HOW I GOT INTO IT, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT.
It was a wet Monday in October, on my return from a journey, with a large party of friends and acquaintances, as far north as Chicago and as far south as St. Louis and the Iron Mountain. We were gradually nearing home, and the fun and jollity grew apace as we got closer to the end of our holiday and to the beginning of our every-day work. Our day's ride was intended to be from Cumberland (on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad) to Baltimore. The murky drizzle made our comfortable car all the more cozy, and the picturesque glories of that part of Western Virginia, through which we had come very leisurely and enjoyably, were heightened by the contrast of the dull cloud that hung over the valley of the Potomac. At Martinsburg the train was stopped for an unusually long time; and in spite of close questioning, we were obliged to satisfy our curiosity with a confused story of an outbreak and a strike among the workmen at the armory, with a consequent detention of trains, at Harper's Ferry. The train pushed on slowly, and at last came to a dead halt at a station called The Old Furnace. There a squad of half a dozen lazy Virginia farmers—we should call them a picket just now, in our day of military experiences—told us half a dozen stories about the troubles ahead, and finally the people in charge of our train determined to send it back to wait for further news from below. A young engineer who was employed on the railroad was directed to go along the track to examine it, and see what, if any, damage had been done. As I had brushed up an acquaintance with him, I volunteered to accompany him, and then was joined by a young Englishman, a Guardsman on his travels, one of the Welsh Wynns, just returning from a shooting-tour over the Prairies. We started off in the rain and mud, and kept together till we came to a bridle-path crossing the railroad and climbing up the hills. Here we met a country doctor, who offered to guide us to Bolivar, whence we could come down to the Ferry, and as the trains would be detained there for several hours, there would be time enough to see all the armory workshops and wonders. So off we started up the muddy hillside, leaving our engineer to his task on the railroad; for what pedestrian would not prefer the worst dirt road to the best railroad for an hour's walking? Our Englishman was ailing and really unwell, and half-way up the rough hill left us to return to the easy comfort of the train.
My guide—Dr. Marmion was the name he gave in exchange for mine—said that the row at the Ferry was nothing but a riotous demonstration by the workmen. He came from quite a distance, and, hearing these vague reports, had turned off to visit his patients in this quarter, so that he might learn the real facts; and as it was then only a little past nine, he had time to do his morning's work in Bolivar. So there we parted, he agreeing to join me again at the Ferry; and he did so later in the day.
Turning to the left on the main pike, I found little knots of lounging villagers gathered in the rain and mud, spitting, swearing, and discussing the news from the Ferry. Few of them had been there, and none of them agreed in their account of the troubles; so I plodded on over the hill and down the sharp slope that led to the Ferry. Just as I began the descent, a person rode up on horseback, gun in hand, and as we came in sight of the armory, he told me the true story,—that a band of men were gathered together to set the slaves free, and that, after starting the outbreak on the night before, they had taken refuge down below. He pointed with his gun, and we were standing side by side, when a sudden flash and a sharp report and a bullet stopped his story and his life.
The few people above us looked down from behind the shelter of houses and fences;—from below not a soul was visible in the streets and alleys of Harper's Ferry, and only a few persons could be seen moving about the buildings in the armory inclosure. In a minute, some of the townspeople, holding out a white handkerchief, came down to the fallen man, and, quite undisturbed, carried him up the hill and to the nearest house,—all with hardly a question or a word of explanation. Shocked by what was then rare enough to be appalling,—sudden and violent death by fire-arms in the hands of concealed men,—I started off again, meaning to go down to the Ferry, with some vague notion of being a peace-maker, and at least of satisfying my curiosity as to the meaning of all these mysteries: for while I saw that that fatal rifle-shot meant destruction, I had no conception of a plot.
Just as I reached the point where I had joined the poor man who had fallen,—it was a Mr. Turner, formerly a captain in the army, and a person deservedly held in high esteem by all his friends and neighbors,—a knot of two or three armed men stopped me, and after a short parley directed me to some one in authority, who would hear my story. The guard who escorted me to the great man was garrulous and kind enough to tell me more in detail the story, now familiar to all of us, of the capture of Mr. Lewis Washington and other persons of note in the Sunday night raid of a body of unknown men. The dread of something yet to come, with which the people were manifestly possessed, was such as only those can know who have lived in a Slave State; and while there was plenty of talk of the steadiness of the slaves near the Ferry, it was plain that that was the magazine that was momentarily in danger of going off and carrying them all along with it.
The officers of the neighboring militia had gathered together in the main tavern of the place, without waiting for their men, but not unmindful of the impressive effect of full uniform, and half a dozen kinds of military toggery were displayed on the half-dozen persons convened in a sort of drum-head court-martial. I was not the only prisoner, and had an opportunity to hear the recitals of my fellows in luck. First and foremost of all was a huge, swaggering, black-bearded, gold-chain and scarlet-velvet-waistcoated, piratical-looking fellow, who announced himself as a Border Ruffian, of Virginia stock, and now visiting his relations near the Ferry; but he said that he had fought with the Southern Rights party in the Kansas war, and that when he heard of the "raid," as he familiarly called the then unfamiliar feat of the Sunday night just past, he knew who was at the top and bottom of it, and he described in a truthful sort of way the man whose name and features were alike unknown to all his listeners,—"Ossawatomie Brown," "Old John Brown." Garnishing the story of their earlier contests with plentiful oaths, he gave us a lively picture of their personal hand-to-hand rights in the West, and said that he had come to help fight his old friend and enemy, and to fight him fair, just as they did in "M'souri." He wanted ten or a dozen men to arm themselves to the teeth, and he'd lead 'em straight on. His indignation at his arrest and at the evident incredulity of his hearers and judges was not a whit less hearty and genuine than his curses on their cowardice in postponing any attack or risk of fighting until the arrival of militia, or soldiers, or help of some kind, in strength to overpower the little band in the armory, to make resistance useless, and an attack, if that was necessary, safe enough to secure some valiant man to lead it on.
My story was soon told, I was a traveller; my train had been stopped; I had started off on foot, meaning to walk over the hill to the Ferry, and expecting there to meet the train to go on to Baltimore. The interruptions were plentiful, and the talk blatant. I showed a ticket, a memorandum-book giving the dates and distances of my recent journey, and a novel (I think it was one of Balzac's) in French, and on it was written in pencil my name and address. That was the key-note of plenty of suspicion. How could they believe any man from a Northern city innocent of a knowledge of the plot now bursting about their ears? Would not my travelling-companions from the same latitude be ready to help free the slaves? and if I was set at liberty, would it not be only too easy to communicate between the little host already beleaguered in the armory engine-house and the mythical great host that was gathered in the North and ready to pour itself over the South? Of course all this, the staple of their every-day discussions, was strange enough to my ears; and I listened in a sort of silent wonderment that men could talk such balderdash. Any serious project of a great Northern movement on behalf of Southern slaves was then as far from credible and as strange to my ears as it was possible to be. It seemed hardly worth while to answer their suggestions; I therefore spoke of neighbors of theirs who were friends of mine, and of other prominent persons in this and other parts of Virginia who were acquaintances, and for a little time I hoped to be allowed to go free; but after more loud talk and a squabble that marked by its growing violence the growing drunkenness of the whole party, court and guard and spectators all, I was ordered along with the other prisoners to be held in custody for the present. We were marched off, first to one house and then to another, looking for a convenient prison, and finally found one in a shop. Here—it was a country store—we sat and smoked and drank and chatted with our guard and with their friends inside and out. Now and then a volley was fired in the streets of the village below us, and we would all go to a line fence where we could see its effects: generally it was only riotous noise, but occasionally it was directed against the engine-house or on some one moving through the armory-yard.
As the militia in and out of uniform, and the men from far and near, armed in all sorts of ways, began to come into the village in squads, their strength seemed to give them increased confidence, and especially in the perfectly safe place where I sat with half a dozen others under a heavy guard. Now and then an ugly-looking fowling-piece or an awkwardly handled pistol was threateningly pointed at us, with a half-laughing and half-drunken threat of keeping us safe. Toward afternoon we were ordered for the night to Charlestown, and to the jail there that has grown so famous by its hospitality to our successors. The journey across was particularly enlivening. My special guard was a gentlemanly young lawyer, one of the Kennedys of that ilk; and to his cleverness I think I owed my safe arrival at the end of our journey. Every turn in the road brought us face to face with an angry crowd, gathering from far and near, armed and ready to do instant justice on a helpless victim. Kennedy, however, gracefully waived them back to the wagons behind us, where other prisoners, in less skilful hands, were pretty badly used. The houses on the road were utterly deserted; on the first news of an outbreak by the slaves, the women and children were hurried off to the larger towns,—the men coming slowly back in squads and arming as best they could, and the negroes keeping themselves hid out of sight on all sides.
The eight miles' distance to Charlestown was lengthened out by the rain and mud, and the various hindrances of the way, so that the day was closing as we came into the main street of the straggling little town. The first odd sight was a procession of black and white children playing soldiers, led by a chubby black boy, full of a sense of authority, and evidently readily accepted by his white and black comrades in childlike faith. The next was a fine, handsome house, where a large number of ladies from the country round had been gathered together, and as we were greeted in going by, my guide stopped, and introducing me, I explained my position. They were all ready with their sympathy, and all overpowering with their gratitude, when I pooh-poohed their fear of a great Northern invasion, and said that the people of the North were just as innocent of any participation in this business as they themselves were. Our line of march resumed brought us to the prison, and I was not sorry to have the shock of an enforced visit somewhat lessened by a general invitation from mine host of an adjoining tavern to liquor up. Of course I was noways chary of invitations to the crowd, and the bar-room being full, I made the bar my rostrum, and indulged in a piece of autobiography that was intended to gain the general consent to return to my fellow-travellers, who were reported still at Martinsburg. If I cannot boast of great success at the bar, I am as little proud of my eloquence on the bar. One of the Kennedys, brother to my guard, did suggest taking me to his house, half a mile off; but to that Colonel Davenport, a bustling great man of the village, answered, that, as there was sure to be some hanging at night, it would be safer to be in the prison, as well from the mob as from any escape on my own part, and it was better to stay contentedly where I was. Doctor Marmion, my acquaintance of the morning, rode over to find me and to explain his part in my visit to the Ferry, hoping that such a confirmation of my story would secure my immediate release. But by that time I was in the custody of the sheriff, by some military legal process; and while that officer was kind and civil, he refused to do anything, except promise me an early hearing before the court-martial, which was to reassemble the next day. Finally, I was hustled through a gaping, pot-valiant crowd, into the prison, where the mob had violently taken possession; and it was a good while before I could be got up stairs and safely locked into my cell. The bolts were shot pretty sharply, but the sense of relief from the threats and impertinence of the bullying fellows outside quite outweighed my sensation of novelty on finding myself in such strange quarters. My supper was sent up, my friendly guard gave me cigars, and a buxom daughter of the jailer lent me a candle. I lay down on a rough cot and was soon asleep; my last recollection was of my sturdy guard, armed and wakeful, in front of my cell; and I woke after several hours of sound, refreshing slumber, startled by the noise of his angry answers to some still more angry and very drunken men. They had, so I learned partly then and partly afterwards, broken into the jail, and hurried from the cell next to mine a poor black prisoner, who was forthwith hanged; and, whetted by their sport, they had returned to find a fresh victim. Fortunately, in the turmoil of their first attack, the only other prisoner easily got hold of was a white boy, who escaped, while I owed my safety to Kennedy's earnest protestations, and to his ready use of a still more convincing argument, a loaded pistol and a quick hand.
Early morning was very welcome, for it brought the court-martial up to Charlestown, and I was soon ready for a hearing. Fortunately, after a good deal of angry discussion and some threats of a short shrift, a message came up from the Ferry from Governor Wise; and as I boldly claimed acquaintance with him, they granted me leave to send down a note to him, asking for his confirmation of my statements. While this was doing, I was paroled and served my Kansas colleague by advice to hold his tongue; he did so, and was soon released; and my messenger returned with such advices, in the shape of a pretty sharp reprimand to the busy court-martial for their interference with the liberty of the citizen, as speedily got me my freedom. I used it to buy such articles of clothing as could be had in Charlestown, and my prison clothes were gladly thrown aside. Some of my fellow-travellers reached the place in time to find me snugly ensconced in the tavern, waiting for an ancient carriage; with them we drove back to the Ferry in solemn state. The same deserted houses and the same skulking out of sight by the inhabitants showed the fear that outlasted even the arrival of heavy militia reinforcements. We stopped at Mr. Lewis Washington's, and, without let or hindrance, walked through the pretty grounds and the bright rooms and the neat negro huts, all alike lifeless, and yet showing at every turn the suddenness and the recentness of the fright that had carried everybody off. Our ride through Bolivar was cheered by a vigorous greeting from my captor of the day before,—the village shoemaker, a brawny fellow,—who declared that he knew I was all right, that he had taken care of me, that he would not have me hanged or shot, and "wouldn't I give him sum't to have a drink all round, and if I ever came again, please to stop and see him"; and so I did, when I came back with my regiment in war-times; but then no shoemaker was to be found.
I paid my respects to Governor Wise, and thanked him for my release; was introduced to Colonel Lee, (now the Rebel general,) and to the officers of the little squad of marines who had carried the stronghold of the "invaders," as the Governor persistently called them. In company with "Porte Crayon," Mr. Strothers, a native of that part of Virginia, and well known by his sketches of Southern life in "Harper's Magazine," I went to the engine-house, and there saw the marks of the desperate defence and of the desperate bravery of John Brown and his men. I saw, too, John Brown himself. Wounded, bleeding, haggard, and defeated, and expecting death with more or less of agony as it was more or less near, John Brown was the finest specimen of a man that I ever saw. His great, gaunt form, his noble head and face, his iron-gray hair and patriarchal beard, with the patient endurance of his own suffering, and his painful anxiety for the fate of his sons and the welfare of his men, his reticence when jeered at, his readiness to turn away wrath with a kind answer, his whole appearance and manner, what he looked, what he said,—all impressed me with the deepest sense of reverence. If his being likened to anything in history could have made the scene more solemn, I should say that he was likest to the pictured or the ideal representation of a Roundhead Puritan dying for his faith, and silently glorying in the sacrifice not only of life, but of all that made life dearest to him. His wounded men showed in their patient endurance the influence of his example; while the vulgar herd of lookers-on, fair representatives of the cowardly militia-men who had waited for the little force of regulars to achieve the capture of the engine-house and its garrison, were ready to prove their further cowardice by maltreating the prisoners. The marines, who alone had sacrificed life in the attack, were sturdily bent on guarding them from any harsh handling. I turned away sadly from the old man's side, sought and got the information he wanted concerning "his people," as he called them, and was rewarded with his thanks in a few simple words, and in a voice that was as gentle as a woman's. The Governor, as soon as he was told of the condition of the prisoners, had them cared for, and, in all his bitterness at their doings, never spoke of them in terms other than honorable to himself and to them. He persistently praised John Brown for his bravery and his endurance; and he was just as firm in declaring him the victim of shrewd and designing men, whose schemes he would yet fathom.
The day was a busy one; for little squads of regulars were sent out on the Maryland Heights to search for the stores accumulated there; and each foraging party was followed by a tail of stragglers from all the volunteers on the ground, who valiantly kept on to the Maryland side of the bridge that crossed the Potomac, and then, their courage oozing out of their fingers and toes both, stopped there and waited for the return of the regulars. On the instant of their arrival, each time fetching a great hay-wagon full of captured goods, tents, picks, spades, pikes, the tag-rag and bobtail party at once set to work to help themselves to the nearest articles, and were soon seen making off homeward with their contraband of war on their backs. The plunder, however, was not confined to the captured property. A strong force of militia soon invaded the armory, and every man helped himself to a rifle and a brace of pistols, and then, tiring of the load, began to chaffer and bargain for their sale. Governor Wise was called on to interfere and preserve the Government property; he came into the little inclosure of the works, and began an eloquent address, but seeing its uselessness, broke off and put his Richmond Grays on guard; and then the distribution of public property was made through the regular channels,—that is, the men inside brought guns and pistols to the men on guard, and they passed them out to their friends beyond, so that the trade went on almost as free as ever.
Night soon came, and it was made hideous by the drunken noise and turmoil of the crowd in the village; matters were made worse, too, by the Governor's order to impress all the horses; and the decent, sober men trudged home rather out of humor with their patriotic sacrifice; while the tipsy and pot-valiant militia fought and squabbled with each other, and only ceased that sport to pursue and hunt down some fugitive negroes, and one or two half-maddened drunken fellows who in their frenzy proclaimed themselves John Brown's men. Tired out at last, the Governor took refuge in the Wager House;—for an hour or two, he had stood on the porch haranguing an impatient crowd as "Sons of Virginia!" Within doors the scene was stranger still. Huddled together in the worst inn's worst room, the Governor and his staff at a table with tallow candles guttering in the darkness, the Richmond Grays lying around the floor in picturesque and (then) novel pursuit of soft planks, a motley audience was gathered together to hear the papers captured at John Brown's house—the Kennedy farm on Maryland Heights—read out with the Governor's running comments. The purpose of all this was plain enough. It was meant to serve as proof of a knowledge and instigation of the raid by prominent persons and party-leaders in the North. The most innocent notes and letters, commonplace newspaper-paragraphs and printed cuttings, were distorted and twisted by the reading and by the talking into clear instructions and positive plots. However, the main impression was of the picturesqueness of the soldiers resting on their knapsacks, and their arms stacked in the dark corners,—of the Governor and his satellites, some of them in brilliant militia array, seated around the lighted table,—and of the grotesque eloquence with which either the Governor or some of his prominent people would now and then burst out into an oratorical tirade, all thrown away on his sleepy auditors, and lost to the world for want of some clever shorthand writer.
In the morning I was glad to hear that my belated train had spent the last forty-eight hours at Martinsburg, and I did not a bit regret that my two days had been so full of adventure and incident. Waiting for its coming, I walked once more through the village, with one of the watchmen of the armory, who had been captured by John Brown and spent the night with him in the engine-house, and heard in all its freshness the story now so well known. Then I bade Governor Wise good-bye, and was duly thanked for my valiant services to the noble Mother of States, and rewarded by being offered the honorary and honorable title of A.D.C. to the commander-in-chief of Virginia, both for past services and for the future tasks to be met, of beating off invading hosts from the North,—all in the Governor's eye. Luckily for both sides, I declined the handsome offer; for my next visit to Virginia was as an A.D.C. to a general commanding troops, not of the North, but of the United States, invading, not the Virginia of John Brown's time, but the Virginia of a wicked Southern Confederacy.
Not long after, I received a letter of thanks from Governor Wise, written at Richmond and with a good deal of official flattery. His son Jennings, an old acquaintance of mine in pleasant days in Germany, came to see me, too, with civil messages from his father. Poor fellow! he paid the forfeit of his rebellious treason with his life at Roanoke Island. His father pays the heavier penalty of living to see the civil war fomented by him making its dreadful progress, and in its course crushing out all his ancient popularity and power.
In spite of many scenes of noble heroism and devoted bravery in legitimate warfare, and in the glorious campaigns of our own successful armies, I have never seen any life in death so grand as that of John Brown, and to me there is more than an idle refrain in the solemn chorus of our advancing hosts,—
"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the ground,
As we go marching on!"
In the summer of 1862, I was brought again to Harper's Ferry, with my regiment, and the old familiar scenes were carefully revisited. The terrible destruction of fine public buildings, the wanton waste of private property, the deserted village instead of the thriving town, the utter ruin and wretchedness of the country all about, and the bleak waste of land from Harper's Ferry to Charlestown, are all set features in every picture of the war in Virginia. At my old head-quarters in Charlestown jail there was less change than I had expected; its sturdy walls had withstood attack and defence better than the newer and more showy structures; the few inhabitants left behind after the ebb and flow of so many army waves, Rebel and Union succeeding each other at pretty regular intervals, were the well-to-do of former days, looking after their household gods, sadly battered and the worse for wear, but still cherished very dearly. Of my old acquaintances, it was a melancholy pleasure to learn that Colonel Baylor, who was mainly anxious to have me hanged, had in this war been reduced to the ranks for cowardice, and then was shot in the act of desertion. Kennedy was still living at home, but his brother was in the Rebel service. The lesser people were all scattered; the better class of workmen had gone to Springfield or to private gun-shops in the North,—the poorer sort, either into the Rebel army or to some other dim distance, and all trace of them was lost.
The thousands who have come and gone through Harper's Ferry and past Bolivar Heights will recall the waste and desolation of what was once a blooming garden-spot, full of thrift and industry and comfort almost unknown elsewhere south of the fatal slave-line; thousands who are yet to pass that way will see in the ruins of the place traces of the avenging spirit that has marked forever the scene of John Brown's Raid.
SCHUMANN'S QUINTETTE IN E FLAT MAJOR.
It was near sundown when we reached the sea-side hotel. By the time we were settled in our apartment, and I had my invalid undressed and in bed, the soft, long summer twilight was nearly over. The maid, having cleared away the litter of unpacking, was sitting in the anteroom, near enough to be within call. The poor suffering body that held so lightly the half-escaped spirit lay on the bed, exhausted with the journey, but feeling already soothed by the pleasant sea-breeze which sighed gently in at the open window.
Our rooms were on the ground-floor of a one-story cottage. A little distance off was the large hotel, to which the cottage was attached by a long arcade or covered gallery. We could hear fragments of the music which the band was playing to the gay idlers who were wandering about the balconies or through the hotel grounds; while laughs and little shrieks, uttered by the children as their pursuing nurses caught them up for bed, mingled not unpleasantly with the silvery hum arising from the fashionable crowd and the festal clang of the instruments.
Sleep half hovered over, half winged off from the pillow. I fanned the peacock plumes slowly to and fro in the delicious air, gazed with a suppressed sigh on the darkening West, and repeated with a rhythmical beat the beautiful Hebrew poem in Ecclesiasticus, which I had so often recited through many long years by the side of that sick-bed, to soothe the ear of the sufferer. I had just reached these lines,—
"A present remedy of all
Is the speeding coming of a cloud,
And a dew that meeteth it,
By the heat that cometh,
Shall overpower it.
"At His word the wind is still;
And with His thought
He appeaseth the deep;
And the Lord hath plumed islands therein,"—
when I noticed that sleep had settled firmly on the dark eyelids, and the panting breath came through the poor clay in little soughs and sighs, as if body and soul, tired with combat, had each sunk down for a momentary rest on the weary battle-field of life.
The music of the band had ceased; the gay crowd had withdrawn into the hotel to prepare for the entertainments of the evening, and there was a lull of human sounds. Then arose the grand roar of the ocean, which with the regular break of the billows on the beach beneath the cliff made the theme where before it had played the bass.
I crept stealthily out of the bed-room, and, after exchanging my travelling-gown for a cool white robe, stretched my tired body on the lounge in the anteroom.
There I lay with cold finger-tips pressed against burning eyelids, and icy palms holding with a firm grasp throbbing temples, under which flowed the hot, seething tide of mortal anguish, anxiety, and aching love. Some one touched me on the shoulder. I looked up. It was Max who was standing beside me.
"There is a great musical treat for you," he said in a low voice. "The A—— Society is here, and also part of B——'s Opera Troupe, with Madame C——, and D——, the great tenor. The troupe and society united are to give such a concert as rarely falls to the lot of mortals to hear. I never saw a better programme. Look!"
I read over the concert-bill. First there was an overture; then several scenes from "Lucia di Lammermoor,"—that great Shakspearian drama, whose dread catastrophe of Death and Doom leaves in the memory of the hearer a heavenly sorrow unmixed with earthly taint. It was the master-work of two poets, Scott and Donizetti, who had conceived it at the best period of their lives, when they were in all the vigor of manhood, and when mind and fancy had become ripened by experience. It was formed in one of those supreme instants, which come like "angels' visits" to artists, when they were enabled, through a power more like inspiration than art, to throw aside all outward influences, and fashion as deftly as Nature could the sad life of the Master of Ravenswood and his "sweet spirit's mate."
The Lucia scenes were grouped together and occupied the main part of the programme. They were those that told the story of the brief passion, from the sweet birth of love up to the solemn hour when both lovers passed away to that resting-place "where nothing could touch them further."
My eyes lingered over the titles of the scenes, while my memory swiftly recalled their characteristics:—the First Duet between Lucia and Edgardo, a passionate burst of youthful love, as delicious as the tender dialogues between Romeo and his Juliet;—the Sextette, that masterly pyramidal piece of vocal harmony, in which the voices group around those of the two lovers, and all mount up glowingly like a flame on a sacrificial altar;—the heart-rending passage where Lucia's spirit, frantic through woe, rises supreme over native timidity and irresolution, and, with one fierce burst of love and grief, which startles alike tyrant and friend, soars aloft in the terrible, but grand realm of madness;—and the Finale, where the dying Edgardo sighs out that delicious air which has been well styled, "a melody of Plato sung by a Christian soul."
The programme closed fitly with Schumann's Quintette in E flat Major.
This Quintette is one of remarkable power and beauty. It is for 'rano, viola, first and second violin, and 'cello. It is divided into four movements: Allegro brillante; In moda d'una Marcia; Scherzo; and Allegro ma non troppo.
As I handed the bill back to Max, he whispered to my maid, who left the room an instant, and returned with a mantle on her arm.
"Come," he said, in a decided tone, "you must go, and quickly, too, for they are already playing the overture. You can surely trust Ernestine with the watching, as you will be such a short distance off; my serving-man shall wait in the arcade, and come for you, if you are needed."
Then, raising me with kind force from the lounge, he wrapped the mantle around me. As we passed out, we stood for an instant at the bed-room-door, looking at the invalid. The breath still came in short pants, but the truce was being kept: sleep had come in between as a transient mediator.
I noticed in the dim light the attenuated frame, the shrunken features, the pinched nostrils, the very shadowy outlining of death. With choking throat and swelling breast I looked at Max, my eyes saying what my voice could not,—
"I cannot go."
Without a word of reply, he lifted me out of the apartment, and in a few moments we were sitting in a dim corner of the concert-room, listening to the charming First Duet.
The scenes followed one another rapidly, and displayed even more powerfully than I had ever noticed before the one pervading theme. Sense and imagination became possessed with it; at each succeeding passage the interest increased continuously, until at the end the passion mounted up as on mighty wings and carried my sad heart aloft and beyond "the ordinary conditions of humanity."
The prima donna, Madame C——, and Signor D——, the tenor, had a sad story of scandal floating about them; it was on every one's lips. Madame C—— was no longer in her first youth, but she was still very beautiful, more attractive than she had been in her younger days,—so those said who had seen and heard her years before.
Her young womanhood had been devoted to patient, honest study, which was rewarded with success, and calm, passionless prosperity. She had married brilliantly, and left the stage, but after an absence of many years had returned to it to aid her husband in some reverse of fortune. Her married life had been tranquilly happy, for she had loved with all the sweet serenity of a cold, unexacting nature.
But now it was whispered that this beautiful, pure woman, who had resisted—indeed, like another Una, had never felt—the temptations which had environed her on the stage, and in the courtly circle to which she had been raised by her husband's rank, was being strangely influenced by a gifted, handsome tenor singer, with whom she had been associated since her return to her professional life.
This person was about her husband's age, a year or two her senior, and unmarried. The infatuation, it was said, existed on both sides, and the two lovers were so blinded by their strange passion as to seem unconscious of any other sight or presence. The husband, report added, behaved with remarkable prudence and good breeding; indeed, some doubted if he noticed the affair,—for he treated not only his wife, but the reputed lover, with familiar and kind friendliness.
The recollection of this scandal flitted over my memory as I listened to the First Duet. Madame C—— was a blonde; she had rich, deep violet eyes, and a lovely skin: her hair, too, was a waving mass of the poet's and painter's golden hue. She was about middle height, and had a full, well-developed person.
"When I saw her in Paris and Vienna, twenty years ago," whispered Max, "she was too pale and slender, and the expression of those brilliant eyes was as cold and still as glacier depths."
Not so now, I thought,—for they fairly blazed with a passionate fire, as the music welled up on her beautiful quivering lips; indeed, the melody appeared to come from them, as much as from her mouth, and I seemed to be listening with my looks as well as my hearing. She was not well, evidently,—for there was a bright red, feverish spot on either cheek, and her movements were feeble and trembling; but her voice was full of the deepest pathos.
"In her best days she never sang so well," said Max, as the room rang with applause at the termination of the duo, "Time may have taken away a little fulness from her lower notes; but the touching tenderness which envelops them, as a purple mist hanging over a forest in autumn, fully compensates for the loss of youthful vigor."
Her voice was, indeed, wonderful,—not simply clear and flexible, but dazzling and glancing, like the lightning that plays around the horizon on a hot midsummer's night; and her execution was as if the Cherub All-Knowledge and the Seraph All-Love had united their divine powers in one human form.
In the Sextette, which followed, the tenor showed to great advantage. His voice, though no longer young, was beautifully managed; it had an exquisite timbre, and on this night there was added to it a rare expression and character.
When he asked the poor trembling Lucia if the signature to the marriage contract was hers, there was a concentrated rage in his singing that was fearful; and Madame C—— almost cowered to the floor, as he held her firmly by the wrist,—for the scenes were sung in costume and with action,—and demanded,—
"A me rispondi. Son tue cifre? Rispondi!"
Her affirmative was like the silvery wail of a fallen angel. Then followed the terrible imprecation passage. He darted out the
"Maledetto sia l'istante!"
with such startling fury that the notes and words seemed to be forked, stinging, serpent tongues.
The Stretta ensued, and the music-tide flowed so high and full that the fashionable audience forgot all artificial conventionalities, and yielded themselves freely to the ennobling emotions of human sympathy. Above the whole sublime assemblage of sounds wailed out that fearful note of the fallen cherub; and the fainting of Lucia, at the close of the Sextette, I felt sure was not a feigned one.
As the curtain fell over the temporary stage, several gentlemen hurried out to make inquiries about Madame C——, for there seemed to be an opinion similar to mine pervading the room. The curtain rose, and it was announced that she was too ill to sing again; but the murmur of regret was silenced almost immediately by the appearance of the chorus with Signor D——, the tenor.
They began the Finale. Signor D——looked haggard and wan, but very stern, and there was more of wrath than repentance in his singing. Was it fancy or reality? The heart-rending
"O bell' alma innamorata!"
seemed to be accompanied by distant, half-veiled sobs. No one else appeared to notice them, and I half doubted their reality.
The Finale ended; and for a few moments the gay crowd buzzed, and some stood up and looked about at their neighbors. The interval was short, however,—for the Quintette performers came upon the stage, and took their places.
I leaned back and covered my face with my hand. My memory was still ringing with echoes of the forlorn cry of wrecked love, mingled with the imaginary sobs I had just heard; therefore I hardly listened to the majestic opening of full, harmonious chords, which lead grandly into a sort of cantabile movement.
The curious modulations which followed aroused me, and I soon busied myself in tracing the changes from major to minor, and from one minor key to another, as sorrows chase each other in life. Just at this part of the composition occurs the passage which sounds like a weird, ghostly call or summons: when I heard it, my fancy began working, and, like Heine, I saw spectres in the music sounds.
The air seemed to have grown suddenly "nipping and eager." I unconsciously drew my mantle around my shoulders, as a shiver ran over me, such as nurses tell us in childhood is caused by some one walking over our graves. I fancied I saw before me the ghost scene in "Hamlet." There was the castle platform,—the gloomy battlements,—the sound of distant wassail; and dimly defined by the vague light of my fancy, stood the sad young Danish prince, shivering in the "shrewd, biting" night-air, tortured with those apprehensions and sickening doubts
"That cloud the mind and fire the brain,"
but talking with a feigned and courtly indifference to his dear friend, "the profound scholar and perfect gentleman," Horatio; and in the gloom around them seemed to be arising the questionable shape which was
"So horridly to shake his disposition."
Strangely the music displayed its fine forms, mingling most curiously with, while it created, my fancied pictures,—and though my senses followed the changing visions, which flitted like a phantasmagoria before my eyes, my mind traced clearly the music train; but when the diminished seventh resolved gracefully into the melody which is taken alternately by 'cello and viola,—the close of the first movement,—my vision faded gradually away.
There was a short pause, but the fine artists who were executing the Quintette did not by any undignified movement break the illusion which the music had created; although a violin-string needed raising, it was done with quiet and skilful dexterity, and they proceeded to the second movement.
Smoothly and mournfully the Funeral March opened. The solemn melody which glides softly through it is totally unlike the restless trampings of Fate heard in other great compositions of the kind; yet Fate is unmistakably there, quiet, but relentless, like
"the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on."
The Scherzo, with its beautiful octave run for the piano and delicious change of harmony in the next measure,—the weird melody sketched out by the first violin, and then yielded up to the piano,—and the strange, but truly inspired, modulations which follow,—lapped my spirit in a sweet bewilderment. I forgot all the before and after of that "sad and incapable story" of human life and love which my fancy had been weaving from the coarse, vulgar threads of common rumor; and even the pictures vanished which had been evoked of the young prince,
"In his blown youth blasted with ecstasy."
I ceased following the modulations, interesting as they were; for often music fills the thoughts so full that the ear forgets to listen to the sweet harmonies.
But I was again aroused by the fine suspension and sequence which open the last movement of the Quintette,—the Allegro ma non troppo. The fugued passage, the reiteration of the opening theme, and the sad close were all as tragic as the last scene in "Hamlet," the
"quarry that cries on, Havoc!"—
but it was also as graceful and touching as the words of the dying prince to his friend,—
"Horatio, I am dead:
Thou liv'st. Report me and my cause aright
To the unsatisfied."
A thousand rumors flitted about the room as the concert broke up. Madame C—— was so ill, they feared she was dying; and, strange to say, the tenor, on leaving the platform after the Lucia finale, had been seized with violent cramps and vomitings, which could not be checked, and he also was lying in a very critical state. There were dark hints and many improbable imaginings.
"All was not well, they deemed;
Some knew perchance,
And some besides were too discreetly wise
To more than hint their knowledge in surmise."
About an hour after midnight I was lying on the lounge in the anteroom of the cottage. The faithful maid had taken my place by the sick-bed,—for my invalid was still sleeping. It was a long, quiet sleep; and so low and peaceful had grown those suffering, panting breaths, that they almost startled me into a hope of happier days. Could health, long absent, be returning? A state of continuous illness, if free from acute pain, would be a relief.
These half-formed hopes made me restless, and, instead of taking the physical repose I needed, I rose from the lounge, and walked out on the deserted lawn in front of the cottage. The moon was at the full, and shone brighter than day's twilight. The night was warm, but not oppressive,—for there was a gentle air blowing, filled with the invigorating briny odor of the ocean; yet I felt choked and stifled.
"Just for a breath from the beach," I said to myself, as I descended the steps leading down from the cliff.
On reaching the sands, instead of being alone, as I had hoped, I found two persons already there. I drew back quickly, intending to return; but they were passing too swiftly to notice me. As they went by, the bright full moon gleamed over their pale, wan faces, and I recognized in them Madame C——and the tenor!
They were talking earnestly, in low, rapid Italian. She leaned on his arm,—indeed, they seemed to be sustaining each other, for both appeared feeble and faint; but, tottering as they were, they sped rapidly by, and so near to me that the corner of Madame C——'s mantle flapped in my face, and left a strange subtile perfume behind it.
But what struck me most was the expression of their faces,—such wild, sad, longing, entreating love! As they disappeared around a corner of the cliff which jutted out, a dreadful suspicion seized me. Could they be seeking self-destruction? Were they going to bury their unhallowed love, with its shame and sorrow, in one wildering embrace beneath those surging ocean-waves?
As one in a dream, I moved along the beach, hardly knowing whither I went. Mechanically I ascended the flight of steps which led to the part of the cliff directly opposite the hotel entrance. As I walked up the lawn, I noticed a great commotion in the house. There were lights flitting about, people running up and down stairs, and many persons talking confusedly on the gallery and in the hall.
"What is the matter?" I asked of a waiter who was passing near me, looking frightened and bewildered.
He stopped, and answered with all the keen eagerness of an untrained person, to whom the communicating of a startling story to an uninformed superior is a perfect godsend.
"Very strange doings, Ma'am,—very strange!"
"Aha!" I thought; "they have discovered the absence or flight of those unhappy creatures."
"Very strange doings!" he repeated. "The foreign lady who sang to-night, and the gentleman too, is both dead."
"Dead!" I exclaimed. "Why, you are mistaken. I saw them just this instant on the sands below the cliff."
The man looked at me as if he thought me crazy.
"I mean the singers, Ma'am,—them as sang at the concert to-night. They was both taken nigh about the same time, was handled just alike, and died here a little while ago, a'most at once, as you might say. Folks is talking hard about the husband of the Madame."
Then he added, in a lower tone, confidentially, "They do say he poisoned 'em; for, you see, he it was that dressed the lobster salad at dinner, and made 'em both eat hearty of it, though they were unwilling; and now they have him over in the office there, in custody."
"But, my good man," I said, as soon as I could get my breath, "I assure you they are not dead."
"Well, Ma'am, if you don't believe my words, you can see 'em with your own eyes, if you choose"; and he led the way into the hall of the hotel.
I followed him. We entered a side room,—a sort of reception salon,—where the two poor creatures were, indeed lying extended on sofas. Several startled persons were gazing at them, but the larger portion of the crowd were drawn off to the other side of the hotel, where the unhappy, stunned husband was listening to the fearful charges of murder,—murder of his wife and his friend!
I stepped up to the dead bodies,—one after the other. Their dresses had not even been changed. The stage finery looked very pitiful. A muslin mantle had been thrown over Madame C——'s bare shoulders and beautiful bosom; from it arose the same curious perfume I had noticed on the beach. It was as if that delicate, rare smell had been kept in a box of some kind of odoriferous resinous wood.
I touched their cold brows, their icy fingers,—noticed the poor features, drawn by acute suffering,—and strange as it was, I could see on both faces, as if behind a gauzy film, the same sad, wild, longing look of love I had observed on the countenances of those two shadowy beings I had met on the sands.
I left the hotel, and walked to the cottage, with my mind in a sad, bewildered state. I entered the open door, and went to the sick-room. There stood Max and Ernestine, and she was weeping.
"It is all over!" he said; "and I am glad she was not here."
I advanced hurriedly forward, pushed them aside, and stood by the bed. Yes, that long, quiet sleep had, indeed, been a forerunner of life,—the true life! All was truly over,—the long years of suffering, the blessed years of loving care, the combat and the struggle; and on the battle-field rested the dread shadows of Night and Death!
And I? I sank on the poor body-shell with one low, long wail, and Nature kindly extended over me her blessed veil of forgetfulness.
RICHARD COBDEN.
On the third day of April last a most impressive and unusual scene was witnessed in the English House of Commons. For some time before the hour for sitting, the members had gathered about the halls and lobbies in whispering groups. One of its leading members had passed away, and there was a consultation as to whether the House should move an adjournment. It is not the custom of the House of Commons to adjourn in case of the death of one of its members, unless that member is an officer of the Government or of extraordinary prominence. The last person for whom it had adjourned was Sir G. Cornwall Lewis. It was considered in the present case that there were some members whose hostility to the departed would not stop at the grave, and that the harmony which alone would make an adjournment graceful as a tribute would be unattainable; so it was decided that the motion should not be made. When the great, deep-toned Westminster clock struck four, the members took their seats. Then slowly entered the ministers, with Lord Palmerston at their head; and for some moments sitting there with their hats on, one might have supposed it a silent meeting of Friends. At this moment all eyes were turned to the door as one entered who is a Friend indeed: heavily, with head bowed under his terrible sorrow, John Bright walked to his place, by the side of which was a vacancy never to be filled. Lord Palmerston, on rising, was received with a cheer which rang through the hall like a wailing cry, and was followed by a deep hush. As the white-haired old man, who had seen the leading men of more than two generations fall at his side, began to speak of the "great loss" which the House and the nation had suffered, his voice quivered, and recovered itself only when it sank to a low tone that was deeply pathetic. And when, having recounted the instances in which Richard Cobden, with his "great ambition to be useful to his country," had been signally useful, each instance followed by the refusal of proffered honors and emoluments, he said, "Mr. Cobden's name will be forever engraved on the most interesting pages of the history of this country," there was a spontaneous burst of applause throughout the House. When Mr. Disraeli arose to speak concerning the man whom for so many years he had met only in uncompromising political combat, it was at once felt how irresistible was the force of a right and true man. No yielding, equivocating, South-by-North politician could ever have brought a lifelong antagonist to stand by his grave and say,—"I believe, that, when the verdict of posterity is recorded on his life and conduct, it will be said of him, that, looking to all he said and did, he was without doubt the greatest political character the pure middle class of this country has yet produced,—an ornament to the House of Commons, and an honor to England." Then arose, as if trying to lift a great burden, noble John Bright. Twice he tried to speak and his voice failed; at length, with broken utterance, but with that eloquent simplicity which characterizes him beyond all speakers whom I have heard,—"I feel that I cannot address the House on this occasion. Every expression of sympathy which I have heard has been most grateful to my heart; but the time which has elapsed, since I was present when the manliest and gentlest spirit that ever actuated or tenanted the human form took its flight, is so short, that I dare not even attempt to give utterance to the feelings by which I am oppressed. I shall leave it to some calmer moment, when I may have an opportunity of speaking to some portion of my countrymen the lesson which I think will be learned from the life and character of my friend. I have only to say, that, after twenty years of most intimate and most brotherly friendship with him, I little knew how much I loved him, until I found that I had lost him." As he spoke the concluding words, which plaintively told his sense of loneliness, the tears that can become a manly man came thick and fast, and all who were in the House wept with him. There have been cases in which the House of Commons has adjourned in honor of deceased members; but perhaps never before has it showed its emotions in generous tears. Did I say that all wept? I must recall it. There actually were two or three who, during the entire scene, had nothing but sneers to give, and sat, as I heard a member remark, "a group fit for the pencil of Retzsch, fresh from its delineations of Mephistopheles." I need not write upon the page which mentions Richard Cobden their names, which, to reverse Palmerston's praise, are engraved only upon the least creditable pages of the history of their own or of others' countries.
When John Bright sat down, some minds were borne back over eight years when Cobden was addressing a large public meeting without the presence of his usual companion. Mr. Bright was then in the far South, in consequence of ill-health of a character to excite grave apprehension among his friends. During his address, Mr. Cobden, having occasion to allude to his absent friend, was so overpowered by his feelings that he could not proceed for several minutes; and rarely has a great audience been so deeply moved as was that by this emotion in one to whose heart, true and ruddy, any sentimentality was unattributable.
To write the history of this friendship between Bright and Cobden, to tell how the sturdy hearts of these strong men became riveted to each other, would be to record the best pages of recent English history. For these men joined hands at the altar of a noble cause; and their souls have been welded in the fires of a fierce and unceasing struggle for humanity.
Richard Cobden was born near Midhurst, Sussex, at his father's farm-house, Dunford, June 3, 1804. His father was one of the class who regarded the repeal of the Corn Laws as identical with their ruin. Young Richard was at an early age placed in a London warehouse, where he so pressed every leisure moment of his time into the acquisition of information that his employer reproved him with a warning that lads so fond of reading were apt to spoil their prospects. (This old gentleman afterwards became unfortunate, and the young man he had thus warned contributed fifty pounds for his comfort every year until his death.) There has been some attempt on the part of certain persons, who have never forgiven Mr. Cobden for their being in the wrong in the matter of the Corn Laws, to sneer at him as an uncultivated man. This was, of course, to be expected by one who made all the old bones in the scholastic coffins at Oxford rattle again and again, by declaring that he regarded "a single copy of the 'Times' newspaper as of more importance than all the works of Thucydides,"—a thing which he has for some years been willing to pledge himself not to repeat,—or illustrating the nature of English education by representing Englishmen's complete knowledge of the Ilissus, which he had once seen dammed up by washerwomen, and their utter ignorance of the Mississippi, flowing its two thousand miles through a magnificent country peopled by their own race. But these partisan sneers could not affect the judgment of any who knew Mr. Cobden, or those who read his works on Russia and the United States and his pamphlets on subjects of current interest, that his classical and historical culture was equal to that of the majority of his critics, whilst his acquaintance with general philosophy and political economy was remarkable.
Mr. Cobden left the ordinary business of the warehouse in which he was employed to become a commercial traveller, in which capacity he gained much knowledge of Continental peoples and their languages. At length he was able to establish himself in the calico business at Manchester, in the firm "Richard Cobden & Co." The "Cobden prints" became celebrated, the business flourished, and Mr. Cobden, at the time when he began his political career, was receiving, as his share of the income, about forty-five thousand dollars per annum. It was probably about the year 1830, when England was feeling the first ground-swells of the great Reform agitation, that Mr. Cobden felt called to give himself entirely to his country's service. He resolved, however, to study for some years with reference to public questions. In 1834-5 he made a tour through many countries, including Egypt, Greece, and Turkey, Canada and the United States. On his return he wrote several pamphlets, in the name of "A Manchester Manufacturer," which excited attention, and one ("England, Ireland, and America") a lively controversy. About this time appeared his first contribution to the Eastern question in a little work entitled "Russia." In all these his fundamental ideas—Retrenchment, Non-Intervention, Free Trade—were set forth in a very spirited and eloquent way. It is now very evident that Mr. Cobden was the product and utterance of his country at that time; and though he was held to be an economical visionary, never was visionary in conservative England blessed with seeing his visions so soon harden into facts. But he was not so absorbed in national politics, and in his proposed "Smithian Society," in which the "Wealth of Nations" was to be discussed, as to forget the more circumscribed duties of a citizen of Manchester. Manchester was not yet a city with municipal representation, when he wrote a pamphlet entitled "Incorporate your Borough," which did as much as anything else to raise it to that dignity; and Manchester showed its gratitude by electing him to be alderman in the first town-council.
It is hard for us at this date to realize the condition of England when that horrible Sirocco, as Robert Browning called it, the tax on corn, was blighting the land. The suicidal policy which had prevailed since the Peace of 1815 had brought the country to the verge of ruin; and when, in 1838, those reformers of Manchester repaired to that first meeting of the Anti-Corn-Law League, it was through crowds of pale, haggard, starving men, each with his starving family at home, muttering treason, and prepared for violence at any touch. The banner of Chartism was already lifted. It was then that these resolute men, with Cobden at their head, met and vowed sacredly that their League should never be disbanded until those laws had been repealed. The devotion with which Richard Cobden fought that good fight may be illustrated by the story that once his little daughter said to her mother concerning her father,—"Mother, who is that gentleman that comes here sometimes?" With a similar devotion to humanity did this tenderest of parents inspire his companions; and it is not in the nature of things that such labors so put forth shall fail. One by one the haughty aristocrats yielded; and when at last Cobden had conquered the conqueror of Napoleon, the battle was won. The "Times" pooh-poohed the movement, until one day the news came that a few gentlemen of Manchester had subscribed between forty and fifty thousand pounds for repeal, when it suddenly discovered that "the Anti-Corn-Law movement was a great fact." When, in 1841, the new Whig Ministry, with Sir Robert Peel at their head, came in, elected as Protectionists, gaunt Famine took its stand by the Royal Mace, like a Banquo. Sir Robert driving along Fleet Street might see those whom this new unwelcome commoner represented grimly gazing of "Punch,"—that of the Premier turning his back on a starving man with half-naked wife and child, and buttoning up his coat with the words, "I'm very sorry, my good man, but I can do nothing for you,—nothing!" But though Peel was the Premier apparent, Cobden was the Premier actual. And means were found of softening Sir Robert's heart,—these, namely: it was intimated to him one morning, that, if a division of the House should go against the Ministry, the Queen would feel compelled to call upon Richard Cobden, manufacturer, to make a cabinet for her. So the Ministry yielded, and the League reached its triumph in 1846. It is due to the memory of Peel to say that he joined with the triumphant nation to yield every laurel to the brow to which it belonged, and uttered the memorable prediction that Cobden's name would be forever venerated and loved, whenever "the poor man ate his daily bread, sweeter because no longer leavened with a bitter sense of unwise and unjust taxation."
In the year 1839 Mr. Cobden had heard John Bright speak with great power at a meeting in Rochdale. A little later, when Bright had just lost his wife at Leamington, Cobden visited him there. He found him in great grief. "Think," said Cobden, "think in your sorrow, of the thousands of men, women, and children, who are this moment starving under the infamous laws which it is your task and mine to help remove. Come with me, and we will never rest until we have abolished the Corn Laws." Then and there were those hands clasped in a sacred cause which were never to be unclasped but by death.
Mr. Cobden took his seat in Parliament in 1841, representing Stockport. He had not only before the triumph of 1846 sacrificed his time and impaired his health, but also given up his fortune to the cause, and was a poor man. By a great spontaneous subscription, the nation reimbursed his actual losses, and amongst other things built the house at Midhurst, where he resided on the spot that his father had occupied. Immediately after the repeal Mr. Cobden started on a Continental tour; and in every city he was met with a triumphal reception, so deeply had his great work in England affected the interests of all Europe. During his absence he was elected to represent the great constituency of the West Riding in Yorkshire, which he accepted.
It was perhaps in those furious days which preceded the Crimean War that the noble personal qualities with which Mr. Cobden was endowed shone out most clearly. When all England, from the thunder of the "Times" to the quiet Muse of Tennyson, was enlisted for war, Cobden took his stand, and refused to bow to the tempest. In a moment the nation seemed to forget the services of years, and Cobden, denounced as a "Peace-at-any-price man," lost the ear of the country, as did Bright and others in those days of political anarchy. To the ability and independence with which Cobden and Bright withstood the popular current then, Mr. Kinglake, the opponent of both, has done justice. It was, in fact, not true that Cobden was a "Peace-at-any-price man." Though he maintained earnestly the principle of non-intervention, it was because he thought that England in its present hands could not be trusted to intervene always in the right interest; and never was there a more pointed confirmation of his suspicion than the event of a war which gave the victory won by the blood of the people over to the French Emperor, that he might with it bind back every nation that in Southern Europe was near to its redemption. The strongest chains binding Circassia, Poland, Hungary, and Venetia, were forged in the fires of the Crimean War. This popular wave reached its height and broke, as such waves will, and the people much ashamed returned to their true leaders. So when, immediately after the end of the Crimean War, the disgraceful bombardment of Canton occurred, Cobden was still there in Parliament ready to risk all again. His resolution condemning the action of Sir John Bowring (who, by the way, was Cobden's personal friend) was passed in the House by a vote of 263 to 247. Palmerston appealed to the selfishness of the country on the subject of Chinese trade, and was sustained. These were the days when Gladstone and Disraeli lay down together. Cobden, Bright, Gibson, Cardwell, Layard, Fox, Miall, and others, all lost their seats. To this interval we are indebted that John Bright recovered strength in a foreign land, and that we received in the United States the second visit of Cobden. Whilst they were absent, the reaction set in: Bright was elected by Birmingham, Cobden by Rochdale. Nay, so strong was the feeling in Cobden's case, that Palmerston found it to his purpose to invite him into the Cabinet; and when, returning from America, Cobden sailed up the Mersey, he was met by a deputation from Liverpool who informed him of his appointment among the new Ministry. He at once declined the appointment, for reasons which have not hitherto been given to the public. Since his death a personal friend of his has written, that, on this occasion, "he told Lord Palmerston, in answer to remonstrances against his decision to decline the honor, that he had always regarded his Lordship as one of the most dangerous ministers England could possibly have, and that his views had not undergone the slightest change. He felt that it would be doing violence to his own sense of duty, and injuring his own character for consistency in the eyes of his countrymen, to profess to act with a minister to whom he had all along been opposed on public grounds."
Mr. Cobden's next great service was in bringing about the treaty of free commerce with France, a service which has endeared him to the French beyond all English statesmen, and which brought him from the Queen the offer of a Baronetcy, which he declined, as he also did in January last Mr. Gladstone's offer of the chairmanship of the Board of Audit, at a salary of two thousand pounds. Well might Gladstone say of him, as he did,—"Rare is the privilege of any man who, having fourteen years ago rendered to his country one signal and splendid service, now again, within the same brief span of life, decorated neither by rank nor title, bearing no mark to distinguish him from the people whom he loves, has been permitted to perform a great and memorable service to his sovereign and to his country."
By the death of Mr. Cobden America has lost one of her truest friends, one who in all this conflict, which has been reflected in England in a fierce warfare of parties, has been in the thick or the fight, "the white plume of Navarre." Nothing told more for the American cause in Europe than the celebrated speech of Cobden, made at the time when the busy Southerners were trying to show that the war was not for Slavery, but Free Trade, in which he declared that he had found the Southerners, and Jefferson Davis himself, whom he had visited, utterly indifferent to the Free Trade movement. He was accustomed to speak of American affairs as an American. I well remember his vehement expressions of feeling concerning the McClellan campaign in Virginia,—in connection with which he told me that he was at one time travelling with Jefferson Davis and McClellan together, and that Davis whispered to him, that, in case of war, "That man [McClellan] is one of the first we should put into service." I thought Mr. Cobden inclined to attribute McClellan's failures to something worse than incapacity. But this is only one instance of the way in which he followed our war-steps, and was interested in the subordinate questions which are usually interesting only to Americans. It is with a melancholy pleasure that we now know that his last public utterance was the letter on American affairs to our minister at Copenhagen, which reached England in the American papers the day before his death,—and that one of his last acts was to send from his death-bed a contribution to a poor and paralyzed American sailor who with his family was suffering in London, without any personal appeal having been made to him. These were the last pulses of a heart that beat only for humanity.
Mr. Cobden was one of the finest speakers I have ever heard. There was a play as of summer lightning about his eloquence, which, whilst it did not strike and crash opponents, was purifying the atmosphere of the debate, and lightning up every detail of fact, so that error could not flourish in his presence, nor even well hide itself. There was a terseness and massiveness in his speech, curiously blended with subtilty and fervor. A question of finance would grow pathetic under his touch, and he could create a soul under the ribs of statistics. He might vie with Lowell's ideal Jonathan for "calculating fanaticism" and "cast-iron enthusiasm." But, after all, what more need be said than the epitaph proposed for his grave: "He gave the people bread"?
MODERN IMPROVEMENTS AND OUR NATIONAL DEBT.
At the commencement of the Rebellion it was the general opinion of statesmen and financiers in other countries, and the opinion of many among ourselves, that our resources were inadequate to a long continuance of the war, and that it must soon terminate under pecuniary exhaustion, if from no other cause. Our experience has shown that this view was fallacious. After having sustained for several years the largest army known to modern times, our available resources seem to be unimpaired. The country is, indeed, largely in debt; but its powers of production are so great that it can undoubtedly meet all future demands as easily as it has met those of the past.
The ability or inability of a nation engaged in war to sustain heavy public expenses is to be measured not so much by its nominal debt as by the relation which the sum of its production bears to that of its necessary consumption. A nation heavily in debt may continue to make large public expenditures and still prosper and increase in wealth, if its powers of production are correspondingly large also. It is a fact of the most encouraging kind, that the power of production exhibited by the United States far exceeds, in proportion to their population, that of any other nation heretofore involved in a long and costly war. The case which most nearly approaches ours, in this regard, is that of England, during her war with Napoleon, from 1803 to 1815. But since the termination of that long contest, the progress of discovery, improvements in the machinery and in the processes of manufacture, more effective implements of agriculture, the general introduction of railways,[H] and other time- and labor-saving agencies, together with the constantly increasing influence of the applied sciences, have so augmented the productive power of humanity, that the experience of the most advanced nations fifty years ago furnishes no adequate criterion of what the United States can do now.
It is not easy to determine the precise ratio in which production has been increased by these instrumentalities. It is unquestionably very large,—not less, probably, than threefold. That is to say, a given population, including all ages and conditions, can produce the articles necessary for its subsistence, such as food, clothing, and shelter, to an extent three times as great, with these agencies, as it could produce without them. Hence it appears, that, if the people of the loyal States could return to the standard of living that prevailed fifty years ago, the amount of their production would be sufficient to subsist not only themselves, but twice as many more in addition. To accomplish this, they would have, indeed, to devote themselves more to the production of articles of prime necessity and less to those of mere ornament and luxury. That they have the productive energy necessary to such a result there can be no doubt.
This encouraging view of our condition is fully sustained by official statements, which show that the industrial products of the country increase in a greater ratio than the population. In 1850 the aggregate value of the products of agriculture, mining, manufactures, and the mechanic arts, in the United States, was $2,345,000.000. In 1860 the aggregate was $3,756,000,000. This is an increase in ten years of sixty per cent, whereas the increase of population during that decade was only thirty-five and a half per cent. Thus we see that during the ten years ending with 1860—the date of the last census—the products of the industry of the country increased almost twice as fast as the population increased. If to this we add the remarkable fact that the value of taxable property increased during the same period a hundred and twenty-six per cent, we have striking proof of the existence of a vast and rapidly increasing productive power,—a power largely due to the influence of those improvements which have been alluded to.
One obvious effect of war is to transfer a portion of labor from the sphere of effective production to that of extraordinary consumption. To what extent the relations of production and consumption among us have been changed during the present contest it is impossible to state. That consumption has been largely increased by our military operations is apparent to all. It is equally apparent that production also has been augmented, though not, perhaps, to the same extent. The extraordinary demand for various commodities for war purposes has brought all the producing agencies of the country into a high state of activity and efficiency, giving to the loyal States a larger aggregate production than they had before the war. Of mining and manufactures this is unquestionably true. As regards the products of the soil, the Commissioner of Agriculture, in his Report for 1863, says,—"Although the year just closed has been a year of war on the part of the Republic, over a wider field and on a grander scale than any recorded in history, yet, strange as it may appear, the great interests of agriculture have not materially suffered in the loyal States.... Notwithstanding there have been over a million of men employed in the army and navy, withdrawn chiefly from the producing classes, and liberally fed, clothed, and paid by the Government, yet the yield of most of the great staples of agriculture for 1863 exceeds that of 1862.... This wonderful fact of history—a young republic carrying on a gigantic war on its own territory and coasts, and at the same time not only feeding itself and foreign nations, but furnishing vast quantities of raw materials for commerce and manufactures—proves that we are essentially an agricultural people; that three years of war have not as yet seriously disturbed, but rather increased, industrial pursuits; and that the withdrawal of agricultural labor, and the loss of life by disease and battle, have been more than compensated by machinery and maturing growth at home, and by the increased influx of immigration from abroad."
In illustration of the character of those agencies to which we owe the remarkable and gratifying results thus portrayed by the Commissioner, I give the following official statement in regard to two of the more prominent modern implements of agriculture. Mr. Kennedy, in his Census Report for 1860, informs us "that a threshing-machine in Ohio, worked by three men, with some assistance from the farm hands, did the work of seventy flails, and that thirty steam-threshers only were required to prepare for market the wheat crop of two counties in Ohio, which would have required the labor of forty thousand men." As it took probably less than two hundred men to work the machines, the immense saving in human labor becomes instantly apparent.
Again, in his last Patent-Office Report, Mr. Holloway states "that from reliable returns in his possession it is shown that forty thousand reapers were manufactured and sold in 1863, and that it is estimated by the manufacturers that over ninety thousand will be required to meet the demand for 1864"; and these machines, he says, will save the labor of four hundred and fifty thousand men.
If the aggregate produce of the loyal States, notwithstanding the large amount of labor that has been withdrawn from production by the demands of the war, is actually greater than ever before, and if, as we have already shown, the sum of that produce is three times as great as the people of those States, using proper economy, would necessarily consume, surely no one should feel any anxiety in regard to the ability of the United States to meet all their pecuniary obligations.
I have already said that England, in her war with Napoleon, furnishes the best criterion in history for judging of our own financial situation; and though the two cases are far from running parallel to each other, it may be interesting to compare them in some of their aspects.
At the restoration of peace in 1815, the national debt of England amounted in Federal currency to $4,305,000,000. It is impossible as yet to say what will be the ultimate amount of our national debt. It amounts now to rather more than one half of the debt of Great Britain, and, at its present ratio of increase, it will take nearly four years more to make our debt equal to hers.
Now, for the purposes of this statement, let us assume that it will take four years more to finish the war and to adjust and settle all its contingent claims, and that at the close of that period, say in 1869, we shall be at peace, with a restored Union, and with a national debt as large as that of England when peace returned to her in 1815,—how will the ability of this country to sustain and pay its debt compare with the ability of England to do the same at the time above referred to?
The simple fact that England was able to assume so vast a debt, and to sustain the burden through half a century, during which her prosperity has scarcely known abatement, and her wealth has been constantly and largely increasing, ought to satisfy every American citizen that his own country can at least do as well. But we can do more and better; for a comparison of the two countries in the matter of ability shows that the preponderance is greatly in our favor.
At the respective periods of comparison just named, to wit, 1815 and 1869, the population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain was less than one half of what the population of the United States will be, and its amount of foreign trade was less than one third. In 1815 the "factory system" was in its infancy and imperfectly organized, the steam-engine was unperfected and in comparatively limited use. The railway, the steamboat, the telegraph, the reaper, the thresher, and many other important improvements and discoveries which tend to augment the productive power of nations, have all come since that day. So far as relates to the question of ability to sustain heavy financial burdens, England, in 1815, can hardly be compared for a moment with a country like our own, possessing as it does, in abundance and perfection, the potent agencies of productive and distributing power just referred to.
It is true that England is now enjoying, to a large extent, the benefit of these important agencies; but she had to supply the capital to create them, after she had assumed the maximum of her enormous debt,—whereas those agencies were all in active operation among us before any part of our national debt was incurred. I hardly need suggest that it makes a vast difference whether a nation has or has not these material advantages at the time when it is contracting a heavy debt, and that our position in this respect, so far as the question of ability is concerned, is a position of immeasurable superiority.
In regard to the paying of our debt after the return of peace, we possess some decided advantages, to which I will very briefly allude. Of these the most obvious are, a greater ratio in the increase of population, and more extensive natural resources. During the decade which ended in 1861, the population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain increased from 27,495,297 to 29,049,540, or less than six per cent. In the ten years which ended in 1860, our increase of population was from 23,191,876 to 31,445,089, or thirty-five and a half per cent. Thus it appears that during the last ten years for which we have official returns, the population of the United States increased in a ratio sixfold greater than that of the United Kingdom. This disparity in our favor will undoubtedly increase from year to year.
The home territory of Great Britain is quite inadequate to support even her present population. This circumstance places that country in a position of comparative dependence. While she must draw from other countries a very considerable proportion of her breadstuffs and other provisions, we supply not only ourselves, but others largely also. The money which England pays to other nations for bread alone would equal in thirty years the entire amount of her national debt.
We need but a resolute and united purpose to sustain with comparative ease our national burdens, whatever may be their extent. Those who doubt this under-estimate not only the magnitude of our national resources, but the powerful aid which modern improvements lend to their development.