BEETHOVEN'S SIXTH SYMPHONY.
Sounding above the warring of the years,
Over their stretch of toils and pains and fears,
Comes the well-loved refrain,
That ancient voice again.
Sweeter than when beside the river's marge
We lay and watched, like Innocence at large,
The changeful waters flow,
Speaks this brave music now.
Tender as sunlight upon childhood's head,
Serene as moonlight upon childhood's bed,
Comes the remembered power
Of that forgotten hour.
The little brook with merry voice and low,
The gentle ripples rippling far below,
Talked with no idle voice,
Though idling were their choice.
Now through the tumult and the pride of life,
Gentler, yet firmly soothing all its strife,
Nature draws near once more,
And knocks at the world's door.
She walks within her wild, harmonious maze,
Evolving melodies from doubt and haze,
And leaves us freed from care,
Like children standing there.
THE BROTHERS.
Doctor Franck came in as I sat sewing up the rents in an old shirt, that Tom might go tidily to his grave. New shirts were needed for the living, and there was no wife or mother to "dress him handsome when he went to meet the Lord," as one woman said, describing the fine funeral she had pinched herself to give her son.
"Miss Dane, I'm in a quandary," began the Doctor, with that expression of countenance which says as plainly as words, "I want to ask a favor, but I wish you'd save me the trouble."
"Can I help you out of it?"
"Faith! I don't like to propose it, but you certainly can, if you please."
"Then give it a name, I beg."
"You see a Reb has just been brought in crazy with typhoid; a bad case every way; a drunken, rascally little captain somebody took the trouble to capture, but whom nobody wants to take the trouble to cure. The wards are full, the ladies worked to death, and willing to be for our own boys, but rather slow to risk their lives for a Reb. Now you've had the fever, you like queer patients, your mate will see to your ward for a while, and I will find you a good attendant. The fellow won't last long, I fancy; but he can't die without some sort of care, you know. I've put him in the fourth story of the west wing, away from the rest. It is airy, quiet, and comfortable there. I'm on that ward, and will do my best for you in every way. Now, then, will you go?"
"Of course I will, out of perversity, if not common charity; for some of these people think that because I'm an abolitionist I am also a heathen, and I should rather like to show them, that, though I cannot quite love my enemies, I am willing to take care of them."
"Very good; I thought you'd go; and speaking of abolition reminds me that you can have a contraband for servant, if you like. It is that fine mulatto fellow who was found burying his Rebel master after the fight, and, being badly cut over the head, our boys brought him along. Will you have him?"
"By all means,—for I'll stand to my guns on that point, as on the other; these black boys are far more faithful and handy than some of the white scamps given me to serve, instead of being served by. But is this man well enough?"
"Yes, for that sort of work, and I think you'll like him. He must have been a handsome fellow before he got his face slashed; not much darker than myself; his master's son, I dare say, and the white blood makes him rather high and haughty about some things. He was in a bad way when he came in, but vowed he'd die in the street rather than turn in with the black fellows below; so I put him up in the west wing, to be out of the way, and he's seen to the captain all the morning. "When can you go up?"
"As soon as Tom is laid out, Skinner moved, Haywood washed, Marble dressed, Charley rubbed, Downs taken up, Upham laid down, and the whole forty fed."
We both laughed, though the Doctor was on his way to the dead-house and I held a shroud on my lap. But in a hospital one learns that cheerfulness is one's salvation; for, in an atmosphere of suffering and death, heaviness of heart would soon paralyze usefulness of hand, if the blessed gift of smiles had been denied us.
In an hour I took possession of my new charge, finding a dissipated-looking boy of nineteen or twenty raving in the solitary little room, with no one near him but the contraband in the room adjoining. Feeling decidedly more interest in the black man than in the white, yet remembering the Doctor's hint of his being "high and haughty," I glanced furtively at him as I scattered chloride of lime about the room to purify the air, and settled matters to suit myself. I had seen many contrabands, but never one so attractive as this. All colored men are called "boys," even if their heads are white; this boy was five-and-twenty at least, strong-limbed and manly, and had the look of one who never had been cowed by abuse or worn with oppressive labor. He sat on his bed doing nothing; no book, no pipe, no pen or paper anywhere appeared, yet anything less indolent or listless than his attitude and expression I never saw. Erect he sat, with a hand on either knee, and eyes fixed on the bare wall opposite, so rapt in some absorbing thought as to be unconscious of my presence, though the door stood wide open and my movements were by no means noiseless. His face was half averted, but I instantly approved the Doctor's taste, for the profile which I saw possessed all the attributes of comeliness belonging to his mixed race. He was more quadroon than mulatto, with Saxon features, Spanish complexion darkened by exposure, color in lips and cheek, waving hair, and an eye full of the passionate melancholy which in such men always seems to utter a mute protest against the broken law that doomed them at their birth. What could he be thinking of? The sick boy cursed and raved, I rustled to and fro, steps passed the door, bells rang, and the steady rumble of army-wagons came up from the street, still he never stirred. I had seen colored people in what they call "the black sulks," when, for days, they neither smiled nor spoke, and scarcely ate. But this was something more than that; for the man was not dully brooding over some small grievance; he seemed to see an all-absorbing fact or fancy recorded on the wall, which was a blank to me. I wondered if it were some deep wrong or sorrow, kept alive by memory and impotent regret; if he mourned for the dead master to whom he had been faithful to the end; or if the liberty now his were robbed of half its sweetness by the knowledge that some one near and dear to him still languished in the hell from which he had escaped. My heart quite warmed to him at that idea; I wanted to know and comfort him; and, following the impulse of the moment, I went in and touched him on the shoulder.
In an instant the man vanished and the slave appeared. Freedom was too new a boon to have wrought its blessed changes yet, and as he started up, with his hand at his temple and an obsequious "Yes, Ma'am," any romance that had gathered round him fled away, leaving the saddest of all sad facts in living guise before me. Not only did the manhood seem to die out of him, but the comeliness that first attracted me; for, as he turned, I saw the ghastly wound that had laid open cheek and forehead. Being partly healed, it was no longer bandaged, but held together with strips of that transparent plaster which I never see without a shiver and swift recollections of the scenes with which it is associated in my mind. Part of his black hair had been shorn away, and one eye was nearly closed; pain so distorted, and the cruel sabre-cut so marred that portion of his face, that, when I saw it, I felt as if a fine medal had been suddenly reversed, showing me a far more striking type of human suffering and wrong than Michel Angelo's bronze prisoner. By one of those inexplicable processes that often teach us how little we understand ourselves, my purpose was suddenly changed, and though I went in to offer comfort as a friend, I merely gave an order as a mistress.
"Will you open these windows? this man needs more air."
He obeyed at once, and, as he slowly urged up the unruly sash, the handsome profile was again turned toward me, and again I was possessed by my first impression so strongly that I involuntarily said,—
"Thank you, Sir."
Perhaps it was fancy, but I thought that in the look of mingled surprise and something like reproach which he gave me there was also a trace of grateful pleasure. But he said, in that tone of spiritless humility these poor souls learn so soon,—
"I a'n't a white man, Ma'am, I'm a contraband."
"Yes, I know it; but a contraband is a free man, and I heartily congratulate you."
He liked that; his face shone, he squared his shoulders, lifted his head, and looked me full in the eye with a brisk—
"Thank ye, Ma'am; anything more to do fer yer?"
"Doctor Franck thought you would help me with this man, as there are many patients and few nurses or attendants. Have you had the fever?"
"No, Ma'am."
"They should have thought of that when they put him here; wounds and fevers should not be together. I'll try to get you moved."
He laughed a sudden laugh,—if he had been a white man, I should have called it scornful; as he was a few shades darker than myself, I suppose it must be considered an insolent, or at least an unmannerly one.
"It don't matter, Ma'am. I'd rather be up here with the fever than down with those niggers; and there a'n't no other place fer me."
Poor fellow! that was true. No ward in all the hospital would take him in to lie side by side with the most miserable white wreck there. Like the bat in Æsop's fable, he belonged to neither race; and the pride of one, the helplessness of the other, kept him hovering alone in the twilight a great sin has brought to overshadow the whole land.
"You shall stay, then; for I would far rather have you than my lazy Jack. But are you well and strong enough?"
"I guess I'll do, Ma'am."
He spoke with a passive sort of acquiescence,—as if it did not much matter, if he were not able, and no one would particularly rejoice, if he were.
"Yes, I think you will. By what name shall I call you?"
"Bob, Ma'am."
Every woman has her pet whim; one of mine was to teach the men self-respect by treating them respectfully. Tom, Dick, and Harry would pass, when lads rejoiced in those familiar abbreviations; but to address men often old enough to be my father in that style did not suit my old-fashioned ideas of propriety. This "Bob" would never do; I should have found it as easy to call the chaplain "Gus" as my tragical-looking contraband by a title so strongly associated with the tail of a kite.
"What is your other name?" I asked. "I like to call my attendants by their last names rather than by their first."
"I've got no other, Ma'am; we have our masters' names, or do without. Mine's dead, and I won't have anything of his about me."
"Well, I'll call you Robert, then, and you may fill this pitcher for me, if you will be so kind."
He went; but, through all the tame obedience years of servitude had taught him, I could see that the proud spirit his father gave him was not yet subdued, for the look and gesture with which he repudiated his master's name were a more effective declaration of independence than any Fourth-of-July orator could have prepared.
We spent a curious week together. Robert seldom left his room, except upon my errands; and I was a prisoner all day, often all night, by the bedside of the Rebel. The fever burned itself rapidly away, for there seemed little vitality to feed it in the feeble frame of this old young man, whose life had been none of the most righteous, judging from the revelations made by his unconscious lips; since more than once Robert authoritatively silenced him, when my gentler hushings were of no avail, and blasphemous wanderings or ribald camp-songs made my cheeks burn and Robert's face assume an aspect of disgust. The captain was a gentleman in the world's eye, but the contraband was the gentleman in mine;—I was a fanatic, and that accounts for such depravity of taste, I hope. I never asked Robert of himself, feeling that somewhere there was a spot still too sore to bear the lightest touch; but, from his language, manner, and intelligence, I inferred that his color had procured for him the few advantages within the reach of a quick-witted, kindly treated slave. Silent, grave, and thoughtful, but most serviceable, was my contraband; glad of the books I brought him, faithful in the performance of the duties I assigned to him, grateful for the friendliness I could not but feel and show toward him. Often I longed to ask what purpose was so visibly altering his aspect with such daily deepening gloom. But I never dared, and no one else had either time or desire to pry into the past of this specimen of one branch of the chivalrous "F.F.Vs."
On the seventh night, Dr. Franck suggested that it would be well for some one, besides the general watchman of the ward, to be with the captain, as it might be his last. Although the greater part of the two preceding nights had been spent there, of course I offered to remain,—for there is a strange fascination in these scenes, which renders one careless of fatigue and unconscious of fear until the crisis is passed.
"Give him water as long as he can drink, and if he drops into a natural sleep, it may save him. I'll look in at midnight, when some change will probably take place. Nothing but sleep or a miracle will keep him now. Good night."
Away went the Doctor; and, devouring a whole mouthful of gapes, I lowered the lamp, wet the captain's head, and sat down on a hard stool to begin my watch. The captain lay with his hot, haggard face turned toward me, filling the air with his poisonous breath, and feebly muttering, with lips and tongue so parched that the sanest speech would have been difficult to understand. Robert was stretched on his bed in the inner room, the door of which stood ajar, that a fresh draught from his open window might carry the fever-fumes away through mine. I could just see a long, dark figure, with the lighter outline of a face, and, having little else to do just then, I fell to thinking of this curious contraband, who evidently prized his freedom highly, yet seemed in no haste to enjoy it. Doctor Franck had offered to send him on to safer quarters, but he had said, "No, thank yer, Sir, not yet," and then had gone away to fall into one of those black moods of his, which began to disturb me, because I had no power to lighten them. As I sat listening to the clocks from the steeples all about us, I amused myself with planning Robert's future, as I often did my own, and had dealt out to him a generous hand of trumps wherewith to play this game of life which hitherto had gone so cruelly against him, when a harsh, choked voice called,—
"Lucy!"
It was the captain, and some new terror seemed to have gifted him with momentary strength.
"Yes, here's Lucy," I answered, hoping that by following the fancy I might quiet him,—for his face was damp with the clammy moisture, and his frame shaken with the nervous tremor that so often precedes death. His dull eye fixed upon me, dilating with a bewildered look of incredulity and wrath, till he broke out fiercely,—
"That's a lie! she's dead,—and so's Bob, damn him!"
Finding speech a failure, I began to sing the quiet tune that had often soothed delirium like this; but hardly had the line,
"See gentle patience smile on pain,"
passed my lips, when he clutched me by the wrist, whispering like one in mortal fear,—
"Hush! she used to sing that way to Bob, but she never would to me. I swore I'd whip the Devil out of her, and I did; but you know before she cut her throat she said she'd haunt me, and there she is!"
He pointed behind me with an aspect of such pale dismay, that I involuntarily glanced over my shoulder and started as if I had seen a veritable ghost; for, peering from the gloom of that inner room, I saw a shadowy face, with dark hair all about it, and a glimpse of scarlet at the throat. An instant showed me that it was only Robert leaning from his bed's-foot, wrapped in a gray army-blanket, with his red shirt just visible above it, and his long hair disordered by sleep. But what a strange expression was on his face! The unmarred side was toward me, fixed and motionless as when I first observed it,—less absorbed now, but more intent. His eye glittered, his lips were apart like one who listened with every sense, and his whole aspect reminded me of a hound to which some wind had brought the scent of unsuspected prey.
"Do you know him, Robert? Does he mean you?"
"Lord, no, Ma'am; they all own half a dozen Bobs: but hearin' my name woke me; that's all."
He spoke quite naturally, and lay down again, while I returned to my charge, thinking that this paroxysm was probably his last. But by another hour I perceived a hopeful change, for the tremor had subsided, the cold dew was gone, his breathing was more regular, and Sleep, the healer, had descended to save or take him gently away. Doctor Franck looked in at midnight, bade me keep all cool and quiet, and not fail to administer a certain draught as soon as the captain woke. Very much relieved, I laid my head on my arms, uncomfortably folded on the little table, and fancied I was about to perform one of the feats which practice renders possible,—"sleeping with one eye open," as we say: a half-and-half doze, for all senses sleep but that of hearing; the faintest murmur, sigh, or motion will break it, and give one back one's wits much brightened by the brief permission to "stand at ease." On this night, the experiment was a failure, for previous vigils, confinement, and much care had rendered naps a dangerous indulgence. Having roused half a dozen times in an hour to find all quiet, I dropped my heavy head on my arms, and, drowsily resolving to look up again in fifteen minutes, fell fast asleep.
The striking of a deep-voiced clock woke me with a start. "That is one," thought I, but, to my dismay, two more strokes followed; and in remorseful haste I sprang up to see what harm my long oblivion had done. A strong hand put me back into my seat, and held me there. It was Robert. The instant my eye met his my heart began to beat, and all along my nerves tingled that electric flash which foretells a danger that we cannot see. He was very pale, his mouth grim, and both eyes full of sombre fire,—for even the wounded one was open now, all the more sinister for the deep scar above and below. But his touch was steady, his voice quiet, as he said,—
"Sit still, Ma'am; I won't hurt yer, nor even scare yer, if I can help it, but yer waked too soon."
"Let me go, Robert,—the, captain is stirring,—I must give him something."
"No, Ma'am, yer can't stir an inch. Look here!"
Holding me with one hand, with the other he took up the glass in which I had left the draught, and showed me it was empty.
"Has he taken it?" I asked, more and more bewildered.
"I flung it out o' winder, Ma'am; he'll have to do without."
"But why, Robert? why did you do it?"
"Because I hate him!"
Impossible to doubt the truth of that; his whole face showed it, as he spoke through his set teeth, and launched a fiery glance at the unconscious captain. I could only hold my breath and stare blankly at him, wondering what mad act was coming next. I suppose I shook and turned white, as women have a foolish habit of doing when sudden danger daunts them; for Robert released my arm, sat down upon the bedside just in front of me, and said, with the ominous quietude that made me cold to see and hear,—
"Don't yer be frightened, Ma'am: don't try to run away, fer the door's locked an' the key in my pocket; don't yer cry out, fer yer'd have to scream a long while, with my hand on yer mouth, before yer was heard. Be still, an' I'll tell yer what I'm goin' to do."
"Lord help us! he has taken the fever in some sudden, violent way, and is out of his head. I must humor him till some one comes"; in pursuance of which swift determination, I tried to say, quite composedly,—
"I will be still and hear you; but open the window. Why did you shut it?"
"I'm sorry I can't do it, Ma'am; but yer'd jump out, or call, if I did, an' I'm not ready yet. I shut it to make yer sleep, an' heat would do it quicker 'n anything else I could do."
The captain moved, and feebly muttered, "Water!" Instinctively I rose, to give it to him, but the heavy hand came down upon my shoulder, and in the same decided tone Robert said,—
"The water went with the physic; let him call."
"Do let me go to him! he'll die without care!"
"I mean he shall;—don't yer interfere, if yer please, Ma'am."
In spite of his quiet tone and respectful manner, I saw murder in his eyes, and turned faint with fear; yet the fear excited me, and, hardly knowing what I did, I seized the hands that had seized me, crying,—
"No, no, you shall not kill him! it is base to hurt a helpless man. Why do you hate him? He is not your master?"
"He's my brother."
I felt that answer from head to foot, and seemed to fathom what was coming, with a prescience vague, but unmistakable. One appeal was left to me, and I made it.
"Robert, tell me what it means? Do not commit a crime and make me accessory to it. There is a better way of righting wrong than by violence;—let me help you find it."
My voice trembled as I spoke, and I heard the frightened flutter of my heart; so did he, and if any little act of mine had ever won affection or respect from him, the memory of it served me then. He looked down, and seemed to put some question to himself; whatever it was, the answer was in my favor, for when his eyes rose again, they were gloomy, but not desperate.
"I will tell you, Ma'am; but mind, this makes no difference; the boy is mine. I'll give the Lord a chance to take him fust; if He don't, I shall."
"Oh, no! remember, he is your brother."
An unwise speech; I felt it as it passed my lips, for a black frown gathered on Robert's face, and his strong hands closed with an ugly sort of grip. But he did not touch the poor soul gasping there behind him, and seemed content to let the slow suffocation of that stifling room end his frail life.
"I'm not like to forget that, Ma'am, when I've been thinkin' of it all this week. I knew him when they fetched him in, an' would 'a' done it long 'fore this, but I wanted to ask where Lucy was; he knows,—he told to-night—an' now he's done for."
"Who is Lucy?" I asked hurriedly, intent on keeping his mind busy with any thought but murder.
With one of the swift transitions of a mixed temperament like this, at my question Robert's deep eyes filled, the clenched hands were spread before his face, and all I heard were the broken words,—
"My wife,—he took her"—
In that instant every thought of fear was swallowed up in burning indignation for the wrong, and a perfect passion of pity for the desperate man so tempted to avenge an injury for which there seemed no redress but this. He was no longer slave or contraband, no drop of black blood marred him in my sight, but an infinite compassion yearned to save, to help, to comfort him. Words seemed so powerless I offered none, only put my hand on his poor head, wounded, homeless, bowed down with grief for which I had no cure, and softly smoothed the long neglected hair, pitifully wondering the while where was the wife who must have loved this tender-hearted man so well.
The captain moaned again, and faintly whispered, "Air!" but I never stirred. God forgive me! just then I hated him as only a woman thinking of a sister woman's wrong could hate. Robert looked up; his eyes were dry again, his mouth grim. I saw that, said, "Tell me more," and he did,—for sympathy is a gift the poorest may give, the proudest stoop to receive.
"Yer see, Ma'am, his father,—I might say ours, if I warn't ashamed of both of 'em,—his father died two years ago, an' left us all to Marster Ned,—that's him here, eighteen then. He always hated me, I looked so like old Marster: he don't,—only the light skin an' hair. Old Marster was kind to all of us, me 'specially, an' bought Lucy off the next plantation down there in South Car'lina, when he found I liked her. I married her, all I could, Ma'am; it warn't much, but we was true to one another till Marster Ned come home a year after an' made hell fur both of us. He sent my old mother to be used up in his rice-swamp in Georgy; he found me with my pretty Lucy, an' though young Miss cried, an' I prayed to him on my knees, an' Lucy run away, he wouldn't have no mercy; he brought her back, an'—took her, Ma'am."
"Oh! what did you do?" I cried, hot with helpless pain and passion.
How the man's outraged heart sent the blood flaming up into his face and deepened the tones of his impetuous voice, as he stretched his arm across the bed, saying, with a terribly expressive gesture,—
"I half murdered him, an' to-night I'll finish."
"Yes, yes,—but go on now; what came next?"
He gave me a look that showed no white man could have felt a deeper degradation in remembering and confining these last acts of brotherly oppression.
"They whipped me till I couldn't stand, an' then they sold me further South. Yer thought I was a white man once;—look here!"
With a sudden wrench he tore the shirt from neck to waist, and on his strong brown shoulders showed me furrows deeply ploughed, wounds which, though healed, were ghastlier to me than any in that house. I could not speak to him, and, with the pathetic dignity a great grief lends the humblest sufferer, he ended his brief tragedy by simply saying,—
"That's all, Ma'am. I've never seen her since, an' now I never shall in this world,—maybe not in t' other."
"But, Robert, why think her dead? The captain was wandering when he said those sad things; perhaps he will retract them when he is sane. Don't despair; don't give up yet."
"No, Ma'am, I guess he's right; she was too proud to bear that long. It's like her to kill herself. I told her to, if there was no other way; an' she always minded me, Lucy did. My poor girl! Oh, it warn't right! No, by God, it warn't!"
As the memory of this bitter wrong, this double bereavement, burned in his sore heart, the devil that lurks in every strong man's blood leaped up; he put his hand upon his brother's throat, and, watching the white face before him, muttered low between his teeth,—
"I'm lettin' him go too easy; there's no pain in this; we a'n't even yet. I wish he knew me. Marster Ned! it's Bob; where's Lucy?"
From the captain's lips there came a long faint sigh, and nothing but a flutter of the eyelids showed that he still lived. A strange stillness filled the room as the elder brother held the younger's life suspended in his hand, while wavering between a dim hope and a deadly hate. In the whirl of thoughts that went on in my brain, only one was clear enough to act upon. I must prevent murder, if I could,—but how? What could I do up there alone, locked in with a dying man and a lunatic?—for any mind yielded utterly to any unrighteous impulse is mad while the impulse rules it. Strength I had not, nor much courage, neither time nor wit for stratagem, and chance only could bring me help before it was too late. But one weapon I possessed,—a tongue,—often a woman's best defence; and sympathy, stronger than fear, gave me power to use it. What I said Heaven only knows, but surely Heaven helped me; words burned on my lips, tears streamed from my eyes, and some good angel prompted me to use the one name that had power to arrest my hearer's hand and touch his heart. For at that moment I heartily believed that Lucy lived, and this earnest faith rousted in him a like belief.
He listened with the lowering look of one in whom brute instinct was sovereign for the time,—a look that makes the noblest countenance base. He was but a man,—a poor, untaught, outcast, outraged man. Life had few joys for him; the world offered him no honors, no success, no home, no love. What future would this crime mar? and why should he deny himself that sweet, yet bitter morsel called revenge? How many white men, with all New England's freedom, culture, Christianity, would not have felt as he felt then? Should I have reproached him for a human anguish, a human longing for redress, all now left him from the ruin of his few poor hopes? Who had taught him that self-control, self-sacrifice, are attributes that make men masters of the earth and lift them nearer heaven? Should I have urged the beauty of forgiveness, the duty of devout submission? He had no religion, for he was no saintly "Uncle Tom," and Slavery's black shadow seemed to darken all the world to him and shut out God. Should I have warned him of penalties, of judgments, and the potency of law? What did he know of justice, or the mercy that should temper that stern virtue, when every law, human and divine, had been broken on his hearthstone? Should I have tried to touch him by appeals to filial duty, to brotherly love? How had his appeals been answered? What memories had father and brother stored up in his heart to plead for either now? No,—all these influences, these associations, would have proved worse than useless, had I been calm enough to try them. I was not; but instinct, subtler than reason, showed me the one safe clue by which to lead this troubled soul from the labyrinth in which it groped and nearly fell. When I paused, breathless, Robert turned to me, asking, as if human assurances could strengthen his faith in Divine Omnipotence,—
"Do you believe, if I let Marster Ned live, the Lord will give me back my Lucy?"
"As surely as there is a Lord, you will find her here or in the beautiful hereafter, where there is no black or white, no master and no slave."
He took his hand from his brother's throat, lifted his eyes from my face to the wintry sky beyond, as if searching for that blessed country, happier even than the happy North. Alas, it was the darkest hour before the dawn!—there was no star above, no light below but the pale glimmer of the lamp that showed the brother who had made him desolate. Like a blind man who believes there is a sun, yet cannot see it, he shook his head, let his arms drop nervelessly upon his knees, and sat there dumbly asking that question which many a soul whose faith is firmer fixed than his has asked in hours less dark than this,—"Where is God?" I saw the tide had turned, and strenuously tried to keep this rudderless life-boat from slipping back into the whirlpool wherein it had been so nearly lost.
"I have listened to you, Robert; now hear me, and heed what I say, because my heart is full of pity for you, full of hope for your future, and a desire to help you now. I want you to go away from here, from the temptation of this place, and the sad thoughts that haunt it. You have conquered yourself once, and I honor you for it, because, the harder the battle, the more glorious the victory; but it is safer to put a greater distance between you and this man. I will write you letters, give you money, and send you to good old Massachusetts to begin your new life a freeman,—yes, and a happy man; for when the captain is himself again, I will learn where Lucy is, and move heaven and earth to find and give her back to you. Will you do this, Robert?"
Slowly, very slowly, the answer came; for the purpose of a week, perhaps a year, was hard to relinquish in an hour.
"Yes, Ma'am, I will."
"Good! Now you are the man I thought you, and I'll work for you with all my heart. You need sleep, my poor fellow; go, and try to forget. The captain is still alive, and as yet you are spared that sin. No, don't look there; I'll care for him. Come, Robert, for Lucy's sake."
Thank Heaven for the immortality of love! for when all other means of salvation failed, a spark of this vital fire softened the man's iron will until a woman's hand could bend it. He let me take from him the key, let me draw him gently away and lead him to the solitude which now was the most healing balm I could bestow. Once in his little room, he fell down on his bed and lay there as if spent with the sharpest conflict of his life. I slipped the bolt across his door, and unlocked my own, flung up the window, steadied myself with a breath of air, then rushed to Doctor Franck. He came; and till dawn we worked together, saving one brother's life, and taking earnest thought how best to secure the other's liberty. When the sun came up as blithely as if it shone only upon happy homes, the Doctor went to Robert. For an hour I heard the murmur of their voices; once I caught the sound of heavy sobs, and for a time a reverent hush, as if in the silence that good man were ministering to soul as well as sense. When he departed he took Robert with him, pausing to tell me he should get him off as soon as possible, but not before we met again.
Nothing more was seen of them all day; another surgeon came to see the captain, and another attendant came to fill the empty place. I tried to rest, but could not, with the thought of poor Lucy tugging at my heart, and was soon back at my post again, anxiously hoping that my contraband had not been too hastily spirited away. Just as night fell there came a tap, and opening, I saw Robert literally "clothed and in his right mind." The Doctor had replaced the ragged suit with tidy garments, and no trace of that tempestuous night remained but deeper lines upon the forehead and the docile look of a repentant child. He did not cross the threshold, did not offer me his hand,—only took off his cap, saying, with a traitorous falter in his voice,—
"God bless you, Ma'am! I'm goin'."
I put out both my hands, and held his fast.
"Good bye, Robert! Keep up good heart, and when I come home to Massachusetts we'll meet in a happier place than this. Are you quite ready, quite comfortable for your journey?"
"Yes, Ma'am, yes; the Doctor's fixed everything; I'm goin' with a friend of his; my papers are all right, an' I'm as happy as I can be till I find"—
He stopped there; then went on, with a glance into the room,—
"I'm glad I didn't do it, an' I thank yer, Ma'am, fer hinderin' me,—thank yer hearty; but I'm afraid I hate him jest the same."
Of course he did; and so did I; for these faulty hearts of ours cannot turn perfect in a night, but need frost and fire, wind and rain, to ripen and make them ready for the great harvest-home. Wishing to divert his mind, I put my poor mite into his hand, and, remembering the magic of a certain little book, I gave him mine, on whose dark cover whitely shone the Virgin Mother and the Child, the grand history of whose life the book contained. The money went into Robert's pocket with a grateful murmur, the book into his bosom with a long look and a tremulous—
"I never saw my baby, Ma'am."
I broke down then; and though my eyes were too dim to see, I felt the touch of lips upon my hands, heard the sound of departing feet, and knew my contraband was gone.
When one feels an intense dislike, the less one says about the subject of it the better; therefore I shall merely record that the captain lived,—in time was exchanged; and that, whoever the other party was, I am convinced the Government got the best of the bargain. But long before this occurred, I had fulfilled my promise to Robert; for as soon as my patient recovered strength of memory enough to make his answer trustworthy, I asked, without any circumlocution,—
"Captain Fairfax, where is Lucy?"
And too feeble to be angry, surprised, or insincere, he straightway answered,—
"Dead, Miss Dane."
"And she killed herself, when you sold Bob?"
"How the Devil did you know that?" he muttered, with an expression half-remorseful, half-amazed; but I was satisfied, and said no more.
Of course, this went to Robert, waiting far away there in a lonely home,—waiting, working, hoping for his Lucy. It almost broke my heart to do it; but delay was weak, deceit was wicked; so I sent the heavy tidings, and very soon the answer came,—only three lines; but I felt that the sustaining power of the man's life was gone.
"I thought I'd never see her any more; I'm glad to know she's out of trouble. I thank yer, Ma'am; an' if they let us, I'll fight fer yer till I'm killed, which I hope will be 'fore long."
Six months later he had his wish, and kept his word.
Every one knows the story of the attack on Fort Wagner; but we should not tire yet of recalling how our Fifty-Fourth, spent with three sleepless nights, a day's fast, and a march under the July sun, stormed the fort as night fell, facing death in many shapes, following their brave leaders through a fiery rain of shot and shell, fighting valiantly for "God and Governor Andrew,"—how the regiment that went into action seven hundred strong came out having had nearly half its number captured, killed, or wounded, leaving their young commander to be buried, like a chief of earlier times, with his body-guard around him, faithful to the death. Surely, the insult turns to honor, and the wide grave needs no monument but the heroism that consecrates it in our sight; surely, the hearts that held him nearest see through their tears a noble victory in the seeming sad defeat; and surely, God's benediction was bestowed, when this loyal soul answered, as Death called the roll, "Lord, here am I, with the brothers Thou hast given me!"
The future must show how well that fight was fought; for though Fort Wagner still defies us, public prejudice is down; and through the cannon-smoke of that black night the manhood of the colored race shines before many eyes that would not see, rings in many ears that would not hear, wins many hearts that would not hitherto believe.
When the news came that we were needed, there was none so glad as I to leave teaching contrabands, the new work I had taken up, and go to nurse "our boys," as my dusky flock so proudly called the wounded of the Fifty-Fourth. Feeling more satisfaction, as I assumed my big apron and turned up my cuffs, than if dressing for the President's levee, I fell to work on board the hospital-ship in Hilton-Head harbor. The scene was most familiar, and yet strange; for only dark faces looked up at me from the pallets so thickly laid along the floor, and I missed the sharp accent of my Yankee boys in the slower, softer voices calling cheerily to one another, or answering my questions with a stout, "We'll never give it up, Ma'am, till the last Reb's dead," or, "If our people's free, we can afford to die."
Passing from bed to bed, intent on making one pair of hands do the work of three, at least, I gradually washed, fed, and bandaged my way down the long line of sable heroes, and coming to the very last, found that he was my contraband. So old, so worn, so deathly weak and wan, I never should have known him but for the deep scar on his cheek. That side lay uppermost, and caught my eye at once; but even then I doubted, such an awful change had come upon him, when, turning to the ticket just above his head, I saw the name, "Robert Dane." That both assured and touched me, for, remembering that he had no name, I knew that he had taken mine. I longed for him to speak to me, to tell how he had fared since I lost sight of him, and let me perform some little service for him in return for many he had done for me; but he seemed asleep; and as I stood reliving that strange night again, a bright lad, who lay next him softly waving an old fan across both beds, looked up and said,—
"I guess you know him, Ma'am?"
"You are right. Do you?"
"As much as any one was able to, Ma'am."
"Why do you say 'was,' as if the man were dead and gone?"
"I s'pose because I know he'll have to go. He's got a bad jab in the breast, an' is bleedin' inside, the Doctor says. He don't suffer any, only gets weaker 'n' weaker every minute. I've been fannin' him this long while, an' he's talked a little; but he don't know me now, so he's most gone, I guess."
There was so much sorrow and affection in the boy's face, that I remembered something, and asked, with redoubled interest,—
"Are you the one that brought him off? I was told about a boy who nearly lost his life in saving that of his mate."
I dare say the young fellow blushed, as any modest lad might have done; I could not see it, but I heard the chuckle of satisfaction that escaped him, as he glanced from his shattered arm and bandaged side to the pale figure opposite.
"Lord, Ma'am, that's nothin'; we boys always stan' by one another, an' I warn't goin' to leave him to be tormented any more by them cussed Rebs. He's been a slave once, though he don't look half so much like it as me, an' I was born in Boston."
He did not; for the speaker was as black as the ace of spades,—being a sturdy specimen, the knave of clubs would perhaps be a fitter representative,—but the dark freeman looked at the white slave with the pitiful, yet puzzled expression I have so often seen on the faces of our wisest men, when this tangled question of Slavery presents itself, asking to be cut or patiently undone.
"Tell me what you know of this man; for, even if he were awake, he is too weak to talk."
"I never saw him till I joined the regiment, an' no one 'peared to have got much out of him. He was a shut-up sort of feller, an' didn't seem to care for anything but gettin' at the Rebs. Some say he was the fust man of us that enlisted; I know he fretted till we were off, an' when we pitched into old Wagner, he fought like the Devil."
"Were you with him when he was wounded? How was it?"
"Yes, Ma'am. There was somethin' queer about it; for he 'peared to know the chap that killed him, an' the chap knew him. I don't dare to ask, but I rather guess one owned the other some time,—for, when they clinched, the chap sung out, 'Bob!' an' Dane, 'Marster Ned!'—then they went at it."
I sat down suddenly, for the old anger and compassion struggled in my heart, and I both longed and feared to hear what was to follow.
"You see, when the Colonel—Lord keep an' send him back to us!—it a'n't certain yet, you know, Ma'am, though it's two days ago we lost him—well, when the Colonel shouted, 'Rush on, boys, rush on!' Dane tore away as if he was goin' to take the fort alone; I was next him, an' kept close as we went through the ditch an' up the wall. Hi! warn't that a rusher!" and the boy flung up his well arm with a whoop, as if the mere memory of that stirring moment came over him in a gust of irrepressible excitement.
"Were you afraid?" I said,—asking the question women often put, and receiving the answer they seldom fail to get.
"No, Ma'am!"—emphasis on the "Ma'am,"—"I never thought of anything but the damn' Rebs, that scalp, slash, an' cut our ears off, when they git us. I was bound to let daylight into one of 'em at least, an' I did. Hope he liked it!"
"It is evident that you did, and I don't blame you in the least. Now go on about Robert, for I should be at work."
"He was one of the fust up; I was just behind, an' though the whole thing happened in a minute, I remember how it was, for all I was yellin' an' knockin' round like mad. Just where we were, some sort of an officer was wavin' his sword an' cheerin' on his men; Dane saw him by a big flash that come by; he flung away his gun, give a leap, an' went at that feller as if he was Jeff, Beauregard, an' Lee, all in one. I scrabbled after as quick as I could, but was only up in time to see him git the sword straight through him an' drop into the ditch. You needn't ask what I did next, Ma'am, for I don't quite know myself; all I'm clear about is, that I managed somehow to pitch that Reb into the fort as dead as Moses, git hold of Dane, an' bring him off. Poor old feller! we said we went in to live or die; he said he went in to die, an' he's done it."
I had been intently watching the excited speaker; but as he regretfully added those last words I turned again, and Robert's eyes met mine,—those melancholy eyes, so full of an intelligence that proved he had heard, remembered, and reflected with that preternatural power which often outlives all other faculties. He knew me, yet gave no greeting; was glad to see a woman's face, yet had no smile wherewith to welcome it; felt that he was dying, yet uttered no farewell. He was too far across the river to return or linger now; departing thought, strength, breath, were spent in one grateful look, one murmur of submission to the last pang he could ever feel. His lips moved, and, bending to them, a whisper chilled my cheek, as it shaped the broken words,—
"I would have done it,—but it's better so,—I'm satisfied."
Ah! well he might be,—for, as he turned his face from the shadow of the life that was, the sunshine of the life to be touched it with a beautiful content, and in the drawing of a breath my contraband found wife and home, eternal liberty and God.
THE SAM ADAMS REGIMENTS IN THE TOWN OF BOSTON.—CONCLUDED.
THE REMOVAL.[1]
"I have been in constant panic," wrote Franklin in London to Dr. Cooper in Boston, "since I heard of troops assembling in Boston, lest the madness of mobs, or the interference of soldiers, or both, when too near each other, might occasion some mischief difficult to be prevented or repaired, and which might spread far and wide."
The people wore indignant at the introduction of the troops, and the crown officials were arrogant and goading; but so wise and forbearing were the popular leaders, that, for ten months, from October, 1768, to August, 1769, no detriment came to their cause from the madness of mobs or the insolence of soldiers. The Loyalists, in this public order, saw the wholesome terror with which military force had imbued the community; they said this "had prevented, if it had not put a final period to, its most pestilential town-meetings": but they termed this quiet "only a truce procured from the dread of the bayonet"; and they held that nothing would reach and suppress the rising spirit of independence but a radical stroke at the democratic element in the local Constitution. They relied on physical force to carry out such a policy, and hence they looked on the demand of the people for a withdrawal of the troops as equivalent to a demand for the abandonment of their policy and the abdication of the Government. The partial removal already made caused great chagrin. The report, at first, was hardly credited in British political circles, and, when confirmed, was construed into inability, inconsistency, and concession by the Administration, and a sign that things were growing worse in America.
General Gage had withdrawn the Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, the detachment of the Fifty-Ninth, and the company of artillery, which left the Fourteenth Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple and the Twenty-Ninth under Lieutenant-Colonel Carr,—the two regiments which Lord North termed "the Sam Adams Regiments,"—not enough, if the Ministers intended to govern by military force, and too many, if they did not intend this. They continued under General Mackay until he left for England, when the command devolved on Lieutenant-Colonel Dalrymple, the senior officer, under whom they had landed, who was exacting, severe in his judgment on the Patriots, and impatient of professional service. Commodore Hood and his family also sailed for Halifax. Both Mackay and Hood, aiming at reconciliation, and liberal in non-essentials, easily won the general good-will. The disuse of the press-gang, which even "Junius" was now justifying, and which England had not learned to abominate, but which rowelled the differently trained mind of the Colonies, was regarded as a great concession to personal liberty; and the discontinuance of parades and horse-racing on Sundays was accepted as a concession to a religious sentiment that was very general, and which, so far from deserving the sneer of being hypocritical, indicated the wide growth of respect for things noble and divine. These officers seemed, at least, to steer clear of political matters, to keep to the line of their profession, and to make the best of an irksome duty. They lived on good terms with the popular leaders, were invited to visit the common-schools with the Selectmen, appeared at the public festivals, and, on their departure, were handsomely complimented in both the Whig and Tory journals for the manner in which they had discharged their duties. They were, however, no mere lookers-on, and their official representations and conclusions were no more far-reaching than those of their superiors. Hood, from Halifax, wrote in harsh terms of Boston, although he put on record severe and true things of that chronic local infliction, the Commissioners of the Customs. His official letters, printed this year, were open to sharp criticism, which they received in the journals. Not, however, until the publication of the Cavendish Debates was it known that General Mackay, who was regarded as uncommonly liberal, received every personal attention, and was the most complimented by the press, stood up in the House of Commons, soon after his arrival in England, and maligned Boston in severe terms. He charged the town with being without government; said it was tyrannized over by a set of men hardly respectable, in point of fortune; and even had the hardihood to say that some of the troops he commanded there had been sold for slaves!
Boston, now a subject of speculation in Continental courts, as well as of abuse in Parliament, was destined to undergo a still severer trial for the succeeding seven months, from August, 1769, to March, 1770, during the continuance of the two remaining regiments. This was an eventful period, characterized by violent agitation in the Colonies to promote a repeal of the revenue acts and an abandonment of the intermeddling and aggressive policy of the Ministry; and it was marked by uncommon political activity in Boston. The popular leaders, as though no British troops were lookers-on, and in spite, too, of the protests and commands of the crown officials, steadily guided the deliberations of the people in Faneuil Hall; and at times the disorderly also, in violations of law and personal liberty that can never be justified, intrepidly carried out their projects. The events of this period tended powerfully to inflame the public mind. The appeals of the Patriots, through the press, show their appreciation of the danger of an outbreak, and yet their determination to meet their whole duty. They endeavored to restrain the rash among the Sons of Liberty within the safe precincts of the law; yet, repelling all thought of submission to arbitrary power, they strove to lift up the general mind to the high plane of action which a true patriotism demanded, and prepare it, if need were, for the majestic work of revolution.
The executive, during an interval thus exciting and important, was in a transition-state, from Francis Bernard to Thomas Hutchinson. It was semi-officially announced in the journals, when the Governor sailed for England, that the Administration had no intention of superseding his commission; and it was intimated that the Lieutenant-Governor would administer the functions of the office until the return of the chief magistrate to his post. These officials, for nine years, had been warm personal friends and intimate political associates. Indeed, so close had been their private and public relations, that Bernard ascribed the origin of his administrative difficulties to his adoption of the quarrels of Hutchinson. For a long time, the Governor had been seeking and expecting something better in the political line than his present office, as a substantial recognition of his zeal; and he had urged, and was now urging, the selection of the Lieutenant-Governor for his successor in office. He represented that Hutchinson was well versed in the local affairs,—knew the motives of the Governor,—warmly approved the policy of the Ministry,—had been, on critical occasions, a trusted confidential adviser,—and, in fact, had become so thoroughly identified with public affairs, that, of the two officials, he (Hutchinson) was the most hated by the faction, which the Governor seemed to consider a special recommendation. He favored this appointment as a measure that would be equivalent to an indorsement of his own administration, and therefore a compliment to himself and a blow at the faction. "It would be," he said, "a peculiarly happy stroke; for while it would discourage the Sons of Liberty, it would afford another great instance of rewarding faithful servants to the Crown."
Thomas Hutchinson, descended from one of the most respected families of New England, and the son of an honored merchant of Boston, was now fifty-seven years of age. He was a pupil at the Old North Grammar School, and was graduated at Harvard College, when he entered upon a mercantile life. He was not successful as a merchant. Thus early, however, he evinced the untiring industry that marked his whole career. He had a decided political turn, and, with uncommon natural talent, had the capacity and the ambition for public life. An irreproachable private character, pleasing manners, common-sense views of things, and politics rather adroit than high-toned, secured him a run of popular favor and executive confidence so long that he had now (1769) been thirty-three years uninterruptedly engaged in public affairs; and he confessed to his friends that this concern in politics had created a hankering for them which a return to business-pursuits could not overcome. He had reason to be gratified at the tokens of public approbation. He was so faithful to the municipal interests as a Selectman that the town intrusted him with an important mission to England, which he satisfactorily executed; his wide commercial knowledge, familiarity with constitutional law and history, decided ability in debate, and reputed disinterestedness, gave him large influence as a Representative in the General Court; he showed as Councillor an ever ready zeal for the prerogative, and thus won the most confidential relations with so obsequious a courtier as Bernard; as Judge of Probate, he was attentive, kind to the widow, accurate, and won general commendation; and as a member of the Superior Court, he administered the law, in the main, satisfactorily. He had been Chief Justice for nine years, and for eleven years the Lieutenant-Governor. He had also prepared two volumes of his History, which, though rough in narrative, is a valuable authority, and his volume of "Collections" was now announced. His fame at the beginning of the Revolutionary controversy was at its zenith; for, according to John Adams, "he had been admired, revered, rewarded, and almost adored; and the idea was common that he was the greatest and best man in America." He was now, and had been for years, the master-spirit of the Loyalist party. It Is an anomaly that he should have attained to this position. He had had practical experience, as a merchant, of the intolerable injustice of the old mercantile system, and yet he sided with its friends; he had dealt, as a politician, to a greater degree than most men, with the rights and privileges which the people prized, conceded that they had made no ill use of them, and yet urged that they ought to be abridged; as a patriot, when he loved his native land wisely, he remonstrated against the imposition of the Stamp Tax, and yet he grew into one of the sturdiest of the defenders of the supremacy of Parliament in all cases whatsoever. He exhibited the usual characteristics of public men who from unworthy considerations change their principles and desert their party. No man urged a more arbitrary course; no man passed more discreditable judgments on his patriot contemporaries; and if in that way he won the smiles of the court which he was swift to serve, he earned the hatred of the land which he professed to love. The more his political career is studied, the greater will be the wonder that one who was reared on republican soil, and had antecedents so honorable, should have become so complete an exponent of arbitrary power.
Hutchinson was not so blinded by party-spirit or love of money or of place as not to see the living realities of his time; for he wrote that a thirst for liberty seemed to be the ruling passion, not only of America, but of the age, and that a mighty empire was rising on this continent, the progress of which would be a theme for speculative and ingenious minds in distant ages. It was the vision of the cold and clear intellect, distrusting the march of events and the capacity and intelligence of the people, he had no heart to admire, he had not even the justice to recognize, the greatness that was making an immortal record,—the sublime faith, the divine enthusiasm, the dauntless resolve, the priceless consciousness of being in the right, that were the life and inspiration of the lovers of freedom. He conceded, however, that the body of the people were honest, but acted on the belief, inspired by wrong-headed leaders, that their liberties were in danger; and while, with the calculation of the man of the world, he dreaded, and endeavored to stem, still, with a statesman's foresight, he appreciated and held in respect, the mysterious element of public opinion. He felt that it was rising as a power. He saw this power already intrenched in the impregnable lines of free institutions. Seeking to know its springs, he was a close and at times a shrewd observer, as well from a habit of research, in tracing the currents of the past, as from occupying a position which made it a duty to watch the growth of what influenced the present. His letters, very voluminous, deal with causes as well as with facts, and are often fine tributes to the life-giving power of vital political ideas, from the pen of a subtle and determined enemy.
When the executive functions devolved on Hutchinson, it had been semi-officially announced that the Ministry, wholly out of commercial considerations, intended to propose, at the next session of Parliament, a repeal of a portion of the revenue acts; and the Patriots were pressing, with more zeal than ever, the non-importation agreement, in the hope of obtaining, as matter of constitutional right, a total repeal. To enforce this agreement, the merchants had held a public meeting in Faneuil Hall, adopted a series of spirited resolves, and adjourned to a future day; and Hutchinson's first important gubernatorial decision had reference to this meeting. He had urged the necessity of troops to sustain the authority of the Government. He had awarded to them the credit of preventing a great catastrophe. He had written that they would make the Boston saints as tame as lambs. It was his settled conviction that the Americans never would set armies in the field against Great Britain, and if they did, that "a few troops would be sufficient to quell them." He was now importuned to use the troops at his command to disperse the merchants' meeting at its adjournment. He held that this meeting was contrary to law. He characterized its resolves as contemptuous and insolent, and derogatory to the authority of Parliament. He never grew weary of holding up to reprobation the objects which the merchants had in view. And his political friends now asked him to make good his professions by acts. But he declined to interfere with this meeting. The merchants proceeded to a close with their business. Hutchinson's explanation of his course to the Ministry, on this occasion, applies to the popular demonstrations which took place, at intervals, down to the military crisis. "I am very sensible," are his words, "that the whole proceeding is unwarrantable; but it is so generally countenanced in this and in several of the Colonies, and the authority of Government is so feeble, that an attempt to put a stop to it would have no other effect than still further to inflame the minds of the people. I can do no more than represent to your Lordship, and wait for such instructions as may be thought proper." And he continued to present these combinations of the merchants as "a most certain evidence of the lost authority of Government," and as exhibiting "insolence and contempt of Parliament." But he complains that they were not so much regarded in England as he expected they would be, and that he was left to act on his own judgment. He soon saw pilloried in the newspapers the names of a son of Governor Bernard and two of his own sons, in a list of Boston merchants who "audaciously counteracted the united sentiments of the body of merchants throughout North America by importing British goods contrary to agreement."
The Lieutenant-Governor again kept quiet, as a town-meeting went on, which he watched with the keenest interest, freely commented on in his letters, and which is far too important to be overlooked in any review of these times. William Bollan, the Colonial Agent in London, sent to the popular leaders a selection from the letters of Governor Bernard, General Gage, Commodore Hood, and others, bearing on the introduction of the troops, which were judged to have aspersed the character, affected the rights, and injured the interests of the town. Their publication made a profound impression on the public mind, and they became the theme of every circle. At one of the political clubs, in which the Adamses, the Coopers, Warren, and others were wont to discuss public affairs, Otis, in a blaze of indignation, charged the crown officials with haughtiness, arbitrary dispositions, and the insolence of office, and vehemently urged a town-meeting. One was soon summoned by the Selectmen, which deliberated with dignity and order, and made answer to the official indictment in a strong, conclusive, and grand "Appeal to the World," and appointed, as a committee to circulate it, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, Richard Dana, Joshua Henshaw, Joseph Jackson, and Benjamin Kent,—men of sterling character, and bearing names that have shed lustre on the whole country. Reason and truth, thus put forth, exerted an influence. Hutchinson felt the force of this. "We find, my Lord, by experience," he advised Lord Hillsborough, October 19, 1769, "that associations and assemblies pretending to be legal and constitutional, assuming powers that belong only to established authority, prove more fatal to this authority than mobs, riots, or the most tumultuous disorders; for such assemblies, from erroneous or imperfect notions of the nature of government, very often meet with the approbation of the body of the people, and in such case there is no internal power which can be exerted to suppress them. Such case we are in at present, and shall probably continue in it until the wisdom of Parliament delivers us from it."
It would be difficult to say what power the people now assumed that belonged only to established authority; they assumed only the right of public meeting and of liberty of discussion, which are unquestionable in every free country; but the ruling spirit of Hutchinson is seen in this fine tribute to the instrumentality of the town-meeting, for he regarded the American custom of corporate presentation of political matters as illegal, and the power of Parliament as sufficient to meet it with pains and penalties. As the committee already named sent forth the doings of the town, they said, (October 23, 1769,) "The people will never think their grievances redressed till every revenue act is repealed, the Board of Commissioners dissolved, and the troops removed."
A few days after this the Lieutenant-Governor was obliged to deal with a mob, which grew out of the meanness of importers, whose selfish course proved to be a great strain on the forbearing policy of the popular leaders. The merchants on the Tory side, among whom were two of Hutchinson's sons, persisted in importing goods; and he writes, with a good deal of pride, as though it were meritorious, that since the agreement was formed these two sons had imported two hundred chests of tea, which they had been so clever as to sell. But such was the public indignation at this course, that they, too, were compelled to give in to the non-importation agreement; and Hutchinson's letters are now severer than ever on the Patriots. He characterizes "the confederacy of merchants" as a very high offence, and the Sons of Liberty as the greatest tyrants ever known. But as he continually predicted a crisis, he said, "I can find nobody to join with me in an attempt to discourage them." He adds, "If any tumults should happen, I shall be under less difficulty than if my own children had been the pretended occasion of them; and for this reason Dalrymple tells me he is very glad they have done as they have." The immediate occasion of the mob was the dealing of the people with an informer on the twenty-eighth of October. They got track of him about noon, and, after a long search, found him towards evening, when they immediately prepared to tar and feather him. It was quite dark. A formidable procession carted the culprit from one quarter of the town to another, and threatened to break the windows of all houses which were without lights. The Lieutenant-Governor summoned such of the members of the Council as were at hand, and the justices of the county, to meet him at the Council-Chamber; he requested Dalrymple to order the force under his command "to be ready to march when the occasion required"; and he "kept persons employed to give him immediate notice of every new motion of the mob." Dalrymple, with a soldier's alacrity, complied with the official request; but the mob went on its course, for "none of the justices nor the sheriff," writes Hutchinson, "thought it safe for them to restrain so great a body of people in a dark evening,"—and the only work done by the soldiers was to protect Mien, the printer, who, being goaded into discharging a pistol among the crowd, fled to the main guard for safety. The finale of this mob is thus related by Hutchinson:—"Between eight and nine o'clock they dispersed of their own account, and the town was quiet."
The intrepid and yet prudent course of the popular leaders and of the people, in standing manfully for the common cause in presence of the British troops, was now eliciting the warmest encomiums on the town from the friends of liberty in England and in the Colonies. The generous praise was copied into the local journals, and, so far from being received with assumption, became a powerful incentive to worthy action. "Your Bostonians," a Southern letter runs, "shine with renewed lustre. Their last efforts were indeed like themselves, full of wisdom, prudence, and magnanimity. Such a conduct must silence every pretended suspicion, and baffle every vile attempt to calumniate their noble and generous struggles in the cause of American Liberty." "So much wisdom and virtue," says a New-Hampshire letter, "as hath been conspicuous in the Bostonians, will not go unrewarded. You will in all respects increase until you become the glory of New England, the pride of British kings, the scourge of tyrants, and the joy of the whole earth," "The patriotism of Boston," says another letter, "will be revered through every age." One of these tributes, from a Southern journal, in the Boston papers of December 18, 1769, runs,—"The noble conduct of the Representatives, Selectmen, and principal merchants of Boston, in defending and supporting the rights of America and the British Constitution, cannot fail to excite love and gratitude in the heart of every worthy person in the British empire. They discover a dignity of soul worthy the human mind, which is the true glory of man, and merits the applause of all rational beings. Their names will shine unsullied in the bright records of Panic to the latest ages, and unborn millions will rise up and call them blessed."
This eulogy on Boston is a great fact of these times, and therefore ought to have a place in a history of them. It was not of a local cast, for it appears in several Colonies and in England; it was not a manufacture of politicians, for it is seen in the private letters of the friends of constitutional liberty which have come to light subsequently to the events; it was not a transient enthusiasm, for the same strain was continued during the years preceding the war. The praise was bestowed on a town small in territory and comparatively small in population. Such were the cities of Greece in the era of their renown. "The territories of Athens, Sparta, and their allies," remarks Gibbon, "do not exceed a moderate province of France or England; but after the trophies of Salamis or Platæa, they expand in our fancy to the gigantic size of Asia, which had been trampled under the feet of the victorious Greeks." No trophies had been gathered in an American Platæa; there had been no great civic triumph; there was no hero upon whom public affection centred; nor was there here a field on which to weave a web of court-intrigue, or to play a game of criminal ambition;—there was, indeed, little that common constructors of history would consider to be history. Yet it was now written, and made common thought by an unfettered press,—"Nobler days nor deeds were never seen than at this time."[2] This was an instinctive appreciation of a great truth; for the real American Revolution was going on in the tidal flow of thought and feeling, and in the formation of public opinion. A people inspired by visions of better days for humanity, luxuriating in the emotions of hope and faith, yearning for the right, mastering the reasoning on which it was based, were steadily taking their fit place on the national stage, in the belief of the nearness of a mighty historic hour. And their spontaneous praise was for a community heroically acting on national principles and for a national cause. Because of this did they predict that unborn millions would hold up the men of Boston as worthy to be enrolled in the shining record of Fame.
As the new year (1770) came in, the people were looking forward to a meeting of the General Court, always a season of peculiar interest, and more so now than ever, for it was certain that the debates in this body would turn on the foremost local subject, the removal of the troops. But the subject was no longer merely local, for it had become a general issue, one affecting not only Boston and Massachusetts, but other towns and Colonies, and the interest felt in the controversy was wide and deep. "In this day of constitutional light," a New-York essay copied into a Boston newspaper runs, "it is monstrous that troops should be kept, not to protect the right, but to enslave the continent." While it was thus put by the journals, the policy was meant to be of this significance by the Ministry; and the letters printed for the first time in this monograph attest the accuracy of the Patriot judgment. On purely local grounds, also, the presence of the troops continued to be deplored. "The troops," Dr. Cooper wrote, January 1, 1770, "greatly corrupt our morals, and are in every sense an oppression. May Heaven soon deliver us from this great evil!" Samuel Adams said, "The troops must move to the Castle; it must be the first business of the General Court to move them out of town"; and James Otis said. "The Governor has the power to move them under the Constitution." Hutchinson endeavored to conciliate the people by making arrangements with General Gage for a removal of the main guard from its location near the Town-House, being informed that this might satisfy the greater part of the members.
Having taken this precaution, Hutchinson was really anxious for a meeting of the General Court. He was in great uncertainty both as to public and private affairs. He knew now that Bernard was not to return, but he did not know who was to be the successor; he conjectured that it might be "that the government was to be put on a new establishment, and a person of rank appointed Governor"; and he confessed that he was "ignorant of the Ministerial plan" as to the Colonies. The Legislature was appointed to convene on the tenth of January. But the November packet from England, happening to make an uncommonly short passage, brought him a peremptory order, which he received on the evening of the third of January, to prorogue the time of the sitting of the General Court; and the journals of the next morning contain his Proclamation, setting forth that "by His Majesty's command" the Legislature was prorogued to the second Wednesday in March. "I guess," Hutchinson writes, "that the Court is prorogued to a particular day with an intention that something from the King or the Parliament shall be then laid before them." "Some of the distant members will be on their journey before the Proclamation reaches them; and if the packet had not had a better passage than common, my orders would have found the Court sitting." As a consequence of this unlooked-for prorogation, the main guard continued to be stationed near the Town-House, until a portion of it played its tragic part on the memorable fifth of March.
The Lieutenant-Governor was apprehensive that this sudden prorogation would cause a great clamor; but he judged that the popular leaders were rather humbled and mortified than roused and enraged by it; and he soon expressed the conviction that this was the right step. But the favorite organ of the Patriots, the "Boston Gazette," in its next issue, of January the eighth, indicates anything but humility. Through it James Otis, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams spoke kindling words to a community who received words from them as things. Otis, in a card elicited by strictures on the "unmanly assault, battery, and barbarous wounding" of himself by Robinson, declared that "a clear stage and no favor were all he ever wished or wanted in court, country, camp, or city"; Hancock, in a card commenting on the report that he had violated the merchants' agreement, "publicly defied all mankind" to prove the allegation, and pledged his coöperation "in every legal and laudable measure to redress the grievances under which the Province and the Continent had so long labored"; and Samuel Adams, under the signature of "Vindex," tested the legality of the prorogation by the terms of the Charter, and adjured every man to make it the subject of his contemplation. "We all remember," are his weighty words, "that, no longer ago than last year, the extraordinary dissolution by Governor Bernard, in which he declared he was purely Ministerial, produced another assembly, which, though legal in all its proceedings, awaked an attention in the very soul of the British empire." He claimed that a Massachusetts executive ought to act from the dictates of his own judgment. "It is not to be expected that in ordinary times, much less at such an important period as this, any man, though endowed with the wisdom of Solomon, at the distance of three thousand miles, can be an adequate judge of the expediency of proroguing, and in effect of putting an end to, an American legislative assembly."
The Lieutenant-Governor had now to meet the severest pressure brought to bear on him by the Tory faction for the employment of the troops, occasioned by a violation on the part of his sons of their agreement as to a sale of goods. They had stipulated with the merchants that an importation of teas made by them should remain unsold, and, as security, had given to the committee of inspection the key of the building in which it was stored. Yet they secretly made sales, broke the lock, and delivered the teas. This was done when the non-importation agreement was the paramount measure,—when fidelity to it was patriotism, was honor, was union, was country,—and when all eyes were looking to see Boston faithful. "If this agreement of the merchants," said "Determinatus" in the "Boston Gazette," "is of that consequence to all America which our brethren in all the other governments and in Great Britain itself think it to be,—if the fate of unborn millions is suspended upon it, verily it behooves not the merchants only, but every individual of every class in city and country to aid and support them, and peremptorily to insist upon its being strictly adhered to. And yet what is most astonishing is, that some two or three persons, of very little consequence in themselves, have dared openly to give out that they will vend the goods they have imported, though they have solemnly pledged their faith to the body of merchants that they should remain in store till a general importation takes place." The merchants met in Faneuil Hall in a large and commanding gathering; for it was composed of the solid men of the town. After deliberation, they proceeded in a body to the residence of the Lieutenant-Governor to remonstrate against the course of his sons. Meantime, the ultra Loyalists pressed him to order the troops to disperse the meeting; the Commissioners savagely urged, that "there could not be a better time for trying the strength of the government"; and others said, "It were best to bring matters to extremities." The commanding officers of the troops now expected work, and prepared for it. Dalrymple dealt out twelve rounds of cartridges to the men. But Hutchinson involuntarily shrank from the bloody business of this programme. He tried other means than force. He appealed to the justices of the peace, and through the sheriff he commanded the meeting, in His Majesty's name, to disperse. But the intrepid merchants, in a written paper, in Hancock's handwriting, averred that law warranted their proceeding; and so they calmly adhered to the action that patriotism dictated. Hutchinson at length sent for the Moderator, William Phillips, of fragrant Revolutionary renown and of educational fame, and stipulated to deposit a sum of money to stand for the tea that had been sold, and to return the balance of it to the store. The concession was accepted. In explanation of his course, and with special reference to the action of the Commissioners in this case, Hutchinson pleaded a want of power, under the Constitution, to comply with their demand. "They did not consider the Constitution," he remarked, "and that by the Charter I can do nothing without the Council, the major part of whom are against me, and the civil magistrates, many of whom made a part of the body which was to be suppressed; so that there could not have been a worse occasion [to call out the troops], and I think anything tragical would have set the whole Province in a flame, and maybe spread farther."
Thus Hutchinson, as well as Franklin, dreaded the effect of a serious collision between the citizens and the troops. At this time the feeling was one of sullen acquiescence in their presence. "Molineaux," he says, February 18, 1770, "to whom the Sons of Liberty have given the name of Paoli, and some others, are restless; but there seems to be no disposition to any general muster of the people again." And yet the newspapers were now crowded with unusually exciting matter, and so continued up to the first week in March: articles about the Liberty-Pole in New York being cut down by the military and replaced in a triumphal procession by the people; about McDougal's imprisonment for printing free comments on the Assembly for voting supplies to the troops; the famous address of "Junius" to the King, in which one count is his alienation of a people who left their native land for freedom and found it in a desert; the details of the shooting, by an informer, of Christopher Snider, the son of a poor German, and of the imposing funeral, which moved from the Liberty-Tree to the burial-place. The importers now feared an assault on their houses; whereupon soldiers were allowed as a guard to some, while others slept with loaded guns at their bedsides. These things deserve to be borne in mind; for they show how much there was to exasperate, when the popular leaders were called upon to meet a paroxysm without a precedent in the Colonies.
It seemed to the Patriots astonishing that the Ministry persisted in keeping troops in Boston. There was no spirit of resistance to law; there was no plot maturing to resist the Government; the avocations of life went on as usual; the popular leaders, men of whom any community might be proud, averred that their opposition to public measures had been prudent and legal, and that they had not taken "a single step that could not be fully justified on constitutional grounds"; and the demand in the public prints was continuous to know what the troops were wanted for, and how they were to be used. On the other hand, the ultra Loyalists as continuously represented that the town was full of a rebellious spirit, was a nest of disorder, and threatened the leaders in it with transportation. Hutchinson seems to have apprehended that this misrepresentation had been carried so far as to be suicidal; for he advised Lord Hillsborough, that, "in matters that had no relation to the dispute between the Kingdom and the Colonies, government retained its vigor, and the administration of it was attended with no unusual difficulty." This is to the point, and conclusive. This was the truth on which the popular leaders rested; and hence it seemed to them a marvel that the Ministry, to use the words of Samuel Adams, should employ troops only "to parade the streets of Boston, and, by their ridiculous merry-andrew tricks, to become the objects of contempt of the women and children."
It would be a tedious and profitless task to go over the bickerings and quarrels that occurred between the inhabitants and the soldiers. The high-spirited citizens, on being challenged in their walks, could not keep their temper; the roughs, here as in every place, would have their say; and the coarse British soldier could not be restrained by discipline; yet in all the brawls, for seventeen months, not a gun was fired in an affray. Fist had been met with fist, and club with club; and not unfrequently these quarrels were settled in the courts. The nature of such emergency as would justify the troops in firing on the people was acutely discussed in the newspapers, and undoubtedly the subject was talked about in private circles and in the political clubs. "What shall I say?" runs an article in the "Gazette." "I shudder at the thought. Surely no provincial magistrate could be found so steeled against the sensations of humanity and justice as wantonly to order troops to fire on an unarmed populace, and more than repeat in Boston the tragic scene exhibited in St. George's Fields." It was a wanton fire on an unarmed populace that was protected against; and the protest was by men who involuntarily shrank from mob-law as they would from the hell of anarchy. They apprehended an impromptu collision between the people and the troops; they knew that an illegal and wanton fire on the people would produce such collision; the danger of this result formed, undoubtedly, a large portion of the common talk; and the frequency and manner in which the subject was discussed elicited from General Gage the rather sweeping remark, that every citizen in Boston was a lawyer. Every citizen was interested in the support of public liberty and public order, and might well regard with deep concern the threats that were continually made, which, if executed, would disturb both. Hutchinson, in one of his letters, thus states the conclusions that were reached:—"Our heroes for liberty say that no troops dare to fire on the people without the order of the civil magistrate, and that no civil magistrate, would dare to give such orders. In the first part of their opinion they may be right; in the second they cannot be sure until they have made the trial."
On Friday, the second of March, in the forenoon, as three soldiers were at Gray's Ropewalks, near the head of India Wharf, they were asked by one of the workmen to empty a vault. Sharp altercation followed this insult, and the soldiers went off, but soon returned with a party of their comrades, when there was a challenge to a boxing-match, and this grew into a fight, the rope-makers using their "wouldring-sticks," and the soldiers clubs and cutlasses. It proved to be the most serious quarrel that had occurred. Lieutenant-Colonel Carr, commander of the Twenty-Ninth, which, Hutchinson said, was composed of such bad fellows that discipline could not restrain them, made a complaint to the Lieutenant-Governor relative to the provoking conduct of the rope-maker which brought on the affray; and thus this affair became the occasion of political consultation, which tended to intensify the animosity between the parties.
On Saturday, the report was circulated that the parties who were engaged in this affray would renew the fight on Monday evening; on Sunday, Carr and other officers went into the ropewalk, giving out that they were searching for a sergeant of their regiment; but though on these days there was much irritation, the town was comparatively quiet.
On Monday, the Lieutenant-Governor laid the complaint of Lieutenant-Colonel Carr before the Council, and asked the advice of this body, which gave rise to debate about the removal of the troops,—members freely expressing the opinion, that the way to prevent collisions between the military and the people was to withdraw the two regiments to the Castle. No important action was taken by the Council, although the apprehension was expressed that the ropewalk affair might grow into a general quarrel. And it is worthy of remark, that, ominous as the signs were, the Lieutenant-Governor took no precautionary measures, not even the obvious step of having the troops restrained to their barracks. His letters, and, indeed, his whole course, up to the eventful evening of this day, indicate confidence in the opinion that there was no intention on the part of the popular leaders to molest the troops, and that the troops, without an order from the civil authority, would not fire on the citizens.
Nor was there now, as zealous Loyalists alleged, any plan formed by the popular leaders, or by any persons of consideration, to expel the troops by force from the town, much less the obnoxious Commissioners of the Customs; nor is there any evidence to support the allegation on the other side, that the crown officials, civil or military, meditated or stimulated an attack on the inhabitants. The Patriots regarded what had occurred and what was threatened, like much that had taken place during the last seventeen months, as the motions of a rod of power needlessly held over the people to overawe them, serving no earthly good, but souring their minds and embittering their passions; the crown officials represented this chafing of the free spirit at the incidents of military rule as a sign of the lost authority of Government and of a desire for independence. Among the fiery spirits, accurately on both sides the mob-element, the ropewalk affair was regarded as a drawn game, and a renewal of the fight was desired on the ground that honor was at stake; while to spirit up the roughs among the Whigs, to use Dr. Gordon's words,—"the newspapers had a pompous account of a victory obtained by the inhabitants of New York over the soldiers there in an affray, while the Boston newspapers could present but a tame relation of the result of the affray here." These facts account satisfactorily for the intimations and warnings given during the day to prominent characters on both sides, and for the handbill that was circulated in the afternoon. The course things took fully justifies the remark of Gordon, that "everything tended to a crisis, and it is rather wonderful that it did not exist sooner, when so many circumstances united to hasten its approach."
There was a layer of ice on the ground, a slight fall of snow during the day, and a young moon in the evening. At an early hour, as though something uncommon was expected, parties of boys, apprentices, and soldiers strolled through the streets, and neither side was sparing of insult. Ten or twelve soldiers went from the main guard, in King Street, across this street to Murray's Barracks, in Brattle Street, about three hundred yards from King Street; and another party came out of these barracks, armed with clubs and cutlasses, bent on a stroll. A little after eight o'clock, quite a crowd collected near the Brattle-Street Church, many of whom had canes and sticks; and after a spell of bantering wretched abuse on both sides, things grew into a fight. As it became more and more threatening, a few North-Enders ran to the Old Brick Meeting-House, on what is now Washington Street, at the head of King Street, and lifted a boy into a window, who rang the bell. About the same time, Captain Goldfinch, of the army, who was on his way to Murray's Barracks, crossed King Street, near the Custom-House, at the corner of Exchange Lane, where a sentinel had long been stationed; and as he was passing along, he was taunted by a barber's apprentice as a mean fellow for not paying for dressing his hair, when the sentinel ran after the boy and gave him a severe blow with his musket. The boy went away crying, and told several persons of the assault, while the Captain passed on towards Murray's Barracks, but found the passage into the yard obstructed by the affray going on here,—the crowd pelting the soldiers with snowballs, and the latter defending themselves. Being the senior officer, he ordered the men into the barracks; the gate of the yard was then shut, and the promise was made that no more men should be let out that evening. In this way the affray here was effectually stopped.
For a little time, perhaps twenty minutes, there was nothing to attract to a centre the people who were drawn by the alarm-bell out of their homes on this frosty, moonlight, memorable evening; and in various places individuals were asking where the fire was. King Street, then, as now, the commercial centre of Boston, was quiet. A group was standing before the main guard with firebags and buckets in their hands; a few persons were moving along in other parts of the street; and the sentinel at the Custom-House, with his firelock on his shoulder, was pacing his beat quite unmolested. In Dock Square, a small gathering, mostly of participants in the affair just over, were harangued by a large, tall man, who wore a red cloak and a white wig; and as he closed, there was a hurrah, and the cry, "To the main guard!" In another street, a similar cry was raised, "To the main guard!—that is the nest!" But no assault was made on the main guard. The word went round that there was no fire, "only a rumpus with the soldiers," who had been driven to their quarters; and well-disposed citizens, as they withdrew, were saying, "Every man to his home!"
But at about fifteen minutes past nine, an excited party passed up Royal Exchange Lane, (now Exchange Street,) leading into King Street; and as they came near the Custom-House, on the corner, one of the number, who knew of the assault on the apprentice-boy, said, "Here is the soldier who did it," when they gathered round the sentinel. The barber's boy now came up and said, "This is the soldier who knocked me down with the butt-end of his musket." Some now said, "Kill him! knock him down!" The sentinel moved back up the steps of the Custom-House, and loaded his gun. Missiles were thrown at him, when he presented his musket, warned the party to keep off, and called for help. Some one ran to Captain Preston, the officer of the day, and informed him that the people were about to assault the sentinel, when he hastened to the main guard, on the opposite side of the street, about forty rods from the Custom-House, and sent from here a sergeant, a very young officer, with a file of seven men, to protect the sentinel. They went over in a kind of trot, using rough words and actions towards those who went with them, and, coming near the party round the sentinel, rudely pushed them aside, pricking some with their bayonets, and formed in a half-circle near the sentry-box. The sentinel now came down the steps and fell in with the file, when they were ordered to prime and load. Captain Preston almost immediately joined his men. The file now numbered nine.
The number of people here at this time is variously estimated from thirty to a hundred,—"between fifty and sixty" being the most common statement. Some of them were fresh from the affray at the barracks, and some of the soldiers had been in the affair at the ropewalks. There was aggravation on both sides. The crowd were unarmed, or had merely sticks, which they struck defiantly against each other,—having no definite object, and doing no greater mischief than, in retaliation of uncalled-for military roughness, to throw snowballs, hurrah, whistle through their fingers, use oaths and foul language, call the soldiers names, hustle them, and dare them to fire. One of the file was struck with a stick. There were good men trying to prevent a riot, and some assured the soldiers that they would not be hurt. Among others, Henry Knox, subsequently General, was present, who saw nothing to justify the use of fire-arms, and, with others, remonstrated against their employment; but Captain Preston, as he was talking with Knox, saw his men pressing the people with their bayonets, when, in great agitation, he rushed in among them. Then, with or without orders, but certainly without any legal form or warning, seven of the file, one after another, discharged their muskets upon the citizens; and the result indicates the malignity and precision of their aim. Crispus Attucks, an intrepid mulatto, who was a leader in the affair at Murray's Barracks, was killed as he stood leaning and resting his breast on a stout "cord-wood stick"; Samuel Gray, one of the rope-makers, was shot as he stood with his hands in his bosom, and just as he had said, "My lads, they will not fire"; Patrick Carr, on hearing the alarm-bell, had left his house full of fight, and, as he was crossing the street, was mortally wounded; James Caldwell, in like manner summoned from his home, was killed as he was standing in the middle of the street; Samuel Maverick, a lad of seventeen, ran out of the house to go to a fire, and was shot as he was crossing the street; six others were wounded. But fifteen or twenty minutes had elapsed from the time the sergeant went from the main guard to the time of the firing. The people, on the report of the guns, fell back, but instinctively and instantly returned for the killed and wounded, when the infuriated soldiers prepared to fire again, but were checked by Captain Preston, and were withdrawn across the street to the main guard. The drums beat; several companies of the Twenty-Ninth Regiment, under Colonel Carr, promptly appeared in the street, and were formed in three divisions in front of the main guard, the front division near the northeast corner of the Town-House, in the kneeling posture for street-firing. The Fourteenth Regiment was ordered under arms, but remained at their barracks.
The report now spread that "the troops had risen on the people"; and the beat of drums, the church-bells, and the cry of fire summoned the inhabitants from their homes, and they rushed through the streets to the place of alarm. In a few minutes thousands collected, and the cry was, "To arms! to arms!" The whole town was in the utmost confusion; while in King Street there was, what the Patriots had so long predicted, dreaded, and vainly endeavored to avert, an indignant population and an exasperated soldiery face to face. The excitement was terrible. The care of the popular leaders for their cause, since the mob-days of the Stamp Act, had been like the care of their personal honor: it drew them forth as the prompt and brave controlling power in every crisis; and they were among the concourse on this "night of consternation." Joseph Warren, early on the ground to act the good physician as well as the fearless patriot, gives the impression produced on himself and his co-laborers as they saw the first blood flowing that was shed for American liberty. "Language," he says, "is too feeble to paint the emotions of our souls, when our streets were stained with the blood of our brethren, when our ears were wounded by the groans of the dying, and our eyes were tormented by the sight of the mangled bodies of the dead." "Our hearts beat to arms; we snatched our weapons, almost resolved by one decisive stroke to avenge the death of our slaughtered brethren."
Meantime the Lieutenant-Governor, at his residence in North Square, heard the sound of the church-bell near by, and supposed it was an alarm of fire. But soon, at nearly ten o'clock, a number of the inhabitants came running into the house, entreating him to go to King Street immediately, otherwise, they said, "the town would be all in blood." He immediately started for the scene of danger. On his way, in the Market-Place, he found himself amidst a great body of people, some armed with clubs, others with cutlasses, and all calling for fire-arms. He made himself known to them, but pleaded in vain for a hearing; and, to insure his safety, he retreated into a dwelling-house, and thence went by a private way into King Street, where he found an excited multitude anxiously awaiting his arrival. He first called for Captain Preston; and a natural indignation at a high-handed act is expressed in the stern and searching questions which the civilian put to the soldier, bearing on the vital point of the subordination of the military to the civil power.
"Are you the commanding officer?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Do you know, Sir, you have no power to fire on any body of people collected together, except you have a civil magistrate with you to give orders?"
Captain Preston replied,—
"I was obliged to, to save the sentry."
So great was the confusion that Preston's reply was heard but by few. The cry was raised, "To the Town-House! to the Town-House!" when Hutchinson, by the irresistible violence of the crowd, was forced into the building, and up to the Council-Chamber; and in a few minutes he appeared on the balcony. Near him were prominent citizens, both Loyalists and Whigs; below him, on the one side, were his indignant townsmen, who had conferred on him every honor in their power, and on the other side, the regiment in its defiant attitude. He could speak with eloquence and power; throughout this strange and trying scene he bore himself with dignity and self-possession; and as in the stillness of night he expressed great concern at the unhappy event, and made solemn pledges to the people, his manner must have been uncommonly earnest. "The law," he averred, "should have its course; he would live and die by the law." He promised to order an inquiry in the morning, and requested all to retire to their homes. But words now were not satisfactory to the people; and those near him urged that the course of justice had always been evaded or obstructed in favor of the soldiery, and that the people were determined not to disperse until Captain Preston was arrested. In consequence, Hutchinson ordered an immediate court of inquiry. The Patriots also entreated the Lieutenant-Governor to order the troops to their barracks. He replied, that it was not in his power to give such an order, but he would consult the officers. They now came on to the balcony,—Dalrymple of the Fourteenth Regiment being present,—and after an interview with Hutchinson returned to the troops. The men now rose from their kneeling posture; the order to "shoulder arms" was heard; and the people were greatly relieved by seeing the troops move towards their barracks.
The people now began to disperse, but slowly, however. Meanwhile, the court of inquiry on Captain Preston was in session, and, after an examination that lasted three hours, he was bound over for trial. Later, the file of soldiers were also arrested. It was three o'clock in the morning before the Lieutenant-Governor left the scene of the massacre. And now all, excepting about a hundred of the people, who formed themselves into a watch, left the streets. Thus wise action by the crown officials, the activity of the popular leaders, and the habitual respect of the people for law, proved successful in preventing further carnage. "It was Royal George's livery," said Warren, "that proved a shield to the soldiery, and saved them from destruction." Hence, a contemporary versifier and participator in these scenes was able to write,—
"No sudden rage the ruffian soldier bore,
Or drenched the pavements with his vital gore;
Deliberate thought did all our souls compose,
Till veiled in gloom the low'ry morning rose."
During the night, the popular leaders sent expresses to the neighboring towns, bearing intelligence of what had occurred, and summoning people from their beds to go to the aid of Boston; but as the efforts to restore quiet were proving successful, the summons was countermanded. This action accounts for the numbers who, very early in the morning of the sixth of March, flocked into the town. They could learn details of the tragedy from the actors in it,—could see the blood, the brains even, of the slaughtered inhabitants,—could hear the groans of the wounded,—could view the bodies of the dead. This terrible revelation of the work of arbitrary power, to a people habitually tender of regard for human life, naturally shocked the sensibilities of all; and thus the public temper was again wrought up to a fearful pitch of indignation. It required the strongest moral influence to restrain the rash, and to guide in the forms of law a righteous demand for a redress of grievance and for future security.
The Lieutenant-Governor, during the night, had summoned such members of the Council as were within reach to meet in the Council-Chamber in the morning; and on joining them, he found the Selectmen, with most of the justices of the county, waiting for him, to represent, as he says, "their opinion of the absolute necessity of the troops being at a distance, that there might be no intercourse between the inhabitants and them, in order to prevent a further effusion of blood." Such was the logic of events which now forced the seventeen months' question of the removal of the troops on the civil and military authorities with an imperativeness that could not be resisted.
The question, however, came up now in a new shape. To put it in the simplest way, and in the very words used on that day,—the people were so excited by the shedding of blood on the preceding night, that they were resolved no longer to acquiesce in the decision of the constituted authorities as to the troops; but, failing in other means, they were determined to effect their removal by force, let the act be deemed rebellion or otherwise. Not that any conspiracy existed; not that any plan had been matured to do this; but circumstances had transferred the question from the domain of reason to that of physical force; and the only point with the crown officials, during this whole day's deliberations, was, whether they would be justified in what appeared to them lowering the national standard at the demand of a power which they habitually represented as "the faction," or whether they might venture to take the responsibility of resisting the demand and of meeting the consequences. Well might John Adams say, "This was a dangerous and difficult crisis."
The Selectmen expressed to the Lieutenant-Governor the opinion, that "the inhabitants would be under no restraint whilst the troops were in town." "I let them know," Hutchinson says, "that I had no power to remove the troops." They also informed him that they had been requested to call a town-meeting, which was the special dread of Hutchinson. As the settled determination of the people became revealed, the anxiety of the Lieutenant-Governor naturally deepened as to what the day might bring forth; and he sent for Colonels Dalrymple and Carr to be present in Council and act as military advisers. But the discussions here were interrupted by the entrance of a messenger from another assembly, bearing the ominous summons for the immediate presence among them of the Selectmen.
This summons invites attention to the movements of the people, who had been constantly coming in from the neighboring towns, and had now gathered in great numbers in and around Faneuil Hall, to use Hutchinson's words, "in a perfect frenzy." It was, however, the general disposition, volcanic as were the elements, to act with caution, deliberation, and in a spirit of unity, and, doubtless, with the consideration that the eyes of the friends of their cause were upon them, and the name and fame of Boston were at stake. The hours passed, and no warrant appeared calling a town-meeting; when, at eleven o'clock, the town-records say, "the freeholders and other inhabitants" held a meeting, "occasioned, by the massacre made in King Street by the soldiery." The town-clerk, William Cooper, acted as the chairman. This true and intrepid patriot held this office forty-nine years, which speaks for his fidelity to duty, intelligence, devotion to principle, and moral worth. "The Selectmen," his clear, round record reads, "not being present, and the inhabitants being informed that they were in the Council-Chamber, it was voted that Mr. William Greenleaf be desired to proceed there and acquaint the Selectmen that the inhabitants desire and expect their attendance at the Hall." This was virtually a command, and the Selectmen immediately repaired thither. Thomas Cushing was chosen the Moderator. He was now the Speaker of the House of Representatives; and though not of such shining abilities as to cause him to be looked up to in Boston as a leader, and of the moderate class of Patriots, yet, by urbanity of manner, a high personal character, diligent public service, and fidelity to the cause, he won a large influence. It was next voted that Constable Wallace wait upon the Reverend Dr. Cooper and acquaint him that the inhabitants desired him to open the meeting with prayer. This great divine was a brother of the town-clerk, and the pastor of the Brattle-Street Church. He was devoted to the Patriot cause, and on the most confidential terms with the popular leaders; and besides being rich in genius and learning, he had, says Dr. Eliot, a gift in prayer peculiar and very excellent. He complied with the request, but no reporter has transmitted the words of this righteous man, or described this solemn assembly, as fervent prayer now went up for country.
The meeting next voted to invite any citizen to give information of the massacre of the preceding evening, "that the same might be minuted by the town-clerk"; whereupon several persons related details of the tragedy. One said he heard a soldier, after the firing, say, that "the Devil might give quarter, he should give none"; another said he heard a soldier say, that "his officer told him, that, if the soldiers went out that night, they must go armed and in companies"; another related a soldier's story of a scheme formed to kill the inhabitants; another said, he "descried a soldier who struck down the inhabitants." These homely words are life-like glimpses of the spirit of the hour. No speech could have been more eloquent, because none could have been better calculated to deepen the general conviction and minister to the common emotion. However, so many witnesses were ready to testify, that it was found to be impracticable to hear all; and a committee was appointed to receive and digest the evidence.
Samuel Adams addressed this remarkable meeting. He spoke with a pathos peculiar to himself. His manner, naturally impressive, was rendered more so by the solemnity of the occasion, and every heart was moved. The great hour demanded dignity and discretion in unison with firmness, and they were combined in the action of the meeting. It resolved that the inhabitants would submit no longer to the insult of military rule. A committee of fifteen was chosen to wait on the Lieutenant-Governor, and acquaint him that it was the unanimous opinion of the meeting that the inhabitants and soldiery could no longer dwell together in safety, and that nothing could be rationally expected to restore the peace of the town and prevent additional scenes of blood and carnage but the immediate removal of the troops; and to say, further, that they most fervently prayed his Honor that his power and influence might be exerted in order that this removal might be instantly effected. This committee well represented the intelligence, the patriotism, the varied interests, and whatever there was of true greatness in Boston. The meeting now dissolved; when the Selectmen issued a warrant for a regular town-meeting to convene at the same place, at three o'clock in the afternoon.
It was about noon when the Lieutenant-Governor received the committee of the town at the Council-Chamber, the Council being in session. I have found no details of what was said by the committee at this interview, in urging a compliance with the demand. Hutchinson said he was not prepared to reply, but would give an answer in writing, when the committee withdrew into another room; and he gives glimpses of what then occurred. "I told the Council," he says, "that a removal of the troops was not with me; and I desired them to consider what answer I could give to this application of the town, whilst Colonel Dalrymple, who had the command, was present." Some of the members, who were among the truest Patriots, urged a compliance, when the Lieutenant-Governor declared that "he would upon no consideration whatever give orders for their removal." The result reached this morning was an advice for the removal of one regiment, in which the commanding officer concurred. As Hutchinson rose from this sitting, he declared that "he meant to receive no further application on the subject."
Things wore a gloomy aspect during the interval between the session of the Council and the time of the afternoon meeting; for the natural effect of the unbending tone of the crown officials was to give firmness to the determined spirit of the people. There were consultations between members of the Council, the popular leaders, and the commanding officers; and now the very men who were branded as incendiaries, enemies of Great Britain, and traitors, were again seen quietly endeavoring to prevent a catastrophe. Hutchinson, in his History, says it was intimated to members of the Council, that, though the commanding officer should receive no authoritative order to remove all the troops, yet the expression of a desire by the Lieutenant-Governor and Council that it should be done would cause him to do it; and on this basis Hutchinson was prevailed upon to meet the Council in the afternoon. This was a great point gained for the popular cause.
At three o'clock, Faneuil Hall was filled to overflowing with the excited population assembled in legal town-meeting. Thomas Cushing was again chosen the Moderator; but the place would hold only about thirteen hundred, and the record reads, "The Hall not being spacious enough to receive the inhabitants who attended, it was voted to adjourn to Dr. Sewall's meeting-house,"—the Old South. The most convenient way for the people would be to pass into King Street, up by the Council-Chamber, and along what is now Washington Street, to the church. As they went, no mention is made of mottoes or banners or flags, of cheers or of jeers. Thomas dishing said his countrymen "were like the old British commoners, grave and sad men"; and it was said in the Council to Hutchinson, "That multitude are not such as pulled down your house"; but they are "men of the best characters," "men of estates and men of religion," "men who pray over what they do." With similar men, men who feared God and were devoted to public liberty, Cromwell won at Marston Moor; and so striking was the analogy, that at this hour it virtually forced itself on the well-read Hutchinson: for men of this stamp had once made a revolution in Boston, and as he looked out on this scene, perhaps scanned the concourse who passed from Faneuil Hall to the Old South, and read in their faces the sign of resolute hearts, he judged "their spirit to be as high as was the spirit of their ancestors when they imprisoned Andros, while they were four times as numerous." As the burden of official responsibility pressed heavily on him, he realized that he had to deal with an element far more potent than "the faction" which officials had long represented as composing the Patriot band, and that much depended on dealing with it wisely. This was not a dependent and starved host wildly urging the terrible demand of "Bread or blood"; nor was it fanaticism in a season of social discontent claiming impossibilities at the hand of power: the craving was moral and intellectual: it was an intelligent public opinion, a people with well-grounded and settled convictions, making a just demand on arbitrary power. Was such public opinion about to be scorned as though it were but a faction, and by officials who bore high the party-standard? And were men of such resoluteness of character and purpose about to be involved in a work of carnage? or would the wielders of British authority avoid the extremity by concession? Boston, indeed America, had seen no hour of intenser interest, of deeper solemnity, of more instant peril, or of truer moral sublimity; and as this assembly deliberated with the sounds of the fife and drum in their ears, and with the soldiery in their sight, questions like these must have been on every lip,—and they are of the civil-war questions that cause an involuntary shudder in every home.
The Old South was not large enough to hold the people, and they stood in the street and near the Town-House awaiting the report of the committee of fifteen, chosen in the morning. The Lieutenant-Governor was now at the Council-Chamber, where, in addition to Colonels Dalrymple and Carr, there had been summoned Captain Caldwell of the Rose frigate; and Hutchinson would, he says, have summoned other crown officers, but he knew the Council would not consent to it. He took care to repeat to the committee, he says, the declaration which he had made in the morning to the Selectmen, the Justices, and the Council,—that "the ordering of the troops did not lie with him." As the committee, with Samuel Adams at the head, appeared on the Town-House steps, the people were in motion, and the word passed, "Make way for the committee!" Adams uncovered his head, and, as he went towards the church, he bowed alternately to those on each side of the lane that was formed, and repeated the words, "Both regiments or none." The answer of the Lieutenant-Governor to the morning demand for a total removal of the troops was read to the meeting in the church. It was to the effect, that he had conferred with the commanders of the two regiments, who received orders from the General in New York, and it was not in his power to countermand these orders; but the Council desired their removal, and Colonel Dalrymple had signified that because of the part which the Twenty-Ninth Regiment had taken in the differences it should be placed without delay in the barracks at the Castle, and also that the main guard should be removed; while the Fourteenth Regiment should be so disposed and laid under such restraint that all occasion for future differences might be prevented. And now resounded through the excited assembly, from a thousand tongues, the words, "Both regiments or none!"
A short debate occurred, when the answer was voted to be unsatisfactory. Then another committee was chosen. It was resolved that John Hancock, Samuel Adams, William Molineaux, William Phillips, Joseph Warren, Joshua Henshaw, and Samuel Pemberton be a committee to inform the Lieutenant-Governor that it was the unanimous opinion of the people that the reply was by no means satisfactory, and that nothing less would satisfy them than a total and immediate removal of the troops. This committee was one worthy of a great occasion. Hancock, Henshaw, and Pemberton, besides being individually of large and just influence from their ability, patriotism, worth, and wealth, were members of the Board of Selectmen, and therefore represented the municipality; Phillips, who had served on this Board, was a type of the upright and liberal merchant; Molineaux was one of the most determined and zealous of the Patriots, and a stirring business-man; Warren, ardent and bold, of rising fame as a leader, personified the generous devotion and noble enthusiasm of the young men; Adams, though not the first-named on the committee, played so prominent a part in its doings, that he appears as its chairman. He was so widely and favorably known now that he was addressed as "the Father of America." Of middling stature, plain in dress, quiet in manner, unpretending in deportment, he exhibited nothing extraordinary in common affairs; but on great occasions, when his deeper nature was called into action, he rose, without the smallest affectation, into an upright dignity of figure and bearing,—with a harmony of voice and a power of speech which made a strong impression, the more lasting from the purity and nervous eloquence of his style and the logical consistency of his argument. Such were the men selected to speak and act for Boston in this hour of deep passion and of high resolve.
The committee, about four o'clock, repaired to the Council-Chamber. It was a room respectable in size and not without ornament and historic memorials. On its walls were representatives of the two elements now in conflict,—of the Absolutism that was passing away, in full-length portraits of Charles II. and James II. robed in the royal ermine, and of a Republicanism which had grown robust and self-reliant, in the heads of Belcher and Bradstreet and Endicott and Winthrop. Around a long table were seated the Lieutenant-Governor and the members of the Council with the military officers,—the scrupulous and sumptuous costumes of civilians in authority, gold and silver lace, scarlet cloaks, and large wigs, mingled with the brilliant uniforms of the British army and navy. Into such imposing presence was now ushered the plainly attired committee of the town.
At this time the Lieutenant-Governor, a portion of the Council, the military officers, and, among other officials now in the Town-House, though not in the Council, the Secretary of the Province, were sternly resolved to refuse compliance with the demand of the people. On the vote of the meeting being presented to the Lieutenant-Governor, Adams remarked at length on the illegality of quartering troops on the inhabitants in time of peace and without the consent of the legislature, urged that the public service did not require them, adverted with sensibility and warmth to the late tragedy, painted the misery in which the town would be involved, if the troops were suffered to remain, and urged the necessity of an immediate compliance with the vote of the people. The Lieutenant-Governor, in a brief reply, defended both the legality and the necessity of the troops, and renewed his old assertion that they were not subject to his authority. Adams again rose, and attention was riveted on him as he paused and gave a searching look at the Lieutenant-Governor. There was in his countenance and attitude a silent eloquence that words could not express; his manner showed that the energies of his soul were roused; and, in a tone not loud, but deep and earnest, he again addressed himself to Hutchinson, "It is well known," he said, "that, acting as Governor of the Province, you are, by its Charter, the Commander-in-Chief of the military forces within it, and, as such, the troops now in the capital are subject to your orders. If you, or Colonel Dalrymple under you, have the power to remove one regiment, you have the power to remove both; and nothing short of their total removal will satisfy the people or preserve the peace of the Province. A multitude, highly incensed, now wait the result of this application. The voice of ten thousand freemen demands that both regiments be forthwith removed. Their voice must be respected,—their demand obeyed. Fail, then, at your peril, to comply with this requisition. On you alone rests the responsibility of the decision; and if the just expectations of the people are disappointed, you must be answerable to God and your country for the fatal consequences that must ensue. The committee have discharged their duty, and it is for you to discharge yours. They wait your final determination." As Adams, while speaking, intently eyed Hutchinson, he says, "I observed his knees to tremble; I saw his face grow pale; and I enjoyed the sight."
A spell of silence followed this appeal. Then there was low conversation, to a whisper, between the Lieutenant-Governor and Colonel Dalrymple, who, in the spirit of the unbending soldier, was for resisting this demand, as he had been for summary proceedings in the case of the meetings. "It is impossible for me," he had said this afternoon, "to go any further lengths in this matter. The information given of the intended rebellion is sufficient reason against the removal of His Majesty's troops." But he now said in a loud tone, "I am ready to obey your orders," which threw the responsibility on Hutchinson. All the members of the committee urged the demand. "Every one of them," Hutchinson says, "deliberately gave his opinion at large, and generally gave this reason to support it,—that the people would most certainly drive out the troops, and that the inhabitants of the other towns would join in it; and several of the gentlemen, declared that they did not judge from the general temper of the people only, but they knew it to be the determination, not of a mob, but of the generality of the principal inhabitants; and they added, that all the blood would be charged to me alone, for refusing to follow their unanimous advice, in desiring that the quarters of a single regiment might be changed, in order to put an end to the animosities between the troops and the inhabitants, seeing Colonel Dalrymple would consent to it." After the committee withdrew, the debates of the Council were long and earnest; and, as they went on, Hutchinson asked, "What protection would there be for the Commissioners, if both regiments were ordered to the Castle?" Several said, "They would be safe, and always had been safe." "As safe," said Gray, "without the troops as with them." And Irving said, "They never had been in danger, and he would pawn his life that they should receive no injury." "Unless the troops were removed," it was said, "before evening there would be ten thousand men on the Common." "The people in general," Tyler said, "were resolved to have the troops removed, without which they would not be satisfied; that, failing of other means, they were determined to effect their removal by force, let the act be deemed rebellion or otherwise." As the Council deliberated, the people were impatient, and the members were repeatedly called out to give information as to the result, This at length was unanimity. This body resolved, that, to preserve the peace, it was absolutely necessary that the troops should be removed; and they advised the Lieutenant-Governor to communicate that conclusion to Colonel Dalrymple, and to request that he would order his whole command to Castle William.
The remark of Dalrymple, as well as the decision of the Council, became known to the people, and the word passed round, "that Colonel Dalrymple had yielded, and that the Lieutenant-Governor only held out." This circumstance was communicated to Hutchinson, and he says, "It now lay upon me to choose that side which had the fewest and least difficulties; and I weighed and compared them as well as the time I had for them would permit. I knew it was most regular for me to leave this matter entire to the commanding officer. I was sensible the troops were designed to be, upon occasion, employed under the direction of the civil magistrate, and that at the Castle they would be too remote, in most cases, to answer that purpose. But then I considered they never had been used for that purpose, and there was no probability they ever would be, because no civil magistrate could be found under whose directions they might act; and they could be considered only as having a tendency to keep the inhabitants in some degree of awe, and even this was every day lessening; and the affronts the troops received were such that there was no avoiding quarrels and slaughter." Still he hesitated substantially to retract his word; for now a request from him, he knew, was equivalent to an order; and before he determined, he consulted three officers of the crown, who, though not present in the Council, were in the building, and the Secretary, Oliver. All agreed that he ought to comply with the advice of the Council. He then formally recommended Colonel Dalrymple to remove all the troops, who gave his word of honor that he would commence preparations in the morning for a removal, and that there should be no unnecessary delay in quartering both regiments at the Castle.
It was dark when the committee bore back to the meeting the great report of their success. It was received with expressions of the highest satisfaction. What a burden was lifted from the hearts of the Patriots! They did not, however, regard their work as quite done. They voted that a strong watch was necessary through the night, when the committee who had waited on the Lieutenant-Governor tendered their services to make a part of the watch, and the whole matter was placed in their hands as "a committee of safety." They were authorized to accept the service of such inhabitants as they might deem proper. The meeting, then dissolved. A few days after, the two regiments were removed to the Castle.
The withdrawal of the troops caused great surprise in England, and long deliberations by the Ministry. "It is put out of all doubt," Governor Bernard wrote Hutchinson, "that the attacking the soldiers was preconcerted in order to oblige them to fire, and then make it necessary to quit the town, in consequence of their doing what they were forced to do. It is considered by thinking men wholly as a manœuvre to support the cause of non-importation." The Opposition termed it an indignity put upon Great Britain, and called upon the Ministry to resent it upon a system, or to resign their offices. Lord Barrington, who approved of the soldiers' retiring to the Castle, said, that, "where there was no magistracy there should be no soldiers; and if they intended to have soldiers sent there again, they should provide for a magistracy, which could not be done but by appointing a royal Council, instead of the present democratical one." The Government were perplexed; but the expectation was general, that General Gage, without waiting for orders from the Government, would send a reinforcement to Boston, and order the whole of the troops into the town. "Every one," Governor Bernard wrote, "without exception, says it must be immediately done. Those in opposition are as loud as any. Lord Shelburne told a gentleman, who reported it to me, that it was now high time for Great Britain to act with spirit." The Governor advised Hutchinson, that, should it turn out that he had been successful in preventing Captain Preston from being murdered by the mob, "Government might be reconciled to the removal of the troops." There was much outside clamor, and those who indulged in it could not reconcile to themselves "six hundred regular troops giving way to two or three thousand common people, who, they say, would not have dared to attack them, if they had stood their ground"; and this class regarded the affair "as a successful bully." Colonel Barré, in the House of Commons, disposed of the question in a few words: "The officers agreed in sending the soldiers to Castle William; what Minister will dare to send them back to Boston?"
These events stirred the public mind in the Colonies profoundly. The Spirit evinced by the people of Boston in the whole transaction raised the town still higher in the estimation of the Patriots; annual commemorative orations kept alive the tragic scene; and thus the introduction of the troops, the question involved in their removal, and the massacre and triumph of the people, contributed powerfully to bring about that change in affections and principles which finally resulted in American Independence.
WET-WEATHER WORK.
BY A FARMER.
IV.
We are fairly on English ground now; of course, it is wet weather. The phenomena of the British climate have not changed much since the time when the rains "let fall their horrible pleasure" upon the head of the poor, drenched outcast, Lear. Thunder and lightning, however, which belonged to that particular war of the elements, are rare in England. The rain is quiet, fine, insinuating, constant as a lover,—not wasting its resources in sudden, explosive outbreaks.
During a foot-tramp of some four hundred miles, which I once had the pleasure of making upon English soil, and which led me from the mouth of the Thames to its sources, and thence through Derbyshire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and all of the Lake counties, I do not think that the violence of the rain kept me housed for more than five days out of forty. Not to say that the balance showed sunshine and a bonny sky; on the contrary, a soft, lubricating mist is the normal condition of the British atmosphere; and a neutral tint of gray sky, when no wet is falling, is almost sure to call out from the country-landlord, if communicative, an explosive and authoritative, "Fine morning, this, Sir!"
The really fine, sunny days—days you believed in rashly, upon the sunny evidence of such blithe poets as Herrick—are so rare, that, after a month of British travel, you can count them on your fingers. On such a one, by a piece of good fortune, I saw all the parterres of Hampton Court,—its great vine, its labyrinthine walks, its stately alleys, its ruddy range of brick, its clipped lindens, its rotund and low-necked beauties of Sir Peter Lely, and the red geraniums flaming on the window-sills of once royal apartments, where the pensioned dowagers now dream away their lives. On another such day, Twickenham, and all its delights of trees, bowers, and villas, were flashing in the sun as brightly as ever in the best days of Horace Walpole or of Pope. And on yet another, after weary tramp, I toiled up to the inn-door of "The Bear," at Woodstock; and after a cut or two into a ripe haunch of Oxfordshire mutton, with certain "tiny kickshaws," I saw, for the first time, under the light of a glorious sunset, that exquisite velvety stretch of the park of Woodstock, dimpled with water, dotted with forest—clumps, where companies of sleek fallow-deer were grazing by the hundred, where pheasants whirred away down the aisles of wood, where memories of Fair Rosamond and of Rochester and of Alice Lee lingered,—and all brought to a ringing close by Southey's ballad of "Blenheim," as the shadow of the gaunt Marlborough column slanted across the path.
There are other notable places, however, which seem—so dependent are we on first impressions—to be always bathed in a rain-cloud. It is quite impossible, for instance, for me to think of London Bridge save as a great reeking thoroughfare, slimy with thin mud, with piles of umbrellas crowding over it, like an army of turtles, and its balustrade steaming with wet. The charming little Dulwich Gallery, with its Bonningtons and Murillos, I remember as situated somewhere (for I could never find it again of my own head) at a very rainy distance from London, under the spout of an interminable waterfall. The guide-books talk of a pretty neighborhood, and of a thousand rural charms thereabout; I remember only one or two draggled policemen in oil-skin capes, and with heads slanted to the wind, and my cabby, in a four-caped coat, shaking himself like a water-dog, in the area. Exeter, Gloucester, and Glasgow are three great wet cities in my memory,—a damp cathedral in each, with a damp-coated usher to each, who shows damp tombs, and whose talk is dampening to the last degree. I suppose they have sunshine in these places, and in the light of the sun I am sure that marvellous gray tower of Gloucester must make a rare show; but all the reports in the world will not avail to dry up the image of those wet days of visit.
Considering how very much the fair days are overbalanced by the dirty, thick, dropping, misty weather of England, I think we take a too sunny aspect of her history: it has not been under the full-faced smiles of heaven that her battles, revolutions, executions, and pageants have held their august procession; the rain has wet many a May-day and many a harvesting, whose traditional color (through tender English verses) is gaudy with yellow sunshine. The revellers of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" would find a wet turf eight days out of ten to disport upon. We think of Bacon without an umbrella, and of Cromwell without a mackintosh; yet I suspect both of them carried these, or their equivalents, pretty constantly. Raleigh, indeed, threw his velvet cloak into the mud for the Virgin Queen to tread upon,—from which we infer a recent shower; but it is not often that an historical incident is so suggestive of the true state of the atmosphere.
History, however, does not mind the rain: agriculture must. More especially in any view of British agriculture, whether old or new, and in any estimate of its theories or progress, due consideration must be had for the generous dampness of the British atmosphere. To this cause is to be attributed primarily that wonderful velvety turf which is so unmatchable elsewhere; to the same cause, and to the accompanying even temperature, is to be credited very much of the success of the turnip-culture, which has within a century revolutionized the agriculture of Kugland; yet again, the magical effects of a thorough system of drainage are nowhere so demonstrable as in a soil constantly wetted, and giving a steady flow, however small, to the discharging tile. Measured by inches, the rain-fall is greater in most parts of America than in Great Britain; but this fall is so capricious with us, often so sudden and violent, that there must be inevitably a large surface-discharge, even though the tile, three feet below, is in working order. The true theory of skilful drainage is, not to carry away the quick flush of a shower, but to relieve a soil too heavily saturated by opening new outflows, setting new currents astir of both air and moisture, and thus giving new life and an enlarged capacity to lands that were dead with a stagnant over-soak.
Bearing in mind, then, the conditions of the British climate, which are so much in keeping with the "wet weather" of these studies, let us go back again to old Markham's day, and amble along—armed with our umbrellas—through the current of the seventeenth century.
James I., that conceited old pedant, whose "Counterblast to Tobacco" has worked the poorest of results, seems to have had a nice taste for fruits; and Sir Henry Wotton, his ambassador at Venice, writing from that city in 1622, says,—"I have sent the choicest melon-seeds of all kinds, which His Majesty doth expect, as I had order both from ray Lord Holderness and from Mr. Secretary Calvert." Sir Henry sent also with the seeds very particular directions for the culture of the plants, obtained probably from some head-gardener of a Priuli or a Morosini, whose melons had the full beat of Italian sunshine upon the south slopes of the Vicentine mountains. The same ambassador sends at that date to Lord Holderness "a double-flowering yellow rose, of no ordinary nature";[3] and it would be counted of no ordinary nature now, if what he avers be true, that "it flowreth every month from May till almost Christmas."
King James took special interest in the establishment of his garden at the Theobald Palace in Hertfordshire: there were clipped hedges, neat array of linden avenues, fountains, and a Mount of Venus within a labyrinth; twelve miles of wall encircled the park, and the soldiers of Cromwell found fine foraging-ground in it, when they entered upon the premises a few years later. The schoolmaster-king formed also a guild of gardeners in the city of London, at whose hands certificates of capacity for garden-work were demanded, and these to be given only after proper examination of the applicants. Lord Bacon possessed a beautiful garden, if we may trust his own hints to that effect, and the added praises of Wotton. Cashiobury, Holland House, and Greenwich gardens were all noted in this time; and the experiments and successes of the proprietor of Bednall-Greene garden I have already alluded to. But the country-gentleman, who lived upon his land and directed the cultivation of his property, was but a very savage type of the Bedford or Oxfordshire landholders of our day. It involved a muddy drag over bad roads, after a heavy Flemish mare, to bring either one's self or one's crops to market.
Sir Thomas Overbury, who draws such a tender picture of a "Milke-Mayde," is severe, and, I dare say, truthful, upon the country-gentleman. "His conversation," says he, "amongst his tenants is desperate: but amongst his equals full of doubt. His travel is seldome farther than the next market towne, and his inquisition is about the price of corne: when he travelleth, he will goe ten mile out of the way to a cousins house of his to save charges; and rewards servants by taking them by the hand when hee departs. Nothing under a sub-pœna can draw him to London: and when he is there, he sticks fast upon every object, casts his eyes away upon gazing, and becomes the prey of every cut-purse. When he comes home, those wonders serve him for his holy-day talke. If he goe to court, it is in yellow stockings: and if it be in winter, in a slight tafety cloake, and pumps and pantofles."
The portrait of the smaller farmer, who, in this time, tilled his own ground, is even more severely sketched by Bishop Earle. "A plain country fellow is one that manures his ground well, but lets himself lye fallow and unfilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy.... His hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and land-mark is the very mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee, and ree, better than English. His mind is not much distracted with objects, but if a good fat cow come in his way, he stands dumb and astonished, and though his haste be never so great, wilt fix here half an hours contemplation. His habitation is some poor thatched roof, distinguished from his barn by the loop-holes that let out smoak, which the rain had long since washed through, but for the double ceiling of bacon on the inside, which has hung there from his grand-sires time, and is yet to make rashers for posterity. He apprehends Gods blessings only in a good year, or a fat pasture, and never praises him but on good ground."
Such were the men who were to be reached by the agricultural literature of the day! Yet, notwithstanding this unpromising audience, scarcely a year passed but some talker was found who felt himself competent to expound the whole art and mystery of husbandry.
Adam Speed, Gent., (from which title we may presume that he was no Puritan,) published a little book in the year 1626, which he wittily called "Adam out of Eden." In this he undertakes to show how Adam, under the embarrassing circumstance of being shut out of Paradise, may increase the product of a farm from two hundred pounds to two thousand pounds a year by the rearing of rabbits on furze and broom! It is all mathematically computed; there is nothing to disappoint in the figures; but I suspect there might be in the rabbits.
Gentleman Speed speaks of turnips, clover, and potatoes; he advises the boiling of "butchers' blood" for poultry, and mixing the "pudding" with bran and other condiments, which will "feed the beasts very fat."
The author of "Adam out of Eden" also indulges himself in verse, which is certainly not up to the measure of "Paradise Lost." This is its taste:—
"Each soyl hath no liking of every grain,
Nor barley nor wheat is for every vein;
Yet know I no country so barren of soyl
But some kind of come may be gotten with toyl.
Though husband at home be to count the cost what,
Yet thus huswife within is as needful as that:
What helpeth in store to have never so much,
Half lost by ill-usage, ill huswifes, and such?"
The papers of Bacon upon subjects connected with rural life are so familiar that I need not recur to them. His particular suggestions, however sound in themselves, (and they generally are sound,) did by no means measure the extent of his contribution to the growth of good husbandry. But the more thorough methods of investigation which he instituted and encouraged gave a new and healthier direction to inquiries connected not only with agriculture, but with every experimental art.
Thus, Gabriel Platte, publishing his "Observations and Improvements in Husbandry," about the year 1638, thinks it necessary to sustain and illustrate them with a record of "twenty experiments."
Sir Richard Weston, too, a sensible up-country knight, has travelled through Flanders about the same time, and has seen such success attending upon the turnip and the clover culture there, that he urges the same upon his fellow-landholders, in a "Discourse of Husbandrie."
The book was published under the name of Hartlib,—the same Master Samuel Hartlib to whom Milton addressed his tractate "Of Education," and of whom the great poet speaks as "a person sent hither [to England] by some good Providence from a far country, to be the occasion and incitement of great good to this island."
This mention makes us curious to know something more of Master Samuel Hartlib. I find that he was the son of a Polish merchant, of Lithuania, was himself engaged for a time in commercial transactions, and came to England about the year 1640. He wrote several theological tracts, edited sundry agricultural works, including, among others, those of Sir Richard Weston, and published his own observations upon the shortcomings of British husbandry. He also proposed a grandiose scheme for an agricultural college, in order to teach youths "the theorick and practick parts of this most ancient, noble, and honestly gainfull art, trade, or mystery." The work published under his name entitled "The Legacy," besides notices of the Brabant husbandry, embraces epistles from various farmers, who may be supposed to represent the progressive agriculture of England. Among these letters I note one upon "Snaggreet," (shelly earth from river-beds); another upon "Seaweeds"; a third upon "Sea-sand"; and a fourth upon "Woollen-rags."
Hartlib was in good odor during the days of the Commonwealth; for he lived long enough to see that bitter tragedy of the executed king before Whitehall Palace, and to hold over to the early years of the Restoration. But he was not in favor with the people about Charles II.; the small pension that Cromwell had bestowed fell into sad arrearages; and the story is, that he died miserably poor.
It is noticeable that Hartlib, and a great many sensible old gentlemen of his date, spoke of the art of husbandry as a mystery. And so it is; a mystery then, and a mystery now. Nothing tries my patience more than to meet one of those billet-headed farmers who—whether in print or in talk—pretend to have solved the mystery and mastered it.
Take my own crop of corn yonder upon the flat, which I have watched since the day when it first shot up its little dainty spears of green, until now it spindles has been faithfully ploughed and fed and tilled; but how gross appliances all these, to the fine fibrous feeders that have been searching, day by day, every cranny of the soil,—to the broad leaflets that, week by week, have stolen out from their green sheaths to wanton with the wind and caress the dews! Is there any quick-witted farmer who shall tell us with anything like definiteness what the phosphates have contributed to all this, and how much the nitrogenous manures, and to what degree the deposits of humus? He may establish the conditions of a sure crop, thirty, forty, or sixty bushels to the acre, (seasons favoring); but how short a reach is this toward determining the final capacity of either soil or plant! How often the most petted experiments laugh us in the face! The great miracle of the vital laboratory in the plant remains to mock us. We test it; we humor it; we fondly believe that we have detected its secret: but the mystery stays.
A bumpkin may rear a crop that shall keep him from starvation; but to develop the utmost capacity of a given soil by fertilizing appliances, or by those of tillage, is the work, I suspect, of a wiser man than belongs to our day. And when I find one who fancies he has resolved all the conditions which contribute to this miracle of God's, and can control and fructify at his will, I have less respect for his head than for a good one—of Savoy cabbage. The great problem of Adam's curse is not worked out so easily. The sweating is not over yet.
If we are confronted with mystery, it is not blank, hopeless, fathomless mystery. Our plummet-lines are only too short; but they are growing longer. It is a lively mystery, that piques and tempts and rewards endeavor. It unfolds with an appetizing delay. Every year a new secret is laid bare, which, in the flush of triumph, seems a crowning development; whereas it presently appears that we have only opened a new door upon some further labyrinth.
Throughout the seventeenth century, the progress in husbandry, without being at any one period very brilliant, was decided and constant. If there was anything like a relapse, and neglect of good culture, it was most marked shortly after the Restoration. The country-gentlemen, who had entertained a wholesome horror of Cromwell and his troopers, had, during the Commonwealth, devoted themselves to a quiet life upon their estates, repairing the damages which the Civil War had wrought in their fortunes and in their lands. The high price of farm-products stimulated their efforts, and their country-isolation permitted a harmless show of the chivalrous contempt they entertained for the novi homines of the Commonwealth. With the return of Charles they abandoned their estates once more to the bailiffs, and made a rush for the town and for their share of the "leeks and onions."
But the earnest men were at work. Sainfoin and turnips were growing every year into credit. The potato was becoming a crop of value; and in the year 1664 a certain John Foster devoted a treatise to it, entitled, "England's Happiness increased, or a Sure Remedy against all Succeeding Dear Years, by a Plantation of Roots called Potatoes."
For a long time the crop had been known, and Sir Thomas Overbury had made it the vehicle of one of his sharp witticisms against people who were forever boasting of their ancestry,—their best part being below ground. But Foster anticipates the full value of what had before been counted a novelty and a curiosity. He advises how custards, paste, puddings, and even bread, may be made from the flour of potatoes.
John Worlidge (1669) gives a full system of husbandry, advising green fallows, and even recommending and describing a drill for the putting in of seed, and for distributing with it a fine fertilizer.
Evelyn, also, about this time, gave a dignity to rural pursuits by his "Sylva" and "Terra," both these treatises having been recited before the Royal Society. The "Terra" is something muddy,[4] and is by no means exhaustive; but the "Sylva" for more than a century was the British planter's hand-book, being a judicious, sensible, and eloquent treatise upon a subject as wide and as beautiful as its title. Even Walter Scott,—himself a capital woodsman,—when he tells (in "Kenilworth") of the approach of Tressilian and his Doctor companion to the neighborhood of Say's Court, cannot forego his tribute to the worthy and cultivated author who once lived there, and who in his "Sylva" gave a manual to every British planter, and in his life an exemplar to every British gentleman.
Evelyn was educated at Oxford, travelled widely upon the Continent, was a firm adherent of the royal party, and at one time a member of Prince Rupert's famous troop. He married the daughter of the British ambassador in Paris, through whom he came into possession of Say's Court, which he made a gem of beauty. But in his later years he had the annoyance of seeing his fine parterres and shrubbery trampled down by that Northern boor, Peter the Great, who made his residence there while studying the mysteries of ship-building at Deptford, and who had as little reverence for a parterre of flowers as for any other of the tenderer graces of life.
The British monarchs have always been more regardful of those interests which were the object of Evelyn's tender devotion. I have already alluded to the horticultural fancies of James I. His son Charles was an extreme lover of flowers, as well as of a great many luxuries which hedged him against all Puritan sympathy. "Who knows not," says Milton, in his reply to the ΕΙΚΩΝ ΒΛΕΙΛΙΚΗ, "the licentious remissness of his Sunday's theatre, accompanied with that reverend statute for dominical jigs and May-poles, published in his own name," etc.?
But the poor king was fated to have little enjoyment of either jigs or May-poles; harsher work belonged to his reign; and all his garden-delights came to be limited finally to a little pot of flowers upon his prison-window. And I can easily believe that the elegant, wrong-headed, courteous gentleman tended these poor flowers daintily to the very last, and snuffed their fragrance with a Christian gratitude.
Charles was an appreciative lover of poetry, too, as well as of Nature. I wonder if it ever happened to him, in his prison-hours at Carisbrooke, to come upon Milton's "L'Allegro," (first printed in the very year of the Battle of Naseby,) and to read,—
"In thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreprovèd pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweetbrier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine."
How it must have smitten the King's heart to remember that the tender poet, whose rhythm none could appreciate better than he, was also the sturdy Puritan pamphleteer whose blows had thwacked so terribly upon the last props that held up his tottering throne!
Cromwell, as we have seen, gave Master Hartlib a pension; but whether on the score of his theological tracts, or his design for an agricultural college, would be hard to say. I suspect that the hop was the Protector's favorite among flowering plants, and that his admiration of trees was measured by their capacity for timber. Yet that rare masculine energy, which he and his men carried with them in their tread all over England, was a very wakeful stimulus to productive agriculture.
Charles II. loved tulips, and befriended Evelyn. In his long residence at Paris he had grown into a great fondness for the French gardens. He afterward sent for Le Notre—who had laid out Versailles at an expense of twenty millions of dollars—to superintend the planting of Greenwich and St. James. Fortunately, no strict imitation of Versailles was entered upon. The splendors of Chatsworth Garden grew in this time out of the exaggerated taste, and must have delighted the French heart of Charles. Other artists have had the handling of this great domain since the days of Le Notre. A crazy wilderness of rock-work, amid which the artificial waters commit freak upon freak, has been strewed athwart the lawn; a stately conservatory has risen, under which the Duke may drive, if he choose, in coach and four, amid palm-trees, and the monster-vegetation of the Eastern archipelago; the little glass temple is in the gardens, under which the Victoria lily was first coaxed into British bloom; a model village has sprung up at the Park gates, in which each cottage is a gem, and seems transplanted from the last book on rural ornamentation. But the sight of the village oppresses one with a strange incongruity; the charm of realism is wanting; it needs a population out of one of Watteau's pictures,—clean and deft as the painted figures; flesh and blood are too gross, too prone to muddy shoes, and to—sneeze. The rock-work, also, is incongruous; it belongs on no such wavy roll of park-land; you see it a thousand times grander, a half-hour's drive away, toward Matlock. And the stiff parterres, terraces, and alleys of Le Notre are equally out of place in such a scene. If, indeed, as at Versailles, they bounded and engrossed the view, so that natural surfaces should have no claim upon your eye,—if they were the mere setting to a monster palace, whose colonnades and balusters of marble edged away into colonnades and balusters of box-wood, and these into a limitless extent of long green lines, which are only lost to the eye where a distant fountain dashes its spray of golden dust into the air,—as at Versailles,—there would be keeping. But the Devonshire palace has quite other setting. Blue Derbyshire hills are behind it; a grand, billowy slope of the comeliest park-land in England rolls down from its terrace-foot to where the Derwent, under hoary oaks, washes its thousand acres of meadow-vale, with a flow as charming and limpid as one of Virgil's eclogues. It is such a setting that carries the great quadrangle of Chatsworth Palace and its flanking artificialities of rock and garden, like a black patch upon the face of a fine woman of Charles's court.
This brings us upon our line of march again. Charles II. loved stiff gardens; James II. loved stiff gardens; and William, with his Low-Country tastes, out-stiffened both, with his
"topiary box a-row."
Lord Bacon has commended the formal style to public admiration by his advocacy and example. The lesson was repeated at Cashiobury by the most noble the Earl of Essex (of whom Evelyn writes,—"My Lord is not illiterate beyond the rate of most noblemen of his age"). So also that famous garden of Moor-Park in Hertfordshire, laid out by the witty Duchess of Bedford, to whom Dr. Donne addresses some of his piquant letters, was a model of old-fashioned and stately graces. Sir William Temple praises it beyond reason in his "Garden of Epicurus," and cautions readers against undertaking any of those irregularities of garden-figures which the Chinese so much affect. He admires only stateliness and primness. "Among us," he says, "the Beauty of Building and Planting is placed chiefly in some certain Proportions, Symmetries, or Uniformities; our Walks and our Trees ranged so as to answer one another, and at exact Distances."
From all these it is clear what was the garden-drift of the century. Even Waller, the poet,—whose moneys, if he were like most poets, could not be thrown away idly,—spent a large sum in levelling the hills about his rural home at Beaconsfields. (We shall find a different poet and treatment by-and-by in Shenstone.)
Only Milton, speaking from the very arcana of the Puritan rigidities, breaks in upon these geometric formalities with the rounded graces of the garden which he planted in Eden. There
"the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold
With mazy error under pendent shades,
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain."
Going far behind all conventionalities, he credited to Paradise—the ideal of man's happiest estate—variety, irregularity, profusion, luxuriance; and to the fallen estate, precision, formality, and an inexorable Art, which, in place of concealing, glorified itself. In the next century, when Milton comes to be illustrated by Addison and the rest, we shall find gardens of a different style from those of Waller and of Hampton Court.
And now from some look-out point near to the close of the seventeenth century, when John Evelyn, in his age, is repairing the damages that Peter the Great has wrought in his pretty Deptford home, let us take a bird's-eye glance at rural England.
It is raining; and the clumsy Bedford coach, drawn by stout Flemish mares,—for thorough-breds are as yet unknown,—is covered with a sail-cloth to keep the wet away from the six "insides." The grass, wherever the land is stocked with grass, is as velvety as now. The wheat in the near county of Herts is fair, and will turn twenty bushels to the acre; here and there an enterprising landholder has a small field of dibbled grain, which will yield a third more. John Worlidge's drill is not in request, and is only talked of by a few wiseacres who prophesy its ultimate adoption. The fat bullocks of Bedford will not dress more than seven hundred a head; and the cows, if killed, would not overrun five hundred weight. There are occasional fields of sainfoin and of turnips; but these latter are small, and no ridging or hurdling is yet practised. From time to time appears a patch of barren moorland, which has been planted with forest-trees, in accordance with the suggestions of Mr. Evelyn, and under the wet sky the trees are thriving. Wide reaches of fen, measured by hundreds of miles, (which now bear great crops of barley,) are saturated with moisture, and tenanted only by ghost-like companies of cranes.
The gardens attached to noble houses, under the care of some pupil of Wise, or of Parkinson, have their espaliers,—their plums, their pears,[5] and their grapes. These last are rare, however, (Parkinson says sour, too,) and bear a great price in the London market. One or two horticulturists of extraordinary enterprise have built greenhouses, warmed, Evelyn says, "in a most ingenious way, by passing a brick flue underneath the beds."
The lesser country-gentlemen, who have no establishments in town, rarely venture up, for fear of the footpads on the heath, and the insolence of the black-guard Cockneys. Their wives are staid dames, learned at the brew-tub and in the buttery,—but not speaking French, nor wearing hoops or patches. A great many of the older exotic plants have become domesticated; and the goodwife has a flaming parterre at her door,—but not valued one half so much as her bed of marjoram and thyme. She may read King James's Bible, or, if a Non-Conformist, Baxter's "Saint's Rest"; while the husband regales himself with a thumb-worn copy of "Sir Fopling Flutter," or, if he live well into the closing years of the century, with De Foe's "True-born Englishman."
Poetic feeling was more lacking in the country-life than in the illustrative literature of the century. To say nothing of Milton's brilliant little poems, "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," which flash all over with the dews, there are the charming "Characters" of Sir Thomas Overbury, and the graceful discourse of Sir William Temple. The poet Drummond wrought a music out of the woods and waters which lingers alluringly even now around the delightful cliffs and valleys of Hawthornden. John Dryden, though a thorough cit, and a man who would have preferred his arm-chair at Will's Coffee-House to Chatsworth and the fee of all its lands, has yet touched most tenderly the "daisies white" and the spring, in his "Flower and the Leaf."
But we skip a score of the poets, and bring our wet day to a close with the naming of two honored pastorals. The first, in sober prose, is nothing more nor less than Walton's "Angler." Its homeliness, its calm, sweet pictures of fields and brooks, its dainty perfume of flowers, its delicate shadowing-forth of the Christian sentiment which lived by old English firesides, its simple, artless songs, (not always of the highest style, but of a hearty naturalness that is infinitely better,)—these make the "Angler" a book that stands among the thumb-worn. There is good marrowy English in it; I know very few fine writers of our times who could make a better book on such a subject to-day,—with all the added information, and all the practice of the newspaper-columns. What Walton wants to say he says. You can make no mistake about his meaning; all is as lucid as the water of a spring. He does not play upon your wonderment with tropes. There is no chicane of the pen; he has some pleasant matters to tell of, and he tells of them—straight.
Another great charm about Walton is his childlike truthfulness. I think he is almost the only earnest trout-fisher I ever knew (unless Sir Humphrey Davy be excepted) whose report could be relied upon for the weight of a trout. I have many excellent friends—capital fishermen—whose word is good upon most concerns of life, but in this one thing they cannot be confided in. I excuse it; I take off twenty per cent. from their estimates without either hesitation, anger, or reluctance.
I do not think I should have trusted in such a matter Charles Cotton, although he was agricultural as well as piscatory,—having published a "Planter's Manual." I think he could, and did, draw a long bow. I suspect innocent milkmaids were not in the habit of singing Kit Marlowe's songs to the worshipful Mr. Cotton.
One pastoral remains to mention, published at the very opening of the year 1600, and spending its fine forest-aroma thenceforward all down the century. I mean Shakspeare's play of "As You Like It."
From beginning to end the grand old forest of Arden is astir overhead; from beginning to end the brooks brawl in your ear; from beginning to end you smell the bruised ferns and the delicate-scented wood-flowers. It is Theocritus again, with the civilization of the added centuries contributing its spangles of reason, philosophy, and grace. Who among all the short-kirtled damsels of all the eclogues will match us this fair, lithe, witty, capricious, mirthful, buxom Rosalind? Nowhere in books have we met with her like,—but only at some long-gone picnic in the woods, where we worshipped "blushing sixteen" in dainty boots and white muslin. There, too, we met a match for sighing Orlando,—mirrored in the water; there, too, some diluted Jaques may have "moralized" the excursion for next day's "Courier," and some lout of a Touchstone (there are always such in picnics) passed the ices, made poor puns, and won more than his share of the smiles.
Walton is English all over; but "As You Like It" is as broad as the sky, or love, or folly, or hope.
THE FRENCH STRUGGLE FOR NAVAL AND COLONIAL POWER.
In comparison with our national misfortunes all beside seems trifling. Else nothing would so fasten our attention as the French invasion and conquest of Mexico. A dependency of France established at our door! The most restless, ambitious, and warlike nation in Europe our neighbor! Who shall tell what results, momentous and lasting, may follow in the train of such events?
What is the explanation of this conquest? Is it the freak of an ambitious despot? Or is it only a stroke in the line of a settled policy? one fact, which we see, amid a great number of facts which we do not see?
This particular enterprise comes close to us. It affronts our pride and tramples upon our political traditions. It establishes, what we did not wish to see on this Western Continent, another foreign jurisdiction. But for more than twenty-five years France has been engaged in a series of like enterprises. In places not so near to us, by the same arbitrary methods, she has already achieved conquests as important. With soft-footed ambition, she has planted her flag and reared her strongholds on spots full of natural advantages. But the aim is the same everywhere: the reëstablishment of her lost colonial and naval power. And the hope of France is, that in the race for mercantile and naval greatness she may yet challenge and vanquish the Sovereign of the Seas.
The peace of 1815 left France with her naval and colonial power broken apparently beyond hope. Even in the thirteen years preceding that peace England had taken or destroyed not less than six hundred of her war-ships. In the Mediterranean, on the Atlantic, amid the islands of the West Indies, in the far-off golden East, wherever contending, fleet against fleet, or ship with ship, everywhere she had been vanquished and driven from the sea. That boundless colonial empire, of which Dupleix in the East dreamed, and for whose establishment in the West Montcalm fought and died, had shrunk to a few fishing-ports off the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a few sugar-islands in the West Indies, and some unarmed factories dotting the coasts of Africa and the shores of Hindostan, and existing by British grace and permission. To so low an estate had fallen that towering ambition which thought to exercise uncontrolled dominion over this continent, to rule with more than regal sway the rich islands and peninsulas of Asia, and to dictate peace to fallen England from the guns of her armadas. After five wars waged with no craven spirit in less than three-quarters of a century, after she had exhausted every resource and more than once banded against her island foe every naval power in Europe, she was forced to succumb to British perseverance and to the gallantry of British sailors. The peace, which came not a moment too soon, found her with a navy literally annihilated, and with little remaining of her colonial empire but the memory. When we compare this hopeless failure with the mercantile activity and naval force of Modern France,—when we call up, in imagination, her new colonies, the germs almost of empires,—we cannot admire too much the courage and energy which have called into existence such magnificent resources. To what are we to attribute this stupendous change? What have been the methods of this growth? By what steps has this grand progress from weakness to strength been achieved?
In such a work of restoration, France had everything to create,—ships, armaments, machinery, and sailors even, to replace those who had fallen in the front of battle. To produce capacity of production was her first work,—to establish new ports or replenish old ones, to build docks, to rear workshops, to gather materials. This is what she has been doing. Silently and steadily she has been laying the foundations of maritime greatness. Her ports, in everything which contributes to naval efficiency,—in size, in mechanical appliances, in concentration upon one spot of all the trades and all the resources necessary for the construction and repair of war-ships,—excel all other naval depots in the world.
This is no exaggeration. There is the port of Cherbourg. Originally it was little more than an open bay, hollowed by the waters of the English Channel in the French coast, with a rocky shore exposed to every northern blast. But it was situated just where France needed a harbor, midway on her northern coast, facing England. Across this open bay, as a chord subtends its arc, a gigantic sea-wall has been stretched. Built in deep water more than a mile from the head of the bay, it extends almost from shore to shore. It is nearly three miles long. It is scarcely less than nine hundred feet wide at its base. Rising from the bed of the sea sixty-six feet, it is firm enough to bear up fortresses strong as human engineering can rear. This is the famous digue of Cherbourg. Its construction has been a seventy years' battle with the elements. Many times the waves have destroyed the work of years. Once a furious tempest swept away the whole superstructure, with its forts, armaments, barracks, and even garrison. But failure has only awakened fresh energy, and it stands now complete and rooted in the sea like a reef. At each end of the digue, between it and the main land, are broad ship-channels, affording a free passage at all tides to the largest ships. Thus science has called into existence a safe harbor, protected from the assaults of the sea by its granite barrier,—protected none the less from man's assaults by the concentric fire of more than six hundred guns.
This is but the exterior of Cherbourg. In the bosom of the rocky cliffs of its western shore three basins or docks have been hewn with gigantic toil. The first, finished in 1813, is 950 feet long, 768 feet wide, and 55 feet deep, and will hold securely fifteen ships of the line. The second, of somewhat smaller dimensions, was completed in 1829, and will float a dozen ships. The third, far larger than either, was opened with great ceremony in 1858: it is 1365 feet long, 650 feet wide, and 60 feet deep, and will contain eighteen or twenty ships of the largest size. On the sides of these basins are twelve building-slips and seven docks. And radiating from them, and in close contiguity, are arsenals, storehouses, timber-yards, ropewalks, sail-lofts, bakeries, and machine-shops capable of turning out marine engines, anchors, cables, and indeed every piece of iron-work which enters into the construction of a ship. It is no vain boast that an army of a hundred thousand men can be embarked any fine morning at Cherbourg, and that the fleet necessary for its transport can be built and armed and equipped and protected to the hour of its departure in this fortified haven.
Yet Cherbourg is but one of five ports equally efficient, equally protected, and equally furnished with the products of mechanic and nautical invention. Brest, L'Orient, and Rochefort, on the west, have far greater natural and scarcely less acquired advantages; while the old port of Toulon on the Mediterranean, old only in name, has been so enlarged and strengthened, that it can supply for the southern waters all and more than Cherbourg does for the northern. One fact will show to what an extent this power of naval production has been carried. In these five ports are some eighty building-slips or houses, and twenty-five docks, and, connected with them, all the materials, all the trades, all the labor-saving machines, all the mechanical forces, which the nineteenth century knows. If she wished, France could build at the same time forty ships of the line and forty frigates, while twenty-five more were undergoing repairs. The result of all this activity is, that, in extent, in completeness, in concentration of forces upon the right spot, the naval ports and dockyards of France are absolutely unequalled. And the work goes on. To-day twenty-two thousand men are employed upon naval works. Within six months a wet dock has been completed at Toulon, and another at L'Orient, while at Brest great ranges of workshops are hastening to completion; and it is whispered that at Cherbourg another basin is, like its predecessors, to be chiselled out of the solid rock.
Do we ask now what France has gained, in fleets and armaments, from this immense work of preparation? Everything. Not to dwell upon sailing-ships, which the progress of invention has made of inferior worth, she has a steam-navy second to that of no power in Europe. Her present ruler has fully appreciated the importance of that new element in naval warfare, steam,—an element all the more important to France, that it tends to lower the value of mere seamanship, in which she has always been deficient, and to increase the value of scientific knowledge and training, in which she has ever been with the foremost. For ten years her energy has been tasked to produce steamships of the greatest power and of the finest models. Since 1852 her ships of the line have increased from two to forty, and her frigates from twenty-one to forty-six. A fleet has thus been created which is numerically equal to that of England, and which, so far as these things depend upon the stanchness of the ships and the weight of the armaments, is perhaps in force and efficiency superior.
If we turn our attention to iron-clad ships, we shall see best displayed the sagacity, energy, and secretiveness of Louis Napoleon. In the Crimean War, three floating batteries covered with iron slabs, and each mounting eighteen fifty-pounders, silenced the Russian fort at Kinburn. This was a lesson it would seem that any one might learn. Louis Napoleon did not fail to learn it. If a ship can be made invulnerable, or nearly so, in every part, then of what avail is that strategy which secures choice of position, and which, of old, almost decided the battle? Will not he come off victor who can produce guns from which the heaviest shot may be hurled at the highest velocity, and gunners who shall launch them on their errand of destruction with the greatest accuracy? The French emperor has fairly overreached his island rivals. While they were experimenting, he laid the keels of two iron-clads of six thousand tons burden. In 1859 he ordered the construction of twenty steel-clad frigates and fifty gunboats. Lord Clarence Paget declared in debate last March, that, while England had, finished or constructing, only sixteen iron-clad frigates, France had thirty-one. And even this takes no account of floating-batteries and gunboats, wholly or in part protected, and of which, if we are to trust her papers, France has an almost fabulous number.
But who shall man this fleet? Where are the skilful mariners to make efficient these tremendous elements of naval power? It was Lord Nelson, I think, who exclaimed, when he saw the stanch ships of Spain, "Thank God, Spaniards cannot build men!" The recent changes in naval construction, decreasing perhaps the relative worth of mere seamanship, may have made the exclamation less pertinent than of old. But, after all, on the rude and stormy ocean, proverbially fickle and uncertain, nothing can take the place of sailors,—of brave and skilful men, trained by long struggle with wind and wave, calm in danger, apt in emergencies, finding the narrow path of safety where common eyes see only peril and ruin. France understands tins. She knows how many of her past humiliations can be traced directly to defective seamanship. But where to seek the remedy? How to find or make sailors fit to contend with those who were almost born and bred on the restless surge? By what methods, with a slender commercial marine and a people reluctant to encounter the hardships and dangers of sea-life, to fill up the scanty roll of her able seamen? That is the problem France had to solve; and she has done everything to solve it,—but remove impossibilities.
The first counsel of wisdom was to make the number of her sailors greater. France has, at the most liberal estimate, only one hundred and fifty thousand men at all conversant with the sea; while England has, including boatmen, fishermen, coasters, and sailors of long voyages, the enormous number of eight hundred thousand. Remove this disproportion and you settle the whole question. Unfortunately, this is a matter in which government can do but little, while national tastes and habits do everything. No despotism can make a commercial marine where no commercial spirit is. And no voice, charm it ever so wisely, can draw the peasant of France from his vine-clad hills and plains. The French rulers have done what they could. They have fostered, with a steady and liberal hand, the fisheries. Every spring, twenty thousand men have set sail to that best nursery of seamanship,—the Banks of Newfoundland. These men are paid a bounty by Government, and, in return, are subjected to a naval discipline, and, upon an emergency, are liable at a moment's notice to enter into the naval service. To quicken mercantile enterprise, by which alone mariners can be called into existence, enormous subsidies have been paid to the great lines of steamers to Brazil and the East. And the yearning for colonies, which in our day has led to almost simultaneous attempts to found settlements in both hemispheres and in all waters, has no doubt for a leading cause the desire to build up a mercantile marine, and with it a numerous body of expert seamen. If these efforts have not accomplished all that their projectors could wish, it is not because their plans lacked sagacity, but because it is hard to put the genius of the sea into the breasts of men who are essentially landsmen.
To increase the number of French sailors would unquestionably be the best possible method of adding to French naval power. But suppose that this cannot be done. Supposes that there is in the heart of the French people an invincible attachment to the soil, which makes them deaf to every siren of the sea. What is the next counsel of wisdom? This, is it not? To make what sailors you have efficient and available for naval emergencies. In this respect the French authorities have achieved an entire success. Every sailor, nay, every man whose employment savors at all of maritime life, though he be only a boatman plying the river, or a laborer in harbor or dock, is enrolled in what is called the marine inscription,—thenceforward in all times of need to be called into active service. This puts the whole seafaring population at the disposal of Government. Nor is this all. Regular drafts are made upon the seamen; and it is computed that in every period of nine years all the sailors of France serve in their turn in the navy. They are trained in all that belongs to naval duty: in the use of ships' guns, in the sailing of great ships, and in the evolutions of fleets. No matter how sudden the call, or from what direction the sailors are taken, no French fleet leaves or can leave port with a crew of green hands.
The training which is given to sailors actually in service is an equally important matter. The French Admiralty keeps no drones in its employ; certainly it does not promote them to places of trust. Honors are won, not bought. Every step up, from midshipman to admiral, must be the result of honorable service, and actual proficiency both in the theory and practice of a sailor's profession. The modern French naval officer is master of his business, fit to compete with the best skill of the best maritime races. Then the sailors themselves are trained. Even in time of peace, twenty-five thousand are kept in service. Gathered on board great experimental fleets, officers and men alike are schooled in all branches of nautical duty. In port or out of it, they are not idle. Every day a prescribed routine of exercise is rigidly enforced. Great have been the results. The French sailor of 1863 is not a reproduction of the sailor of 1800. In alertness, in knowledge, in silent obedience, he is a great improvement upon his predecessor. Actual experiment shows that a French crew will weigh anchor, spread and furl sail, replace spars or running-ringing, lower or raise topmasts, or perform any other duty pertaining to a ship, with as much celerity as the crew of any other nation. And no confusion, no babbling of many voices, such as the British writers of the last generations delighted to describe, mars the beauty of the evolutions. One mind directs, and one voice alone breaks the stillness. Since the Crimean War, the English speak with respect of French seamanship; and though they do not believe that it is equal to their own, they do not scruple to allow that a naval battle would be disputed now with a fierceness hitherto unknown.
All that sagacity and experience would prompt has been attempted. All that training and discipline can do has already been accomplished. Yet there is one source of weakness for which there can be no remedy. France has no naval reserves. And if she war with England, she will need them. To put her marine on a war-basis would require all her available seamen. To fill the gaps of war, she has not, and she cannot have, until a truly commercial spirit grows up in the hearts of her people, the multitudes of reserved men, more familiar with the sea than the land, such as swarm in English ports. Yet, with every deduction, her capacity of naval production, her strong fleets, and her trained seamen make her a naval power whose might no one can estimate, and whose assault any nation may well shun by all means except the sacrifice of honor and rights.
If now we turn from the naval progress of France to her recent colonial enterprises, we shall find fresh evidence that she has resumed that contest which came to so disastrous a close fifty years ago. The old dream of colonial empire has come back again. This was inevitable. A great nation like France cannot always drink the cup of humiliation. With an ambition no less high and arrogant than that which pervades the British mind, she would plant far and wide French ideas and civilization. While England has colonies scattered in every part of the habitable globe, while Holland has almost monopolized the rich islands of the Eastern Archipelago, and while even Spain has Manila in the East and Cuba in the West, it could hardly be expected that France, the equal of either, and in some respects the superior of all, should rest content with a virtual exclusion from everything but her narrow home-possessions.
And then, however disguised, there is in the heart of France an intense naval rivalry of England. Though the stern logic of events has been against her more than once, she does not accept the verdict. She means to revise it with a strong hand. But she must have a navy, and a navy cannot exhibit its highest vigor, unless it have a just foundation in an energetic, wide-ranging commerce. And such a commerce cannot exist except it have its depots and its agencies, its outlets and its markets, everywhere. Above all, we are to seek the source of this new colonial ambition in the character and purposes of that singular man who controls the destinies of France. Not even his enemies would now question his ability. The power he wields in Europe, the impression he has stamped upon its policy, the skill with which he has made even his foes minister to his greatness, all bear witness to it. But no one can study him in the light of the past and not see that his is no ordinary ambition. To be the ruler of one kingdom does not fill out its measure. To be the arbiter of the fortunes of states, the genius who shall change the current of affairs and shape the destiny of the future,—to exercise a power in every part of the globe, and to have a name familiar in every land and beneath every sun,—this is his ambition. No wonder that under such a ruler France has embarked in a career of colonial aggrandizement whose limit no one can foresee. The same hand which curbed the despot of the North, and made the fair vision of Italian unity a solid reality, may well think to place a puppet king on the throne of the Aztecs, or to carve rich provinces out of Farther India.
France made her first practical essay in colonization by her conquest of Algiers. A Dey once said to an English consul, "The Algerines are a company of rogues, and I am their captain." The definition cannot be improved. That such a power should have been permitted to exist and ravage is one of the anomalies of modern history. Yet within the memory of living men this hoard of pirates flaunted its barbarism in the face of the civilization of the nineteenth century. But in 1830 the Dey filled the cup of wrath to the brim. He inflicted upon the French consul, in full levee, the gross insult of a blow in the face. The expedition sent to revenge the insult showed upon what a hollow foundation this savage power rested. The army landed without opposition. In five days it swept before it in hopeless rout the wreck of the Algerine forces. In three weeks it breached and captured the corsair's strongholds. The history of the French occupation of Algeria is a tale of unceasing martial exploits, by which France has extended her empire six hundred miles along the shores of the Mediterranean, and inland fifty miles,—two hundred miles, according, we had almost said, to the position of the last Arab or Kabyle raid and insurrection.
Whatever else Algeria may or may not have done for France, it certainly has furnished a field whereon to train soldiers. Here seventy-five thousand men, day and night, have watched and fought a wily foe. Here all the great soldiers of the Empire, Arnand, Pelissier, Canrobert, Bosquet, have won their first laurels. Here, amid the exigencies of wild desert and mountain campaigning, has grown up that marvellous body of soldiers, the Zouaves: "picked men, short of stature, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, bull-necked," agile as goats, tolerant of thirst and hunger, outmarching, outfighting, and outenduring the Desert Arab; men who have never turned their backs upon a foe. Subtract from the army of Louis Napoleon the heroes of Algeria, and you leave behind a body out of which the fiery soul has fled.
The commercial results are not quite so satisfactory. The exports, indeed, have risen to fifteen millions of dollars, and the imports to twenty-five millions more; while some two hundred thousand Europeans have made their home in the Colony, and a few hundred square miles have been subjected to European culture. But as the yearly cost of the occupation is fifteen million of dollars, the net profit cannot be great. Algeria, however, is the safety-valve of France, giving active employment to the idle, the discontented, and the revolutionary; and the Government, on that account, may consider that the money is well expended.
One consequence of the occupation of Algeria has generally been overlooked,—its naval result. Hitherto France had absolutely no good port in the Mediterranean (if we except those of Corsica) but Toulon and Marseilles. It was absolutely less at home in its own sea than England. The new conquest gave it a strip of coast on the southern border of the sea, but no port. The harbor of Algiers, with the exception of a little haven artificially protected and capable of holding insecurely a dozen vessels, was much like that of Cherbourg, an open bay, facing northward. The storms sweep it with such fury that not less than twenty vessels have been driven ashore in one gale. But the French genius seems to delight in such struggles for empire with the waves. Almost with the taking of the citadel the engineer began his work. Two jetties, as they are called, were pushed out from the land into deep water,—one from the mole on the north, half a mile long, and the other from Point Bab-Azoum on the south, a third of a mile long. In 1850 these were so far complete as to inclose a safe harbor of two hundred acres. But not content, the French have already planned, and possibly are now finished, still other works, by which the perilous roadstead outside this harbor shall be transformed into a secure anchorage of sixteen hundred acres. Past events warrant us in believing that these improvements will be pursued with no slack hand, until astonished Europe finds another Cherbourg, a safe harbor, ample means of repair, and frowning guns to repel all invaders. Imprudent Young France, indeed, whispers now that Algiers makes the Mediterranean a French lake. But that is a little premature. While Gibraltar and Malta hold safely their harbors, and England's naval power is unbroken, no nation can truly make this boast.
The next enterprise of France was hardly so creditable to her as the Algerine conquest. Midway in the Pacific is the island of Tahita or Otaheite,—as fair a gem as the sun ever looked down upon. The soft and balmy air,—the undulating surface, rising to mountains and sinking into deep valleys, luxuriant with tropical verdure,—the distant girdle of coral reefs, which holds the island set in a circlet of tranquil blue waters,—the gentle and indolent temper of the natives,—have all conspired to throw an air of romance around the very name Otaheite. The Christian world is bound to it by another tie. For thither came Protestant missionaries, drawn by the reports of the tractable disposition of the islanders, and labored with such success that in 1817 the king and all his subjects espoused Christianity.
Into this island Eden discord came in the guise of a Roman catechist, who was sent thither for the express purpose of proselyting. As if aware of the nature of his ungracious task, he disguised his real character. But he was detected, and, together with a companion who had joined him, was dismissed from the island by Queen Pomare, who dreaded the sectarian strife his presence would awaken. This was her whole offence. Four years later, in 1838, when the whole transaction might well have been forgotten, Captain De Petit Thouars appeared in the French frigate Venus, and demanded and obtained satisfaction in the sum of two thousand piastres Spanish, and freedom for Catholic worship. In two subsequent visits, though no new offence had been given, he increased the severity of his demands, first putting the island under a protectorate, and finally, in 1843, taking full possession of it as a French colony. The helpless Queen appealed to Louis Philippe, who returned the island, but reaffirmed the protectorate.
This same French protectorate is a rare piece of ponderous irony. The French governor collects all export and import duties, writes all state-papers, assembles and dismisses the island legislature according to his good pleasure, doles out to the Queen a yearly allowance of a thousand pounds, puts her in duress in her own house, if her conduct displeases him, and will not allow her to see strangers, except by his permission. Few will believe that zeal for the honor of the Catholic Church prompted Louis Philippe to inflict so disproportioned a punishment. That the island is the best victualling-station in the South Pacific is a far greater sin, and one for which there could be in covetous eyes no adequate punishment, except that seizure which is so modestly termed a protectorate.
Pass now from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. There is the little rocky island of St. Paul, situated in the same latitude as Cape Town and Melbourne; and, planted with singular accuracy equidistant from the two, it is the only place of shelter in the long route between them. Its harbor, if harbor it may be called, is the most secure, the most secluded, and the most romantic, perhaps, in the whole world. St. Paul is of volcanic origin. It is, indeed, little more than an extinct crater with a narrow rim of land around it to separate it from the sea. Through this rim the waters of the great Indian Ocean have cut a channel. The crater has thus become a beautiful salt lake, a mile in diameter, clear, deep, almost circular, and from whose border, on every side, rise the old volcanic walls draped in verdure. The strait connecting it with the sea is but three hundred feet wide, and at high tide ten feet deep,—thus affording an easy passage for small vessels into this most delightful seclusion; and no doubt the strait might be so deepened as to float the largest ships. St. Paul is not at present much frequented. But in a sea which is every year becoming more populous with the commerce of every nation, who shall tell what such a central station may become? Its title was somewhat uncertain. England thought she held it as a dependency of Mauritius. But in 1847 the governor of Bourbon, with a happy audacity, took possession of it, as an outpost of his own island, and planted a little French colony of fishermen. We have not heard that the assumption has been disputed.
No doubt, most of our readers may have observed in the daily prints occasional allusions to the French War in Cochin China. Probably few have understood the full meaning of the facts so quietly chronicled. Perhaps none have dreamed that they were reading the first notices of a new Eastern conquest, which, in extent and importance, may yet be second only to that which has already been achieved by the British in Hindostan. Yet so it is. The Cambodia is the largest river in Southern Asia, and, together with the smaller and parallel river of Saigon, drains a tract of not less than five hundred thousand square miles. The region for which the French have been contending includes the provinces which cluster around the mouths of these two rivers, and command them. No position could be happier. For while on the one hand it controls the outlet of a river stretching up into a rich and fertile country eighteen hundred miles, on the other it projects into the Chinese Sea at a point nearly midway between Singapore and Hong Kong, and so secures to its possessor a just influence in that commercial highway. The ostensible cause of the war in this region was the murder of a French missionary. If this was ever the real cause, it long since gave way to a settled purpose of conquest.
In the latter part of the year 1862 the Emperor of Cochin China was forced to cede to France the coveted provinces. Already new fortifications have arisen at Saigon, and dock-yards and coal-depots been established, and all steps taken for a permanent occupation of the territory. The following advertisement appeared in the London "Times" for January 23, 1863,—"Contract for transportation from Glasgow to Saigon of a floating iron dock in pieces. Notice to ship-owners. The administration of the Imperial Navy of France have at Glasgow a floating iron dock in pieces, which they require to be transported from that port to Saigon, Cochin China. The said dock, with machinery, pumps, anchors, and instruments necessary to its working, will weigh from two thousand to twenty-five hundred tons. Ship-owners disposed to undertake the transport are requested to forward their tenders to the Minister of Marine and Colonies previous to the fifth of February next." Now, if we consider that the news of the cession of these provinces did not reach France until the close of the year 1862, that this advertisement is dated January 23, 1863, and that a dock of the magnitude described could hardly be constructed short of many months, we shall be satisfied, that, long before any definite articles of peace had been proposed, the Emperor had settled in his own mind just what region he would annex to his dominions.
We shall not need much argument to convince us that the subjugation of Mexico does not, either in character or methods, differ much from other acts of the French ruler. Nevertheless, the details are curious and instructive. It must be allowed that Mexico had given the Allies causes of offence. She left unpaid large sums due from her to foreign bond-holders. The subjects of the allied powers, temporarily resident in Mexico, were robbed by forced loans, and sometimes imprisoned, and even murdered. To redress these grievances, an expedition was fitted out by the combined powers of England, France, and Spain. The objects of the expedition were, first, to obtain satisfaction for past wrongs, and, second, some security against their recurrence in the future. It was expressly agreed by all parties, that the Mexicans should be left entirely free to choose for themselves their own form of government. Later events would seem to prove that England and Spain were sincere in their professions.
Everything went on smoothly until the capture of Vera Cruz. Then the French Emperor unfolded secret plans which were not contained in the original programme. They were these: To take advantage of the weakness of the United States to establish in Mexico a European influence; to take possession of its capital city; and thence to impose upon the Mexican people a government more agreeable than the present to the Allies. England and Spain retired from the expedition with scarcely concealed disgust, declaring, in almost so many words, that they did not come into Mexico to rob another people of their rights, but to gain redress and protection for their own subjects. Louis Napoleon does not even seek to conceal his intentions from us. "We propose," he says, "to restore to the Latin race on the other side of the Atlantic all its strength and prestige. We have an interest, indeed, in the Republic of the United States being powerful and prosperous; but not that she should take possession of the whole Gulf of Mexico, thence to command the Antilles as well as South America, and to be the only dispenser of the products of the New World." This is plain enough. What will be the final form of settlement we do not even conjecture. It is probable that the Emperor does not himself know. With our fortunes so unsettled, and with so many European jealousies to conciliate, even his astute genius may well be puzzled as to the wisest policy. But it is of no consequence what particular government France may impose upon the conquered State,—monarchical, vice-regal, or republican,—Maximilian, a Bonaparte, or some one of the seditious Mexican chiefs. In either case, if the French plan succeeds, the broad country which Cortés won and Spain lost, will be virtually a dependency of France.
Even while we write, France has embarked in yet other schemes of colonial aggrandizement. She has just purchased the port of Oboch on the eastern coast of Africa, near the entrance of the Red Sea. The place is not laid down upon the maps; nor is its naval and commercial importance known; but its proximity to Aden suggests that it may be intended as a checkmate to that English stronghold. In the great island of Madagascar she is founding mercantile establishments whose exact character have not as yet been divulged; but experience teaches us that these enterprises are likely to be pursued with promptness and vigor.
Thus France is displaying in colonial affairs an aggressive activity which was scarcely to have been expected. To what extent she may perfect her plans no one can prophesy. That she will be able to girdle the earth with her possessions, and rear strongholds in every sea, is not probable. England has chosen almost at her leisure what spots of commercial advantage or military strength she will occupy; and the whole world hardly affords the material for another colonial system as wide and comprehensive.
There is one consideration which ought not to be overlooked. It is this: the relations which Louis Napoleon has succeeded in maintaining between himself and that power which had the most interest in defeating his schemes, and the most ability to do it. Under the Bourbons, the whole policy of France was based upon a principle of settled and unchangeable enmity to England. As a result, war always broke out while French preparations were incomplete; and the concentrated English navy swept from the sea almost every vestige of an opposing force. The present French emperor has adopted an altogether different course. He has sought the friendship of England. He has multiplied occasions of mutual action. He has sedulously avoided occasions of offence. Kinglake, in his "Crimean War," intimates that Louis Napoleon desired this alliance with England and her noble Queen to cover up the terrible wrongs by which he had obtained his authority. It is more likely far that he sought it in order that under its shadow he might build himself up to resistless power: just as an oak planted beneath the shade of other trees grows to strength and majesty only to cut down its benefactors.
This proposal for alliance was unquestionably received by the English people at first with feelings akin to disgust. The memory of the bad faith by which power had been won, of the wrongs and exile of the greatest statesmen and soldiers of France, and of the red carnage of the Boulevards, was too recent to make such a friendship attractive. Though acceptance of it might be good policy, yet it could not be yielded without profound reluctance. But soon this early sentiment gave way to something like pride. It was so satisfactory to think that the allied powers were wellnigh irresistible; that they had only to speak and it must be done; that they could dictate terms to the world; that they could scourge back even the Russian despot, seeking to pour down his hordes from the icy North to more genial climes. It is hardly surprising, then, that men came to congratulate themselves upon so favorable an alliance, and concluded to overlook the defect in his title in consideration of the solid benefits which the occupant of the French throne conferred.
But this feeling could not last. When the people of England saw how inevitably Louis Napoleon reaped from every conflict some selfish advantage, how the Crimean War gave him all the prestige, and the Italian War the coveted province of Nice, they began to doubt his fair professions. And this jealousy is fast deepening into fear. The English people have an instinct of approaching danger. Any one can see that the "entente cordiale" is not quite what it once was. When a British Lord of Admiralty can rise in his place in Parliament, and, after alluding to the powerful and increasing naval force of France, add,—"I say that any Ministry who did not act upon that statement, and did not at once set about putting the country in the position she ought to occupy in respect to her navy, would deserve to be sent to the Tower or penitentiary,"—we may be sure that England has as much jealousy as trust, and perhaps quite as much alarm as either.
But we have only to look at her acts to know what England is thinking. For six years she has been engaged in an unceasing war with France,—not, indeed, with swords and bayonets, but as really with her workshops and dockyards. She has tasked these to their uttermost to maintain and increase her naval superiority. And this is not the only evidence we have of her true feeling. The building of new fortifications for her ports, and the enlargement and strengthening of the old defences, all tell the same story of profound distrust. "Plymouth has been made secure. The mouth of the Thames is thought to be impregnable." That is the way English papers write. Around Portsmouth and Gosport she has thrown an immense girdle of forts. We may think what we will of Cherbourg, England views it in the light of a perpetual menace. To the proud challenge she has sent back a sturdy defiance. Right opposite to it, on her nearest shore, she has reared a "Gibraltar of the Channel." If you take your map, you will perceive, facing Cherbourg, and projecting from the southern coast of England, the little island of Portland, which at low tide becomes a peninsula, and is connected with the main land by Chesil Bank, a low ridge of shingle ten miles long. On the extreme north of this island, looking down into Weymouth Bay, is a little cluster of rocky hills, rising sharply to a considerable height, and occupying, perhaps, a space of sixty acres. This is where the fortress, or Veme, as it is called, is built. On the northern side, the cliff lifts itself up from the waters of the bay almost in a perpendicular line, and is absolutely inaccessible. On all other sides the Veme has been isolated by a tremendous chasm, which makes the dry ditch of the fort. This chasm has been blasted into the solid rock, and is nowhere less than a hundred feet wide and eighty feet deep. At the angles of the fortress it widens to two hundred feet, and sinks beneath the batteries in a sheer perpendicular of one hundred and thirty feet. Two bastions jut from the main work into it, protecting it from approach by a terrible cross-fire. All the appointments are upon the same scale. The magazines, the storehouses, the water-tanks, are built to furnish supplies for a siege, not of months, but of years. On every side the rocky surface of the hills has been shaved down below the level of its guns; so that there is not a spot seaward or landward that may not be swept by its tremendous batteries. Such is this remarkable stronghold which is rising to completion opposite Cherbourg. Yet it is but one of several strong forts which are to protect the single harbor of Weymouth Bay. Was this Titanic work reared in the spirit of trust? Does it speak of England's hope of abiding friendship with France? No; it tells us that beneath seeming amity a deadly struggle is going on,—that every dock hollowed, every ship launched, every colony seized, and every fortress reared, is but another step in a silent, but real, contest for supremacy.
When this hidden fire shall burst forth into a devouring flame, when this seeming alliance shall change into open enmity and bitter war, no one can prophesy. But no doubt sooner or later. For between nations, as well as in the bosom of communities, there are irrepressible conflicts, which no alliances, no compacts, and no motives of wisdom or interest can forever hold in check. And when it shall burst forth, no one can foretell what its end shall be. That dread uncertainty, more than all these things else, keeps the peace. We can but think that the naval preëminence of England has grown out of the real character of her people and of their pursuits,—and that the same causes which, in the long, perilous conflicts of the past, have enabled her to secure the sovereignty of the seas, will strengthen her to maintain that sovereignty in all the conflicts which in the future may await her. But, whatever may be the result, to whomsoever defeat may come, nothing can obliterate from the pages of history the record of the sagacity, perseverance, and courage with which the French people and their ruler have striven to overcome a maritime inferiority, whose origin, perhaps, is in the structure of their society and in the nature of their race.
SOMETHING LEFT UNDONE.
Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone,
Something, uncompleted still,
Waits the rising of the sun.
By the bedside, on the stair,
At the threshold, near the gates,
With its menace or its prayer,
Like a mendicant it waits:
Waits, and will not go away,—
Waits, and will not be gainsaid.
By the cares of yesterday
Each to-day is heavier made,
Till at length it is, or seems,
Greater than our strength can bear,—
As the burden of our dreams,
Pressing on us everywhere;
And we stand from day to day
Like the dwarfs of times gone by,
Who, as Northern legends say,
On their shoulders held the sky.
THE GREAT INSTRUMENT.
Early in the month of November the mysterious curtain which has hidden the work long in progress at the Boston Music Hall will be lifted, and the public will throng to look upon and listen to the GREAT ORGAN.
It is the most interesting event in the musical history of the New World. The masterpiece of Europe's master-builder is to uncover its veiled front and give voice to its long-brooding harmonies. The most precious work of Art that ever floated from one continent to the other is to be formally displayed before a great assembly. The occasion is one of well-earned rejoicing, almost of loud triumph; for it is the crowning festival which rewards an untold sum of devoted and conscientious labor, carried on, without any immediate recompense, through a long series of years, to its now perfect consummation. The whole community will share in the deep satisfaction with which the public-spirited citizens who have encouraged this noble undertaking, and the enterprising; and untiring lover of science and art who has conducted it from the first, may look upon their completed task.
What is this wondrous piece of mechanism which has cost so much time and money, and promises to become one of the chief attractions of Boston and a source of honest pride to all cultivated Americans? The organ, as its name implies, is the instrument, in distinction from all other and less noble instruments. We might almost think it was called organ as being a part of an unfinished organism, a kind of Frankenstein-creation, half framed and half vitalized. It breathes like an animal, but its huge lungs must be filled and emptied by alien force. It has a wilderness of windpipes, each furnished with its own vocal adjustment, or larynx. Thousands of long, delicate tendons govern its varied internal movements, themselves obedient to the human muscles which are commanded by the human brain, which again is guided in its volitions by the voice of the great half-living creature. A strange cross between the form and functions of animated beings, on the one hand, and the passive conditions of inert machinery, on the other! Its utterance rises through all the gamut of Nature's multitudinous voices, and has a note for all her outward sounds and inward moods. Its thunder is deep as that of billows that tumble through ocean-caverns, and its whistle is sharper than that of the wind through their narrowest crevice. It roars louder than the lion of the desert, and it can draw out a thread of sound as fine as the locust spins at hot noon on his still tree-top. Its clustering columns are as a forest in which every music-flowering tree and shrub finds its representative. It imitates all instruments; it cheats the listener with the sound of singing choirs; it strives for a still purer note than can be strained from human throats, and emulates the host of heaven with its unearthly "voice of angels." Within its breast all the passions of humanity seem to reign in turn. It moans with the dull ache of grief, and cries with the sudden thrill of pain; it sighs, it shouts, it laughs, it exults, it wails, it pleads, it trembles, it shudders, it threatens, it storms, it rages, it is soothed, it slumbers.
Such is the organ, man's nearest approach to the creation of a true organism.
But before the audacious conception of this instrument ever entered the imagination of man, before he had ever drawn a musical sound from pipe or string, the chambers where the royal harmonies of his grandest vocal mechanism were to find worthy reception were shaped in his own marvellous structure. The organ of hearing was finished by its Divine Builder while yet the morning stars sang together, and the voices of the young creation joined in their first choral symphony. We have seen how the mechanism of the artificial organ takes on the likeness of life; we shall attempt to describe the living organ in common language by the aid of such images as our ordinary dwellings furnish us. The unscientific reader need not take notice of the words in parentheses.
The annexed diagram may render it easier to follow the description.
The structure which is to admit Sound as a visitor is protected and ornamented at its entrance by a light movable awning (the external ear). Beneath and within this opens a recess or passage, (meatus auditorium externus,) at the farther end of which is the parchment-like front-door, D (membrana tympani).
Beyond this is the hall or entry, H, (cavity of the tympanum,) which has a ventilator, V, (Eustachian tube,) communicating with the outer air, and two windows, one oval, o, (fenestra ovalis,) one round, r, (fenestra rotunda,) both filled with parchment-like membrane, and looking upon the inner suite of apartments (labyrinth).
This inner suite of apartments consists of an antechamber, A, (vestibule,) an arched chamber, B, (semicircular canals,) and a spiral chamber, S, (cochlea,) with a partition, P, dividing it across, except for a small opening at one end. The antechamber opens freely into the arched chamber, and into one side of the partitioned spiral chamber. The other side of this spiral chamber looks on the hall by the round window already mentioned; the oval window looking on the hall belongs to the antechamber. From the front-door to the oval window of the antechamber extends a chain, c, (ossicula auditûs,) so connected that a knock on the first is transmitted instantly to the second. But as the round window of the spiral chamber looks into the hall, the knock at the front-door will also make itself heard at and through that window, being conveyed along the hall.
In each division of the inner suite of apartments are the watchmen, (branches of the auditory nerve,) listening for the approach of Sound. The visitor at length enters the porch, and knocks at the front-door. The watchmen in the antechamber hear the blow close to them, as it is repeated, through the chain, on the window of their apartment. The impulse travels onward into the arched chamber, and startles its tenants. It is transmitted into one half of the partitioned spiral chamber, and rouses the recumbent guardians in that apartment. Some portion of it even passes the small opening in the partition, and reaches the watchmen in the other half of the room. But they also hear it through the round window, not as it comes through the chain, but as it resounds along the hall.
Thus the summons of Sound reaches all the watchmen, but not all of them through the same channels or with the same force. It is not known how their several precise duties are apportioned, but it seems probable that the watchmen in the spiral chamber observe the pitch of the audible impulse which reaches them, while the others take cognizance of its intensity and perhaps of its direction.
Such is the plan of the organ of hearing as an architect might describe it. But the details of its special furnishing are so intricate and minute that no anatomist has proved equal to their entire and exhaustive delineation. An Italian nobleman, the Marquis Corti, has hitherto proved most successful in describing the wonderful key-board found in the spiral chamber, the complex and symmetrical beauty of which is absolutely astonishing to those who study it by the aid of the microscope. The figure annexed shows a small portion of this extraordinary structure. It is from Kölliker's well-known work on Microscopic Anatomy.
Enough has been said to show that the ear is as carefully adjusted to respond to the blended impressions of sound as the eye to receive the mingled rays of light; and that as the telescope presupposes the lens and the retina, so the organ presupposes the resonant membranes, the labyrinthine chambers, and the delicately suspended or exquisitely spread-out nervous filaments of that other organ, whose builder is the Architect of the universe and the Master of all its harmonies.
Not less an object of wonder is that curious piece of mechanism, the most perfect, within its limited range of powers, of all musical instruments, the organ of the human voice. It is the highest triumph of our artificial contrivances to reach a tone like that of a singer, and among a hundred organ-stops none excites such admiration as the vox humana; a brief account of the vocal organ will not, therefore, be out of place. The principles of the action of the larynx are easily illustrated by reference to the simpler musical instruments. In a flute or flageolet the musical sound is produced by the vibration of a column of air contained in its interior. In a clarionet or a bassoon another source of sound is added in the form of a thin slip of wood contained in the mouth-piece, and called the reed, the vibrations of which give a superadded nasal thrill to the resonance of the column of air.
The human organ of voice is like the clarionet and the bassoon. The windpipe is the tube containing the column of air. The larynx is the mouth-piece containing the reed. But the reed is double, consisting of two very thin membranous edges, which are made tense or relaxed, and have the interval between them through which the air rushes narrowed or widened by the instinctive, automatic action of a set of little muscles. The vibration of these membranous edges (chordæ vocales) produces a musical sound, just as the vibration of the edge of a finger-bowl produces one when a wet finger is passed round it. The cavities of the nostrils, and their side-chambers, with their light, elastic sounding-boards of thin bone, are essential to the richness of the tone, as all singers find out when those passages are obstructed by a cold in the head.
The human voice, perfect as it may be in tone, is yet always very deficient in compass, as is obvious from the fact that the bass voice, the barytone, the contralto, and the soprano have all different registers, and are all required to produce a complete vocal harmony. If we could make organ-pipes with movable, self-regulating lips, with self-shortening and self-lengthening tubes, so that each tube should command the two or three octaves of the human voice, a very limited number of them would be required. But as each tube has but a single note, we understand why we have those immense clusters of hollow columns. As we wish to produce different effects, sometimes using the pure flute-sounds, at other times preferring the nasal thrill of the reed-instruments, we see why some of the tubes have simple mouths and others are furnished with vibratory tongues. And, lastly, we can easily understand that the great interior spaces of the organ must of themselves furnish those resonant surfaces which we saw provided for, on a small scale, in the nasal passages,—the sounding-board of the human larynx.
The great organ of the Music Hall is a choir of nearly six thousand vocal throats. Its largest windpipes are thirty-two feet in length, and a man can crawl through them. Its finest tubes are too small for a baby's whistle. Eighty-nine stops produce the various changes and combinations of which its immense orchestra is capable, from the purest solo of a singing nun to the loudest chorus in which all its groups of voices have their part in the full flow of its harmonies. Like all instruments of its class, it contains several distinct systems of pipes, commonly spoken of as separate organs, and capable of being played alone or in connection with each other. Four manuals, or hand key-boards, and two pedals, or foot key-boards, command these several systems,—the solo organ, the choir organ, the swell organ, and the great organ, and the piano and forte pedal-organ. Twelve pairs of bellows, which it is intended to move by water-power, derived from the Cochituate reservoirs, furnish the breath which pours itself forth in music. Those beautiful effects, for which the organ is incomparable, the crescendo and diminuendo,—the gradual rise of the sound from the lowest murmur to the loudest blast, and the dying fall by which it steals gently back into silence,—the dissolving views, so to speak, of harmony,—are not only provided for in the swell-organ, but may be obtained by special adjustments from the several systems of pipes and from the entire instrument.
It would be anticipating the proper time for judgment, if we should speak of the excellence of the musical qualities of the great organ before having had the opportunity of hearing its full powers displayed. We have enjoyed the privilege, granted to few as yet, of listening to some portions of the partially mounted instrument, from which we can confidently infer that its effect, when all its majestic voices find utterance, must be noble and enchanting beyond all common terms of praise. But even without such imperfect trial, we have a right, merely from a knowledge of its principles of construction, of the preëminent skill of its builder, of the time spent in its construction, of the extraordinary means taken to insure its perfection, and of the liberal scale of expenditure which has rendered all the rest possible, to feel sure that we are to hear the instrument which is and will probably long remain beyond dispute the first of the New World and second to none in the Old in the sum of its excellences and capacities.
The mere comparison of numbers of pipes and of stops, or of external dimensions, though it gives an approximative idea of the scale of an organ, is not so decisive as it might seem as to its real musical effectiveness. In some cases, many of the stops are rather nominal than of any real significance. Even in the Haarlem organ, which has only about two-thirds as many as the Boston one, Dr. Burney says, "The variety they afford is by no means what might be expected." It is obviously easy to multiply the small pipes to almost any extent. The dimensions of an organ, in its external aspect, must depend a good deal on the height of the edifice in which it is contained. Thus, the vaulted roof of the Cathedral of Ulm permitted the builder of our Music-Hall organ to pile the façade of the one he constructed for that edifice up to the giddy elevation of almost a hundred feet, while the famous instrument in the Town Hall of Birmingham has only three-quarters of the height of our own, which is sixty feet. It is obvious also that the effective power of an organ does not depend merely on its size, but that the perfection of all its parts will have quite as much to do with it. In judging a vocalist, we can form but a very poor guess of the compass, force, quality of the voice, from a mere inspection of the throat and chest. In the case of the organ, however, we have the advantage of being able to minutely inspect every throat and larynx, to walk into the interior of the working mechanism, and to see the adaptation of each part to its office. In absolute power and compass the Music-Hall organ ranks among the three or four mightiest instruments ever built. In the perfection of all its parts, and in its whole arrangements, it challenges comparison with, any the world can show.
Such an instrument ought to enshrine itself in an outward frame that should correspond in some measure to the grandeur and loveliness of its own musical character. It has been a dream of metaphysicians, that the soul shaped its own body. If this many-throated singing creature could have sung itself into an external form, it could hardly have moulded one more expressive of its own nature. We must leave to those more skilled in architecture the detailed description of that noble façade which fills the eye with music as the voices from behind it fill the mind through the ear with vague, dreamy pictures. For us it loses all technical character in its relations to the soul of which it is the body. It is as if a glorious anthem had passed into outward solid form in the very ecstasy of its grandest chorus. Milton has told us of such a miracle, wrought by fallen angels, it is true, but in a description rich with all his opulence of caressing and ennobling language:—
"Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose, like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze with bossy sculptures grav'n."
The structure is of black walnut, and is covered with carved statues, busts, masks, and figures in the boldest relief. In the centre a richly ornamented arch contains the niche for the key-boards and stops. A colossal mask of a singing woman looks from over its summit. The pediment above is surmounted by the bust of Johann Sebastian Bach. Behind this rises the lofty central division, containing pipes, and crowning it is a beautiful sitting statue of Saint Cecilia, holding her lyre. On each side of her a griffin sits as guardian. This centre is connected by harp-shaped compartments, filled with pipes, to the two great round towers, one on each side, and each of them containing three colossal pipes. These magnificent towers come boldly forward into the hall, being the most prominent, as they are the highest and stateliest, part of the façade. At the base of each a gigantic half-caryatid, in the style of the ancient hermæ, but finished to the waist, bends beneath the superincumbent weight, like Atlas under the globe. These figures are of wonderful force, the muscular development almost excessive, but in keeping with their superhuman task. At each side of the base two lion-hermæ share in the task of the giant. Over the base rise the round pillars which support the dome and inclose the three great pipes already mentioned. Graceful as these look in their position, half a dozen men might creep into one of them and lie hidden. A man of six feet high went up a ladder, and standing at the base of one of them could just reach to put his hand into the mouth at its lower part, above the conical foot. The three great pipes are crowned by a heavily sculptured, ribbed, rounded dome; and this is surmounted, on each side, by two cherubs, whose heads almost touch the lofty ceiling. This whole portion of the sculpture is of eminent beauty. The two exquisite cherubs of one side are playing on the lyre and the lute; those of the other side on the flute and the horn. All the reliefs that run round the lower portion of the dome are of singular richness. We have had an opportunity of seeing one of the artist's photographs, which showed in detail the full-length figures and the large central mask of this portion of the work, and found them as beautiful on close inspection as the originals at a distance.
Two other lateral compartments, filled with pipes, and still more suggestive of the harp in their form, lead to the square lateral towers. Over these compartments, close to the round tower, sits on each side a harper, a man on the right, a woman on the left, with their harps, all apparently of natural size. The square towers, holding pipes in their open interior, are lower than the round towers, and fall somewhat back from the front. Below, three colossal hermæ of Sibyl-like women perform for them the office which the giants and the lion-shapes perform for the round towers. The four pillars which rise from the base are square, and the dome which surmounts them is square also. Above the dome is a vase-like support, upon which are disposed figures of the lyre and other musical symbols.
The whole base of the instrument, in the intervals of the figures described, is covered with elaborate carvings. Groups of musical instruments, standing out almost detached from the background, occupy the panels. Ancient and modern, clustered with careless grace and quaint variety, from the violin down to a string of sleigh-bells, they call up all the echoes of forgotten music, such as the thousand-tongued organ blends together in one grand harmony.
The instrument is placed upon a low platform, the outlines of which are in accordance with its own. Its whole height is about sixty feet, its breadth forty-eight feet, and its average depth twenty-four feet. Some idea of its magnitude may be got from the fact that the wind-machinery and the swell-organ alone fill up the whole recess occupied by the former organ, which was not a small one. All the other portions of the great instrument come forward into the hall.
In front of its centre stands Crawford's noble bronze statue of Beethoven, the gift of our townsman, Mr. Charles C. Perkins. It might be suggested that so fine a work of Art should have a platform wholly to itself; but the eye soon reconciles itself to the position of the statue, and the tremulous atmosphere which surrounds the vibrating organ is that which the almost breathing figure would seem to delight in, as our imagination invests it with momentary consciousness.
As we return to the impression produced by the grand façade, we are more and more struck with the subtile art displayed in its adaptations and symbolisms. Never did any structure we have looked upon so fully justify Madame de Staël's definition of architecture, as "frozen music." The outermost towers, their pillars and domes, are all square, their outlines thus passing without too sudden transitions from the sharp square angles of the vaulted ceiling and the rectangular lines of the walls of the hall itself into the more central parts of the instrument, where a smoother harmony of outline is predominant. For in the great towers, which step forward, as it were, to represent the meaning of the entire structure, the lines are all curved, as if the slight discords which gave sharpness and variety to its less vital portions were all resolved as we approached its throbbing heart. And again, the half fantastic repetitions of musical forms in the principal outlines—the lyre-like shape of the bases of the great towers, the harp-like figure of the connecting wings, the clustering reeds of the columns—fill the mind with musical suggestions, and dispose the wondering spectator to become the entranced listener.
The great organ would be but half known, if it were not played in a place fitted for it in dimensions. In the open air the sound would be diluted and lost; in an ordinary hall the atmosphere would be churned into a mere tumult by the vibrations. The Boston Music Hall is of ample size to give play to the waves of sound, yet not so large that its space will not be filled and saturated with the overflowing resonance. It is one hundred and thirty feet in length by seventy-eight in breadth and sixty-five in height, being thus of somewhat greater dimensions than the celebrated Town Hall of Birmingham. At the time of building it, (1852,) its great height was ordered partly with reference to the future possibility of its being furnished with a large organ. It will be observed that the three dimensions above given are all multiples of the same number, thirteen, the length being ten times, the breadth six times and the height five times this number. This is in accordance with Mr. Scott Russell's recommendation, and has been explained by the fact that vibrating solids divide into harmonic lengths, separated by nodal points of rest, and that these last are equally distributed at aliquot parts of its whole length. If the whole extent of the walls be in vibration, its angles should come in at the nodal points in order to avoid the confusion arising from different vibrating lengths; and for this reason they are placed at aliquot parts of its entire length. Thus the hall is itself a kind of passive musical instrument, or at least a sounding-board, constructed on theoretical principles. Whatever is thought of the theory, it proves in practice to possess the excellence which is liable to be lost in the construction of the best-designed edifice.
We have thus attempted to give our readers some imperfect idea of the great instrument, illustrating it by the objects of comparison with which we are most familiar, and leaving to others the more elaborate work of subjecting it to a thorough artistic survey, and the rigorous analysis necessary to bring out the various degrees of excellence in its special qualities, which, as in a human character, will be found to mark its individuality. We shall proceed to give some account of the manner in which the plan of obtaining the best instrument the Old World could furnish to the New was formed, matured, and carried into successful execution.
It is mainly to the persistent labors of a single individual that our community is indebted for the privilege it now enjoys in possessing an instrument of the supreme order, such as make cities illustrious by their presence. That which is on the lips of all it can wrong no personal susceptibilities to tell in print; and when we say that Boston owes the Great Organ chiefly to the personal efforts of the present President of the Music-Hall Association, Dr. J. Baxter Upham, the statement is only for the information of distant readers.
Dr. Upham is widely known to the medical profession in connection with important contributions to practical science. His researches on typhus fever, as observed by him at different periods, during and since the years 1847 and 1848, in this country, and as seen at Dublin and in the London Fever Hospital, were recognized as valuable contributions to the art of medicine. More recently, as surgeon in charge of the Stanley General Hospital, Eighteenth Army Corps, he has published an account of the "Congestive Fever" prevailing at Newborn, North Carolina, during the winter and spring of 1862-63. We must add to these practical labors the record of his most ingenious and original investigations of the circulation in the singular case of M. Groux, which had puzzled so many European experts, and to which, with the tact of a musician, he applied the electro-magnetic telegraphic apparatus so as to change the rapid consecutive motions of different parts of the heart, which puzzled the eye, into successive sounds of a character which the ear could recognize in their order. It was during these experiments, many of which we had the pleasure of witnessing, that the "side-show" was exhibited of counting the patient's pulse, through the wires, at the Observatory in Cambridge, while it was beating in Dr. Upham's parlor in Boston. Nor should we forget that other ingenious contrivance of his, the system of sound-signals, devised during his recent term of service as surgeon, and applied with the most promising results, as a means of intercommunication between different portions of the same armament.
In the summer of 1853, less than a year after the Music Hall was opened to the public, Dr. Upham, who had been for some time occupied with the idea of procuring an organ worthy of the edifice, made a tour in Europe with the express object of seeing some of the most famous instruments of the Continent and of Great Britain. He examined many, especially in Germany, and visited some of the great organ-builders, going so far as to obtain specifications from Mr. Walcker of Ludwigsburg, and from Weigl, his pupil at Stuttgart. On returning to this country, he brought the proposition of procuring a great instrument in Europe in various ways before the public, among the rest by his "Reminiscences of a Summer Tour," published in "Dwight's Journal of Music." After this he laid the matter before the members of the Harvard Musical Association, and, having thus gradually prepared the way, presented it for consideration before the Board of Directors of the Music-Hall Association. A committee was appointed "to consider." There was some division of opinion as to the expediency of the more ambitious plan of sending abroad for a colossal instrument. There was a majority report in its favor, and a verbal minority report advocating a more modest instrument of home manufacture. Then followed the anaconda-torpor which marks the process of digestion of a huge and as yet crude project by a multivertebrate corporation.
On the first of March, 1856, the day of the inauguration of Beethoven's statue, a subscription-paper was started, headed by Dr. Upham, for raising the sum of ten thousand dollars. At a meeting in June the plan was brought before the stockholders of the Music Hall, who unanimously voted to appropriate ten thousand dollars and the proceeds of the old organ, on condition that fifteen thousand dollars should be raised by private subscription. In October it was reported to the Directors that ten thousand dollars of this sum were already subscribed, and Dr. Upham, President of the Board, pledged himself to raise the remainder on certain conditions, which were accepted. He was then authorized to go abroad to investigate the whole subject, with full powers to select the builder and to make the necessary contracts.
Dr. Upham had already made an examination of the best organs and organ-factories in New England, New York, and elsewhere in this country, and received several specifications and plans from builders. He proceeded at once, therefore, to Europe, examined the great English instruments, made the acquaintance of Mr. Hopkins, the well-known organist and recognized authority on all matters pertaining to the instrument, and took lessons of him in order to know better the handling of the keys and the resources of the instrument. In his company, Dr. Upham examined some of the best instruments in London. He made many excursions among the old churches of Sir Christopher Wren's building, where are to be found the fine organs of "Father Smith," John Snetzler, and other famous builders of the past. He visited the workshops of Hill, Gray and Davidson, Willis, Robson, and others. He made a visit to Oxford to examine the beautiful organ in Trinity College. He found his way into the organ-lofts of St. Paul's, of Westminster Abbey, and the Temple Church, during the playing at morning and evening service. He inspected Thompson's enharmonic organ, and obtained models of various portions of organ-structure.
From London Dr. Upham went to Holland, where he visited the famous instruments at Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam, and the organ-factory at Utrecht, the largest and best in Holland. Thence to Cologne, where, as well as at Utrecht, he obtained plans and schemes of instruments; to Hamburg, where are fine old organs, some of them built two or three centuries ago; to Lubeck, Dresden, Breslau, Leipsic, Halle, Merseburg. Here he found a splendid organ, built by Ladergast, whose instruments excel especially in their tone-effects. A letter from Liszt, the renowned pianist, recommended this builder particularly to Dr. Upham's choice. At Frankfort and at Stuttgart he found two magnificent instruments, built by Walcker of Ludwigsburg, to which place he repaired in order to examine his factories carefully, for the second time. Thence the musical tourist proceeded to Ulm, where is the sumptuous organ, the work of the same builder, ranking, we believe, first in point of dimensions of all in the world. Onward still, to Munich, Bamberg, Augsburg, Nuremberg, along the Lake of Constance to Weingarten, where is that great organ claiming to have sixty-six stops and six thousand six hundred and sixty-six pipes; to Freyburg, in Switzerland, where is another great organ, noted for the rare beauty of its vox-humana stop, the mechanism of which had been specially studied by Mr. Walcker, who explained it to Dr. Upham.
Returning to Ludwigsburg, Dr. Upham received another specification from Mr. Walcker. He then passed some time at Frankfort examining the specifications already received and the additional ones which came to him while there.
At last, by the process of exclusion, the choice was narrowed down to three names, Schultze, Ladergast, and Walcker, then to the two last. There was still a difficulty in deciding between these. Dr. Upham called in Mr. Walcker's partner and son, who explained every point on which he questioned them with the utmost minuteness. Still undecided, he revisited Merseburg and Weissenfels, to give Ladergast's instruments another trial. The result was that he asked Mr. Walcker for a third specification, with certain additions and alterations which he named. This he received, and finally decided in his favor,—but with the condition that Mr. Walcker should meet him in Paris for the purpose of examining the French organs with reference to any excellences of which he might avail himself, and afterwards proceed to London and inspect the English instruments with the same object.
The details of this joint tour are very interesting, but we have not space for them. The frank enthusiasm with which the great German organ-builder was received in France contrasted forcibly with the quiet, not to say cool, way in which the insular craftsmen received him, gradually, however, warming, and at last, with a certain degree of effort, admitting him to their confidence.
A fortnight was spent by Dr. Upham in company with Walcker and Mr. Hopkins in studying and perfecting the specification, which was at last signed in German and English, and stamped with the notarial seal, and thus the contract made binding.
A long correspondence relating to the instrument followed between Dr. Upham, the builder, and Mr. Hopkins, ending only with the shipment of the instrument. A most interesting part of this was Dr. Upham's account of his numerous original experiments with the natural larynx, made with reference to determining the conditions requisite for the successful imitation of the human voice in the arrangement called vox humana. Mr. Walcker has availed himself of the results of these experiments in the stop as made for this organ, but with what success we are unable to say, as the pipes have not been set in place at the time of our writing. As there is always great curiosity to hear this particular stop, we will guard our readers against disappointment by quoting a few remarks about that of the Haarlem organ, made by the liveliest of musical writers, Dr. Burney.
"As to the vox humana, which is so celebrated, it does not at all resemble a human voice, though a very good stop of the kind; but the world is very apt to be imposed upon by names; the instant a common hearer is told that an organist is playing upon a stop which resembles the human voice, he supposes it to be very fine, and never inquires into the propriety of the name, or exactness of the imitation. However, with respect to our own feelings, we must confess, that, of all the stops which we have yet heard, that have been honored with the appellation of vox humana, no one in the treble part has ever reminded us of anything human, so much as the cracked voice of an old woman of ninety, or, in the lower parts, of Punch singing through a comb." Let us hope that this most irreverent description will not apply to the vox humana of our instrument, after all the science and skill that have been expended upon it. Should it prove a success like that of the Freyburg organ, there will be pilgrimages from the shores of the Pacific and the other side of the Atlantic to listen to the organ that can sing: and what can be a more miraculous triumph of art than to cheat the ear with such an enchanting delusion?
Before the organ could be accepted, it was required by the terms of the contract to be set up at the factory, and tested by three persons: one to be selected by the Organ Committee of the Music-Hall Association, one by the builder, and a third to be chosen by them. Having been approved by these judges, and also by the State-Commissioner of Würtemberg, according to the State ordinance, the result of the trial was transmitted to the President and Directors of the Music-Hall Association, and the organ was accepted.
The war broke out in the mean time, and there were fears lest the vessel in which the instrument might be shipped should fall a victim to some of the British corsairs sailing under Confederate colors. But the Dutch brig "Presto," though slow, was safe from the licensed pirates, unless an organ could be shown to be contraband of war. She was out so long, however,—nearly three months from Rotterdam,—that the insurance-office presidents shook their heads over her, fearing that she had gone down with all her precious freight.
"At length," to borrow Dr. Upham's words, "one stormy Sunday in March she was telegraphed from the marine station down in the bay, and the next morning, among the marine intelligence, in the smallest possible type, might be read the invoice of her cargo thus:—
"'Sunday Mar. 22
"'Arr. Dutch brig Presto, Van Wyngarten, Rotterdam, Jan. 1. Helvoet, 10th Had terrific gales from SW the greater part of the passage. 40 casks gin JD & M Williams 8 sheep Chenery & Co 200 bags coffee 2 casks herrings 1 case cheese W. Winsel 1 organ JB Upham 20 pipes 6 casks gin JD Richards 6 casks nutmegs J Schumaker 20 do gin 500 bags chickory root Order,' etc., etc.
"And this was the heralding of this greatest marvel of a high and noble art, after the labor of seven years bestowed upon it, having been tried and pronounced complete by the most fastidious and competent of critics, the wonder and admiration of music-loving Germany, the pride of Würtemberg, bringing a new phase of civilization to our shores in the darkest hour of our country's trouble."
It remains to give a brief history of the construction of the grand and imposing architectural frame which we have already attempted to describe. Many organ-fronts were examined with reference to their effects, during Dr. Upham's visits of which we have traced the course, and photographs and sketches obtained for the same purpose. On returning, the task of procuring a fitting plan was immediately undertaken. We need not detail the long series of trials which were necessary before the requirements of the President and Directors of the Music-Hall Association were fully satisfied. As the result of these, it was decided that the work should be committed to the brothers Herter, of New York, European artists, educated at the Royal Academy of Art in Stuttgart. The general outline of the façade followed a design made by Mr. Hammatt Billings, to whom also are due the drawings from which the Saint Cecilia and the two groups of cherubs upon the round towers were modelled. These figures were executed at Stuttgart; the other carvings were all done in New York, under Mr. Herter's direction, by Italian and German artists, one of whom had trained his powers particularly to the shaping of colossal figures. In the course of the work, one of the brothers Herter visited Ludwigsburg for the special purpose of comparing his plans with the structure to which they were to be adapted, and was received with enthusiasm, the design for the front being greatly admired.
The contract was made with Mr. Herter in April, 1860, and the work, having been accepted, was sent to Boston during the last winter, and safely stored in the lecture-room beneath the Music Hall. In March the Great Work arrived from Germany, and was stored in the hall above.
"The seven-years' task is done,—the danger from flood and fire so far escaped,—the gantlet of the pirates safely run,—the perils of the sea and the rail surmounted by the good Providence of God."
The devout gratitude of the President of the Association, under whose auspices this great undertaking has been successfully carried through, will be shared by all lovers of Art and all the friends of American civilization and culture. We cannot naturalize the Old-World cathedrals, for they were the architectural embodiment of a form of worship belonging to other ages and differently educated races. But the organ was only lent to human priesthoods for their masses and requiems; it belongs to Art, a religion of which God himself appoints the high-priests. At first it appears almost a violence to transplant it from those awful sanctuaries, out of whose arches its forms seemed to grow, and whose echoes seemed to hold converse with it, into our gay and gilded halls, to utter its majestic voice before the promiscuous multitude. Our hasty impression is a wrong one. We have undertaken, for the first time in the world's history, to educate a nation. To teach a people to know the Creator in His glorious manifestations through the wondrous living organs is a task for which no implement of human fabrication is too sacred; for all true culture is a form of worship, and to every rightly ordered mind a setting forth of the Divine glory.
This consummate work of science and skill reaches us in the midst of the discordant sounds of war, the prelude of that blessed harmony which will come whenever the jarring organ of the State has learned once more to obey its keys.
God grant that the Miserere of a people in its anguish may soon be followed by the Te Deum of a redeemed Nation!
THE KING'S WINE.
The small green grapes in countless clusters grew,
Feeding on mystic moonlight and white dew
And mellow sunshine, the long summer through:
Till, with blind motion in her veins, the Vine
Felt the delicious pulses of the wine,
And the grapes ripened in the year's decline.
And day by day the Virgins watched their charge;
And when, at last, beyond the horizon's marge
The harvest-moon dropt beautiful and large,
The subtile spirit in the grape was caught,
And to the slowly dying Monarch brought
In a great cup fantastically wrought,
Whereof he drank; then straightway from his brain
Went the weird malady, and once again
He walked the Palace free of scar or pain,—
But strangely changed, for somehow he had lost
Body and voice: the courtiers, as he crost
The royal chambers, whispered,—"The King's Ghost!"