The Chautauquan, June 1884

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The Chautauquan.

A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.

Vol. IV. JUNE, 1884. No. 9.

Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

President—Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.

Superintendent of Instruction—Rev. J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn.

Counselors—Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D.; Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.

Office Secretary—Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J.

General Secretary—Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Contents

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REQUIRED READING
FOR THE
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1883-4.
June.

READINGS FROM ROMAN HISTORY.

SELECTED BY WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON.

Next we will give a picture, a partial picture it must be, of an action occurring a little more than half a century later in Roman history. Dr. Arnold shall be our painter:

HANNIBAL CROSSING THE ALPS.

[219 B. C.]

Hannibal was on the summit of the Alps about the end of October; the first winter snows had already fallen; but two hundred years before the Christian era, when all Germany was one vast forest, the climate of the Alps was far colder than at present, and the snow lay on the passes all through the year. Thus the soldiers were in dreary quarters; they remained two days on the summit, resting from their fatigues, and giving opportunity to many of the stragglers, and of the horses and cattle, to rejoin them by following their track; but they were cold and worn and disheartened; and mountains still rose before them, through which, as they knew too well, even their descent might be perilous and painful.

But their great general, who felt that he now stood victorious on the ramparts of Italy, and that the torrent which rolled before him was carrying its waters to the rich plains of Cisalpine Gaul, endeavored to kindle his soldiers with his own spirit of hope. He called them together; he pointed out the valley beneath, to which the descent seemed the work of a moment. “That valley,” he said, “is Italy; it leads us to the country of our friends, the Gauls, and yonder is our way to Rome.” His eyes were eagerly fixed on that point of the horizon; and as he gazed, the distance between seemed to vanish, till he could almost fancy that he was crossing the Tiber, and assailing the Capitol.

After the two days’ rest the descent began. Hannibal experienced no more open hostility from the barbarians, only some petty attempts here and there to plunder; a fact strange in itself, but doubly so, if he was really descending the valley of the Doria Baltea, through the country of the Salassians, the most untamable robbers of all the Alpine barbarians. It is possible that the influence of the Insubrians may partly have restrained the mountaineers; and partly, also, they may have been deterred by the ill success of all former attacks, and may by this time have regarded the strange army and its monstrous beasts with something of superstitious terror. But the natural difficulties of the ground on the descent were greater than ever. The snow covered the track so that the men often lost it, and fell down the steep below; at last they came to a place where an avalanche had carried it away altogether for about three hundred yards, leaving the mountain side a mere wreck of scattered rocks and snow. To go round was impossible; for the depth of the snow on the heights above rendered it hopeless to scale them; nothing, therefore, was left but to repair the road. A summit of some extent was found, and cleared of the snow; and here the army were obliged to encamp, whilst the work went on. There was no want of hands; and every man was laboring for his life; the road therefore was restored, and supported with solid substructions below; and in a single day it was made practicable for the cavalry and baggage cattle, which were immediately sent forward, and reached the lower valley in safety, where they were turned out to pasture. A harder labor was required to make a passage for the elephants; the way for them must be wide and solid, and the work could not be accomplished in less than three days. The poor animals suffered severely in the interval from hunger; for no forage was to be found in that wilderness of snow, nor any trees whose leaves might supply the place of other herbage. At last they too were able to proceed with safety; Hannibal overtook his cavalry and baggage, and in three days more the whole army had got clear of the Alpine valleys, and entered the country of their friends, the Insubrians, on the wide plain of northern Italy.

Hannibal was arrived in Italy, but with a force so weakened by its losses in men and horses, and by the exhausted state of the survivors, that he might seem to have accomplished his great march in vain. According to his own statement, which there is no reason to doubt, he brought out of the Alpine valleys no more than 12,000 African and 8,000 Spanish infantry, with 6,000 cavalry, so that his march from the Pyrenees to the plains of northern Italy must have cost him 33,000 men; an enormous loss, which proves how severely the army must have suffered from the privations of the march and the severity of the Alpine climate; for not half of these 33,000 men can have fallen in battle.

Once again the subject shall be Hannibal, and Arnold shall be the artist. This time Hannibal suffers his final defeat at the hands of Scipio.

THE BATTLE OF ZAMA.

[201 B.C.]

Hannibal, we are told, landed at Leptis, at what season of the year we know not; and after refreshing his troops for some time at Adrumetum, he took the field, and advanced to the neighborhood of Zama, a town situated, as Polybius describes it, about five days’ journey from Carthage, toward the west. It seems that Scipio was busied in overrunning the country, and in subduing the several towns, when he was interrupted in these operations by the approach of the Carthaginian army. He is said to have detected some spies sent by Hannibal to observe his position; and by causing them to be led carefully round his camp, and then sent back in safety to Hannibal, he so excited the admiration of his antagonist as to make him solicit a personal interview, with the hope of effecting a termination of hostilities. The report of this conference, and of the speeches of the two generals, savors greatly of the style of Roman family memoirs, the most unscrupulous in falsehood of any pretended records of facts that the world has yet seen. However, the meeting ended in nothing, and the next day the two armies were led out into the field for the last decisive struggle. The numbers on each side we have no knowledge of, but probably neither was in this respect much superior. Masinissa, however, with four thousand Numidian cavalry, beside six thousand infantry, had joined Scipio a few days before the battle; while Hannibal, who had so often been indebted to the services of Numidians, had now, on this great occasion, only two thousand horse of that nation to oppose to the numbers and fortune and activity of Masinissa. The account of the disposition of both armies, and of the events of the action, was probably drawn up by Polybius from the information given to him by Lælius, and perhaps from the family records of the house of Scipio. And here we may admit its authority to be excellent. It states that the Roman legions were drawn up in their usual order, except that the maniples of every alternate line did not cover the intervals in the line before them, but were placed one behind another, thus leaving avenues in several places through the whole depth of the army, from front to rear. These avenues were loosely filled by the light-armed troops, who had received orders to meet the charge of the elephants, and to draw them down the passages left between the maniples, till they should be enticed entirely beyond the rear of the whole army. The cavalry, as usual, was stationed on the wings; Masinissa, with his Numidians, on the right, and Lælius, with the Italians, on the left. On the other side, Hannibal stationed his elephants, to the number of eighty, in the front of his whole line. Next to these were placed the foreign troops in the service of Carthage, twelve thousand strong, consisting of Ligurians, Gauls, inhabitants of the Balearian islands, and Moors. The second line was composed of those Africans who were the immediate subjects of Carthage, and of the Carthaginians themselves; while Hannibal himself, with his veteran soldiers, who had returned with him from Italy, formed a third line, which was kept in reserve, at a little distance behind the other two. The Numidian cavalry were on the left, opposed to their own countrymen under Masinissa; and the Carthaginian horse on the right, opposed to Lælius and the Italians. After some skirmishing of the Numidians in the two armies, Hannibal’s elephants advanced to the charge, but being startled by the sound of the Roman trumpets, and annoyed by the light-armed troops of the enemy, some broke off to the right and left, and fell in amongst the cavalry of their own army on both the wings, so that Lælius and Masinissa, availing themselves of this disorder, drove the Carthaginian horse speedily from the field. Others advanced against the enemy’s line, and did much mischief, till at length, being frightened and becoming ungovernable, they were enticed by the light-armed troops of the Romans to follow them down the avenues which Scipio had purposely left open, and were thus drawn out of the action altogether. Meantime, the infantry on both sides met, and, after a fierce contest, the foreign troops in Hannibal’s army, not being properly supported by the soldiers of the second line, were forced to give ground; and in resentment for this desertion, they fell upon the Africans and Carthaginians, and cut them down as enemies, so that these troops, at once assaulted by their fellow-soldiers, and by the pursuing enemy, were also, after a brave resistance, defeated and dispersed. Hannibal, with his reserve, kept off the fugitives by presenting spears to them, and obliging them to escape in a different direction; and he then prepared to meet the enemy, trusting that they would be ill able to resist the shock of a fresh body of veterans, after having already been engaged in a long and obstinate struggle. Scipio, after having extricated his troops from the heaps of dead which lay between him and Hannibal, commenced a second, and a far more serious contest. The soldiers on both sides were perfect in courage and in discipline, and as the battle went on, they fell in the ranks where they fought, and their places were supplied by their comrades with unabated zeal. At last Lælius and Masinissa returned from the pursuit of the enemy’s beaten cavalry, and fell, in a critical moment, upon the rear of Hannibal’s army. Then his veterans, surrounded and overpowered, still maintained their high reputation, and most of them were cut down where they stood, resisting to the last. Flight indeed was not easy, for the country was a plain, and the Roman and Numidian horse were active in pursuit; yet Hannibal, when he saw the battle totally lost, with a nobler fortitude than his brother had shown at the Metaurus, escaped from the field to Adrumetum. He knew that his country would now need his assistance more than ever, and as he had been in so great a degree the promoter of the war, it ill became him to shrink from bearing his full share of the weight of its disastrous issue.

On the plains of Zama twenty thousand of the Carthaginian army were slain, and an equal number taken prisoners, but the consequences of the battle far exceeded the greatness of the immediate victory. It was not the mere destruction of an army, but the final conquest of the only power that seemed able to combat Rome on equal terms. In the state of the ancient world, with so few nations really great and powerful, and so little of a common feeling pervading them, there was neither the disposition nor the materials for forming a general confederacy against the power of Rome; and the single efforts of Macedonia, of Syria, and of Carthage herself, after the fatal event of the second Punic war, were of no other use than to provoke their own ruin. The defeat of Hannibal insured the empire of the ancient civilized world.

The only hope of the Carthaginians now rested on the forbearance of Scipio, and they again sent deputies to him, with a full confession of the injustice of their conduct in the first origin of the war, and still more in their recent violation of the truce, and with a renewal of their supplications for peace. The conqueror, telling them that he was moved solely by considerations of the dignity of Rome, and the uncertainty of all human greatness, and in no degree by any pity for misfortunes which were so well deserved, presented the terms on which alone they could hope for mercy. “They were to make amends for the injuries done to the Romans during the truce; to restore all prisoners and deserters; to give up all their ships of war, except ten, and all their elephants; to engage in no war at all out of Africa, nor in Africa without the consent of the Romans; to restore to Masinissa all that had belonged to him or any of his ancestors; to feed the Roman army for three months, and pay it till it should be recalled home; to pay a contribution of ten thousand Euboic talents, at the rate of two hundred talents a year, for fifty years; and to give a hundred hostages, between the ages of fourteen and thirty, to be selected at the pleasure of the Roman general.” At this price the Carthaginians were allowed to hold their former dominion in Africa, and to enjoy their independence, till it should seem convenient to the Romans to complete their destruction. Yet Hannibal strongly urged that the terms should be accepted, and, it is said, rudely interrupted a member of the supreme council at Carthage, who was speaking against them. He probably felt, as his father had done under circumstances nearly similar, that for the present resistance was vain, but that, by purchasing peace at any price, and by a wise management of their internal resources, his countrymen might again find an opportunity to recover their losses. Peace was accordingly signed, the Roman army returned to Italy, and Hannibal, at the age of forty-five, having seen the schemes of his whole life utterly ruined, was now beginning, with equal patience and resolution, to lay the foundation for them again.

But Zama was Hannibal’s Waterloo, and the virtual overthrow of Carthage. Rome’s course was now open to universal empire.

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[June 1.]

When we wish by our own efforts that something shall succeed, we become irritated with obstacles, because we feel in these hindrances that the motive that makes us act has not placed them there, and we find things in them which the self-will that makes us act has not found there.

But when God inspires our actions, we never feel anything outside that does not come from the same principle that causes us to act; there is no opposition in the motive that impels us; the same motive power which leads us to act, leads others to resist us, or permits them at least; so that as we find no difference in this, and it is not our own will that combats external events, but the same will that produces the good and permits the evil, this uniformity does not trouble the peace of the soul, and is one of the best tokens that we are acting by the will of God, since it is much more certain that God permits the evil, however great it may be, than that God causes the good in us (and not some secret motive), however great it may appear to us; so that in order really to perceive whether it is God that makes us act, it is much better to test ourselves by our deportment without than by our motives within, since if we only examine ourselves within, although we may find nothing but good there, we can not assure ourselves that this good comes truly from God. But when we examine ourselves without, that is when we consider whether we suffer external hindrances with patience, this signifies that there is a uniformity of will between the motive power that inspires our passions and the one that permits the resistance to them; and as there is no doubt that it is God who permits the one, we have a right humbly to hope that it is God who produces the other.

But what! we act as if it were our mission to make truth triumph, whilst it is only our mission to combat for it. The desire to conquer is so natural that when it is covered by the desire of making the truth triumph, we often take the one for the other, and think that we are seeking the glory of God, when in truth we are seeking our own. It seems to me that the way in which we support these hindrances is the surest token of it, for in fine if we wish only the order established by God, it is certain that we wish the triumph of his justice as much as that of his mercy, and when it does not come of our negligence, we shall be in an equal mood, whether the truth be known or whether it be combated, since in the one the mercy of God triumphs, and in the other his justice.—Pascal.

[June 8.]

O most blessed mansion of the heavenly Jerusalem! O most effulgent day of eternity, which night obscureth not, but the supreme truth continually enlighteneth! a day of perennial peace and joy, incapable of change or intermission! It shineth now in the full splendor of perpetual light to the blessed; but to the poor pilgrims on earth it appeareth only at a great distance, and “through a glass darkly.” The redeemed sons of heaven triumph in the perfection of the joys of his eternal day, while the distressed sons of Eve lament the irksomeness of days teeming with distress and anguish. How is man defiled with sins, agitated with passions, disquieted with fears, tortured with cares, embarrassed with refinements, deluded with vanities, encompassed with errors, worn out with labors, vexed with temptations, enervated with pleasures, and tormented with want!

O when will these various evils be no more? When shall I be delivered from the slavery of sin? When, O Lord, shall my thoughts and desires center and be fixed in thee alone? When shall I regain my native liberty? O, when will peace return, and be established, peace from the troubles of the world, and the disorders of sinful passions; universal peace, incapable of interruption; that “peace which passeth all understanding?” When, O most merciful Jesus! when shall I stand in pure abstraction from all inferior good to gaze upon thee and contemplate the wonders of redeeming love? When wilt thou be to me all in all? O, when shall I dwell with thee in that kingdom which thou hast prepared for thy beloved before the foundation of the world?

Soften, I beseech thee, the rigor of my banishment, assuage the violence of my sorrow! for my soul thirsteth after thee; and all that the world offers for my comfort would but add one more weight to the burden that oppresses me. I long, O Lord, to enjoy thee truly, and would fain rise to a constant adherence to heavenly objects, but the power of earthly objects operating upon my unmortified passions, keeps me down. My mind labors to be superior to the good and evil of this animal life, but my body constrains it to be subject to them. And thus, “wretched man that I am,” while the spirit is always tending to heaven, and the flesh to earth, my heart is the seat of incessant war, and I am a burden to myself! … LXXVII.—“Unto thee do I lift up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens.” In thee, the Father of mercies, I place all my confidence! O illuminate and sanctify my soul with the influence of thy Holy Spirit; that being delivered from all the darkness and impurity of its alienated life, it may become the holy temple of thy living presence, the seat of thy eternal glory! In the immensity of thy goodness, O Lord, and “in the multitude of thy tender mercies, turn unto me,” and hear the prayer of thy poor servant, who hast wandered far from thee into the region of the shadow of death. O protect and keep my soul amid the innumerable evils which this corruptible life is always bringing forth; and by the perpetual guidance of thy grace, lead me in the narrow path of holiness to the realms of everlasting peace.—Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ.”

[June 15.]

The Christian life is better than any other that can be discovered or devised.

First, this is manifest from its object. For no life can have or desire a better object than that which is set forth in the Christian religion, which finds its object in the vision of the divine essence.… But since man can not attain to the contemplation of divine things except by purification of the heart, how much, even in this regard, does the Christian life excel all others. For no greater purification of the heart can be discovered than Christian purification. For that is called pure which is not mixed with another substance, especially one inferior to itself. Thus gold is said to be pure when it is not mixed with silver or lead, or any other inferior substance. Now, because the end of man is God, when man through the intellect and the affections, is united or mixed with other creatures as an ultimate end, especially with those inferior to himself, he is called impure. And the more one frees himself from the love of creatures, the more pure he becomes; purity of the human heart consists in withdrawing the desires and the will from creature loves. But no greater or more perfect withdrawal from earthly loves can be discovered or devised than that which is proclaimed in the Christian religion.… And since man can not live without any love, it teaches that man should love God above all things, even above himself. And, if he loves himself or other creatures, it commands that he love them for the sake of God, so that all his love may tend toward God, and that in the creatures themselves he may love God, and may think nothing, speak nothing, do nothing which does not tend to the glory and honor of God, so that the whole man may tend toward God, and be united with God, and become one with God. And certainly no life can be discovered or devised better than this.

As to the will, he loves God and our Lord Jesus Christ above all things, and his neighbor as himself, keeping all the commands of the law which depend upon this double love.

As to the sensibilities, he strives with all his might to bring desire and anger and all the emotions under the control of reason, and by no means to make provision for the lusts of the flesh (curam carnis facere in concupiscentia).—Savonarola—“De Simplicitate Christianæ Vitæ.”

[June 22.]

The sense of the vastness of the universe, and of the imperfection of our own knowledge, may help us in some degree to understand—not, indeed, the origin of evil and of suffering, but, at any rate, something of its possible uses and purposes. We look around the world, and we see cruel perplexities; the useless spared, the useful taken; the young and happy removed, and the old and miserable lingering on; happy households broken up under our feet, despondent hopes, and the failure of those to whom we looked up with reverence and respect. We go through these trials with wonder and fear; and we ask whereunto this will grow. But has nothing been gained? Yes, that has been gained which nothing else, humanly speaking, could gain. We may have gained a deeper knowledge of the mind of God, and a deeper insight into ourselves. Truths which once seemed mere words, received our heed and heart. Our understanding may have become part of ourselves.

Humility for ourselves, charity for others, self-abasement before the judge of all mankind, these are the gifts that even the best man, and even the worst man may gain by distrust, by doubt, by difficulty.

The perplexity, the danger, the grief often brings with it its own remedy.

On each bursting wave of disappointment and vexation there is a crown of heavenly light which reveals the peril and shows the way, and guides us through the roaring storm.

Out of doubt comes faith; out of grief comes hope; and “to the upright there ariseth light in darkness.”

With each new temptation comes a way to escape; with each new difficulty comes some new explanation. As life advances it does indeed seem to be as a vessel going to pieces, as though we were on the broken fragments of a ship, or in a solitary skiff on the waste of waters; but as long as existence lasts, we must not give up the duty of cheerfulness and hope. He who has guided us through the day may guide us through the night also. The pillar of darkness often turns into a pillar of fire. Let us hold on though the land be miles away; let us hold till the morning breaks. That speck on the distant horizon may be the vessel for which we must shape our course. Forward, not backward, must we steer—forward, and forward, till the speck becomes the friendly ship. Have patience and perseverance; believe that there is still a future before us; and we shall at last reach the heaven where we would be.—Dean Stanley.

[June 29.]

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him. A breath of air, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But were the universe to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he dies; and the universe knows nothing of the advantage it has over him.

Our whole dignity consists then in thought. Our elevation must be derived from this, not from space and duration, which we can not fill. Let us endeavor, then, to think well.

Our imagination so magnifies the present time by continually reflecting upon it, and so diminishes eternity by not reflecting upon it, that we make a nothingness of eternity, and an eternity of nothingness, and all this has its roots so vital in us, that our reason can not defend us from it.

It is necessary to know where to doubt, where to be assured, and where to submit. Who does not thus, understands not the force of reason. There are those who offend against these three principles, either affirming everything as demonstrative, for want of a knowledge of demonstration; or doubting everything, for want of knowing where it is necessary to submit; or submitting to everything, for want of knowing where it is necessary to judge.

But those who seek God with all their heart, who have no sorrow, but in being deprived of his presence, who have no desire but to possess him, and no enemies but those who turn them from him; who are afflicted in seeing themselves surrounded and oppressed by such enemies; let them be comforted, I bring them good news; there is a liberator for them, I shall cause them to see him; I shall show them that there is a God for them; I shall show him to no others.

The stoics say: Enter into yourselves; there you will find repose; and this is not true. Others say: Go out of yourselves; seek happiness in diverting yourselves; and this is not true. Diseases come; happiness is neither out of us, nor in us; it is in God, both out of, and in us.

If man is not made for God, why is he happy only in God? If man is made for God, why is he opposed to God?—Pascal.

READINGS IN ART.

III.—ENGLISH PAINTERS AND PAINTINGS.

Abridged from “English and American Painters,” by Wilmot Buxton and S. R. Köhler.

WILLIAM HOGARTH,

Who was the first original painter of England, was born in 1697. His father, who had received a good education at St. Bees, kept a school in Ship Court, and sought work from booksellers. But, like many another poor scholar, he could not make a living, and died disappointed.

After spending some time at school, William Hogarth, warned by the example of his father, determined to pursue a craft in preference to literature, and was apprenticed, probably in 1711, to Ellis Gamble, a silversmith in Cranbourne Alley. He tells us how he determined to enter a wider field than that of mere silver-plate engraving, though at the age of twenty to engrave his own designs on copper was the height of his ambition. The men and women who jostled him in London streets or rolled by him in their coaches, were his models. Beside the keenest powers of observation, and a sardonic, sympathizing, and pitying humor, he possessed a wonderfully accurate and retentive memory, which enabled him to impress a face or form on his mind, and to reproduce it at leisure. Occasionally, if some very attractive or singular face struck his fancy, he would sketch it on his thumb nail, and thence transfer it. Hogarth tells us that “instead of burdening the memory with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged pictures, I have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest way of obtaining knowledge of my art.” In 1724 he engraved “Masquerades and Operas,” a satire, which represents “society” crowding to a masquerade, and led by a figure wearing a cap and bells on his head, and the garter on his leg. This engraving delighted the public whom it satirized, and Hogarth lost much through piracies of his work. He was employed by the booksellers to illustrate books with engravings and frontispieces. In 1726 was published, beside his twelve large prints, which are well known, an edition of “Hudibras,” illustrated by Hogarth, in seventeen smaller plates. The designs of Hogarth are not so witty as the verses of Butler, but we must remember that the painter had never seen men living and acting as they are described in the poem; they were not like the men of whom he made his daily studies. At this period he who dared to be original, and to satirize his neighbors, had much trouble. In 1730 Hogarth made a secret marriage at old Paddington Church, with Jane, only daughter of Sir James Thornhill, Serjeant-Painter to the King. He had frequented Thornhill’s studio, but whether the art of the court painter, or the face of his daughter was the greater attraction we know not. There is no doubt that Hogarth’s technique was studied from Thornhill’s pictures, and not from those of Watteau or Chardin, as has been supposed. For a time after his marriage Hogarth confined himself to painting portraits and conversation pieces, for which he was well paid, although Walpole declares that this “was the most ill-suited employment to a man whose turn was certainly not flattery.” Truthfulness, however, is more valuable in a portrait than flattery, and we surely find it in Hogarth’s portraits of himself, one in the National Gallery, and in that of “Captain Coram,” at the Foundling.

One of the best of Hogarth’s life stories is the “Marriage à la Mode,” the original paintings of which are in the National Gallery; they appeared in prints in 1745. These well known pictures illustrate the story of a loveless marriage, where parents sacrifice their children, the one for rank, the other for money. Mr. Redgrave (“A Century of Painters”) tells us that “the novelty of Hogarth’s work consisted in the painter being the inventor of his own drama, as well as painter, and in the way in which all the parts are made to tend to a dramatic whole, each picture dependent on the other, and all the details illustrative of the complete work. The same characters recur again and again, moved in different tableaux with varied passions, one moral running through all, the beginning finding its natural climax in the end.” We can not do more than mention some of the remaining works by which the satirist continued “to shoot Folly as she flies.” “Beer Street,” and “Gin Lane,” illustrate the advantages of drinking the national beverage, and the miseries following the use of gin. “The Cockpit” represents a scene very common in those days, and contains many portraits. “The Election” is a series of four scenes, published between 1755 and 1758, in which all the varied vices, humors, and passions of a contested election are admirably represented.

Hogarth’s last years were embittered by quarrels, those with Churchill and Wilkes being the most memorable. The publication in 1753 of his admirable book, called “The Analysis of Beauty,” in which he tried to prove that a winding line is the line of beauty, produced much adverse criticism and many fierce attacks, which the painter could not take quietly. He was further annoyed by the censures passed on his picture of “Sigismunda,” now in the National Gallery, which he had painted in 1759 for Sir Richard Grosvenor, and which was returned on his hands. Two years previously Hogarth had been made Serjeant-Painter to the King. He did not live to hold his office long; on October 26th, 1764, the hand which had exposed the vices and follies of the day so truly, and yet with such humor, had ceased to move.

RICHARD WILSON.

The story of Richard Wilson (1713-1782) is the story of a disappointed man. Born at Pinegas, Montgomeryshire, the son of the parson of that place, Wilson’s early taste for drawing attracted the attention of Sir George Wynne, by whom he was introduced to one Wright, a portrait painter in London. In 1749 he visited Italy, and whilst waiting for an interview with the landscape painter Zuccarelli he is said to have sketched the view through the open window. The Italian advised the Englishman to devote himself henceforth to landscapes, and Wilson followed his advice. After six years’ stay in Italy, during which period he became imbued with the beauties of that country, Wilson returned to England in 1755, and found Zuccarelli worshiped, whilst he himself was neglected. His “Niobe,” one version of which is in the National Gallery, was exhibited with the Society of Artists’ Collection, in Spring Gardens, 1760, and made a great impression, but, in general, his pictures, infinitely superior to the mere decorations of the Italian, were criticised, and compared unfavorably with those of Zuccarelli, and it was not till long after Wilson’s death that he was thoroughly appreciated. He was often compelled to sell his pictures to pawnbrokers, who, so it is said, could not sell them again. Wilson was one of the original thirty-six members of the Royal Academy, and in 1776 applied for and obtained the post of Librarian to that body, the small salary helping the struggling man to live. The last years of his life were brightened by better fortune. A brother left him a legacy, and in 1780 Wilson retired to a pleasant home at Llanberis, Carnarvon, where he died two years later. Mr. Redgrave says of him: “There is this praise due to our countryman—that our landscape art, which had heretofore been derived from the meaner school of Holland, following his great example, looked thenceforth to Italy for its inspiration; that he proved the power of native art to compete on this ground also with the art of the foreigner, and prepared the way for the coming men, who, embracing Nature as their mistress, were prepared to leave all and follow her.” Wilson frequently repeated his more successful pictures. “The Ruins of the Villa of Mæcenas, at Tivoli” (National Gallery), was painted five times by him. In the same gallery are “The Destruction of Niobe’s Children,” “A Landscape with Figures,” three “Views in Italy,” “Lake Avernus with the Bay of Naples in the Distance,” etc. In the Duke of Westminster’s collection are “Apollo and the Seasons” and “The river Dee.” Wilson, like many another man of genius, lived before his time, and was forced one day to ask Barry, the Royal Academician, if he knew any one mad enough to employ a landscape painter, and if so, whether he would recommend him.

JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was born at Plympton, Devon, the son of a clergyman who was a master in the grammar school. His father had intended him for a doctor, but nature decided that Joshua Reynolds should be a painter. He preferred to read Richardson’s “Treatise on Painting” to any other book, and when his taste for art became manifest he was sent to London to study with Hudson, the popular portrait painter of the day. It was in 1741 that Joshua Reynolds began his studies with Hudson, and as that worthy could teach him little or nothing, it is fortunate for art that the connection only lasted two years. On leaving Hudson’s studio Reynolds returned to Devonshire, but we know little about his life there till the year 1746, when his father died, and the painter was established at Plymouth Dock, now Devonport, and was painting portraits. Many of these earlier works betray the stiffness and want of nature which their author had probably learned from Hudson. Having visited London, and stayed for a time in St. Martin’s Lane, the artists’ quarter, Reynolds was enabled, in 1749, to realize his great wish, and go abroad, where, unfettered and unspoilt by the mechanical arts of his countrymen, he studied the treasures of Italy, chiefly in Rome, and without becoming a copyist, was imbued with the beauties of the Italian school. A love of color was the characteristic of Reynolds, and his use of brilliant and fugitive pigments accounts for the decay of many of his best works; he used to say jestingly that “he came off with flying colors.” Doubtless the wish to rival the coloring of the Venetians led Reynolds to make numerous experiments which were often fatal to the preservation of his pictures.

Most of the leaders of the rank and fashion of the day sat for their portraits to the painter who “read souls in faces.” In 1768 Joshua Reynolds was chosen first President of the Royal Academy, and was knighted by George III. He succeeded, on the death of Ramsey, to the office of Court Painter. His “Discourses on Painting,” delivered at the Royal Academy, were remarkable for their excellent judgment and literary skill. A lesser honor, though one which caused him the greatest pleasure, was conferred on Reynolds in 1773, when he was elected Mayor of his native Plympton. In the same year he exhibited his famous “Strawberry Girl,” of which he said that it was “one of the half dozen original things” which no man ever exceeded in his life’s work. In 1789 the failure of his sight warned Sir Joshua that “the night cometh when no man can work.” He died, full of years and honors, on February 23rd, 1792, and was buried near Sir Christopher Wren, in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Reynolds was a most untiring worker. He exhibited two hundred and forty-five pictures in the Royal Academy, on an average eleven every year. In the National Gallery are twenty-three of his paintings. Mr. Ruskin deems Reynolds “one of the seven colorists of the world,” and places him with Titian, Giorgione, Correggio, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Turner. He likewise says: “Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters.” Titian paints nobler pictures, and Van Dyck had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of heart and temper.

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), the son of a clothier, was born at Sudbury, in Suffolk. The details of this master’s life are few and uneventful. When between fourteen and fifteen years of age, his father sent Thomas Gainsborough to London to study art. His first master was Gravelot, a French engraver of great ability, to whose teaching Gainsborough probably owed much. From him he passed to Hayman, in the St. Martin’s Lane Academy, a drawing school only. Gainsborough began as a portrait and landscape painter in Hatton Garden, but finding little patronage during four years of his sojourn there, returned to his native town. In 1760 he removed to Bath, and found a favorable field for portrait painting, though landscape was not neglected. Fourteen years later Gainsborough, no longer an unknown artist, came to London and rented part of Schomberg House, Pall Mall. He was now regarded as the rival of Reynolds in portraiture, and of Wilson in landscape. Once, when Reynolds at an Academy dinner proposed the health of his rival as “the greatest landscape painter of the day,” Wilson, who was present, exclaimed, “Yes, and the greatest portrait painter, too.” One of the original members of the Royal Academy, Gainsborough exhibited ninety pictures in the Gallery, but refused to contribute after 1783, because a portrait of his was not hung as he wished. A quick tempered, impulsive man, he had many disputes with Reynolds, though none of them were of a very bitter kind. Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy” is commonly said to have been painted in spite against Reynolds, in order to disprove the President’s statement that blue ought not to be used in masses. But there were other and worthier reasons for the production of this celebrated work, in respect to which Gainsborough followed his favorite Van Dyck in displaying “a large breadth of cool light supporting the flesh.” It is pleasant to know that whatever soreness of feeling existed between him and Sir Joshua passed away before he died. This was in 1788. Gainsborough was buried at Kew. The Englishness of his landscapes makes him popular. Wilson had improved on the Dutch type by visiting Italy, but Gainsborough sought no other subjects than his own land afforded. Nature speaks in his portraits, or from his landscapes, and his rustic children excel those of Reynolds, because they are really sun-browned peasants, not fine ladies and gentlemen masquerading in the dresses of villagers. Mr. Ruskin says of Gainsborough: “His power of color (it is mentioned by Sir Joshua as his peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens; he is the purest colorist—Sir Joshua himself not excepted—of the whole English school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not now in Europe. I hesitate not to say that in the management and quality of single and particular tints, in the purely technical part of painting, Turner is a child to Gainsborough.”

JOSEPH TURNER.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) stands at the head of English landscape painters. It has been said that though others may have equaled or surpassed him in some respects, “none has yet appeared with such versatility of talent.” Turner owed nothing to the beauty or poetic surroundings of his birthplace, which was the house of his father, a barber in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. But as Lord Byron is said to have conjured up his loveliest scenes of Greece whilst walking in Albemarle Street, so the associations of Maiden Lane did not prevent Turner from delineating storm-swept landscapes, and innumerable splendors of nature. The barber was justly proud of his child, who very early displayed his genius, and the first drawings of Turner are said to have been exhibited in his father’s shaving room. In time the boy was coloring prints and washing in the backgrounds of architects’ drawings. Dr. Monro, the art patron, extended a helping hand to the young genius of Maiden Lane. “Girtin and I,” says Turner, “often walked to Bushey and back, to make drawings for good Dr. Munro at half a crown a piece, and the money for our supper when we got home.” He did not, of course, start from London.

In 1789 Turner became a student in the Academy, and exhibited a picture in the next year at Somerset House, “View of the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth.” He was then only fifteen. From that time he worked with unceasing energy at his profession. Indeed, the pursuit of art was the one ruling principle of his life. He frequently went on excursions, the first being to Ramsgate and Margate, and was storing his memory with effects of storm, mist, and tempest, which he reproduced. In 1799, when made A.R.A., Turner had already exhibited works which ranged over twenty-six counties of England and Wales. In 1802 he was made full Academician, and presented, as his diploma picture, “Dolbadarn Castle, North Wales.” In this year he visited the Continent, and saw France and Switzerland. Five years later Turner was appointed Professor of Perspective to the Royal Academy. We are told his lectures were delivered in so strange a style, that they were scarcely instructive. Of his water-color paintings and of the “Liber Studiorum” it is impossible to speak too highly; he created the modern school of water-color painting, and his works in oil have influenced the art of the nineteenth century. He visited Italy for the first time in 1819; again ten years later, and for the last time in 1840. His eccentricity, both in manner and in art, increased with age. Though wealthy, and possessing a good house in Queen Anne Street, he died in an obscure lodging by the Thames, at Chelsea, a few days before Christmas, 1851.

Turner bequeathed his property to found a charity for male decayed artists, but the alleged obscurity of his will defeated this object. It was decided that his pictures and drawings should be presented to the National Gallery, that one thousand pounds should be spent on a monument to the painter in St. Paul’s, twenty thousand pounds should be given to the Royal Academy, and the remainder to the next of kin and heir at law. The National Gallery contains more than one hundred of his pictures, beside a large number of water-color drawings and sketches.

EASTLAKE.

Charles Lock Eastlake (1793-1865), son of the Solicitor to the Admiralty in that town, was born at Plymouth, and educated first in Plympton Grammar School, where Reynolds had studied, and afterward at the Charterhouse, London. Choosing the profession of a painter, he was encouraged, doubtless, by his fellow townsman, Haydon, who had just exhibited “Dentatus.” Eastlake became the pupil of that erratic master, and attended the Academy schools. In 1813 he exhibited at the British Institution a large and ambitious picture, “Christ raising the Daughter of the Ruler.” In the following year the young painter was sent by Mr. Harmon to Paris, to copy some of the famous works collected by Napoleon in the Louvre. The emperor’s escape from Elba, and the consequent excitement in Europe, caused Eastlake to quit Paris, and he returned to Plymouth, where he practiced successfully as a portrait painter. In 1819 Eastlake visited Greece and Italy, and spent fourteen years abroad, chiefly at Ferrara and Rome. The picturesque dress of the Italian and Greek peasantry so fascinated him that for a long period he forsook history for small genre works, of which brigands and peasants were the chief subjects. A large historical painting, “Mercury bringing the Golden Apple to Paris,” appeared in 1820, and seven years later, “The Spartan Isidas.” In 1828 Eastlake produced “Italian Scene in the Anno Santo, Pilgrims arriving in sight of St. Peters,” which he twice repeated. In 1829 “Lord Byron’s Dream,” a poetic landscape (National Gallery), was exhibited, and Eastlake becoming an Academician, returned to England. To his labors as a painter Eastlake added the duties of several important offices, and much valuable literary work. He was Secretary to the Royal Commission for Decorating the New Palace of Westminster, Librarian of the Royal Academy, and Keeper, and afterward Director of the National Gallery. In 1850 he succeeded Sir Martin Shee as President of the Royal Academy, and was knighted. From that time till his death, at Pisa, in 1865, he was chiefly engaged in selecting pictures to be purchased by the British Government. He was editor of Kugler’s “Handbook of the Italian Schools of painting,” and author of “Materials for a History of Oil Painting.”

SIR EDWIN LANDSEER.

Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873) was eminent among English animal painters. No artist has done more to teach us how to love animals and to enforce the truth that

“He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small.”

Not only did Landseer rival some of the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century in painting fur and feathers, but he depicted animals with sympathy, as if he believed that “the dumb, driven cattle” possess souls. His dogs and other animals are so human as to look as if they were able to speak. The painter was the son of John Landseer, the engraver, and was born in London. He received art lessons from his father, and, when little more than a baby, would sketch donkeys, horses, and cows at Hampstead Heath. Some of these sketches, made when Landseer was five, seven, and ten years old, are at Kensington. He was only fourteen when he exhibited the heads of “A Pointer Bitch and Puppy.” When between sixteen and seventeen he produced “Dogs Fighting,” which was engraved by the painter’s father. Still more popular was “The Dogs of St. Gothard rescuing a Distressed Traveler,” which appeared when its author was eighteen. Landseer was not a pupil of Haydon, but he had occasional counsel from him. He dissected a lion. As soon as he reached the age of twenty-four he was elected A.R.A., and exhibited at the Academy “The Hunting of Chevy Chase.” This was in 1826, and in 1831 he became a full member of the Academy. Landseer had visited Scotland in 1826, and from that date we trace a change in his style, which thenceforth was far less solid, true and searching, and became more free and bold. The introduction of deer into his pictures, as in “The Children of the Mist,” “Seeking Sanctuary,” and “The Stag at Bay,” marked the influence of Scotch associations. Landseer was knighted in 1850, and at the French exhibition of 1855 was awarded the only large gold medal given to an English artist. Prosperous, popular, and the guest of the highest personages of the realm, he was visited about 1852 by an illness which compelled him to retire from society. From this he recovered, but the effects of a railway accident in 1868 brought on a relapse. He died in 1873, and was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. On the death of Sir Charles Eastlake, in 1865, he was offered the Presidentship of the Royal Academy, but this honor he declined. In the National Gallery are “Spaniels of King Charles’s Breed,” “Low Life and High Life,” “Highland Music” (a highland piper disturbing a group of five hungry dogs, at their meal, with a blast on the pipes), “The Hunted Stag,” “Peace,” “War” (dying and dead horses, and their riders lying amidst the burning ruins of a cottage), “Dignity and Impudence,” “Alexander and Diogenes,” “The Defeat of Comus,” a sketch painted for a fresco in the Queen’s summer house, Buckingham Palace. Sixteen of Landseer’s works are in the Sheepshanks Collection, including the touching “Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner,” of which Mr. Ruskin said that “it stamps its author not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the man of mind.”

CRITICISMS ON AMERICAN LITERATURE.

CONDITIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.

The conditions under which the communities of the New World were established, and the terms on which they hitherto existed, have been unfavorable to Art. The religious and commercial enthusiasms of the first adventurers to her shores, supplying themes for the romancers of a later age, were themselves antagonistic to romance. The spirit which tore down the aisles of St. Regulus, and was revived in England in a reaction against music, painting and poetry, the Pilgrim Fathers bore with them in the “Mayflower” and planted across the seas. The life of the early colonists left no leisure for refinement. They had to conquer nature before admiring it, to feed and clothe before analyzing themselves. The ordinary cares of existence beset them to the exclusion of its embellishments. While Dryden, Pope and Addison were polishing stanzas and adding grace to English prose, they were felling trees, navigating rivers, and fertilizing valleys.… An enlightened people in a new land “where almost every one has facilities elsewhere unknown for making his fortune,” it is not to be wondered that the pursuit of wealth has been their leading impulse; nor is it perhaps to be regretted that much of their originality has been expended upon inventing machines instead of manufacturing verses, or that their religion itself has taken a practical turn. One of their own authors confesses that the “common New England life is still a lean, impoverished life, in distinction from a rich and suggestive one,” but it is there alone that the speculative and artistic tendencies of recent years have found room and occasion for development. Our travelers find a peculiar charm in the manly force and rough adventurous spirit of the Far West, but the poetry of the pioneer is unconscious. The attractive culture of the South has been limited in extent and degree. The hothouse fruit of wealth and leisure, it has never struck its roots deeply into native soil.… All the best transatlantic literature is inspired by the spirit of confidence—often of over-confidence—in labor. It has only flourished freely in a free soil; and for almost all its vitality and aspirations, its comparatively scant performance and large promise we must turn to New England. Its defects and merits are those of the national character as developed in the northern states, and we must seek for an explanation of its peculiarities in the physical and moral circumstances which surround them.

When European poets and essayists write of nature it is to contrast her permanence with the mutability of human life. We talk of the everlasting hills, the perennial fountains, the ever-recurring seasons.… In America, on the other hand, it is the extent of nature that is dwelt upon—the infinity of space, rather than the infinity of time, is opposed to the limited rather than to the transient existence of man. Nothing strikes a traveler in that country so much as this feature of magnitude. The rivers like rolling lakes, the lakes which are inland seas, the forests, the plains, Niagara itself, with its world of waters, owe their magnificence to their immensity; and by a transference, not unnatural, although fallacious, the Americans generally have modeled their ideas of art after the same standard of size. Their wars, their hotels, their language, are pitched on the huge scale of their distances. “Orphaned of the solemn inspiration of antiquity,” they gain in surface what they have lost in age; in hope, what they have lost in memory.

“That untraveled world whose margin fades

Forever and forever when they move,”

is all their own; and they have the area and the expectation of a continent to set against the culture and the ancestral voices of a thousand years. Where Englishmen remember, Americans anticipate. In thought and action they are ever rushing into empty spaces. Except in a few of the older states, a family mansion is rarely rooted to the same town or district; and the tie which unites one generation with another being easily broken, the want of continuity in life breeds a want of continuity in thought. The American mind delights in speculative and practical, social and political experiments, as Shakerism, Mormonism, Pantagamy; and a host of authors from Emerson to Walt. Whitman, have tried to glorify every mode of human life from the transcendental to the brutish. The habit of instability, fostered by the rapid vicissitudes of their commercial life and the melting of one class into another drifts away all their landmarks but that of temporary public opinion; and where there is little time for verification and the study of details, men satisfy their curiosity with crude generalizations. The great literary fault of the Americans has thus come to be impatience. The majority of them have never learned that “raw haste is half-sister to delay,” that “works done least rapidly, art most cherishes.” The make-shifts which were first a necessity with the northern settlers have grown into a custom. They adopt ten half measures instead of one whole one; and, beginning bravely like the grandiloquent preambles to their Constitutions end sometimes in the sublime, and sometimes in the ridiculous.

The critics of one nation must, to a certain extent, regard the works of another from an outside point of view. Few are able to divest themselves wholly of the influence of local standards; and this is preëminently the case when the early efforts of a young country are submitted to the judgment of an older country, strong in its prescriptive rights, and intolerant of changes the drift of which it is unable or unwilling to appreciate. English critics are apt to bear down on the writers and thinkers of the new world with a sort of aristocratic hauteur; they are perpetually reminding them of their immaturity and their disregard of the golden mean. Americans, on the other hand, are impossible to please. Ordinary men among them are as sensitive to foreign, and above all to British censure, as the irritable genus of other lands. Mr. Emerson is permitted to impress home truths on his countrymen, as “your American eagle is all very well, but beware of the American peacock.” Such remarks are not permitted to Englishmen; if they point to any flaws in American manners or ways of thinking, with an effort after politeness, it is “the good natured cynicism of a well-to-do age;” if they commend transatlantic institutions or achievements, it is, according to Mr. Lowell, “with that pleasant European air of self-compliment in condescending to be pleased by American merit which we find so conciliating.” Now that the United States have reached their full majority, it is time that England should cease to assume the attitude of their guardian, and time that they should cease to be on the alert to resent the assumption. Foremost among the more attractive features of transatlantic literature is its freshness. The authority which is the guide of old nations constantly threatens to become tyrannical; they wear their traditions like a chain; and in the canonization of laws of taste, the creative powers are depressed. Even in England we write under fixed conditions; with the fear of critics before our eyes, we are all bound to cast our ideas into similar moulds, and the name of “free-thinkers” has grown into a term of reproach. Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” is perhaps the last book written without a thought of being reviewed. There is a gain in the habit of self-restraint fostered by this state of things; but there is a loss in the consequent lack of spontaneity, and we may learn something from a literature which is ever ready for adventure. In America the love of uniformity gives place to impetuous impulses; the most extreme sentiments are made audible; the most noxious “have their day and cease to be;” and truth being left to vindicate itself, the overthrow of error, though more gradual, may at last prove more complete. A New England poet can write with confidence of his country as the land

“Where no one suffers loss or bleeds

For thoughts that men call heresies.”

Another feature of American literature is its comprehensiveness; what it has lost in depth it has gained in breadth. Addressing a vast audience it appeals to universal sympathies.—Abridged from “American Literature” in Encyclopædia Britannica.

OUR LITERATURE IMITATIVE.

Literature is a positive element of civilized life; but in different countries and epochs it exists sometimes as a passive taste or means of culture, and at others as a development of productive tendencies. The first is the usual form in colonial societies, where the habit of looking to the fatherland for intellectual nutriment as well as political authority is the natural result even of patriotic feeling. The circumstances, too, of young communities, like those of the individual, are unfavorable to original literary production. Life is too absorbing to be recorded otherwise than in statistics. The wants of the hour and the exigencies of practical responsibility wholly engage the mind. Half a century ago, it was usual to sneer in England at the literary pretensions of America; but the ridicule was quite as unphilosophical as unjust, for it was to be expected that the new settlements would find their chief mental subsistence in the rich heritage of British literature, endeared to them by a community of language, political sentiment, and historical association. And when a few of the busy denizens of a new republic ventured to give expression to their thoughts, it was equally natural that the spirit and the principles of their ancestral literature should reappear. Scenery, border-life, the vicinity of the aborigines, and a great political experiment were the only novel features in the new world upon which to found anticipations of originality; in academic culture, habitual reading, moral and domestic tastes, and cast of mind, the Americans were identified with the mother country, and, in all essential particulars, would naturally follow the style thus inherent in their natures and confirmed by habit and study. At first, therefore, the literary development of the United States was imitative; but with the progress of the country, and her increased leisure and means of education, the writings of the people became more and more characteristic; theological and political occasions gradually ceased to be the exclusive moulds of thought; and didactic, romantic, and picturesque compositions appeared from time to time. Irving peopled “Sleepy Hollow” with fanciful creations; Bryant described not only with truth and grace, but with devotional sentiment, the characteristic scenes of his native land; Cooper introduced Europeans to the wonders of her forest and seacoast; Bancroft made her story eloquent; and Webster proved that the race of orators who once roused her children to freedom was not extinct. The names of Edwards and Franklin were echoed abroad; the bonds of mental dependence were gradually loosened; the inherited tastes remained, but they were freshened with a more native zest; and although Brockden Brown is still compared to Godwin, Irving to Addison, Cooper to Scott, Hoffman to Moore, Emerson to Carlyle, and Holmes to Pope, a characteristic vein, an individuality of thought, and a local significance is now generally recognized in the emanations of the American mind; and the best of them rank favorably and harmoniously with similar exemplars in British literature; while, in a few instances, the nationality is so marked, and so sanctioned by true genius, as to challenge the recognition of all impartial and able critics. The majority, however, of our authors are men of talent rather than of genius; the greater part of the literature of the country has sprung from New England, and is therefore, as a general rule, too unimpassioned and coldly elegant for popular effect. There have been a lamentable want of self-reliance, and an obstinate blindness to the worth of native material, both scenic, historical, and social. The great defect of our literature has been a lack of independence, and too exclusive a deference to hackneyed models; there has been, and is, no deficiency of intellectual life; it has thus far, however, often proved too diffusive and conventional for great results.—Henry T. Tuckerman.

POETRY OF AMERICA.

America abounds in the material of poetry. Its history, its scenery, the structure of its social life, the thoughts which pervade its political forms, the meaning which underlies its hot contests, are all capable of being exhibited in a poetical aspect. Carlyle, in speaking of the settlement of Plymouth by the Pilgrims, remarks that, if we had the open sense of the Greeks, we should have “found a poem here; one of nature’s own poems, such as she writes in broad facts over great continents.” If we have a literature, it should be a national literature; no feeble or sonorous echo of Germany or England, but essentially American in its tone and object. No matter how meritorious a composition may be, as long as any foreign nation can say that it has done the same thing better, so long shall we be spoken of with contempt, or in a spirit of impertinent patronage. We begin to sicken of the custom, now so common, of presenting even our best poems to the attention of foreigners with a deprecating, apologetic air; as if their acceptance of the offering, with a few soft and silky compliments, would be an act of kindness demanding our warmest acknowledgements. If the Quarterly Review or Blackwood’s Magazine speaks well of an American production, we think that we can praise it ourselves, without incurring the reproach of bad taste. The folly we yearly practice, of flying into a passion with some inferior English writer, who caricatures our faults, and tells dull jokes about his tour through the land, has only the effect to exalt an insignificant scribbler into notoriety, and give a nominal value to his recorded impertinence. If the mind and heart of the country had its due expression, if its life had taken form in a literature worthy of itself, we should pay little regard to the childish tattling of a pert coxcomb, who was discontented with our taverns, or the execrations of some bluff sea-captain, who was shocked with our manners. The uneasy sense we have of something in our national existence which has not yet been fitly expressed, gives poignancy to the least ridicule launched at faults and follies which lie on the superficies of our life. Every person feels that a book which condemns the country for its peculiarities of manners and customs does not pierce into the heart of the matter, and is essentially worthless. If Bishop Berkeley, when he visited Malebranche, had paid exclusive attention to the habitation, raiment, and manners of the man, and neglected the conversation of the metaphysician, and, when he returned to England, had entertained Pope, Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot, with satirical descriptions of the “complement extern” of his eccentric host, he would have acted just as wisely as many an English tourist, with whose malicious pleasantry on our habits of chewing, spitting, and eating, we are silly enough to quarrel. To the United States, in reference to the pop-gun shots of foreign tourists, might be addressed the warning which Peter Plymley thundered against Bonaparte, in reference to the Anti-Jacobin jests of Canning: Tremble, oh thou land of many spitters and voters, “for a pleasant man has come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker of jokes, and he shall talk his pleasant talk to thee, and thou shalt be no more!”

In order that America may take its due rank in the commonwealth of nations, a literature is needed which shall be the exponent of its higher life. We live in times of turbulence and change. There is a general dissatisfaction, manifesting itself often in rude contests and ruder speech, with the gulf which separates principles from actions. Men are struggling to realize dim ideals of right and truth, and each failure adds to the desperate earnestness of their efforts. Beneath all the shrewdness and selfishness of the American character, there is a smouldering enthusiasm which flames out at the first touch of fire,—sometimes at the hot and hasty words of party, and sometimes at the bidding of great thoughts and unselfish principles. The heart of the nation is easily stirred to its depths; but those who rouse its fiery impulses into action are often men compounded of ignorance and wickedness, and wholly unfit to guide the passions which they are able to excite. There is no country in the world which has nobler ideas embodied in more worthless shapes. All our factions, fanaticisms, reforms, parties, creeds, ridiculous or dangerous though they often appear, are founded on some aspiration or reality which deserves a better form and expression. There is a mighty power in great speech. If the sources of what we call our fooleries and faults were rightly addressed, they would echo more majestic and kindling truths. We want a poetry which shall speak in clear, loud tones to the people; a poetry which shall make us more in love with our native land, by converting its ennobling scenery into the images of lofty thought; which shall give visible form and life to the abstract ideas of our written constitutions; which shall confer upon virtue all the strength of principle, and all the energy of passion; which shall disentangle freedom from cant and senseless hyperbole, and render it a thing of such loveliness and grandeur as to justify all self-sacrifice; which shall make us love man by the new consecrations it sheds on his life and destiny; which shall force through the thin partitions of conventionalism and expediency; vindicate the majesty of reason; give new power to the voice of conscience, and new vitality to human affection; soften and elevate passion; guide enthusiasm in a right direction, and speak out in the high language of men to a nation of men.—E. P. Whipple.

THE THREE PERIODS OF OUR LITERATURE.

The literary history of the United States may be treated under three distinctly marked periods, viz.: a colonial, or ante-revolutionary period, during which the literature of the country was closely assimilated in form and character to that of England; a first American period (from 1775 to 1820) which witnessed the transition from a style for the most part imitative to one national or peculiar, as a consequence of the revolutionary struggle and the ideas generated by it; a second American (from 1820 to the present time), in which the literature of the country assumed a decided character of originality.

Though men of letters were found everywhere among the colonists, in New England alone, where the first printing press was established, was there any considerable progress made in literary culture, and the literature of the colonial period was chiefly confined to that locality or indirectly connected with it. The earliest development, owing to the religious character of the people, and to the fact that during the first century after the settlement of the country the clergy were the best informed and educated class, was theological. Some of the works, by Edwards and others, in defense of the dogmas of the church were very elaborate, and the positions taken maintained with much ability and acuteness of argument.

The influence of the great English essayists and novelists of the eighteenth century had, meanwhile, begun to affect the literature of the New World; and in the essays, the collection of maxims published under the title of “Poor Richard,” or “The Way to Wealth,” the scientific papers and autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, we have specimens of practical philosophy, or of simple narrative expressed in a style eminently clear, pleasing, and condensed; and not unfrequently embellished by the wit and elegance characteristic of the best writers of Queen Anne’s time. His investigations in electricity and other scientific subjects are not less felicitously narrated, and together with the works of James Logan, Paul Dudley, Cadwallader Colden and John Bartram, a naturalist, and one of the earliest of American travelers, constitute the chief contributions to scientific literature during the colonial period.

II. The earliest works produced during the first American period, commencing with the Revolution, are naturally associated with the causes which led to that event. The severance of the intellectual reliance of the colonies on the mother country followed as a consequence of their political independence, and as early as the commencement of the revolutionary struggle the high literary ability as well as practical wisdom evinced in the public documents of the principal American statesmen, were recognized by Lord Chatham, in whose opinion these productions rivaled the masterpieces of antiquity. Politics now gained a prominence almost equal to that enjoyed by theology in the preceding period. The discussions accorded thoroughly with the popular taste, and the influence of political writers and orators in giving a decided national type to American literature is unmistakable.

III. The last period of American literature presents a marked contrast with those which preceded in the national character, as well as in the variety and extent of its productions. In 1820 the poverty of American Literature was sneeringly commented upon by Sydney Smith in the Edinburgh Review, but from that date, the political crisis being past, the intellectual development of the country has been commensurate with its social and material progress, until at the present day it can be said there is no department of human knowledge which has not been more or less thoroughly explored by American authors. In history, natural science, jurisprudence, and imaginative literature their efforts have not been exceeded by those of contemporary authors in any part of the world.

The catalogue of American books, many of them having rare excellence, published in the last half century would fill volumes.

Perhaps in her periodical literature, more than elsewhere, America excels. Her leading quarterlies and literary magazines are scarcely inferior to the best we get from Europe; while their number and circulation are matter of astonishment. The masses in America read far more than in other countries. They patronize 11,403 different periodicals, that have an aggregate circulation of 31,177,924. Of these 3,637,224 are received daily, making 148,451,110 papers a year. There are 19,459,107 papers published weekly, making 97,295,535 a year. Others are published semi-weekly, monthly, semi-monthly, or quarterly.—Abridged from American Cyclopædia.

For when a man is brought up honorably, he feels ashamed to act basely; every one trained to noble deeds blushes to be found recreant; valor may be taught, as we teach a child to speak, to hear those things which he knows not; such love as the child learns he retains with fondness to old age—strong incitements to train your children well.—Euripides.

UNITED STATES HISTORY.

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.

For twelve years after the defeat of the French, the English colonists in America, though suffering many things, prospered. A patriotic, vigorous race had possession of the new world—men who loved liberty, knew their rights, and dared maintain them. Their civil institutions were founded on liberal principles, and the sovereignty of the people recognized. Time and conflicting interests had somewhat weakened the ties that bound them to the mother country. Already numbering near two millions, though nominally subject to the crown they had, for generations, managed their affairs with more hindrance than help from the ruling class in Great Britain. Agriculture was the chief industry, and the products had become extensive; but commerce hampered by many restrictions was carried on awkwardly, and often with little profit to the producers. Manufacturing enterprises were discouraged and hindered by arbitrary enactments respecting them. The colonists felt the wrongs they suffered, but endured them till the hindrances and burdens became intolerable. Their complaints unheeded and their petitions spurned, nothing could longer delay the bold, defiant assertion of their rights, or quell the spirit of indignant resentment. The most thoughtful had reluctantly come to regard war as inevitable, and resolutely prepared to meet the demands that would be made on them. The differences between the home government and the colonists were of long standing and about matters of such vital interest to the latter, they could make no compromise. The king and his ministers claimed the right to tax, at their pleasure, two millions of British subjects who were allowed no representation in Parliament. This was denied steadily and with emphasis—every attempt to enforce, however indirectly, the claim was watched and defeated. Enactments that were regarded oppressive were either evaded or openly set at naught. The duties required could not be collected. No matter how plain the law, governors who held office by the appointment of the king could not enforce it, and the recusant merchants and manufacturers, if arrested and tried, were not convicted. Applications to the courts for warrants to seize goods were resisted—and neither search nor seizure was found quite safe for those who attempted it.

In 1763 officers were directed to confiscate all merchant vessels engaged in what was declared unlawful trade, and English war ships were sent to the American coast to enforce the order. This exasperating measure ruined for a time trade with the West Indies, but failed to intimidate. The next year the odious Stamp Act was passed requiring all deeds, articles of agreement, notes, receipts, checks and drafts to be written on paper bearing the government stamp, and taxed from three pence to six pounds sterling, according to the purpose for which it was prepared. Franklin, who labored hard to prevent the passage of the act, was sadly disappointed and wrote to a friend at home: “The sun of American liberty has set—we must now light the lamps of industry and economy.” “Be assured,” said the patriotic friend in reply, “we shall light torches of another sort.” And they did. The paper was manufactured and sent over in large quantities, but no market was found for it. In New York and Boston much of it was seized and publicly destroyed, while whole cargoes were carried back to England. The people were thoroughly aroused and indignant. Crowds of excited men collected in the towns, and acts of violence were committed against any who proposed submission. The ringing words of Patrick Henry in the Virginia legislature, and the resolutions sent out from that body boldly declaring that the colonists, as Englishmen, would never submit to be taxed without representation, startled the people. Some were alarmed, but most expressed hearty approval. About the same time similar action was taken by the New York and Massachusetts legislatures, and the question of an American Congress, suggestive of a separate nationality, was agitated. The patriotic society known as “The Sons of Liberty” was now organized, the members being pledged to oppose tyranny and defend, with their lives, if necessary, the sacred rights of freemen. Merchants in the principal cities bound themselves to buy no more goods from English houses until the offensive act was repealed, while the people with wonderful unanimity resolved to deny themselves all imported luxuries. The storm that was seen to be gathering caused some hesitation in Parliament. The English manufacturers and merchants, whose products and merchandise remained in their storehouses, became alarmed, while a few eminent statesmen as Lord Camden, and Pitt in the House of Commons, espoused the cause of the colonists and denounced the folly of the administration. “You,” said Pitt in a powerful speech, “have no right to tax America. I rejoice that Americans have resisted.” The result was the necessitated repeal of the unwise measure. To cover their retreat from the position taken, and to conciliate the Tories, the act to repeal was accompanied with a declaration of “right to bind the colonists in all things whatsoever.” Nobody seemed to care much for their harmless declaration, and for a brief space there was quiet, if not peace.

A year later there was a change in the ministry, and, in an hour of unparalleled folly, another scheme was brought forward to levy a tax in a slightly different form—a duty on sundry specified articles, such as glass, paper, printers’ colors and tea. The resentment was immediate and indignant. It seemed like adding insult to injury, and denunciations of the attempt, both in popular assemblies and by the press, were prompt and bitter. Early in 1768 the legislature of Massachusetts adopted a circular calling on the other colonies for assistance in a determined effort to have redress. This, more than all that orators or editors could say, exasperated the British lords, who in the name of the king enjoined the legislature to at once rescind their action, that was pronounced treasonable, and to express regret for such hasty proceedings. The sturdy Massachusetts men, who had counted the cost, were not in a temper to do anything of the kind, but instead they almost unanimously re-affirmed their action; nor would they disperse at his bidding when the Tory governor, with authority dissolved the Assembly. They knew the peril of the situation, and their great disadvantage in having among them and over them civil officers appointed by the king, while his armies held all the forts and arsenals of the country. But there was no alternative. They must accept a servile condition or offer manly resistance and take the consequences. For this they were ready, and the people ready to sustain them. In opposition to the governor’s edict they communicated to their constituents and to the other colonies their unchanging determination to resist the unjust demands of their lordly oppressors. This hastened the crisis. The exasperated governor invoked the aid of the military. And his friend General Gage, commander of the British forces in America, ordered from Halifax two regiments of regulars to strengthen the governor’s police. It seemed a large force for the purpose, but even they were not sufficient to squelch the spirit of freedom. The civil authorities promptly refused to provide supplies or quarters for the troops for whose presence they had no occasion or need. They were encamped on the common, and, for the purpose of intimidation, a great display was made, but it only imbittered the feelings of the citizens. Mutual hatred between them and the hired soldiers, aggravated by insults and injuries on both sides, soon led to open hostilities. A small company of soldiers were attacked by a mob, and fired, killing some and wounding others. The rage of the people at the occurrence knew no bounds. They became so violent that it was thought advisable to withdraw the troops from the city. The squad implicated in the massacre was indicted for murder and had a fair trial. This was magnanimous. The keenest sense of the injuries received did not make true patriots forgetful of the personal rights of those who were the instruments of the oppression they suffered. At the trial of the soldiers John Adams and Josiah Quincy, both well known as stanch advocates of the people’s cause, appeared for the defense, and showed that the evidence could only convict of manslaughter, and as it seemed in self-defense, the punishment should be light.

Meanwhile full accounts of these disturbances were sent to England and caused intense excitement there. Parliament not only censured the colonists in strongly worded resolutions, but directed the governors to seize and transport to England for trial the leaders of disloyalty. The order was never carried out. Even after this some concessions were made to the demands of the colonists under the pressure of urgent appeals from English merchants who saw nothing but financial ruin to themselves in the loss of their trade with America. The duties on all articles imported from England were removed except on tea, and that, it was said, was retained simply to assert the sovereignty of the home government. This was an effort to conciliate those whom threats and military displays had failed to intimidate, but it too failed.

The East India Company had large quantities of tea in their storehouses, and having no orders from merchants, and being assured that many Tories, as all officers and supporters of the king were called, would patronize them, made arrangements for carrying on the business through their own agents. The plan seemed to promise success. Their men were appointed and a number of vessels freighted and sent to America. But there were difficulties in the way. In New York and Philadelphia the consignees, though anxious for the gains promised them, became alarmed and dared not enter on the duties of their appointment; and the captains were obliged to return to England with their cargoes. In Boston the agents of the company refused to resign, though threatened for their contumacy. In the midst of the excitement three ships arrived with cargoes of tea. A large committee demanded that it should be taken away. Of course there could be no public, and the vigilance of the citizens prevented a secret landing. The shipmasters saw that the only safe course for them was to obey the will of the people, but when they would have departed the governor was obstinate and no clearance could be obtained without first landing the cargoes. Repeated meetings were held, the question fully discussed, when it was resolved to resist to the last extremity the landing of the tea. They were in mass meeting when the ultimatum of the governor refusing the passports was received. The deliberations were then at an end, and the enthusiasm knew no bounds. A man in the crowd suddenly gave the war whoop and a rush was made for the wharf. The disguised man was joined by others, perhaps twenty in number, who without damaging any other property emptied all the tea chests into the sea. The work was done speedily and without hindrance. When informed of these violent proceedings Parliament immediately passed the “Boston Port Bill,” and removed the custom house to Salem. At the same time two other acts were passed, that added fuel to the fire, one giving the appointment of all civil and judicial officers directly to the crown; the other providing that in any future trial for homicide or violent resistance of the lawfully constituted authorities, the governor might send the accused out of the colony for trial.

In 1774 General Gage was appointed governor instead of Hutchinson. Personally he was much preferred to his predecessor, but coming to enforce the Port Bill, and having military authority the people felt that he was their enemy, and were ready to obstruct any measures he might adopt. Though Gage, with his army of regulars, was in possession, the organization and training of the militia proceeded with great zeal. Soon twelve thousand were enrolled as “Minute Men,” or civilians ready for military service at a moment’s notice. In the other colonies much the same state of things existed. The people organized, drilled and prepared materials of war for the common defense.

In September of this year Congress met in Philadelphia. Of the fifty-three members in attendance nearly all were men of high standing in society, and already known to the country as true patriots. They were not an assembly of political aspirants and adventurers who, for personal ends, had sought the high position they filled, but representative men who deeply felt that the best interests, if not the very existence of the communities they represented demanded of them measures as prudent and cautious as they were firm and uncompromising. They indorsed the action of the Massachusetts Convention; put forth a plain, well-considered declaration of colonial rights; enumerated instances in which these had been violated; effected a more efficient opposition to any trade with England until satisfaction could be obtained for injuries done.

The moderation yet firmness of Congress met with very general approval. A few were in sympathy with the government, and the Quakers condemned everything they thought might bring on the country the calamities of war. All other religious bodies, and especially the pastors of the New England churches, without hesitation lent all their influence to the cause of freedom. Parliament now decided on more violent coercive measures. The policy of Pitt was rejected. The colonial agents, Franklin and others, were refused a hearing, and large military reënforcements ordered to America. The crisis had come sooner than some, who thought it inevitable, expected, but the citizens, cut off from all their sources of prosperity and denounced as rebels, were ready. The British garrison in Boston was strong, but the suffering people were unawed, and the commander of the post learned with some concern of the vigorous preparations for the impending conflict that were progressing in all parts of the province. Arms and other war material were, with all possible speed, collected and stored in different places. It was soon learned that notwithstanding the presence of the army and vigilance of the officers, large quantities of arms and ammunition had been smuggled out of Boston and stored at Concord, some eighteen miles distant. General Gage thought the time had come to stop these movements that might cause him serious trouble, and eighteen hundred of his infantry were sent to seize the stores at Concord. The plan of that first raid was supposed to be entirely secret. But somehow, Dr. Warren, a prominent Boston patriot, became apprised of it and spread the intelligence through the country in time to have the stores in part removed to a safer place. The troops next morning on reaching Lexington, a few miles from Concord, found a company of militia under arms, who were ordered to disperse, a volley was fired and eight men killed. At Concord the minute men endeavored to keep possession of a bridge, but were charged and driven from it. The object of the raid was in part accomplished. Some stores that could not be removed in time to save them were destroyed, but nothing of value could be taken away. The “Minute Men” were, by this time, coming from all quarters, and a very hasty retreat was found necessary. They were exposed to a galling fire from riflemen concealed on both sides of the road, while others pressed hard on their rear. Many fell, and but for reënforcements sent out to meet them, the whole command might have been cut off or captured. They lost that day not far from three hundred men. British soldiers and their officers gained some new ideas of the metal of the untrained militia with whom they had to deal. The war was now begun, the first blood shed, and the call to arms was promptly answered in all parts of the province. In a short time there were more men gathered about Boston with their rifles and shotguns than could be employed. The city was besieged, and in the trenches, amidst intense excitement, there was enough brave talk of driving the British into the sea. Through all the southern and middle colonies the news of the opening of the campaign called forth the strongest expressions of sympathy and prompt assurances of support in the common cause. Everywhere the patriots organized for defense and for the seizure of such military funds and stores as might be found at posts not sufficiently guarded.

In May, 1775, Congress met again in Philadelphia and decided that as war had been commenced by the mother country the most active measures should be taken for defense. George Washington, of Virginia, was made commander-in-chief, and several Major and Adjutant Generals appointed.

In the meantime the forces that held Gage shut up in Boston rapidly increased in numbers. Stark, Putnam, Green and Arnold, with their militia, hastened to the scene of action, eager to avenge the wrongs of their fellow citizens.

In another quarter the eccentric Ethan Allen, with a company of Vermont mountaineers, made a dash as daring and successful as any during the war. The attention of the patriotic leaders was turned to the fortress at Ticonderoga, where immense stores were collected for the use of the British army. Allen resolved to surprise the garrison and capture the place. They reached the shore of the lake opposite Ticonderoga without being discovered, but found the means of transportation so limited that only eighty men succeeded in crossing. To delay was to fail, and the attack must be made at once. Allen and Arnold, who had joined the expedition as a private, rushed into the gateway of the fort, driving, and entering with the sentinel, closely followed by their men. The shouts of the audacious assailants, already within the fort, were such as few garrisons had heard. Not a gun had been discharged, but Allen’s men faced the barracks, while he rushed to the quarters of the commandant, and shouted, “Surrender this fort immediately.” “By what authority?” inquired the astounded officer, suddenly roused from his slumbers. “In the name of the Great Jehovah and of the Continental Congress,” said Allen. And there seemed to be no alternative. A fortress that cost England millions of dollars was captured in ten minutes by that little band of patriots. Twenty cannon and a vast quantity of all kinds of military stores fell into the hands of the Americans.

In May of this year Generals Howe, Clinton, and Burgoyne arrived at Boston with reënforcements that increased the army holding the place to more than ten thousand men. General Gage, thus strengthened, became arrogant, issued his proclamation, denouncing those in arms as rebels, but offering pardon to any who would submit, excepting Adams and Hancock. These two, when delivered up or taken, were to suffer the penalty for treason.

There were evident preparations for some movement from Boston—rumor said to burn the neighboring towns, and lay waste the country. To prevent this the Americans determined to seize and fortify Bunker Hill, which commanded the peninsula over which their enemies would seek to pass. On the night of the 16th of June, Colonel Prescott was sent with a thousand men to occupy the hill. The movement was skilfully carried out, and a position a little farther down the peninsula than that contemplated, and within easy cannon range of the city was fortified, the men working diligently till morning in digging trenches and constructing their fort. When the astonished general discovered what was done, he said: “We must take those works immediately.” After a fierce cannonade, that did little harm, the attack was made by General Howe, with three thousand regulars, determined to carry the works on the hill by assault. As the column moved forward in fine order, all the batteries within range opened fire on the intrenchments of the Americans, who were only about fifteen hundred in number, and having wrought all night, and till three p. m., were suffering from hunger and fatigue. Happily the gunners did not get the range, or much disturb those in the trenches, who reserved their fire till the head of the column was within one hundred and fifty feet, when, at the command of Prescott, every gun was discharged with deliberate aim. The shock was terrible. Hundreds fell, and there was a precipitate retreat. At the foot of the hill they were re-formed, and made a second fierce assault, with a like result, the men in the trenches reserving their fire till the enemy were close at hand. The destruction was so terrible that nearly all the officers fell, and the shattered column returned in disorder. General Clinton, who had witnessed the unexpected repulse, hastened to the field with reinforcements, and the third attempt was more successful. The provincials had but little ammunition left, and were unable to repel the fresh assailants. Some had already leaped over the breastworks, and the brave defenders of the fort withdrew. In the retreat the lamented Warren fell. Though defeated it was a glorious day for the patriots. Generals Howe and Clinton had gained a victory, but at fearful cost. Two more such would have nearly blotted out that splendid army.

They dared not venture into the country, but returned to Boston and were still closely besieged by Washington and his army. The siege was so pressed that it was difficult to subsist the army there, and to save the city from destruction they were allowed to embark the whole army on transports, taking with them many Tories who had been too open in their friendship for the Royalists to be safe if left behind. Of that class there were some in almost all communities, and during the bloody years that followed they both suffered much and caused much suffering. In some sections where they were numerous the citizen conflicts between Whigs and Tories, or Patriots and Loyalists were characterized by great bitterness and unmitigated cruelty on both sides. Hundreds were slain not in battle, but by the hands of assassins who were neighbors, and had been friends.

For nearly a year no decisive battles were fought, though there was much skirmishing and much suffering, destruction of property and loss of life. The colonists were in an anomalous condition, still confessing themselves British subjects, and in the Episcopal churches repeating prayers for the king, while doing all in their power to resist his authority and destroy his armies.

In June, 1776, a resolution similar to that passed by the Virginia Assembly, was discussed in Congress with much ability, and on the 4th of July the memorable Declaration of Independence, drawn up by Jefferson, with the assistance of Franklin and others, was adopted. The preamble, as remarkable for its finish as for clearness and strength, commences: “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the nations of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” After such a beginning there follows a clear, succinct, forcible statement of the wrongs endured, and the contemptuous rejection of all petitions for redress. The conclusion reached is in the following words: “These united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved.”

For the maintenance of this declaration the signers pledged their property, lives and sacred honor.

Hostilities were continued with, if possible, more determined energy on both sides. With some partial successes there followed a long series of disasters to the patriot cause, that at times seemed almost hopeless.

In August Washington, anticipating an attack on New York, sent Putnam with nine hundred men to defend the place. They were defeated with heavy loss on Long Island. The enemy, however, did not gain much from the victory, as the patriots quietly crossed the river to New York in the night, and the victors had but possession of the island, and nothing more. In the city Washington himself took command, and had a large part of his available forces there. When the British fleet, that was expected, entered the harbor, any attempt further to defend the place would have been useless, and the patriot forces were withdrawn. Fort Washington, a place of great natural and artificial strength, on Manhattan Island, five miles from the city, was for some reason not evacuated when the army left, and was some time after attacked and forced to surrender. The assailants suffered great loss, but took the fort, and the garrison of two thousand men were crowded into the filthy New York military prisons. Washington retreated through New Jersey, closely pursued, but by great vigilance and skill avoided a conflict for which he was not prepared. It often requires more real generalship to conduct a retreat safely, than to make a successful assault, and the great American general, with an army so inferior in numbers and equipments, had much to do in that line during the struggle for independence.

On the 8th of December he crossed the Delaware, taking with him or destroying all the boats within reach, and thus baffled his pursuer. Cornwallis found it necessary to wait for the freezing of the river, and reluctantly put his army into winter quarters in the nearest towns and villages. Two thousand Hessians, commanded by Colonel Rahl, occupied Trenton, and the other detachments were arranged so that all might proceed against Philadelphia soon as the river was bridged with ice. During the month Washington saw and seized the opportunity to strike a blow for his disheartened country. He planned to cross the river Christmas night, in three divisions, and attack the portion of the army at Trenton before daylight. The division led by the General himself and Sullivan succeeded, not without great difficulty because of the floating ice, in crossing some miles above the town. The others failed. Though delayed beyond the time intended, and without the support expected, the attempt must be made. So dividing those that were over into two bands, that the assault might be made on both sides at once, they approached rapidly. The Hessians were completely surprised, their Colonel killed at the first volley, and the whole regiment, thinking themselves surrounded, threw down their arms and begged for quarter. They were made prisoners of war, and before night their captors had them safe beyond the river. This at the time, and under all the circumstances, was an event of great importance, as it encouraged the soldiers and gave new hope to the country.

Three days after, Washington with all his available force returned to Trenton, and on the day following, Cornwallis approached from Princeton with the main body of his army, determined to crush the resolute Americans. After much skirmishing Cornwallis attempted to force his way into the town, but was repulsed, and, as it was now evening, thought it prudent to wait for the morning. The position of the Americans, confronted with such superior numbers, was critical. To attempt to recross the Delaware was too hazardous, so it was promptly decided to withdraw quietly in the night, and by a circuitous route to strike the enemy at Princeton before his expectant antagonist could discover the movement. The baggage was safely removed, the campfires were lighted, and a guard left to keep them burning. The sentries walked their beats too, unconcernedly, till the morning light showed a deserted camp, and about the same time the roar of American cannon thirteen miles away told Cornwallis how he had been outgeneraled. A sharp battle was fought at Princeton, and Washington was again victorious, but the legions of the British army were within hearing. When they arrived the active enemy that had so annoyed and harmed them had departed, going northward. Again sadly disappointed, Cornwallis must needs hasten to New Brunswick, to protect the stores.

It is impossible here even to mention the important events that followed. For weary months and years the terribly destructive war continued. Many campaigns were planned and conducted with great energy. Battles were fought in which the carnage was fearful. Ships were burned or sunk—strongholds were taken by siege or assault, and the garrisons defending them cut to pieces, or, as in some instances, cruelly massacred after they were surrendered. Towns and hamlets were burned, and large sections of country laid waste. For a time the greatest destruction was in the East and North, but when the work of death fairly commenced in the South blood flowed not less freely. In 1779 the principal theater of the war was in Georgia and the Carolinas, and the heaviest engagements were adverse to the Americans. Savannah and Charleston were captured and the whole states overrun by detachments of British soldiers who at first met with but little opposition. Very soon, however, the patriots, though unable by reason of their losses to take the field in force, renewed the contest under Sumter, Marrion, Pickens, and other daring leaders who continually harassed not only the British, but also the Tories, of whom there were great numbers in that region.

In the North General Burgoyne, after two battles with General Gates, in both of which the Americans had the advantage, surrendered his whole army of seven thousand regulars, beside Indians and Canadians. This achievement, vastly important to the country, as it had influence in securing the powerful aid of France, gave Gates a standing higher than he deserved or could maintain. On account of his victory at Saratoga he was sent to recover South Carolina; but in his first encounter with Cornwallis at Camden, he was routed, with the loss of one thousand men, and with the remnant of his army fled to North Carolina.

After obtaining aid from France, though some serious disasters were suffered, and the faint-hearted were at times discouraged, the cause of the country gained strength till final success was assured.

In 1781, at Cowpens, S. C., on January 17th, General Morgan won a brilliant victory over the British under Tarleton; and the bloody battle at Eutaw Springs nearly terminated the war in South Carolina. In Virginia, Cornwallis, who was now opposed by La Fayette, Wayne and Steuben, had fortified himself at Yorktown, where he had a large army. Meanwhile, the American army of the North, under Washington, and the French army under Count de Rochambeau formed a junction on the Hudson which seemed to threaten an attack on Clinton in New York, and effectually prevented him from sending aid to the army shut up at Yorktown. By a sudden diversion, and before the movement was discovered, the allied armies, 12,000 strong, were far on their way toward Yorktown, and arrived without hindrance, on the 28th of September. The siege was but short. On the 19th of October Cornwallis surrendered, with his whole army of 7,000 men. This victory substantially terminated the conflict, and secured American independence. Thus ended the war which, in the language of Pitt, “Was conceived in injustice, nurtured in folly, and whose footsteps were marked with slaughter and devastation. The nation was drained of its best blood and its vital resources, for which nothing was received in return but a series of inefficient victories and disgraceful defeats; victories obtained over men fighting in the holy cause of liberty—defeats which filled the land with mourning for the loss of dear and valuable relations, slain in a detested and impious quarrel.”

During the seven years of blood Great Britain sent to the war she was waging to subdue her colonists 134,000 soldiers and seamen. The forces of the United States and their allies consisted of 230,000 regular soldiers, and some 56,000 militia. Those who perished in battle or otherwise, by reason of the war, reached some hundreds of thousands; other hundreds of thousands were made widows or orphans, while the cost in actual expenditures and property destroyed must be told by hundreds of millions. And yet, for America, the sacrifice was not too great. The heritage of freedom left us is more than worth it all.

[End of Required Reading for 1883-4.]

NIGHT.

By CHARLES GRINDROD.

The sunset fades into a common glow:

A deeper shadow all the valley fills:

The trees are ghostlier in the fields below:

The river runs more darkly through the hills:

Only the Night-bird’s voice the coppice thrills,

Stirring the very leaves into a sense.

A witching stillness holds the breath of things.

Earth has put on her garb of reverence,

As when a nun within a cloister sings

To mourn a passing soul before it wings.

Silent as dew now falls the straight-winged Night.

Clear overhead (God’s still imaginings),

Shining like Hope, through very darkness bright,

Star follows star, till heaven is all alight.

ECCENTRIC AMERICANS.

By COLEMAN E. BISHOP.

VII.—THE WELL-BALANCED ECCENTRIC.

At length we have an Eccentric American who was practical, successful, useful, and happy; who was a conservative radical, a laughing philanthropist, a non-resisting hero, a lovely fighting Quaker, the popular champion of an unpopular cause, and—most singular of all!—a Christian in fact and act, though counted a heretic by evangelicals, and excommunicated by his own sect. It is just because his life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him, that Isaac T. Hopper takes rank as one of the grandest and rarest of Eccentrics. For, as the reader may know, we have declared from the outset of this series that the true man in a false world is necessarily eccentric; that uniformity is always at the expense of principle. “Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out often thousand.” And isn’t that odd?

The key to this symmetrical eccentricity of friend Hopper is found in the counterbalancing qualities of his character. A powerful will was offset by a conscience equally imperative. A native bravery was balanced by softness of heart, so that he was at once incapable of fear and of cruelty; combativeness was mollified by simplicity of manner and frankness of speech. A genius for finesse was by an all-pervading benevolence and love of justice enlisted in the service of the slave and the convict; a lively sense of humor sweetened the austerities of a formal religion, softened the asperities of a life of warfare and informed great natural pride with geniality. With less love of abstract justice, he might have been a great lawyer; with less conscience and benevolence he might have been a great soldier; with less earnestness and dignity he might have been a great comedian; with less philanthropy he might have been a great business man; with less executive will he might have been a great preacher. Balanced as these qualities were, he was a rare Eccentric—being lawyer, soldier, comedian, business man and minister combined.

“The boy was father of the man,” in his case. Born in 1771 to poor parents, farmers in New Jersey, he early made manifest extraordinary qualities.

Bravery.—A cosset lamb which he had reared was seized by a foraging party of British soldiers from Philadelphia and cast bound into their wagon. The lad of ten years ran and climbed into the vehicle, cut the cords with a rusty jack-knife, and then stoutly resisted the captors, until the officer in command, attracted by the outcry, rode up and ordered the lamb restored, out of admiration for the wee patriot’s pluck and devotion. He would fight any man on behalf of all of his pet animals, of which he always had a menagerie, caught and tamed by aid of a certain brute free-masonry which he possessed.

Justice.—Isaac and his brother trapped partridges. One day the former found one in his brother’s trap and none in his own; first removing the bird to his own trap he carried it home, saying he took it out of his trap—the little lawyer! But before morning conscience asserted itself, he confessed the deception and restored the game—the little justice!

Humor.—His love of mischief kept him in continual disgrace, and the house and school in continual turmoil—albeit his love of justice usually led to reparation of damages; if he got others into scrapes he was quite willing to shoulder the consequences; he could fill a schoolmate’s dinner pail with sand, and then dry all tears by giving up his own lunch. One night he went to see old Polly milk. Fun soon got the better of the boy, he got a twig, the cow got a sensation, and Polly got a surprise. There was a lacteal cataclysm and a tableau vivant; mingled strains of wild juvenile laughter and wilder feminine screams, accompanied by a rude barbaric clangor of cow-bell and tin pail. The boy went slippered and supperless to bed, but he lay there hungry and happy, waking the wild echoes of his raftered chamber with shouts of laughter over the persisting vision of how the maid turned pale and flew, and the cow turned pail and ran, with altitudinous tail and head. The artless sports of our childhood are often our most enduring joys, and Father Hopper never forgot this chef d’œuvre of his childhood, though he was only five years old when he thus essayed the part of Puck; for he afterward secured the cow’s bell, and for fifty years used it as a dinner bell, refusing to substitute a more melodious, but less memorial monitor. He immensely enjoyed reviving at once the household and his own thoughts with it, and often with a sedate Quaker chuckle told the story when he tolled the bell.

Not the least curious antithesis in this mixed character was his open-heartedness and cunning; his simplicity of speech and shrewdness of management. From the age of nine years he marketed the farm produce in Philadelphia, and there was known as “The Little Governor,” for his precocious dignity. When asked the price of a pair of fowls, he replied, “My father told me to sell them for fifty cents if I could, if not, to take forty.” He got the fifty before he would part with them, however—just as, years on, he would frankly give up his plans to an antagonist and still beat him.

Isaac’s sympathy with the enslaved was aroused as early as the age of nine by listening to the harrowing narrative of a native African captive; and he was only sixteen years old when he assisted to liberate a slave who had acquired the right of freedom by residence in Philadelphia. The lad was at that time apprentice to a tailor, his uncle, in the city. Slavery still existed in all the states of the union, though the movement for its gradual abolishment had been begun in several of them. Pennsylvania had taken a long step in this direction by enacting the gradual emancipation of her own citizens’ slaves, and decreeing that any slave from another state, coming by his owner’s consent into Pennsylvania and there abiding continuously for six months, should be free; and that any slave landing there from a foreign country should immediately become free by that fact. It was in enforcing this law, as also in preventing the kidnaping of free negroes from Pennsylvania, that Hopper soon distinguished himself. Philadelphia became a modern city of refuge, and Friend Hopper a recognized deliverer of fugitives and freedmen, from either Southern or Northern states. It is thus a fact, not often remarked as to the relation of human slavery to our government, that the first blows at the institution were the work of state rights; and that the remedy provided for this trenching of one state upon the institutions of another, in the fugitive slave law of Fillmore’s time, was an encroachment of federal power over the previously reserved rights of the states. The National Anti-Slavery Society was formed many years later; the national conscience was not yet quickened on this question; but Philadelphia had even then a local anti-slavery society, and with it Friend Hopper identified himself. He made himself master of all the laws, findings, decisions and proceedings relating to slavery and manumission, as well as, incidentally, an adept in the proverbially intricate Pennsylvania laws of contracts, property, evidence, and general processes, so that he soon became the best authority thereon in Philadelphia. In fact, he was the embodiment of that enigma which, it is alleged, could “puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer.” His standing in court became so well recognized that no lawyer was anxious to take a case against him. “You had better consult Mr. Hopper,” said a judge to a veteran counselor who asked his opinion on a slave case before him, “he knows more law on these cases than you and I both together.” “I thought I knew something of law, but it seems I do not,” said a magistrate petulantly, upon being tripped up in a slave case by Friend Hopper, a layman. The latter did not scruple to use in behalf of freedom all the technicalities and delays of law; and his craft in these devices was not the less effective because his openness of manner made him seem an unsophisticated and rather simple fellow. His dignity, simplicity and directness of speech in quaint Quaker phraseology, compelled the respect of courts and won the confidence of juries. If needs were he would procrastinate and continue a case in court three or four years, until the master would tire out and sell the manumission of the slave for a nominal sum. In case of attempted kidnaping he took the aggressive against the abductors, and forced them to pay roundly for the benefit of the negroes; generally those who came to carry off others were glad enough to escape themselves. Hopper and other friends advanced large sums of money for the purchase of manumissions, which were invariably repaid, in part or entire, from the subsequent earnings of the freedmen.

Unbroken success at length brought Friend Hopper a factitious reputation, insomuch that it was difficult to enlist Philadelphia officers of law heartily against him; if a magistrate reluctantly granted a process, the constables more timidly executed it. “Did you say I dared not grant a warrant to search your house?” demanded the Mayor upon one occasion.

“Indeed I did say so, and I now repeat it,” rejoined the imperturbable Quaker. “I am a man of established reputation; I am not a suspicious character.” (This was what the world calls “bluffing.” The slave was at that moment locked in his house.)

“Is not this man’s slave in your house?” asked the Mayor.

“Thou hast no right to ask that question, friend Mayor. A man is not bound to inform against himself. Thou well knowest the penalty for secreting a slave.”

Getting no evidence sufficient for a search-warrant, his house was watched day and night for a week. Friend Hopper, with perfect urbanity, tendered the planter the use of his warm parlor as a guard-house, for the nights were cold. This was surlily refused. In the morning he had a good hot breakfast prepared for the shivering men outside, but they dared not accept it. They had learned that Hopper was most dangerous when most agreeable, and feared a trick from the gift-bearing Greek. A ruse was preparing for them. At night a free colored man was employed to run out of the house. The guard sprang out of their hiding and seized him, but immediately released him on perceiving their mistake. Hopper arrested them and put them under peace bonds. This made them cautious. The next night the same negro made another rush and was not stopped. The third night it was the slave who did the rushing; he ran past the irresolute guard and escaped to other hiding, until Hopper could negotiate his manumission with the discouraged master.

On one occasion he instituted a fictitious suit for debt against a freedman in order to gain time to secure evidence of his freedom. On another, he offered to become bound to the United States for the return of a slave to court, and the simple magistrate so entered the recognizance. When the day came Hopper was there but the slave was not, and magistrate, owner and lawyer for the first time discovered that the bond was worthless, as the United States could not be a party to it. Again he entered into an undertaking to produce a slave or pay $500 for his freedom—after his master had once before agreed to free him for $150. He produced the slave, and professed to have failed in raising the $500, and demanded the return of his bond. The slave, previously instructed, as soon as the bond touched Hopper’s hand, bolted and escaped by a back door and an alley. The master was so furious at this trick that he assaulted several free colored people, for which he was arrested and threatened with such heavy penalties that he was glad to remit the $150 first promised him for a bill of manumission, and to pay some damages to the other negroes besides.

“There is no use trying to capture a runaway slave in Philadelphia,” exclaimed an irate and discouraged master. “I believe the devil himself could not catch them when they once get here.”

“That is very likely,” answered Friend Hopper with a twinkling eye; “but I think he would have less difficulty in catching the masters, being so much more familiar with them.”

In dealing with so desperate a class of men as usually made a business of man-chasing, incensed as they were by his successful tactics, Hopper was often in extreme peril, and he always showed a coolness and dexterity equal to the most daring of them. His adventures and escapes outdo romance. After making all allowance for supposed consciousness of the weakness of a bad cause on the part of his antagonists, and the moral effect of his name; after picturing his insensibility to fear, his calm, good-natured, and dignified bearing, and above all, that remarkable will-power, under which officers in the rightful discharge of their duties had been known to surrender to him—maugre all this, it seems wonderful that in the hundreds of cases he had to do with, he neither used force nor (save once) suffered by force. It seems as if there could have been found some one man in the United States cool enough to face down or reckless enough to strike down this man of peace—but there was not. It must have been the power of passiveness, the irresistibleness of non-resistance. “The weak alone are strong.” This is Scriptural eccentricity. Even in this world of force he who, when smitten on one cheek, can turn the other, may conquer—though this is a definition of success by cheek that is not usually accepted.

The solitary occasion upon which Friend Hopper suffered violence was when a posse of kidnapers guarding a negro threw him bodily from a second story window. Though severely hurt, as it afterward turned out, he gained a reëntrance, and while the guard were yet congratulating themselves on being well rid of him, he walked into the room, cut the captive’s bonds and secured his escape. He seemed to bear a charmed life, and when years later he went to Europe, he found the reputation of a wizard had preceded him.

These efforts lasted during his forty years’ residence in Philadelphia, and continued after his removal to New York (1829). Not less than one thousand persons owed their escape from servitude to him, some of them becoming useful members of society. One was a missionary to Sierra Leone, one a bishop, several were preachers and teachers. So this one tailor made nine men multiplied an hundred fold.

He made other than black men. His labors in behalf of prison reform and for the raising of fallen men and abandoned women, and the relief of the unfortunate, if less exciting, were not less apt to draw our admiration and sympathy. The story of “The Umbrella Girl,” which has traveled the rounds of the press for forty years, is a good example of his tact in conducting a delicate case to a happy end; one hardly knows which most to admire, the goodness or the shrewdness of the philanthropist. His biography, by Lydia Maria Child, abounds in narratives of these acts; it would make an admirable Sunday-school library volume.

His success in reclaiming the lost and despairing was largely due to two beautiful traits, viz.: his confidence in human nature and his patient long-suffering. Seventy and seven times could he forgive and lift again a brother, because he believed there was an imperishable spark of the divine there. He was accustomed to say that there was not one among the prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary with whom he would be afraid to trust himself alone by night with large sums of money in his pocket.

His biographer tells the following in point:

One of the prisoners, who had been convicted of manslaughter, became furious, in consequence of being threatened with a whipping. When they attempted to bring him out of his dungeon to receive punishment, he seized a knife and a club, rushed back again, and swore he would kill the first person who came near him. Being a very strong man, and in a state of madness, no one dared to approach him. They tried to starve him into submission, but finding he was not to be subdued that way, they sent for Friend Hopper, as they were accustomed to do in all such difficult emergencies. He went boldly into the cell, looked the desperado calmly in the face, and said, “It is foolish for thee to contend with the authorities, thou wilt be compelled to yield at last. I will inquire into thy case. If thou hast been unjustly dealt by, I promise thee it shall be remedied.” This kind and sensible remonstrance had the desired effect. From that time forward he had great influence over the ferocious fellow, who was always willing to be guided by his advice, and finally became one of the most reasonable and orderly inmates of the prison.

Charity for convicts was truly eccentric in that day. The general sentiment regarding prisoners and prison management was far different from what it now is. It was with great difficulty that consent could be got to even hold religious services in prison; the authorities declaring that the prisoners would rise, kill the minister, escape in a body, and burn and kill indiscriminately. At the first service (1787) they had a loaded cannon mounted on the rostrum, by the side of the messenger of Christ, a man standing by with lighted match during the prayer and preaching, the prisoners being carefully arranged in a solid column in front of the cannon. Thus was accompanied the first preaching to prisoners in this country. Deplorable as was their situation behind the bars, their punishment was hardly less after their release. “Who passes here leaves hope behind” might have been written over the prison door outside and inside. (Was the North then more humane in its regard of convicts than the South was in its regard of slaves? In which respect has public sentiment more improved, and in what states most?)

Among the insane, too, he was a missionary. He had the clairvoyant sense to understand, and the mysterious power to control them, such as made him when a boy a tamer of wild animals. In fact, among all the depraved and unfortunate elements of society his face was a benediction, his tones pulsated hope, his hand lifted to better lives. I fancy that his cheery, hearty, homely, sympathetic presence came from the feminine side of his nature, while the strong uplift and commanding presence came from the masculine side; and that he seemed both mother and father to the unfortunate; to be a representative of both home and heaven. The grandest natures that walk the earth are these congenital marriages, combinations of the two sexes in one person. The weakest, those which are only masculine or only feminine.

“The bravest are the tenderest,

The loving are the daring.”

Friend Hopper’s appearance was much in his favor in this work. His erect form, jet black, curly hair, plain, rich Quaker costume, and dignified port made him conspicuous in a crowd. But his face was the study. Its lines mingled of strength and tenderness gave it that representation of benign efficiency which sculptors and limners try to give to their personifications of divine attributes. Humboldt’s was one of those faces—and I remember once seeing some children, constructing a “play” world, paste a likeness of Humboldt to the ceiling. When asked what that was for, they explained with perfect sincerity and reverence, “That is God.” Happy the childhood that hath received such beautiful conceptions of the All Father! It was often remarked that Hopper’s face bore a strong resemblance to that of Napoleon Bonaparte. Joseph Bonaparte, when he resided at Bordentown, frequently commented on the remarkable likeness, and declared that Isaac T. Hopper could easily excite a revolution in Paris.

In 1829 Friend Hopper had reduced himself to insolvency by the expenditure of money and time on behalf of others, and he closed his tailoring business at Philadelphia, removed to New York, and accepted the agency for the publications of the Anti-Slavery Society. Here his activity in behalf of slaves got him worse enmity than in Philadelphia it did. New York’s commercial interests made her a Northern stronghold of pro-slavery sentiment. The press was violent against the Abolitionists, the courts were unfriendly, and “Judge Lynch” more than once summarily adjudicated their cases. One of these mobs directed their attack toward Friend Hopper’s store, after having sacked several places. He was apprised of the danger but refused to budge, to call in help, to close his doors, or to put up his shutters. He received the howling rioters, standing impassively on the steps. Not a word was uttered on either side; the mob stopped its course there, because the sight of its master compelled it to pause, and presently it passed on to other spoliation. It was quite fit that in the same city twenty-five years later, the mob which hung negroes to lamp posts and burned colored orphan asylums should single out the house of Isaac T. Hopper’s daughter for destruction, while she was away nursing soldiers in the hospitals!

The commercial spirit of slavery invaded every interest of society and every church. Even the Quakers became infected, insomuch that Friend Hopper and others were tried and expelled the society for their connection with anti-slavery publications. Thus the persecuted sect of old turned persecutors. This was the severest penalty this Eccentric was called on to pay for his adherence to his work; for he loved the faith and associations of his fathers. It was he who remained orthodox and regular, however, and the society which became eccentric to true Quakerism; they narrowed and declined. “His character grew larger and his views more liberal, after the bonds which bound him to a sect were cut asunder,” says his Quaker biographer; “it is astonishing how troublesome a living soul proves to be when they try to shut it up within the narrow limits of a drowsy sect.” He lived to be solicited to return to the society, and to decline a connection with a church which he thought had abandoned its own faith and practice.

In New York Friend Hopper also continued his work on behalf of prisoners and offenders. Public interest at length awoke; the Prison Association was formed, and organized efforts began in that direction. Father Hopper was made its agent, and he became a very active one, for though seventy-four years old, his movements were as elastic, his spirit as young, and his hair as unstreaked of white as ever. In the legal relations of this work, Friend Hopper was frequently before the legislature and the governor of the state, and his appeals uniformly secured ameliorations of law or pardon of convicts. “Friend Hopper, I will pardon any convict whom you say you conscientiously believe I ought to pardon,” said Governor Young. Hopper always addressed his excellency as “Esteemed friend, John Young,” and the Governor in reply adopted the Quaker “thou” and “thee.” When he was seventy-eight years old the Prison Association struck a bronze medallion likeness of Hopper, from the fine portrait by the artist Page, representing him raising a prisoner from the ground, and bearing the striking text:

“To seek and save that which was lost.”

No one this side of the White Throne knows how many he was instrumental in rescuing from worse than death. One whom he had lifted from prison, from the insane asylum, from the gutter many times, and at last made a safe, good, and happy woman, thus wrote him:

“Father Hopper, you first saw me in prison, and visited me. You followed me to the asylum. You did not forsake me. You have changed a bed of straw to a bed of down. May heaven bless and reward you for it. No tongue can express the gratitude I feel. Many are the hearts you have made glad. Suppose all you have dragged out of one place and another were to stand before you at once! I think you would have more than you could shake hands with in a month; and I know you would shake hands with them all.”

Isaac T. Hopper’s democratic spirit was one of the most conspicuous of his minor traits. It was founded in his natural lack of reverence and intense love of justice, and fostered by his religious training and political experience. He came honestly by it. His mother revealed it in her parting injunction to him upon his leaving home: “My son, you are now going forth to make your own way in the world. Always remember that you are as good as any other person; but remember also that you are no better.” Fowler, the phrenologist, made a happy guess when he said of Hopper:

“He has very little reverence, and stands in no awe of the powers that be. He is emphatically republican in feeling and character. He has very little credulity; he understands just when and where to take men and things.”

How remarkable was the benevolence of a man thus keen-sighted for human defects, and immovable by human excellence, that he became so great a philanthropist; but for this counterbalance of sympathy and justice he would have been a cynic—with his keen wit, a satirist. His democratic manners showed more conspicuously in the old country than here. The following incidents illustrate his irreverence and coolness:

When in Bristol, he asked permission to look at the interior of the cathedral. He had been walking about some little time when a rough looking man said to him in a very surly tone, “Take off your hat, sir!”

He replied very courteously, “I have asked permission to enter here to gratify my curiosity as a stranger. I hope there is no offense.”

“Take off your hat!” rejoined the rude man. “If you don’t, I’ll take it off for you.”

Friend Hopper leaned on his cane, looked him full in the face, and answered very coolly, “If thou dost, I hope thou wilt send it to my lodgings; for I shall have need of it this afternoon. I lodge at No. 35, Lower Crescent, Clifton.” The place designated was about a mile from the cathedral. The man stared at him as if puzzled whether he were talking to an insane person or not. When the imperturbable Quaker had seen all he cared to see, he deliberately walked away.

At Westminster Abbey he paid the customary fee of two shillings sixpence for admission. The doorkeeper followed him, saying, “You must uncover yourself, sir.”

“Uncover myself,” exclaimed the Friend, with an affectation of ignorant simplicity. “What dost thou mean? Must I take off my coat?”

“Your coat!” responded the man, smiling. “No, indeed, I mean your hat.”

“And what should I take off my hat for?” he inquired.

“Because you are in a church, sir,” answered the doorkeeper.

“I see no church here,” rejoined the Quaker. “Perhaps thou meanest the house where the church assembles. I suppose thou art aware that it is the people, not the building, that constitutes a church, sir?”

The idea seemed new to the man, but he merely repeated, “You must take off your hat, sir.”

But the Friend inquired, “What for? On account of these images? Thou knowest Scripture commands us not to worship graven images.”

The man persisted in saying that no person could be permitted to pass through the church without uncovering his head. “Well, friend,” rejoined Isaac, “I have some conscientious scruples on that subject; so give me back my money and I will go out.”

The reverential habits of the doorkeeper were not quite strong enough to compel him to that sacrifice; and he walked away without saying anything more on the subject.

When Friend Hopper visited the House of Lords, he asked the sergeant-at-arms if he might sit on the throne. He replied, “No, sir. No one but his majesty sits there.”

“Wherein does his majesty differ from other men?” inquired he. “If his head were cut off, wouldn’t he die?”

“Certainly he would,” replied the officer.

“So would an American,” rejoined Friend Hopper. As he spoke he stepped up to the gilded railing that surrounded the throne, and tried to open the gate. The officer told him it was locked. “Well, won’t the same key that locked it unlock it?” inquired he. “Is this the key hanging here?”

Being informed that it was, he took it down and unlocked the gate. He removed the satin covering from the throne, carefully dusting the railing with his handkerchief before he hung the satin over it, and then seated himself in the royal chair. “Well,” said he, “do I look anything like his majesty?”

The man seemed embarrassed, but smiled as he answered, “Why, sir, you certainly fill the throne very respectably.”

There were several noblemen in the room, who seemed to be extremely amused by these unusual proceedings.

Father Hopper lived verily to a “green old age.” On his eightieth birthday he thus wrote to his youngest daughter, Mary:

“My eye is not dim, nor my natural force abated. My head is well covered with hair, which still retains its usual glossy, dark color, with but few gray hairs sprinkled about. My life has been prolonged beyond most, and has been truly a chequered scene. Mercy and kindness have followed me thus far, and I have faith that they will continue with me to the end.”

A few months later, going to visit a discharged convict for whom the association had built a shop far up in the city, Friend Hopper took a fatal cold. It was a long and painful sickness, but he restrained his tendency to groan by singing, and said: “There is no cloud. There is nothing in the way. Nothing troubles me.” His heart was with his past work. His son-in-law wrote: “Reminiscences are continually falling from his lips, like leaves in autumn from an old forest tree; not, indeed green, but rich in the colors that are of the tree, and characteristic. I have never seen so beautiful a close to a good man’s life.” On the last day he said: “I seem to hear voices singing, ‘We have come to take thee home.’” And again he spoke low to his daughter, “Maria, is there anything peculiar in this room?” “No; why do you ask that question?” “Because,” said the dying patriarch, “you all look so beautiful; and the covering on the bed hath such glorious colors as I never saw. But perhaps I had better not have said anything about it.”

His last act was characteristic. Calling for his box of private papers he took out one and asked to have it destroyed, lest it should do some injury. He confided to his eldest daughter as a precious keepsake a little yellow paper, fastened by a rusty pin; it was the first love letter of his first love, her mother, written when she and he were fourteen years old, children in school. Love of justice and love of love in his last breath!

Truth is the source of every good to gods and men. He who expects to be blest and fortunate in this world should be a partaker of it from the earliest moment of his life, that he may live as long as possible a person of truth; for such a man is trustworthy. But that man is untrustworthy who loveth a lie in his heart; and if it be told involuntary, and in mere wantonness, he is a fool. In neither case can they be envied; for every knave and shallow dunce is without real friends. As time passes on to morose old age, he becomes known, and has prepared for himself at the end of his life a dreary solitude; so that, whether his associates and children be alive or not, his life becomes nearly equally a state of isolation.—Plato.

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE INEBRIATES?

Synopsis of a lecture delivered on Saturday, April 12, in the National Museum, at Washington, D. C., by Dr. W. W. Godding, in charge of the Government Hospital for the Insane at Washington, D. C.

The profound interest which I feel for this subject is in sympathy with certain words of Terence: “I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me.” This sentiment is to be commended to the scientists of the Christian era. Entitled, then, to the grave consideration of humanity, is the miserable inebriate. The study of this subject has both a biological and anthropological bearing. The former defines the protoplasm—the wonderful beginning of existence—the subject in hand demonstrates the destructive oxidation of the soul in the presence of alcohol, the deterioration of vital energy, and a misspent life. Again, the anthropologist studies man in his present and primeval existence, delving into burial mounds and bone cases to spell out the lessons learned by each succeeding generation in the great struggle for existence.

Of man it has been written: “How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God!” But by saturating his brain with whiskey, how soon would the godlike man become debased lower than the meanest brute. Truly here in the nineteenth century—not in the old red sandstone or in the silurian beds—but right here in this day appears what might be called the “missing link” in anthropological studies.

What is to be done with the inebriate? Prohibition, total abstinence, and women’s crusades have struggled with the demon of drunkenness, but its throne has not yet been demolished. Its dominion was set up among men long before the Macedonian conqueror, with heel planted upon the neck of a prostrate world, was vanquished by it, and its temples were already hoary when the old Roman worshiped Bacchus under the vines. In the history of the world it has been more potent than Christianity in winning the savage tribes, and at the same time has done more to depauperize Christian nations than all other calamities put together. The subject of intemperance and its cure present the most important social problem of the day for both philanthropist and legislator. However, much good has been brought about by the moral forces of society and the benevolent organizations, toward the extinction of the vice, yet it seems that its utter annihilation is entirely beyond the reach of all influences. Shakspere well described this lurking remnant of a vice not wholly to be controlled, when he said, “I have lost the immortal part, sir, of myself, and what remains is bestial.” There has been too much nonsense in dealing with the inebriate. The world has laughed too long at the noisy, reeling comedy daily enacted on our streets, and is unmindful too often of the corresponding silent tragedy taking place at home. Patient women are not unfrequently found wearing away in gloom what might have been a happy life, looking for the daily return of a drunken husband. Many a death is attributed in the obituary columns of our papers to Bright’s disease, or pneumonia, when in reality whiskey should take all the blame.

The indiscriminate commitment of the inebriate to the hospital for the insane is a grievous wrong. Genuine cases of a real insanity, resulting from dipsomania, are indeed to be found, but it is absurd to class any considerable portion of the inebriates in this category. The hospital for the insane is, however, preferred to the workhouse, as announcing less publicly the disgrace of the victim, and therefore it is that dipsomania is so often stretched into insanity. With some physicians inebriety is confounded with insanity, while others deny the existence of an insanity whose sign is a passion for drink, and accordingly fail to distinguish dipsomania from drunkenness or crime. These points need not, however, be discussed in a lecture intended to treat the subject socially. Social science asks whether this inebriety is a crime or a disease. The law classes drunkenness among crimes, and sends the offenders to penal institutions; but how often do friends, unwilling to see the victims of intemperance committed with the felons, bring to bear on the case powerful arguments to show that the mind is diseased, and thus have him transferred from the gaol to the lunatic asylum, where he is evidently out of place as soon as the fumes of alcohol have left the brain. Inebriety is both a crime and a disease, and owing to a want of recognition of this truth on the part of philanthropists, much work and intended good have been wasted. When it is regarded by the law as an iniquitous disease, and provided for by the law with a curative punishment, then will the community at large be afforded a relief which might also effect the recovery of the victim.

As to the vices of drunkenness and opium consumption, women are probably as much addicted to the latter as men, while drunkenness counts many more victims among the males. The former is a social vice, the latter a solitary evil. The latter injures none but the consumer, leaving out of consideration its power to unfit the mind for business, and thus injure the other members of the family. Through persistent indulgence in opium the mind at last suffers more surely than from alcohol. The love of opium often originates in a physician’s prescription of an opiate for the relief of pain. That is a grave responsibility, but it is inexcusable that the patient is allowed to renew the prescription at will, and long after the immediate necessity for its use has passed away. The antidotes so commonly used as “opium cures” are nothing but disguised morphine, and the poor wretch instead of conquering his love for opiates allows them to get a firmer and surer hold upon him. Such nostrums as “Collins’s cure” and “Hoffman’s antidote” should be analyzed by a chemist directed by state authorities, and the amount of morphine contained in them be published to the world. Prolonged treatment in proper homes, where the victims of opium can be protected against themselves, is the only radical cure.

The dipsomaniac is often to be found in the full vigor of youth; a man rejoicing in a magnificent physique, and showing no external signs of impairment. He may have talent and wit, and be high in the social scale. But behind the mask something is found to be lacking. His liver, clogged with fatty deposit, is disordered, the coats of the stomach are more or less burnt out, dyspeptic symptoms are apparent. The man becomes moody and irritable if deprived of his stimulant, while gout and neuralgia perhaps add themselves to the list of symptoms. The most marked result probably is the utter absence of the natural instincts of rectitude and morality. His whole confession of faith might be summed up in the words of Byron: “Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.”

If the dipsomaniac be sent to the hospital, it is noticed that, while recovering from the immediate effects of his revels there is a condition of unstrung nerves, with marked depression of mind. As his normal activity is restored through rest, proper food and abstinence from stimulants, there appear peculiar intellectual and moral phases characteristic of the inebriate. He speaks of his indulgence as a thing of the past; blames everybody but himself for his excess; declares that it is the result of a dose of Plantation Bitters (perhaps) taken as a cure for an attack of cholera morbus, at the suggestion of a friend who declared they contained no alcohol; treats the matter as something which could never possibly happen again—in fact, regards it as an unfortunate mistake. He declares that the idea of being detained as a lunatic is absurd, and repugnant to his feelings, and probably will soon actually have the effect of converting him into a lunatic; that it is absolutely necessary for him to go and attend to his business. He will never forget the physician’s kindness, and departs apparently cured. His actions remind me of the poor Indian who came to the missionary and began repeating the names of the twelve apostles, adding those of the patriarchs and Old Testament worthies, and anxious to enlarge upon Biblical literature; but when the astounded missionary exclaimed, “What does all this mean?” the Indian promptly replied “Whiskey.”

I have pictured the dipsomaniac as I myself have known him. There are, of course, cases in which the victim is thoroughly convinced of his folly and sin, and radically cured. That is the exception, however, and not the rule. The grave question then has to be considered—“What shall we do with the inebriates?” Are they to be sent back to their families, because the law allows a man’s house to be his castle, in which he has a right to do as he pleases? The inebriate has no such right. Whether sick or criminal, such a man is a nuisance, and should be put down. The law should confine him, however, not as a disturber of the peace, not as a terror to wife and children, nor as a dangerous man to the community, but he should be restrained and punished because he is a confirmed inebriate, with the hope that the punishment will cure his disease and depravity. If sent to the insane hospital it should be as an inebriate, not as a lunatic, and a separate building and enclosed grounds should be provided for this class. The law should provide for his prolonged detention and compulsory labor. The victim, if a minor, should be sentenced for the remainder of his minority. It is an open question whether the will power of a drunkard ever, indeed, attained its majority. If over twenty-one years of age, the first offense should be limited to perhaps one year; but should a second commitment be necessary, then for a term of years, discretionary power being left with the court, under the advice of the authorities of the institution.

Insufficient period of detention, lack of legal power to detain, and absence of authority to inflict compulsory labor, has prevented much good being done by inebriate asylums. It is the province of legislation to invest the court and authorities of inebriate asylums with these powers. Unfortunately, there is a fourth drawback to the permanent cure of the inebriate—one which is outside of the control of legislation—namely: a general indisposition to reform, a perfect atrophy of moral sense, an instinctive return, like “the dog to his own vomit,” of the inebriate to his cups. After the law has endued the authorities of inebriate asylums with all desired power, the essential element of their cure then comes in, and that is sound medical treatment. Asylums conducted in this manner would be able to record quite as large a proportion of good recoveries as the insane hospitals. Would there be anything cruel in subjecting the patient to compulsory labor, or in detaining him for a long period? Surely not; his freedom before the right time would only mean a return to vice and sloth, while his labor could probably be made to pay for his maintenance in the asylum. Not until savants take an interest in this subject will public sentiment be gained, legislation in its behalf enacted and, in fine, a glad release from this state of bondage be attained.

It is a foe invisible which I fear—an enemy in the human breast which opposes me—by its coward fear alone made fearful to me; not that which, full of life, instinct with power, makes known its present being; that is not the perilously formidable. Oh, no! it is the common, the quite common, the thing of an eternal yesterday, which ever was and evermore returns—sterling to-morrow for it was sterling to-day; for man is made of the wholly common, and custom is his nurse. Woe then to them who lay irreverent hands on his old house furniture, the dear inheritance from his forefathers! For time consecrates, and what is gray with age becomes religion. Be in possession, and thou hast the right, and sacred will the many guard it for thee.—Schiller.

CLIMATE-SEEKING IN AMERICA.

By GEO. ALFRED TOWNSEND.

As nations rise in wealth, comfort and communications, they discover that the simplest of all things, mere climate or air, is of the greatest value. The English race paid early attention to this question and seized upon the sheltered positions, the spas and baths as places of resort both for weak systems and for luxurious existence. Religion itself conveniently placed its miracles and chapels where the best climate or the most healing waters were found.

Soon after America was discovered there spread through the most successful nations a belief in a Golden Spring, an El Dorado, and this was pursued notably in Florida, where many yet believe that the most golden spring is to be found, as its season hardly begins till February or March, and is used to offset a lingering winter and the angry winds of the northern sea coast country.

One of the most notable instances of seeking a climate in our colonial history is that of Sir William Johnson, who lived among the six nations of Indians about the Mohawk, and being a portly man with European habits of life, he found his old age, in spite of his active and military youth, affected by gouts and by the heavy stagnant air of the limestone valleys in which he lived, and he was one of the first Americans to select at once a seacoast resort and the mineral springs. We need not repeat the story of how the Indians, among whom he married, concluded in their affection for him to show him their celebrated mineral spring, and took him on a litter through hidden paths to the Tufa rock of Saratoga, where he, the first of white men, saw the reflection of his face in the meteoric water there. It is not as well known that Sir William Johnson also made himself a road to the sea beach, near New London, where he went in summer, not for mineral water, but for sea air, which he esteemed so much more valuable.

Climate, indeed, is one of the most important subjects to be considered by superior men, and the earliest travelers in this country noted down where they escaped the insects, where the nights were cool, where the trade winds blew, etc. The oranges of Florida, for instance, were noted by the old Spanish chroniclers as the finest that grew in their immense dominions, and that perfection is kept up to the present time.

General Washington, a man of good condition, was one of the early annual seekers for a pleasant climate, which he found west of the North Mountain, about Berkeley Springs, where he had a hut built, and for years repaired there with his chicken cocks and horses. When he went through Virginia as a young surveyor, he observed the differences in the temperature, and in the humidity, and located some of the best springs and resorts in the Old Dominion. When Washington first visited Saratoga he endeavored, at once, to purchase the tract enclosing the few sources at that time known, so much was he impressed with the superiority of the climate of New York in summer over that of Virginia.

Mr. Jefferson, who was one of the best amateurs in the country at all sorts of subjects, although he lived on the top of a mountain above the tidewater region, and in sight of other peaks, would not spend his summers at home about Charlottsville, but had a road cut far into the west and built himself a sort of lodge called Poplar Forest, in the high country about Lynchburgh; it was a brick house on a slope, one story high in front and two stories high in the rear, of octagon shape, with a portico in front and a veranda in the rear. To this spot Jefferson went both in summer and in autumn to escape his political followers, and to think, read and sleep.

Jefferson was one of the earliest weather prophets in this country and in his works are found many references to the American climate, of use to any future climatologist. About 1805 he wrote to Mr. Volney, the philosopher: “In no case does habit attach our choice or judgment more than in climate. The Canadian glows with delight in his sleigh and snow, the very idea of which gives me the shivers. The changes between heat and cold in America are greater and more frequent, and the extremes comprehend a greater scale on the thermometer in America than in Europe. Habit, however, prevents these from affecting us more than the smaller changes of Europe affect the European, but he is greatly affected by ours. As our sky is always clear and that of Europe always cloudy, there is a greater accumulation of heat here than there in the same parallel. The changes between wet and dry are much more frequent and sudden in Europe than in America, for though we have double the rain, it falls in half the time. Taking all these together, I prefer much the climate of the United States to that of Europe, and I think it a more cheerful one. It is our cloudless sky which has eradicated from our constitutions all disposition to hang ourselves, which we might otherwise have inherited from our English ancestors. Still, I do not wonder that a European should prefer his grey to our azure sky.”

This description in the main holds good to our time, although social causes have increased here the tendency to suicide, though perhaps the ratio of suicide is no greater in America now than it ever was. If we add dueling, which was a form of suicide, to the regular cases of suicide, I have my doubts whether more Americans make away with themselves now than in the early days. I happen to think of one signer of the Declaration of Independence who died from mental excitement over signing that instrument, of another who was poisoned, and of a third who was killed by a fellow patriot in a duel.

Jefferson also noted in 1809, under “Cultivation,” the changes in the American climate, in a letter to Dr. Chapman: “I remember,” said he, “that when I was a small boy, say sixty years ago, snows were frequent and deep in every winter, to my knee very often, to my waist sometimes, and that they covered the earth long. And I remember while yet young to have heard from very old men that in their youth the winters had been still colder, with deeper and longer snows. In the year 1772 we had a snow two feet deep in the Champagne parts of this state, and three feet in the counties next below the mountains. But when I was President the average fall of snow for the seven winters was only 14½ inches, and the ground was covered but sixteen days in each winter on an average of the whole. I noticed the change in our climate in my ‘Notes on Virginia,’ but since that time public vocations have taken my attention from the subject, nor do I know of any source in Virginia now existing, from which anything on climate can be derived. Dr. Williamson has written on the subject, and Mr. Williams in his ‘History of Vermont’ has an essay on the subject of climate.”

Addressing Mr. Louis E. Beck at Albany, N. Y., in 1824, when he was a very old man, Jefferson said:

“I thank you for your pamphlet on the climate of the West; although it does not yet establish a satisfactory theory, it is an additional step toward it. My own was perhaps the first attempt to bring together the few facts then known, and suggest them to public attention, and they were written before the close of the revolutionary war, when the western country was a wilderness untrodden but by the feet of the savage or the hunter. It is now flourishing in population and science, and after a few more years of observation and collection of facts, they will doubtless furnish a theory of their climate. Years are requisite for this, steady attention to the thermometer, to the plants growing there, the times of their leafing and flowering, its prevalent winds, quantities of rain and snow, temperature of fountains, animal inhabitants, etc. We want this, indeed, for all the states, and the work should be repeated once or twice in a century to show the effects of clearing and culture toward changes of climate.”

Thus promptly did our early scholars and sages watch the climatic relations of the country to its population and vitality. These “Notes on Virginia,” which Jefferson wrote during the Revolution, contain five years’ instrumental observation on rain, heat and wind taken at Williamsburgh, the tidewater capital, which is about forty miles from Fortress Monroe, which latter place has since become a winter resort. He computed that we had forty-seven inches of rain annually, considerably more than fell in Europe, but a much larger proportion of sunshine than there, only half as many cloudy days as in France and Germany, and the statesman says about the Alleghany Mountain region, of which Chautauqua Lake is an outpost:

“It is remarkable that proceeding on the same parallel of latitude westerly, the climate becomes colder in like manner as when you proceed northerly. This continues to be the case until you attain the summit of the Alleghany, which is the highest land between the ocean and the Mississippi. From thence, descending in the same latitude to the Mississippi, the change reverses, and, if we may believe travelers, it becomes warmer there than it is on the same latitude on the sea side. On the higher parts of mountains, where it is absolutely colder than it is on the plains on which they stand, frosts do not appear so early by a considerable time in autumn, and go off sooner in the spring than on the plains. I have known frost so severe as to kill the hickory trees round about Monticello, and yet not injure the tender fruit blossoms then in bloom on the top and higher parts of the mountain. A change in our climate is taking place very sensibly, and both heats and colds are becoming much more moderate, within the memory even of the middle-aged.”

General Washington, it may not be generally known, kept all his early diaries on the blank leaves of the “Virginia Almanac,” which was printed at Williamsburgh, showing that he watched the weather as if it were a part of public life.