III.—THE MORBID STATESMAN.
A study in morbid anatomy! John Randolph, of Roanoke, might have said, with Mrs. Gummidge, “everything goes contrary with me;” for not only every quality of his nature, but all the circumstances of his life conspired to create in him a sum of unhappiness not often concentrated upon one individual; and this, notwithstanding his opportunities for usefulness were exceptionally good, his career brilliant, his abilities of the highest order, and his motives in the main praiseworthy. To understand such untoward results flowing from such conditions we must as well know his surroundings as study his character.
John Randolph was born, near Petersburg, Va., June 2, 1773,—a subject of George III. He was descended on his father’s side from an old English family; on the other side from an older American family—a royal line, too, viz: that of Pocahontas, the Indian princess, by Captain Rolfe. In this fusion and confusion of blood can probably be found the cause of much disease in him, and of that decay of his family which brought such disappointment and disaster to his most cherished hopes. Indian blood showed itself in his swarthy complexion and straight black hair, in his placing one foot straight before the other in walking, and in his vengeful temper. The Randolphs led in the effort of Virginia planters to transplant the manners and institutions of the English aristocracy to the new country, with the very important difference that the American aristocracy was to be rooted in African slavery. This solecism was adhered to by the Randolphs after most of the other first families of Virginia had learned theories of government more American and more democratic. Such dreamers desired to have the English laws of entail and primogeniture reënacted by the Virginia legislature; defended slavery after it had become a burden and a loss to them, and had sunk Virginia from the first to the eighth rank among the states; and they advocated state-sovereignty to the last. Their conservatism became obstruction against all changes. Randolph condensed their theory of government into the famous aphorism, “a wise and masterly inactivity,” which his sympathetic biographer, as late as 1850, declared “embraces the whole duty of American statesmen.” So they were forced along with the progress of the country, backward—as the cattle went into the cave of Cacus—and with despairing gaze turned toward the receding past. “The country is ruined past redemption; it is ruined in the spirit and character of the people,” cried Randolph, when he found that the United States would not turn back, and he said he would leave the country if he could sell out and knew where to go. Hence, we find Randolph going through his varied political career, protesting like Hamlet:
“The times are out of joint. O, cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set them right.”
He was the last man to set anything right, having been born wrong himself. A more delicate, high-strung, untuned human instrument was never set up; it was, moreover, set in a frame out of order in every part. A skin as thin and delicate as a girl’s; nerves all on the surface; a remarkably precocious intellect of poetic cast; proud and affectionate in disposition, and “a spice of the devil in his temper,” as he said. “A spice!” This was a mild term (a thing Randolph was not often chargeable with using) to apply to a person who at the age of four years would fly into such a passion as to swoon away and remain for some time unconscious. Every function of his organism seemed to be influenced by his mood; his mood responded like a thermometer to his environment; disappointment or mental disturbance would upset the whole machine. Thus natural poetry, sweetness and affection were “like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;” and body and mind became in harmony morbid—almost the only harmony in his organization.
Life, at its best, jars harshly on such natures; but it dealt with the unfortunate Randolph with a severity that might have appalled and broken down a strong and healthy nature. Nothing but physical and moral courage as extraordinary as the rest of his qualities could have carried him through sixty years of pent-up purgatory. While an infant he lost his father; and his mother (“the only human being who ever knew me”) was taken away when he was fifteen. The sensitive, irritable, delicate child was left to “rough it” alone.
A succession of blows destroyed the dearest object of his life—the transmission of the family name and estates. One brother, Theodorick, died three years after his mother (1791), and three years later the eldest brother, Richard, the pride and hope of the family. The perpetuation of the line rested then on John and Richard’s two infant sons. John Randolph nursed these carefully to manhood, only to see one of them become a hopeless madman from disappointment in love, and the other sicken and die with consumption.
Meanwhile Randolph had himself received a wound which at once blasted his own happiness, and cut off the last hope of succession through himself. He loved; something, we know not what, came between him and his affianced and she married another. Undoubtedly a man of his intense and self-repressed nature threw into this passion extraordinary abandon. At least he never recovered from the disappointment and never married—though, be it said to his credit, cynical as he was, he retained through life the most profound respect for women, and found in their society the only alleviation of his lot. Late in life he wrote: “There was a volcano under my ice, but it is burnt out. The necessity of loving and being beloved was never felt by the imaginary beings of Rousseau’s and Byron’s creation more imperiously than by myself.” Randolph erected a cabin for himself among those of his slaves and there, when not in Congress or traveling abroad he spent his life in solitude, brooding over his misery and ruin, as wretched a recluse and misanthrope as ever breathed out a painful, hopeless existence.
To complete the sad picture, give the hapless victim of himself and circumstances a deeply religious nature and take away the consolations of hope and faith. This last drop was added to the cup and he sipped its dregs all his life. He brought his wonderful intellectual powers to bear on this subject; read, studied, thought, brooded, agonized over it in pursuit of spiritual peace; went through all the variations of skepticism, contrition, hope, despair, conversion, and relapse. Such an analytical mind coupled with a quick and self-depreciating conscience, a high ideal of religious experience, and a downright honesty of purpose could not compromise with its own extreme demands, could accept of no doubtful convictions or half-conversion. The very desire for salvation might seem selfish and unworthy to an unhealthy nature; the failure to feel, to live all that others profess (often without feeling) becomes to it conclusive evidence of the hopeless, forever-lost condition of self. Doubt brought self-condemnation for doubting; self-condemnation in turn brought new doubts. So, in a fog, he traveled perpetually in a circle.
But, through all these years of struggle and misery John Randolph was a just, a pure, a benevolent man, and he discharged his private and public duties with a fidelity and devotedness that they of sound mind and body might well emulate. The contrasts of mood and act of such a man were many and strong; they got him the credit of being crazy, and of being most so when he was most himself—such is the world’s usual perception of eccentricity.
The personal appearance of the man, however, encouraged this idea: Tawny complexion, tall thin form, spindle shanks, long hair in a queue, large, black, glowing eyes, pointed chin, beardless face, small effeminate hands, long tapering fingers, and, above all, a voice shrill, piercing, sonorous and magnetic as a woman’s. He dressed in drab or buck-skin breeches, with blue coat and white top-boots, or large buckled shoes. His manner was courteous and attractive to the few whom he regarded as his equals; to the rest of mankind he was dignified and reserved; to no one did he permit familiarity. A man introduced himself to Randolph as Mr. Blunt. “Blunt?” said he with a piercing and repellant glance; “Blunt! Ah, I should say so!”
Another stranger addressed him in Washington: “Mr. Randolph, I am just from Virginia; I passed your house a few days ago?” “Thank you, I hope you always will,” was the only encouragement the advance received.
Yet, in England, Randolph was thought very approachable and genial. An introduction was not necessary to an acquaintance at all. Perhaps the difference was largely in his health, which was better abroad.
John Randolph first came into prominence in politics in 1798, by the daring act of opposing on the stump the idol of Virginia, the venerable Patrick Henry. Henry took grounds against the State upon its nullification of the laws of the United States, although he had always been an extreme States-rights man. Young Randolph—then aged twenty-five—astounded everybody by daring to meet such a champion; but he had Henry’s former record in his favor, and he made a speech of such power that it carried him into the House of Representatives. Referring to these two men, the happy expression was used, “The Rising and the Setting Sun.” Henry died soon after.
Randolph took his seat in December, 1799. When he advanced to the Speaker’s desk to take the oath, the clerk, moved by his youthful and singular appearance, asked, “Are you old enough to be eligible?” “Ask my constituents,” was the only reply his State pride allowed him to make. In one month Randolph had become one of the best marked men of the nation. He broke with the administration of his party under Jefferson on “the Yazoo business”—a bit of early official corruption that rivals anything disclosed in later times. His opposition to the anti-English measures of Madison’s administration, and to the war of 1812, cost him his re-election, and he was retired. Henry Clay’s star was rising, and a new era was dawning. “The American system” of internal improvements, protection, manufactures, and Federal supremacy was taking shape. The irrepressible conflict of State versus Federal powers, had begun under Clay and Randolph—a conflict destined to lead to the duel between these two leaders, and ultimately to be appealed to the arbitrament of civil war.
Defeat cut John Randolph more deeply than it did David Crockett under similar circumstances. Randolph retired to his cabin and brooded; misanthropy gnawed like the vulture at the vitals of Prometheus bound. He longed for human sympathy, and was too proud to accept of it when proffered. It was during this season of disappointment and isolation that his severest religious discipline and the hope of conversion came; then also came the last sundering of his hopes of a lineal successor. “This business of living,” he said, “is dull work. I possess so little of pagan philosophy or of Christian patience as to be frequently driven to despair. * * I look forward without hope. * * I have been living in a world [in Washington] without souls, until my heart is dry as a chip, and cold as a dog’s nose.”
In 1815 Randolph rode into Congress again on the wave of reaction against the war and its burdens, and remained in the House until 1826, when he was elected to the Senate to fill a vacancy. His antagonism against Henry Clay reached a dangerous point in the struggle over the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
Randolph went to England in 1822. He took with him large quantities of books and magazines to be bound, as he would not “patronize our Yankee task-masters, who have caused such a heavy duty to be imposed on foreign books. I shall employ John Bull to bind my books until the time arrives when they can be properly done south of Mason and Dixon’s line.” He was received with much honor by all classes in England, where his stout championship of English ideas was well known. His singular appearance was heightened by his very great emaciation, and by a big fur cap with a long fore-piece which he wore. But the splendid intellect, fine manners, and brilliant conversational powers which shone out of this grotesqueness, made him even more noted.
The issue of the Presidential election of 1825 was the occasion of the Randolph-Clay duel. There had been no choice by the people, and the election went to the House of Representatives. Adams, Crawford, Clay and Jackson were the candidates. Clay’s friends threw the election to John Quincy Adams. When the latter made up his cabinet, Clay’s name appeared at the head, as Secretary of State. The disappointed friends of Jackson and Crawford immediately made charges of a bargain between Adams and Clay, but no one dwelt on it with such persistence and bitterness of invective as Randolph. In a speech in the Senate in 1826, he referred to Adams and Clay as “the coalition of Blifil and Black George—the combination, unheard of till then, of the Puritan with the blackleg.” He also charged Clay with forging or falsifying certain state documents which had been furnished the Senate. A challenge from Clay promptly followed, and was as promptly accepted, Randolph refusing to disclaim any personal meaning as to Clay.
“The night before the duel,” says General James Hamilton, of South Carolina, “Mr. Randolph sent for me. I found him calm, but in a singularly kind and confiding mood. He told me he had something on his mind to tell me. He then remarked, ‘Hamilton, I have determined to receive, without returning, Clay’s fire; nothing shall induce me to harm a hair of his head; I will not make his wife a widow, or his children orphans. Their tears would be shed over his grave; but when the sod of Virginia rests on my bosom, there is not in this wide world one individual to pay tribute upon mine.’ His eyes filled, and resting his head upon his hand, we remained some moments silent.”
All efforts to dissuade him from sacrificing himself were unavailing; but he appeared on the “field of honor” in a huge dressing-gown, in which the locale of his attenuated form was as well hidden as it would have been in a hogshead. Clay fired, and the ball passed through the gown where it was reasonable to suppose its wearer to be, but in fact was not. Randolph fired his shot in air, and then approaching Clay he vehemently called out in his shrill voice, “Mr. Clay, you owe me a cloak, sir, you owe me a cloak!” at the same time pointing to the hole in that wrap. Clay replied with much feeling, pointing to Randolph’s breast, “I am glad I am under no deeper obligation. I would not have harmed you for a thousand worlds.” This ended the encounter, but not the enmity, at least on Randolph’s part, as it was a matter of patriotic principle with him.
In 1827 he was again elected to the House, and immediately became the leader of the opposition, then called the Republican party. His speeches were numerous, and furnish some of the finest specimens of American eloquence. Many of his startling phrases became permanent additions to the list of Americanisms, as “bear-garden” (applied to the House of Representatives), and “dough-faces” (truckling Northern politicians). He was remarkable for eclecticism of words and careful accuracy of pronunciation.
When Jackson issued his famous proclamation against the South Carolina nullifiers, Randolph arose from his sick bed and actively canvassed the district, making inflammatory speeches from his carriage to arouse a public sentiment against the proclamation and its author—as if a skeleton, uttering a voice from the grave, had come back to awaken the living. Then we hear of him at the Petersburg races, making a speech and betting on the horses. It was probably on this occasion that he made the retort to a sporting man. Randolph excitedly offered a certain wager on one of the horses. A stranger proposed to take the bet, saying, “My friend Thompson here will hold the stakes.” “Yes,” squealed the skeleton statesman, suspiciously, “and who will hold Thompson?”
But the end was drawing on. Ill as he was, he made preparations to go abroad again, and in May, 1833, started for Philadelphia to take passage.
On the boat thence to Philadelphia the dying man—for such now he was—ate heartily of fried clams, asked an acquaintance to read for him and criticised every incorrect accent or pronunciation, and talked freely about men, measures, and especially about his horses, which were very fast. The closing scene took place in Philadelphia, in a hotel, among strangers,—fit finale of his desolate, homeless life.
He lingered several days, during which time he took, with great care, the necessary legal steps to confirm his will for the manumission of his slaves. This finally done, he seemed to feel easier in mind and body. The account of the strange end of the eventful history proceeds:
He now made his preparations to die. He directed John to bring him his father’s breast button; he then directed him to place it in the bosom of his shirt. It was an old-fashioned, large-sized gold stud. John placed it in the button hole of the shirt bosom—but to fix it completely required another hole on the other side. “Get a knife,” said he, “and cut one.” A napkin was called for, and placed by John, over his breast. For a short time he lay perfectly quiet, with his eyes closed. He suddenly roused up and exclaimed:
“Remorse! Remorse!”
It was thrice repeated—the last time, at the top of his voice, with great agitation. He cried out, “Let me see the word. Get a dictionary! Let me see the word!”
“There is none in the room, sir.”
“Write it down then—let me see the word.”
The Doctor picked up one of his cards, “Randolph, of Roanoke.” “Shall I write on this?”
“Yes; nothing more proper.”
The word remorse was then written in pencil. He took the card in a hurried manner, and fastened his eyes on it with great intensity. “Write it on the back,” he exclaimed. It was so done and handed him again. He was extremely agitated.
“Remorse! you have no idea what it is; you can form no idea of it whatever; it has contributed to bring me to my present situation. But I have looked to the Lord Jesus Christ, and hope I have obtained pardon. Now let John take your pencil and draw a line under the word,” which was accordingly done.
“What am I to do with the card,” inquired the Doctor.
“Put it in your pocket, take care of it, and when I am dead, look at it.”
The dying man was propped up in the bed with pillows, nearly erect. Being extremely sensitive to cold, he had a blanket over his head and shoulders; and he directed John to place his hat on over the blanket, which aided in keeping it close to his head.
The scene was soon changed. Having disposed of that subject most deeply impressed on his heart, his keen, penetrating eye lost its expression, his powerful mind gave way, and his fading imagination began to wander amid scenes and with friends that he had left behind. In two hours the spirit took its flight, and all that was mortal of John Randolph of Roanoke was hushed in death. At a quarter before twelve o’clock, on the twenty-fourth day of June, 1833, aged sixty years, he breathed his last, in a chamber of the City Hotel, Philadelphia.
From the very necessities of the nature of an Eccentric, John Randolph could not be in harmony with the time in which he lived. But this difference was intensified into enmity by the irritable nature of his mind and the diseased condition of his body; nay, by his very virtues and genius. To increase the enmity and his own misfortune, he threw himself with ardor upon the losing side of an irrepressible conflict in government. I think posterity is better prepared to do him justice than were his contemporaries, for we have passed a settlement of the political conflict, and from pitying hearts can make full allowance for Randolph’s unhappy nature and unfortunate lot, while recognizing the purity, honesty and heroism of his character. Which of us would have been a better man in his situation?
[THE STORK.]
Translated from the Swedish, for The Chautauquan.[K]
An isle there is in airy distance
Where rise green forests, grim and tall,
Its name eludes one with persistence,
But occupied with genie small;
The dewy air is dawn’s fresh greeting,
And drowsy waves the reeds are beating,
There poppies grow, and lilies rare,
These only really thriving there,
But crimson-booted stork there feedeth,
To earthly mothers children leadeth.
In poppy scent with lilies vieing,
He gently flaps at water’s brink,
To capture chubby genie trying,
And begs them not to fear or shrink.
The bantlings, in whose souls are blended
Fragrance from both flowers expended,
Which makes the tender sense appear
In these both slumbering and clear,
Around the snowy stork would rally,
And ventured not, but wished to dally.
“Come here, come here,” a voice then crying,
The stork soon ruffles up his frill,
He sees two tiny urchins flying
So near as to be touched at will.
But oh, what wings, now waving lightly!
And feathers too, these shifting brightly
In green, as light as young birch leaves
When spring its bath of dew receives,
In red, as pale a hue revealing,
As streak at dawn, the mist concealing!
At night they breast to breast had slumbered,
In moonbeams’ silver veil did lie
On poppy-bed by waves unnumbered,
To angels’ sweetest lullaby.
Now stand they fresh as early morning,
In sprightly mood, all dullness scorning.
One cries, “Come, long-legs, come to me!”
The stork looks round quite loftily,
And straightway to the youngsters striding,
He asks them, “Do ye feel like riding?”
The boy then answers, “I would try it,
So on thy back pray let me sit!
On earth ’tis lovely, none deny it,
But be not ugly—gently flit!”
And up on snowy plumage springing,
A shower of down around him flinging,
Sat firm. The stork asked, “Lassie, thou,
Wilt thou not also travel now
And be a child to some good mother?”
But no—too timid, shy, this other.
They started off. The pleasure craving,
So free and wild on stork he flew,
And to his sister farewell waving,
Until at last was lost to view.
And she whose fear her trip prevented,
Now wished to be along, repented.
She felt so lonely, was not glad,
And when next year the stork she had,
Who late and early came and started,
Her wish to ride next time imparted.
He answered, “Come then, naught detaining!
’Twas stupid to refuse last year;
Not now the same good mother gaining
As he, the boy thou held so dear,
For she beneath the turf is sleeping;
But come, my little dove, now keeping
Most careful hold around my neck,
And scream not till our course we check!”
And round his neck her arms she twineth,
And heaven’s winds his flight assigneth.
On earth they grew up well protected,
The boy to manhood had attained,
A beauteous maiden, she, perfected,
When first they met, as seemed ordained.
Were early memories, reviving,
To draw them soul to soul now striving?
Was it the roguish stork, oh say,
That thus together brought their way?
I think that fate great fondness bore them,
When choosing different mothers for them.
But thou shouldst see the cot so sightly,
The woodland home in which they dwell!
The cause of it I know not rightly
Why storks just there should thrive so well,
And one especially, who hovers
On roof which inner chamber covers,
And goes and flaps with all his might
So crimson-booted, silver-white,
And best she worked, the mother hinted,
When he had sticks and straws unstinted.
Each fall he goes, the habit keeping,
But seen each spring again on roof,
From there o’er house and garden peeping;
And can I judge, or take as proof
The children I have seen there playing,
Full often has the stork been straying
To that fair poppy-covered isle,
And now brings lass with winsome smile,
And now a lovely boy, a treasure;
This must afford him constant pleasure.
As pedagogue he struts hereafter,
And trousers of the boys he pecks
With bill, rewarded then with laughter,
If naughtiness or prank detects;
But yet for their protection striving,
And serpents from the garden driving,
And patiently will he comply
When “Long-legs, come!” the children cry.
Each eve from thatch so closely heeding,
If they the psalms are nicely reading.
The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again. And even of the books we decide to read, there are almost always large portions which do not concern us, and which we are sure to forget the day after we have read them. The art is to skip all that does not concern us, whilst missing nothing that we really need. No external guidance can teach us this, for nobody but ourselves can guess what the needs of our intellect may be. But let us select with decisive firmness, independently of other people’s advice, independently of the authority of custom. In every newspaper that comes to hand there is a little bit that we ought to read; the art is to find that little bit, and waste no time over the rest.—Philip G. Hamerton.
[GARDENING AMONG THE CHINESE.]
Translated for The Chautauquan, from “Revue des Deux Mondes.”
A French physician, M. Martin, who has for several years been an attaché of the French ambassador at Pekin, calls the Chinese the authors of the art of gardening. Since the earliest times their leaders have had the wisdom to have cultivated not only ornamental plants, but as well those which would increase the resources of the inhabitants. Their vast enclosures have often been the nurseries of the provinces, and to excite the ambition of their subjects, the rulers award prizes on many public occasions to those who present to them new flowers or fruits. Our societies of horticulture do no better. The annals of the Tsing dynasty mention mandarins whose business it was to care for the gardens of the emperor, and especially to look after the bamboos. The taste for flowers increased by the encouragement of the authorities gives an astonishing commercial value to certain plants. The sambac, whose flowers have at once the odor of the rose and of the orange, as blended in the common jasmine, is used to perfume tea, liquors, syrups and preserves; at Pekin a very small branch is worth from ten dollars to twelve dollars and upwards. An asclepias, which gives its perfume only at night, has been sold for twenty and thirty ounces of silver, and each year the viceroy of the province of Tche-kiang sends several cuttings of it to Pekin for the apartments of the emperor. In order to profit by so lucrative a taste, Chinese horticulture has been for the most part spent in trying to make the most of the treasures of their flora. To this flora we owe the chief of our ornamental flowers—the Chinese pink, sent in 1702 to the Abbé Bignon, and first described in 1705; the aster, sent out in 1728, and which received from a committee of amateurs the name of Queen Marguerite; our autumn chrysanthemum, which for a long time figured on the coat of arms of the emperors; the dicentra (or “bleeding heart”), whose rosy spurred cups look like a double shield; the Chinese rose; the Chinese honeysuckle, whose original name signifies “the gold and silver flower,” in reference to its various colors; the begonia, green above and provided with purple veins below; our camellia, which the Chinese call the tea-flower; finally, a flower which we call the isle of Guernsey, because the vessel which brought the bulbs of this elegant amaryllis into England having been shipwrecked in sight of its country, the bulbs, carried by the waves on to the sandy shores of the isle, took root there and were kept alive in the pleasant temperature.
The taste of these Orientals is very different from ours. We are disagreeably affected by the care which they take to diminish the height of all vegetation. The missionaries assure us that they have seen cypresses and pines which were not more than two feet in height, although forty years old, and well proportioned in all their parts. It is one way of obtaining a great number of types in a narrow space, which is precious in a country where the gardens are so elegant and the ownership so divided. It is one of the results of the culture of the family life, and if a stranger is but little pleased by these stunted forms he is, at least, able to extract a moral upon the infinite patience which has produced them. By energy and will they direct as they wish the most obstinate plants, and in their flower-beds imitate lakes, rocks, rivers, and even mountains.
But they have as well their landscape gardens: they are around tombs, and especially the pagodas, those centers of civilization which are at once places of prayer, store-houses for the harvests of the simple, and grazing grounds for the preservation of quadrupeds. It is in these gardens of the extreme East that one sees those avenues of bamboos, whose knots hollowed out leave niches for idols; then there are magnificent specimens of the great thuja of the East, whose sweet-scented imperishable wood is used for making coffins, and reduced to powder is made into aromatic chopsticks, which are burnt before the statues of their divinities; the fir-tree, with long cones, a native of the northeast; the oak, with leaves like the chestnut tree, and which bears the mistletoe in China; the weeping willow and the funeral cypress, whose bright leaves stand out against the black background of the pines; the Pinus bungeana, which grows to an enormous size, and whose trunk becomes so white with age that it might easily pass for limestone. We can not describe the effect of this grand, severe vegetation, intermingled with marble statues and columns, surrounding the lofty conical roofs of the pagodas.
In no country of Europe are the gardeners so skillful in multiplying and cultivating. They have processes of their own. Our gardeners do not know how to use half-rotten planks, which they pierce with holes, fill with earth, and use in the germination of the cutting; when the plant begins to grow they break away the plank. We are far from practicing grafting in their bold style; this horticultural operation is performed among the Chinese in very different ways. They graft successfully the chrysanthemum on the wormwood, the oak on the chestnut, the grape on the jujube tree. These feats, which shock the customs of our horticulturists and even the convictions of our botanists, recall those which the good Pliny relates, and for which he has been charged with ignorance and hyperbole.
Their cleverness in gardening has one outlet of which we are ignorant. We cut our boxwood, and do not save it for the Palm-Sunday festival. The Chinese cultivate plants for holy purposes. The ponds and other bodies of water so numerous in a country where rice is the chief food, gives them opportunity to cultivate in abundance a magnificent water plant, the lotus of the Indus, the sacred plant of the Hindoos. The god Buddha is always represented reposing on the lotus flower, whose root signifies vigor, its great leaves growth, its odor the sovereign spirit, its brilliancy love. Thus it is customary to offer to the idols the beautiful flowers of the lotus; besides, its culture offers a double advantage, its fruitful root and its sweet grains (the beans of Egypt) being used in Chinese cookery. The fruit of one variety of the lemon tree is produced from the separated carpels, which are disjoined at the base of the lemon and developed separately, like the fingers of a hand. This hand is among the Chinese that of their god; Fo-chou-kan, as it is called, signifies the sweet smelling hand of Buddha. A writer assures us that the gardeners aid, by bands which are early fastened on the fruit, in bringing about this paying division; they are capable of it.
This union of two very different feelings, the greed for gain and piety, ought not to astonish us much. The simple affection which they have for plants seems to be a kind of religious sentiment. Each plant inspires them with a kind of mystic love which affects certain of their poems. Their literature represents to us a delight in flowers which we do not easily understand. They are enraptured at the sight of a plant, and seek by continued observation to understand its development. One is not surprised at the degree of skill to which such an exalted taste leads their gardeners.
The emperors have always especially encouraged the production of vegetables and orchards, as well as general agriculture. “I prefer,” said the emperor Kang-hi, “to procure a new kind of fruit or of grain for my subjects rather than to build an hundred porcelain towers.” Two centuries before him one prince published an herbarium containing the plants suitable to cultivate in time of famine, after having consulted with the peasants and farmers.
The Chinese have always displayed the greatest activity in order to assure themselves of their food at the expense of the vegetable world, sometimes from plants which are not cultivated, as from seaweeds, from which they obtain gelatine or a salty condiment, and particularly from those which they can perfect in their gardens. There are to be found in their kitchen gardens not only the most of our common vegetables, as turnips, carrots, radishes, onions, and our salad herbs, but some peculiar vegetables like the Chinese cabbage whose seeds furnish oil; the rapeseed, the young shoots of which are used in pickles, like those of mustard; fruits similar to our melons and cucumbers; enormous egg-plants, etc. If the garden contains a stream of water, as is frequent, they cultivate according to the depth of the water either aquatic grasses, of which they eat the terminal buds, or water plants like the lotus, or the Chinese cock’s-comb, of which all the parts furnish a nourishing fecula, or plants of the melon family, like the watermelon or the peculiar water chestnut, which is at times a scarlet red, and which they gather in the autumn. The picturesque way in which they gather these nuts is well described by M. Fauvel. Men, women and children embark on the canal in tubs, which they push with long bamboos about the floating islets of the chestnut, and which often capsize, to everyone’s great amusement.
In some places one observes a singular culture of mushrooms. These cryptograms are greatly valued in China, and not alone on account of their nutritive properties. One species which takes root upon coming into the open air, and which is edible, has so dry a tissue that it keeps almost as fresh as when one gathers it ripe. Ancient writers took it for a symbol of immortality.
It is particularly interesting to examine the Chinese orchards, distinguishing the productions of the north and south. The fruits of the south are less interesting: dates, cocoanut trees, mangoes, bananas, bread trees, pineapples, all tropical fruits which are not exclusively Chinese. The principal fruits of the north are first the five fruits, that is, the peach, apricot, plum, the chestnut and the jujube. The most important of Chinese fruit trees is the peach, which most probably is a native of the country. Its winter florescence has been taken by Chinese romance writers as the symbol of love and fidelity. Chinese orchards also furnish many other fruits: several kinds of plums, a fine white pear as round as our bergamot, the berries of the myrica, which pass very well for our strawberries, and which are easily mistaken for the arbute berry; but for general use nothing equals the Chinese figs and oranges.
[EIGHT CENTURIES WITH WALTER SCOTT.]
By WALLACE BRUCE.
“The Fair Maid of Perth” is at once a photograph and a drama. The beautiful county of Perthshire, with its wild mountains and picturesque lakes, seems transferred bodily as by a camera to the novelist’s pages, and the historic incidents are so real and rapid in dramatic interest that they seem lifted from the realm of history into a sort of Shaksperean play.
The story opens with a description of Perth from a spot called the Wicks of Baigle, “where the traveler beholds stretching beneath him the valley of the Tay, traversed by its ample and lordly stream; the town of Perth with its two large meadows, its steeples, and its towers; the hills of Moncreiff and Kinnoul faintly rising into picturesque rocks, partly clothed with woods; the rich margin of the river, studded with elegant mansions, and the distant view of the huge Grampian mountains, the northern screen of this exquisite landscape.”
The time of the story is 1402. Almost a century has elapsed since the battle of Bannockburn—a century of turmoil and strife. Its history seems like a great tempest-tossed sea swept by constantly recurring whirlwinds. Three kings and as many regents reign in turn; and at the opening of our story Scotland is under the government of Robert the Third.
David the Second, only son of Robert Bruce, died childless; his sister, Marjory, married Walter, the Lord High Steward of the realm; their son was crowned Robert the Third, King of Scotland. The family took the name of Stewart, which gave by direct descent the Stuart line to the throne of Britain, and their descendants are to-day upon the thrones of England, Italy and Greece. The little skiff, tossed ashore upon the rugged cliffs and cold hospitality of Lorne Castle, as described in our last article, carried therefore the ancestor of a long historic line—a line not always fortunate, not always honest, but presenting for the most part during its record of five hundred years a fair average of manhood and womanhood as kings and queens generally run.
Robert the Third found his country torn by civil feuds, and his temper was too mild for those stormy times. His brother, the Duke of Albany, a crafty counselor of the Iago type, provoked strife between father and son. The good king’s heart was broken. “Vengeance followed,” says Scott, “though with a slow pace, the treachery and cruelty of his brother. Robert of Albany’s own grey hairs went, indeed, in peace to the grave, and he transferred the regency, which he had so foully acquired, to his son Murdoch. But nineteen years after the death of the old king, James the First returned to Scotland, and Duke Murdoch of Albany, with his sons, was brought to the scaffold, in expiation of his father’s guilt and his own.”
Such are the main historic features of the story. The inwoven incidents make us acquainted with many of the customs of humble life which pertain to the close of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century. It portrays the ancient observances of St. Valentine’s Day; the fierce conflict of two Highland clans; the bitter jealousy between the Black Douglas and the Earl of March; the trial by Bier-Right in the Church of St. John; the government of Scottish towns and burroughs; the hardihood of the brave burghers who knew their rights, and had the courage to maintain them. It reveals the dissipation of the Court, led on by the much-loved but dissipated son of the king, the Duke of Rothsay, over whom the father mourned, even as David over his son Absalom.
Through this black serge-cloth of history runs a silver thread—the life of Catharine Glover. Her bold and resolute lover, Henry Gow, a smith and armorer by trade, who had the good fortune of being her Valentine, seems too warlike for her gentle and amiable character, or as Harry sums it up briefly in a blunt sentence: “She thinks the whole world is one great minster church, and that all who live in it should behave as if they were at an eternal mass.”
The romance abounds with many eloquent passages and poetic touches; even the bold armorer, with his love for hard blows, reveals here and there a touch of sentiment, as where he returns to Perth from a long journey and says: “When I crossed the Wicks and saw the bonny city lie fairly before me, like a fairy queen in romance, whom the knight finds asleep among a wilderness of flowers, I felt even as a bird, when it folds its weary wings to stoop down on its own nest.”
The description of the burial of the Highland Chief is the sketch of a master. We are transported to the rugged hills of the northern Highlands. Around us rise lofty mountain peaks; below us stretches the silver expanse of Loch Tay; the black-bannered flotilla carrying the dead leader, Mac Ian, with oars moving to wild music, holds its course to the ruined cathedral of the Holy Isle, where still slumbers the daughter of Henry the First of England, wife of Alexander the First of Scotland. “The monks issue from their lowly portal; the bells peal their death-toll over the long lake; a yell bursts from the assembled multitude, in which the deep shout of warriors, and the shrill wail of females join their notes with the tremulous voice of age, and the babbling cry of childhood; the deer start from their glens for miles around and seek the distant recesses of the mountains, even the domestic animals, accustomed to the voice of man, flee from their pastures into morasses and dingles.”
Scott’s power as a poet is seen in passages like this, and his power as a dramatist in words like the following placed in the mouth of the heart-broken king, revealing in one condensed sentence of agony the unfortunate state of his country: “Oh, Scotland, Scotland; if the best blood of thy bravest children could enrich the barren soil, what land on earth would excel thee in fertility? When is it that a white hair is seen on the beard of a Scottish man, unless he be some wretch like thy sovereign, protected from murder by impotence, to witness the scenes of slaughter to which he can not put a period? The demon of strife and slaughter hath possessed the whole land.”
But the clouds and mists upon the mountain-heights of royalty do not always envelop the valley, or affect the happiness of those who live in humble spheres; and we are glad to know that Harry Gow is at last made happy by the hand of Catharine. He promises to hand up his broadsword, never more to draw it unless against the enemies of Scotland. “And should Scotland call for it,” said Catharine, “I will buckle it round you.”
Our next novel, in historic sequence, takes us to the Court of Louis the Eleventh in the year 1468. The reader is introduced to a young Scotchman by the name of Quentin Durward. He is in France seeking employment for his sword; he joins the Scottish archers which form the body-guard of the King; he soon wins the notice and favor of Louis the Eleventh by his courage, address and honesty; he goes as escort for two noble ladies who had fled for refuge from the court of Burgundy to France, and becomes at last as the title of the book would indicate the important personage in the romance, and his honesty is rewarded by the hand of the heroine.
But the great value of this work is the character sketch of Louis the Eleventh, a king who possessed a soul as hardened as that of Mephistopheles, and a brain like that of Machiavelli, whose birth at Florence in 1469 appropriately commemorates the early years of Louis’ reign; he found the throne in a tottering condition; in fact all Europe was unsettled. It was the dark hour preceding the dawn of the Reformation. There was some excuse for caution, and perhaps for craftiness in order to preserve his government, but no excuse and no necessity for the cruelty and treachery that marked every day of his life. He seemed malevolent for the sake of malevolence; or as Scott more briefly puts it, “he seemed an incarnation of the devil himself, permitted to do his utmost to corrupt our ideas of honor to its very source.” He surrounded himself with menials, invited low and obscure men to secret councils, employed his barber as prime minister, not for any special ability displayed, but from his readiness to pander to his lowest wishes. In every way he brought disrespect upon the court of his father, “who tore from the fangs of the English lion the more than half-conquered kingdom of France.”
Scott places the character of Louis the Eleventh in contrast with that of the Duke of Burgundy; “a man who rushed on danger because he loved it, and on difficulties because he despised them.” His rude, chivalrous nature despised his wily cousin, who had his mouth at every man’s ear, and his hand in every man’s palm. As we read the history of Louis XI. he seems like a great spider slowly but surely spinning his web about his enemies until at last there is no escape. By tortuous policy he “rose among the rude sovereigns of the period to the rank of a keeper among wild beasts, who, by superior wisdom, by distribution of food, and some discipline of blows, comes finally to predominate over those, who, if unsubjected by his arts, would by main strength have torn him to pieces.”
Apart from the main thread of history Scott gives us a picture of the Gypsies, or Bohemians, who had just made their appearance in Europe. They claimed an Egyptian descent, and their features attested that they were of eastern origin. Their complexion was positively eastern, approaching to that of the Hindoos. Their manners were as depraved as their appearance was poor and beggarly. The few arts which they studied with success, were of a slight and idle, though ingenious description. Their pretensions to read fortunes, by palmistry and astrology, acquired them sometimes respect, but oftener drew them under the suspicion of sorcerers; and lastly, the universal accusation that they augmented their horde by stealing children, subjected them to doubt and execration. They incurred almost everywhere sentence of banishment, and, where suffered to remain, were rather objects of persecution than of protection from the law. The arrival of the Egyptians as these singular people were called, in various parts of Europe, corresponds with the period in which Tamerlane invaded Hindostan, affording its natives the choice between the Koran and death. There can be little doubt that these wanderers consisted originally of the Hindostanee tribes, who, displaced and flying from the sabers of the Mohammedans, undertook this species of wandering life, without well knowing whither they were going. Scott gives us in the character of Hayraddin a type of this great family, a brief sketch of which taken as above from his notes we thought would be of interest to the general reader.
The interview of Louis the Eleventh with the astrologer not only reveals the superstition of the king but also places in sharp contrast the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which were cut asunder, as it were, with a sword of light. The old astrologer’s apostrophe to the art of printing, which was then invented, is worthy of a place in these historic references: “Believe me that, in considering the consequences of this invention, I read with as certain augury as by any combination of the heavenly bodies, the most awful and portentous changes. When I reflect with what slow and limited supplies the stream of science hath hitherto descended to us; how difficult to be obtained by those most ardent in its search; how certain to be neglected by all who regard their ease; how liable to be diverted, or altogether dried up, by the invasion of barbarism; can I look forward without wonder and astonishment to the lot of a succeeding generation, on which knowledge will descend like the first and second rain, uninterrupted, unabated, unbounded; fertilizing some grounds, and overflowing others; changing the whole form of social life; establishing and overthrowing religions; erecting and destroying kingdoms.” “Hold,” said Louis, “shall these changes come in our time?” “No, my royal brother,” replied the astrologer, “this invention may be likened to a young tree, which is now newly planted, but shall, in succeeding generations, bear fruit as fatal, yet as precious, as that of the Garden of Eden; the knowledge, namely, of good and evil.”
Anne of Geierstein is to a certain extent a sequel to Quentin Durward. The time of the story is four years later; the scene is laid in the mountains of Switzerland. The romance reveals the power of the Vehmic tribunal of Westphalia, a secret organization, whose bloody executions gave to the east of Germany the name of the Red Land. It portrays faithfully the heroic character of the Swiss people who preferred peace to war, but accepted war when the issue meant liberty or servitude.
Two travelers, apparently English merchants, are benighted near the ruined castle of Geierstein. They are hospitably entertained, and after a few days’ delay, they join a Swiss embassy on its way to the Court of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, the mission of which embassy was to ask redress for injuries done to the Helvetian Cantons. On their journey they meet with a warlike adventure in which the English travelers have opportunity to display their courage and judgment. They are imprisoned and released; the elder has the misfortune of falling into the hands of the Vehmic court, and the rare good fortune of being released; and so the story moves on as it were from one ambuscade to another, until they reach the court and army of the proud Duke of Burgundy.
They meet en route at a Cathedral in Strasburg, Queen Margaret of Anjou, who in the bloody struggle between the House of York and Lancaster had been driven from the English throne. This meeting reveals the fact that the English travelers are no less personages than the Earl of Oxford and his son, who are on their way to persuade, if possible, the Duke of Burgundy to give his support to the House of Lancaster. The duke promises relief; but circumstances combine with his rashness to prevent the proffered aid. He proposes at first to subdue the haughty Swiss. He dismisses their embassy with scorn, and prepares for a fruitless war in spite of the noble plea of the white haired Landamman: “And what can the noble Duke of Burgundy gain by such a strife? Is it wealth and plunder? Alas, my lord, there is more gold and silver on the very bridle-bits of your Highness’ household troops than can be found in the public treasures or private hoards of our whole confederacy. Is it fame and glory you aspire to? There is little honor to be won by a numerous army over a few scattered bands, by men clad in mail over half-armed husbandmen and shepherds—of such conquest small was the glory. But if, as all Christian men believe, and as it is the constant trust of my countrymen, from memory of the times of our fathers—if the Lord of Hosts should cast the balance in behalf of the fewer numbers and worse-armed party, I leave it with your Highness to judge, what in that event would be the diminution of worship and fame. Is it extent of vassalage and dominion your Highness desires, by warring with your mountain neighbors? Know that you may, if it be God’s will, gain our barren and rugged mountains; but, like our ancestors of old, we will seek refuge in wilder and more distant solitudes, and when we have resisted to the last, we will starve in the icy wastes of the glaciers. Ay, men, women and children, we will be frozen into annihilation together, ere one free Switzer will acknowledge a foreign master.”
Well would it have been if the stubborn duke had listened to these words; for Louis the Eleventh was already making peace with the English king, and the balance of power which the duke had held for so many years was slipping from his grasp forever. He attacks the Swiss in their mountain fastnesses, and pays for his rashness with his life. The haughty Queen Margaret dies, and for the time the hope of the House of Lancaster perishes.
But does some fair reader ask: Who is Anne of Geierstein? Is the book all history? Ask the son of the Earl of Oxford, and he will tell you that Anne was the fair maiden who rescued him from a perilous rock the night they were lost near the castle of Geierstein; that she was with the embassy on her way to visit her father; that she again rescued him from imprisonment and death; and after the fall of the House of Lancaster the Swiss maiden becomes his bride.
“And on her lover’s arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold,
And so across the hills they went,
In that new world, which is the old.”
“But the star of Lancaster,” in the language of Scott, “began again to culminate, and called the banished lord and his son from their retirement, to mix once more in politics, and soon thereafter was fought the celebrated battle of Bosworth, in which the arms of Oxford and his son contributed so much to the success of Henry the Seventh. This changed the destinies of young Oxford and his bride; but it is said that the manners and beauty of Anne of Geierstein attracted as much admiration at the English Court as formerly in the Swiss chalet.”
[ASTRONOMY OF THE HEAVENS FOR JANUARY.]
By Prof. M. B. GOFF.