THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.

VOL. XX.—SEPTEMBER, 1867.—NO. CXIX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by Ticknor and Fields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.

Contents

[THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.]
[PROPHETIC VOICES ABOUT AMERICA: A MONOGRAPH.]
[SUNSHINE AND PETRARCH.]
[CANADIAN WOODS AND WATERS.]
[THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY.]
[HOSPITAL MEMORIES.]
[MINOR ITALIAN TRAVELS.]
[THE MYSTERY OF NATURE.]
[A WIFE BY WAGER.]
[THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]
[THE BLUE AND THE GRAY.]
[FUGITIVES FROM LABOR.]
[REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.]

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MUSTERING OF FORCES.

Not long after the tableau performance had made Myrtle Hazard's name famous in the school and among the friends of the scholars, she received the very flattering attention of a call from Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place. This was in consequence of a suggestion from Mr. Livingston Jenkins, a particular friend of the family.

"They've got a demonish splendid school-girl over there," he said to that lady,—"made the stunningest-looking Pocahontas at the show there the other day. Demonish plucky-looking filly as ever you saw. Had a row with another girl,—gave the war-whoop, and went at her with a knife. Festive,—hey? Say she only meant to scare her,—looked as if she meant to stick her, anyhow. Splendid style. Why can't you go over to the shop and make 'em trot her out?"

The lady promised Mr. Livingston Jenkins that she certainly would, just as soon as she could find a moment's leisure,—which, as she had nothing in the world to do, was not likely to be very soon. Myrtle in the mean time was busy with her studies, little dreaming what an extraordinary honor was awaiting her.

That rare accident in the lives of people who have nothing to do, a leisure morning, did at last occur. An elegant carriage, with a coachman in a wonderful cape, seated on a box lofty as a throne, and wearing a hat-band as brilliant as a coronet, stopped at the portal of Madam Delacoste's establishment. A card was sent in bearing the open sesame of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, the great lady of 24 Carat Place. Miss Myrtle Hazard was summoned as a matter of course, and the fashionable woman and the young girl sat half an hour together in lively conversation.

Myrtle was fascinated by her visitor, who had that flattering manner which, to those not experienced in the world's ways, seems to imply unfathomable depths of disinterested devotion. Then it was so delightful to look upon a perfectly appointed woman,—one who was as artistically composed as a poem or an opera,—in whose costume a kind of various rhythm undulated in one fluent harmony, from the spray that nodded on her bonnet to the rosette that blossomed on her sandal. As for the lady, she was captivated with Myrtle. There is nothing that your fashionable woman, who has ground and polished her own spark of life into as many and as glittering social facets as it will bear, has a greater passion for than a large rough diamond, which knows nothing of the sea of light it imprisons, and which it will be her pride to have cut into a brilliant under her own eye, and to show the world for its admiration and her own reflected glory. Mrs. Clymer Ketchum had taken the entire inventory of Myrtle's natural endowments before the interview was over. She had no marriageable children, and she was thinking what a killing bait Myrtle would be at one of her own parties.

She soon got another letter from Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, which explained the interest he had taken in Madam Delacoste's school,—all which she knew pretty nearly beforehand, for she had found out a good part of Myrtle's history in the half-hour they had spent in company.

"I had a particular reason for my inquiries about the school," he wrote. "There is a young girl there I take an interest in. She is handsome and interesting, and—though it is a shame to mention such a thing—has possibilities in the way of fortune not to be undervalued. Why can't you make her acquaintance and be civil to her? A country girl, but fine old stock, and will make a figure some time or other, I tell you. Myrtle Hazard,—that's her name. A mere school-girl. Don't be malicious and badger me about her, but be polite to her. Some of these country girls have got 'blue blood' in them, let me tell you, and show it plain enough."

("In huckleberry season.") said Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, in a parenthesis,—and went on reading.

"Don't think I'm one of your love-in-a-cottage sort, to have my head turned by a village beauty. I've got a career before me, Mrs. K., and I know it. But this is one of my pets, and I want you to keep an eye on her. Perhaps when she leaves school you wouldn't mind asking her to come and stay with you a little while. Possibly. I may come and see how she is getting on if you do,—won't that tempt you, Mrs. C. K.?"

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum wrote back to her relative how she had already made the young lady's acquaintance.

"Livingston Jenkins (you remember him) picked her out of the whole lot of girls as the 'prettiest filly in the stable.' That's his horrid way of talking. But your young milkmaid is really charming, and will come into form like a Derby three-year-old. There, now, I've caught that odious creature's horse-talk, myself. You're dead in love with this girl, Murray, you know you are.

"After all, I don't know but you're right. You would make a good country lawyer enough, I don't doubt. I used to think you had your ambitions, but never mind. If you choose to risk yourself on 'possibilities,' it is not my affair, and she's a beauty,—there's no mistake about that.

"There are some desirable partis at the school with your Dulcinea. There's Rose Bugbee. That last name is a good one to be married from. Rose is a nice girl,—there are only two of them. The estate will cut up like one of the animals it was made out of,—you know,—the sandwich-quadruped. Then there's Berengaria. Old Topping owns the Planet Hotel among other things,—so big, they say, there's always a bell ringing from somebody's room day and night the year round. Only child—unit and six ciphers—carries diamonds loose in her pocket—that's the story—good-looking—lively—a little slangy—called Livingston Jenkins 'Living Jingo' to his face one day. I want you to see my lot before you do anything serious. You owe something to the family, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw! But you must, suit yourself, after all: if you are contented with a humble position in life, it is nobody's business that I know of. Only I know what life is, Murray B. Getting married is jumping overboard, any way you look at it, and if you must save some woman from drowning an old maid, try to find one with a cork jacket, or she'll carry you down with her."

Murray Bradshaw was calculating enough, but he shook his head over this letter. It was too demonish cold-blooded for him, he said to himself. (Men cannot pardon women for saying aloud what they do not hesitate to think in silence themselves.) Never mind,—he must have Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's house and influence for his own purposes. Myrtle Hazard must become her guest, and then, if circumstances were favorable, he was certain of obtaining her aid in his project.

The opportunity to invite Myrtle to the great mansion presented itself unexpectedly. Early in the spring of 1861 there were some cases of sickness in Madam Delacoste's establishment, which led to closing the school for a while. Mrs. Clymer Ketchum took advantage of the dispersion of the scholars to ask Myrtle to come and spend some weeks with her. There were reasons why this was more agreeable to the young girl than returning to Oxbow Village, and she very gladly accepted the invitation.

It was very remarkable that a man living as Master Byles Gridley had lived for so long a time should all at once display such liberality as he showed to a young woman who had no claim upon him, except that he had rescued her from the consequences of her own imprudence and warned her against impending dangers. Perhaps he cared more for her than if the obligation had been the other way,—students of human nature say it is commonly so. At any rate, either he had ampler resources than it was commonly supposed, or he was imprudently giving way to his generous impulses, or he thought he was making advances which would in due time be returned to him. Whatever the reason was, he furnished her with means, not only for her necessary expenses, but sufficient to afford her many of the elegances which she would be like to want in the fashionable society with which she was for a short time to mingle.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was so well pleased with the young lady she was entertaining, that she thought it worth while to give a party while Myrtle was staying with her. She had her jealousies and rivalries, as women of the world will, sometimes, and these may have had their share in leading her to take the trouble a large party involved. She was tired of the airs of Mrs. Pinnikle, who was of the great Apex family, and her terribly accomplished daughter Rhadamantha, and wanted to crush the young lady, and jaundice her mother, with a girl twice as brilliant and ten times handsomer. She was very willing, also, to take the nonsense out of the Capsheaf girls, who thought themselves the most stylish personages of their city world, and would bite their lips well to see themselves distanced by a country miss.

In the mean time circumstances were promising to bring into Myrtle's neighborhood several of her old friends and admirers. Mrs. Clymer Ketchum had written to Murray Bradshaw that she had asked his pretty milkmaid to come and stay awhile with her, but he had been away on business, and only arrived in the city a day or two before the party. But other young fellows had found out the attractions of the girl who was "hanging out at the Clymer Ketchum concern," and callers were plenty, reducing tête-à-têtes in a corresponding ratio. He did get one opportunity, however, and used it well. They had so many things to talk about in common, that she could not help finding him good company. She might well be pleased, for he was an adept in the curious art of being agreeable, as other people are in chess or billiards, and had made a special study of her tastes, as a physician studies a patient's constitution. What he wanted was to get her thoroughly interested in himself, and to maintain her in a receptive condition until such time as he should be ready for a final move. Any day might furnish the decisive motive; in the mean time he wished only to hold her as against all others.

It was well for her, perhaps, that others had flattered her into a certain consciousness of her own value. She felt her veins full of the same rich blood as that which had flushed the cheeks of handsome Judith in the long summer of her triumph. Whether it was vanity, or pride, or only the instinctive sense of inherited force and attraction, it was the best of defences. The golden bracelet on her wrist seemed to have brought as much protection with it as if it had been a shield over her heart.

But far away in Oxbow Village other events were in preparation. The "fugitive pieces" of Mr. Gifted Hopkins had now reached a number so considerable, that, if collected and printed in large type, with plenty of what the unpleasant printers call "fat,"—meaning thereby blank spaces,—upon a good, substantial, not to say thick paper, they might perhaps make a volume which would have substance enough to bear the title, printed lengthwise along the back, "Hopkins's Poems." Such a volume that author had in contemplation. It was to be the literary event of the year 1861.

He could not mature such a project, one which he had been for some time contemplating, without consulting Mr. Byles Gridley, who, though he had not unfrequently repressed the young poet's too ardent ambition, had yet always been kind and helpful.

Mr. Gridley was seated in his large arm-chair, indulging himself in the perusal of a page or two of his own work before repeatedly referred to. His eye was glistening, for it had just rested on the following passage:—

"There is infinite pathos in unsuccessful authorship. The book that perishes unread is the deaf mute of literature. The great asylum of Oblivion is full of such, making inaudible signs to each other in leaky garrets and unattainable dusty upper shelves."

He shut the book, for the page grew a little dim as he finished this elegiac sentence, and sighed to think how much more keenly he felt its truth than when it was written,—than on that memorable morning when he saw the advertisement in all the papers, "This day published, 'Thoughts on the Universe. By Byles Gridley, A. M.'"

At that moment he heard a knock at his door. He closed his eyelids forcibly for ten seconds, opened them, and said, cheerfully, "Come in!"

Gifted Hopkins entered. He had a collection of manuscripts in his hands which it seemed to him would fill a vast number of pages. He did not know that manuscript is to type what fresh dandelions are to the dish of greens that comes to table, of which last Nurse Byloe, who considered them very wholesome spring grazing for her patients, used to say that they "biled down dreadful."

"I have brought the autographs of my poems, Master Gridley, to consult you about making arrangements for publication. They have been so well received by the public and the leading critics of this part of the State, that I think of having them printed in a volume. I am going to the city for that purpose. My mother has given her consent. I wish to ask you several business questions. Shall I part with the copyright for a downright sum of money, which I understand some prefer doing, or publish on shares, or take a percentage on the sales? These, I believe, are the different ways taken by authors."

Mr. Gridley was altogether too considerate to reply with the words which would most naturally have come to his lips. He waited as if he were gravely pondering the important questions just put to him, all the while looking at Gifted with a tenderness which no one who had not buried one of his soul's children could have felt for a young author trying to get clothing for his new-born intellectual offspring.

"I think," he said presently, "you had better talk with an intelligent and liberal publisher, and be guided by his advice. I can put you in correspondence with such a person, and you had better trust him than me a great deal. Why don't you send your manuscript by mail?"

"What, Mr. Gridley? Trust my poems, some of which are unpublished, to the post-office? No, sir, I could never make up my mind to such a risk. I mean to go to the city myself, and read them to some of the leading publishers. I don't want to pledge myself to any one of them. I should like to set them bidding against each other for the copyright, if I sell it at all."

Mr. Gridley gazed upon the innocent youth with a sweet wonder in his eyes that made him look like an angel, a little damaged in the features by time, but full of celestial feelings.

"It will cost you something to make this trip, Gifted. Have you the means to pay for your journey and your stay at a city hotel?"

Gifted blushed. "My mother has laid by a small sum for me," he said. "She knows some of my poems by heart, and she wants to see them all in print."

Master Gridley closed his eyes very firmly again, as if thinking, and opened them as soon as the foolish film had left them. He had read many a page of "Thoughts on the Universe" to his own old mother, long, long years ago, and she had often listened with tears of modest pride that Heaven had favored her with a son so full of genius.

"I'll tell you what, Gifted," he said. "I have been thinking for a good while that I would make a visit to the city, and if you have made up your mind to try what you can do with the publishers, I will take you with me as a companion. It will be a saving to you and your good mother, for I shall bear the expenses of the expedition."

Gifted Hopkins came very near going down on his knees. He was so overcome with gratitude that it seemed as if his very coat-tails wagged with his emotion.

"Take it quietly," said Master Gridley. "Don't make a fool of yourself. Tell your mother to have some clean shirts and things ready for you, and we will be off day after to-morrow morning."

Gifted hastened to impart the joyful news to his mother, and to break the fact to Susan Posey that he was about to leave them for a while, and rush into the deliriums and dangers of the great city.

Susan smiled. Gifted hardly knew whether to be pleased with her sympathy, or vexed that she did not take his leaving more to heart. The smile held out bravely for about a quarter of a minute. Then there came on a little twitching at the corners of the mouth. Then the blue eyes began to shine with a kind of veiled glimmer. Then the blood came up into her cheeks with a great rush, as if the heart had sent up a herald with a red flag from the citadel to know what was going on at the outworks. The message that went back was of discomfiture and capitulation. Poor Susan was overcome, and gave herself up to weeping and sobbing.

The sight was too much for the young poet. In a wild burst of passion he seized her hand, and pressed it to his lips, exclaiming, "Would that you could be mine forever!" and Susan forgot all that she ought to have remembered, and, looking half reproachfully but half tenderly through her tears, said, in tones of infinite sweetness, "O Gifted!"

CHAPTER XXV

THE POET AND THE PUBLISHER.

It was settled that Master Byles Gridley and Mr. Gifted Hopkins should leave early in the morning of the day appointed, to take the nearest train to the city. Mrs. Hopkins labored hard to get them ready, so that they might make a genteel appearance among the great people whom they would meet in society. She brushed up Mr. Gridley's best black suit, and bound the cuffs of his dress-coat, which were getting a little worried. She held his honest-looking hat to the fire, and smoothed it while it was warm, until one would have thought it had just been ironed by the hatter himself. She had his boots and shoes brought into a more brilliant condition than they had ever known: if Gifted helped, it was to his credit as much as if he had shown his gratitude by polishing off a copy of verses in praise of his benefactor.

When she had got Mr. Gridley's encumbrances in readiness for the journey, she devoted herself to fitting out her son Gifted. First, she had down from the garret a capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered with leather, and adorned with brass-headed nails, by the cunning disposition of which, also, the paternal initials stood out on the rounded lid, in the most conspicuous manner. It was his father's trunk, and the first thing that went into it, as the widow lifted the cover, and the smothering, shut-up smell struck an old chord of associations, was a single tear-drop. How well she remembered the time when she first unpacked it for her young husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed their snowy plaits! O dear, dear!

But women decant their affection, sweet and sound, out of the old bottles into the new ones,—off from the lees of the past generation, clear and bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it. Gifted Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and thought proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the mother of Hopkins.

So she took great pains to equip this brilliant but inexperienced young man with everything he could by any possibility need during his absence. The great trunk filled itself until it bulged with its contents like a boa-constrictor who has swallowed his blanket. Best clothes and common clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, flannels and linens, socks and collars, with handkerchiefs enough to keep the pickpockets busy for a week, with a paper of gingerbread and some lozenges for gastralgia, and "hot drops," and ruled paper to write letters on, and a little Bible, and a phial with hiera picra, and another with paregoric, and another with "camphire" for sprains and bruises,—Gifted went forth equipped for every climate from the tropic to the pole, and armed against every malady from Ague to Zoster. He carried also the paternal watch, a solid silver bull's-eye, and a large pocket-book, tied round with a long tape, and, by way of precaution, pinned into his breast-pocket. He talked about having a pistol, in case he were attacked by any of the ruffians who are so numerous in the city, but Mr. Gridley told him, No! he would certainly shoot himself, and he shouldn't think of letting him take a pistol.

They went forth, Mentor and Telemachus, at the appointed time, to dare the perils of the railroad and the snares of the city. Mrs. Hopkins was firm up to near the last moment, when a little quiver in her voice set her eyes off; and her face broke up all at once, so that she had to hide it behind her handkerchief. Susan Posey showed the truthfulness of her character in her words to Gifted at parting. "Farewell," she said, "and think of me sometimes while absent. My heart is another's, but my friendship, Gifted—my friendship—"

Both were deeply affected. He took her hand and would have raised it to his lips; but she did not forget herself, and gently withdrew it, exclaiming, "O Gifted!" this time with a tone of tender reproach which made him feel like a profligate. He tore himself away, and when at a safe distance flung her a kiss, which she rewarded with a tearful smile.

Master Byles Gridley must have had some good dividends from some of his property of late. There is no other way of accounting for the handsome style in which he did things on their arrival in the city. He went to a tailor's and ordered a new suit to be sent home as soon as possible, for he knew his wardrobe was a little rusty. He looked Gifted over from head to foot, and suggested such improvements as would recommend him to the fastidious eyes of the selecter sort of people, and put him in his own tailor's hands, at the same time saying that all bills were to be sent to him, B. Gridley, Esq., parlor No. 6, at the Planet House. Thus it came to pass that in three days from their arrival they were both in an eminently presentable condition. In the mean time the prudent Mr. Gridley had been keeping the young man busy, and amusing himself by showing him such of the sights of the city and its suburbs as he thought would combine instruction with entertainment.

When they were both properly equipped and ready for the best company, Mr. Gridley said to the young poet, who had found it very hard to contain his impatience, that they would now call together on the publisher to whom he wished to introduce him, and they set out accordingly.

"My name is Gridley," he said with modest gravity, as he entered the publisher's private room. "I have a note of introduction here from one of your authors, as I think he called himself,—a very popular writer for whom you publish."

The publisher rose and came forward in the most cordial and respectful manner. "Mr. Gridley?—Professor Byles Gridley,—author of 'Thoughts on the Universe'?"

The brave-hearted old man colored as if he had been a young girl. His dead book rose before him like an apparition. He groped in modest confusion for an answer. "A child I buried long ago, my dear sir," he said. "Its title-page was its tombstone. I have brought this young friend with me,—this is Mr. Gifted Hopkins of Oxbow Village,—who wishes to converse with you about—"

"I have come, sir—" the young poet began, interrupting him.

"Let me look at your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Popkins," said the publisher, interrupting in his turn.

"Hopkins, if you please, sir," Gifted suggested mildly, proceeding to extract the manuscript, which had got wedged into his pocket, and seemed to be holding on with all its might. He was wondering all the time over the extraordinary clairvoyance of the publisher, who had looked through so many thick folds, broadcloth, lining, brown paper, and seen his poems lying hidden in his breast-pocket. The idea that a young person coming on such an errand should have to explain his intentions would have seemed very odd to the publisher. He knew the look which belongs to this class of enthusiasts just as a horse-dealer knows the look of a green purchaser with the equine fever raging in his veins. If a young author had come to him with a scrap of manuscript hidden in his boots, like Major André's papers, the publisher would have taken one glance at him and said, "Out with it!"

While he was battling for the refractory scroll with his pocket, which turned half wrong side out, and acted as things always do when people are nervous and in a hurry, the publisher directed his conversation again to Master Byles Gridley.

"A remarkable book, that of yours, Mr. Gridley,—would have a great run if it were well handled. Came out twenty years too soon,—that was the trouble. One of our leading scholars was speaking of it to me the other day. 'We must have a new edition,' he said; 'people are just ripe for that book.' Did you ever think of that? Change the form of it a little, and give it a new title, and it will be a popular book. Five thousand or more, very likely."

Mr. Gridley felt as if he had been rapidly struck on the forehead with a dozen distinct blows from a hammer not quite big enough to stun him. He sat still without saying a word. He had forgotten for the moment all about poor Gifted Hopkins, who had got out his manuscript at last, and was calming the disturbed corners of it. Coming to himself a little, he took a large and beautiful silk handkerchief, one of his new purchases, from his pocket, and applied it to his face, for the weather seemed to have grown very warm all at once. Then he remembered the errand on which he had come, and thought of this youth, who had got to receive his first hard lesson in life, and whom he had brought to this kind man that it should be gently administered.

"You surprise me," he said,—"you surprise me. Dead and buried. Dead and buried. I had sometimes thought that—at some future period, after I was gone, it might—but I hardly know what to say about your suggestions. But here is my young friend, Mr. Hopkins, who would like to talk with you, and I will leave him in your hands. I am at the Planet House, if you should care to call upon me. Good morning. Mr. Hopkins will explain everything to you more at his ease, without me, I am confident."

Master Gridley could not quite make up his mind to stay through the interview between the young poet and the publisher. The flush of hope was bright in Gifted's eye and cheek, and the good man knew that young hearts are apt to be over-sanguine, and that one who enters a shower-bath often feels very differently from the same person when he has pulled the string.

"I have brought you my Poems in the original autographs, sir," said Mr. Gifted Hopkins.

He laid the manuscript on the table, caressing the leaves still with one hand, as loath to let it go.

"What disposition had you thought of making of them?" the publisher asked, in a pleasant tone. He was as kind a man as lived, though he worked the chief engine in a chamber of torture.

"I wish to read you a few specimens of the poems," he said, "with reference to their proposed publication in a volume."

"By all means," said the kind publisher, who determined to be very patient with the protégé of the hitherto little-known, but remarkable writer, Professor Gridley. At the same time he extended his foot in an accidental sort of way, and pressed it on the right-hand knob of three which were arranged in a line beneath the table. A little bell in a distant apartment—the little bell marked C—gave one slight note, loud enough to start a small boy up, who looked at the clock, and knew that he was to go and call the publisher in just twenty-five minutes. "A, five minutes; B, ten minutes; C, twenty-five minutes";—that was the small boy's working formula. Mr. Hopkins was treated to the full allowance of time, as being introduced by Professor Gridley.

The young man laid open the manuscript so that the title-page, written out very handsomely in his own hand, should win the eye of the publisher.

BLOSSOMS OF THE SOUL.

A WREATH OF VERSE; Original.

By Gifted Hopkins.

"A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown."

Gray.

"Shall I read you some of the rhymed pieces first, or some of the blank-verse poems, sir?" Gifted asked.

"Read what you think is best,—a specimen of your first-class style of composition."

"I will read you the very last poem I have written," he said, and began:—

"THE TRIUMPH OF SONG.

"I met that gold-haired maiden, all too dear;
And I to her: Lo! Thou art very fair,
Fairer than all the ladies in the world
That fan the sweetened air with scented fans,
And I am scorchéd with exceeding love,
Yea, crispéd till my bones are dry as straw.
Look not away with that high-archéd brow,
But turn its whiteness that I may behold,
And lift thy great eyes till they blaze on mine.
And lay thy finger on thy perfect mouth,
And let thy lucent ears of carven pearl
Drink in the murmured music of my soul,
As the lush grass drinks in the globéd dew;
For I have many scrolls of sweetest rhyme
I will unroll and make thee glad to hear.
"Then she: O shaper of the marvellous phrase
That openeth woman's heart as doth a key,
I dare not hear thee—lest the bolt should slide
That locks another's heart within my own.
Go, leave me,—and she let her eyelids fall
And the great tears rolled from her large blue eyes.
"Then I: If thou not hear me, I shall die,
Yea, in my desperate mood may lift my hand
And do myself a hurt no leech can mend;
For poets ever were of dark resolve,
And swift stern deed—
That maiden heard no more,
But spake: Alas! my heart is very weak,
And but for—Stay! And if some dreadful morn,
After great search and shouting thorough the wold,
We found thee missing,—strangled,—drowned i' the mere,—
Then should I go distraught and be clean mad!
O poet, read! read all thy wondrous scroll!
Yea, read the verse that maketh glad to hear!
Then I began and read two sweet, brief hours,
And she forgot all love save only mine!"

"Is all this from real life?" asked the publisher.

"It—no, sir—not exactly from real life—that is, the leading female person is not wholly fictitious—and the incident is one which might have happened. Shall I read you the poems referred to in the one you have just heard, sir?"

"Allow me, one moment. Two hours' reading, I think, you said. I fear I shall hardly be able to spare quite time to hear them all. Let me ask what you intend doing with these productions, Mr——rr—Popkins."

"Hopkins, if you please, sir, not Popkins," said Gifted, plaintively. He expressed his willingness to dispose of the copyright, to publish on shares, or perhaps to receive a certain percentage on the profits.

"Suppose we take a glass of wine together, Mr.——Hopkins, before we talk business," the publisher said, opening a little cupboard and taking therefrom a decanter and two glasses. He saw the young man was looking nervous. He waited a few minutes, until the wine had comforted his epigastrium, and diffused its gentle glow through his unspoiled and consequently susceptible organization.

"Come with me," he said.

Gifted followed him into a dingy apartment in the attic, where one sat at a great table heaped and piled with manuscripts. By him was a huge basket, half full of manuscripts also. As they entered he dropped another manuscript into the basket and looked up.

"Tell me," said Gifted, "what are these papers, and who is he that looks upon them and drops them into the basket?"

"These are the manuscript poems that we receive, and the one sitting at the table is commonly spoken of among us as The Butcher. The poems he drops into the basket are those rejected as of no account."

"But does he not read the poems before he rejects them?"

"He tastes them. Do you eat a cheese before you buy it?"

"And what becomes of all these that he drops into the basket?"

"If they are not claimed by their author in proper season they go to the devil."

"What!" said Gifted, with his eyes stretched very round.

"To the paper factory, where they have a horrid machine they call the devil, that tears everything to bits,—as the critics treat our authors, sometimes,—sometimes, Mr. Hopkins."

Gifted devoted a moment to silent reflection.

After this instructive sight they returned together to the publisher's private room. The wine had now warmed the youthful poet's præcordia, so that he began to feel a renewed confidence in his genius and his fortunes.

"I should like to know what that critic of yours would say to my manuscript," he said boldly.

"You can try it, if you want to," the publisher replied, with an ominous dryness of manner which the sanguine youth did not perceive, or, perceiving, did not heed.

"How can we manage to get an impartial judgment?"

"O, I'll arrange that. He always goes to his luncheon about this time. Raw meat and vitriol punch,—that's what the authors say. Wait till we hear him go, and then I will lay your manuscript so that he will come to it among the first after he gets back. You shall see with your own eyes what treatment it gets. I hope it may please him, but you shall see."

They went back to the publisher's private room and talked awhile. Then the small boy came up with some vague message about a gentleman—business—wants to see you, sir, etc, according to the established programme; all in a vacant, mechanical sort of way, as if he were a talking-machine just running down.

The publisher told the small boy that he was engaged, and the gentleman must wait. Very soon they heard The Butcher's heavy footstep as he went out to get his raw meat and vitriol punch.

"Now, then," said the publisher, and led forth the confiding literary lamb once more, to enter the fatal door of the critical shambles.

"Hand me your manuscript, if you please, Mr. Hopkins. I will lay it so that it shall be the third of these that are coming to hand. Our friend here is a pretty good judge of verse, and knows a merchantable article about as quick as any man in his line of business. If he forms a favorable opinion of your poems, we will talk over your propositions."

Gifted was conscious of a very slight tremor as he saw his precious manuscript deposited on the table under two others, and over a pile of similar productions. Still he could not help feeling that the critic would be struck by his title. The quotation from Gray must touch his feelings. The very first piece in the collection could not fail to arrest him. He looked a little excited, but he was in good spirits.

"We will be looking about here when our friend comes back," the publisher said. "He is a very methodical person, and will sit down and go right to work just as if we were not here. We can watch him, and if he should express any particular interest in your poems, I will, if you say so, carry you up to him and reveal the fact that you are the author of the works that please him."

They waited patiently until The Butcher returned, apparently refreshed by his ferocious refection, and sat down at his table. He looked comforted, and not in ill humor. The publisher and the poet talked in low tones, as if on business of their own, and watched him as he returned to his labor.

The Butcher took the first manuscript that came to hand, read a stanza here and there, turned over the leaves, turned back and tried again,—shook his head—held it for an instant over the basket, as if doubtful,—and let it softly drop. He took up the second manuscript, opened it in several places, seemed rather pleased with what he read, and laid it aside for further examination.

He took up the third. "Blossoms of the Soul," etc. He glared at it in a dreadfully ogreish way. Both the lookers-on held their breath. Gifted Hopkins felt as if half a glass more of that warm sherry would not hurt him. There was a sinking at the pit of his stomach, as if he was in a swing, as high as he could go, close up to the swallows' nests and spiders' webs. The Butcher opened the manuscript at random, read ten seconds, and gave a short, low grunt. He opened again, read ten seconds, and gave another grunt, this time a little longer and louder. He opened once more, read five seconds, and, with something that sounded like the snort of a dangerous animal, cast it impatiently into the basket, and took up the manuscript that came next in order.

Gifted Hopkins stood as if paralyzed for a moment.

"Safe, perfectly safe," the publisher said to him in a whisper. "I'll get it for you presently. Come in and take another glass of wine," he said, leading him back to his own office.

"No, I thank you," he said faintly, "I can bear it. But this is dreadful, sir. Is this the way that genius is welcomed to the world of letters?"

The publisher explained to him, in the kindest manner, that there was an enormous over-production of verse, and that it took a great part of one man's time simply to overhaul the cart-loads of it that were trying to get themselves into print with the imprimatur of his famous house. "You're young, Mr. Hopkins. I advise you not to try to force your article of poetry on the market. The B——, our friend, there, that is, knows a thing that will sell as soon as he sees it. You are in independent circumstances, perhaps? If so, you can print—at your own expense—whatever you choose. May I take the liberty to ask your—profession?"

Gifted explained that he was "clerk" in a "store," where they sold dry goods and West India goods, and goods promiscuous.

"O, well, then," the publisher said, "you will understand me. Do you know a good article of brown sugar when you see it?"

Gifted Hopkins rather thought he did. He knew at sight whether it was a fair, salable article or not.

"Just so. Now our friend, there, knows verses that are salable and unsalable as well as you do brown sugar.—Keep quiet now, and I will go and get your manuscript for you.——There, Mr. Hopkins, take your poems,—they will give you a reputation in your village, I don't doubt, which is pleasant, but it will cost you a good deal of money to print them in a volume. You are very young: you can afford to wait. Your genius is not ripe yet, I am confident, Mr. Hopkins. These verses are very well for a beginning, but a man of promise like you, Mr. Hopkins, mustn't throw away his chance by premature publication! I should like to make you a present of a few of the books we publish. By and by, perhaps, we can work you into our series of poets; but the best pears ripen slowly, and so with genius.—Where shall I send the volumes?"

Gifted answered, to parlor No. 6, Planet Hotel, where he soon presented himself to Master Gridley, who could guess pretty well what was coming. But he let him tell his story.

"Shall I try the other publishers?" said the disconsolate youth.

"I wouldn't, my young friend, I wouldn't. You have seen the best one of them all. He is right about it, quite right: you are young, and had better wait. Look here, Gifted, here is something to please you. We are going to visit the gay world together. See what has been left here this forenoon."

He showed him two elegant notes of invitation requesting the pleasure of Professor Byles Gridley's and of Mr. Gifted Hopkins's company on Thursday evening, as the guests of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, of 24 Carat Place.

CHAPTER XXVI.

MRS. CLYMER KETCHUM'S PARTY.

Myrtle Hazard had flowered out as beyond question the handsomest girl of the season. There were hints from different quarters that she might possibly be an heiress. Vague stories were about of some contingency which might possibly throw a fortune into her lap. The young men about town talked of her at the clubs in their free-and-easy way, but all agreed that she was the girl of the new crop,—"best filly this grass," as Livingston Jenkins put it. The general understanding seemed to be that the young lawyer who had followed her to the city was going to capture her. She seemed to favor him certainly as much as anybody. But Myrtle saw many young men now, and it was not so easy as it would once have been to make out who was an especial favorite.

There had been times when Murray Bradshaw would have offered his heart and hand to Myrtle at once, if he had felt sure that she would accept him. But he preferred playing the safe game now, and only wanted to feel sure of her. He had done his best to be agreeable, and could hardly doubt that he had made an impression. He dressed well when in the city,—even elegantly,—he had many of the lesser social accomplishments, was a good dancer, and compared favorably in all such matters with the more dashing young fellows in society. He was a better talker than most of them, and he knew more about the girl he was dealing with than they could know. "You have only got to say the word, Murray," Mrs. Clymer Ketchum said to her relative, "and you can have her. But don't be rash. I believe you can get Berengaria if you try; and there's something better there than possibilities." Murray Bradshaw laughed, and told Mrs. Clymer Ketchum not to worry about him; he knew what he was doing.

It so happened that Myrtle met Master Byles Gridley walking with Mr. Gifted Hopkins the day before the party. She longed to have a talk with her old friend, and was glad to have a chance of pleasing her poetical admirer. She therefore begged her hostess to invite them both to her party to please her, which she promised to do at once. Thus the two elegant notes were accounted for.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, though her acquaintances were chiefly in the world of fortune and of fashion, had yet a certain weakness for what she called clever people. She therefore always variegated her parties with a streak of young artists and writers, and a literary lady or two; and, if she could lay hands on a first-class celebrity, was as happy as an Amazon who had captured a Centaur.

"There's a demonish clever young fellow by the name of Lindsay," Mr. Livingston Jenkins said to her a little before the day of the party. "Better ask him. They say he's the rising talent in his line, architecture mainly, but has done some remarkable things in the way of sculpture. There's some story about a bust he made that was quite wonderful. I'll find his address for you." So Mr. Clement Lindsay got his invitation, and thus Mrs. Clymer Ketchum's party promised to bring together a number of persons with whom we are acquainted, and who were acquainted with each other.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum knew how to give a party. Let her only have carte blanche for flowers, music, and champagne, she used to tell her lord, and she would see to the rest,—lighting the rooms, tables, and toilet. He needn't be afraid; all he had to do was to keep out of the way.

Subdivision of labor is one of the triumphs of modern civilization. Labor was beautifully subdivided in this lady's household. It was old Ketchum's business to make money, and he understood it. It was Mrs. K.'s business to spend money, and she knew how to do it. The rooms blazed with light like a conflagration; the flowers burned like lamps of many-colored flame; the music throbbed into the hearts of the promenaders and tingled through all the muscles of the dancers.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was in her glory. Her point d'Alençon must have spoiled ever so many French girls' eyes. Her bosom heaved beneath a kind of breastplate glittering with a heavy dew of diamonds. She glistened and sparkled with every movement, so that the admirer forgot to question too closely whether the eyes matched the brilliants, or the cheeks glowed like the roses. Not far from the great lady stood Myrtle Hazard. She was dressed as the fashion of the day demanded, but she had added certain audacious touches of her own, reminiscences of the time when the dead beauty had flourished, and which first provoked the question and then the admiration of the young people who had a natural eye for effect. Over the long white glove on her left arm was clasped a rich bracelet, of so quaint an antique pattern that nobody had seen anything like it, and as some one whispered that it was "the last thing out," it was greatly admired by the fashion-plate multitude, as well as by the few who had a taste of their own. If the soul of Judith Pride, long divorced from its once beautifully moulded dust, ever lived in dim consciousness through any of those who inherited her blood, it was then and there that she breathed through the lips of Myrtle Hazard. The young girl almost trembled with the ecstasy of this new mode of being, soliciting every sense with light, with perfume, with melody,—all that could make her feel the wonderful complex music of a fresh life when all its chords first vibrate together in harmony. Miss Rhadamantha Pinnikle, whose mother was an Apex (of whose race it was said that they always made an obeisance when the family name was mentioned, and had all their portraits painted with halos round their heads), found herself extinguished in this new radiance. Miss Victoria Capsheaf stuck to the wall as if she had been a fresco on it. The fifty-year-old dynasties were dismayed and dismounted. Myrtle fossilized them as suddenly as if she had been a Gorgon, instead of a beauty.

The guests in whom we may have some interest were in the mean time making ready for the party, which was expected to be a brilliant one; for 24 Carat Place was well known for the handsome style of its entertainments.

Clement Lindsay was a little surprised by his invitation. He had, however, been made a lion of several times of late; and was very willing to amuse himself once in a while with a peep into the great world. It was but an empty show to him at best, for his lot was cast, and he expected to lead a quiet domestic life after his student days were over.

Master Byles Gridley had known what society was in his earlier time, and understood very well that all a gentleman of his age had to do was to dress himself in his usual plain way, only taking a little more care in his arrangements than was needed in the latitude of Oxbow Village. But Gifted must be looked after, that he should not provoke the unamiable comments of the city youth by any defect or extravagance of costume. The young gentleman had bought a light sky-blue neckerchief, and a very large breastpin containing a gem which he was assured by the vendor was a genuine stone. He considered that both these would be eminently effective articles of dress, and Mr. Gridley had some trouble to convince him that a white tie and plain shirt-buttons would be more fitted to the occasion.

On the morning of the day of the great party Mr. William Murray Bradshaw received a brief telegram, which seemed to cause him great emotion, as he changed color, uttered a forcible exclamation, and began walking up and down his room in a very nervous kind of way. It was a foreshadowing of a certain event now pretty sure to happen. Whatever bearing this telegram may have had upon his plans, he made up his mind that he would contrive an opportunity somehow that very evening to propose himself as a suitor to Myrtle Hazard. He could not say that he felt as absolutely certain of getting the right answer as he had felt at some previous periods. Myrtle knew her price, he said to himself, a great deal better than when she was a simple country girl. The flatteries with which she had been surrounded, and the effect of all the new appliances of beauty, which had set her off so that she could not help seeing her own attractions, rendered her harder to please and to satisfy. A little experience in society teaches a young girl the arts and the phrases which all the Lotharios have in common. Murray Bradshaw was ready to land his fish now, but he was not quite sure that she was yet hooked, and he had a feeling that by this time she knew every fly in his book. However, as he had made up his mind not to wait another day, he addressed himself to the trial before him with a determination to succeed, if any means at his command would insure success. He arrayed himself with faultless elegance: nothing must be neglected on such an occasion. He went forth firm and grave as a general going into a battle where all is to be lost or won. He entered the blazing saloon with the unfailing smile upon his lips, to which he set them as he set his watch to a particular hour and minute.

The rooms were pretty well filled when he arrived and made his bow before the blazing, rustling, glistening, waving, blushing appearance under which palpitated, with the pleasing excitement of the magic scene over which its owner presided, the heart of Mrs. Clymer Ketchum. He turned to Myrtle Hazard, and if he had ever doubted which way his inclinations led him, he could doubt no longer. How much dress and how much light can a woman bear? That is the way to measure her beauty. A plain girl in a simple dress, if she has only a pleasant voice, may seem almost a beauty in the rosy twilight. The nearer she comes to being handsome, the more ornament she will bear, and the more she may defy the sunshine or the chandelier. Murray Bradshaw was fairly dazzled with the brilliant effect of Myrtle in full dress. He did not know before what handsome arms she had,—Judith Pride's famous arms, which the high-colored young men in top-boots used to swear were the handsomest pair in New England, right over again. He did not know before with what defiant effect she would light up, standing as she did directly under a huge lustre, in full flower of flame, like a burning azalea. He was not a man who intended to let his sentiments carry him away from the serious interests of his future, yet, as he looked upon Myrtle Hazard, his heart gave one throb which made him feel in every pulse that this was a woman who in her own right, simply as a woman, could challenge the homage of the proudest young man of her time. He hardly knew till this moment how much of passion mingled with other and calmer motives of admiration. He could say I love you as truly as such a man could ever speak these words, meaning that he admired her, that he was attracted to her, that he should be proud of her as his wife, that he should value himself always as the proprietor of so rare a person, that no appendage to his existence would take so high a place in his thoughts. This implied also, what is of great consequence to a young woman's happiness in the married state, that she would be treated with uniform politeness, with satisfactory evidences of affection, and with a degree of confidence quite equal to what a reasonable woman should expect from a very superior man, her husband.

If Myrtle could have looked through the window in the breast against which only authors are privileged to flatten their features, it is for the reader to judge how far the programme would have satisfied her. Less than this, a great deal less, does appear to satisfy many young women; and it may be that the picture just drawn, fairly judged, belongs to a model lover and husband. Whether it does or not; Myrtle did not see this picture. There was a beautifully embroidered shirt-bosom in front of that window through which we have just looked, that intercepted all sight of what was going on within. She only saw a man, young, handsome, courtly, with a winning tongue, with an ambitious spirit, whose every look and tone implied his admiration of herself, and who was associated with her past life in such a way that they alone appeared like old friends in the midst of that cold, alien throng. It seemed as if he could not have chosen a more auspicious hour than this; for she never looked so captivating, and her presence must inspire his lips with the eloquence of love. And she—was not this delirious atmosphere of light and music just the influence to which he would wish to subject her before trying the last experiment of all which can stir the soul of a woman? He knew the mechanism of that impressionable state which served Coleridge so excellently well,—

"All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
The music, and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve,"—

though he hardly expected such startling results as happened in that case,—which might be taken as an awful warning not to sing moving ballads to young ladies of susceptible feelings, unless one is prepared for very serious consequences. Without expecting that Myrtle would rush into his arms, he did think that she could not help listening to him in the intervals of the delicious music, in some recess where the roses and jasmines and heliotropes made the air heavy with sweetness, and the crimson curtains drooped in heavy folds that half hid their forms from the curious eyes all round them. Her heart would swell like Genevieve's as he told her in simple phrase that she was his life, his love, his all,—for in some two or three words like these he meant to put his appeal, and not in fine poetical phrases: that would do for Gifted Hopkins and rhyming tomtits of that feather.

Full of his purpose, involving the plans of his whole life, implying, as he saw clearly, a brilliant future or a disastrous disappointment, with a great unexploded mine of consequences under his feet, and the spark ready to fall into it, he walked about the gilded saloon with a smile upon his lips so perfectly natural and pleasant, that one would have said he was as vacant of any aim, except a sort of superficial good-natured disposition to be amused, as the blankest-eyed simpleton who had tied himself up in a white cravat and come to bore and be bored.

Yet under this pleasant smile his mind was so busy with its thoughts that he had forgotten all about the guests from Oxbow Village who, as Myrtle had told him, were to come this evening. His eye was all at once caught by a familiar figure, and he recognized Master Byles Gridley, accompanied by Mr. Gifted Hopkins, at the door of the saloon. He stepped forward at once to meet and to present them.

Mr. Gridley in evening costume made an eminently dignified and respectable appearance. There was an unusual look of benignity upon his firmly moulded features, and an air of ease which rather surprised Mr. Bradshaw, who did not know all the social experiences which had formed a part of the old Master's history. The greeting between them was courteous, but somewhat formal, as Mr. Bradshaw was acting as one of the masters of ceremony. He nodded to Gifted in an easy way, and led them both into the immediate Presence.

"This is my friend Professor Gridley, Mrs. Ketchum, whom I have the honor of introducing to you,—a very distinguished scholar, as I have no doubt you are well aware. And this is my friend Mr. Gifted Hopkins, a young poet of distinction, whose fame will reach you by and by, if it has not come to your ears already."

The two gentlemen went through the usual forms, the poet a little crushed by the Presence, but doing his best. While the lady was making polite speeches to them, Myrtle Hazard came forward. She was greatly delighted to meet her old friend, and even looked upon the young poet with a degree of pleasure she would hardly have expected to receive from his company. They both brought with them so many reminiscences of familiar scenes and events, that it was like going back for the moment to Oxbow Village. But Myrtle did not belong to herself that evening, and had no opportunity to enter into conversation just then with either of them. There was to be dancing by and by, and the younger people were getting impatient that it should begin. At last the music sounded the well-known summons, and the floors began to ring to the tread of the dancers. As usual on such occasions there were a large number of non-combatants, who stood as spectators around those who were engaged in the campaign of the evening. Mr. Byles Gridley looked on gravely, thinking of the minuets and the gavots of his younger days. Mr. Gifted Hopkins, who had never acquired the desirable accomplishment of dancing, gazed with dazzled and admiring eyes at the wonderful evolutions of the graceful performers. The music stirred him a good deal; he had also been introduced to one or two young persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he began to feel a kind of excitement, such as was often the prelude of a lyric burst from his pen. Others might have wealth and beauty, he thought to himself, but what were these to the gift of genius? In fifty years the wealth of these people would have passed into other hands. In fifty years all these beauties would be dead, or wrinkled and double-wrinkled great-grandmothers. And when they were all gone and forgotten, the name of Hopkins would be still fresh in the world's memory. Inspiring thought! A smile of triumph rose to his lips; he felt that the village boy who could look forward to fame as his inheritance was richer than all the millionnaires, and that the words he should set in verse would have a lustre in the world's memory to which the whiteness of pearls was cloudy, and the sparkle of diamonds dull.

He raised his eyes, which had been cast down in reflection, to look upon these less favored children of Fortune, to whom she had given nothing but perishable inheritances. Two or three pairs of eyes, he observed, were fastened upon him. His mouth perhaps betrayed a little self-consciousness, but he tried to show his features in an aspect of dignified self-possession. There seemed to be remarks and questionings going on, which he supposed to be something like the following:—

Which is it? Which is it?—Why, that one, there,—that young fellow,—don't you see?—What young fellow are you two looking at? Who is he? What is he?—Why, that is Hopkins, the poet.—Hopkins, the poet! Let me see him! Let me see him!—Hopkins? What! Gifted Hopkins? etc., etc.

Gifted Hopkins did not hear these words except in fancy, but he did unquestionably find a considerable number of eyes concentrated upon him, which he very naturally interpreted as an evidence that he had already begun to enjoy a foretaste of the fame of which he should hereafter have his full allowance. Some seemed to be glancing furtively, some appeared as if they wished to speak, and all the time the number of those looking at him seemed to be increasing. A vision came through his fancy of himself as standing on a platform, and having persons who wished to look upon him and shake hands with him presented, as he had heard was the way with great people when going about the country. But this was only a suggestion, and by no means a serious thought, for that would have implied infatuation.

Gifted Hopkins was quite right in believing that he attracted many eyes. At last those of Myrtle Hazard were called to him, and she perceived that an accident was making him unenviably conspicuous. The bow of his rather large white neck-tie had slid round and got beneath his left ear. A not very good-natured or well-bred young fellow had pointed out the subject of this slight misfortune to one or two others of not much better taste or breeding, and thus the unusual attention the youthful poet was receiving explained itself. Myrtle no sooner saw the little accident of which her rural friend was the victim, than she left her place in the dance with a simple courage which did her credit. "I want to speak to you a minute," she said. "Come into this alcove."

And the courageous young lady not only told Gifted what had happened to him, but found a pin somehow, as women always do on a pinch, and had him in presentable condition again almost before the bewildered young man knew what was the matter. On reflection it occurred to him, as it has to other provincial young persons going to great cities, that he might perhaps have been hasty in thinking himself an object of general curiosity as yet. There had hardly been time for his name to have become very widely known. Still, the feeling had been pleasant for the moment, and had given him an idea of what the rapture would be, when, wherever he went, the monster digit (to hint a classical phrase) of the collective admiring public would be lifted to point him out, and the whisper would pass from one to another, "That's him! That's Hopkins!"

Mr. Murray Bradshaw had been watching the opportunity for carrying out his intentions, with his pleasant smile covering up all that was passing in his mind, and Master Byles Gridley, looking equally unconcerned, had been watching him. The young man's time came at last. Some were at the supper-table, some were promenading, some were talking, when he managed to get Myrtle a little apart from the rest, and led her towards one of the recesses in the apartment, where two chairs were invitingly placed. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were sparkling,—the influences to which he had trusted had not been thrown away upon her. He had no idea of letting his purpose be seen until he was fully ready. It required all his self-mastery to avoid betraying himself by look or tone, but he was so natural that Myrtle was thrown wholly off her guard. He meant to make her pleased with herself to begin with, and that not by point-blank flattery, of which she had had more than enough of late, but rather by suggestion and inference, so that she should find herself feeling happy without knowing how. It would be easy to glide from that to the impression she had produced upon him, and get the two feelings more or less mingled in her mind. And so the simple confession he meant to make would at length evolve itself logically, and hold by a natural connection to the first agreeable train of thought which he had called up. Not the way, certainly, that most young men would arrange their great trial scene; but Murray Bradshaw was a lawyer in love as much as in business, and considered himself as pleading a cause before a jury of Myrtle Hazard's conflicting motives. What would any lawyer do in a jury case, but begin by giving the twelve honest men and true to understand, in the first place, that their intelligence and virtue were conceded by all, and that he himself had perfect confidence in them, and leave them to shape their verdict in accordance with these propositions and his own side of the case?

Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the pleasing accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact, that she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his plans,—they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from her, and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could safely give his confidence.

The dread moment was close at hand. Myrtle was listening with an instinctive premonition of what was coming,—ten thousand mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it all in preceding generations until time reached backwards to the sturdy savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the great primeval grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock, or into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming question announce itself by stirring in the pulses and thrilling in the nerves of the descendant of all these grandmothers?

She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere blind elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of Schehallion. Her lips were parted, and she breathed a little faster than so healthy a girl ought to breathe in a state of repose. The steady nerves of William Murray Bradshaw felt unwonted thrills and tremors tingling through them, as he came nearer and nearer the few simple words with which he was to make Myrtle Hazard the mistress of his destiny. His tones were becoming lower and more serious; there were slight breaks once or twice in the conversation; Myrtle had cast down her eyes.

"There is but one word more to add," he murmured softly, as he bent towards her—

A grave voice interrupted him. "Excuse me, Mr. Bradshaw," said Master Byles Gridley, "I wish to present a young gentleman to my friend here. I promised to show him the most charming young person I have the honor to be acquainted with, and I must redeem my pledge. Miss Hazard, I have the pleasure of introducing to your acquaintance my distinguished young friend, Mr. Clement Lindsay."

Once more, for the third time, these two young persons stood face to face. Myrtle was no longer liable to those nervous seizures which any sudden impression was liable to produce when she was in her half-hysteric state of mind and body. She turned to the new-comer, who found himself unexpectedly submitted to a test which he would never have risked of his own will. He must go through it, cruel as it was, with the easy self-command which belongs to a gentleman in the most trying social exigencies. He addressed her, therefore, in the usual terms of courtesy, and then turned and greeted Mr. Bradshaw, whom he had never met since their coming together at Oxbow Village. Myrtle was conscious, the instant she looked upon Clement Lindsay, of the existence of some peculiar relation between them; but what, she could not tell. Whatever it was, it broke the charm that had been weaving between her and Murray Bradshaw. He was not foolish enough to make a scene. What fault could he find with Clement Lindsay, who had only done as any gentleman would do with a lady to whom he had just been introduced,—addressed a few polite words to her? After saying those words, Clement had turned very courteously to him, and they had spoken with each other. But Murray Bradshaw could not help seeing that Myrtle had transferred her attention, at least for the moment, from him to the new-comer. He folded his arms and waited,—but he waited in vain. The hidden attraction which drew Clement to the young girl with whom he had passed into the Valley of the Shadow of Death overmastered all other feelings, and he gave himself up to the fascination of her presence.

The inward rage of Murray Bradshaw at being interrupted just at the moment when he was, as he thought, about to cry checkmate and finish the first great game he had ever played, may well be imagined. But it could not be helped. Myrtle had exercised the customary privilege of young ladies at parties, and had turned from talking with one to talking with another,—that was all. Fortunately for him the young man who had been introduced at such a most critical moment was not one from whom he need apprehend any serious interference. He felt grateful beyond measure to pretty Susan Posey, who, as he had good reason for believing, retained her hold upon her early lover, and was looking forward with bashful interest to the time when she should become Mrs. Lindsay. It was better to put up quietly with his disappointment; and, if he could get no favorable opportunity that evening to resume his conversation at the interesting point where he left it off, he would call the next day and bring matters to a conclusion.

He called accordingly, the next morning, but was disappointed in not seeing Myrtle. She had hardly slept that night, and was suffering from a bad headache, which last reason was her excuse for not seeing company.

He called again, the following day, and learned that Miss Hazard had just left the city, and gone on a visit to Oxbow Village.

PROPHETIC VOICES ABOUT AMERICA: A MONOGRAPH.

The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus is the greatest event of all secular history. Besides the potato, the turkey, and maize, which it introduced at once for the nourishment and comfort of the Old World, this discovery opened the door to influences infinite in extent and beneficence. Measure them, describe them, picture them, you cannot. While this continent was unknown, imagination invested it with proverbial magnificence. It was the Orient. When afterwards it took its place in geography, imagination found another field in trying to portray its future history. If the Golden Age is before, and not behind, as is now happily the prevailing faith, then indeed must America share at least, if it does not monopolize, the promised good.

Before the voyage of Columbus in 1492, nothing of America was really known. A few scraps from antiquity, a few rumors from the ocean, and a few speculations from science, were all that the inspired navigator found to guide him. Foremost among all these were the well-known verses of the Spaniard Seneca, in the chorus of his "Medea," which for generations had been the finger-point to an undiscovered world.

"Venient annis sæcula seris
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
Tethysque novos detegat orbes;
Nec sit terris ultima Thule."[1]

"In tardy years the epoch will come in which the ocean will unloose the bonds of nature, and the great earth will stretch out, and the sea will disclose new worlds; nor will Thule be the most remote on the globe."

Two, if not more, different copies of these verses are extant in the handwriting of Columbus,—precious autographs; one in the sketch of his work on the Prophecies, another in a letter addressed to Queen Isabella; and it would seem as if there was still a third entered among his observations of lunar eclipses at Hayti and Jamaica. By these verses the great discoverer sailed. But Humboldt, who has illustrated the enterprise with all that classical or mediæval literature affords,[2] does not hesitate to declare his conviction, that the discovery of a new continent was more completely foreshadowed in the simple geographical statement of the Greek Strabo, who, after a long life of travel, sat down in the eighty-fourth year of his age, during the reign of Augustus, to write the geography of the world, including its cosmography. In this work, where are gathered the results of ancient study and experience, the venerable author, after alluding to the possibility of passing direct from Spain to India, and explaining that the inhabited world is that which we inhabit and know, thus lifts the curtain: "There may be in the same temperate zone two and indeed more inhabited lands, especially nearest the parallel of Thinæ or Athens, prolonged into the Atlantic Ocean."[3] This was the voice of ancient science.

Before the voyage of Columbus, Pulci, the Italian poet, in his Morgante Maggiore, sometimes called the last of the romances and the earliest of the Italian epics, reveals an undiscovered world beyond the Pillars of Hercules.

"Know that this theory is false; his bark
The daring mariner shall urge far o'er
The western wave, a smooth and level plain,
Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.
Man was in ancient days of grosser mould,
And Hercules might blush to learn how far
Beyond the limits he had vainly set
The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way.

"Men shall descry another hemisphere,
Since to one common centre all things tend;
So earth, by curious mystery divine
Well balanced, hangs amid the starry spheres.
At our Antipodes are cities, states,
And thronged empires, ne'er divined of yore.
But see, the sun speeds on his western path
To glad the nations with expected light."[4]

This translation is by our own eminent historian, Prescott, who first called attention to this testimony,[5] which is not mentioned even by Humboldt. Leigh Hunt referred to it at a later day.[6] Pulci was born in Florence, 1431, and died there, 1487, five years before Columbus sailed, so that he was not aided by any rumor of the discovery which he so distinctly predicts.

Passing from the discovery, it may not be uninteresting to collect some of the prophetic voices about the future of America, the "All-Hail Hereafter" of our continent. They will have a lesson also. Seeing what has been already fulfilled, we may better judge what to expect. I shall set them forth in the order of time, prefacing each prediction with an account of the author sufficient to explain its origin and character. If some are already familiar, others are little known. Brought together into one body, on the principle of our national Union, E pluribus unum, they must give new confidence in the destinies of the Republic.

Of course I shall embrace only what has been said seriously by those whose words are important; not an oracular response, which may receive a double interpretation, like the deceptive replies to Crœsus and to Pyrrhus; and not a saying, such as is described by Sir Thomas Browne when he remarks, in his "Christian Morals," that "many positions seem quodlibetically constituted, and, like a Delphian blade, will cut both ways."[7] Men who have lived much and felt strongly see further than others. Their vision penetrates the future. Second sight is little more than clearness of sight. Milton tells us,

"That old experience does attain
To something like prophetic strain."

Sometimes this strain is attained even in youth.

Sir Thomas Browne.—1682.

Dr. Johnson called attention to a tract of Sir Thomas Browne entitled, "A Prophecy concerning the Future State of Several Nations," where the famous author "plainly discovers his expectation to be the same with that entertained later with more confidence by Dr. Berkeley, that America will be the seat of the fifth empire."[8] The tract is vague, but prophetic.

Sir Thomas Browne was born 19th October, 1605, and died 19th October, 1682. His tract was published, two years after his death, in a collection of Miscellanies, edited by Dr. Tenison. As a much-admired author, some of whose writings belong to our English classics, his prophetic prolusions are not unworthy of notice. They are founded on verses entitled "The Prophecy," purporting to have been sent to him by a friend. Among these are the following:—

"When New England shall trouble New Spain,
When Jamaica shall be lady of the isles and the main;
When Spain shall be in America hid,
And Mexico shall prove a Madrid;
When Africa shall no more sell out their blacks
To make slaves and drudges to the American tracts;

* * * *

When America shall cease to send out its treasure,
But employ it at home in American pleasure;
When the New World shall the Old invade,
Nor count them their lords but their fellows in trade;

* * * *

Then think strange things have come to light,
Whereof but few have had a foresight."[9]

Some of these words are striking, especially when we consider their early date. The author of the "Religio Medici" seems in the main to accept the prophecy. In a commentary on each verse he seeks to explain it. New England is "that thriving colony which hath so much increased in his day"; its people are already "industrious," and when they have so far increased "that the neighboring country will not contain them, they will range still farther, and be able in time to set forth great armies, seek for new possessions, or make considerable and conjoined migrations." The verse about Africa will be fulfilled "when African countries shall no longer make it a common trade to sell away their people." And this may come to pass "whenever they shall be well civilized and acquainted with arts and affairs sufficient to employ people in their countries." It would also come to pass "if they should be converted to Christianity, but especially into Mahometism; for then they would never sell those of their religion to be slaves unto Christians." The verse about America is expounded as follows:—

"That is, when America shall be better civilized, new policied, and divided between great princes, it may come to pass that they will no longer suffer their treasure of gold and silver to be sent out to maintain the luxury of Europe and other ports; but rather employ it to their own advantages, in great exploits and undertakings, magnificent structures, wars, or expeditions of their own."[10]

The other verse, on the invasion of the Old World by the New, is thus explained:—

"That is, when America shall be so well peopled, civilized, and divided into kingdoms, they are like to have so little regard of their originals as to acknowledge no subjection unto them; they may also have a distinct commerce themselves, or but independently with those of Europe, and may hostilely and piratically assault them, even as the Greek and Roman colonies after a long time dealt with their original countries."[11]

That these speculations should arrest the attention of Dr. Johnson is something. They seem to have been in part fulfilled. An editor remarks that, "To judge from the course of events since Sir Thomas wrote, we may not unreasonably look forward to their more complete fulfilment."[12]

Bishop Berkeley.—1726.

It is pleasant to think that Berkeley, whose beautiful verses predicting the future of America are so often quoted, was so sweet and charming a character. Atterbury wrote of him, "So much understanding, knowledge, innocence, and humility I should have thought confined to angels, had I never seen this gentleman." Swift said, "He is an absolute philosopher with regard to money, title, and power." Pope let drop a tribute which can never die, when he said,

"To Berkeley every virtue under Heaven."

Such a person was naturally a seer.

He is compendiously called an Irish prelate and philosopher; he was born in Kilkenny, 1684, and died in Oxford, 1753. He began as a philosopher. While still young, he wrote his famous treatise on "The Principles of Human Knowledge," in which he denies the existence of matter, insisting that it is only an impression produced on the mind by Divine power. After travel for several years on the Continent, and fellowship with the witty and learned at home, among whom were Addison, Swift, Pope, Garth, and Arbuthnot, he conceived the project of educating the aborigines of America, which was set forth in a tract, published in 1725, entitled, "Scheme for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity by a College to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda." Persuaded by his benevolence, the ministers promised twenty thousand pounds, and there were several private subscriptions to promote what was called by the king "so pious an undertaking." Berkeley possessed already a deanery in Ireland, with one thousand pounds a year. Turning away from this residence, and refusing to be tempted by an English mitre, offered by the queen, he set sail for Rhode Island, "which lay nearest Bermuda," where, after a tedious passage of five months, he arrived, 23d January, 1729. Here he lived on a farm back of Newport, having been, according to his own report, "at great expense for land and stock." In familiar letters he has given his impression of this place, famous since for fashion. "The climate," he says, "is like that of Italy, and not at all colder in the winter than I have known it everywhere north of Rome. This island is pleasantly laid out in hills and vales and rising grounds, hath plenty of excellent springs and fine rivulets and many delightful landscapes of rocks and promontories and adjacent lands. The town of Newport contains about six thousand souls, and is the most thriving, flourishing place in all America for its bigness. It is very pretty and pleasantly situated. I was never more agreeably surprised than at the first sight of the town and its harbor."[13] He seems to have been contented here, and when his companions went to Boston stayed at home, "preferring," as he wrote, "quiet and solitude to the noise of a great town, notwithstanding all the solicitations that have been used to draw us thither."[14]

The money which he had expected, especially from the ministry, failed, and after waiting in vain expectation two years and a half, he returned to England, leaving an infant son buried in the yard of Trinity Church, and bestowing upon Yale College a library of eight hundred and eighty volumes, as well as his estate in Rhode Island. During his residence at Newport he had preached every Sunday, and was indefatigable in pastoral duties, besides meditating, if not composing, "The Minute Philosopher," which was published shortly after his return.

He had not been forgotten at home during his absence; and shortly after his return he became Bishop of Cloyne, in which place he was most exemplary, devoting himself to his episcopal duties, to the education of his children, and the pleasures of composition.

It was while occupied with his plan of a college, especially as a nursery for the Colonial churches, shortly before sailing for America, that the future seemed to be revealed to him, and he wrote the famous poem, the only one to be found among his works, entitled, "Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America."[15] The date may be fixed at 1726. Such a poem was an historic event. I give the first and last stanzas.

"The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme,
In distant lands now waits a better,
Producing subjects worthy fame.

* * * *

"Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

It is difficult to exaggerate the value of these verses, which have been so often quoted as to become one of the commonplaces of literature and politics. There is nothing from any oracle, there is very little from any prophecy, which can compare with them. The biographer of Berkeley, who wrote in the last century, was very cautious, when, after calling them "a beautiful copy of verses," he says that "another age will, perhaps, acknowledge the old conjunction of the prophetic character with that of the poet to have again taken place."[16] The vates of the Romans was poet and prophet; and such was Berkeley.

The sentiment which prompted the prophetic verses of the good Bishop was widely diffused; or, perhaps, it was a natural prompting.[17] Of this an illustration is afforded in the life of Benjamin West. On his visit to Rome in 1760, the young artist encountered a famous improvvisatore, who, on learning that he was an American come to study the fine arts in Rome, at once addressed him with the ardor of inspiration, and to the music of his guitar. After singing the darkness which for so many ages veiled America from the eyes of science, and also the fulness of time when the purposes for which America had been raised from the deep would be manifest, he hailed the youth before him as an instrument of Heaven to raise there a taste for those arts which elevate man, and an assurance of refuge to science and knowledge, when, in the old age of Europe, they should have forsaken her shores. Then, in the spirit of prophecy, he sang:—

"But all things of heavenly origin, like the glorious sun, move westward; and truth and art have their periods of shining and of night. Rejoice then, O venerable Rome, in thy divine destiny; for though darkness overshadow thy seats, and though thy mitred head must descend into the dust, thy spirit immortal and undecayed already spreads towards a new world."[18]

John Adams, in his old age; dwelling on the reminiscences of early life, records that nothing was "more ancient in his memory than the observation that arts, sciences, and empire had travelled westward, and in conversation it was always added, since he was a child, that their next leap would be over the Atlantic into America." With the assistance of an octogenarian neighbor, he recalled a couplet that had been repeated with rapture as long as he could remember:—

"The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends,
And empire rises where the sun descends."

It was imagined by his neighbor that these lines came from some of our early pilgrims,—by whom they had been "inscribed, or rather drilled, into a rock on the shore of Monument Bay in our old Colony of Plymouth."[19]

Another illustration of this same sentiment will be found in Burnaby's "Travels through the Middle Settlements of North America, in 1759 and 1760," a work which was first published in 1775. In his reflections at the close of his book the traveller thus remarks:—

"An idea, strange as it is visionary, has entered into the minds of the generality of mankind, that empire is travelling westward: and every one is looking forward with eager and impatient expectation to that destined moment when America is to give the law to the rest of the world."[20]

The traveller is none the less an authority for the prevalence of this sentiment because he declares it "illusory and fallacious," and records his conviction that "America is formed for happiness, but not for empire." Happy America! What empire can compare with happiness! But, to make amends for this admission, the jealous traveller, in his edition of 1796, after the adoption of our Constitution, announces that "the present union of American States will not be permanent, or last for any considerable length of time," and "that that extensive country must necessarily be divided into separate states and kingdoms."[21] Thus far the Union has stood against all shocks, foreign or domestic; and the prophecy of Berkeley is more than ever in the popular mind.

Turgot.—1750.

Among the illustrious names of France there are few equal to that of Turgot. He was a philosopher among ministers, and a minister among philosophers. Malesherbes said of him, that he had the heart of L'Hôpital and the head of Bacon. Such a person in public affairs was an epoch for his country and for the human race. Had his spirit prevailed, the bloody drama of the French Revolution would not have occurred, or it would at least have been postponed. I think it could not have occurred. He was a good man, who sought to carry into government the rules of goodness. His career from beginning to end was one continuous beneficence. Such a nature was essentially prophetic, for he discerned the natural laws by which the future is governed.

He was of an ancient Norman family, whose name suggests the god Thor; he was born at Paris, 1727, and died, 1781. Being a younger son, he was destined for the Church, and commenced his studies as an ecclesiastic at the ancient Sorbonne. Before registering an irrevocable vow, he announced his repugnance to the profession, and turned aside to other pursuits. Law, literature, science, humanity, government, now engaged his attention. He associated himself with the writers of the Encyclopædia, and became one of its contributors. In other writings he vindicated especially the virtue of toleration. Not merely a theorist, he soon arrived at the high post of intendant of Limousin, where he developed a remarkable talent for administration, and a sympathy with the people. He introduced the potato into that province. But he continued to employ his pen, especially on questions of political economy, which he treated as a master. On the accession of Louis XVI. he was called to the cabinet as Minister of the Marine, and shortly afterwards he gave up this place to be the head of the finances. Here he began a system of rigid economy, founded on a curtailment of expenses and an enlargement of resources. The latter was obtained especially by a removal of disabilities from trade, whether at home or abroad, and the substitution of a single tax on land for a complex multiplicity of taxes. The enemies of progress were too strong at that time, and the king dismissed the reformer. Good men in France became anxious for the future; Voltaire, in his distant retreat, gave a shriek of despair, and addressed to Turgot some remarkable verses entitled Épître à un Homme. Worse still, the good edicts of the minister were rescinded, and society was put back.

The discarded minister gave himself to science, literature, and friendship. He welcomed Franklin to France and to immortality in a Latin verse of marvellous felicity. He was already the companion of the liberal spirits who were doing so much for knowledge and for reform. By writing and by conversation he exercised a constant influence. His "ideas" seem to illumine the time. We may be content to follow him in saying, "The glory of arms cannot compare with the happiness of living in peace." He anticipated our definition of a republic, when he said "it was formed upon the equality of all the citizens,"—good words, not yet practically verified in all our States. Such a government he, living under a monarchy, bravely pronounced the best of all; but he added that he "had never known a constitution truly republican." This was in 1778. With similar plainness he announced that "the destruction of the Ottoman empire would be a real good for all the nations of Europe," and—he added still further—for humanity also, because it would involve the abolition of negro slavery, and because to strip "our oppressors is not to attack, but to vindicate, the common rights of humanity." With such thoughts and aspirations, the prophet died.

But I have no purpose of writing a biography, or even a character. All that I intend is an introduction to Turgot's prophetic words relating to America. When only twenty-three years of age, while still an ecclesiastic at the Sorbonne, the future minister delivered a discourse on the Progress of the Human Mind, in which, after describing the commercial triumphs of the ancient Phœnicians, covering the coasts of Greece and Asia with their colonies, he lets drop these remarkable words:—

"Les colonies sont comme des fruits qui ne tiennent à l'arbre que jusqu'à leur maturité; devenues suffisantes à elles-mêmes, elles firent ce que fit depuis Carthage,—ce que fera un jour l'Amérique."[22]

"Colonies are like fruits, which hold to the tree only until their maturity; when sufficient for themselves, they did that which Carthage afterwards did,—that which some day America will do."

On this most suggestive declaration, Dupont de Nemours, the editor of Turgot's works, published in 1808, remarks in a note as follows:—

"It was in 1750 that M. Turgot, being then only twenty-three years old, and devoted in a seminary to the study of theology, divined, foresaw the revolution which has formed the United States,—which has detached them from the European power apparently the most capable of retaining its colonies under its domination."

At the time Turgot wrote, Canada was a French possession; but his words are as applicable to this colony as to the United States. When will this fruit be ripe?

John Adams.—1755, 1776, 1780, 1785, 1787.

Next in time among the prophets was John Adams, who has left on record at different dates several predictions which show a second-sight of no common order. Of his life I need say nothing, except that he was born 19th October, 1735, and died 4th July, 1826. I mention the predictions in the order of their utterance.

1. While teaching a school at Worcester, and when under twenty years of age, he wrote a letter to one of his youthful companions, bearing date 12th October, 1755, which is a marvel of foresight. Fifty-two years afterwards, when already much of its prophecy had been fulfilled, the original was returned to its author by the son of his early comrade and correspondent, Nathan Webb, who was at the time dead. In this letter, after remarking gravely on the rise and fall of nations, with illustrations from Carthage and Rome, he proceeds:—

"England began to increase in power and magnificence, and is now the greatest nation of the globe. Soon after the Reformation, a few people came over into this New World for conscience' sake. Perhaps this apparently trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire to America. It looks likely to me; for if we can remove the turbulent Gallics, our people, according to the exactest computations, will, in another century, become more numerous than England itself. Should this be the case, since we have, I may say, all the naval stores of the nations in our hands, it will be easy to obtain the mastery of the seas; and then the united force of all Europe will not be able to subdue us. The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to disunite us. Divide et impera. Keep us in distinct colonies, and then, some great men in each colony desiring the monarchy of the whole, they will destroy each others' influence, and keep the country in equilibrio."[23]

On this letter his son, John Quincy Adams, remarks:—

"Had the political part of it been written by the minister of state of a European monarchy, at the close of a long life spent in the government of nations, it would have been pronounced worthy of the united wisdom of a Burleigh, a Sully, or an Oxenstiern.... In one bold outline he has exhibited by anticipation a long succession of prophetic history, the fulfilment of which is barely yet in progress, responding exactly hitherto to his foresight, but the full accomplishment of which is reserved for the development of after ages. The extinction of the power of France in America, the union of the British North American Colonies, the achievement of their independence, and the establishment of their ascendency in the community of civilized nations by the means of their naval power, are all foreshadowed in this letter, with a clearness of perception and a distinctness of delineation which time has done little more than to convert into historical fact."[24]

2. The Declaration of Independence bears date 4th July, 1776, for on that day it was signed; but the vote which determined it was on the 2d July. On the 3d July, John Adams, in a letter to his wife, wrote as follows:—

"Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was nor will be decided among men.... I am surprised at the suddenness as well as greatness of this revolution. Britain has been filled with folly, and America with wisdom. At least this is my judgment. Time must determine. It is the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever.... The day is past. The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore. You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the ray of ravishing light and glory; and that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not."[25]

Here is a comprehensive prophecy, first, that the two countries would be separated forever; secondly, that the anniversary of Independence would be celebrated as a great annual festival; and, thirdly, that posterity would triumph in this transaction, where, through all the gloom, shone rays of ravishing light and glory; all of which has been fulfilled to the letter. Recent events give to the Declaration additional importance. For a long time its great promises that all men are equal, and that rightful government stands only on the consent of the governed, were disowned by our country. Now that at last they are beginning to prevail, there is increased reason to celebrate the day on which the mighty Declaration was made, and new occasion for triumph in the rays of ravishing light and glory.

3. Here is another prophetic passage in a letter dated at Paris, 13th July, 1780, and addressed to the Count de Vergennes of France, pleading the cause of the colonists:—

"The United States of America are a great and powerful people, whatever European statesmen may think of them. If we take into our estimate the numbers and the character of her people, the extent, variety, and fertility of her soil, her commerce, and her skill and materials for ship-building, and her seamen, excepting France, Spain, England, Germany, and Russia, there is not a state in Europe so powerful. Breaking off such a nation as this from the English so suddenly, and uniting it so closely with France, is one of the most extraordinary events that ever happened among mankind."[26]

Perhaps this may be considered a statement rather than a prophecy; but it illustrates the prophetic character of the writer.

4. In an official letter to the President of Congress, dated at Amsterdam, 5th September, 1780, the same writer, while proposing an American Academy for refining, improving, and ascertaining the English language, thus predicts the extension of this language:—

"English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age. The reason of this is obvious,—because the increasing population in America, and their universal connection and correspondence with all nations, will, aided by the influence of England in the world, whether great or small, force their language into general use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be thrown in their way, if any such there should be."[27]

In another letter of an unofficial character, dated at Amsterdam, 23d September, 1780, he thus repeats his prophecy:—

"You must know I have undertaken to prophesy that English will be the most respectable language in the world, and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the close of this. American population will in the next age produce a greater number of persons who will speak English than any other language, and these persons will have more general acquaintance and conversation with all other nations than any other people."[28]

This prophecy is already accomplished. Of all the European languages, English is most extensively spoken. Through England and the United States it has become the language of commerce, which, sooner or later, must embrace the globe. The German philologist, Grimm, has followed our American prophet in saying that it "seems chosen, like its people, to rule in future times in a still greater degree in all the corners of the earth."[29]

5. There is another prophecy, at once definite and broad, which proceeded from the same eminent quarter. In a letter dated London, 17th October, 1785, and addressed to John Jay, who was at the time Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the Confederation, John Adams reveals his conviction of the importance of France to us, "while England held a province in America";[30] and then, in another letter, dated 21st October, 1785, reports the saying of people about him, "that Canada and Nova Scotia must soon be ours; there must be war for it; they know how it will end, but the sooner the better. This done, we shall be forever at peace; till then, never."[31] These intimations foreshadow the prophecy which will be found in the Preface to his "Defence of the American Constitutions," written in London, while he was Minister there, and dated at Grosvenor Square, 1st January, 1787:—

"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature.... Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind. The experiment is made, and has completely succeeded."[32]

Here is foretold nothing less than that our system of government is to embrace the whole continent of North America.

Galiani.—1776, 1778.

Among the most brilliant persons in this list is the Abbé Galiani, a Neapolitan, who was born in 1728, and died at Naples in 1787. Although Italian by birth, yet by the accident of official residence he became for a while domesticated in France, wrote the French language, and now enjoys a French reputation. His writings in French and his letters have the wit and ease of Voltaire.

Galiani was a genius. Whatever he touched shone at once with his brightness, in which there was originality as well as knowledge. He was a finished scholar, and very successful in lapidary verses. Early in life, while in Italy, he wrote a grave essay on Money, which contrasted with another of rare humor suggested by the death of the public executioner. Other essays followed, and then came the favor of that congenial pontiff, Benedict XIV. In 1760 he found himself at Paris, as Secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy. Here he mingled with the courtiers officially, according to the duties of his position, but he fraternized with the liberal and sometimes audacious spirits who exercised such an influence over society and literature. He was soon recognized as one of them, and as inferior to none. His petty stature was forgotten, when he conversed with inexhaustible faculties of all kinds, so that he seemed an Encyclopædia, Harlequin, and Machiavelli all in one. The atheists at the Thursday dinner of D'Holbach were confounded, while he enforced the existence of God. Into the questions of political economy which occupied attention at the time he entered with a pen which seemed borrowed from the French Academy. His Dialogues sur le Commerce des Blés had the success of a romance; ladies carried this book on corn in their work-baskets. Returning to Naples, he continued to live in Paris through his correspondence, especially with Madame d'Epinay, the Baron d'Holbach, Diderot, and Grimm.[33]

Among his later works, after his return to Naples, was a solid volume—not to be forgotten in the History of International Law—on the "Rights of Neutrals," where a difficult subject is treated with such mastery that, half a century later, D'Hautefeuille, in his elaborate treatise, copies from it at length. Galiani was the predecessor of this French writer in the extreme assertion of neutral rights. Other works were left at his death in manuscript, some grave and some humorous; also letters without number. The letters he had preserved from Italian savans filled eight large volumes; those from savans, ministers, and sovereigns abroad filled fourteen. His Parisian correspondence did not see the light till 1818, although some of the letters may be found in the contemporary correspondence of Grimm.

In his Parisian letters, which are addressed chiefly to that clever individuality, Madame d'Epinay, the Neapolitan Abbé shows not only the brilliancy and nimbleness of his talent, but the universality of his knowledge and the boldness of his speculations. Here are a few words from a letter dated at Naples, 12th October, 1776, in which he brings forward the idea of "races," so important in our day, with an illustration from Russia:—

"All depends on races. The first, the most noble of races, comes naturally from the North of Asia. The Russians are the nearest to it, and this is the reason why they have made more progress in fifty years than can be got out of the Portuguese in five hundred."[34]

Belonging to the Latin race, Galiani was entitled to speak thus freely.

1. In another letter to Madame d'Epinay, dated at Naples, 18th May, 1776, he had already foretold the success of our Revolution. Few prophets have been more explicit than he was in the following passage:—

"Livy said of his age, which so much resembled ours, 'Ad hæc tempora ventum est quibus, nec vitia nostra, nec remedia pati possumus,'—'We are in an age where the remedies hurt as much as the vices.' Do you know the reality? The epoch has come of the total fall of Europe, and of transmigration into America. All here turns into rottenness,—religion, laws, arts, sciences,—and all hastens to renew itself in America. This is not a jest; nor is it an idea drawn from the English quarrels; I have said it, announced it, preached it, for more than twenty years, and I have constantly seen my prophecies come to pass. Therefore, do not buy your house in the Chaussée d'Antin; you must buy it in Philadelphia. My trouble is that there are no abbeys in America."[35]

This letter was written some months before the Declaration of Independence was known in Europe.

2. In another letter, dated at Naples, 7th February, 1778, the Abbé alludes to the "quantities" of English men and women who have come to Naples "for shelter from the American tempest," and adds, "Meanwhile the Washingtons and Hancocks will be fatal to them."[36] In still another, dated at Naples, 25 July, 1778, he renews his prophecies in language still more explicit:—

"You will at this time have decided the greatest revolution of the globe; namely, if it is America which is to reign over Europe, or if it is Europe which is to continue to reign over America. I will wager in favor of America, for the reason merely physical, that for five thousand years genius has turned opposite to the diurnal motion, and travelled from the East to the West."[37]

Here again is the idea of Berkeley which has been so captivating.

Adam Smith.—1776.

In contrast with the witty Italian is the illustrious philosopher and writer of Scotland, Adam Smith, who was born 5th June, 1723, and died 17th July, 1790. His fame is so commanding that any details of his life or works would be out of place on this occasion. He was a thinker and an inventor, through whom mankind was advanced in knowledge.

I say nothing of his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," which constitutes an important contribution to the science of ethics, but come at once to his great work of political economy, entitled "Inquiry into the Nature and Sources of the Wealth of Nations," which first appeared in 1776. Its publication marks an epoch which is described by Mr. Buckle when he says: "Adam Smith contributed more, by the publication of this single work, toward the happiness of man, than has been effected by the united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has preserved an authentic account." The work is full of prophetic knowledge, and especially with regard to the British colonies. Writing while the debate with the mother country was still pending, Adam Smith urged that they should be admitted to Parliamentary representation in proportion to taxation, so that their representation would enlarge with their growing resources; and here he predicts nothing less than the transfer of empire.

"The distance of America from the seat of government, the natives of that country might flatter themselves, with some appearance of reason too, would not be of very long continuance. Such has hitherto been the rapid progress of that country in wealth, population, and improvement, that, in the course of little more than a century, perhaps, the produce of America might exceed that of British taxation. The seat of the empire would then naturally remove itself to that part of the empire which contributed most to the general defence and support of the whole."[38]

In these tranquil words of assured science this great author carries the seat of government across the Atlantic.

Governor Pownall.—1777, 1780, 1785.

Among the best friends of our country abroad during the trials of the Revolution was Thomas Pownall, called by one biographer "a learned antiquary and politician," and by another "an English statesman and author." Latterly he has so far dropped out of sight, that there are few who recognize in him either of these characters. He was born, 1722, and died at Bath, 1805. During this long period he held several offices. As early as 1745 he became secretary to the Commission for Trade and Plantations. In 1753 he crossed the ocean. In 1755, as Commissioner for Massachusetts Bay, he negotiated with New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in union with New England, the confederated expedition against Crown Point. He was afterwards Governor of Massachusetts Bay, New Jersey, and South Carolina, successively. Returning to England, he was, in 1761, Comptroller-General of the army in Germany, with the military rank of Colonel. He sat in three successive Parliaments until 1780, when he passed into private life. Hildreth gives a glimpse at his personal character, when, admitting his frank manners and liberal politics, he describes his "habits as rather freer than suited the New England standard."[39]

Pownall stands forth conspicuous for his championship of our national independence, and especially for his foresight with regard to our national future. In both these respects his writings are unique. Other Englishmen were in favor of our independence, and saw our future also; but I doubt if any one can be named who was his equal in strenuous action, or in minuteness of foresight. While the war was still proceeding, as early as 1780, he openly announced, not only that independence was inevitable, but that the new nation, "founded in nature and built up in truth," would continually expand; that its population would increase and multiply; that a civilizing activity beyond what Europe could ever know would animate it; and that its commercial and naval power would be found in every quarter of the globe. All this he set forth at length with argument and illustration, and he called his prophetic words "the stating of the simple fact, so little understood in the Old World." Treated at first as "unintelligible speculation" and as "unfashionable," the truth he announced was neglected where it was not rejected, but generally rejected as inadmissible, and the author, according to his own language, "was called by the wise men of the British Cabinet a Wild Man, unfit to be employed." But these writings are a better title now than any office. In manner they are diffuse and pedantic; but they hardly deserve the cold judgment of John Adams, who in his old age said of them, that "a reader who has patience to search for good sense in an uncouth and disgusting style will find in those writings proofs of a thinking mind."[40]

He seems to have written a good deal. But the works which will be remembered the longest are not even mentioned by several of his biographers. Rose, in his Biographical Dictionary, records works by him, entitled Antiquities of Ancient Greece; Roman Antiquities dug up at Bath; Observations on the Currents of the Ocean; Intellectual Physics; and also contributions to the Archæologia. Gorton in his Biographical Dictionary adds some other titles to this list. But neither mentions his works on America. This is another instance where the stone rejected by the builders becomes the head of the corner.

At an early date Pownall comprehended the position of our country, geographically. He saw the wonderful means of internal communication supplied by its inland waters, and also the opportunities of external commerce supplied by the Atlantic Ocean. On the first he dwells, in a memorial drawn-up in 1756 for the Duke of Cumberland.[41] Nobody in our own day, after the experience of more than a century, has portrayed more vividly the two masses of waters,—one composed of the great lakes and their dependencies, and the other of the Mississippi and its tributaries. The great lakes are described as "a wilderness of waters spreading over the country by an infinite number and variety of branchings, bays, and straits." The Mississippi, with its eastern branch, called the Ohio, is described as having, "so far as we know, but two falls,—one at a place called, by the French, St. Antoine, high up on the west or main branch"; and all its waters "run to the ocean with a still, easy, and gentle current." The picture is completed by exhibiting the two masses of water in combination:—

"The waters of each respective mass—not only the lesser streams, but the main general body of each going through this continent in every course and direction—have by their approach to each other, by their communication to every quarter and in every direction, an alliance and unity, and form one mass, or one whole."[42]

Again, depicting the intercommunication among the several waters of the continent, and how "the watery element claims and holds dominion over this extent of land," he insists that all shall see these two mighty masses in their central throne, declaring that "the great lakes which lie upon its bosom on one hand, and the great river Mississippi and the multitude of waters which run into it, form there a communication,—an alliance or dominion of the watery element, that commands throughout the whole; that these great lakes appear to be the throne, the centre of a dominion, whose influence, by an infinite number of rivers, creeks, and streams, extends itself through all and every part of the continent, supported by the communication of, and alliance with the waters of the Mississippi."[43]

If these means of internal commerce were vast, those afforded by the Atlantic Ocean were not less extensive. The latter were developed in the volume entitled "The Administration of the Colonies," the fourth edition of which, published in 1768, is now before me. This was after the differences between the Colonies and the mother country had begun, but before the idea of independence had shown itself. Pownall insisted that the Colonies ought to be considered as parts of the realm, entitled to representation in Parliament. This was a constitutional unity. But he portrayed a commercial unity also, which he represented in attractive forms. The British isles, and the British possessions in the Atlantic and in America, were, according to him, "one grand marine dominion," and ought, therefore, by policy, to be united into one empire, with one centre. On this he dwells at length, and the picture is presented repeatedly.[44] It was incident to the crisis produced in the world by the predominance of the commercial spirit which already began to rule the powers of Europe. It was the duty of England to place herself at the head of this great movement.

"As the rising of this crisis forms precisely the object, on which government should be employed, so the taking leading measures towards the forming all those Atlantic and American possessions into one empire, of which Great Britain should be the commercial and political centre, is the precise duty of government at this crisis."

This was his desire. But he saw clearly the resources as well as the rights of the Colonies, and was satisfied that, if power were not consolidated under the constitutional auspices of England, it would be transferred to the other side of the Atlantic. Here his words are prophetic:—

"The whole train of events, the whole course of business, must perpetually bring forward into practice, and necessarily in the end into establishment, either an American or a British union. There is no other alternative."

The necessity for union is enforced in a manner which foreshadows our national Union:—

"The Colonial Legislature does not answer all purposes; is incompetent and inadequate to many purposes. Something more is necessary,—either a common union among themselves, or a common union of subordination under the one general legislature of the state."[45]

Then, again, in another place of the same work, after representing the declarations of power over the Colonies as little better than mockery, he prophesies again:—

"Such is the actual state of the really existing system of our dominions, that neither the power of government over these various parts can long continue under the present mode of administration, nor the great interests of commerce extended throughout the whole long subsist under the present system of the laws of trade."[46]]

Recent events may give present interest to his views, in this same work, on the nature and necessity of a paper curency, where he follows Franklin. The principal points of his plan were, that bills of credit, to a certain amount, should be printed in England for the use of the Colonies; that a loan-office should be established in each Colony to issue bills, take securities, and receive the payment; that the bills should be issued for ten years, bearing interest at five per cent,—one tenth part of the sum borrowed to be paid annually, with interest; and that they should be a legal tender.

When the differences had flamed forth in war, then the prophet became more earnest. His utterances deserve to be rescued from oblivion. He was open, and almost defiant. As early as 2d December, 1777, some months before our treaty with France, he declared, from his place in Parliament, "that the sovereignty of this country over America is abolished and gone forever"; "that they are determined at all events to be independent, and will be so"; and "that all the treaty this country can ever expect with America is federal, and that, probably, only commercial." In this spirit he said to the House:—

"Until you shall be convinced that you are no longer sovereigns over America, but that the United States are an independent, sovereign people,—until you are prepared to treat with them as such,—it is of no consequence at all what schemes or plans of conciliation this side of the House or that may adopt."[47]

The position taken in Parliament he maintained by writings, and here he depicted the great destinies of our country. He began with a work entitled "A Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe," which was published early in 1780, and was afterwards, through the influence of John Adams, while at the Hague, abridged and translated into French. In this remarkable production independence was the least that he claimed for us. Thus he foretells our future:—

"North America is become a new primary planet in the system of the world, which, while it takes its own course, must have effect on the orbit of every other planet, and shift the common centre of gravity of the whole system of the European world. North America is de facto an independent power, which has taken its equal station with other powers, and must be so de jure.... The independence of America is fixed as fate. She is mistress of her own future, knows that she is so, and will actuate that power which she feels she hath, so as to establish her own system and to change the system of Europe."[48]

Not only is the new power to take an independent place, but it is "to change the system of Europe." For all this its people are amply prepared. "Standing on that high ground of improvement up to which the most enlightened parts of Europe have advanced, like eaglets, they commence the first efforts of their pinions from a towering advantage."[49] Then again, giving expression to this same conviction in another form, he says:—

"North America has advanced, and is every day advancing, to growth of state, with a steady and continually accelerating motion, of which there has never yet been any example in Europe."[50] "It is a vitality, liable to many disorders, many dangerous diseases; but it is young and strong, and will struggle, by the vigor of internal healing principles of life, against those evils, and surmount them. Its strength will grow with its years."[51]

He then dwells in detail on "the progressive population" here; on our advantage in being "on the other side of the globe, where there is no enemy"; on the products of the soil, among which is "bread-corn to a degree that has wrought it to a staple export for the supply of the Old World"; on the fisheries, which he calls "mines of more solid riches than all the silver of Potosi"; on the inventive spirit of the people; and on their commercial activity. Of such a people it is easy to predict great things; and our prophet announces,—

1. That the new state will be "an active naval power," exercising a peculiar influence on commerce, and, through commerce, on the political system of the Old World,—becoming the arbitress of commerce, and, perhaps, the mediatrix of peace.[52]

2. That ship-building and the science of navigation have made such progress in America, that her people will be able to build and navigate cheaper than any country in Europe, even Holland, with all her economy.[53]

3. That the peculiar articles to be had from America only, and so much sought in Europe, must give Americans a preference in those markets.[54]

4. That a people "whose empire stands singly predominant on a great continent" can hardly "suffer in their borders such a monopoly as the European Hudson Bay Company"; that it cannot be stopped by Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope; that before long they will be found "trading in the South Sea and in China"; and that the Dutch "will hear of them in the Spice Islands."[55]

5. That by constant intercommunion of business and correspondence, and by increased knowledge with regard to the ocean, "America will seem every day to approach nearer and nearer to Europe"; that the old alarm at the sea will subside, and "a thousand attractive motives will become the irresistible cause of an almost general emigration to the New World"; and that "many of the most useful, enterprising spirits, and much of the active property, will go there also."[56]

6. That "North America will become a free port to all the nations of the world indiscriminately, and will expect, insist on, and demand, in fair reciprocity, a free market in all those nations with whom she trades"; and that, adhering to this principle, "she must be, in the course of time, the chief carrier of the commerce of the whole world."[57]

7. That America must avoid complication with European politics, or "the entanglement of alliances," having no connections with Europe other than commercial;[58]—all of which at a later day was put forth by Washington in his Farewell Address, when he said, "The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political concern as possible."

8. That similar modes of living and thinking, the same manners and same fashions, the same language and old habits of national love, impressed on the heart and not yet effaced, the very indentings of the fracture where North America is broken off from England, all conspire naturally to a rejuncture by alliance.[59]

9. That the sovereigns of Europe, "who have despised the unfashioned, awkward youth of America," and have neglected to interweave their interests with the rising States, when they find the system of the new empire not only obstructing, but superseding, the old system of Europe, and crossing all their settled maxims, will call upon their ministers and wise men, "Come, curse me this people, for they are too mighty for me."[60]