thin and soft, as if the late storm had walked the azure arch with feath ered feet. The sun smiles out from the west at the rainbow in the east, where it stands in its beauty, the new-born child of his own light and the shower that has passed by. Zephyr comes hovering round, fanning the disordered locks and sprinkled drapery of the grateful PITY. 15 Anna, as she stands and looks abroad upon the scene, meditating on the mutations of an hour, and the perils from which she and her companions have been saved. But what is this, that floats along on the air, near her, from among the shrubs and grass on yonder height ? It is brilliant as a piece cut out of that rainbow, and full of life and grace ful motion. Its body is wrapped in a downy vest, and girt about with shining rings. Its wings are of soft velvet, like the leaf of a vio let, studded with gems and bordered with a golden fringe. The pretty airy stranger flies over Anna s shoulder, and to and fro before her eyes. Then away, away he goes, across the sand, and over the water, balancing and dancing, and sailing mere awhile in the air. And now he returns and hovers near her, as if he, even he, the butterfly, had a message to communicate, or a mission to perform, for one whom he must not disobey; one who had made him so bright, and suspended him in air, on the wing before her. And again that small, still voice comes to the soul of Anna, in mys terious accents, saying : 1 In the winged one before thee, that has 16 PITY. arisen from the worm which once crawled at thy feet, behold I show thee an emblem of a being nobler in power, wiser in understanding, and higher in destination ; but still weak, wan dering, blind, and ever in need of the sparing mercy, the tender pity, and the protecting hand of the greater, higher, and holier One who in- habiteth eternity. PITY is a kind, soothing, gentle angel, the daughter of Love, lovely and beautiful in the sight, and dear to the heart of her Father in heaven. Yet he hath no office for her there, where there are no wounds for her to bind up no woes for her to weep over. On earth, abundant cause of gratitude and delight will he make manifest to the soul that entertains her. To this world was she sent from her native skies, to work, and watch, and drop her precious tears, not for herself, for she is ever blest; but for others, the children of earth. And when her purpose is accomplished here, she will fall asleep on her Father s bosom, and rest forever ! THE GRAVE BENEATH THE THORN-TREE. THE pleasant New England town of New- buryport, lying on a gentle slope of ground, just above where the Merrimack opens into the ocean, declines gracefully to the water s edge. There, as its boats and shipping glide over the stream, casting the shadows of their white sails on its sparkling surface, or furl the canvas in the haven, it may be said to form a smile about the mouth of that noble river, as it finishes its course. The town, owing to its position, and the peculiar beauty of the scenery within and around it, affords many points of observation where, by a single coup-d oeil, one may com mand a very wide and diversified prospect, with nothing to intercept the view till it is lost in the distance. 2 18 THE GRAVE BENEATH Its High Street is rich in these ; while it forms its boundary on one side, and finishes off a large part of that upper skirt with a neat and comely border of fair buildings, umbra geous trees, gardens, grassy grounds, flowering shrubs, and climbing vines. When, at a certain point in this street, you have on one hand the town, whose fall, though easy, is still so low that your eye may glance over it, or run down one of its other neat streets, straight to the wharves ; and, crossing the river either by water or the bridge, stray away, if it be not too short-sighted, among the fields and woods of Salisbury, and the country beyond it. On the other hand lies a green strip of pleasure ground, into which you may step from the highway; and, measuring its width by a few paces, reach the railing on the opposite side. As you lean against this bar rier, and look down the steep bank which it surmounts, your sight will fall on a quiet little body of water that lies, calm and noiseless, in its basin far below you ; and, like the bosom of the righteous, is supplied, in its serenity, by a secret, living, and never-failing spring. THE THORN-TREE. 19 Glancing over this miniature lake, your eye strikes first on the eastern side of a sudden rise of earth, denominated, by way of distinction from its neighbor cemetery, The Old Burying Ground. Situated thus, you have the land of the living behind, and that of the dead before you ; with only this little sheet of water separa ting you from the latter. If you go down to the path encircling the pond, you may look up, and see this solemn eminence rising abruptly above your head, like one vast sepulchral mound, and bristling to its summit with thickset monu mental stones, dark, white, and grey, that bear the names of those whose ashes seem to have been amassed until they swelled the height. The limits of this burying-ground now in clude the hill and a part of the valley, that on the south and west sinks at its foot. Tradi tion affirms, that they originally encompassed the hill only ; and, that this lower portion was, at a later period, taken in as an enlargement, to accommodate the silent congregation ; when their numbers had increased till the higher places were all filled. But, whether the choice of those, who first selected this spot to be thus consecrated, was fixed by its height that the 20 THE GRAVE BENEATH sun might shine earlier from the east, and later from the west, on the city of their dead, than on the habitations of the living, or was decided by the aqueous feature of the scene, stirring up in their pure minds some hallowed associa tions with the symbolic waters of their religion, no witness remains to tell. Touching the inequality of situation, the high and the low places assigned to the multi tude in this dominion, it is too late for human clay to be puffed up and made vain by the one, or humbled and depressed by the other. The morning, it is true, smiles first, and the sun pours his fullest flood of glory over the more elevated ashes ; but the dew lies longest on the flower, the grass is softest, and the ver dure richest on the beds of those who sleep in the vale. One bright and balmy afternoon in the spring-time of the year, I found myself shut out from observation, on the retired side of this hill, and, with reverential foot, winding my way among the mounds and speaking stones, at about half its height. The train of thoughts, the frame of feeling into which such a walk will lead the mind and bring the heart of the THE THORN-TREE. 21 meditative, needs not be told to one who has taken it ; while, to one who has not, they can never be made known by description. On such an occasion, that busy power, imagina tion, should be sanctified, and have her wings luminous with the light of a higher and purer world, to hover over so much dust and dark ness. Curiosity, too, should be spiritual ; and the subjects of her speculations not physical, but moral. Yet, while she must shudder at the sacrilegious thought that would impiously lift the clods, and pry into the secret concerns beneath them, she may innocently question her sister, imagination, about the many and vari ous stories of the lives of those to whom they are now but as a dream when one awaketh. With my thoughts thus occupied by the vol umes of interesting tales of truth that could here be compiled, could every grave give out the his tory of its tenant, I had paused, and was look ing up, to consider whether I should climb any farther, occasionally preventing my feet from sliding back, by the check of a memento morij when the sweet song of a bird, suddenly war bled forth from behind me, touched my ear, and turned my eye down into the vale. The 22 THE GRAVE BENEATH happy little minstrel was perched on the top of a small thorn-tree, covered with white blossoms, that grew straight up out of a grave, which was the first of a long range that lay side by side, and near together, in the lowest spot at the base of Ihe hill. I supposed it to be a kindred gather ing, and passed down, to read the family name : but I found it was only that of the family of strangers and sojourners here. This was the foreigners lot. Its tenants, brought into such close alliance, and quiet neighborhood of dust, were of different countries, nations, and lan guages. Here had their wanderings ended ; and their tongues no longer needed the inter preter! But, how this flowering tree, in its delicate dress and sharp armor, was planted here, was wholly a matter of conjecture. The berry or seed, that contained its germ, might have been dropped by some antecedent rela tive of that very little winged one which I had just frightened away. It was small in circum ference and in height, not much above the human stature ; and with its robe of white blossoms prevailing in show over the young green leaves not yet spread, by the supersti tious eye, never the most accurate in defining THE THORN-TREE. 23 form or taking dimensions, passing that way in the shadowy night hour, it might easily have been converted into a sheeted spectre. And, had that little bird chanced to be a nightingale, serenading the sleepers, it might also have passed for that great wonder on earth, a musi cal apparition. Its root had struck down into the grave, where it was working deeper than I wished to study ; though I made a slight investigation to learn the hold and the course it had taken. At this, a spirited little scion, starting out from among the herbage I was separating, pierced my finger with its needle, demanding a drop of blood as a penalty for the intrusion, which it paid, and withdrew, smarting for its temerity. But, notwithstanding this quick repulse and pointed reproof for meddling, I ventured to part the tufts of grass before the head-stone, that felt damp and cold, like the moist locks on the forehead of the dying, as I held them back to examine the inscription on its mossy face. I read, i Ci-git Marie Felicite, espouse de - and enough farther to inform me that she, who slept there, was a French lady from the island of Guadaloupe ; that she was married, and 24 THE GRAVE BENEATH had died when very young. These facts, with an interest natural to one who has had friends abroad in foreign lands, enkindled in me a desire to know something more of this lady. I therefore transferred the name on the rough stone to a vellum leaf, as it occurred to my mind, that I knew one person who could, per haps, tell me some portion of the history of her who had borne it. There then dwelt in the town, though he too is now in the dust, an aged French physician, a native of the mountains of France, who, in the bloody days of the Revolution, and the reign of terror, had been a refugee ; and, after having passed some time among the West India Islands, had thence found his way to this country and town, where he settled, and had been, from a day not within my knowledge, a successful and highly respected practitioner. In former years, the good old gentleman might be seen at all hours, and in every quar ter of the town, in his suit of dark green, his white hair bound in a slender cue, lying on his back, with its end curled out into a little silvery globe, that looked like a flower of the snow ball tree with its stem bent downward over THE THORN-TREE. 25 the deep verdure, as he diligently wended his way to the chambers of the sick, with a smile, a reverence, or a word of civility for every one he met. And, in his pleasantry and cheerful ness of spirit, he often carried to his patient a medicine to minister to a mind diseased, which was quite as efficacious as that which the vials in his pocket contained for the body, and ever made him a welcome visitor. But now, in his advanced age, the eyes that had long and faithfully served him as a man of profound science, a polished scholar, and a devoted lover of the beauties of nature and of art that had looked on the fearful sights of the times of Robespierre, and wept the adieu of an exile to his country, had become totally blind! An impenetrable veil had passed be tween them and all outer things. Yet on its inside, its lining, memory was ever busily em ployed as a painter of the scenes and objects of other days. The picture of his whole life s journey was there vividly portrayed in despite of those dark films. What is memory, a single faculty of the soul, that it can command and embrace so much ? What is a whole life, or a system of 26 THE GRAVE BENEATH things here, that the concerns thereof can be so compressed? What is the soul, that on these but rests her foot as a point from which to depart, while lifting her wings for that un bounded flight onward, onward, where the very echo of imagination that calls after is lost behind the eternal hills ? This venerable man had no relative near him, or on this side of the waters spread be tween him and his native shore. He had passed through life a solitary bachelor ; and now, in the decline of his strength, and the dark evening of his day, he had, literally, no one on whom to lean for support, or to lend him vision. He had lost sight of the world, and the world had lost sight of him. He therefore kept chiefly at home, sustained by remembrance of the past, and such hopes of the future as the present consolations of his Catholic faith could afford him, with no image or confessor but what he found in the still sanctuary of his own bosom ; yet, to any friend who would seek him in the seclusion of his dim room, he ever gave a warm welcome, and was courteous, social, and entertaining, as in his days of light. THE THORN-TREE. 27 I had known that the troubled state of his country, at the time of his leaving it, was a subject which, whenever it was reverted to, wrought powerfully on his feelings ; but, with out suspecting how tender a string I was about to touch, I sought an early opportunity of see ing him, and asked if he ever had such a patient as the lady whose name I produced. His aged bosom heaved, and a tear shone in his darkened eye, as he replied, Ah ! oui pauvre Marie ! cette douce fleur fletrie avant le midi ! Elle etait belle comme 1 aurore ; et bonne comme les anges du ciel ! Having re lieved himself by a few vehement expressions, compounded of words, sighs, and gesticula tions, he attempted to tell me, while his broken English and disused French contending, and tripping each other on his tongue, prevented a fair utterance of either, something of the object of my inquiry. But I soon discovered that there was nothing very extraordinary in the life of Marie, or that was particularly connected with him, to occasion his emotion. It was only a few incidents in the history of her pa rents, that had led his mind back to the trou bled past, and his murdered king. What he 28 THE GRAVE BENEATH knew of Marie was conveyed in a few words. He then said he had some notes and snatches of history, that would give me a few facts relative to her family, that might not be unin teresting. Rising, he felt the way along to his desk, to which he applied the key ; and, tak ing out an old-fashioned pocket-book, richly wrought with gold and all the colors of the rainbow, unclasped it, saying, as he held forth one hand, Vous voyez que j ai un ceil au bout de chaque doight ! Presenting several little parcels of papers, bound with different colored ribbons, he selected one, and asked, Est-ce que cela a le ruban bleu ? On my affirmative answer, he put the blue ribboned manuscript into my hand, and requested me to read it. It was his own writing ; and neat, pure French, in the choice of every expression and word, the peculiarly graceful cut and easy run of every letter and line. What he particularly wished to communi cate, respecting Marie s father and mother, was a short piece of the thread of their story, taken abruptly from amidst the perilous scenes of its eventful day, and may be conveyed in the fol lowing brief narration, in connection with the THE THORN-TREE. 29 circumstances which, at a later period, led her to her final rest beneath the clods where I had found her name. Soon after the great battle of Fleurus, in 1794, between the French and Austrians, though victory had turned on the side of the former, their troops, re-entering Belgium, were sur prised in Brussels, and so near being taken, that they were scattered and put to flight. It was just at night-fall, when Annette Mar- celle, the young niece, and foster-child of the sexton of a parish on the border of Brussels, standing at her uncle s door, saw a youthful passenger, whom she discovered to be a French officer, hurrying by ; and rushing, as she well knew, directly into the power of those, who, though her friends, were his deadly foes. That mysterious and holy spring, which in the bo som of the benevolent is so quickly moved by the sight of misfortune, was at once put in play in the sensitive heart of the generous girl by the object before her. She knew him to be one from an enemy s camp ; yet it was enough that he was alone, defenceless, and in mortal peril, from which she might rescue him ; and the moment being one propitious to such an 30 THE GRAVE BENEATH enterprise, through the absence of her uncle from home, she resolved without delay to do her utmost to save him. 1 Stop ! stranger, she cried, if you go on, you are lost ! * I am equally so, if I go back, replied the fugitive ; * I know not where safety is. l Come in here, said Annette, i and you shall find it. Nadau, for such was the strang er s name, accepted. Annette then explained to him the motive and the circumstances that had emboldened her to take so venturous a step, and told him it was one that might yet prove fatal to him, as her uncle, should he come home and find him there, would assur edly deliver him up to those who were seeking him. Then, giving a loose outer garment, she told him to wrap it round him and follow her. Leading the way to the barn, where was a large pile of new straw, she directed him to hollow out a cell and lie down, and let her bury him in it. Having heaped the light cov ering well over her hidden protege, she returned to the house, and was busily employed about her domestic concerns, when the sexton came home. Nadau was a shrewd and ardent politician, THE THORN-TREE. 31 and an intrepid soldier. His talents as the one, and his prowess as the other, rendered him a marked man and a desirable conquest. He knew his pursuers had track of him, and that they would leave no stone unturned in their search ; while his jeopardized life, which other wise might have been but loosely held, was doubly dear on account of his wife and little son, now retired into the country, and ignorant of his fate. By some, the charge may have been laid against the kind Annette, of a roman tic susceptibility to that tender passion to which it is said, that pity melts the mind, and of her being actuated by this in her heroism in behalf of the young stranger. But she will be acquitted, or allowed to have turned the teach ing of that potentate to a disinterested and holy use, when it is known, that on being in formed by Nadau of the strongest ties, which bound him to life, being conjugal and paternal, her assiduity to save that life seemed even greater than before. He had not lain long, under his new covert, when a scouting band of the enemy s soldiers came up, and, seeing that the barn offered a com modious lodging place, they turned in also, to 32 THE GRAVE BENEATH refresh their war-worn frames on the comforta ble bed of straw that seemed made ready ex pressly for their coming. They threw them selves down on it, and soon passed into the land of dreams. The vigilant girl kept one eye to them and the other to her uncle, till he retired for the night, leaving her free from ob servation. Then, under favor of the shades, with stealthy steps, she made her way to the barn, and, having listened without till a nasal enunciation gave evidence that the soldiers were under keeping of the leaden king s key, she crept round to where her warrior lay, not < taking his rest, but motionless and half-suffo cated, and, giving a gentle signal that she was near, whispered him to rise and escape. The rustling and settling of the straw, as he withdrew his feet from under it, where one of the soldiers had pillowed his head, aroused the slumberer. He started up, and seized Nadau by the hand within the cloak, with the grasp of one not yet come to himself, and uncertain whether it was dream or reality. But Annette, whose eyes and wits were wider awake, feel ing herself at the dernier resort, in this dark rencounter, thrust her head between two belli- THE THORN-TREE. 33 gerents, and said, in her soft voice, ( Let me go ! it is I, come to see if my poor, lame kid was not suffering hurt from The half- asleep soldier, surprised by a female voice, and ashamed of his attack, supposing it to be her hand that he had seized, loosed his hold, and, muttering an apology, lowered himself to rest ; while the object of so much and so widely dif ferent interest, passed out, followed by his fair deliverer. Annette then conducted Nadau to her own room, and, closing the door, bade him remain, while she would go for a lamp, and the keys of the church, of which her uncle had the care. Furnished with these, she returned, and bade him follow her, as, with her muffled lamp, she led the way ; and, reaching the chapel, that had been plundered of all its rich vessels and orna ments by the ravages of war, she passed in, removing the key to the inner side of the lock, and turning it, proceeded to the altar. Behind this was a secret trap-door, which she lifted, and said, You see these sombre steps : they lead to the tomb of an illustrious family ; a place so long unopened, that it is nearly for gotten or unknown. If you have the fortitude 3 34 THE GRAVE BENEATH to descend, and wait here till a moment shall offer for your escape, I will watch for it, and come and apprize and liberate you. She then stepped down to usher her companion into the solemn chamber of death. But what was the surprise of Nadau, when, by the first rays of the lamp that fell on the gloomy furniture of this shadowy apartment, he beheld the arms of his own family, who were of high rank, and originally of Brus sels ! For a while he stood and gazed on the escutcheons, mute and motionless with aston ishment, to find himself thus surrounded by the ashes of those whose blood had descended to his veins, and was coursing warm through them ; while their ancestral names were ad dressing him with a kindred greeting from the marble coffins that on every side met his eye, in that abode of shade and silence, and wel coming him to an asylum from death beneath his very throne ! In his transport and overflow of feeling at this surprise, which for a while made him for get the cause that had introduced him to it, Annette left him, promising soon to return and liberate him, or at least bring refreshments. THE THORN-TREE. 35 Alone with the ashes of his kindred, he re garded each sarcophagus as containing a friend, whose love and sympathy he there possessed ; and, kneeling beside them, he conversed with the dust, as if it were still informed by the spirits that had so long ago passed out of it to their final inheritance. With his rnind thus partially diverted from the strangeness and peril of his own situation, and his thoughts interlaced with the many-col ored threads of the history of his ancient and honorable family line, he found, by the strokes of the old church clock, that the night had worn away and the morning come, much quicker than he could have expected in so gloomy an inn. The day advanced, and he began to grow impatient for the return of his friend. Yet hour after hour was dolefully tolled off by that solemn clock, till another evening drew near; and still she came not ! Sometimes he feared she might have forgotten him ; and then, sorry for so unjust a suspicion, he trembled lest she had been detected in her benevolent undertaking, and fallen a martyr to her efforts to save him ; while he might be left there alone, to come to a more 36 THE GRAVE BENEATH terrible end than any he had escaped above ground. Thus, with the image of a most dreadful, lingering death staring him in the face, did Nadau find another, and the darkest night that ever he had known, settling down over him, in that sepulchral cell. Overcome by the horrors of his condition, and exhausted from want of air and food, he fell upon one of the coffins, where he lay too faint to rise, and expecting never more to come forth to the light of time. His lamp had gone out ; and he felt that the lamp of his life must soon follow, leav ing to his friends no traces of his fate. On the morning of the second day, Annette came with refreshments. As she descended into the vault, she saw the form of Nadau stretched like a corpse on the coffin ; and sup posing him to be dead, she gave a deep groan, and hastily reascending, dropped the trap. A desperate effort, and a preternatural energy enabled the prostrate man to utter a cry, which brought her back to his relief; when fresh air and nourishment soon revived him. Annette explained the cause of her absence. Their house, she said, had been beset by armed men, who accused her uncle of having secreted THE THORN-TREE. 37 an emigrant foe ; while he, ignorant of her im prudence, had, with the most solemn assevera tions, disclaimed all knowledge of any such person; and that they had both been strictly watched. Hardly had she made this explanation, when the sound of voices, the opening of doors, with rude foot-steps and the clanging of arms, was heard within the church. She understood it all, and gently lowered the trap ; for she recog nized the voices, and knew it was a band of soldiery accompanied by her uncle, who, in the sincerity of his heart, was endeavoring to estab lish his innocence, by showing every part of the church where they had accused him of concealing the object of their search. They passed roughly about from place to place, in every direction; and even walked, with an awful tramp, over the door that shut in the living entombed among the dead. Finding their search but vain, they gave it over, and withdrew; while the two subterraneans heard their receding feet, and the doors closing after them, with feelings of a new and unspeakable relief and joy. When all was hushed as before, Annette 38 THE GRAVE BENEATH ventured forth, promising to return soon with fresh supplies of provision, and to attend him till a way for his safe departure should seem clear. And day after day her word was kept, and the prisoner sustained by her unremitting care and ministrations. When more than a week had thus heavily worn away, she came one evening and in formed him that a season of calm had arrived, when he might regain his liberty. As the hunted deer darts out of the thicket, and is off at a bound, so did this disentombed prisoner go forth, when he had thanked God and his humane instrument in this deliverance with all the depth and fervor of gratitude, which heart could feel and expression make known, for his thrice-restored life. In taking leave of Annette, he felt as if the spirit and essence of the friendship of a whole age of man had been condensed into the few days of then* acquaintance. He was melted to tears, and knelt before his benefactress with the burden of a heart weighed down by unutterable emotions. But the noble girl motioned him to rise ; and, pointing to the starry heavens, THE THORN-TREE. Kneel, said she, * to no being below Him whose throne is there ! If I have rendered you a service, it was He, the inspirer of all good thoughts, and the mover and guide to every worthy act, whose finger in the heart directed me to this work ; and his pure eye would frown on my receiving a homage due only to himself. Thank him, not me ! As the reward from you, of which you speak, I would claim this alone - that you let every unfortunate, whom you may hence find it in your power to relieve, serve as a memorial of me ; and thereby secure to yourself the sat isfaction that now is mine, at the thought of what I have been able to do for one in distress. If your gratitude flows out in secret breathings of the heart to heaven, attended with deeds of benevolence and love towards your fellow- creatures, it will be sure to reach the right end. Should it be an enemy, who comes into your power to be saved or sacrificed, remember Annette, and the church beneath which your ancestors rest ; and think of the forgiving mercy of him whose presence fills his holy temple! Adieu! speed on your way the twinkling hosts above will be better company than I, and 40 THE GRAVE BENEATH safer lights than my lamp. When they go out, let the sun rise upon you beyond danger ! Nadau made haste, and soon after reached the bosom of his family in safety. But it was not till reunited to his gentle and beautiful Lucille, and their little son, Etienne, that he learnt the full weight of his obligation to the high-minded and heroic, though humble, girl of Brussels. The vicissitudes of life and fortune in that revolutionary epoch, which ultimately led Henri Nadau to quit France, and seek a home else where, are not given. But it was not long after the events already related, that he found himself, with his affectionate Lucille, estab lished as a temporary resident in the island of Guadaloupe. There was Marie, their second child, bom ; and there also was his acquaintance, if it had before been begun, ripened into a close intimacy with the good physician, my chronicler. The climate of that tropical region, which so often proves fatal to Europeans and Americans, soon began to show its baleful effects on the constitution of Nadau. The doctor was his friend and comforter ; but he had not the pana- THE THORN-TREE. 41 cea for this case here all his healing art failed. The golden bowl was broken ; the essence of life was fast flowing out ; he could not stay it ! And who could gather it up ? Not long before he left the island for the United States, he had the grief to see his patient and friend, Nadau, sink into the earth ; and the widowed Lucille, leading out her little Marie, each with a fresh wreath of flowers to hang upon the cross erected over his grave their daily offer ing to the memory of the lost husband and father. The want of proper means of education in the West India Islands, had induced the parents, on leaving France, to let their boy re main behind, at school, under the eye of a friend and relative. Therefore, until the term for which he was left had expired, Marie was her mother s only present treasure. Like a flower of her own warm native clime, she soon came forward in life to full bloom ; and at the early age bordering on childhood, when among the French, and particularly in the islands, matrimonial alliances are formed, Madame Nadau consented to her daughter s becoming the bride of M. Pierre Merlande, a 42 THE GRAVE BENEATH wealthy and respectable gentleman, by more than a dozen years her senior, and a native of France ; though at that time residing in Guad- aloupe. Marie, like her mother, had two children, a son and a daughter the boy about two years older than his sister; and one six, the other four, when their mother s health began rapidly to decline. Medical advice prescribed a sea- voyage, and change of scenes and climate, as the best means of restoring her failing strength and sinking spirits ; and, as it was Merlande s intention to give his son an English education at the schools and seminaries in the United States, the little Emilius now being of an age to be put under his instructors, preparations were made for her to accompany her husband and child to these shores. They embarked with her brother and one more friend, intend ing to see the young Emilius well established in school ; and when they could leave him happy and familiarized with the new things and ways in American life, they hoped to return with health and gladness, to rejoin Madame Nadau and the infantine Louise, whom they had left with her grand-parent, to supply, by THE THORN-TREE. 43 her play and prattle, the place of the whole group of absentees. But truly, it is not in man that walketh, to direct his steps. He who has declared, my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, had in this case marked out an order of things signally different from that of human arrangement. On the voyage, the sea-sickness, which it was hoped would be salutary in Marie s case, pro duced the opposite effect; bringing on a hemorrhage of the lungs, and other fearful symptoms, which so reduced her, that when the vessel arrived in port, she was borne on shore like one who had only escaped an ocean- burial to sink into earth her foot had never trod. But the land-breeze refreshed her withered vital energies, and buoyed up her drooping frame, till, for a time, it seemed losing its languor ; and her wonted light and playfulness of spirit returned, with apparently returning health. Yet -these favorable signs proved to be only the flattery of that deceitful and insidious dis ease that touches the cheek with rose, and lights 44 THE GRAVE BENEATH the eye with a brighter radiance, while its keen tooth works deep within, and its draught is the whole fountain of life. To the watchful eyes of the husband and brother, her appearance spoke a fearful truth, in language which their affectionate hearts but too well understood; and most bitterly did they regret her separation from her mother and child. The prospect of soon losing her forever, and this, too, by her sinking in a foreign land; among strangers, of whose language she under stood not a syllable ; whose modes of life, and way of preparing and ministering the smallest comfort, were all new and alien to the invalid ; of whose manners and habits she knew nothing, and who were of another faith and wor ship ! this was overwhelming. On the other hand, to attempt to return home, with her health in its present state, would be rashness, and beyond a doubt prove fatal. Soon after their arrival, they took their course to this town, where the early friend of their family, the venerable physician, resided; and the languishing Marie was confided to his care, with the full assurance that, while she could freely communicate with him in her native THE THORN-TREE. 45 tongue, his known medical skill, and his acquaintance with constitutions accustomed to the air and aliment of her native clime, would enable him to do all that human instrumentality could for her recovery. Scarcely were the strangers established here, where they had taken lodgings in a private family, when the late war was declared between the United States and England, which so para lyzed commerce, that their means of intercourse with home were chiefly cut off. The doctor was then* constant visitor, and unremitting in his attention and services, both as physician and friend. But as the chilly autumn weather came on, and its winds and frost assailed the tender tropical flower ; he saw that the daughter of his early friend was soon to follow her father to the < undiscovered coun try whence none return. Yet she lingered, and did not utterly fail till, for the first time in her life, she had seen the snows falling thick around her ; and was to be transplanted from an icy, mid- winter scene into the Paradise from which her soul seemed already to have taken its odor and its hue. A short time before hfer decease, a letter was; 46 THE GRAVE BENEATH one morning brought to Merlande, bearing a black seal. It was from Madame Nadau, an nouncing the death of the little Louise, and filled with mournings, and entreaties that her children would, if possible, return and console her; or that they might at least mingle their tears together for their lost jewel. As this letter was kept from the knowledge of Marie, she never learnt that her child had past from earth before her, till, two days after its receipt, she went to meet the infant angel in the light of another world. While she yet lived, her husband and brother had, in her presence, concealed the deep grief they had at heart on account of her state and the loss of the child, by that outward, artificial gaiety of spirit which is so characteristic of their nation, to cloak a wounded bosom. But now that she was gone and forever! that her soul had passed away, without unction or shrift, from the fair form that lay, pale and cold, before them! they gave themselves up to the uncontrolled indulgence of sorrow. Its exhibition was sudden, violent, wild and im petuous as a hurricane of their island; while the astonished child, Emilius, who had never THE THORN-TREE. 47 before witnessed a death-scene, shuddering looked with equal wonder and awe oh the calm and the paleness of his mother, and the burn ing eyes and frenzied actions of his father and uncle. He stood, as if petrified, between the dead and the living, the beautiful little statue of a weeper, without visible motion, except what appeared in the heavy round drops that rolled down his colorless cheek from his full, dark eye ; while the distracted husband and brother, as they wrung their hands beside the sleeping clay, called aloud on the name of Marie ; and invoked her spirit to return into the dust it had forsaken, to console them with even one more ray of light from that sealed eye, and a smile or a word from those silent lips ! They had themselves performed the rite of sprinkling the holy water, and had the burning tapers placed at the head and feet of the corpse. But the funeral service now to follow must be by a Protestant minister! They had no priest none ! to understand their desired form of burial, to pray for the soul of the dead, or to give consolation to the living! All seemed cold and bleak around them; the religion; the earth ; the skies ! Every blast of air was 48 THE GRAVE BENEATH freezing ; and the whole a dark scene. Their loved one must be borne through drifted snows, and left beneath them, in a frozen ground, as her last resting-place! The funeral must be conducted in the Protestant form, all new, for eign, and uncongenial to their bereaved affec tions, as the wintry aspect of nature around them was to the outer man. Yet then* views of the religion, and their opinion of the temperature of the heart here, seemed greatly changed when, some time after the interment, they called on the clergyman who had officiated at the funeral, and offered them such consolation as a man of God must aim to render in such a case, to pay their respects and thank him. They then expressed to a friend who accompanied them as interpreter, their surprise that The Priest would take no pay for his services. During the remainder of the winter, the hus band and brother used frequently to walk out in the evening, when none in the house knew whither, often absenting themselves from the fire- side for hours. But it was told by the in habitants who lived near the burying-ground, and on so elevated a situation as to command THE THORN-TREE. 49 a view of the valley part of it, that they were repeatedly seen, with their black dresses strik ingly contrasted with the snowy mound, pros trate on the grave of their beloved Marie. In the following spring, they sought and found an opportunity of returning home under a neutral flag, Merlande, thus bereaved of his wife and daughter, felt that the plan of leaving his son behind must now be abandoned, par ticularly as the means of intercourse with other shores were now so restricted, and our country involved in war. On an afternoon of April in that spring the little, mournful band embarked, and were seen standing in a sable-clad group on the deck, looking their long farewell to the earth that imbosomed the remains of their lost one, as the vessel glided down towards the ocean, over the blue river-waters laid open to the reader s eye in the beginning of my narrative. Some are yet living, who knew all their story during their residence in this town, who sympathised with them in their affliction, and witnessed their sorrowful departure. After their vessel had gone out too far to sea for the eye of friendship to follow her through the 4 50 THE GRAVE BENEATH telescope, one of the ladies of the house, going into the room which Merlande had occupied, found several valuable articles that had once belonged to Marie, marked, and left as tokens to different members of the family, and a sealed note addressed to herself, lying on the table. Opening it, she found it was signed by Merlande, and, being translated, it read thus : The many tokens of kindness which I have received from you and your amiable family, during my residence with you, and in the affliction that has befallen me, authorize me to solicit from you a new proof of friendship, which is, that you will sometimes visit the grave of my wife. I even dare ask that yon will plant thereon two wild rose-trees, in memory of the pains she has suffered. Even as that flower, her life has been beset with thorns, and her too feeble organs could not resist the cold winter. But the rose will bloom again in the spring It is a great consolation to the bleeding heart to find sympa thy in its sorrows. The tears you have shed for my beloved Marie have fallen on the wounds of my soul. I depart ! I leave with you the remains of my wife. I repeat the request I have made, that you will visit them, and often. k Adieu ! I never forget my friends. MERLANDE. The lady fulfilled the request ; but the roses, after promising awhile to flourish, began to languish, and finally dwindled away ; when, in their stead, and without any known human THE THORN-TREE. 51 agency, came up the thorn-tree, that now puts forth its white blossoms, pure and beautiful, and stands as an armed sentinel over the grave of MARIE. It may perhaps add some interest to the fore going narrative, to state, that I have now in my possession the original French note, of which a translation is given, with the date and signature of M. Merlande, on the day that he sailed. His wife s name and age may still be read on her small, mossy grave-stone ; and the venerable clergyman who witnessed the sor rows I have described, and consigned her re mains to that resting-place, still lives, and remembers the scene. He probably remem bers, too, being told at the time, of the remark I have quoted respecting him after the visit. That the life of the good physician I have described was beloved, and his memory re vered, may be believed, by the fact, that several highly respectable families in the town had each a son named after him, Francis Vergnies. A friend, who read my manuscript, expressed a wish that Annette of Brussels could have 52 THE GRAVE BENEATH been brought to view again in the story. But where history, not fiction, is aimed at in simple narration, this taking up again of characters that have appeared once and performed their part in an interesting light, or otherwise, is not to be done, as in fiction and romance. I have attempted only a relation of interesting facts at least they are so to me without even dis guising a name by the use of another. Since writing this story, I find, among the notes to a long poem of Le GouvVs, the same singular circumstances and preservation of the life of a French soldier or officer by a girl, the niece of a sexton in Brussels, is given, but without names. The notes were illustrative of some lines in the poem on the < merits of women. It is but a sad, though a true sequel, to add, concerning the friend spoken of as having ac companied Mr. Merlande and his family, that in the terrible destruction by the late earth quake at Point-Petre, Guadaloupe, he was one of the keenest sufferers. He was in public office, had a large and valuable establishment, and an interesting family a wife and numer ous children in their seniority, or near it. In the space of about a minute and a half, all THE THORN-TREE. 53 these, with the exception of one son, were snatched from him into eternity, his buildings crumbled down, or swallowed by the yawning earth, and his own person painfully injured. I have seen a letter of his writing since the event, giving an account of his own distressing share in the calamity of that awful moment. But neither in public print, or private letter, does any mention meet my eye of the names of Merlande and Nadau. THE PAINTER S LAST TOUCH. 4 1 HAVE it, said Eicardo de Vittori, breaking from the abstraction in which he had reached the threshold of his small, shadowy apartment. Yes, I have it ! I know just what is wanting the very touch to give it the expression I have so long sought in vain to impart. Closing this short soliloquy, he entered, and closed the door, shutting out every thing that breathed but his own wasted person, and all besides that bore the human form, except what was portrayed upon the canvas on his easel, to which he advanced, and seated himself be fore it. This, his darling piece, was a beautiful Ma donna, with the infant Jesus. Over it the painter had wrought many a wearisome day, and studied away the dark, silent night-hours to bring it to perfection. It had caused him to forget his food and lose his slumber, till he had grown thin and pale ; and he had this morning arisen from a sleep less pillow, and come fasting, to transfer from the image in his mind the last touches to his picture, before they should be effaced by any rude brush from the world without. The babe, that lay asleep on the mother s lap, with its little head slightly raised upon her arm, and reclining against her bosom, was done finished exactly to the wish of the artist. He could find no part where to set the pencil that had thus completed it, without hurt ing the beautifully rounded limb, marring the expression of some feature, or spoiling the life like hue and delicate texture of the fair, half- transparent surface, beneath which he almost imagined he could perceive the vital streams in motion. Ricardo sat some time, with the brush up in his hand, surveying the picture, as if too much lost in admiration of the child, to proceed to finish his mind s image of the mother. At length he drew near, and cautiously gave the mouth of the Madonna a few strokes of the pencil, the effect of which sent a thrill to his 56 heart. By involuntary motion, he half-inclined his cheek and ear to feel and hear if he had, by some sudden inspiration unknown to him self, imparted to his piece the breath of life. He raised his brush to the eye, which, turned heavenward and fixed in a rapture of devotion, looked as if the soul was passing through it to the Being with whom she held communion. He touched it. It grew brighter and more extatic, while the mild rays of the morning sun stole timidly in at the moment, through a small, uncurtained part of the window, and played upon one side of the painting. The artist was startled at the expression of the eye, and, hastily withdrawing his hand from the piece, he threw a quick glance at his pencil, as in doubt of its being the one he had before held ; and then, instantly dropped it, as if he had found it dipped in something un earthly, and forbidden to the use of man. As it fell on the floor he feared to look at it, lest he should see its point tipped with the Prome thean spark ; and his feet were drawn back, as if to avoid treading on a fiery serpent. The work was done. The picture was fin ished. The beau ideal of the artist was em- 57 bodied. The master had now but to contem plate and admire his piece ; and he beheld it with the spirit of him, who, casting his eye over his own proud city, exultingly exclaimed, < Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of my kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty ? He sat motionless before the painting, sus pended between astonishment at the execution of his own hand, and a kind of reverential rapture into which the subject had mysteriously thrown him. At length, with a tone of glad ness and triumph, he cried, It is finished ! it is finished! I have mastered the piece in this, my beautiful work; and what has so long been the object of my mind s eye, has at last come forth from the canvas, to praise me as its maker ! As he gazed at the piece, overcome by the intensity of his feelings at the success of his last effort, a haziness came over his sight, he gradually lost the consciousness of his own materiality, feeling himself lulled by rocking, like a bark on the ocean, in a sea of wavy shadows, till his head drooped over to the side where his elbow rested on a small table, all 58 THE PAINTER S LAST TOUCH. around him grew dim and uncertain, and he was lost in sleep. But slumber, which had so often been ban ished from his pillow by the picture, could not chase the picture from its master s presence. It was still before the eye of his imagination, and he still adoring its beauty and perfection. As he beheld it in his dream, a soft halo, that seemed at first, faintly kindling, gradually beamed out, broad and bright around it ; and the figures came forth into the relief of real life, with the vividness and warmth of com bined matter and spirit. There was a slight, heaving motion, like that of respiration, in the breast of the Madonna, while the delicate rose- tint that had been thrown into her cheek by the pencil, crept slowly over its bounds, trans fusing itself into the edge of the neighboring lily ; and her up-turned eye was bright with a living radiance that seemed the reflection of light from another and brighter world. Over the half-parted lips and fair forehead of the child was a diffusion of fine, silvery mois ture, like that which sometimes hangs in the balmy air of a bright spring morning, but is almost too light and thin to bear the name of 59 vapor. A gentle pulsation was going on in the smooth temple ; and pale violet lines on his neck and arms showed the paths of the warm, purple current that coursed beneath the sur face ; while the little white hand, that had been thrown up with out-spread fingers on the mother s bosom, had slidden down and lodged in the folds of her drapery. The painter looked wondered admired ; and in ecstacy exclaimed, It is finished ! it is finished ! By the sound of his voice the in fant was aroused, but not startled. He reached forth his little white hand towards the artist; while the long, silky lashes of his eye-lid un wove themselves from those below it, and the eye was turned on Ricardo with an expression of innocent confidence, heavenly purity, and sweet peace, that touched him to the soul. That look of unsuspecting love had fallen like sunlight on the window of his heart, disclosing the darkness and derangement within, where his favorite art sat supreme as a god. It melted him to tears, and he sobbed aloud. His weeping brought down upon him the eye of the Madonna, with a look of benignity caught from the world to which her spirit had 60 THE PAINTER S LAST TOUCH. been raised, and in the voice of tenderness and pity she thus addressed him : 1 Why, Bicardo, should a simple shade affect thee so much more than its blessed original, or all that has taken place concerning him before whose pictured image thou art now weeping, ever has done ? Has his life, his suffering, or his death, ever softened thee to tears ? 1 When he pronounced, " It is finished ! " there was deep, awful, glorious import in the words. Earth felt it, and trembled to her cen tre, while the pit yawned in disappointment after its lost prey. The rocks felt it, and their hearts were broken, as the veil of the temple was rent asunder. The meaning of that sen tence was glorious, as the redemption of a fallen world from under the awful frown of insulted Omnipotence, and man s recovery of the lost image of God. The enemy of souls felt it, and his head was bruised. His kingdom was shaken by the King of glory. The graves felt it, and knew that they must yield up their dead. The gates of heaven felt it, and opened to the repentant, dying sinner, that he might that day be with his Lord in paradise. Death felt it, and was swallowed up of victorv ! 61 ( Such, Ricardo, was the meaning of that solemn declaration which thou hast borrowed from the lips of Him, whose word is life, to apply it to a work of thine own ambitious per formance, on which, ere the sun of to-day goes down, thine eye may be forever closed, and all with thee be finished. When he pronounced the sentence, it was not the work of a mortal hand, but the purpose of infinite benevolence of an eternal God, that was accomplished. When he disrobed himself of his heavenly glories to assume a mortal guise, and com menced his earthly course, in the form of the babe of Bethlehem, it was not for worldly honor - temporal renown, purchased by labor and study over works like thine ; but to im press on the soul of man his own pure spiritual image. No, the little tender frame that thou hast here depicted, was to grow up for a life of weariness and suffering ; to be like the young balsam-tree, spared in the sapling, that in its full growth and vigor it may pour through its own wounds a healing balm for others. It was to fast in the desert ; to wake and bend amid the midnight gloom, the chill mountain 62 THE PAINTER S LAST TOUCH. air and nature s solemn stillness, while He, who bore it, poured forth his spirit in prayer for his enemies. It was to bow in the garden, while the warm life-stream exuded in crimson drops forced through the delicate pores by the agony of the spirit within, as it stooped and strove to lift a fallen race from darkness, wo, and death, to light and life and blessedness. Its portion was to be insult, persecution, ston ing, and a crown of thorns pressed on the throbbing temples by an infuriated mob of those, whom he came to seek and to save ; while the prayer for the forgiveness of those who had platted it, was followed on his lips by the vinegar and the gall at their hands ! But thou knowest all, Ricardo ; thou know- est all, from the scene in the manger to that where the veins were opened, and these violet lines turned white by the points of the Roman spears ; when the fainting voice sounded, " It is finished!" as the rich fountain showered down its crimson balm for the soul of man, to heal the hurt of which he was dying. Those pre cious drops ! rich indeed may they be called, since they were to cure the bite of the serpent, sin, and take away the sting of death ; to pur- 63 chase an entrance into the city with pearly gates, and golden streets, and blessed inhabi tants ; where none say, " I am sick ! " and there is no sorrow, no night ! Since that great consummation, ages have rolled on to those beyond the flood. Man has been swept off, generation after generation, to taste forever the sweet or the bitter fruits of having applied, or neglected to apply, for an interest in that soul-reviving blood ; while his mortal part has mingled with the elements, to undergo the changes of nature, till he who slept the sleep of infancy on the bosom of a human mother, shall, by the trump of his angel, awaken all in their far-scattered graves, and assemble them for judgment. How many then, thinkest thou, will be found to have pierced the Lord afresh ? This is no fancy piece no painter s fiction. The scene of Calvary has passed ; and, if the cast-off shroud and the forsaken sepulchre the prints of the nails, and the wounded side, touched by the incredulous disciple, did not give sufficient pledge that the other shall take place, all the nations of the earth will ere long rise up in testimony to the truth of what has 64 THE PAINTER S LAST TOUCH. been foretold ; some to the resurrection of life, and some .... ; But tell me, if thou art not a believer in these things ; if thou art of a lineage above the race whom Christ came to seek and save ; or if, as thou hast sometimes said, death be an eternal, dreamless sleep, why art thou so moved ? Oh ! that eye, that eye ! said the painter, as the child seemed to cast another look upon him, I cannot bear its glance ! Thou canst not bear the regard of love, peace, innocence ! said the Madonna. Were it then easier to meet that of stern justice ? The eye which once saw through the optic organ of a babe, is the same that looks into the councils of the Most High, and the deepest recesses of the human soul. It has never been closed on thee, Bicardo, though thou hast not till now felt its power or seen its light. It will one day fall on thee in that of the Judge of an assembled universe of spirits ; when all that has been hidden must be revealed ; and every one who has had his portion of time to decide his destiny for eternity, must undergo its scrutiny alone. Then, every hour must be accounted 65 for, and its work approved or condemned ; every talent that was lent, weighed, and its revenue demanded ; every secret operation of his heart who stands at the bar, called up to give in its testimony for or against him. Each hidden stab which conscience has received will be laid open ; all her stifled cries heard with appalling fulness of sound. When he, who lay a feeble infant on the lap of his virgin mother, shall appear, coming in the clouds with his angel band ; then wilt thou, Ricardo, remember how much more of thy precious time was devoted to thy favorite art, from a vain desire to please the human sight, and win the applause of creatures fleet ing and dying like thyself, than ever thou hast given to copying the life and temper of him, whom thou must take up thy cross and follow, or utterly perish. Thou wilt then remember how much more adoration thou hast paid to this, thy darling picture, than to him whose birth-place on earth was pointed out by the new-made star of heaven. Thou wilt also have set before thee thy profane use, thine atheistical perversion of the sacred volume, which enshrines the spirit of God, and is redo- 5 66 THE PAINTER S LAST TOUCH. lent of hope and life to man, or of despair and death, as he himself shall decide; and thy having come, by the early light of this holy Sabbath morning, to take thy pencil and beau tify an idol, till thou couldst say, " It is fin ished!" this day of the Lord, consecrated to his service ; this peaceful, hallowed hour, when the tomb was first found broken forever, and he who was slain and laid therein arisen and walking in the garden among the dewy lilies! < Yet, what would this frail work of thy per ishable hand, for which thou art trifling with the guide to heaven and bartering eternal trea sures, be, should a spark of fire light upon it ? Just what thine own death -sealed form would become, should its vital spark go out ashes ! ashes ! c I, Rlcardo, am thy guardian angel. I was appointed by him from whose imaginary eye thou art now shrinking, when the bud of thine existence began to unfold, to attend, to watch over, and protect thee ; till I should at length bring thee safe to his kingdom. I was by thee to lift the soft lid of thy tender eye, when it received the first ray of this world s light, 67 and I shall not cease to be with thee, till I finally close it to all sublunary things. t Faithful to my mission, I have appeared to thee in many forms, and spoken to thee in a thousand voices ; from the sweet, low tones of love and mercy to the loud thunderings of power and judgment. I have wooed thee in the whispering zephyr and refreshing breeze ; and threatened thee in the roaring tempest. I have smiled on thee from the azure skies, the flowery earth and the limpid streams ; and frowned on thee from the stormy clouds and the gaping gulf. I have sought to lead thee by binding about thy heart the ties of sweet affection, and to startle thee by snapping them asunder. I have come before thee in the pale form of death and in the promise of a glorious resurrection. I have flushed thy cheek with health, and faded it by malady. I have pointed both at blessing and affliction, as a price put into thy hand to get wisdom, and have even entered into thy bosom and pleaded, mourned and ex postulated with thee in the voice of conscience, while thou wouldst fain have silenced it by suffocation or opiate, only to make it turn traitor in the end, the great, the trying moment. 68 All these ways, and many more, have I tried in vain to turn thy feet into the lowly, peaceful path that leads to life. Now I come to seek thee in a new form ; to speak to thee through the work of thine own hand ; and I must do it quickly, as all here, I find, is destructible and evanescent. Listen then, and by all that is winning in immortal life and joy, or fearful in an eternity of despair ; by thy body, that must soon die ; and by thy soul that must live forever, go and pour out thy tears go and kneel and lift up thine eye there ! there ! Ricardb, there ! As the Madonna uttered the last emphatic word, she reached forth her hand towards the east and a scene which had suddenly risen to view through a long shadowy vista ; at which her finger pointed, while her form and that of the infant melted away in a light vapor, that rose over the picture, and nothing remained of them but her lone, white hand, stretching from the cloud, and still pointing, as when she said < there ! The figures before the painter had dissolved ; his chef-d ceuvre had vanished from sight. His eye followed in the direction where the finger 69 pointed for something whereon to fix, to make up the loss. He looked through the dim, narrow vista, to a scene where the deep gloom of a darkened sky over-hung a confused mass of human forms, and among them, perceived the gleam ing of spears, and the busy motion of an en raged or excited populace. Here, was a countenance from which the wild spirit of demon malignity looked forth, and there, another marked by a soul wrung with the bitterest anguish. Here appeared the attitude of active fury, and there that of deep, passive woe. Amid the group of weeping fe males, Ricardo thought he discovered one face, which he had somewhere seen before; and when the wet kerchief was again removed, he saw it was that of his beautiful Madonna. But ah, how changed! Past years had left their marks, and present sufferings sat heavily upon it. A little beyond, on a rising ground, and lifted above the multitude, as ,the painter cast his eye onward, he beheld the awful spectacle that had drawn this mingled company together, where the few mournful followers of him who 70 said, l My kingdom is not of this world, seemea lost in the hosts of him who declared, c My name is legion, for we are many. It was the crucifixion in all the freshness and fulness of its horrors. The soul of Blcardo sickened at the appalling view. His head grew dizzy ; he reeled; his knees smote together, and his sight was lost ; while he felt the earth shudder ing and swinging beneath him, and heard the tremendous sound of nature in convulsions, mingled with shouts of malicious human tri umph and the plaint of helpless human woe. Amid this dissonance, the sudden peal of a deep-toned bell poured upon his ear. It grew louder and nearer, as the other sounds became fainter and more remote, and at length died away in the distance. 1 A bell? said the painter, <a bell? Why, I never heard of this ! They did not sound the passing bell ! The act of speaking, together with the sound that had in reality reached his ear from abroad, aroused him. He shook off the leaden remains of slumber and opened his eyes upon the picture. The rays of the sun, which had lighted it 71 up when they were closed, had now passed off, and there the painting stood before its master, finished indeed ; but the enthusiasm attendant on his first seeing it so was gone like the sun beams, yet not like them to return, but beyond recall. It now appeared to him flat, inane> unsatisfactory. It was empty imitation a something having form but being void ! There was no life, nor warmth, nor motion no spirit in it ! He could touch a shadow on the wall, and feel as much ! But there was certainty reality in the sound of the clear-voiced bell, which from a neighbor ing temple was calling aloud to assemble the worshippers of Him to whom the day belonged, for the service of the sanctuary. Yes ; there was certainty in the sound, and meaning in the call of that bell, whose tones, having brought the artist from the vision of a dream, still vibrated on his ear, as if commis sioned to awaken him to something more than the recovery of suspended reason. 4 And shall I go ? said he, shall I go, in this neglected, unprepared state of body and of mind, and present myself among those who have long been awake, and all alive to the holy glories of this consecrated morning ? They have their feet washed, and shod with the gospel preparation, for the sacred courts ; their heads are anointed, and they have clothed themselves, both the inner and the outer man, in that pure, comely attire which befits the company, the house, and the presence of Him whom they come to honor. Shall I come also among them who thus present themselves be fore the Lord ? Ah, yes ! He says to the weary children of men, " Come now, and I will give you rest." It is to-day, not to-mor row, that we may come. He says to the self- neglected wayfarer, " Come, just as thou art, and put off thy soiled and tattered garments, and I will give thee a pure, seamless vesture, without spot or wrinkle ! " It is to the wan derers, the scatterlings of the flock, that the Great Shepherd gives out this tender, forgiving call. My good angel, I hear thy voice once more. It comes in the tones of the Sabbath- bell. I will obey I come, I come ! Saying this, Ricardo pressed his hand on his forehead, as if to quell the throbbings, or blunt the acuteness of pain, and rose to depart ; 73 when his foot was set upon something which rolled beneath it, and nearly overthrew him. 4 Ah, my brush ! said he, this is not the first time thou hast tripped me when I started on some good purpose, and wouldst fain have cast me so that I could rise no more. Often hast thou held me back, and, like a wizard s wand, kept me within thy charmed circle, with my lips sealed, and my whole soul devoted to thee and thy work ; while others were gone forth into a glorious liberty, with their hearts tuned and their lips vocal with the praise of their Creator ! Often hast thou bound me to the babe of Bethlehem, while I felt not my need of a Redeemer, and disregarded the Messiah in the prototype of my intended copy. My heart has been thine, not his. But thy charm is broken, thy power is gone. Thou art a fallen idol, and beneath my foot. Lie there, deceitful thing ! Thou wilt not stop me now. Nor canst thou restore the days, which thou hast chased away, the Sabbath hours that have flown off, to be set down against me in deeper shades than ever thou hast laid, and to remain thus forever; unless forgiving mercy wipe them out ! 74 Thus apostrophising his innocent pencil, and, with the wonted proneness of the human heart to charge its own faults upon some thing, anything, else, making the instrument of his art the scape-goat for his sins, the unhappy man strode with a determined air across the apartment, which a short time before he had entered as eagerly as one starving would enter a refectory, and passing out, fled from the door, as from the crater of a volcano, bending his steps towards the church. The way to the sanctuary was one long un trodden by his feet, and when he reached the house the sound of the bell had ceased ; the congregation were all gathered in, like a flock within the fold, and he felt himself in an awful stillness and solitude, which he had never before experienced. < A lost sheep, indeed ! thought he. i I am out in the wilderness, away from the Good Shepherd. I need a resting-place, a shelter, a hand to feed me. The wolf from which I have but just escaped with a torn fleece, is still near ; and where is my refuge ? He crossed the empty vestibule alone, and advanced to the inner door. With the back of 75 every one of the calm assembly towards him, he stole noiselessly in, dropping, unobserved, into one of the first seats, directly under the or chestra, feeling that he was indeed the last, and behind all there. His eye ran up the long, silent aisle, to the altar, and rested on the table spread with the elements, the sacred symbols of the Lord s Supper. At the same moment, the stillness of the scene was broken by the gentle swell of the unseen organ s notes, and the voices of the invisible choir, as they sang above him : Hark ! t is Love and Mercy calling, In the sounds from Calvary ; See the tears of pity, falling In the blood that bathes the tree. It is finished! hear him crying, With the faint, departing breath, Who, to save a world, is dying, Thus for us to conquer death. ( Lo ! the great High Priest is bending With the sacrifice for sin, That the temple s vail is rending, As he bows and enters in. 76 And are these calls of love and mercy to me ? Were the sins of my soul borne on that sacrifice ? thought Ricardo, as he leaned his head on his hand, in profound meditation, till the lips of him, who was to lead in the exer cises of the morning, were opened by prayer. The subjects of the discourse, which fol lowed, were such as the occasion brought especially to view, and the event about to be commemorated first and forcibly suggested. The mind of the preacher seemed lifted by the sublimity of his theme to an almost super natural elevation, and kindled with divine light, which clothed his thoughts, and sent them forth with a power irresistible. He com pared the promise of salvation through Christ-, offered in the gospel, to the eye of a well exe cuted portrait, which is directed to every one, who will look up to it, as fully as if it had no other object. His eloquence, free from vain ornament and glitter, was glowing, touching, and bold, as becomes the integrity of a fearless and faithful servant of God. It began like the clear mountain rill, which is the infancy of a mighty river, and increasing in power and grandeur, seemed sweeping his audience along 77 to look upon the ocean of eternity. He dared not to twine the sword of the Spirit with wreaths of earthly flowers, to spare the hearts of his hearers, but brought it forth unsheathed and bright, as it had been put into his hand by Him, from whom he held his commission. He muffled up the truth in no cloak of man s weaving or embroidery, as if it had come from its author with deformity which the skill and delicacy of the human hand should conceal. He presented it undisguised, in its beautiful symmetry, clothed only with its native light; and applied it so warm and forcibly to the hearts of his hearers, it could not fail to leave an impression. It had come upon the soul of the artist, and he could not shake it off. He was subdued and melted. Overwhelmed by a sense of the manner in which he had spent the better part of his life, and the profane use he had made of the Word of God, by selecting from it his first subjects, while he denied its divine authority, and contemptuously smiled at the credulity of its believers, he bowed before the mercy-seat, in sincere contrition, and deep humiliation of spirit. 1 And I, thought he, have been spared to 78 this day, a cumberer of the ground; worse than a barren tree. Why has not the sentence, cut it down, been long ago executed on me ? I have spread out my foliage as a shelter for the ministers of the enemy of souls, and have put forth thorns to wound the followers of the Friend of sinners. Like the deadly Upas, I have diffused poison in the atmosphere around me, while I decked myself with flowers, to invite the passenger to come and pluck them, that he might inhale their odors, and die ! I have perverted the sacred volume, whose Author is the source of light and the fountain of goodness. While unable to ascribe its con tents to finite mind, I jeered the thought of its divine inspiration. I have used it as a vast, unparalleled field of beautiful scenery and sub lime imagery, and have roamed through it with sacrilegious steps, selecting subjects that were drawn by the hand of Omnipotence, and glowing with unearthly hues, that I might pro fane them with my unhallowed touch. I have painted the mount where the Law of God was given, while I trampled on that Law, and doubted the existence of a God above nature. And I wonder that the terrors of Sinai have 79 not scathed me forever. I have pictured the bush of Horeb, and kindled it with strange fire, till I know not why a glance of righteous in dignation from His eye, who once lighted it, has not consumed me. I have portrayed angels running on errands of good to man, while I smiled at them as the airy creatures of man s disordered brain. While I painted forms of the holy prophets, I have secretly, nay, openly, laughed at them as madmen. Thus have I dabbled with my brush, in the very waters of life, and would fain have made them such as no soul could drink. And oh, insup portable thought! I have treated as ingenious fiction the life, death, and resurrection of Him, to whom alone I can now fly for relief from all this burden of guilt. Yet, blessed Saviour, what if thou hadst not died for my sins, and risen to be my advocate ? Is there not hope through thee, in Him, who, out of thee, is a consuming fire ? Yes, for it is only to those who " shall be heirs of salvation, that he mak- eth his angels ministering spirits." And hath he not given one to minister even unto me, in all my sinful ways, to this hour ? Such was the appalling review of his past 80 THE PAINTER S LAST TOUCH. life, which came before the painter, as he re tired from the church, when its services had closed, and went to his home and his closet, with the devout resolution of henceforth living in newness of life. Disgusted with his art, on remembering the impious uses he had made of it, he felt that he could no longer pursue it, to incur the penalty of remorse it must inflict as a souvenir. He had experienced the mysterious process of having a heart of stone taken away, and one of flesh given in its stead. And on this, he felt, must be traced a likeness of its giver, features which his pencil could not delineate. It had already desecrated too much that testi fied of him. He became a new man ; and he could not look on the former productions of his pencil without horror. He called them his old works of darkness. The spirit with which he executed them haunted him continually. He seemed to see its malign eye gazing at him from behind the canvas, and alike through the brightest colors and the heaviest shades of the most finished pieces, whenever he beheld them, turning his past glory to thorns in the retro spection. THE PAINTER S LAST TOUCH. 81 c What, he mentally exclaimed, but my guardian angel has been between me and the awful deep, beside which I have walked, envel oped in shades, along a fearful precipice, on a crumbling pathway! What but the wing of this heavenly protector has borne me up, when my feet were ready to stumble on the dark mountains, and saved me from a hopeless plunge into the black, wild billows of endless despair! How shall I redeem time! How shall the lovely features of Jesus of Nazareth be copied on my soul ! Teach me, O spirit of the Holy One! for I am become as a little child. My pencil cannot do this work. I have given the Painter s Last Touch ! That night the soul of the Painter was re quired of him. THE BROKEN PRISM. A SOB shook the bosom of the infant boy, as the zephyr shakes a leaf; and sorrow had come over his beaming face as the mist before a star. A tear lay below his full blue eye, and a bright crimson drop tipped his small white finger. The sparkling fragments of a broken prism clinked in his frock-skirt, as he held it by it s hem, in the left hand ; and, putting forth the other with a look of horror at the blood, ran to seek his mother. Molher! mother! he piteously cried, take away this blood, and join my broken play thing! Mend it! or I cannot cast colors round the room, or make pieces of rainbow any more! I staid where you bade me: I sat upon the carpet, or leaned against the sofa, till the wide light of the window had dwindled to a narrow streak. Then, only once, I left the THE BROKEN PRISM. 83 parlor, and carried the prism to the door, to catch the whole sun, and make larger pieces of rainbow. As I stood on the marble step, a beautiful white dove came and lit down by me. I sprang to take her, but she was gone in a moment ; before I could touch her feathers she was off in the high air! The prism slip ped from me and fell ; and when I turned to find it, it looked like clear water sprinkled on the marble. I took up the pieces and tried to put them together, but they all had sharp edges ! ~ one has cut my finger ! Take my hand in yours, mother, and feel how it aches. O, still the pain, and join this broken prism ! I feel all thy pains, my child, and will bind up the wound ; but I cannot quell its anguish, nor make whole the lamented prism. Break ing thy promise and my command, thou hast also broken thy plaything. All this sorrow, for which thou hast exchanged the joy of sporting with the colors of the rainbow, is the fruit of ONE MISDEED! But let the pain of thy hand, and the grief of thy heart be laid up in mem ory for future good; they may yet prove a treasure to thee. As long as thou shalt live, remember this drop of blood, and thy mother s 84 THE BROKEN PRISM. word when she wiped it away. Innocence, like a white dove, flies from the hand of him whose feet are turned into the path of disobe dience ; and he goes forth to sow that, whereof he shall only reap anguish and tears. The fruit of error is bitterness ! Thus the mother spake to her boy ; but the rest she said to herself, for the child could not understand it. 1 Poor thing ! he has begun betimes to find how soon our brightest joys may, in their ruins, become instruments to wound us. By their smoothness do they slide away to prove their fragile nature. Their very polish is akin to destruction! * Hope is a prism. When our sun is un clouded, we see in it all the beautiful hues of the bow of promise ; by it we cast them on the objects around us. But if, like this frail thing, whose deceitful fragments have drawn tears and blood from my tender boy, our hopes be made up of the glistening sands of earth, how soon may they be dashed to atoms! Then will they come with sharp edges to cut keenly across our heart-strings, or be like water that is spilt, and cannot be gathered up ; while THE BROKEN PRISM. 85 the dove of peace flies away, and leaves our bosoms desolate. O, may my child find his hope in that me dium through which we see the light of heaven, the pure, enduring crystal, clasped between the covers that hold the eternal Word, which never can be broken ! In this shall he behold the power and glory of the SUN of an unchanging world. It will enliven the things of time with the reflection of the fair, unfading colors that beautify the throne of Him who placed his bow in the heavens, a covenant sign between himself and his creatures. It will delight the eye of his soul with a view of Truth, Justice, Love, Mercy, and Peace, as they blend in one blessed token, to remain and brighten when the heavens are passing away, and to appear in the fulness of its beauty and perfection, when there is a new heaven and a new earth. Then will the spirit that once took the form of a dove be ever near him, with "healing in his wings" for all his wounds, and they will be bound up by the careful hand of ONE whose love passeth even that of a mother. THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. To what age the trees that adorned the cra dle of mankind might have attained, when the father of our race first opened his eye, and saw them standing around in their shadowy beauty, is not a question designed for present discus sion. Some modern geologists and theolo- gists, however, maintain that they must have been very old indeed, even at that period. One class of these sages base their argument on the supposition, that the meek penman, in spired and employed by the Creator to give the history of his wondrous works in the heaven and the earth, was so lax in his style, as to render it uncertain whether a given term of time, which he stated, should be understood a day or an age ; or that he made the mistake of using the former for the latter, in his account of the creation ; that the * six days should THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. 87 have been written, six ages or eras of in definite duration. This manner of expounding the sacred writ ings may account for the headlong spirit of worldliness and Sabbath-breaking witnessed in our day. Others charge Moses with anachronism, affirming positively that Adam was not the first man. They tell us that, after giving a regular account of the five consecutive days from the beginning, Moses, before he took up the story of man, as we have it, on what he calls the sixth day, for some cause not re vealed, dropped a series of ages into a chasm, where they passed silently from sight in the abyss ; while he continued on, to tell the tale of Adam s creation, in the order of the first six days, and as if he were the first human occupant of the earth. And these lost ages, together with their multifarious concerns, they deem it their especial province to go down into the unknown deep and hook up, to be lectured upon, for the edification and use of society, and to establish unquestionable evidence of their own ability to correct the law-giver of Israel. 88 THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. The theory of these deep-thinkers may elu cidate, or it seems at least in harmony with the restless, burning zeal, for adventure and discov ery, which animates our age. A third and somewhat mingled class, in order to end all question and care about what Moses wrote, the prophets spake, and David sung, in a peaceful and summary way, put the whole volume of the Old Testament out of sight as obsolete, except in such prudent por tions as they, the spiritual physicians, may administer, distilled through the alembic of their own wisdom and understanding. Some, indeed, direct their pupils to the remedy, with out letting them know their disease. They must believe in the new dispensation as they can comprehend it, without inquiring into the cause of their need of it, by whom it was promised, or through whom the coming light was foreshown. But we are conservatives of that old-fash ioned school of the simple and credulous, who would not grow wiser than our teachers are, while we have Moses and the Prophets .to establish our belief in the Evangelists and Apostles. And we trust that a long train of THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. 89 saints, who lived and died before the age of steam and railroad celerity, did make their way to heaven by that low and narrow path, which they were content to tread through the valley of patience and humility. We believe that Adam was the first man, who enjoyed the trees which his Creator had made to grow, pleasant to the sight, out of the ground, not many days before he found himself in existence among them in paradise. Though he lost his blissful abode for a fruit, and transmitted its bitter taste, and the forfeiture of life and Eden to all his descendants ; still he retained his love of the trees; and this has also descended to his offspring in all lands and ages from that day till now. And through all the wanderings of man, and the heat or rude ness of his ways on earth, this love has re mained to console him. A stately green tree has ever been, to the savage and the civilized, a delightful and venerable object. Free from that jealous spirit of rivalry which decides on the merits of the works of men s hands, and that variance of ideas of beauty, which makes a son of the forest see more wis dom and perfection in the construction of his 90 THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. bark wigwam, than in the marble palace, and think his tawny woodland charmer fairer than the blonde, whose complexion combines the lily and the rose, people of every nation, tribe, and tongue, meet in taste at the majestic green tree, making it the central attraction of univer sal admiration. All have enjoyed it as a can opy, and consecrated it as a monument and a temple. Its shadow has been made the sanc tuary for communion between the God of na ture and the soul, and from the view of its verdant branches, the brightest and holiest thoughts of man have budded and opened in clusters of blossoms, to send up odors sweet and acceptable to heaven. In attempting to enumerate the signal trees at which we might point, as having peculiar claims to our notice, the mind would become bewildered in a forest rising up thick around it, beginning, perhaps, at the aged family tree at our own door, and reaching back to the olive tree where the dove plucked the branch. We should see in it the tent of Abraham, the grave of Deborah, Jacob hiding the gods and jewels of his household, the heathen erecting his altar, and the Israelite his , the dwelling THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. 91 of the Prophetess, and the angel standing by the sleeping Prophet with his cake and cruise of water .... Touching present individual feelings of pri vate or domestic arborary attachment, few. pro bably, may be found, having lived to advanced age, or even past their minority, who have not dear and hallowed associations embalmed in their choicest recollections with some old fami liar tree. There is one, perhaps, in the history of every individual. And in this does memory sit and sing, like a bird, cling to it as ivy, or sigh as an air-harp, at the waking of the winds of life and fortune, that in other days have played on the heart-strings, in the tender zephyr, swept them in the refreshing breeze, or chilled and wrung them in the gloomy storm, and the adverse, rending blast. This is the green, ral lying point ; the place of reveille for visions of the past. Even the tree that stood by the school-house of our childhood, in whose shade we were grouped with our happy little play-mates, and, like the squirrel, shelled our nut at liberty, is remembered when much that was taught us by our instructor is forgotten, and the school- 92 THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. house and the tree are numbered but among the things that were. And he, who has been the scholar of maturer years, will never lose the image of that one that blazed and sparkled before his study window, at the rising sun of a winter morning, with its leafless branches decked out with diamonds, silver drops, and brilliants of every hue. The remembrance of that beautiful splendor-tree will cool his fevered spirit, when throbbing with the hottest strife of life s concerns, long years after those icy jewels have been melted, and returned to dress the boughs in verdure that have shaded him in the summer day, or checkered his room and his door-yard with the moon-light of the silent evening hours. We know that to ancient Athens there came a Sylla, who respected not the beautiful groves of plane trees which the Lacedemonians, when they ravaged all Attica, had reverently spared, because they imbosomed the Academy and the Lyceum, but recklessly caused them to be cut down and wrought up into machinery. And we own that the spirit of our own times and country, in some instances, like that of the Roman invader, lays an innovating, marring THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. 93 and mercenary hand on some of the loveliest features of natural beauty in our land. It annihilates or changes the face of the dearest scenery around old homes ; and even home itself, where the affections had quietly nestled, is broken up like a dream, as it goes on, cutting sheets of water into shreds, strangling rivers in the course where their Maker set them out and bade them run, threshing the mountains and making the hills as chaff, and profaning some of the most sacred places. Even the sanctu ary, in some instances, is not spared ; but stands an illustration of opposition to the injunction, Make not my Father s house a house of mer chandise. Yet, amidst this working up and casting down ; this heated, vapory, whirling system of things, when now and then some one s chariot wheels, on the high road to fortune or to fame, take fire from their own velocity and consume ; and here and there a modern Phaeton enlight ens the world with the glare of his fatal vain glory, and the beacon- blaze of his self-destruc tion, we still have our trees standing, cool and majestic, in their shadowy grandeur, in units, 94 THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. groups, lines, and groves, all over the settled portions of our land. We have the good old favorite tree where the individual may come in person or in mem ory and refresh a solitary heart in seclusion, and that around which the hearts of a family, a city, a state, or the whole nation may cluster, with equal interest. Till within a few years, Pennsylvania had her TREATY ELM, which she revered almost as a father, while it lived ; and, since it fell be neath the weight of age, she still preserves it in the form of canes, boxes, and trinkets relics retained, as we keep a lock of hair, or other memorials of a departed friend. And well may its memory be cherished, for in the shade of its outspread arms, was made what is stated to be the only treaty entered into between the Europeans and the Indians without an oath, and the only one that was kept inviolate ! Connecticut has her CHARTER OAK ; and Ohio, her darling flowery BUCKEYE, from among whose roots her queen city sprang up at the stroke of the pioneer s axe, all adorned in her beauty, as Minerva from Jupiter s head, at the blow of the hatchet that cleft it. But, THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. 95 perhaps no tree in our land, save the cypress at Mount Vernon, has, from the associations with its history, so wide and general a claim to the interest of the patriotic, and to the naturalist, as a curiosity, as the one under present con sideration. In the pleasant New England village of Lexington, Massachusetts, near its centre, about a quarter of a mile from the battle ground, and close to the door of the old parsonage house, is this most singular tree ; this Reverend Elm ; which probably deserves the title more than any the poet ever knew. It now numbers a hundred and forty-four years, and is immensely large. In the year 1701, the Rev. John Hancock, then minister of Lexington, planted the seed whence it sprung beside his dwelling. The body rose erect several feet from the ground, then branched out into three distinct trees. They grew, not very tall, but exceedingly large, reach ing over the whole highway, and hanging their graceful canopy far over the wall on the oppo site side. In a gale of October, 1804, the division nearest the house was split from the bole partly down ; but it was closed with an iron 96 THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. bolt, and continued to grow like the others, till, by a violent tempest in September, 1815, it was cast down, and in a direction that brought it exactly along the whole front of the house, at a convenient distance from the door to serve as a fence. But, not separated from the trunk entirely, it continued to draw nourishment from the root of the general stock, and thus grew on still in its horizontal position, supported by its limbs at a sufficient height to give free access to the house, and between them forming a beautiful arched gateway to the entrance. Now, forty feet from the trunk, near what would have been the top had it stood, a scion has struck down and taken root, and a straight, young tree flourishes from it ; so that altogether, it forms a rare natural curiosity of great beauty, fastened in the ground at both ends, and im- bowering the venerable old mansion of piety and patriotism in an arbor such as no other dwelling can boast. When at Lexington, several years ago, at tending the funeral solemnities of the soldiers who fell in battle, when their remains were removed from the burying-ground and en tombed under the monument, I visited the THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. 97 ancient parsonage house and its tenants. It was then occupied by .two venerable ladies, unmarried daughters of the Rev. Jonas Clarke, who dwelt there alone, the only survivors of his family, and near relatives of the Hancocks ; both were then very aged ; one, I should think, an octogenarian. The day was to them an excit ing and solemn one. < Sixty years ago, to-day, said one of them, I saw those soldiers buried, just as they were taken up where they fell/ In showing me the tree, and giving its history, she told me she remembered seeing the precise spot, over which the green branches of the fallen part are spread, sprinkled with the blood of the wounded soldiers, who ran along from across the fields and past her father s door, in the direction of the prostrate trunk, from its head to the main body. This house, it seems, was the resort of the patriots, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, for deliberation and council, during the stormy times of the Revolutionary movements; and here were they concealed, when proscribed by the British governor, as guilty of unpardonable crime. In its cellar, beneath the vegetables, all the rich plate and other precious treasures of 7 98 THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. Hancock s house were safely hidden, and pre served from being made the spoils of war. My venerable informant told me much more of the concerns of that day than can have a place here. She afterwards furnished me with the dimen sions of the elm at that time, which I quote. Circumference of the body, two feet from the ground, twenty-one feet; extension of the branches from east to west, six rods, five feet ; from north to south, five rods, six feet. It has since been growing and flourishing till its size is greatly increased. When I visited the Misses Clarke, I passed under this living gateway, and in their neat parlor, of the olden style, with many other interesting matters, found two beautiful por traits of the Hancock family, originals of Cope- ley, to win my admiration. Since then, both these hospitable ladies have departed; and their house, which had never been occupied but by ministers and their fami lies, is left tenantless. All are gone ! but the tree remains ; the recumbent part still clinging to the main body for life, and lying in the atti tude which it took so many years ago, when it bowed like a worshipper of old, and fell gently THE OLD ELM OF LEXINGTON. 99 along over the gate-posts of that last temporal abode of departed righteousness. It is a beautiful sight; and to a painter it must be an inspiring one, on a summer morn ing, particularly if there has been a heavy dew or a shower the previous evening. As you approach the house where it faces the east, you can see but a small part of any window in the whole front, through the lively green foliage that imbowers it, growing out of this vegetating bar rier, moving gently to the zephyr, and sprinkled with clear water-drops, that sparkle to the morning sun like glittering gems strewed in by spirit hands among the verdant leaves. Wrapped in its green mantle, this part of the triune elm lies, like a reclining monarch, in love, honor, and guardianship of the house and the ground. THE HAUNTED FOREST. OLD things, that have passed away, are fast becoming new. Ancient fashions and arti cles of dress are brought up from oblivion, and resuscitated. Antique pieces of furniture, their coevals, are hunted out in their hiding- places, in the dark corners of dilapidated, poverty-stricken buildings, where they seemed long ago to have settled in their final rest, beneath the thick drapery of many generations of spiders, and dragged back to light. The different members of sets of plate porcelain, delph, glass, and other wares, which, like those of a family, have long been separated by the shifting and chances of time and fortune, and have changed their uses and their stations, as they have survived or changed their owners, are sought after with the zeal of Laban for his images. They are evoked. from their hermit THE HAUNTED FOREST. 101 seclusion, and set as household gods, in splen did edifices, to shine with more than seven-fold pristine brightness. Cabinets, tables, chairs, and their et ceteras return on then* rickety limbs from the dust and shades of past centuries, and, after revival and rejuvenescence from the scraper, and being clothed upon with a new coat of . varnish, reprove the love of change and want of taste, which succeeded their early-day glory, and cast them into obscurity, by taking the highest places in favor and in station. It is an era of vision. The chattels of our ancestry arise and come forth, joint to joint, from their burial places. But this mania search, and eager desire after antiquities, is not confined to the physical alone, nor to the once good and useful. With the aid of foreign importation of old absurdities, and impious doctrines, free of duty or custom house inspection, and the strength and speed of our iron horse, with his more than Archi medes- head, knowing, not only how to move the world, but also where to put it, namely, everywhere, and of course turning the heads of the people in certain instances, we have relics 102 THE HAUNTED FOREST. of an antiquity far more remote than the days of our traceable ancestors. The arts of Simon Magus, of the seven sons of Seva, and of the damsels who brought their masters much gain by soothsaying, are newly got up, and flourish in our enlightened day, for equally holy purposes as in their beginning. Perhaps, then, it will not seem surprising that such a title as the present little story bears, should be seen, spectre-like, standing at the head of a chapter. It will not appear strange that some of the apparitions that were cotem- porary with the proprietors of the venerated movables alluded to, and might have been familiar with them of old, gliding about among them, in their shadowy visits to the apartments they once furnished, should re-appear, to claim their share of notice and respect, as antiques. Some of them may have been themselves the first and rightful owners of these temporali ties. They may have used them for the con venience of the corporeal with which they once were burdened. For, even here, in the pure Pilgrim Land, if tradition and history speak truth, there have been, not only witches, but genuine, unsophisticated, Puritanical ghosts! THE HAUNTED FOREST. 103 some visible, some audible, and others that could make themselves either, or both, at will. Yet, the good old Governor Winthrop has left on imperishable record a fact, which seems to be an episode to the general description and solemn demeanor of these mysterious people of vision and auditory. In his notes of one year, he has it : This year one James Everell, (a sober, discreet man,) and two others, saw a great light in the night time, near Muddy River. When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about four yards square : when it ran, it diminished into the figure of a swine, and ran, swift as an arrow, towards Charlton ; and so, up and down, two or three hours. They had come down in their lighter ; and, when this was over, they found themselves carried back, against wind and tide, three miles, to the place they started from. * Now, the pious chief magistrate gives not a word to indicate his opinion of this strange sight; but probably he never thought of ex plaining it by natural philosophy. Nor could he have supposed it a revenant of one of the race, whose form it appeared in, feloniously * See Winthrop s Notes, &c. 104 THE HAUNTED FOREST. slain. Without doubt, he conscienciously be lieved himself to be recording, for the good of posterity, a luminous trick of the arch deceiver, to make a brilliant exhibition, by veiling his miscreated form in a covering of b ght. Yet, could his mind have shot forward, and looked into the future, even to this date, he would have seen that his note was of an ante fact; or a type of the brilliant lights that, in our day, are produced by the taking off of the multitudes of the bristly people that fall in the west, to enlighten our northern darkness with their beaming apparitions on our tables and mantels, to the great relief and peace of leviathan on his billowy bed, when spirit lights of a more ethe real nature do not supersede them. But the spirit of the Pilgrim has, in cer tain instances, been thought so tenacious of this, his new world, as .to prefer it to one newer, even after his body has disappeared from the face of its earth; and to return, in phantom form, to linger around its old familiar scenes, as loath to quit them ; or sometimes, perhaps, unable to rest till it had revealed im portant facts of interest or of guilt, by leading those nearest concerned to the investigation of subjects allied to them. THE HAUNTED FOREST. 105 It was never the red man, in his shroud of skins and feathers, who appeared as the in jured or the guilty ghost, whatever might have been the wrongs he had suffered, or the ven geance he had taken ; it was always the pale- faced European, or his Ethiop slave, who re appeared. If these spectral visitants were somewhat laid with the felling of the forest-trees, and, as population and knowledge increased in the cities, were scattered to the purlieus ; if they were thence driven, to take refuge in the small villages, and the new and thinly- settled country towns, till they finally dwindled away; still, they left behind them a long train of ghost- stories, which did not entirely subside, until a very recent date. And the sacred truth of all these was most religiously avouched by every narrator s grandmother, or some other pious chronicler, who knew all about the visit ations, and even the suspected crimes for which they were permitted. The following, however, is of a different character from these, and more substantially founded. When I had just entered my teens, I heard an elderly gentleman from Vermont, 106 THE HAUNTED FOREST. when on a visit to this place, relate the story in its principal facts, to my parents ; as having happened in his own town, to his own per sonal knowledge ; himself, I think, being one of the parties at the opening scene. It has often occurred to me, when hearing of supernatural appearances ; and, a few years ago, I for the first time told it to a friend, in a conversation which touched on subjects of the phantom kind. To my surprise, the following week, when I went to hear him lecture before a lyceum, I found myself listening to the facts I had told him, woven into his lecture on appari tions, witches, optical illusions, and the like. This first suggested to me the idea of giving it a written form, in my own style ; but, as the things narrated took place sixty years ago, in the Green Mountain State, (then denominated { the New State, ) which was a very different place, and its inhabitants different people from what they are at the present day ; so, too, did a tract of its land present the aspect of a wilder ness, which has since budded and blossomed as the rose. Sixty years ago, on the high-road that led through a tract of dense forest ground, and on THE HAUNTED FOREST. 107 the skirt of that forest, in a thinly settled town ship of Vermont, there stood an inn, offering such accommodation and refreshment to the weary traveller, as the time and the place may be supposed to have afforded. The landlord, an astute, honest-faced, two- handed Yankee, in the subtlest sense of the word, secularly obedient to the apostolic in junction, was not, indeed, < forgetful to enter tain strangers ; and, while attending to the supply of their creature comforts, he often en tertained them with food for the mind; still looking to recompense of the reward. He had a curious set of stories to tell his guests, to make them slow to quit his premi ses ; and, though a rubicund, full-faced, broad- shouldered, short, rotund figure, that looked as if matter had prevailed in the composition of his obese person, almost to the exclusion of spirit, he still had sagacity enough, stored away somewhere beneath his knit cap of green yarn, to know just what arrow would hit the mark. He made his bar-room a cheerful and comfort able resort, not only to the weary traveller from afar, but also to his widely scattered neighbors and fellow-townsmen, who, returning home 108 THE HAUNTED FOREST. from their hard day-labor, loved to break the monotony of the way by dropping in to in quire what news had come from the lower towns, or, down below , their comprehensive term, applied to all between Vermont and the salt sea. Here, too, they frequently regaled them selves with that i cup o kindness, reeking and hissing from the recent immersion of the hot poker, at the hand of Captain Barney, which, in these temperate times, will probably never be brought up, even as an antique, namely - the foaming 1 mug 1 of flip. Thus the inn be came at once a resting, drinking, and gossip ing place. 1 Landlord, said a tall, gentlemanly -looking equestrian traveller, one evening, as he rose from the supper-table and brought the sides of his superfine surtout together on his breast, with the air of one about to depart, Landlord, will you give me your bill and have my horse brought round? Sir, said the shrugging host, assuming a very solemn and knowing look, Sir, you surely don t intend to go through the dark for est to-night ? * And why not, Sir ? replied Mr. Barkeley, THE HAUNTED FOREST. 109 e l have important business that requires my presence at W early in the morning. The evening is clear and pleasant, though there is no moon, and as to darkness, my good Bright could see, though it were black as herself. She is sure and light-footed, fleet as a leopard, and gentle as a lamb ; she will soon skim over the ground. 4 Blessed be her eyes, if they do not see too much ! blessed be her eyes, if they do not see too much, sir ! said Barney. < Can she stand a fright ? * Too much of what ! a fright from whom ? said Mr. Barkeley, You talk darkly, sir. * You ll have light enough to show you what I mean, when you get into the depth of the forest, said Barney. < I mean to ask, if your horse can outrun a spirit ! and to say that, if she does not see too much of another world s inhabitants for even a beast to look on without terror, I mistake, and will entertain you, scot free, when you come back> if ever you do come alive. Do you know that you must go directly over the haunted ground ? There is no haunted ground, said Mr. Barkeley, drawing on his gloves, except where 110 THE HAUNTED FOREST. a guilty conscience, or a superstitious imagina tion makes it such. I have no fears of the dead : the good have no desire to return ; and if they did, it would only be for good; the wicked are in too sure a prison ; and, as to the living, I have given none cause to do or wish me evil. I do not fear your spectres? By this emphatic speech, the attention of the several guests was drawn towards the traveller from the different parts of the room, where they were imitating the polished Athenians, in their desire to hear, or to tell some new thing, much more closely than by their looks and attitudes; and a knowing expression of one, and a significant shake of the head by another, evinced that, had they been an empanneled jury, and life or death at issue, the stranger must have lost his case. * You wouldn t feel quite so stout-hearted, if you d seen what I have, said a brawny young wood-cutter, in a blue-striped frock, with his axe beside him. *No, said the traveller, smiling, if I had seen as many trees, standing to stare me in the face till I could lay them by the axe at the root, as you have, I think I should not. But what THE HAUNTED FOREST. Ill is it that you have seen so wonderful, young man? < Oh ! that s the very question ; that s the very thing that nobody can tell! replied the rustic. i But I wish it was nothin worse than trees for me to level. I did n t see the white ghost that has scared so many ; but I did see something from the very infarnal regions, risin straight up through the ground, all wrapped up in fire, that did n t shine about and give light as the fire of this world does. It seemed as if it was burnin in ard to devour the soul that wore it, like a blanket, hot enough, I should think ; and it had dark spots on it, like stains, as if blood had spouted on t, and all the flames where it went could n t burn em out. No, I didn t see the white figger, that sometimes stands near t other, and close to the road ; the one that was murdered, I s pose. But Uncle Ned seed it once, and so did a good many more. T was bad enough for me to see the fiery one. I was a coming home one dark night, think ing of nothing on airth but the length of the road and my supper, and how I wished I could strike into the wood and get to t, by goin across, 112 THE HAUNTED FOREST. instead o stretching all the way round. Grow ler was playing along by my side, when, all at once, he stopped, and went, " wooh ! wooh ! wooh ! " I turned to see, over t other shoulder, what he was at; and there stood what I ve told you of, right against me, but a little in from the road among the dark trees and bushes. < 1 looked and looked, till my eyes struck fire ; and I begun to think I was goin to kindle up too ; and I thought Growler seemed to see something that was strange about me, for he growled and whined, and acted so, that I took to my heels, and he with me, dodging some times between em, and sometimes before and sometimes behind me ; while my feet went, " tunk, tunk, tunk," like a bear s feet, and sounded as if the ground all round was hol low ; and my heart thumped just as loud, and burnt like a live coal. But my axe was light as a feather. I believe, if I d dropped it into the spring, it would have swum. But I did n t look back ; for I d no notion of bein turned into a pillar of fire and brimstone, nor bit by the sarpent of the wilderness. So I cut on till my breath failed ; and I do n t know whether my head or my heels gave out first; but down THE HAUNTED FOREST. 113 I swamped, and forgot every thing. I didn t know what had become of me. But by-and- by I began to come back to my senses, when the first thing I felt, was some great, warm, heavy weight, laid right across me. I did n t know whether I could move, or was fastened down forever; but I thought I d see. So I moved a foot a little, and then got the use of my hand. I put it out to feel what was on me ; when the first thing I touched was Grow- ler s paw ; and glad was I to find it was n t the paw of the evil one * May you never be more under it than at that moment, said Mr. Barkeley, snapping the thread of the boor s story. * Keep clear of his power and you will never need to fear ghosts. Our guide-book through the wilderness of this world prescribes a perfect antidote, which it tells us " casteth out fear," " because in all fear there is torment," as you yourself have experi enced. But, said another sitter-by, with a seriou& air, many have seen strange sights on that spot, who would n t tell any thing false for their right hand ; and who were no more under tire power of the evil one than the people are down 8 114 THE HAUNTED FOREST. below, in Boston and thereabouts, where they had been to trade, when they were frightened by the apparitions as they went honestly home, feeling that they had cheated nobody, however they had come off themselves ; and, that if sin does " stick between the buyer and seller, like a nail in the joints of a wall," it did n t stick on their side of the bargain. Sometimes a tall white figure stands near the road, and a little from it the one that Zeb saw. Some foul deed must have been done there. * Gentlemen, good evening, said the travel ler, turning, and inwardly smiling at the credu lity of the simple-hearted group on which he closed the door of Captain Barney s inn. And now is he out, on his gallant black steed, that curvets and dances beneath him, with feet light as a Mercury, as she tunes herself for the forward pace, and then strikes off at full -peed into the depth of the forest. l What, says he to himself, can these strange people ha\e conjured up as a scarecrow to themselves and others ? Ignorance is indeed the mother of superstition, and thus, the grandmother of a thousand bugbears,- the very one whose au thority makes these vulgar stories all so true! THE HAUNTED FOREST. 115 Thus meditating, he proceeds rapidly till he has gained the heart of the forest ; when, sud denly he perceives unusual symptoms of reluc tance to forward motion, with a blowing and sheering off, in his trusty Bright. He urges her on ; but her inclination is backward or oblique, and her hind feet are crushing the leaves and bushes that border the road-side. What can she see ? Surely she has not a guilty conscience, nor a superstitious imagina tion. She is well-bred too ; but she trembles, puffs, and brings all her feet together for a side- wise spring. At this moment the eye of her rider has caught a glimpse of a tall white object, stand ing near the road, and a little beyond it, of one of strange aspect, presenting at once brightness and blackness ; and the more he views it the more luminous it seems to grow. Determined to pass, he touches the satin side of the quiver ing Bright with the spur. By one spring she has cleared the ground, and darted forward from under him as an arrow from the bow. At the same instant an arm from the white figure, smiting the front of his hat, has cast it off backward ; while he is quietly lodged on a tuft 116 THE HAUNTED FOREST. of brakes by the way-side, between it and his departing horse, with one gloved hand plunged into a mass of wet, spungy turf, to investigate his condition and the cause of it at his leisure. The flying feet of Bright sound terribly; and the click of her shoes on the stones in her way, seems like the last ticking of Time s old family clock, to the confused ear of her as tounded owner, as she gallops off through the lone wilderness ; then tacks, and comes whin nying at a distance for her master, and stands, scraping with her hoofs the bound of the en chanted ground, which she dares not overstep. Now hideous shrieks, like those of a woman or a child in distress, break from the thicket close by the grounded traveller. These are answered from another point by a wicked- sounding laugh, ha, ha, ha ! and this again by a hollow hooting, that comes in to fill the dismal round, as if the spirits of darkness were exulting in his distress and celebrating his fall with a malignant glee. He, like the young wood-cutter, begins to question whether he shall ever be an upright man again; and feels that it is one thing to buckle on the armor, and quite another to wear it victoriously through the fight. THE HAUNTED FOREST. 117 He does not know but Zeb s axe might swim here, since he could sink so low, and his good Bright be so wrought upon, as to cast off her master and forsake him in the very moment of need. But he reassures himself, as a single combatant with many horrors, throws down his muddy glove as a challenge, and rising, gropes for his absent hat ; that he may not share the fate of Absalom, should he ever be reinstated in the saddle. In doing this, he comes round to a quick and full eclaircissement of the whole matter. Near the road-side, with a few light, low bushes at its foot, stands a fair and erect white birch tree; its bark of uncommon whiteness and smoothness on the body, free of limbs to a height somewhat above that of man s stature. Then, branching out widely, some of its boughs reach partly over the passage, and several so low that, by a slight elevation from the jump of his horse, the rider s hat came in contact with one of them and was thus dislodged. The other mysterious object is also stripped of its terrors. It stands revealed, the decaying trunk of an old forest tree, whose aged head and withered limbs were long ago struck off 118 THE HAUNTED FOREST. by Time and his tempests ; and which now, in its perishing state, has become in part that phosphorescent material so common in decay ing vegetable substances, particularly in the stumps of trees, as they moulder away, and familiarly called light-wood. The birch, though in the day-time not dis tinguishable from many others in its neighbor hood, is yet so located as to appear at least, ambiguous at a slight glance from those seek ing horrors in the solemn night-hour ; and in such cases here, as in others, one coward s story has become the mother of many. Light is a wonderful dispeller of fear. Those who passed this way by day, were so familiar with the view of the white birches around, seen, as they could not be from their distance, in the shades of night, as never to suspect that they were in the presence of the apparition ; while the fiery spectre, like many other objects of physical and moral vision, lost its brightness before the face of day. Mr. Barkeley took his affrighted horse kindly by the bridle, and soothing her, as the young hero of Macedon did his, when he turned his head from the shadow, remounted and pursued THE HAUNTED FOREST. 119 his way, leaving the melancholy night birds, the owls and whip-poor-will, to serenade the apparitions with their horrible concert. * And so, thought he, * this is the ground which the cunning old tavern-keeper holds for the simple to spring his game ! When I re turn, I shall make an explanation that will break some of the meshes of his net, and deprive him of many silly birds he has been in the habit of catching as night-lodgers. THE GRAVE OF L. E. L [ I took the first opportunity to steal away, to look at the grave of L. E. L., who died here, (Cape Coast Castle,) after a residence of only two months ; and within four months after be coming the wife of Governor McLean. * * ******** j n fl^ O p en area of the fort, at some distance from the castle- wall, the stone pavement has been removed in several spots, and replaced with plain tiles. Here lie buried some of the many British offi cers who have fallen victims to the deadly at mosphere of the region, and among them rests L. E. L. Her grave is distinguishable by the ten red tiles which cover it. Daily the tropic sun blazes down upon the spot. Daily, at the hour of parade, the peal of military music re sounds over her head, and the garrison marches and countermarches through the area of the THE GRAVE OF L. E. L. 121 fortress, nor shuns to tread upon the ten red tiles, any more than upon the insensible stones of the pavement. ] Journal of an African Cruiser. WHERE is thy lovely shrine of clay, Sweet sister of the Lyre, Since passed it s light so swift away, When heaven recalled it s fire ? Where is the veil thy spirit wore ? I know, alas, too well, On Afric s strand, what passes o er The dust of L. E. L. My saddened soul within me weeps, That no kind power would save The form of genius there that sleeps, From that unholy grave. And when the half-indignant blush Would on my cheek appear, T is backened by the sorrow-gush, That bathes it with a tear. Dead warriors, in their final rest, Her couch of earth surround ! Rude soldiers, trampling o er her breast, Their loud reveille sound. The daily drum and clang of arms, The march, the stern command, Pass o er her form, whose music charms The pure in every land. 122 THE GRAVE OF L. E. L. T is meet to lay bold warriors there, Beneath their last parade ; But not that tender woman share The ground where these are laid. The blazing tropic sun may shower His fiery darts on them ; But o er her breast some lovely flower Should bow on flexile stem. Yet she, who her sweet harp inwreathed With fair, undying flowers, To touch the soul whene er it breathed, And gave the world its powers She sleeps in noisy, foreign ground, O erhung by burning skies, With no green grass, or tree, or mound, To mark where LANDON lies ! Four months a bride two moons within Those grim old castle walls ; Then laid in death, amid the din That o er that court-yard falls ! Her heart, the home of peace and love, Of truthfulness and trust, Has not a footing for the dove To light above its dust ! And now, in that unpeaceful grave, Forsaken! left behind! By him to whom herself she gave, Heart, hand, and glorious mind ! THE GRAVE OF L. E. L. 123 But clattering arms, and soldier s tramp, Though borne afar by fame, Have no dishonor e er to stamp On her far-honored name. That name was England s praise ; it shone, A star, throughout the world, Where er her royal tongue is known Her haughty flag unfurled. And will not England s parent-love Will not her pride and power, Her gifted daughter s dust remove To some cool, native bower ? No squaring art, in marble strong Should rear her measured tomb ; But o er her gush the wild bird s song, Leaves spread, and young flowers bloom. Yet, L. E. L., thy name, on earth Immortal, cannot die ! Sweet Poesy embalms thy worth, Where er thine ashes lie. And may some abler hand than mine Thy sweeter requiem give ; And amaranth with cypress twine, To bid thy memory live ! Thy voice is hushed to mortal ear, Thy form, a broken lyre ; But shining hosts thy numbers hear,. Where seraphs form the choir. June 27, 1845. THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST, MONT LOUIS, OR PERE LA CHAISE* WHERE is he, who in the course of his life has never lost a friend ? I am not that happy one. The grave has devoured many very dear to me ; and now it has just snatched from me a college companion and friend, to whom I was united by ties of the sweetest intimacy. One of our comrades has apprised me of the fatal event, by coming to request my presence at the obsequies. Our friend s residence was in the rue St. An- toine ; consequently his mortal remains are to be borne to Pere La Chaise. We follow the funeral carriage in that pro found silence and religious reflection, which, it seems to me, should ever be observed in these sad ceremonies. * Translated from the French. THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 125 We enter the cemetery by the gate fre quented for the last few years, on the Boule vard. This is well done. The old one was too niggardly for a place that holds within its walls so much of memory and of glory. We have seen the first shovel-full thrown on those cold relics ! And oh, what thoughts does that little portion of earth inspire ! But why, on the brink of this funereal vault, where all mortal schemes, hopes, and passions are to be swallowed up why do these greedy grave-diggers come, rudely to tear us from sorrows thus legitimate, by meanly bargaining for the price of a service, at which one is in despair ? If there is any of that religious meditation and that solemn silence, which ought to reign in these places, or even an idea that can be put to flight, they will attempt it. A venerable priest has sprinkled the lustral water on the grave. A distinterested friend has made the tears of all the assistants to flow, by an extemporaneous discourse, and all is fin ished All is finished ! What a word ! My friend and I have withdrawn, and stand apart from the numerous group of those who 126 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. formed the escort. * Let us leave them, said I, they are going, without doubt, to drown their grief in wine, by dining at Morel s, at the barrier of Almond-trees. I would not imitate them. I find it a singular mania which the people have adopted, to terminate a burial, the most austere and imposing of all earthly cere monies, with libations to the god of the grapes, and bacchanalian songs. < And, what wouldst thou, my dear ? said he. c Earth itself is but a vast tomb ; and they who dance upon it trample under foot the ashes of the dead. I know not what original has said, with justice, that life is a fantastical book, composed of black leaves and white ones, in nearly equal numbers, which an un skilful binder, without regard to order, has con fusedly stitched together. And here is precisely the reason why the impression of a scene like the present is abruptly effaced by one of plea sure, which, in its turn, must fade, to give place to others of funereal solemnity. It has been so through the past ; it is so now ; and so it will be in ages to come. But this place what bitter tears have here been shed! How many regrets, hopes, and THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 127 affections, are buried under these monumental stones! What pompous words have been uselessly and awkwardly lavished here ! What great phrases for little men ! How much bom bast, tinsel, and parade, for a little human clay, that is soon to become dust! How small is man ! Oh ! Death has a rigor of all most hard His suppliants to defy. The cruel ! he stops his ear at our prayer, And leaves us in vain to cry. What a singular aspect does this burial en closure present! Viewed from this point, it seems as if itself were plunged into a coffin. The sun, which gilds the glass of that chapel and these proud tombs, appears to lend them his immortal splendor but with regret. Ah ! what mean these simple wooden crosses, that rise from the centre of the sacred ground ? What mean this marble, this porphyry, and these stones that crush it with their weight? They, and even the simple mound covered with moss or grass, all these objects tell us that our fellow-mortals rest beneath the flowers about our feet ! 128 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. All here engraves most solemnly, In lines that naught disputes, The pride and nothingness of man, Hi* two great attributes. Alas ! of all his splendor, power, And talents, this their term Has nothing now to offer us But ashes and the worm A little ashes, which the winds, That wander wild in space, Contending for it as they meet, Shall with their breath efface. And such is man insensate man ! "Why, then, is he so proud I The coffin, as his palace, waits His coining in the shroud; In this deep lodge lugubrious, All solitary laid, To moulder silently, concealed In mortuary shade. If this be human destiny. Why doth yon lordling eye My poverty but with contempt, Aad hold his honors high ? And why should his base opulence Give him a haughty head, Thus daily on my penury With insolence to tread ? THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 129 Is gold the god men so adore, And to it incense burn ; While they to honor lift the vile, And virtuous merit spurn ? Can this bright idol give a shield, Of death to turn the blow That they may stand, and hold their ground, When his dread scythe shall mow ? Yet let us wait. That foe, perhaps, May bow the lofty head Ere midnight, by the cutting stroke That parts the vital thread. And they, who contumelious now Our humbler presence meet, May be, when sinks but one more sun, The dust beneath our feet. We 11 therefore leave these mighty ones To shake their glittering chain ; Their souls to dazzle and innate With splendor poor and vain. And let them in idea raise Their monuments of state, Whose marble proud shall stand to say, Beneath me rests the great ! For what imports their empty show Their grandeur frivolous ; This idol of the ignorant And vulgar, worshipped thus ? 9 130 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. And what are their distinctive ranks (Of no true good the friends,) To me, who touch the hour and place Where all in nothing ends ? But we will banish these sombre and mel ancholy reflections ; and, since chance has conducted me to Pere La Chaise, I would avail myself of it, to visit whatever may here be found remarkable. Thou, my friend, whose taste ever leads thy feet, as their favorite prome nade, through the paths of this solemn enclo sure, thou wilt be my guide. But, first, thou wilt give me the history of this ground, even before it became a cemetery. Very readily, answered my friend ; and here is what he related. HISTORY OF THE CEMETERY OF PERE LA CHAISE. Dulaure, in his history of Paris, informs us that the ground known at present by the name of Pere La Chaise, bore at a very remote period, that of Bishop s Field. The chroni clers have omitted to instruct us respecting the origin of this name. Saint Faith, however, THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 131 tells us, that at that day the ground belonged to the Bishop of Paris. Its well-known and au thentic record is not traceable farther back than the fourteenth century an era when the Pari sians, ever strongly given to applying to per sons, places, and things, soubriquets of their own invention, baptized it, Rcgnaulfs Folly. A rich grocer of Paris, Regnault by name, from setting out in life a very poor boy, had, by diligence and tact in his line of business, risen to be a man of vast wealth. He pos sessed himself of this beautiful eminence, which affords such a rich and extensive view on every side, while, to the west, the eye here embraces all Paris at a glance ; and, after hav ing been so long, as it were, getting root in his humble occupation, he burst out in full blown pride on this high ground, and all redo lent of the odor of the spices he had patiently dealt out through many a year, in his low, pent- up stand, to enable him to transplant himself on the airy height. Here he built a splendid country house, and drew on himself the ridicule of the wits of the day, by assuming a new character, and a style of living so little in harmony with his accus- 132 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. tomed habits, that he bore his honors but awk wardly. He gave himself many airs ; and boasted that, in his retirement, he could enjoy the pleasures of the country, have a wide sweep of prospect on every side, and overlook all Paris, without troubling himself with the little affairs that busied and annoyed the Messieurs of the Capital. But nothing is stable on this earth. Man and his concerns are more moving still than the sand. The grocer, Regnault, died; and, what is common in such cases, he left many heirs, who, not agreeing to any division of his possessions, had the whole estate sold for their mutual benefit and satisfaction. It was the epoch when the Jesuits had just begun to forge the first links of the chain with which they hoped ultimately to bind all the kings of the earth. The fair sex, who, though always worthy of our love and our homage, have nevertheless ever manifested some little weakness in the head, became infatuated with these reverend fathers. A lady, who was very rich, and a great devotee, purchased Regnault s Folly, and presented it, as a country seat, to those respec- THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 133 table ecclesiastics, then domiciled in the rue St. Antoine. Ah ! if the walls of this ancient garden could have spoken, what curious things would they have revealed! How many plots, intrigues, letters of proscription, sharpened poniards, per fidious insinuations, and calumnious denuncia tions, have issued from this enclosure ! The destinies of France, through a long lapse of years, turned, as on a pivot, on Reg- nault s Folly ; as it has recently been at tempted to make them turn at Monterouge! But the present day is not like the past. The French have eyes, and they see. A hundred numbers of the Journal of our age were suffi cient to put the Jesuits at the gate of Monte- rouge : it took three hundred years to expel them from Regnault s Folly ! But what method did these reverend fathers use to change the name of RegnauWs Folly to that of Mont Louis? Accident and a little flattery did the whole. On the 2d of July, 1652, Cardinal Mazarin took Louis XIV., then a child, to the table of this hill, to witness the combat which took place in the Faubourg St. An toine, between Marshal Turenne and the great 134 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. Conde. All, acquainted with their history, know that the latter was beaten, and came near losing his army. But what may not be so well known is, that the Jesuits availed them selves of this little diversion, which they had just given to the royal infant, to ask, and obtain of him, permission to efface the rough name of Regnault s Folly, and replace it with that of MONT Louis. This, however, did not prevent the people from preserving the appellation which they had bestowed on the place. At a later period, they even had the impertinence to call the small house of the venerable confessor of the king, La Chaise s Folly. If Louis XIV. was ever great, surely it was not towards the close of his life. How could he be so, enfeebled as he then was by age, and beset by those two evil genii, a bigot wife and a Jesuit confessor ? By the conventicle long held on this ground, some plot, some cruel decree, some lettre-de- catchet, was ever being drawn up. Here origi nated the terrible St. Bartholomew s massacre ; the dragoonade of the Cevennes ; the burning of Charenton ; and a long list of similar atroci- THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 135 ties, which it is useless now to sum up, since, for many years past, this troop of corrupters and regicides have been so stripped of their disguise, that nothing remains to be told of their story. We will therefore dismiss the subject of their high-handed deeds during their long sojourn on Mont Louis. The Memoirs of La Chalotais are a thousand times above all that we could say on this point. Besides, it is the history of the ground, and not that of its masters, that we would now give. Yet this justice we must render to the vener able father La Chaise : the place was wonder fully embellished under his hands; which is proved by an engraving, consecrated by Du- laure, to preserve and retrace the coup-d ceil which the pleasure-house and ground offered at that period. From ten acres the enclosure was extended to fifty-two a very reasonable and consistent enlargement for a monk who had taken the vow of poverty ! The higher parts of this beautifully undu lating earth he had sown with grain, and the little hillocks planted with vines. But its most extraordinary feature was a rich orchard, in which His Reverence, who loved to a fault the 136 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. fair and the good of fruits, collected, according to the manner of the Jesuits, (that is, for chap- lets and indulgences) all the rarest and most delicious fruits of France. The king himself possessed not their equals. But it is well known that a king of France, at that period, was but a little boy beside a Jesuit. A shining piece of water, of which a group of willows now betrays the place, groves and bowling-greens interspersed, completed the ensemble of the garden. And here His Reverence entertained all the great-caps* of the day. Even Madame de Maintenon herself came with her petitions ; and Boileau, the severe Boileau, was interested and cringing courtier enough to come and make his bow, and think it a signal honor and favor, here to have read his piece of verses en titled, i The Love of God! It seems as if one, having such fooleries on his own conscience, ought not to show himself so severe a censor of other poor sinners. At length the great day of justice arrived. * A contemptuous epithet applied to Madame de Maintenon, and those who followed her, whoset the fashion of nearly bury ing the face in a large cap. THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 137 All the Parliaments of France were leagued against the Jesuits. They were politely ad vised and urged to depart from the kingdom ; but they manifested a disposition to wait for more ceremony. Then Louis XV. sanctioned their expulsion, and the Pope himself. Clement XIV. abolished their order. Thus it appears very certain that, if ever they possess the right of conferring canonization, they will never make a saint of Clement XIV. What a pity ! when, otherwise, they might have written him beside the worthy brother, James Clement, who had so well merited his place in their martyrology, by his cowardly assassination of the person of the King, (Henry III. of France.) Behold, then, the unfortunate Jesuits forced to quit our kingdom, where they had found themselves so well-conditioned. The blow was cruel, and of a nature to turn any one s head. So the poor fathers lost the use of theirs, by this astounding stroke. In their despair, they forgot to pay their debts ; when, without respect for their sacred persons, the Parliament of Paris, which in those days meant no jesting, simply ordered that Mont Louis should be sold for the payment of several millions of 138 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. bills of change due at Lyons ; and, in 1765. Mont Louis was sold for this purpose. It was purchased by the Messieurs Baron- Desfontaines, who for a long time held this beautiful place in all its rural charms. But the revolution, by altering their fortune, deprived them of the means of retaining it conveniently ; and it was soon divided off in lots for many tenants. Thus the ancient establishment of Pere La Chaise seemed threatened with the loss of its splendor and its name ; when M. Frochot, Prefect of the Seine, satisfied of its rich and picturesque position, purchased, in the name of the city, the entire ground for 160,000 francs, for the purpose of converting it into a cemetery. M. Brogniard was charged with the care of its being suitably laid out and prepared for its new destination ; and the genius of this archi tect developed itself in the enterprise, as wor thy of its vast designs. He named Mont Louis, Cemetery of the East. But the people, faithful to their old habits, took no note of this new denomination, and preserved the title of * Pere La Chaise ; content, because the people loved the Jesuits so well^ to see the home of a rev- THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 139 erend father of the company of Jesus trans formed to a burying-ground 1 It was, says Dulaure, on the 1st of May, 1804, that the first interment took place in this new cemetery. It was the burial, in the lower part of the ground, of a bell-carrier to the police officer. to the faubourg St. Antoine. Yet, through some of the inexplicable whim- sey and caprice, common to the heart of man, this place, on which nature had lavished so many peculiar gifts, and which the wonders of art had just rendered superior in attractions to any thing it had ever been, this cemetery, so advan tageous in every respect, was from its first opening stigmatized with popular disfavor. But whence did this arise ? M. Marchand, in a work which he has published on Pere La Chaise, presents two causes : first, the Revolu tion ; secondly, the mania for victories. The Revolution, in effecting the total over throw of France, violently rent away its vir tues : and respect for the ashes of the dead, was one of those most slow to regain their places in the breasts of the French. The military glory, which succeeded the storms of the revolution, was little favorable to 140 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. that solicitude which every one ought to feel for the memory of his kindred ; at a time when every death made way for some survivor to advance a step in the career of dignities, or the path of disgrace. Death could not be viewed in a proper light. It could win no regard from the religious, the philosophic, or the pensive eye. Men were shoving, and crowding, and thrusting one another ; and, when once arrived at their post, they cared little for those whom they had struck down on the way. This order of things was not of long dura tion. Victory grew weary of following us. The elements unchained themselves against us. The disasters in Russia gave the signal ; and our armies, till then invincible, retreated step by step, from Moscow to Paris. The misfortunes of the invasion, the loss of the swan of France, our great Poet, the Abbe Delille, that of the immortal Gretry, the tragic and terrible deaths of Labedoyere and Marshal Ney, gave the public mind an insen sible turn to serious and mournful reflection. This produced a love of retirement, and walks for the indulgence of solemn reverie in places the most peaceful and funereal. THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 141 Little by little, an observing glance was cast on the admirable position of Pere La Chaise, The meditative bent their steps thither to con template the last asylum of some of the French soldiers, who, during fifteen years, had been displacing and bearing crowns. This seemed to yield some little consolation for the reverses of the day. The more this ground became frequented, the more did general admiration increase for its beautiful and varied sites ; its alternations of plain, hill, and dell, offering a thousand pic turesque and romantic irregularities. These, with the magnificent view which the height commanded, and finally, the growth of re ligious affections, and respect of survivors for the memory and the dust of their kindred, com pleted the fortune of the cemetery, and trans formed it into a true Elysium. Then, the most wealthy individuals seemed eagerly vieing with each other, to cover the soil with monuments more or less costly and imposing. Some sought here to develope all the richness and perfection of art, others all the fantastic and odd inventions of imagination, 142 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. All kinds and forms of monuments and tombs, unknown or obsolete until that day, came together on this ground. And it is precisely this confusion and variety of models and ma terials, which produce the principal beauty of this last repose of our dead. A superb monument of marble, rising beside a low and modest stone/ forms a contrast which does not sadden the eye of one who re flects that between the little portions of dust, resting beneath these mementos, there is no difference. The students of the Medical School revived, in France, a funeral ceremony of the ancients, by bearing on their arms to the grave, the re mains of one of their beloved masters, Dr. Beclard. The burial solemnities of General Foy add ed still more energy to these last duties of respect rendered by a grateful public to men, who, during their lives, have merited much from their country. Here, in the most fearful times, a hundred thousand people, from all ranks of society, attended his cold form to its final repose ; and two millions of men endowed THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 143 the son of the warrior-Patriot that France had just lost ! * From that time public opinion has preserved this tribute of love and gratitude to be shown when the great depart. Talma, La Rochefau- cault, and Manuel, received the same honors. And if the authorities, unfavorable to this dis interested homage, have sometimes sought to suppress its prevalence, they have not been able to eradicate it in the hearts of all France, who regard its manifestation as a sacred duty, of which nothing should, or can, prevent the fulfilment. In the autumn of 1820, the ancient house of Pere La Chaise was taken down, to give place to the chapel which now occupies its site. The limits of the enclosure have been extend ed, till they include from eighty to a hundred acres. The interments and solemn ceremonies that have taken place in this cemetery, have raised it to the highest degree of public interest and * An account of the affecting scenes that occurred at the fune ral of General Toy, may be found in a Biographic Sketch of him, by M. Tissot, prefixed to his published discourses. 144 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. favor, as it will appear from the following sketches and descriptions. Thus far I have translated my author. He now spreads before the reader a map of the cemetery, and then presents a series of very beautiful engravings of tombs, monuments, trees, and shrubbery, that ornament the ground. He quotes many inscriptions, and offers his in cidental remarks and opinions, as he goes on, leading you, as it were, by the hand, through every path, and stopping to point out whatever appears to claim notice, either for the beautiful and sublime, or the absurd and ridiculous. Nothing escapes his eye of nice distinctions, which often seems to delight more in the sim ple beauty of an humble wooden cross and the tree it leans against, or the flowers that sur round it, than in the expensive pile of por phyry, marble, or any other costly material, moulded by the hand of art. Yet to these he would do justice, as well as to the characters of those whose memories they perpetuate, and the sentiments that caused them to be reared. THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. 145 He even recounts, en passant, some little sto ries of the lives or the deaths of several indi viduals, the ends of whose histories are marked by these solemn periods of stone. One monu ment, a pile of white marble, in a low, seques tered spot, and embosomed in deep shade, he points out as very touching and beautiful, and says it is to the memory of a fair North American flower a young lady of Boston. < Here, he says, is something which occa sions me deep emotion, a simple piece of paper fastened to a small wooden cross. It is the writing of a little child, who comes, in this way, to wish bonne fete to his brother ; and the flowers he has brought lie all fresh and sweet at the foot of the cross, on the grave that holds the dust of this tender object of such pure fra ternal, infant love. He gives a number of very appropriate, and well-composed epitaphs, and then remarks, that, with the exception of these, you would be sur prised at the flat uniformity of most of the many thousands besides. Every one assures the passenger, that beneath it sleeps the best, the purest, and most perfect being, as husband, wife, parent, child, brother, sister, or friend, 10 146 THE CEMETERY OF THE EAST. that ever blessed the world ! He expresses his suspicion that much excellence of character exists on the speaking marble, that was never known or acknowledged elsewhere; and adds, 1 No wonder that we meet so many vices in the streets of Paris, since the virtues seem all to have retired to Pere La Chaise ! THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. THE venerable man, to whom the above title may in a two-fold sense be applied, resides in a town of Massachusetts, about thirty miles from its metropolis. He was an officer in our revolutionary war, and, having gone through nearly all the most perilous and interesting scenes in the great struggle for independence, can relate many anecdotes concerning that memorable era, which have no record, but in the mind of one who this day enters on his eighty-second year. His reverend form is now before me ; and, while his snowy locks lie loose and still on the silver bows of his spectacles, through which he reads, to learn how it goes with the country he has loved and served so well, he little dreams that he is sitting for his portrait, or what may 148 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. be the subject of the pen that is moving near him. As a soldier, he has gone through much suf fering from hunger, fatigue, and exposure to the weather : and many perils by the cannon and the sword. His blood sprinkled his path, returning from Lexington to Cambridge, in the afternoon of the day of the battle : and his feet had none behind them, when, after that of Bunker Hill, he was fired at as a single mark, on Charlestown Neck, from the British floating batteries, and saw a ball cut a trench on his way close before him, which caused him to stumble as he ran to overtake his company. He was at White Plains, and Still- Water, and will tell you how the first field-piece, taken from Burgoyne, felt to his own right hand, as he sprang through the embrasure and took it,* when his was the first hand laid upon it He commanded the guards at West Point, at the time of Arnold s desertion, and can recount * This piece of ordnance was. a few years ago, and perhaps is stffl. statkftd in the city of New York, accompanied by an account of when and where it was taken: bat the name of the Then? he saw it when on a visit to the city, fifty years after th memorable day when he first touched & THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER, 149 many schemes laid by the traitor to bring con fusion into the camp ; some of which were by himself discovered and baffled, while Arnold, perceiving it, endeavored to dazzle his eyes by flattery and attention. He can describe the person of the gallant Andre, and his deport ment at the time of his capture ; for it fell to his lot to pass the evening and night, after he was taken, with him, as his guard watch. In short, his memory is a well-regulated store-house of all that happened from the time when, having returned with wet feet from crossing his father s meadows, he heard the first alarm, that the British had landed, and were on their way to Concord: and shoul dered his musket and went forth, to that when he saw the sword given into the hand of Gates, when, the victory won, the country free, and the army disbanded, he returned home on foot, performing the distajnce of one hundred and sixty miles in three successive days, and ascribing all the glory of the victory to the God of armies. The private life of our venerable friend was, in its early part, a season of success and sunshine. His sails were swift upon the ocean, 150 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. and his cattle fat upon the hills. He was blessed in his basket and his store. But, as in prosperity he was not puffed up, so in ad versity he was not broken down. And when it afterwards pleased the Lord to try him, as he did his servant of old, by a sudden reverse of fortune, which brought on losses and afflic tions in a burden that would have crushed a spirit not accustomed, Like his, to throw all temporal things, whether of loss or of gain, into the scale against that < far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory to which he is now looking with the feeling of a near ap proach, he has never been known to murmur nor to charge God foolishly. In one instance, there literally came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of his house, and it fell. Yet, in all his tribulation, he seemed soothed and supported by a conscience whispering within, But he knoweth the way that I have taken ; when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. My foot hath held his stera his way I have kept, and not de clined. His misfortunes and the vicissitudes of his life, if they were written and printed in a book, THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 151 would form a series of truths far more interest ing than many of the glowing and pathetic fictions that are sung about heroes from the regions of romance. But, after having buffeted the tempest for many years, in which he was ever more ready to convince the world that the staff he walked by was not rested on an earthly foundation, than to boast of that which supported him, he at length saw the clouds melted and scattered away, thin and pale on the face of the azure heavens. He is now sound in health, serene, and happy ; and a calm, sunset-glory hangs about the eve ning of his day. It may not be improper here to add of him who has fought so manfully for his country, and so faithfully for the Captain of his salva tion, that his religious belief has ever been set forth less by his words than by his walk, in which he has invariably been found a follower of him who was meek and lowly. His Chris tian profession, on which he has never brought a stain, was made early in life ; but on the subject of religion he is modest, reverential, and a man of few words. No sectarian or bigot, he judges no man, in- 152 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. terferes with none ; but while one is contend ing that he is of Paul, and another that he is of Apollos, he is satisfied to be found of Christ, and in the exercise of that charity which suffer- eth long- and is kind. The gospel, in the sim ple form in which it was handed down by the inspired writers to his ancestors and to him, he took for the first pattern by which to shape his religious views and character ; and he has never since wished to alter them to any new mode, or to conform to more recent-made rules of belief and practice. He reads no works of doctrine or contro versy ; but, regarding the Book of books as the light for his mind, and the fountain for his thirst, he prefers it, in the one sense, to any of the lesser luminaries that may be kindled or lighted at it ; and, in the other, to the streams that may be drawn from it, and poured into clayey vessels of divers colors, to be tinged with the hue of each. You may therefore often see him at this well-spring of life, as he sits with a large folio Bible open across his lap, with a hand fast on either side, as though it were the only thing to hold on by in this world ; and his ye fixed on THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 153 its pages, as if looking through them, as an open gate-way, into heaven. His early religious experience has always been less known to the world than to himself and the Being with whom the business of the soul is transacted. Indeed, I never knew of, his speaking on the subject, till a friend, a few months ago, wishing to know something of it, questioned him so closely as to draw from him the following simple statement : 4 My first impressions were from pious pa rents, whose moral and religious instructions were always illustrated to my young mind, by the example of their upright and holy walk before me. As I grew older, and began to read and reflect for myself, I used to take the Bible into retirement; and, meditating alone over its contents, I felt that I could not make a wiser choice than its Author, for my friend through life; nor seek a better portion than the inheritance of a child of God, trusting that to this all needed things would be added. 4 1 was now but a boy, yet I believed He spake truth, who said, they who seek me early shall find me ; and I gladly gave up my heart and its concerns into his keeping, feeling that they 154 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. could be no where else so safe. I remember, that one of my favorite haunts for meditation, in good weather, was a beautiful walnut grove, on my father s grounds, not far from our dwell ing. Here I used to go out alone, to admire ,the beauties of the natural world, and to com mune with him who had caused them. As I looked from my grassy seat, up through the tall trees, whose boughs were on every side studded with young nuts ; and considered, that the hand which was forming the kernel in the shell, and bringing it to perfection, had also spread out and now upheld the heavens above, I was filled with wonder and admiration at a thought of the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of Him, who was the author of all I beheld without and all I felt within me. It was at this age, and in an hour and a scene like these, that, with my heart melted by unmingled love, I came to the early, but deliberate decision, that I would be Christ s for time, and trust him for eternity. And thus, I bound myself to him by a covenant which has held me up through all the deep and troubled waters, and remained unbroken by any of the tempests of this changeful world. THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. 155 When I went into the army, I took my Bible with me in my knapsack, determined to square my actions by its rules, come what might ; and never have I regretted going forth to the field, clothed in the armor it prescribed. It is now to be added to the foregoing, which was written some years ago, that it is here in serted as a tribute, not to the virtues of the living, but to the memory of the departed ; since its sainted subject has recently finished the fight of the CHRISTIAN SOLDIER, and gone to his reward. Subsequent to the day when this article was penned, he was led to answer questions, and make short relations of events concerning his revolutionary campaigns, which were caught from his lips, and in his own words committed to paper, as he continued to speak, not aware that these words were taking any form more tangible than that of sound. A few of these sketches were then in a fragmen tary, fugitive form, published in short articles. He also, at the request of his friends, wrote, himself, in his advanced age, but with clear memory, and in a style of truth, simple and 156 THE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER. ungarnished, a brief account of his adventures connected with that period, to leave as a keep sake with his children. Some of these papers may perhaps hereafter be compiled, and .given to the public. S A INT 3 II ome rino, held >red with ing your .. - rdlden S- oace<l SUIT IfSALIA. :: -~ / slid L 1** -.-._;. ^ .> 158 SAINT ROSALIA. 4 Ah, yes ! and a true and beautiful view of an old, familiar scene ! said he, as his black, Italian eye glanced at the engraving, like a gleam from the sun of his own bright clime. But, as he studied the piece more intently, the enthusiastic ah* gave way to the pensive ; and a moisture glistening in the light beneath his long, dark eyelashes, showed me that I had touch a deep-toned instrument of many strings ; and inadvertently brought home too near to one who had left it, with every kindred tie, beyond the Atlantic waves. Pained at per ceiving the deep abstraction of affection and memory into which I had suddenly thrown him, I aimed to bring him out of it, by request ing him to give me the history of this fair saint, and to tell what eminent works of piety she had done, to purchase canonization. I will, said he, give you some account of the historical facts that are authentic, and the traditions and notions, religious and supersti tious, concerning her. I made a sketch of these, and of Monte Pellegrino, in manuscript, during my second and late voyage from Sicily to the United States. Being in a merchant ship, I was the only passenger ; and my cap- SAINT ROSALIA. 159 tain, a true old son of Cape Cod, made the most of me as a gossip, to wile away the tedi ous hours of his watch below. Among other curiosities which he had in his cabin, he once showed me a crystal case, containing a wax figure, made to represent a beautiful young girl in the sackcloth of a pil grim ; her fair brow crowned with a wreath of roses, and her lovely form reclining in pensive attitude on the rude stones of what might be called a cave. The captain said he had purchased the toy in Palermo, for a present to carry home to his children ; and, as he made it his rule to have a story for every thing, he wished he could have one, and a good one, too, to tell them at home about that girl in the glass case. 4 1 smiled, and told this aged boy that, as to that girl-) I guessed I could tell him something to the point. So, on a Saturday evening, when he had trimmed his sails, and seen that all was right on deck, and we sat down to give our usual Saturday-evening sentiment, Friends at home ! to which he always added a laconic, and abroad ! I told him the story of Rosalia, which I will place at your service. 160 SAINT ROSALIA. Shortly afterwards my Palermitan friend fur nished me with the manuscript papers, from which I give the following : ROSALIA, THE PILGRIM SAINT. Rosalia, the guardian saint of the city of Palermo, was of the royal house of the Sini- baldis, who, in the middle ages, swayed their sceptre over the whole island and kingdom of Sicily. This family was an ancient branch of the house of Charlemagne ; or, according to some historians, descended in direct line from the great Emperor himself. Young, beautiful and innocent, Rosalia was the darling child of her royal parents, the dear est object of their affections, the brightest jewel of their crown. In her centred the admiration of the courtiers, the love of the people. She was the minstrel s theme ; the bright star of the troubador ; the lady-love in whose defence and honor many noble knights and gallant cava liers were ready to break a lance with the proudest and best that ever wore spurs, or rode a tournament, in all Christendom. Attracted by the charms of her beauty, and the lustre of SAINT ROSALIA. 161 her station, many a royal suitor had endeavored to win to his love this noble daughter of a long line of princes ; this fairest rose that ever bloomed in Sicily; But the heart of Rosalia was not a prize to be successfully striven for by man. Another, and a holier flame than that of mortal love, burned in the deepest recesses of her soul. Disgusted with the manners of a court, sick of the vanities of earth, and dead to its allure ments at the early age of fifteen, while her uncle, William the Good, yet filled the throne she turned away from the seeming advantages of her royal birth, and the pleasures of a sinful world, to consecrate her heart and her life to God. It is an ancient tradition, which many at the present day believe to have been founded on truth, that while the royal maiden was one day in her chamber, dressing to appear at a tourna ment, she had a heavenly vision. The mirror, which reflected her own fair form, suddenly presented to her eye the image of the Saviour in the affecting attitude of his last sufferings for the redemption of mankind. And at the- 11 162 SAINT ROSALIA. same moment, she heard a celestial voice, re minding her, in the sweetest tones of fatherly complaint, of what the Son of God had borne for her, to win her love ; and enjoining it on her to make sure her salvation, by withdrawing from the snares, and flying the temptations of a deceitful world. Rosalia listened to the call, and with willing heart resolved to obey it. She determined t quit forever the home of her earthly fathers; and to follow the way that might be pointed out by her unearthly guide, to gain at last the more enduring and glorious mansion of her Father in heaven. In the year 1159, she suddenly disappeared from the palace and the eye of man ; and fled to a neighboring forest, burying herself in its shadowy depths for solitude and prayer for undisturbed communion with the Father of her spirit. Thence, suspecting herself pursued, she passed on, to a cavern in the side of the Monte Quesquina. On the rocky side of this retreat she engraved the following Latin in scription, which was not discovered till long afterwards: Ego Rosalia Sinibaldi quisquine SAINT ROSALIA. 163 et rosarum Domini filia Amore Dei mei Jesu Christi in hoc antro habitare decrevL* But the fair fugitive was discovered, and interrupted in her meditations by a troop of cavaliers sent out in quest of her ; and was, by the king s command, hurried back to the palace, when she had just gone up into the mountain to pray, and had placed the record of her pious resolution in its ancient cavern mouth. Yet, neither the endearments, the prayers and entreaties, nor even the stern injunction of her friends, could unsettle the holy purpose of her mind. She eluded their vigilance, and the anxious solicitude of their affections. Assum ing the disguise of a pilgrim, with no guide or protector but her firm resolution and her God, she again fled from the palace, bidding a final adieu to her father-home and the presence of man. She was gone! but none could tell whither. Her foot had left no print ; no mark * The grammatical correctness of this inscription will be questionable to the classic eye. But I copy it as given by the Eev. G N. Wright, A. M., and others. Brydone calls it, < a specimen of the Saint s Latinity. My informant thinks rosa rum refers to the profusion of splendid roses for which that part of the island was once celebrated, and that hence, probably, the name, Rosalia. 164 SAINT ROSALIA. remained to reveal the way she had taken. None who then lived on earth was ever again to behold her face, or to learn her fate. As light before the dial s shade, As odors on a wave of air ; So passed the beauteous royal maid, While mortal could not answer, where ! Northward of the beautiful Bay of Palermo, and about two miles from the city, stands Monte Pellegrino. It rises boldly and abruptly to the height of 1474 feet, when it dilates into a plain about a mile in length ; and is there surmounted by a loftier peak, which makes the extreme elevation of the mountain about 1963 feet above the level of the sea. On the top of that peak has stood, from time immemorial, the old watch-tower, which, in our day, has been appropriated to the use of a telegraph. This mountain is not without its honored fame in ancient history. It is the Mons Ercta of the ancients. The name reminds the scholar of Hamilcar Barcas and Pyrrhus, and of. the bloody battles fought on and around its plains, between the Carthagenians and the Romans. About midway up the mountain are the SAINT ROSALIA. 165 fragments of an old castle, demolished by the abrading hand of time, which, even in the days of the Carthagenians, was, according to the Sicilian historian, regarded as an antiquity, and said to have belonged to the reign of Saturn. Diodorus writes, that Hamilcar held this same castle against the most powerful efforts of the Romans, for the space of three years and more. But the memory of these warlike deeds was to be obscured in process of time by the re nown of a more peaceful and holy adventure. Few of the thousands who go yearly to visit the mountain, have ever read, or heard of the battles it has borne, as the Mons Ercta, whilst all look up to the Monte Pellegrino, (the Pil grim s Mountain,) with feelings of the deepest reverence, for it is the shrine of ROSALIA ! On the eastern and most accessible side, and reaching to its first-named elevation, there is now built a wide and commodious road, rest ing on several arcades of rough, heavy ma sonry, gradually decreasing in the ascent, and winding on, high, through the hollow of a hard- climbing ravine. But, at the epoch of our story, it must have been a task, even to the 166 SAINT ROSALIA. daring huntsman, to brave the difficulties of that ascent, so steep at many points as to seem inaccessible to all but the eagle. The surface of the mountain presents noth ing remarkable, or peculiarly striking to the eye ; unless it be found in its utter barrenness, and the fine contrasts of the ever-varying tints of its massive peaks. As the traveller ascends, he sees, rising con tinually around and above him, immense heaps of eternal rocks confusedly thrown together, and heaving enormously one over another, like the ocean-billows after a tempest. No smiling verdure refreshes his weary sight ; but here and there it may be greeted by a tuft of worthless weeds, springing out from the clefts of the old grey rocks, or the solitary wild-flower of the mountain, nodding carelessly under the scorch ing rays of the noon-day sun. He hears no voice, no sound ; not even the monotonous roar of a torrent breaking wildly upon the solemn stillness of the scene. Noth ing, but the acute echo of his own footsteps, as he treads along the flinty gravelled road ; or the sharp-armed thistle, hissing from the over hanging peaks, to the rough breath of the SAINT ROSALIA. 167 north, or its melancholy murmnrings to the gentle breeze of the south. But no sooner, has he reached the first eleva tion, and found himself at the brink of a preci pice, where a wooden cross has been erected to remind him that he now treads on hallowed ground, than his eye and his ear are at once, as if by magic, surprised and delighted by the beautiful prospect, and the cheerful hum of the living, animated nature beneath him. The uncertain, dying sounds from the distant city, stealing softly along on the winds of the pass ing wind, come like sweetest music to his en raptured sense. The city itself, with its marble palaces, its hundred turrets, and its magnificent domes, glittering to the sun, is seen yonder, towards the east, quietly reposing on the verge of the calm blue sea, bound in by the shore, and by the endless perspective of mountains extending as far as the eye can reach, till their outlines are blended and lost in the clear azure of the sky. Then, the plains that surround the city are seen rising gently into hills, chang ing by degrees into a vast ampitheatre of moun tains, and exhibiting the most charming grada tions of green, sloping meadows, and deep 168 SAINT ROSALIA. groves of orange-trees ; then the grey and brownish masses of olive-woods ; and, tower ing higher up, the dark, majestic forests, broken here and there, and set forth by a white cottage, the shepherd s mountain home. Nor is the scene towards the south less mag nificent than that to the. east. Here, again, it opens to the eye, as if within arms-reach of the beholder, in a spacious level country, inter sected in a hundred directions by roads and pathways, and studded at every point with splendid villas and thatched cottages ; teeming all around with the luxurious vegetation of a southern climate, and bounded north and west by two gulfs, whence, again, the dark blue sea stretches away to the farthest verge of the horizon. Turning to the right, and directly in front of the beholder, appears now the last road on the mountain, adorned on one side by a natural line of wild oaks, blasted and hoary by weather and age, the first and only trees to be met with on the Pellegrino, and by several brick chapels at short distances apart At the termination of this road, and precisely at the base of the mountain s loftiest peak, will SAINT ROSALIA. 169 be found a capacious grotto, not seen at first, for it is, like the sepulchre at Jerusalem, en closed within the precincts of a church. - On entering the church-gate, you stand beneath a portico, supported by granite columns. Two old sepulchral marble monuments are seen close by each side of the entrance ; the col umns, the tombs, the portico, and its arched vaults, all mouldering away with age and the continual dampness of the mountain. Cross ing thence, over a gravelled, moss-grown court, walled in by heavy clustering rocks, and open to the light of the clear, blue vault above, you gain admittance, through a massive iron fence, into the grotto. A range of high- backed seats, of carved and finely-polished oak, is on each side of the entrance, for the use of the officiating priests, similar to those found in every cathedral in the old country. Dark masses of brown and mossy rocks, many of them shaped like icicles, and incrusted with glittering stalactites, project from the vaults and the bottom of the cave. All here is cheerless and awfully still. The dead silence and solemn darkness of the place are only interrupted by the slow, perpetual 170 SAINT ROSALIA. dropping of the mountain waters, and the lu gubrious glimmering of a few tapers, ever burning on the altar. For a temporal abode in this melancholy grotto, and to breathe out her life in commu nion with him whose still, small voice, once gladdened the Prophet in the mouth of his mountain cave, did the lovely heiress of royal honors resign them all, together with the gaiety of a court and the splendor of a palace. To this wild scene and dismal retreat did the beautiful Rosalia, alone, defenceless, and frail as the solitary mountain flower she passed, at length make her way. And here did she attain the end of her one great desire, a sure and final refuge from human pursuit and all the lying vanities of life. In this shadowy desert sanctuary was her pure spirit exhaled to its Father in Heaven, and in this stupendous sepulchre, robed in the pilgrim s sackcloth, lay the remains of this fair daughter of kings, un touched, unseen, while centuries rolled away. What hardships the pious young fugitive had to suffer in her journey up the mountain, where the difficulties must have required almost superhuman power to overcome them ; SAINT ROSALIA. 171 what was the life she led in this solitude ; what were her exercises here, or how she could pos sibly have been nourished, in a place hardly affording the extreme necessities of human nature the scanty luxury of water, and a few roots to be gathered among the stones and crevices, are all things which no one, to this day, has been able to ascertain. Nor are there any data whereby to judge how long she con tinued here, or at what period of her life God was pleased to call this innocent, self-sacri ficing victim home to his kingdom. Days, months, and years went by, after her mysterious disappearance; but nothing was heard of the fugitive maiden, whom many believed to have been translated to heaven. Time, and the common destiny of human affairs, swept slowly from the face of the earth the worldly splendor, the race, and almost the name of her royal fathers. Generation fol lowed generation to the grave, burying her memory, and all curiosity about her fate, in the dust and oblivion of the past. Nearly five centuries after the flight of Rosa lia, in the year 1624, one of those awful calam ities which Divine Justice sometimes sends 172 SAINT ROSALIA. among men, as a fearful warning of its omnip otence, visited Palermo. A fierce pestilence, the plague, raged among its inhabitants, spar ing neither age nor sex, while with its blasting breath, it swept alike through the luxurious gilded mansion of the rich, and the humble abode of the poor. Its victims fell in hun dreds, and faster than there was time to give them burial. Heaps of the dead were lying in the deserted streets, which presented a hideous melange of trophies of the destroyer. A dull, heavy atmosphere veiled the face of heaven, shutting out from the eyes of the dying the view of its serene azure ; and the sun, no lon ger seen rising with a smile in the east, came up, sickly and pale, to send his parching shafts through a fiery mist, till he went down, bloody and burning, in the west, to give place to a breezeless, dewless, and more desolate night. The terrible scourge, instead of showing any abatement, seemed daily to increase in strength and virulence. Those who in person were yet untouched by the fatal malady, haggard and ghastly, gave themselves up to despair, feeling that they were at the extreme of all hope, save SAINT ROSALIA. 173 in Him whose righteous indignation they had, by their sins, wilfully provoked. It was about the middle of July, when a venerable man, whose life had been that of a hunter, retired from the city, to ramble among the rocks of Monte Pellegrino, perhaps in quest of game, or to avoid the sweeping malady. Or, having lost by its ravages all that was dear to him, he might have gone up into the mountain solitude to let his heart bleed to death through the severed ties of his affections, peacefully and alone, Overcome by fatigue and the noontide heat, he sought rest and shelter . from the sun, in a cave near him, which offered a cool shade, though but a stony pillow. Entering it, he laid himself down on a rocky couch, and was soon lost in a deep sleep. He dreamed. A sweet voice, like the gentle murmurings of a silvery fountain, or the music of a harp deli cately touched by aerial fingers, seemed steal ing on his delighted sense, and softly whisper ing, to pronounce his name. He awoke. Opening his eyes, and turning them to the direction whence the voice came, by an open ing over the side of the grotto, he beheld the appearance of a beautiful being, whose delicate 174 SAINT ROSALIA. form, in reclining attitude, seemed in sweet repose. The novelty and strangeness of the apparition, the angelic beauty and heavenly brightness that shone in the features and ex pression of its face, had seized the poor wan derer with amazement and awe, when again he heard the voice, which thus addressed him : Fear not, good mortal! fear not! I am Rosalia Sinibaldi, once the royal child of kings who reigned over yonder city, now a saint of God, to whom I was faithfully devoted during my life of seclusion in this grotto, and whose presence I now enjoy among his blessed iri heaven. Thence have I beheld the deep misery of my native city; and my heavenly Father, through my intercession, is at last pleased to deliver it from the ravages of the pestilence. Haste, -then, to the city, and bid the people rejoice ; and, in token of their grati tude, let them come here, to remove my mortal remains, which, uncoffined, unentombed, are now lying there, (and she pointed to the spot) to give them the hallowed rest of an honored grave ! The favored huntsman recovered his spirits, and hastened on his gracious errand to the SAINT ROSALIA. 175 suffering city. The excitement caused by his wonderful tidings was intense; and rays of hope began to dart through the clouds of mel ancholy that shrouded the people. In a few hours, the clergy, the magistrates, and the nobles of the city, followed by a long train of people, were seen winding their way up the mountain, and there gathering within and about the cave. Directed by the hunter, on the spot pointed out by the vision, they found the frail remains of Rosalia, which, with great reverence, and the anxious expectations of religious faith, they removed to the city. Three days they bore them through all the streets of Palermo. On the fourth appeared signs of the staying of the plague. Gusts of wind rose from every quarter, followed by heavy drops of rain, which presently increased to copious showers, whose refreshing influence revived the aspect of nature, and quickened her nearly exhausted sources of life. By the end of the month, the malady had disappeared. Then it was, that, in the enthusiasm of their gratitude for miraculous relief, the people of Palermo erected an altar over the spot where 176 SAINT ROSALIA. the relies of their blessed Rosalia were found ; and deposited them in a silver monument, kept to this day in a magnificent chapel in their cathedral. They placed her on their calendar, and electing her their tutelar Saint, instituted a solemn annual festival of prayer and thanks giving, which is still celebrated yearly, in the middle of July, in commemoration of the dis tressing events and the happy deliverance. But, amid all the splendor and magnificence of these festivals, Monte Pellegrino and its grotto have ever been, and will continue to be, the chief objects of devotional interest to the whole people. Pilgrims, male and female, old and young, of every rank and condition, go yearly and monthly, from the most distant parts of the island, to visit their hallowed mountain, and the shrine of Rosalia. The poor fisherman, in his lighted boat, gliding silently along the shore, cheers on his nightly toil, singing the praises of the pilgrim Saint, and looks, now and then, with mingled emotions of affection and awe, at the huge mountain overshadowing the rippling bay. The long-absent wanderer greets first, on his return, the airy summits of his beloved Pelle- SAINT ROSALIA. 177 grino, gracefully pointing to the sky, now bathed in the gorgeous tints of the blushing morning now glistening to the rays of the rising sun. His fluttering heart flies before the wind, quicker far than the gallant bark that bears him on ; and, as he draws near, he recognizes in every peak of that mountain, a dear friend of his childhood ; and feels that he can now die in peace, for he dies at home. Such are the historical facts that are au thentic ; and the traditions and notions, re ligious and superstitious^ which, it will be remembered, my Sicilian friend engaged to lay before me ; and these classes are easily distin guished. That the fair young princess, Rosalia, was piously given, is undoubtedly true. That, her mind being awakened to the subject of re ligion, and a fitness of state for the kingdom of heaven, she felt the need of a change of heart, and a conscience purged from dead 12 178 SAINT ROSALIA. works, may readily be believed by every ex perimental Christian. That, thus exercised, her spirit sighed for tranquillity, and yearned after a holier atmos phere, and more congenial society than sur rounded her in the centre of court scenes of that day, till she might calmly regulate the momentous concerns of her soul; and be firmly established on the Rock of Ages, will easily be conceived and understood. It will also appear clear, that, at her tender age, with no proper spiritual adviser, and .not permitted to read the revealed Word of God for herself, to the en lightening of her mental vision, her mind, yet that of a child, was strongly wrought upon, her understanding beclouded, and her imagina tion highly excited ; till at length reason tottered, and she became the victim of a wild and fatal delusion. With this view of :her character, and her position in life, where her young heart must have borne secretly and alone its great struggle with the warring influences from within and without her, all Christian charity must hope that her error of judgment was expiated by the sincere purity of her motive, and her suffer- SAINT ROSALIA. 179 ings ; that her self-immolation, for no possible good end on earth ; was wept out by the tears of mercy from the recording angel s book, and she finally accepted among the heirs of the heavenly kingdom. Without these apologetic considerations ; and trying her course, after she believed herself to have received a special divine call, by the touch-stone of gospel teaching and example, or that of the older dispensation, what can we make of her running away from her fond pa rents, contrary to the holy laws of nature, and the duties imposed by revelation ; and thus burying, not only her talents, but herself and her life, in more than * a napkin, even in the rocks and mountains ? But she did not know, when she inscribed her intention on the cavern rock, the story of him who once hid himself in a similar place, because, as he said, he l was very jealous for the Lord ; and who received the reproving demand, What doest thou here, Elijah ? She had not been permitted to study for her self the lives of Dorcas, Lydia, and the other holy women of scripture ; or surely, if she wished to lead a truly Christian life, she would 180 SAINT ROSALIA. have found very different means of consecrat ing herself to the cause of that holy God, who will have mercy before sacrifice ; and of show ing that her life was hid in Christ, whose whole days on earth were spent in teaching, and 1 going about doing good. She had never learnt that the great secret of the spirit of Christianity is, to be in, but not o/, the world. She had not been taught the all- important truth, that the world is the furnace into which the children of the kingdom are cast, to be tried ; and where they must be seen of men l walking in the midst of the fire, and one with them, in form, like the Son of God. Had Rosalia known and understood the words of the holy Founder of the religion to which she aimed to be a devotee, Ye are the salt of the earth, Ye are the light of the world, and other similar precepts, how, if she was in her right mind, could she justify her own conduct, or expect to render up her ac count ? How do the fair enthusiasts who, in modern times, would follow her example, as far as the present state of society and the thickly peopled world render it practicable, apply these teach- SAINT ROSALIA. 181 ings, when they put their candle under a bushel/ and do the most they can to prevent the earth and the world from knowing whether they be salt or not ? For, if they cannot, from the centre of civilized society, decently scram ble up into the rugged mountain-tops, and deposit themselves among the old grey rocks, where all the salt that ever the little pilgrim saint possessed, went to preserve her royal re mains ; they make monastic walls the substitute for that sublimer retreat, where, in a literal sense at least, she could for once say, she had the world beneath her feet. Rosalia s mistake was worthy of the state of error and ignorance of the social system into which she was born, the dark ages in which she and her ancestors lived, and the moral degradation which must have been the conse quence of this gross darkness, as well as the perpetuating cause of it. On this, the pious little maiden looked round ; and, affrighted at the view, like a timid bird, spread her wings and flew to the mountain peak. If the holiest thing that a saint could do, in that day, was to flee from all trial, and beyond the power and opportunity of benefiting others, 182 SAINT ROSALIA. or of growing in grace by contact with those who had none, (which is certainly one of the greatest trials of faith which the righteous are called to endure,) wickedness must have pre vailed. And when He, who from his holy throne looked down on the scene of disobe dience to his commands, had sent the destroy ing angel in the form of the raging plague, to make known his displeasure ; it is not strange that the awakened consciences of the survivors of the multitudes, mown down by his sickle, should have caught at any hold of hope and trust. The dream of the wandering hunter, during, perhaps, the first sleep he had fallen into, after a long and wearisome watch amid the dead and the despairing, and this, too, where he probably caught a view of the remains, between sleeping and waking, furnished some little ground for superstitious belief, in a moment of despair, to rest upon. The return of Rosalia to her native city happened, probably, when He who sent the judgment, had beheld the penitence of the people, and was about to avert it, by using the elements as his ministers of SAINT ROSALIA. 183 mercy, to dispel the malaria, and refresh man and nature with the shower and the breeze. If they who yielded implicit belief and con fidence to the miracle of the saint s bones, ad duced, as the ground of this credence, the case of the young man restored to life by touching the bones of Elisha and I can think of no other possible foundation for it how little did they understand the holy written word, and the end of the miracles recorded therein ! The prophets were themselves the book of God s revealed will ; their minds the pages on which he imprinted it by the power of his Spirit ; and he sent his angel to touch their lips, as with a coal from off his altar, to speak it forth. They were the medium through which he made him self known; and types of the Messiah, who was to come in fulfilment of the promises which they delivered, and the things they shad owed forth. This miracle was probably designed by God to witness to man the truth of what Elisha had taught, and as an evidence of his having been anointed his chosen messenger. He no doubt also designed this instance of raising the dead, as typical of what Christ, though he suf- 184 SAINT ROSALIA. fered the death of the body, would accomplish, in victory over spiritual death for his believers ; and of his triumph over the grave. But Christ has come ; and his gospel is with man. And the great, inexplicable wonder is, how they, who in the present day of light and knowledge, possess the volume of Eternal Truth, and profess to believe and trust in it, can be so deluded, (for I would not deem it insincerity,) as to withhold the worship which belongs alone to the Saviour of man, to bestow it on the bones of a weak$ bewildered girl, who never did any known good in his cause; or on images made by their own hands, and called by her name. It is clinging to a relic of the dark ages, with a preposterous credulity and lenaclous- ness worthy of darkness in any age. The absurd pageant, and solemn pomp of circum stance, annually exhibited on the recurrence of this saint s festival, reminds one irresistibly of a scene on the Plain of Dura, where The princes, the governors, and captains, the judges, the treasurers, the counsellors, the sheriilV, arid the rulers of the provinces., were gathered to gether unto the dedication of the image. THE ANGEL OF THE LEAVES. ALAS ! alas ! said the sorrowing tree, * my my beautiful robe is gone ; it has been torn from me! Its faded pieces whirl upon the wind; they rustle beneath the squirrel s foot, as he searches for his nut ; they float upon the passing stream, and on the quivering lake. Woe is me ! for my dear green vesture is gone. It was the gift of the Angel of the Leaves ! I have lost it, and my glory has vanished ; my beauty has disappeared; my summer honors have passed away. My bright and comely garment, alas! it is rent into a thousand parts. Who will weave me such another ? Piece by piece has it been stripped from me. Scarcely did I sigh for the loss of one, ere another wan dered off on air. The sweet sound of music cheers me no more. The birds that sang in 186 THE ANGEL OF THE LEAVES. my bosom, were dismayed at my desolation they have flown away with their songs. I stood in my pride. The sun brightened my robe with his smile ; the zephyrs breathed softly through its glossy folds; the clouds strewed pearls among them. My shadow was wide upon the earth ; my arms spread far on the gentle air ; my head was lifted high, and my forehead was fair to the heavens. But now, how changed ! Sadness is upon me ; my head is shorn; my arms are stripped; I cannot throw a shadow on the ground. Beauty has departed ; gladness is gone out of my bosom. The blood has retired from my heart, and sunk into the earth. I am thirsty. I am cold. My naked limbs shiver in the chilly air ; the keen blast cpmes pitiless among them. The winter is coming. I am destitute. Sorrow is my portion ; mourning must wear me away. How shall I account to the angel, who clothed me, for the loss of his beautiful gift ? The angel had been listening. In soothing accents he answered the lamentation. My beloved Tree, said he, * be comforted ! I am by thee still, though every leaf has for saken thee. The voice of gladness is hushed THE ANGEL OF THE LEAVES. 187 among thy boughs ; but let my whisper con sole thee. Thy sorrow is but for a season. Trust in me. Keep my promise in thy heart. Be patient and full of hope. Let the words I leave with thee, abide, and cheer thee through the coming winter. Then will I return and clothe thee anew. The storm will drive rudely over thee ; the snow will sift among thy naked limbs. But these will be light and passing afflictions. The ice will weigh heavily on thy helpless arms ; but it shall soon dissolve to tears. It shall pass into the ground, and be drunken by thy roots. Then will it creep up, in secret, beneath thy bark, and spread into the branches it has op pressed ; and help to adorn them. I shall be here to use it ! Thy blood has now retired for safety. The frost would chill and destroy it. It has gone into thy mother s bosom, for her to keep it warm. Earth will not rob her offspring. She is a careful parent. She knows the wants of all her children, and forgets not to provide for the least of them. The sap that has for awhile gone down, will make thy roots strike deeper, 188 THE ANGEL OF THE LEAVES. and spread wider; and, renewed and strength ened, it shall return to nourish thy heart. Then, if thou shalt have remembered and trusted in my promise, I will fulfil it. Buds shall shoot forth on every bough. I will un fold another robe for thee. I will color and fit it in every part. It shall be a comely raiment. Thou shalt forget thy present sorrow. Sad ness shall be swallowed up of joy. Now, my beloved Tree, fare thee well for a season ! The Angel was gone. The cold, mutter ing, winter drew near. The wild blast whis tled for the storm. The storm came, and howled around the tree. But the word of the angel was hidden in her heart. It soothed her amid the threatenings of the tempest. The ice-cakes rattled on her limbs, and loaded and weighed them down. * My slender branches, said she, let not this burden overcome you! Break not beneath this heavy affliction break not! but bend, till you can spring back to your places. Let not a twig of you be lost ! Hope must prop you up for a while, and the angel will reward your patience. You will wave in a softer air. THE ANGEL OF THE LEAVES. 189 Grace shall be again in your motion, and a renewed beauty hang around you. The scowling face of winter began to lose its features. The raging storm grew faint, and breathed its last. The restless clouds fretted themselves to fragments; these scattered on the sky, and were brushed away. The sun threw down a bundle of golden arrows, that fell upon the tree. The ice-cakes glittered as they came. Every one was shattered by a shaft, and unlocked itself upon the limb. They melted, and were gone. Spring had come to reign. Her blessed ministers were abroad in the earth. They hovered in the air. They blended their beauti ful tints, and cast a new-created glory on the face of the heavens. The Tree was rewarded for her trust. The angel was true to the object of his love. He returned he bestowed on her another robe. It was bright, glossy, and unsullied. The dust of summer had never lit upon it ; the scorching heat had not faded it the moth had not pro faned it. The tree stood again in loveliness ; she was dressed in more than her former 190 THE ANGEL OF THE LEAVES. beauty. She was very fair. Joy smiled around her on every side. The birds flew back to her bosom, and sang among her branches their hymns to the ANGEL OF THE LEAVES ! THE SISTER THERESE. THE following little story is drawn, as a fine silver thread, from among the many of a sadder and more fearful hue, that make up the crim son cord of the history of that bloody period, the reign of terror, in France. It is given by a French author of veracity, in his writings concerning the events of that day, from whom it is here rather recounted than translated. Among the unfortunate subjects of the tyranny of Robespierre and his associates in audacious cruelty, who were thrown into the prison of Bordeaux, to await their turn at the guillotine, should it please the monsters to find them guilty of opposing their designs, or stand ing in their way to rule, was Henri Delorbe, a young citizen of the place, and one of birth and fortune. 192 THE SISTER THERESE. In the person of Delorbe, a striking manly beauty of face and form, and a noble and win ning grace of deportment, were united with a richly endowed mind, and rigidly virtuous and patriotic principles. The horrors of his situation and impending fate, preying on his spirits, and the miasma of the prison infusing poison into his frame with every breath, proved too much for his physical energies to resist. 4 The spirit of a man may sustain his infirmi ties ; but a wounded spirit who can bear ? Nature s forces in the constitution of the young prisoner, sapped by his accumulated ills, were made for a while to succumb. He was brought low by sickness, and thought near to death. In this state of languishment and prostration, it was permitted him to be removed to the hospital, where the kind Sisters of Charity lent their benevolent services attending on the sick, relieving their wants, and closing the eyes that were to wake no more. It fell to the lot of Delorbe, to have his min istering angel appointed in the form of the young Sister Therese a gentle, warm-hearted, compassionate girl, who, having renounced the THE SISTER THERESE. 193 world and eschewed its allurements, felt but a single desire to do good, and keep the lamp of her profession filled with the oil of grace, and this in the lively exercise of burning, while she watched over the sick, endeavored to soften their sufferings, to keep up the nickering flame of life, or, when it must be, smoothed the pil low of the dying. Therese had never heard of the close alliance of Cupid and Psyche ; nor, though she owned that she had a- heart desperately wicked, had she ever suspected it of containing a latent spark to which a random arrow from the little blind archer, striking her unawares, might open a vent that would kindle it up to light. The pleasing exterior of the young stranger had at first won her particular regard, and drawn out her sympathy towards him in his suffering state. But, as his character disclosed itself, and he recounted to her his misfortunes and his fears, compassion completed what a tender interest had begun in the bosom that had never known itself susceptible of any but a heavenly love ; while she resolved to do all in her power to restore him to health, and, should he be raised up, to effect his liberation. 13 194 THE SISTER THERESE. And the pretty nun had not only charity, which hopeth all things, but ingenuity, that can seek out many inventions. Her faith and works were at length blessed in the manifestation of signs that the disease had run to its limits, and was giving way be fore the superior powers in the constitution of her patient. But her own heart had become agitated by a strange uneasiness the seat of a new malady, which the physicians do not count with the self-limited diseases, or reckon among those within the sphere of their medi cal practice ; and about which the metaphysi cian talks very smoothly and wisely, while he can neither solve its nature, calculate its dura- lion, prescribe an antidote against it, or resist its attacks. Yet, among her most earthly thoughts, The- rese admitted not the shadow of a possibility of her ever seeing Delorbe beyond the walls that then enclosed them, should he regain his health and liberty. She only wished that he might go forth to life and freedom, and be happy, and make others so, while she remained behind, dead to the world, but alive to memory, to keep her vows, but to think of him ; and, if THE SISTER THERESE. 195 this were sinful, to get absolved, and then go on and sin again ; while, at the same time, she could but shudder at the thought of letting her heart run so far astray as to twine its conse crated strings around any earthly object. Nor did she let the secret of her bosom escape in word, or deed, or look ; but, like a good little Sister of Charity, she kept her sentiments to herself, and gave her attention to her duties and her charge. Meantime, the soft sensibilities of the sick man had not been deadened or idle, under the care of his gentle nurse. Patience, says one student of the human affections, i is the art of hoping. This was illustrated in the diligent assiduities of Therese towards the object of her kindness. * Hope, says another, * is the dream of a waking man. This might also have been pronounced true concerning Del- orbe, could his thoughts have been read as they passed unuttered through his mind. Strange as it may seem to those who do not know how wildly and perversely the wayward human heart will sometimes take upon itself to act, independently of the reasoning head while the invalid was yet uncertain whether he were 196 THE SISTER THERESE. virtually a beheaded man or not, but certain that his benefactress had renounced the world, and professed herself as the bride of heaven, dead to earthly attachments his heart had warmed as with new vitality beneath her care, and had been shooting out its young affections after her, like the roots of an air-plant, that grow without ground, and live on the wind that agitates them. But he, too, had learnt that a wise man spareth his tongue, especially in a case like his, if indeed he ever had a predecessor ; and he kept silence, not allowing an intimation of his penchant for the fair religieuse to escape, and only giving utterance to his heart in ex pression of gratitude and respect. At length, There se had fixed on a way and a time for his deliverance. He was sick and in prison, and she had ministered unto him ; and now would she throw open the prison- door to him that was bound, having it written as a law upon her heart, that she ought to do the one thing, and not to leave the other un done. But here, in order to carry out her design with success, it became necessary for her to THE SISTER THERESE. 197 confide it to a third person, and obtain his aid. This was the surgeon of the hospital. On the trying day, she instructed her patient to feign symptoms like the approach of death, and then, after a hard struggle and seeming agony, to sink away into silence, as if life had departed, a little while before the hour when the attending physician was to make his accus tomed round among the sick. Delorbe obeyed her like a docile pupil, for he saw that she well knew how to employ the wisdom of the ser pent with the harmlessness of the dove. He affected strong paroxysms, succeeding languor, and then the sleep that hath no dream. His nurse threw up the sheet over his face, accord ing to the custom, when a patient had ceased to breathe, to signify that he was no more ; and shortly after the physician entered. He looked towards the bed, saw what he supposed to be the lifeless form stretched beneath the sheet, asked when he had died, and, hardly waiting for an answer, further than a partial description of the sudden change, from Therese, passed on. In the evening she intimated that the body was demanded for the instruction of the pupils, and had the pretended dead removed 198 THE SISTER THERESE. into the dissecting-room, where the benevolent surgeon, knowing and aiding in the prosecu tion of her plans, with a skill quite different from that exercised in the use of his steel in struments, was ready with a second suit of his own apparel for his subject, whose frame he found fit rather to be clothed upon than anato mized, and in a state of comfortable resuscita tion. Delorbe assumed the surgical habit ; and, under the disguise, unsuspected, passed out to a safe place of refuge. The next day the escape was discovered, and Therese summoned and questioned by the powers that were. The magnanimous girl threw herself upon their mercy, confessing the whole truth of the strata gem, but withholding the affair of her heart for a higher confessor than fallen man ; and with such show of ingenuous contrition for the du plicity and the offence, as to obtain pardon for the crime, and absolution from the sin. Before he left the hospital, Delorbe had en gaged his benefactress to meet him in his asy lum, that he might once more express his sense of the great debt he owed her; and she was not slow to fulfil her promise. Here, much to her surprise, her protege took the form of a THE SISTER THERESE. 199 suitor, and, making a free disclosure of his sentiments and his wishes, proffered to her his hand and his fortune ; and the future devotion of a life of which she had, in a twofold sense, been the preserver ; entreating her to fly with him beyond the reach of pursuit, where her destiny and his might henceforth be one. The pious, gentle sister was at first startled shocked horrified, at the thought of breaking her religious vows, and returning to the ways of temptation and worldly vanities, where her gold might become dim in the fogs of earth ; her fine gold be changed for a baser metal her love of heaven stolen away by a mortal robber, should she consent to be a mortal s bride. But her heart played the traitor in the very moment of necessity, and pleaded so strongly in behalf of her lover s proposal, that she could not for her life rally the objections which she thought it was her duty strenuously to raise against it. She tried to reason within herself. The pearl, thought she, while locked up in the shell, is safe from being soiled or lost, even among the rocky caverns, the sands, the sea- weeds, and the monsters of the deep ; but let it out of its native casket, unlock its closet, and 200 THE SISTER THERESE. what will become of it in the vast ocean ? Yet, there were other bright ideas about the pearl, rising up in opposition to these, to break the ascetic shell of seclusion in which the pretty nun had fain kept her gem-like spirit incased. She feared they came from the tempter ; but still they would come! She thought of the pearl brought up from the dismal bottom of the sea taken out of its dark secrecy into the light of the sun set as an ornament on the brow of a king ; of the words of a certain wise man, calling a virtuous woman a crown. Then she argued that, if it were sinful to break her covenant vows, and go back to an evil world, she was already guilty since the wicked desire no longer to remain under bond age to them had already seized her heart, and the sin of the heart was the very soul of transgression ; that volition being tantamount to the outward, actual iniquity, and her affec tions being gone abroad among the unsancti- fied, and into the ways of vanity, head, hand, and foot might as well go also ; as her former restricted course of life would henceforth be only irksome. The truth was, a subtle casuist was operat- THE SISTER THERESE. 201 ing on her wavering soul. Her heart, before so peaceful and so strongly armed, was be sieged by circumvallation, and taken in its citadel. When she had prudently paused, deliberated, and pondered the weighty matter as fairly as her haste and agitation would let her do, finally, as the young bird that, having found the use of its wings, returns to the nest no more, she resolved to keep clear of the cloister, and to entrust her future temporal des tiny, for better, for worse, to the power of a new temporal lord and master. They made haste to depart, and passed over into Spain, where the narrator, whose aim was not to make out a long romantic story about a pair of lovers, but only to record the fact of Delorbe s imprisonment and liberation, the noble traits of female character by which the latter was brought about, and the happy se quel, simply says, * they were married? Thus he wafts them, by a feat of legerdemain, as on wings, over all the perils, the difficulties, the escapes, the rocks, hills, and ravines, the roses, brambles, hedges and ditches, which we may suppose on the way, by a short airy course, straight to Hymen s altar. Here he wisely 202 THE SISTER THERESE. takes leave of them, prudently forbearing to follow them beyond it to see if the apostate nun proved more faithful to her latter, than her former covenant ; or acted upon her old theory, touching sins of heart and deed, carrying it out into practice still farther maintaining, that since she was in the world, and the ways of temptation, she might follow the multitude to do evil. Yet, from the moral elements, whose mutual attraction had drawn them into this holy alliance, we judge that neither Del- orbe nor Therese ever had reason to wish that her vows as a religieuse had been better kept ; or that his death in the hospital had been a reality instead of a feint. BLANCHE AND ISABEL [FROM THE FRENCH.] WILLIAM, a French nobleman, and a de scendant of the House of Tancrede, had just entered his sixteenth year, when he inherited the kingdom of Sicily, founded by his ances tors. Henri de Souabe, Emperor of Germany, and uncle to the new king by marriage with his aunt, coveting the possessions of his nephew, declared war against him ; and, hav ing conquered and taken him prisoner, he caused him to perish on the scaffold, before the eyes of his people, in the Great Square of Palermo. Already rendered odious to the Sicilians by this barbarity, Henri, by new cruelties, daily increased their hatred for him, and their regrets 204 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. for the milder government, which the French had taught them to cherish. After the execution of William, the Cheva lier de Toredo, one of the most zealous parti- zans of the young king, seeking a balm for the wound his loss had occasioned, from the calm of private life, withdrew to a rural and retired ground, where, with his young and only daughter, he lived respected, and passed his days in peace. In the person of Blanche, for this was the name of the daughter, external beauty and attractions were united with great sprightliness of mind, depth of feeling, and an uncommon share of magnanimity. Her father had not only trained her up in the love of virtue, but had inspired her young heart with the highest respect and the warmest attachment for the House of Trancrede, and the strongest aver sion towards Henri and the Germans. Blanche carried out these opposite senti ments, even to fanatacism. She often ques tioned her father about the face, the form, the whole personal appearance and character of the unfortunate William ; and her mind seemed restless till she obtained, in detail, the BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 205 account of the fatal combat in which he had yielded, and of his early and violent death. When listening to these recitals, she would sometimes groan aloud, to think that she could not, with the price of her own blood, restore him to life and the throne, and she was moved to tears. One day, when the Chevalier had been some time from home, he returned, bringing with him a young female stranger, whom he introduced to his daughter by the name of Isabel. He then told Blanche that this young lady was to remain with them ; and requested that she should entertain her with great kind ness, and instruct the domestics to treat her with attention and respect. Isabel, in the beauty of her person and her whole -manner, bore so strong a resemblance to Blanche as to attract the notice of every eye. Their likeness was such that they might easily have passed for sisters. But Blanche needed not this relationship to inspire her with love for her new friend. From their first meeting she felt a lively interest spring up in her warm heart towards her ; and this was strengthened by. her often surprising Isabel weeping, and 206 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. sighing over a piece of writing, which she would conceal, and wipe away her tears, when she perceived any one approaching. She wished to discover the cause of this secret sorrow ; but, as Isabel seemed struggling to hide it from her observation, she forbore to question her, or even to allude to the grief and disquietude which could not be voluntarily confided to her. Yet in this discretion, which she had imposed on herself, she only found a tormentor. Who/ she would sometimes say to herself, who is this mysterious Isabel, whom I have been instructed to treat with so much respect and attention, without seeking or wishing to know anything of her destiny ? What can the writing be, that she weeps over so much ? and what mean those sighs that she heaves so freely, as soon as she thinks herself alone, and stifles them when any one comes near? Thoughts like these revolved continually in the mind of Blanche. Now disturbed, and now wounded, to find that her tenderest solici tude, and all the warmth of her attachment, did not win for her the confidence of friendship, she would sometimes resolve to give a gentle BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 207 reproach to Isabel. But then, penetrated by the respect due to misfortune, she would sub due her feelings, and consider that the most delicate part for her would be to wait with patience for the avowal. But this confession was not made. The secret was still withheld. Blanche now deter mined to effect her object by adroitly drawing Isabel into a conversation that should imper ceptibly lead on to a confidence which her high soul would not solicit, and thus to come at the cause of her friend s disquietude with out alarming her sensibility. Already a few words, a few hints, dropped by Isabel, and caught with eagerness by Blanche, had created suspicions in her mind, which she promised herself soon to prove true. Tender and generous as she was, it was not to satisfy a vain curiosity that she felt this burn ing desire to learn the secret of Isabel. She only wished, by getting nearer, to find out what part of her heart she might touch and heal. Isabel, on her side, sensible to all the kind ness of Blanche, and fully appreciating her character, felt alike embarrassed. Her torn 208 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. bosom, a prey to sorrows deep and sacred, could not but feel how sweet it would be to have some beloved and gentle hand placed upon its wound. She knew that those com munications, wherein the slightest complaint touches a chord of sympathy and draws forth a soothing response, would soften her afflic tion, and relieve her, yet she dared not to break silence. The Chevalier de Toredo had so often re peated his cautions, assuring her that the most innocent word, or the least inadvertency in her action, might prove fatal to her, that, even in her conversations with Blanche 3 the fear of incurring reproach from her benefactor re strained her, and kept back the secret ever ready to escape, Frequently did she wish that Blanche would become more pressing, so as to furnish her an excuse, in her own eyes, at least, for some slight indiscretion that might lead to a disclo sure. Such were her feelings, when Blanche, one day, proposed to her a walk in the pleas ant wood, at a short distance from their dwell ing. The two friends, now equally at a loss how BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 209 to commence and order their conversation, kept for some time a profound silence. At length a few vague remarks eased the way to greater freedom, and gave Blanche an opportu nity to summon her fortitude, so as skilfully to direct the discourse to the fate of the young William. Isabel turned pale at the mention of his name ; and Blanche, perceiving it, felt convinced of the truth she had already suspected. She pursued the subject ; and, entering into the par ticulars of the history of William, painted with fire his defeat, his captivity, and his untimely death. Isabel, whose trouble had been aug menting at every word, unable any longer to contain it, threw herself into the arms of Blanche. 1 To whom, cried she, l do you give these horrid pictures? Even to the sister of Wil liam !~r- to the last branch of an unfortunate family ! I confide to you a secret on which my life depends ; but my full heart feels the need of pouring itself into yours ! Blanche fell at the feet of Isabel, calling her her sovereign, and vowing to her unlimited devotion. On receiving from her an order to 14 210 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. rise, she obeyed, and sought to be informed of the events that had saved her from the persecu tor of her family. Isabel pressed her hand tenderly, and promised to satisfy her. The day was drawing to a close ; large trees over shadowed them with their branches ; the place and the hour were suited to a sorrowful recital ; and Isabel, seating Blanche beside her, thus began her narrative. i I had hardly gained my fifteenth year, when Henri de Souabe, who had married my mother s sister, came, with no other rights than those of ambition, to attack my brother Wil liam on the throne of Sicily, his lawful inher itance. My brother was overpowered, taken, and condemned to death. 4 At the approach of the German army, Wil liam had sent my mother and me to the house of my maternal grandfather, the Duke of Fer- rara, for safety. When we learnt his danger, we flew to Rome to plead with the Pope for his intercession in William s behalf. But the per fidious Pontiff, far from being touched with our affliction, delivered us up to the usurper ; and we were thrown into a dungeon. * We could have borne this rigor without a BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 211 murmur, would the loss of our liberty have saved our unhappy William. But, hardly were we prisoners by order of Henri, when the guards came to drag us to the place of his execution, to witness the horrid spectacle ! Terrible re finement of cruelty! Judge what must have passed in our hearts, when we saw this young Prince, so dear to us, this heir to the throne of our ancestors, appear on an infamous scaf fold, there to suffer the death due only to a criminal! Think what must have been his anguish, when, casting his eyes round for the last time on the things of this world, he beheld before him his mother and his sister, who, with dishevelled hair, cords around their bowed necks, and their hands loaded with irons, were brought forth to serve as a trophy at his death! 1 Our streaming eyes met, and ceased not to confound their looks till his head was dropped. At the fatal blow, we too fell, deprived of con sciousness. When we awoke again to life, it was amid the gloomy horrors of our prison. On opening our eyes, the first sight that struck them was the blood of our beloved William, with which we were covered ! Mingling our 212 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. tears with this precious blood, we fain would have gathered it into our own hearts. We expected soon to follow this innocent victim ; but the excess of our sorrow touched the sympathy of the keeper of the tower where we were confined, and he proposed to us to fly, offering to do all in his power to aid our escape. "We accepted; and he furnished us with suitable garments for a disguise, and some pieces of gold for our necessities. As soon as night had fallen, so as to favor our object, assisted by our kind liberator to pass without the prison, we availed ourselves of the shades, and led under the protection of dark ness, yet trembling at every step, lest the emis saries of Henri should surprise us, while we walked as fast as our strength would permit, till we were out of Palermo. Our first aim was to gain the sea-side, where we might throw ourselves into some vessel that would convey us to the coast of the Duchy of Ferrara. But, weariness at length compelling us to stop on the way, we pre sented ourselves, with assumed names and a feigned story, at the house of a widow lady. BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 213 Signora Maldini, who lived in the country, re tired, and on a small annuity. Hardly had we commenced the fable we had imagined, when this benevolent woman received us hospitably within her dwelling, and offered every attention a kind heart could suggest. Believing, however, that we should be safer under the roof of a relative, we were preparing to depart, when information reached us that the Duchy of Ferrara had been inva ded, and was now in the possession of a neighboring Prince. 4 This intelligence, which cut off all our hopes of an asylum there, was too much for my poor mother. Overwhelmed with afflic tion, she fell suddenly ill. In vain was every filial care; and all the offices of friendship be stowed by the good Signora Maldini proved alike unavailing. The blow was given, and she expired beneath it ! Conceive my despair. I had seen my father die in the fulness of his strength, my brother by the hand of a licensed murderer! I had just learnt the misfortune of my excellent relative. And, when no one re mained to me but my mother, I received her last sigh ! 214 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 1 Crushed by the weight of so many afflic tions, I fixed a sad and steadfast gaze on the pale clay of my beloved parent ; but I could not weep ; even the relief of tears was denied me ! They tore me from it to perform the last mel ancholy duties paid by the living to the dead. A grave was prepared in the garden, where Signora Maldini permitted me to rear an hum ble monument, to which I daily bore my tribute of affection and sorrow - sorrow, alas ! too just. Without kindred without a country I knew not to what court I might fly for refuge. In Sicily and in Germany reigned the de stroyer of William. At Rome was seated the Pontiff, who had sold us. At Ferrara the enemy of my family held command! Pro scribed by so many powers, from what Prince could I expect a welcome ? Besides, how could my pained soul bear, from court to court, the picture of my wretchedness, only to expose me to contempt, or the treachery of their sov ereigns ? The generous Signora, viewing my help lessness, pressed me to fix myself with her; and I yielded to her solicitations. Her situation BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 215 and expenses had nothing of show about them to attract attention. Her dwelling was remote from Palermo. I there passed as her niece, and excited no suspicion. Then, the ashes of my mother slumbered there, and I preferred an asylum where I could feel that her shade was watching over my fate. Indeed, I lived peace fully in this retreat. The kindness of my amiable benefactress, my rural occupation, the view of true and pure pleasure, all conspired to bring seasons of sweet calm to my long agita ted soul. 4 1 had passed three years in this quiet home, when my benefactress was seized with a fatal illness. It was one of rapid progress, and of which my redoubled attentions could neither stay the power, or check the haste. She sent for a friend, who came, and united his efforts to mine to save her. This friend was your father! i When she had presented him to me, " I feel," said she, " my end drawing near, but I have thought of your fate, when I shall be no more. I now give you into the hands of the most virtuous of men. He is warmly attached to your family, and you may dwell in his 216 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. house without fear." To these melting words the gentleman added the most affecting protes tations; and I freely confided my destiny to him. But I could not bid adieu to my beloved friend, till I had remained to close her eyes. She breathed her last sigh in my bosom, and I saw her dear remains safely laid at rest in the garden, by the side of my mother. When I had taken a sorrowful farewell of these sacred graves, I followed your father. 1 Such, Blanche, have been the losses I have sustained, and it belongs only to a friend like you to solace me under them. Blanche assured her that, if every testimony of a pure and warm attachment could give a charm to intimacy, she should find it in hers. 1 But, continued she, I fear I shall never be able to dispel your sadness. It is, indeed, but too just. Called, as you are by your birth, to the highest rank and honor, you must feel un happy and indignant, to be dragging out your days in humble obscurity, while a usurper is insolently seated on the throne of your fathers. i You mistake, my dear Blanche, said Isa bel, interrupting her; the chimeras of ambition torment me not. Born in courts, I have seen BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 217 power and sorrow closely allied, and by a near view; and I never turn up my eyes to that power which has escaped me. The picture I have seen of it should have satisfied me con cerning the possession of dominion, which is but a pompous misfortune, were there no other reflection to give it additional horrors. But, it has cost the life of my dear "William ! And how could my thoughts pause on the throne, that is stained with the blood of a brother ? It occasions me no effort to conceal my claims. My native pride and the dignity of my birth first inspired me with the design of living in seclusion and unknown, when I accepted the invitation of my departed friend. And now, I find that obscurity agrees best with my charac ter. It has procured me tranquillity of soul, and real friends, - treasures too precious for me to run the risk of losing them ! Every word you utter, replied Blanche, does but make me love you the more. Yet, why dissemble ? Whether it be ambition, or some other sentiment that afflicts you, you cer tainly suffer! I have surprised you in tears, which you fain would have concealed. Does one weep when the soul is at peace? And 218 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. then, that writing, which you are ever read ing Isabel interrupted her. Cruel Blanche ! said she, must you wring from me my soul s whole secret? Well, I will resist no longer. Look into my heart and read ! Few are the troubles that disturb it. LOVE alone fills consumes it! She drew a deep sigh, and, pausing a few moments to gather fortitude, thus went on : About a year after my eyes took their last look at the face, of my beloved mother, they heheld, for the first time, the mortal who was to inspire me with the sweetest and most cruel of sentiments. 4 It was one of those bright and balmy days, when earth is clothed anew by the return of the joyous spring. I had been out among the thatched cabins around us to carry some little gifts from Signora Maldini, to distribute among the poor cottagers ; and, having performed my errand, felt disposed to continue my ramble farther among the fields. I know not whether it was because nature is more pleasing, when we have done a good deed, or that there was an unusual splendor BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 219 and richness in the scene around ; but I yielded myself up to the admiration of its beauty, and, with unwonted tenderness of feeling, strayed over the grounds. 1 As thus musing I went on, I was turning the corner of a wood, when what was the sight that suddenly met my view? A wounded hunter, bleeding, and stretched upon the grass before me ! 4 1 ran to him, and, rending my veil in two, took one part to stanch the blood, and with the other bound up the wound. When his con sciousness had gradually returned, I helped him ro rise ; and perceived, with a blush, that he was in the flower of youth, with mildness and beauty beaming over all his features. When he opened his eyes, and lifted them to me, I seemed to see celestial azure coming out of a cloud. His look, his blood, with which the turf was reeking; his paleness from the loss of it, which rendered his face more touching ; the weakness, which added pliancy and grace to his motions all conspired to send into my soul an uneasiness to which I had, till that moment, been a stranger. I was about to depart; but his words and voice with held me, 220 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. Why would you fly me ? said he, Is it right to hide ourselves from the hearts we have made happy ? Stay ! What are you ? If we were in the days of the Fables, I should believe you a nymph of the wood a divinity come down from above to the relief of sinking humanity ! But, be you goddess or mortal, nothing can be sweeter than to have received your care, and felt those tender hands closing my wound ! Would you leave your work imperfect? You have driven death from me. Will you now forsake me ; and leave me, alone and languishing, in a place to which he may return and seize me ? From the compassion, of which I have already had such touching proofs, I dare to hope that you will yet deign to guide my steps to some cottage, where I may obtain the help of which I stand so much in need. 4 1 answered him, with a trembling voice, " You are quite too feeble to support yourself in walking, even with assistance. Give me but a few moments ; I will soon be back." I did not wait for a reply ; but, hastening away, was gone only a short time, when I returned with an escort, bringing with him a litter of reeds. BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 221 PIERRE, for so the young hunter called him self, was placed on the bed, and conveyed to the house of Signora Maldini, who came out to meet him, and offered him an asylum, which he gratefully accepted. An apartment was prepared for him, furnished with every comfort his situation might require, and his wound taken care of with the peculiar grace which that benevolent woman so well knew how to shed over all her deeds. She went every morning with early inqui ries after the state of the invalid s health ; but I never accompanied her. I had discovered that I loved Pierre ; and this alone forbade me to manifest any forwardness or solicitude about his welfare. I dared not to see him ! I ques tioned no one respecting the progress of his recovery, though I often detected myself on the way to his apartment ; and whenever Sig nora Maldini spoke of him, I listened with greedy attention. 1 This lively interest alarmed me. I reflected that the gratitude of Pierre was no proof that he loved me. I found, too, that the Signora never spoke of his having mentioned me, or intimated a wish to see me ; nor that he had 222 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. shown any surprise because I had not visited him. I also considered the barrier that my birth must interpose between us, even if I pos sessed his affections ; as by this I was forbid den to unite myself in marriage to any but a prince. 4 With thoughts like these, I gathered strength to combat my inclinations, and might, perhaps, have gained the victory, had Pierre never again appeared to me. 4 When he was able to leave his room, he came below and joined us in the parlor. I blushed, and then turned pale, as he entered the room. He drew towards me, and gave a gentle reproach for my apparent indifference to his sufferings. I knew not how to answer. Happily he relieved my embarrassment by dropping the conversation. His eyes alone spake to me ; but when they met mine they suddenly fell, and seemed only to turn on me again by involuntary motion. Day after day his manner was the same. His broken con versation, restrained looks, and every outward action, bore testimony to some internal uneasi ness, some secret cause of disquietude. Uncertainty, as to the true state of his feel- BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 223 ings towards me, kept my thoughts ever rest less and inquisitive to find out the cause of his restraint in my presence. Did he fear that he might love? Or did he love me, and fear to confess it ? These questions I wished to answer to myself, and I determined to observe him with a watchful eye. ( I surprised him, one day, fondly looking at and kissing a miniature that was attached to a chain passing about his neck, and carried in his bosom. I had no doubt that this was the likeness of some lady, and felt convinced at once that I had discovered the cause of his disquiet. * Invoking all my fortitude and pride to aid me, I resolved to think no more of the man who seemed thus devoted to another, and even promised myself that I would never seek to ascertain whose picture this might be. Vain resolution ! My passion, lighted up by its first research, had flamed to its height without my perceiving it. I was devoured by jealousy and curiosity ; and, assured that I possessed not the affections of Pierre, found myself the most wretched of women. His image was ever be fore me, tenderly regarding and kissing the 224 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. fatal miniature. If be stayed out of my pres ence, I thought it was the charm of this idol that detained him. If he retired, it was to contemplate it with freedom. I heeded not the tender looks he addressed to me. I thought only of the cruel ornament that he wore upon his heart ; and often, when conversing with him, I felt seized with a sudden desire to open his vest and snatch it away, that I might break it in pieces. But accident at length ended my torments. I was taking one of my solitary walks in the fields, pensive, and deploring my unhappy fate, in being thus doomed to cherish a love without return, when a voice from the grove near me suddenly touched my ear. I listened ; it was Pierre ! He was singing, and I dis tinctly heard these words : " Beloved grove, where oft I came, To tell to thee my secret grief; And here to speak that hallowed name, Elizabeth, to every leaf " I then believed that name alone Upon my lips would ever dwell 5 But I another love must own My lips must utter Isabel ! BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 225 " Dear picture of thy giver s face, Which I so long adored in thee, Absolve a heart that bears the trace Of other features dear to me ! " When, of my lost Elizabeth, Her people s voice proclaimed aloud The hapless fate the cruel death ! A life of faith to thee I vowed. " Elizabeth, thy bleeding shade I see, as if it late had wept : It frowns to find thy lover made That vow to be no longer kept. " Yet, to have held that promise fast, The eyes whose tears in torrents fell, When darkness over thine was cast, Should ne er have looked on Isabel. " In memory thou shalt ever live. I 11 seek thee there at sorrow s shrine ; But hence, to Isabel I give The love that once was only thine ! " 4 In my transport at hearing these words, I darted forward into the grove, to ascertain if it was indeed Pierre who had pronounced them. He perceived me ; and, concealing the pic ture, asked in a tremulous voice if I had heard 15 226 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. all " All ! " I replied. " Well then, Isabel," said he, " what is to be my fate ? I adore you ! Can I hope that you return my love ? " 1 The picture that I knew he had in his bosom, checked my confession. Before I made it, I wished to learn more about this Elizabeth, who, from the depth of the tomb, was my rival ; and I questioned Pierre. " You need not fear her," said he, " since death has borne her from me, and you bear so strong a likeness to her ; it is ELIZABETH DE TANCREDE." At this name my senses seemed forsaking me. But recovering myself, " Elizabeth de Tancrede ! " said I, " and what makes her so dear to you ? " " I was to have been her husband," said he. " I am Pierre of Provence, son of the sovereign of that court." " You ? " said I, " ah ! proceed." He obeyed ; and without suspicion of my birth, went on to tell me, that he had asked Elizabeth in mar riage ; and that the court of Sicily, according to the royal custom, had sent him her picture. In this, he said, he had become so deeply en amored of the princess, that he was waiting with impatience the moment that should unite BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 227 him to her, when he received the news of her death, and the account of her brother s execu tion. 1 " Overwhelmed with affliction at this intelli gence," continued he, " I left my father s court, and travelled from country to country, in the hope of escaping from my love and my sor row. But my love and my sorrow were every where present ! " In one of my voyages, our ship was stranded on the coast of Sicily, and I was hospitably received into the castle of a nobleman, whose grounds border on those of Signora Maldini. He was fond of the chase, and I joined him in it. Weary of existence, I courted peril by attacking the most ferocious animals. In such a state as this, I strayed away from the other hunters in pursuit of a wild boar, whose tooth had given me the wound from which I was bleeding, when I received your succor. " How was I bewildered, when, on open ing and raising my eyes, they beheld in your face the features of Elizabeth! From that moment, the names of Isabel and Elizabeth have been confounded in my mind, and mingled on my lips. In vain did my kind 228 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. friend at the castle invite me to return to him ; and watch the progress of my recovery till he thought I might be removed. I knew not what might be your sentiments towards me ; but a spell I could not break bound me to the house where I could be near you. Still, I had my scruples. I feared that in loving you, I was false to the memory of Elizabeth ; and I some times fancied her shade before me, frowning, and reproaching me with my infidelity. But you have triumphed over all you I adore! Accept, then, the homage of a heart which feels that you alone must have its devotion ! " c When he had ceased speaking, he looked to my eyes for an answer. I could not let him remain in error, and replied : * "In me behold Isabel no longer! I am that princess whom you mourned as in the tomb ; and who congratulates herself that she still lives, since she has your love and can repay you ! " 1 1 then related my adventures. He listened, filled with astonishment, joy, and love ; and in the intoxication they produced, called me a thousand times, his preserver, his companion, his bride ! Touched by these endearing names, BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 229 and happy at finding myself so near to him whom my family had chosen for my husband, my former misfortunes disappeared; and it seemed as if that moment was the first of my existence. My soul surrendered itself to senti ments of the purest felicity. * Recovered from the transport of his sur prise, Pierre proposed that I should accompany him to the house of his father, where he would marry me in presence of the court, and then take up arms to place me on the throne of Sicily. * I answered, that I was convinced of the sincerity and delicacy of his sentiments; still, I could not follow him, not being his wife ; and having too much reason to fear that his father would not consent to his union with a princess, who was robbed of her possessions, and could bring him no other dowry than a war to sus tain and perils to encounter. * He gave me the strongest assurances that I should be received by his family with all the interest due to my misfortunes and my birth. But, as I objected still, he offered to have the marriage rites performed in the nearest church, in the presence of Signora Maldini, before our departure. 230 BLANCHE AND ISABEL, I Not to consent to this, I was obliged to summon all my fortitude. My heart rent itself to obey the dictate of honor. After manifest ing to my generous lover how deeply I was affected, I represented to him, that it would ill befit a high-minded girl to enter a family with out being sure of their welcome. " I under stand/ said he ; " you doubt my father s con sent ! I will fly to him for it, and hasten back to bring it ! Will you then go with me ? " I 1 told him that, as soon as he would bring me a certainty, I would joyfully follow him. Satisfied with this, he made the preparations for his departure. When about to leave me, he put into my hand the verses that had drawn forth our mu tual confession, and led me to the grave of my mother. There he solemnly lifted up his voice, calling on her shade to witness the immortal love he bore me, and made a vow, that he would come and console her, by making me his wife, and placing me on the throne of her fathers. I needed not these protestations to convince me of his sincerity, nor to make me depend on the fulfilment of his promises. It seemed BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 231 Impossible that he could deceive me. This persuasion kept up my courage during the first part of his absence, and even gave to it a kind of mysterious charm. I loved to visit the room he had occupied, the walks he had pre ferred, and the grove where he had received my confession. To each of these dear confidents of his ten derness I promised his return. Alas ! I de ceived them I deceived myself ! Since the fatal moment of our separation I have had no word from him, no information of him ! What am I to think of this silence ? My troubled soul is open to every cruel idea. Sometimes I paint him, on the seas, pursued by the tempest, struggling with the waves, stricken by the thunderbolt and swallowed by the waters ! Then, I fancy him at his father s court, sur rounded with splendor, receiving homage, im mersed in pleasure, giving himself up to other love, and forgetting the sad Elizabeth ! I know not at which of these thoughts to stop ; and all are alike tormenting. Whether Pierre is dead, or has betrayed me, I have my whole life to weep for him my whole life to suffer 1 Not 232 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. that I regret the throne, on which he would have placed me, or the grandeur he would have restored to me. It is his hand his love, of which I cannot bear the loss ! I call him incessantly I seek him every where ; but I find him only in my heart ! When Elizabeth had ceased speaking,Blanche endeavored to console her, by assuring her that, by the impression her narrative had given her of the character of Pierre, she could not be lieve him to be false ; and though he kept si lence, that must be owing to some cause which rendered it impossible for him to do otherwise. She advised her to arm herself with forti tude, to expect every thing from time, and to use the sweets of friendship as a balm for the pains of love. The young friends, thus earned away by the charm of a first out-pouring of confidence, had let the hours fly over them unnoticed ; and it was now late, and time for them to return to their dwelling. As they rose to depart, they expressed their satisfaction at the new tie they had just formed, and mutually promised to fulfil every duty it should impose, even to the last moment of life. BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 233 An opportunity to put the strength of these promises of friendship to the test was not slow to offer itself. Henri, seated on the throne of Sicily, of which he had robbed the lawful heir, reigned, a prey to all the fears that ever haunt the mind of an usurper. He knew that the Sicilians murmured against his government, and re gretted the House of Tancrede. It was in vain that he caused all who manifested their hatred to him to be arrested and punished. His rigorous treatment only irritated the people and caused new conspiracies. Just at this moment, the emissaries he had secretly scattered abroad, to watch for every thing that might concern the safety of his power, brought him information that the sister of William was living, concealed in the house of the Chevalier de Toredb. They affirmed that they had every assurance of this, and even a personal description of her. The escape of Elizabeth had rendered him suspicious and uneasy ; and, to remove all hope from those of his subjects who might think of opposing to him, a branch of the royal 234 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. family, he had caused a rumor of her death to be spread throughout the kingdom. The contradiction of this report was indiffer ent to him; but his safety required that he should have the person of the princess in his own keeping, as a protection against the hos tile dispositions of the Sicilians. He therefore despatched a company of soldiers to the house of de Toredo, with an order to arrest Elizabeth, and a personal description of her was given them. Before they reached his dwelling, the Cheva lier was warned of their approach, but not in time to send Elizabeth away from the castle, which the soldiers soon surrounded ; and he had only a moment to hurry her into a vault, the passage to which was not easy to be dis covered. Hardly had he left her there, when the guards appeared, and, in the name of Henri, sum moned him to render into their hands, Eliza beth de Tancrede! Blanche being present, they took her for the princess, and arrested her. The Chevalier told them she was his daughter; but they, not believing him, and thinking he only used this as a subterfuge, BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 235 threatened to fire the castle, if he did not own the truth. At this menace, both father and daughter trembled for the fate of Elizabeth. As the only means of saving her, the generous Blanche, remembering her promise, and ready to sacrifice herself for her friend, availed her self of the belief of the soldiers. 1 I must no longer try to deceive you ! said she, I am indeed Elizabeth ; my fate is in your hands! The Chevalier, sincerely at tached to the House of Tancrede, did not con tradict her. The soldiers, satisfied that they had the prin cess now in possession, conducted Blanche and the Chevalier to Palermo, where they were thrown into the same prison that had been occupied by William. Elizabeth s sorrow was Overwhelming and almost insupportable, when she learnt that her friends had been borne away and cast into prison on her account; and she bitterly re pented having accepted the hospitality that had thus exposed her benefactors. As she knew nothing of the generous falsehood practised by Blanche, she supposed the arrest to be solely on account of their having given her an asy- 236 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. lum ; and her mind was perplexed to know in what manner she might best serve them. Her first impulse was, to go and deliver her self up to Henri, that she might, by her own death, procure their liberty. But then, she was not sure that by doing this, she should gain her object, and that her taking such a step would not hasten their destruction ; as, now, she thought them only to be detained on suspicion of having secreted her, and her avowal would end all uncertainty in a hasty execution. In this embarrassment and indecision, she resolved on going to Palermo, and there to learn, from the passing rumors, what way would be the wisest for her to take, to render herself serviceable to her friends, without ex posing them. She accordingly took one ser vant from the castle, to accompany her, and set out for Palermo. Hardly had she reached there, when she heard that the sister of William was then in irons, and on the point of being condemned! At this information, the whole truth burst at once into her mind ! She flew to the palace of Henri, and, in order to obtain a quick admittance to his pres- BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 237 ence, said to all who would have retarded her, that she had something of importance, and in timately connected with his power to say to him. She stood before him. 4 Henri, said she, you have been deceived ! you think you have in your hands Elizabeth de Tancrede ! But you have only the daugh ter of the Chevalier de Toredo, who, wishing to serve her, has given herself up, by taking her name, to die in her stead. You see in me, alone, the last branch of that illustrious house ! If the throne, of which you have robbed me, had been all in question between me and Blanche, I would gladly have resigned it to her. But it is the scaffold to which I come to assert my right ! Restore, then, liberty to your magnanimous captive, and strike down your enemy! I await her release, and my own death! Henri was thunderstruck. He could con ceive how one might contend for power, but not for a right to die on the scaffold. Lost in astonishment, he felt wholly unable to decide whether it was Blanche or Elizabeth who had committed the imposture. Yet, fearing some snare, he ordered his fair prisoner to be brought 238 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. before him. Ills people hastened to obey him. But what was their surprise, when, on entering the Tower, where Blanche and her father had been confined, they discovered that both had disappeared ! In a transport of rage at this intelligence, Henri ordered that Elizabeth should be kept under the strictest guard, and sent out soldiers, in every direction, to arrest the fugitives. But their search was vain. The Chevalier and his daughter were already at Messina with Sode- rini, their liberator ! This Sicilian lord, an inveterate enemy of the Germans, had long meditated their expul sion. In order to effect this, he had combined with many of the citizens of Messina, whose birth, wealth, or talents, promised to favor the enterprise. The hatred they entertained towards the Germans, had insured him a nu merous party. A skilful conspirator, in order to elude all suspicion, he went to Palermo, and presented himself at the court. Pleasing and , attractive in person and manners, he had, by his seduc tive qualities, ingratiated himself with the sov ereign, and secured his favor, at the moment BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 239 when Blanche was brought to Palermo, under the name of Elizabeth de Tancrede. Feeling how much this name would aid him in the accomplishment of his purpose, he won his way to her by bribery ; and, confiding to her his whole plot, proposed her escape with him. To this Blanche listened, and consented, without informing Soderini of the mistake he was under ; and he managed the flight so as to avoid detection, till they were safe in Messina. The conspirators, at the sight of her whom they believed to be Elizabeth de Tancrede, felt that it was now the moment for them to break out into an open revolt. They proclaimed their intention aloud to the people, and distrib uted arms among them; and the soldiers of Henri arrived, only in time to witness a general insurrection. Every one knows how rapidly a flame, thrown into a building, will spread to all the apartments, and reduce the whole edifice to a mass of ruins and ashes ; so quick was the spirit of the leaders in the rebellion, to pass into the bosoms of the inhabitants of Messina. They rushed with fury on the citadel, which treason delivered up to them, and massacred 240 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. the garrison. The other Germans were slain wherever they could be found, in the streets, in their houses, and in the temples. They were even pursued to the arms of the Sicilian women they had married! Their children were not spared. The babe was sacrificed in the cradle, or torn from its mother s breast to perish. Amid this scene of carnage, the name of Elizabeth flew every way. With the trium phant shouts of those who had armed them selves with fervor to defend her, she was pro claimed Queen of Sicily ! Even Blanche herself put on armor, and wished to confront danger, to give an example of courage to the people so ready to die for her. In these important movements, she had not forgotten Pierre, of whom Elizabeth had so often spoken. The court of Provence was held at Aix ; and thither she despatched a se cret envoy to instruct the Prince of all that had happened, and to engage him to take arms and come forth in defence of his Elizabeth. But Henri left her no time for the return of this messenger. As soon as he heard of the revolt at Messina, he advanced with rapid steps BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 241 and attended by a formidable army; sending before him a manifesto, in which he repre sented the new queen as not being Elizabeth de Tancrede ; and declaring that this princess was still in his custody at Palermo. The peo ple of Messina were only the more exasper ated by this, which they received as another artifice and a new insult. Soderini, their gen eral, feeling that he must profit by the fury of this excitement, led out his followers to meet Henri. The rencontre took place at some miles from Messina. The two armies fell upon each other with desperate force, and victory seemed, for some time, floating between them. Blanche, who fought as a heroine by the side of her father, wished to decide it by a great exploit. In the enemy s ranks she dis covered the son of Henri, and, urging on her courser, advanced towards him with her drawn sword. The prince let her approach, and aimed at her a forcible blow, which she parried, and returned one with such adroitness that he fell bleeding from his horse, and expired. This terrified the soldiers of Henri, and in spired those of Blanche with new courage to 16 542 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. fight. They fell upon the Germans with such fury that they gave ground and dispersed. In vain did Henri endeavor to rally them to renew the combat. He was himself drawn in after them, in their flight ; and he hastened back, with the wreck of his army, to hide his shame in Palermo! It will easily be conceived, that, by this vic tory, Blanche was rendered dearer than ever to her soldiers. Young, beautiful, and heroic, she became the idol of her army. Meantime the messenger, whom she had despatched to Pierre, returned with his answer. The Prince, never forgetful of Elizabeth, thus explained his silence. A shipwreck had thrown him on the coast of Africa, where he had been taken and held in slavery, without the means of writing or of sending any word to his friends respecting his miserable state of bondage, of which he prom ised to give Elizabeth the particulars when they should meet. He said he had just returned to his father s dominions, through many perils and with great sufferings ; and that he was now happy to arm himself, and come forth in defence of her BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 243 whose name he had often caused the echo of the desert to repeat, that he might hear it, He finished with these words : c My dear Eliza beth, my father consents to our union, and ap proves my enterprise. Already he has given orders for vessels to be filled with soldiers ; and as soon as my forces are ready, I cross the sea, and descend to Messina, where I hope to avenge you, or to die ! On reading this, Blanche sent back a vessel, with a message to Pierre, requesting him to direct his fleet to Palermo, where she awaited him. Indeed, she had taken advantage of the first moment of terror in the enemy s army to possess herself of several important places, meeting with little opposition and great accla mations ; and, following on after the discom fited foe, she had subjugated all the towns on her way, and thus reached Palermo. Henri, who had there been preparing to avenge his defeat, now, with deep regret, found himself constrained to think only of defence. Blanche, informed that Pierre had, according to her request, just appeared before Palermo and blocked up the port, gave orders for the attack. The city, pressed on from the land 244 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. and the sea, could make but a short resist ance. Henri, finding himself abandoned by his party, escaped with a small escort ; while Blanche, after having stopped the carnage and proclaimed mercy, entered into the midst of a people intoxicated with joy, at finding them selves freed from the German yoke, and at liberty to obey the laws of a House which they had so much regretted. Pierre, meantime, having forced the port, leaped forth to the shore, elated with joy, pride, and love; and sought first to find the object for whom he had conquered. Being told that she was in the palace, he flew thither, and was introduced into the hall where Blanche awaited him alone. He saw her, and, deceived by her likeness to Elizabeth, fell at her feet. But who can long remain in ignorance respecting the beloved one ? He looked with earnestness could not recognize Elizabeth ! and sought his love in the object who bore her name ! He knew not what to think. Had Elizabeth deceived him, in calling herself the sister of William ? or. BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 245 was the woman before him trying to deceive him by calling herself Elizabeth ? Blanche perceived his inquietude, and wish ed not to prolong it. * Pierre, said she, your heart does not deceive you. I am not your Elizabeth, though nature has adorned me with her features ! You deserve, by your constancy and valor, to find her faithful. Henri has held her bound in irons ; but they are now broken, and you shall again see her! 1 Elizabeth ! exclaimed Pierre, * ah ! let her appear ! If her love is reserved for me, it is a dowry worth all the diadems in the universe. 1 Love and a diadem ! replied Blanche. She brings you both in this moment. She is Queen of Sicily! I have conquered under her name but to restore to her, her name and her inheritance. To-morrow I will assemble my nobles, and in their presence reveal a se cret which is now known only to my father and to you. Surprise, admiration, and the most melting emotions at once took possession of the soul of Pierre. He had no words that could ex press to Blanche the sentiments with which he was penetrated. He was lost in silence, which 246 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. he first broke by a cry of anguish, at the return of the officer whom Blanche had sent to lead Elizabeth to her, on seeing him come without her, and learning that she was no longer in Palermo ! 1 When I entered the prison, said the officer, the keeper informed me that the king had sent the fair captive away from the city some days ago ; and perhaps the monster has now sacri ficed her to his hatred. At this intelligence, Pierre and Blanche were overwhelmed. Love and friendship groaned equally in those two feeling souls. Blanche caused the German prisoners to be questioned respecting the fate of Elizabeth. One of them answered, that Henri had removed her to a neighboring castle, which was protected by a strong garrison. 4 Soldier, cried Pierre, guide me to that fort this moment ! My own men of Provence are sufficient to render me master of it at once ; and who but the lover of Elizabeth should be her deliverer ? Blanche, not wishing to deprive the prince of the happiness of saving Elizabeth, contented BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 247 herself with supporting the Provengals, by fol lowing them with a corps of Sicilians. Pierre hastened the march, and in a few hours arrived at the foot of the castle. He caused a ladder to be erected suddenly against the wall, and, with an axe in his hand, was himself the first to ascend. A paper was thrown to him from the rampart, by which the governor informed him that Elizabeth was about to perish, and if he did not desist and retire, the sword, that was now already raised over her, should fall at once. This menace only redoubled the ardor of Pierre. He approached the draw-bridge, and with blows from his axe, struck off one of the chains which held it, and let it drop. Then darting forth, followed by his men, he rushed into the interior of the fort. Here he beheld a scaffold erected, and Elizabeth holding her head under the murderous sword ! He sprang forward, disarmed the monster who held it, and, with a bleeding arm, bore off the fainting Elizabeth. What was the surprise of the princess, when, on returning to life, she saw herself in the arms of that lover whom she had so long 248 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. mourned as faithless or dead! It was not till she had recovered from a second swoon, that she could believe all was not an illusion. When she realized that this was indeed the voice, the face, the hand of him who had long been lost, she yielded herself to the joy of so sweet a conviction; and tasted the happiness of having found once more the prince, whom she adored, and of owing her life to him, as well as that of learning that he had never ceased to love her. But, in relating what had past, Pierre re served one surprise for her. In giving the ac count of Blanche s success, he had not spoken of her generous intention ; and Elizabeth, alto gether occupied with the love, the protestations, and the constancy of the prince, directed not her thoughts to the throne, which had been taken for her, till she had reached Palermo. Pierre then led her into the public square, where she beheld Blanche, surrounded with the nobles, the army, and the citizens. On seeing Elizabeth, Blanche advanced towards her, and, taking the diadem from her own head, cried aloud : People, soldiers, behold your sovereign! I am but the daughter of BLANCHE AND ISABEL. 249 de Toredo ! I am her subject ! I have dared to assume her name to save her from death ; but I restore it from the moment when the scaffold became to her a throne. Elizabeth de Tancrede, ascend the throne of your fathers ; and, for your first homage, receive the submis sion of Blanche ! The assembly broke forth into loud acclama tions ; while Elizabeth, melted by the affecting scene, refused to accept ; and the Chevalier de Toredo and the nobles bore her to the throne. Before she seated herself on it, she called her deliverer to her arms and tenderly embraced her. This sight filled all hearts with emotion, and every eye with tears. Elizabeth s first care was to unite Blanche to Soderini, whom she raised to the rank of prime minister ; to confer high honors and an office of dignity on the Chevalier de Toredo ; and to distribute benefits among all those who had fought for her. When she had satisfied her feelings of grati tude, she thought of her own happiness, and received Pierre as her husband. Their nup tials, attended with great pomp and splendor^ took place at Palermo. 250 BLANCHE AND ISABEL. When happy Elizabeth forgot not her faith ful Blanche. She made her her counsellor ; and consulted her on the complaints of the un fortunate, and all desires of her people. The court of Elizabeth was the only one where LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, and JUSTICE together met and reigned, LANCASTER. THE early history of the town of Lancaster,. Mass., is a study of intense interest. The natu ral scenery of the place and its environs pos sesses great and peculiar beauty. One striking feature of this is formed by the river Nashaway, and the junction of its two main branches. One of these has its source in a pond in Westminster ; the other springs from the foot of the Wachusett, in Princeton, The first, entering Lancaster on its north-west side, pursues a southerly course towards its centre ; while the other enters it at the south west angle, and runs in an easterly direction, till they meet in the very heart of the town, and thence flow on together in one noble stream. Had the divine poet, who tells us how some- 252 LANCASTER. times l they meet, and mingle souls, stood be side this bright, soft-flowing river, he might have used it happily in the poem, as a figure of contrast to the destructive influences of the young vulpine incendiaries employed by Sam son, which figure so brilliantly in his verses on a highly important subject. From the year 1680 to 1692, Lancaster con tinued in the peaceful enjoyment of her pos sessions ; and the settlement went on increasing with uninterrupted quiet. But again was she afflicted, and brought into a valley of blood and fire. The abdication of the despotic bigot, James the Second, of England, in 1688, and the licen tious and superstitious Louis the Fourteenth, of France, espousing his cause, embroiled the two kingdoms, and plunged them into a long- protracted war. Their neighbor provinces thus involved in hostilities, the native tribes of each became terrible instruments of destruction and death on every side. And most fearfully was Lancaster assailed by the Canadian Indians under command of their French leaders, who employed against her fire-arms the torch and tomahawk, with every other species of barbari- LANCASTER. 253 ty and torture that savage excitement of a heathen spirit could suggest. . * m * * * But history has been too faith ful a recorder of the scenes of those days ; and this is so familiar, or accessible to all, as to ad mit of nothing said here, by way of farther information ; while the atrocities, the sufferings, and the sorrows it has chronicled, are of too distressing a nature to be needlessly brought up, and unveiled to present view. I will now, therefore, pass over a long, harrowing detail of these, and as some slight illustration of the state of things, when the sufferings of Lancas ter from the red men were drawing to a close, give a sketch or two from one point the gar rison of Mr. Thomas Sawyer. THE FRIGHTENED HORSE. It is morning, September 11, 1697. The enemy have been gone a long time from Lan caster. The inhabitants have no suspicion of their return, and are off their guard. One has gone to his own house, another to his field, a third elsewhere ; till none remain to take care of the garrison, the gates of which are left 254 LANCASTER. wide open, and a few children only are playing within and around it. Among them is a little son of Mr. Jabez Fairbanks. Mr. Fairbanks is gone to his house, about half a mile off, intending soon to return, and take his child home. Suddenly his horse comes running to him, affrighted, puffing, his ears pricked, his eyes flashing fire, and seeming as if he would break forth in speech, while trying every power of his mute eloquence to make his master under stand what has terrified him. Yet the master cannot take the meaning of these earnest ex pressions of the generous animal. He thinks, however, it is a good opportunity to fulfil his intention of going for his child mounts, and turns the horse towards the garrison. The swift-footed creature sets off at full speed, and, without slackening his pace, carries his rider furiously within the open gates. Mr. Fair banks has hardly time to close them, when the mute language of the animal is explained. Several companies of Indians, who had come in the absence of the people, and were on the point of rushing in, and taking the garrison, seeing Mr. Fairbanks approach with such LANCASTER. 255 haste, supposing themselves discovered, spring from their ambush behind the trees and fences, and betake themselves to flight. The little boy, unharmed, bounds to his father s arms ; and thou, noble horse ! hast saved him and the garrison. THREE MEN CAPTURED. THE FIRST SAW-MILL IN CANADA. October 15th, 1705. At day-break the garri soned house of Mr. Thomas Sawyer is again attacked by the ferocious Canadian Indians. His youngest son, a lad of fourteen, has made his escape through a back window; but Mr. Sawyer himself, his son Elias, and another young man, John Bigelow, are captured. And now commences their dismal and pain ful journey, the end of which is designed to be certain and cruel death. Mr. Sawyer, having fought valiantly and successfully with the sav ages many times, now that he is in their pow er, is an object of their special barbarity ; and is treated with every cruelty that will not disa- 256 LANCASTER. ble him to continue his route towards Canada : but the young men are used with more mercy. At length their melancholy pilgrimage brings them to Montreal, the place appointed for their immolation by the fagot and other instruments of torture. Here Mr. Sawyer has an interview with the French governor. He informs him that he is himself an experienced mill-wright that he has observed a very favorable site on the river Chamblee, for the erection of mills ; and that, if he will ransom him and his companions, they will build a fine mill for sawing, there so much needed. There being at the time no saw-mill in Canada, and no architect capable of building one, the governor readily accepts the proposition, and the contract is closed. He has no difficulty in redeeming the two young men, and they are liberated. But the blood-thirsty savages refuse to give Mr. Sawyer up at any price; and are determined to glut their malice and vengeance, by sacrificing him with every species of torture they can devise, and a lingering death. Already the preparations are made. Already is he bound to the stake, and the fuel gathered LANCASTER. 257 on the spot, while the demoniac preliminaries and incantations are enacted within the circle around him, and the echo of malignant voices passes among the rocks and woods. But, hold ! who comes here ? A venerable, black-robed form, with solemn aspect and de termined air, enters upon the scene. He has a cross on his breast, a book in his hand, and at his girdle an instrument such as the savages have never seen. It is a Jesuit Priest, who comes demanding the surrender of the captive uninjured. He takes the instrument in his hand, holds it forth, assuring the Indians that it is the key of the bottomless pit of the infernal regions; and if they do not at once release the prisoner, he will open the earth and let them all down in an instant ! They are, as by lightning, struck dumb and motionless, and stand aghast, till the victim s bands are loosed ; and he departs, un scathed, to fulfil his promise to the Governor. Mr. Sawyer, with his two young men, sets about the promised work. In a year the mill is completed, and in brisk operation. He and Bigelow now depart for their home. The Governor retains young Sawyer in his service 17 258 LANCASTER. one year longer, as a teacher of others in the sawing craft At the end of this, he also re turns to his native place. * * * * * Let those, and especially those from Lancaster, who, at the present day, visit Mont real, cast an eye over her architectural grandeur, and reflect under what circumstances, and by whom were begun the operations which have tended to transform the frowning forests into the magnificent, glittering city. You, who may behold it, I know not what peril you may be in ; or how, or to what you may be bound ; but whatever be your trials whether the cord be on the body or the spirit, to bind it to posts of torture, never despair! You know not what great work you may yet be saved to perform. Remember, the hand that set the first spring of this immense process in motion that erected the first saw-mill in Canada, on its noble river Chamblee, was that of a man just released from the stake. You who have the power of helping or saving mer cy, fail not to exercise it for the relief of a suf ferer, whether so morally, physically, or in a pecuniary sense. For you know not what great wave of good you may thus set in mo tion, to flow on, on, never to cease. LANCASTER. 259 One long absent from Lancaster thus sings back from afar, a simple lay of affectionate reminiscence. 0, Lancaster ! just as I saw thee in childhood, Does memory, still as a child, cling to thee ; Where once, mid the flowers of thy meadows and wild-wood, I roamed, culling sweets, like a careless young bee ! I see thy green turf with the red berries sprinkled ; The spice of thy pines I inhale from the breeze ; I still hear the lonely old cow-bell, that tinkled, As, vagrant, its wearer browsed through the green trees. I hear the cracked sound of the mill-wheel that clattered, When, fierce, the pent waters rushed pale from the flume ; Then, taming their pace as the wild spray was scattered, Ran off", bright and singing, through verdure and bloom. I still hear rehearsed the old tale of the quarry Of far-carried slate, which my grandfather found, Inwrought with the names, Whighting, Harrington, Torrey, And others, the first ever taught me by sound. 1 But cease, restless memory, cease from thy sweeping So hard on these heart-strings to things past away ! With phantoms of joys that in ashes are sleeping, O, shake not the chords, lest they break by thy play ! ST. BERNARD. To him whose wanderings on our uneven, terraqueous planet, have been among the stu pendous and fantastic works of nature, exhib ited in the lake and mountain scenery of Switzerland ; and thence, over the frozen passes of the Alps, into the smiling vineyards and olive-groves of sunny Italy, the name of the Great St. Bernard will never be an uninterest ing sound. It will revive in him old, ineffable ideas of the picturesque, the magnificent, the sublime, unparalleled in the physical world; and those of moral beauty and grandeur, even more rarely witnessed, in the character and purposes of his fellow-man* It will present to his recollections the sea of ice, the mountain of snow, the fearful, impending avalanche, the piercing air all that is chilling, cheerless, and menacing to the traveller through a region of ST. BERNARD. 261 almost perpetual winter, contrasted in his mind with all that he found cheering, comforting, and refreshing in the hospice, with its warm hearth, its ready table, and the unfeigned, cordial wel come from its benevolent inmates. The sound of that name will recall to his memory the hour when he arrived, cold, weary, and perhaps benighted, at that highest place of human habi tation in Europe ; and, while openly partaking the fruits of the beneficence of its tenants, se cretly confessed their self-sacrificing efforts and devotedness in the cause of suffering humanity, as far transcending those of the common level of mankind, as their abode exceeds theirs in point of elevation. It will remind him, too, of the moment when he departed, invigorated and grateful, dropping, as he passed out from under their hospitable roof, his thank-offering into the small contribu tion-box in the chapel the unasked and only pecuniary return for the entertainment he had received. He will remember, also, that he was unquestioned as to his faith, whether Pagan, Jew, or Christian ; and that he went on his way rejoicing, with a heart enlarged, and more than ever in love with all his fellow-men- 262 ST. BERNARD. invoking, perhaps, for the first time in his life, the blessing of Heaven on a fraternity of monks. Even the docile and philanthropic dogs of the hospice will come in for a share of his respectful and affectionate remembrance, when he recalls the humane teaching of which they are susceptible, their obedience to man s in struction, and their untiring toil and fidelity in seeking out travellers, and saving their lives when bewildered or overcome by cold and fatigue, in their journey across the mountain. But, in this age of stir and restlessness, when general and ceaseless locomotion seems to be the order of the day, and the world appears possessed of a spirit of going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it, there may, perhaps, be some who have experienced, and others who have heard of, the kindness of the benevolent brothers of the hospice of the Great and of the Little St. Bernard, who may yet be unacquainted with the early private his tory of the founder of these institutions, from whom both mountains derive their names. If you pass into Savoy, partly encompassed by vine-clad hills and retreating mountains, ST. BERNARD. 263 you will find the gloomy old town of Annecy, situated at the outlet of a small lake of the same name, whose escaping waters form a stream running through the town, which, in its days of pride and opulence, was vain of this bright feature ; and enjoyed it as a source of pleasure and convenience to powerful, aristo cratic inhabitants. Before the Revolution, so destructive to the temporal estate of the Savoyard nobility, this town was a place of much importance. It was the residence of many noble families. Here the Genevois counts had a stately castle, and the bishop held a court. The magnificent edifice, the pompous equipage, and the lofty bearing of the people, proclaimed the worldly wealth and pride of the place ; while numerous churches, nunneries, and their appurtenances, declared its poorness in spirit and ghostly hu mility. But, subsequent to this period, the town took a different aspect, and became as a widowed bride; or a queen, suddenly robbed of her crown and ornaments, and sitting in sackcloth and tears. Where once rolled the glittering carriage, was now seen the impoverished pe- 264 ST. BERNARD. destrian, anxious and solitary. Ruin took hold of the architecture, and moss and mildew came upon the ruin. The passage to many a splen did mansion, once lightly paced by the foot of the buoyant-hearted and gaily dressed, had be come forsaken and choked with confused de bris. The convents were thrown open, their pious recluses scattered abroad, and the de cayed buildings desecrated as warehouses, or perverted to other uses equally opposed to their former sanctity. The castle of the counts was, in one part of it, converted to a prison, while the other was appropriated as barracks for small detachments of squalid soldiery. After a long season of dismal desolation, the first symptom of revival in the place, appeared in the utilitarian introduction of the apparatus for a cotton factory, whose wheels were to be moved by the waters of that beautiful stream, which had so often carried on the poet s mus ing, the scholar s reverie, the devotee s devo tion; and this, too, in the very heart of the town which had been a favorite resort of the philosophic, the refined, the pontifical ! The mercenary machinery took possession of a building originally consecrated as the ST. BERNARD. 265 abode of a holy sisterhood of nuns ; and through its hungry, gnashing teeth, gave out the harsh sounds of the spirit of this world, where their sweet voices and their hymns had long since died away. On the side of the narrow lake, opposite to the town of Annecy, among the gently-swelling hills that stand between the level earth imme diately bordering the water, and the mountains rising moderately above them in the back ground, are several ancient castles, relics of the feudal ages, and emblems of old baronial firmness, defensive power, and domestic mag nificence. One of these castles belonged to the high and mighty family of Menthon, who had it inscribed in stone over the gate-way of their edifice, to remain when their deeds and their clay, each of so much importance in their own day, should be of little or none in ours, that the Menthons were a line of barons before the Christian era! Alas, alas, for human vanity, family pride, trust in titles, power, and riches ! Dust and darkness shroud them till the clear light and the free air of time dissolve and sweep them away. 266 ST. BERNARD. The lord of this house and domain, in the early part of the tenth century, was the son of an illustrious sire, Oliver de Menthon, Count of Geneva, and friend and companion of the immortal Charlemagne. And, in the year 923, (or, as some say, 928,) in this castle, his son, BERNARD, sole heir to the honors of the Men- thons, entered, a little crying novice, on this world s stage of shifting scenery, to battle with its vanity and vexation of spirit. Great was the exultation in the castle at his birth, that a son was given to perpetuate the glory and magnify the name of the honorable house of Menthon. Scarcely was the babe wrapped in swaddling-bands, when imagina tion had already invested him, as a future hero, with the cuirass and sword of his renowned grandfather, Oliver ; while every sturdy shriek that the little baron gave out, was taken as a prognostic of the noise he was to make in the world, and of decision and courage in the bud. The child grew, large and strong; and, as he had been designed from the very peep of his existence to the profession of arms, bade fair to fulfil what seemed the express purpose of his being, to fight and conquer ! When of ST. BERNARD. 267 a suitable age, his father, wishing to bestow on him a more finished education than he had himself enjoyed, or than could be given him at home, sent him to Paris, and placed him under such a tutor as he thought would train up his mind in the way it should go. When the time of his pupilage had elapsed, Bernard was recalled home, to stand up in the castle of his inheritance with the form of full- grown manhood, and the majestic and invinci ble spirit of a mature Savoyard nobleman and commander. But great was the astonishment and the dis appointment of his parents, at their son s re turn, on finding that they had placed him under the tuition of an instructor widely different from the one they had intended and thought him to be. Bernard was humble, solemn, often ab stracted, loving retirement, and seeming to have devoted himself to a cause wholly at variance with carnal pride and indulgence, and all tem poral glory. He was disinclined to speak or to hear of any of these things ; and gave evi dence of his determination to wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with the power and against the dominion of sin and Satan. 268 ST. BERNARD. His mind was filled to overflowing with the teachings and warnings he had received from his patron, St. Nicholas ; he had solemnly de voted himself to a life of poverty and humility, and the cause of Him whose kingdom is not of this world. He had dreamed dreams, had visions, and received calls in heavenly voices all forbidding him to seek earthly power and riches, and prompting him to take up the cross and turn away from an alluring, deceitful, evil world. His time was spent in prayer, praise, and prophecy, or in other religious exercises and retirement for meditation. The father s mortification at this disappoint ment was insupportable ; and his whole study and object were now to redeem his son from this unexpected state of mind, and his unearthly course. To effect this, his own judgment, and that of his friends, suggested a matrimonial alliance. Accordingly, the beautiful young heiress of another noble house was selected as the all-potent charm. The uncommon personal beauty of the lovely Marguerite de Miolans, with her sweet, affec tionate disposition and cheerfulness of spirit, seemed fully adequate to dispelling the infatua- ST. BERNARD. 269 tion of Bernard; while the honor of her an cient house was looked upon as nowise infe rior to that of Menthon. In those days, the marriage contract was stipulated for the young couple by their pa rents ; and it was the custom to have it con summated, with all the display and festivity of the wedding, at the house of the bridegroom s father. Bernard saw his bride elect, and faint ly praised her beauty and seeming excellence ; and, though he did not in word object to being united to her, he turned aside with a melan choly air, which had the coldness of a refusal, while he thought of the i King s daughter, the church, 4 all glorious within, to which his soul was indissolubly wedded. The great preparations for the nuptials went on, while he witnessed them but with revolting and horror; and the whole train of guests were invited to accompany the betrothed from the castle of the Miolans to that of the Menthons. On the appointed day, with all the dignity of their pompous externals, they arrived, full of gladsome spirits, to enliven the scene ; and with healthful appetites, to do justice to the sumptuous board prepared as the marriage 270 ST. BERNARD. feast. The Chateau was filled with guests, musicians, and menials, going hither and thith er, every one with some important part to per form, like shuttles passing one another in the loom, each having its own thread to carry out, to make the web perfect. On the great, auspicious morning, w r hen the sacred knot was to be tied, the family and their guests were assembled in due array ; but the bride, in her costly adornments, saw no bride groom appear to claim her. They waited he came not from his chamber. He was sum moned, yet did not obey ; was called, but gave no answer. The door of his apartment was opened ; and lo, he was gone ! The unpressed pillow showed that his bed had given him no repose the previous night ; and a letter ad dressed to his parents, found lying on his little silver table, told the rest. In it, he implored their forgiveness for disobedience to their will, but pleaded that this was his only alternative, hard as he felt it to be, to avoid disobeying that of Heaven, whose higher command and call he must not, dared not disregard. He assured them that, having solemnly avouched himself for Christ and his service, he ST. BERNARD. 271 had only to take up his cross and follow him ; and that he could not now go back, except to perdition, to take his portion from amongst the husks and beggarly elements of the world. He argued that, if he were a member of the body of Christ, he must die to himself and live in him ; as a penitent, he must crucify all car nal affections, and keep clear of every incum- brance that might retard or cause him to stum ble in his holy race. If Jesus was his pattern, he had never been taught by his example to wed himself to an earthly bride. And what, said he, c did that great Preceptor, whose word is life, intend to inculcate, when he spake the parable of the feast that was prepared, and those who were bidden, but refused to come ? Surely he must have known, and would have us to know the temptation to reluctance or refusal to come up to our religious duties, our heavenly feast, which a mortal bride might prove, when he stated, that the first and the second bidden to the supper, pleading worldly business as an apology for declining the invi tation, added, " therefore I pray thee have me excused ; " but the third said, " I have married a wife, therefore I cannot come." 272 ST. BERNARD. Having filled his letter with these and similar cogent reasons for his righteous abhorrence of matrimony, the soundness or the sophistry of which, they who have tried the experiment, which he had not, can best decide for them selves, the future saint opened his window, and, leaping out upon a rock lying many feet below it, went his way, none but himself knew whither. Some appearances of indentations in the rock, seen at this day, the good Catholic as sures the traveller, are the prints of the saint s feet, as they met it from the leap ; when it was miraculously softened to receive them, and then turned hard as adamant. The scene of confusion, of dismay, and con sternation some spirits bristling with haughty resentment, others cast down with sorrow which the castle presented when the flight was discovered, would defy all power of descrip tion, even if the narrow limits here prescribed did not forbid it in fuller detail. But none of all the actors in the drama, claimed so much unmingled tenderness and pity as the beautiful, forsaken betrothed, and none performed so high-minded and heroic a part. ST. BERNARD. 273 Could the fugitive bridegroom have looked back and seen her in this trying moment, he would, perhaps, have repented of his rash step, and owned that, if his reasoning had been right as to generality, yet here, in an especial case, it might be a little sophistical. While the Baron de Menthon and his lady were overwhelmed by grief and despair at their bereavement, and mortification from the disappointment, they knew not how to meet the insulted dignity of the Miolans. The lofty old father of the deserted maiden, and all his party, except the meek-spirited daughter, towered high with indignation, and flashed with ire at the dishonor cast on their ancient house ; and, placing the hand upon the hilt of the sword, they began to talk of obtain ing recompense at its point. High words and significant gestures seemed to be fast forming the preliminaries of a civil war between the two houses. And this, according to the cus tom of the times, when men looked to their trusty steel for satisfaction, in all cases of per sonal or family insult or injury, would no doubt have ensued, had not the gentle Mar guerite, like a genuine pearl, as her name sig- 18 274 ST. BERNARD, nines, shone out with a pure, native lustre, which seemed the brightness of a holier world than this. After a short but severe inward struggle to suppress her emotions, she came between the jarring parties like an angel of peace; and, declaring her free and full forgiveness of the offence, expressed herself satisfied with the pious reasons rendered by the absconder, for thus suddenly turning and fleeing from the hymeneal altar, when brought so near as to feel himself scorched by its flame. Her gentle spirit subdued the turbulence of her choleric friends ; and their angry passions, rebuked by her magnanimity, fell back like the receding Waves of a troubled sea, at the ebb of tide. Glad that they had been saved from an attempt to wash out the imagined stain of their glory with blood, and commiserating the wretched ness of the forsaken parents, they returned in peace to their own homes. Shortly after this strange event, the disap pointed Marguerite, sick of the world, and wishing to withdraw from it forever, abjured it with its deceit, its riches, and its vanities, and retired into a convent for life. Here her supe- ST. BERNARD. 275 rior virtues and eminent piety soon won for her the respect and love of the whole sister hood ; till at length, in due time, she became prioress of the convent in Annecy, which has before been mentioned, as recently converted into a place of spindles and looms, and the more secularly-inspired sisters of a factory. The Baron de Menthon and lady, having found all search for their lost son but vain, re tired from public life; and, immuring them selves from the world within their own castle, sunk into a state of quiet melancholy, which succeeded the storm of sorrow and despair, as a calm settles on a landscape, when the hurri cane has laid its honors waste. Thus, for a long lapse of years, did they re main secluded, passing their time in noiseless but bitter repentance for their rash experiment of coercion on their only child ; and wholly in the dark as to every thing connected with his course or his fate, after the farewell left behind him in his letter, on the eventful night previous to the visionary wedding. While the Sun of Righteousness seemed not to have arisen to their souls with healing in his wings, the sun of their earthly glory had set forever. Or if some gleams of lingering 276 ST. BERNARD. light at times appeared, it was only to show long, dark shadows of forms that were unseen or passing away, and all to be lost in the chill and hush of a starless night. Then, strange spirit-whisperings came near, warning them that time was short the grave close before them earth s elements preparing to become food for devouring fire the skies to drop the stars, as a tree its untimely fruit, and pass away ; and it behooved them speedily to make their peace with Heaven, through Him who, in reference to that day, assures his friends, Because I live, ye shall live also. And to claim a share in this promise, was the righteous resolution to which they ultimately came. They made confession of their sins, and poured out the burden of their contrite hearts before the mercy-seat, crying, first for the grace of supplication, that they might pray aright for the bread for which their souls were starving ; that they might even be allowed the crumbs that fell from their Lord s table, in conscious unworthiness of a seat at the board among his chosen friends. They distributed of their substance to the poor, and made boun teous donations of their temporal riches, with a view to eternal interest. Still, they asked ST. BERNARD. 277 increase of faith, till grace for grace was given them in manifold proportion ; while their heads were whitening with the frost of life s winter time, and the hues of earth becoming dim through its chilly haze. But ever, among the softest, inmost folds of their parental hearts, one burning, wasting desire was closely wrap ped up, as the canker in the bud, and silently feeding. Could they only be favored with some communication, either from earth or heaven, that would inform them what, and where, had been the life ; or when, and how, the death of their lost Bernard, then they felt they could depart in peace ! Yet no human or angel hand lifted the sable curtain, behind which he had passed, and vanished out of sight. They asked in midnight s solemn shade When morning s splendor shone If he to distant lands had strayed ; If in the grave his dust were laid ; If he in glory stood arrayed Before the eternal throne. None answered through night s silent gloom ! No beams of opening day The painful mystery could illume : Nought from the world of deathless bloom, From distant earth, or secret tomb, Told how he passed away. 278 ST. BERNARD. As this aged couple perceived themselves nearly down the steep descent of life, and ap proaching the dark valley through which none shall ever retrace his steps, they felt an increas ing desire for wisdom and strength to console and sustain them in the trial which every one must meet alone. Fame had spread abroad the transcendent piety, eminent good works and unbounded hospitality of a holy father of a monastery of brethren of the St. Augustine order, in the town of Aosta, on the Italian side of the Alps. His counsel was said to be light, and his teach ing, understanding ; and to him, in their hoary age, did the Baron de Menthon and his lady resolve to make a pilgrimage, to seek his in struction and blessing, while time and ability yet remained for them to perform the journey. They reached the monastery, were affection ately welcomed by the reverend superior, made known the object of their visit, and related to him the whole story of their life and sorrow. To the pathetic tale of the lost son, and their affecting confession of contrition for the course by which they had driven him into exile, and made themselves childless, the prior listened ST. BERNARD. 279 with deep interest, and apparent firmness, till it became too much for his disciplined mind, with its Christian philosophy in full exercise, to suppress or conceal the powerful emotions of his bosom. He found himself situated like Joseph in Egypt, while listening to the story of his brethren ; yet he could not, like him, stay to enter into his chamber and weep there, be fore he fell upon their necks and kissed them, revealing himself as no other than their long- lost Bernard, and uttering the forgiving senti ment of his magnanimous prototype : Now, therefore, be not grieved nor angry with your selves that ye sold me hither. ..... So now, it was not you that sent me hither, but God, It was a scene not to be described, and al most too affecting to be considered, when the aged parents clasped once more the child of their youth and their pride, sobbing and speech less, while their swelling hearts seemed burst ing with the cry, Our son was lost, but now is found ; was dead, but lives again ! After the first flood of emotion had subsid ed, a happy season of mutual confession and blessing followed, with a relation of his history and their sufferings since their separation, and 280 ST. BERNARD. an account of the whole proceedings, from the morning when his mysterious flight caused such a strange scene of confusion in his native castle. The venerable couple passed many days at the monastery, and then returned to their home, where they spent the remainder of their time in a holy tranquillity ; and at length departed this life, in the full assurance of being finally united to their son in that happy kingdom where they go no more out forever. Bernard, after his wild start and sudden spring from under the yoke that was about to be fastened on him for life, and his unknightly escape from the lovely Marguerite and the cas tle of his ancestors, bent his course towards Aosta, and entered its monastery, a nameless, lonely stranger. By his extraordinary piety and ability, manifested as he passed through the different stages of duty and office, he rap idly advanced to the priorship. Here he exercised the most liberal hospi tality ; and, among many other good works, undertook to open a passage to the neighbor ing mountain, for the benefit of pilgrims on their way to Rome, ST. BERNARD. 281 The Romans, in their days of paganism, had used this route into the Vallais ; and on the highest point of the passage, had erected a temple, to propitiate the destroying demon who was supposed to haunt the place, assuming at pleasure any form that might best serve his purpose. Sometimes he was said to come clothed in the furious storm, burying men alive in the snow or ice. Sometimes he appeared in the robber or bandit; then, in the shape of wild beasts, rending and devouring human victims. To this temple did the benevolent prior, at the head of his monks, labor in person to clear the passage; and then, with its materials to build a hospice for travellers on the spot where it had stood. It was in this beneficent and arduous enterprise that he was engaged, when his fame, reaching the ear of his parents, occa sioned them to make the journey which led to the happy discovery already related. In his pious and useful life, whose whole amount of good can never be cast up in this world, Bernard continued until the year 1008, when, at the good old age of eighty-five, he, too, fell asleep. His name is his imperishable 282 ST. BERNARD. monument. It is fixed upon the mountains, where it will stand till they- be removed! To that where he took the old temple to build the hospitium, formerly Mount Toux, after his ca nonization, was given the name of the Great St. Bernard. Another and smaller mountain, where the road leads over the Grison Alps, and where, on the spot once occupied by a heathen pillar, he built another hospitium, re ceived the appellation of the Little St. Ber nard. At his death, he left these hospitia in charge of the St. Augustine brotherhood. But, in process of time, certain changes taking place and difficulties arising, government took them under its especial patronage, and enlarged the establishments and their funds, till they grew at length to their present magnitude and use fulness. One word more about the gentle Marguerite. Her earthly career and that of her once-des tined bridegroom form a striking antithesis. While his name is indelibly engraven on the heights, hers is hidden in a low, dark, secret place, and washed by restless waters, perpetu ally dashed against it by the force of a wheel. ST. BERNARD. 283 The most we know of it is this. A few years ago, an American traveller, on an excursion in that part of Europe, after having found in an old volume,^ in a library of Geneva, a confirma tion, in copious, and minute detail, of the facts here related, of which the foregoing is but an abstract, visited Annecy. Here, among its most conspicuous objects of interest, he was shown a large and flourishing cotton factory, built from the nunnery of which the pious recluse y Marguerite, became, and died, Lady Superior, The superintendent, showing him the build ing and its machinery, stated, that the case of its large water-wheel was formed of the tomb stones taken from the cemetery where the ab besses of the convent had been buried ! When that factory shall have wound up its thread, and in its turn shall pass away, leaving its foundations to be broken up, then, and not till then, may the name of the beautiful heiress of Miolans, the fair Marguerite, be brought to light! * The author of this volume has filled several pages with a description of the confused scene in the castle, the morning after Bernard absconded. THE HUMMING-BIRD. BY one of those sudden impulses which many may have experienced, but which few, if any, can explain, I found myself hastily equip ped, and out for a short walk ; my object, that important one which thousands pursue in the locomotion of a great portion of their useful temporal existence- to go somewhere, and come back again ! Indeed, par parenthese, some appear to think such purpose the noblest end of their mission here on earth ; and, more over, that for this sublime ultimatum they were dismissed from the very abode of the celestials ; to which their return is certain, and where their reward is sure, whilst now invested with a kind of superfine clay. But I ramble, and will return to my place. In a street not far from my own, a little boy ran out from the side-passage to the door of a THE HUMMING-BIRD. 285 house I was passing, and, lifting his beautiful blue eyes earnestly to my face, then, dropping them at my feet, cried, Humming-bird ! hum ming-bird ! Looking down, I saw a small object, which seen, as it was, through a veil, and by a pair of near-sighted eyes, seemed at first sight a green leaf slightly curled and driven by the wind; then, a disabled butterfly with lopped wings, running swiftly towards the middle of the street, across the side-walk, but a few inches before my foot that had nearly trodden on it ; while the child reiterated his one word, Hum ming-bird, humming-bird ! with the most im ploring, earnest expression I ever witnessed in a face of seven years. On nearer view, I perceived that it was, sure enough, a humming-bird, with close-folded wings, gliding along on its tiny invisible feet, like a reptile, so near the ground that its bosom and train swept the sand. I took up the little fallen beauty and set it on the palm of my hand, to examine its condition, and see if I could discover the cause of its pedestrianism ; but I could find none. Whose bird is it ? said I. 286 THE HUMMING-BIRD. Mine, replied the child. Whose little boy are you ? What is your name ? * Mrs. s ; my name is William. 4 What have you done to the bird, to prevent its flying ? 1 Nothing. I have n t touched it. 1 How long have you had it ? 4 It has just come. It flew in there, at the other door of the wood-house, and came out this way, running on its feet. I do n t know what makes it act so. * Do you wish to keep it ; or may I have it ? 1 You may have it. I have another up there ; and he pointed to a cage high up on the side of the house. In the meantime I had set the brilliant, living bijou on my finger, and offered it flight. But it struck its delicate claws into the meshes of my glove, and kept its perch, without a flutter or any symptom of uneasiness. Its plumage was smooth, and I could perceive no sign of hurt, or of any feeling but that of perfect fa miliarity and content ; while it sat, turning its sweet little diamond eyes at me, this way and that, looking like two rays beaming out from THE HUMMING-BIRD. 287 some bright star shut up in its cunning head, and seemingly as unconcerned as if I had been a tree, on a twig of which it had lighted. I hardly knew what to make of this social ap pearance. Had it been a day of superstition and augury, I should have had thoughts .... At length the mystery was solved. Under the tip of one of the wings, I discovered the end of a fine filament like sleaved silk. Tak ing this clew, I drew forth quite a large cobweb that had been bound about the pinion, or fast ened among the wing-feathers beneath, thus keeping^ them from spreading. No sooner was the odd trammel removedj than, quick as a flash, the wings were up, and the bird darted off to the top of the house, above its prisoned companion, which had probably been the at traction, when it met with the mishap. And never did mortal hero bear misfortune more philosophically than did this little plumed knight-errant his sudden drop from the ethereal region, at the very moment when he had gained sight of the object of his adventure. In passing through the wood-house, he had come in contact with a spider s snare for the lesser winged ones ; and, instead of being 288 THE HUMMING-BIRD. caught, had, like Samson with the Philistine s gate, borne it off at his shoulder. I now endeavored to reason with the child, to induce him to open the cage and let his bird go ; and, explaining the uselessness and cruelty of keeping the little captive imprisoned still, I enforced my argument by a home illustration. 4 Are you going, said I, to keep the poor thing shut up there, where it is pining for free dom and its natural food and drink, and where you will probably soon find it dead of suffering for want of these ? If liberated, it would come humming about among the flowers, in your garden, all life and joy, with its wings, which now it cannot use, in rapid motion, and bright as a jewel shining in the sun. Oh ! said William, I know how it looks, flying, and among the flowers ; and twas this made me want it for my own. It came here, whizzing over them this ^morning, bright and light as a soap-bubble. When it stopped, I put my hat on it, and caught it. But it did n t try to get away ; and now, it s contented and happy in the cage. It has a glass of sugar and water, and every thing it wants there. It sits still, and doesn t want to go. It s very happy. THE HUMMING-BIRD. 289 Precious innocent! methought, such is the sophistry of many older than thou, with whom it would be well, did they employ it with as sincere ignorance of the wrong they are doing. But, to " know the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue ! " this is fastening a stone about the neck of one s own soul, to drag it down, when the injured can feel oppression no more, and the oppressor of his kind, or of his brute, shall have done forever with power \ But, said I, should you feel contented and happy, William, if some great creature of a different form from your own, and as many times larger than you as you are larger than the bird, should come and take you from all your friends, and shut you up in prison, where you and your parents, or your brothers, sisters, and playmates, could only see each other through the iron grates ? How do you think your mother would feel to see you thus, even if you had enough to keep you alive, of a kind of food and drink, alike new and disagreeable? The child looked serious; and, glancing with a wet eye at the cage, replied, I have n t any mother, nor any brothers and sisters. My mother is dead ! Mrs. takes care of me. 19 290 THE HUMMING-BIRD, i And where, I asked, do you think your mother is, since she died ? 4 In heaven. Should you like to go there too, when you die? I hope I shall, and be with her, and be happy. And what must you do, to be able to meet her, and be happy there ? I must be good 1 Well, my dear, then you will not be cruel to any living thing, be it bird, insect, or larger animals. All cruelty is wickedness ; and the wicked cannot enter heaven. It is holiness that makes the happiness there. God, who made the heavens and the earth, dwells there. His eye beholds at once all that he has made. He sees the fall of every sparrow to the ground ; he made this beautiful bird, that looks so sad in the cage ; and he looks into your heart, and knows whether you are willing to do right, or prefer to continue on in the wrong, in this case, as he does in all others. I hope you will lib erate the bird, and let it go off, free among the others, before it grows too sick to enjoy the use of its wings. I wish you to consider this. THE HUMMING-BIRD. 291 After this, and some more similar counsel, I left the child to ponder it, looking in a very considerate mood, alternately at me and the cage, as if I had given him a hard lesson of duty to fulfil, as I passed from him. Meeting a friend who lived near, and saw the child daily, I told her the incident, and the text I had made of it to preach a sermon on mercy, to her little neighbor. I asked her to ascertain how William practiced npon what he had so unexpectedly heard ; and if he let the bird out, to provide him a guide and send him to me. Early the next morning I had a call from William, led by another little boy somewhat older than himself. He said he had come to tell me, that he had let the bird out soon after I left him. I gave him a little book, as the un expected reward of his obedience to my teach ing. It was full of pictures ; and he seemed to think it a much more valuable possession than the one I had induced him to relinquish without any promised reward, but the con sciousness of having acted aright. This para graph, however, is inserted for the special grati fication of my little friends, who may know of 292 THE HUMMING-BIRD. my meeting with William and the bird. For those of maturer age, a few reflections follow, suggested by that trammeled wing. Let parents, or those who stand in their places to little children, ask themselves, and answer, if they can, the question, How soon does an infant mind begin to reason ? Until they can answer this, let them beware how they demand implicit obedience to an in junction or prohibition, without explaining its reasonableness. Reason is the very ground into which the seeds of instruction must be sown, and the sound stock from which they should fall. A child cannot obey, till it can under stand. And then, if compelled to obedience, through fear of punishment, without being shown the right of the command, that inherent arbiter of the faculties in every human breast the will is not softened, but stiffened ; and the subject of such government is very likely to pay back the despotic severity in an unexpect ed form of retribution, in some after day. So, too, is the neglect to train the mind to obe dience, by enlightening the understanding, most commonly recompensed with shame and sor row. THE HUMMING-BIRD. 293 Many a young spirit, bright and docile as that of the little boy with the bird, has, no doubt, been thus thoughtlessly hampered by some fetter on its wing, slight perhaps at first, as a cobweb, but strong enough to keep the young immdrtal from soaring in its proper ele ment ; and sufficient, in the end, to bring the grey head of a parent down with sorrow to the grave, and itself to a deeper destruction. Let the first lessons be given to your child with mildness and patience ; let it be shown by illustration or practical example, the right or the wrong of acting thus, or so, at once appealing to the reasoning powers and address ing the better feelings of its nature, and it will, most generally, afterwards give you its faith and yield a ready obedience, when you do not stop to explain, till the wisdom of your judg ment appears in the result. I believe that in most cases, where parents go sorrowing to the dust, and this, often, before their time, from affliction brought on them by their children, the root of the evil may be trace able to themselves, in their own wrong begin ning with their tender offspring. Some how or other, they mismanaged the infant being. 294 THE HUMMING-BIRD. They may have been too indulgent ; and of that faith which a fond Yankee mother some years ago professed that she believed in total depravity, fully, as it related to all children but her own ; yet these she could not think had a spark of it ! They may have been too rigid and severe. They may have claimed from their children a strict obedience to precepts which they did not themselves practice before them ; thus virtually saying, in the most im pressive language, See that ye do as we say, but not as we do. Perhaps they punished their child for a little show of human nature in resistance or resentment, themselves the while burning red with anger. It may have been even so, for an accident, or an error of ignorance, rather than a fault of the will, in the child. They would have their children, and servants too, perfect as angels, and enlighten them for becoming thus, from within them selves, with scintillations of that bright, particu lar star, Son of the morning! They may feel their own weakness and insufficiency to direct young minds and rid themselves of pa rental responsibility, by casting it with their purse on some vicarious plenipotentiary. THE HUMMING-BIRD. 295 They may have been easy, and winked at a little sin ; which is said by an old divine, to be 1 like a fine ribbon on a bird s leg, to prevent the soul from rising, till it grows in strength to a three-fold cord, not easily broken. Their care may have been more for the education, the clothing, and the graces of the body, than for those of the soul. But some how, in some way, they missed the right in the beginning ; and all has since been wrong, and themselves and their children made miserable ! Such are some of the many ways in which a glad young spirit, flying from flower to flower, in the dewy morning of its life, may be trammeled in its wing, it knows not how, and brought down, perhaps to rise no more. But there are other phases of the simile ; other impediments to upward or onward mo tion may exist, when the rudiments of educa tion have been faultless. Unsuspecting youth may be taken unawares by sudden temptation ; and even through some noble trait in its na ture, or some slip of inadvertency, fall into the fowler s snare and be brought low, for the want of some minister of charity to kindly 296 THE HUMMING-BIRD. loose its bond and say, Go, and wisdom go with thee, that thou err no more ! It may be, that some bright, aspiring genius, that would mount to the empyrean, and bless the world with its divine fire, caught from the pure element of the sun and stars, is hampered and kept down by pecuniary embarrassment, which the fine sensibilities of its nature forbid it to make known ; but which is a sure and invisible bondage, borne in silence and outward serenity, like that of the brilliant humming bird; when the liberal-minded, full-hand patron of genius and friend of mankind, could re move the difficulty as easily as a cobweb, and would most readily do so, could the true state of the case be made clear. It may be, that native timidity and diffidence is the tie ; and the richly endowed mind has its priceless, precious talents buried to society, shut up by fear and trembling, while a little kindly influence alone is needed to bring them forth in peerless beauty. Yet, still this spider- net is bound about its pinion, as sure a stay as prison grates, which it may look through, but cannot break nor pass. The most noble, upright spirit, in the full THE HUMMING-BIRD. 297 tide of life s business concerns, may be sud denly met by adverse winds of fortune; and its bark be driven and tossed, here and there, till finally fastened among the rocks and shoals, where it must remain helpless, while others go by, white-winged and swift, in glorious ca reer ; unless some helping hands shall come and give it a heave, and tow it into deep water the humming-bird untrammeled in its miniature similitude. But there are countless ways in human con cerns, in which this little feathered biped may be used as a figure of the lord of creation. As such, it has been constantly flitting before the eye of my imagination, since the day when I found it, and studied out its case. Now do I a second time unbind its wing, that it may fly away to others, and, as a new kind of carrier- bird, deliver this, its message ; which I hope they will receive in kindness, and understand aright. If it be found to contain any useful moral, to be appropriated to their own use, my end is accomplished and my recompense re ceived. THE LINDEN LEAF, FROM A TREE STANDING NEAR SIR ISAAC NEWTON S DWELLING. LEAF of the green and shadowy tree, That guards the window where the eye Of NEWTON once look forth, to see The glorious hosts arrayed on high ! Thy root holds fast the distant sod That gave his foot a resting-place, Untiring, while his spirit trod Ethereal heights, the spheres to trace. Thou art to me a beaming page Ay, volume ! and in radiant lines, The story of a deathless Sage On thy fair, verdant surface shines. While I peruse thee as a tome, To fancy s eye dear visions rise ; She hovers round his earthly home She soars where he surveyed the skies. I bend in homage to the worth, The power, the beauty of his mind, That shows where er it moved on earth By brilliant tracery left behind. THE LINDEN LEAF. And he, to whom a falling frait Mysterious Nature s problem solved, Unerring, up through space could shoot, And span the spheres as they revolved. As through the solar world he moved, Among its beaming mechanism, His lucid thoughts at will, he proved To have the power of lens, or prism. And measuring those proud realms afar, With angel speed, and prophet s sight, He set his foot from star to star ; His way-marks were the orbs of light. Yet, not alone for earth and time, Did that aspiring spirit rise ; But, for the science more sublime, To bear the palm beyond the skies. His soul with love of Truth inspired, No rest in baser love could find, Till that vast mind divinely fired, Broke forth with light for all mankind. He sought her, studying Nature s laws, And these harmonious proved to men He traced her to her great First Cause, By prophet s voice and gospel pen. And she then made so strong and clear The crystal of his telescope, It brought unearthly wealth so near, T was seen by Faith, and grasped by Hope. NEWTON ! to thee, where Truth unveils Her lovely image to thy view, 299 300 THE LINDEN LEAF. * Are not the philosophic scales Thou here hast used, proved just and true ? Did not her clear, sweet accents tell, While she bestowed thy diadem, That when that earthly apple fell, It was her angel snapped the stem ? That when she saw thy soul ascend, To seek her, from the blushing fruit, She bade that holy servant bend His pinion for thy parachute ? To that fair attribute of heaven That daughter of the King Most High, When thy young heart so soon was given, She gave to thee thy seer s eye. Then many a bright celestial hue She to thy vision made appear, Which others ne er discover through Earth s dust and vapory atmosphere. She taught the fair analysis Of rays which made thy spirit mount, Seeking a truer world than this, Of light s pure streams to find the fount. And thus, thy high discoveries made The science so attained by thee, Have made thy memory ne er to fade Thy glory for eternity. T is from the freshness of the one My leaf hath verdure not its own ; While from the other, as a sun, This radiance o er the green is thrown. THE SARRACENIA PURPUREA, OR PUEPLE SIDE-SADDLE FLOWER. THIS curious little child of our North Amer ican meadows, derives its common name from a fancied resemblance of some of its parts to those of a side-saddle. Sarracenia, says a writer, is from its being named after Dr. Sar- razin, the friend of Tourneforte. But this may, I think, with equal propriety, be traced to Saracen, as its origin, from the peculiar structure of the plant, as well as its orthography. The monuments, or grave-stones, in the Moorish (Saracenic) burying-grounds, have small hollows, or basins, scooped in them, to catch the rain, that the birds may come there and drink. And, as the etymology of Saracen may give some interest to the emblematic sig nification with which I invest the flower, as it relates to the mother of the faithful, I will give 302 THE SARRACENIA PURPUREA. it, at the risk of its being styled by some far fetched. The Arabic professor, Sabellicus, informs us, that Mohammed was the son of a heathen father, and an Ishmaelite mother a direct de scendant of Hagar. Yet, wishing to disclaim his descent from the bond-woman, and to es tablish it as lineally from Sarah and Abraham, to give importance and seeming truth to his religion, he named himself and his followers, 1 Saracens] or descendants of Sarah ; while the Greeks, in derision, called them Hagarenes, as the descendants of Hagar are called in Psalm Ixxxiii : 6. This same learned monk, Sabellicus, has given a curious history of the pseudo-prophet, to which few, perhaps, may now have access. The flower which, as names in the floral kingdom are arbitrarily bestowed, I shall hence call Saracenia, is, I believe, a turnsole. It has been familiar to my eye from earliest child hood ; and I do not remember ever to have seen it face otherwise than toward the sun. It is a large, nodding flower, externally of mixed pur ple and green, that in the sun, appears lustrous and changeable, like the plumage of the dove ; THE SARRACENIA PURPUREA. 303 but the centre is of a bright golden hue. It crowns a somewhat tall, smooth cylindric stem, around the base of which are set the singularly formed radical leaves. These seem to have been originally cut after the pattern of a plan tain, or broad lily-leaf ; but, by an after-thought of nature, for some especial purpose, to have been each rolled up so far as to make the side- edges meet ; and to have been thus united to gether, nearly to the top, so as to form a water- vessel, or can, bulged in the middle, open at the top, and with a lip cut and turned out at the mouth. Each of these cruses will contain a wine-glass of water; and they are never empty. Insects fly to them as cisterns ; and the flower can draw from them, though the earth be dry and the clouds yield no water. The plant is a beautiful emblem of Faith, when earth is dreary, and all visible prospects dis couraging. An anonymous author has a few excellent lines on this subject, which illus trate the idea so finely, that they are here bor rowed. Fear not , thy cruse of oil, it shall not fail ! One greater than Elijah sittcth here, Though poverty s grim stare and iron face 304 THE SARRACENIA PURPUREA. Hedge thee around. Thy cruse shall not decrease, Nor barrel waste : the sun is then most near, When hid in winter ; and the bow of peace Binds the dark cloud. For all to him are dear The king who sits in golden palaces, The bird that sings in winter s hoary tress : He is all-infinite greater and less In Him are not ; but, as the helpless child Doth to the yearning mother dearer prove, Them to himself he hath the nearest styled, Who have on earth no blessing but his Love. I