FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, Elias Ashmole, Esquire, and Mr. William Lilly, written by themselves; containing first, William Lilly's History of his Life and Times, with Notes by Mr Ashmole; secondly, Lilly's Life and Death of Charles I; and lastly, the Life of Elias Ashmole, Esq., by way of Diary, etc. London, 1774.
[2] Lilly's Life and Death of King Charles I.
[3] The Lives of those eminent Antiquaries, Ellas Ashmole and William Lilly, &c. London, 1774.
[4] See Pepys' Diary and Correspondence. London, 1858. Vol. i, p. 116.
[5] The reader will find this question already answered in the pages of holy writ: 'For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.'—Matt, xvi, 27.—Ed. Con.
JEFFERSON DAVIS—REPUDIATION, RECOGNITION, AND SLAVERY.
letter no. ii, from hon. robert j walker.
London, 10 Half Moon Street, Piccadily}
July 30th, 1863. }
In my publication of the 1st inst., it was proved by the two letters of Mr. Jefferson Dans of the 25th May, 1849, and 29th August, 1849, that he had earnestly advocated the repudiation of the bonds of the State of Mississippi issued to the Union Bank. It was then shown that the High Court of Errors and Appeals of Mississippi, the tribunal designated by the Constitution of the State, had unanimously decided that these bonds were constitutional and valid, and that more than seven years thereafter, Mr. Jefferson Davis had nevertheless sustained the repudiation of those bonds.
In his letter before quoted, of the 23d March last, Mr. Slidell, the minister of Jefferson Davis at Paris, says, 'There is a wide difference between these (Union) bonds and those of the Planters' Bank, for the repudiation of which neither excuse nor palliation can be offered.' And yet I shall now proceed to prove, that Mr. Jefferson Davis did not only palliate and excuse, but justified the repudiation, in fact, of those bonds by the State of Mississippi. First, then, has Mississippi repudiated those bonds? The principal and interest now due on those bonds exceed $5,000,000 (£1,000,000), and yet, for a quarter of a century, the State has not paid one dollar of principal or interest. 2. The State, by act of the Legislature (ch. 17), referred the question of taxation for the payment of those bonds to the vote of the people, and their decision was adverse. As there was no fund available for the payment, except one to be derived from taxation, this popular vote (to which the question was submitted by the Legislature) was a decision of the State for repudiation, and against payment. 3. The State, at one time (many years after the sale of the bonds), had made them receivable in purchase of certain State lands, but, as this was 'at three times its current value,' as shown by the London Times, in its article heretofore quoted by me, this was only another form of repudiation. 4. When a few of the bondholders commenced taking small portions of these lands in payment, because they could get nothing else, the State repealed the law (ch. 22), and provided no substitute. 5. The State, by law, deprived the bondholders of the stock of the Planters' Bank ($2,000,000), and of the sinking fund pledged to the purchasers for the redemption of these bonds when they were sold by the State. Surely there is here ample evidence of repudiation and bad faith.
The bonds issued by the State of Mississippi to the Planters' Bank were based upon a law of the State, and affirmed, by name, in a specific provision of the State Constitution of 1832. The State, through its agent, received the money, and loaned it to the citizens of the State, and the validity of these obligations is conceded by Mr. Slidell and Mr. Davis.
These bonds were for $2,000,000, bearing an interest of six per cent. per annum, and were sold at a premium of 13-1/2 per cent For those bonds, besides the premium, the State received $2,000,000 of stock of the Planters' Bank, upon which, up to 1838, the State realized ten per cent. dividends, being $200,000 per annum. In January, 1841, the Legislature of Mississippi unanimously adopted resolutions affirming the validity of these bonds, and the duty of the State to pay them. (Sen. Jour. 314.)
In his message to the Legislature of 1843, Governor Tucker says:
'On the 1st of January, 1838, the State held stock in the Planters' Bank for $2,000,000, which stock had, prior to that time, yielded to the State a dividend of $200,000 per annum. I found also the first instalment of the bonds issued on account of the Planters' Bank, $125,000, due and unpaid, as well as the interest for several years on said bonds.' (Sen. Jour. 25.)
The Planters' Bank (as well as the State), by the express terms of the law, was bound for the principal and interest of these bonds. Now, in 1839, Mississippi passed an act (Acts, ch. 42), 'to transfer the stock now held by the State in the Planters' Bank, and invest the same in stock of the Mississippi Railroad Company.' By the first section of this act, the Governor was directed to subscribe for $2,000,000 of stock in the railroad company for the State, and to pay for it by transferring to the company the Planters' Bank stock, which had been secured to the State by the sale of the Planters' Bank bonds. The 10th section released the Planters' Bank from the obligation to provide for the payment of these bonds or interest. Some enlightened members, including Judge Gholson, afterward of the Federal Court, protested against this act as unconstitutional, by impairing the obligation of contracts, and as a fraud on the bondholders.
They say in this protest:
'The money which paid for the stock proposed to be transferred from the Planters' Bank to the Mississippi Railroad Company, was, under the provisions of the charter, obtained by loans on the part of the State, for the payment of which the stock, in addition to the faith of the Government, was pledged to the holders of the bonds of the State. By the terms of the contract between the commissioners on the part of the State and the purchasers of the bonds, the interest on the loans is required to be paid semiannually out of the semiannual dividends accruing upon the said stock; and the surplus of such dividends, after paying the said interest, is to be converted into a sinking fund for the payment and liquidation of said loans. The bill, as the title purports, simply provides for the transfer of the stock now held by the State in the Planters' Bank, and that the same shall be invested in the stock of the Mississippi Railroad Company, leading from Natchez to Canton, which has banking privileges to twice the amount of capital stock paid in. The transferring of the stock and dividend to another irresponsible corporation, and the appropriation of the same to the construction of a road, is a violation of and impairing the obligation of the contract made and entered into with the purchasers or holders of the bonds of the State, under a solemn act of the Legislature. If it should be thought that a people, composed of so much virtue, honor, and chivalry, as the noble and generous Mississippians, would disdain, and consequently refrain, from repealing or violating their plighted faith, it may be answered, that the faith of the State, solemnly and sacredly pledged by an act of the Legislature, with all the formality and solemnity of a constitutional law, is violated by the provisions of this very bill under consideration. The faith of the State is pledged to the holders of the bonds, by the original and subsequent acts incorporating the Planters' Bank, as solemnly as national or legislative pledges can be made, that the stock and dividends accruing thereon shall be faithfully appropriated to the redemption and payment of said loans and all interest thereon, as they respectively become due; the appropriation of this fund to an other purpose is, therefore, a violation of the faith of the State.' (House Jour. 443.)
Thus was it, that the stock of the bank, which for so many years had been yielding a dividend far exceeding the interest on the loan, and which stock had been pledged for the redemption of the loan, was diverted to the building of a railroad, which never did or could yield a single dollar, and the company soon became insolvent. By another clause of this act of 1839, the Planters' Bank, which, by the loan act, was made responsible (together with the State) for the payment of these bonds, was released from the obligation to make such payments.
And now, what is the answer of Jefferson Davis on this subject? He says, in his letter of the 25th May, 1849, before quoted:
'A smaller amount is due for what are termed Planters' Bank bonds of Mississippi. These evidences of debt, as well as the coupons issued to cover accruing interest, are receivable for State lands, and no one has a right to assume they will not be provided for otherwise, by or before the date at which the whole debt becomes due.'
To this the London Times replied, in its editorial of the 13th July, 1849, before quoted, as follows:
'The assurance in this statement that the Planters' Bank, or non-repudiated bonds, are receivable for State lands, requires this addition, which Mr. Jefferson Davis has omitted, that they are only so receivable upon land being taken at three times its current value. The affirmation afterward, that no one has a right to assume that these bonds will not be fully provided for before the date at which the principal falls due, is simply to be met by the fact, that portions of them fell due in 1841 and 1846, and that on these, as well as on all the rest, both principal and interest remain wholly unpaid.'
Mr. Davis's 'palliation and excuse' for the non-payment of these bonds was: 1st. That the principal was not due. If this were true, it would be no excuse for the non-payment of the semi-annual interest. But the statement of Jefferson Davis as to the principal was not true, as shown by the Times, and as is clear upon the face of the law. Then, as to the lands. The bonds, principal aid interest, were payable in money, and it was a clear case of repudiation to substitute lands. But when, as stated by the Times, this land was only receivable 'at three times its current value,' Mr. Davis's defence of the repudiation of the Planters' Bank bonds by Mississippi, is exposed in all its deformity. When, however, we reflect, as heretofore shown, that the law authorizing the purchase of these lands by these bonds was repealed, and the bondholders left without any relief, and the proposition for taxation to pay the bonds definitively rejected, it is difficult to imagine a case more atrocious than this.
The whole debt, principal and interest, now due by the State of Mississippi, including the Planters' and Union Bank bonds, exceeds $11,250,000 (£2,250,000). Not a dollar of principal or interest has been paid by the State for more than a fourth of a century on any of these bonds. The repudiation is complete and final, so long as slavery exists in Mississippi. Now, would it not seem reasonable that, before Mississippi and the other Confederate States, including Florida and Arkansas, ask another loan from Europe, they should first make some provision for debts now due, or, at least, manifest a disposition to make some arrangement for it at some future period. If a debtor fails to meet his engagements, especially if he repudiates them on false and fraudulent pretexts, he can borrow no more money, and the same rule surely should apply to states or nations. Nor can any pledge of property not in possession of such a borrower, or, if so, not placed in the hands of the lender, change the position. It is (even if the power to pay exists) still a question of good faith, and where that has been so often violated, all subsequent pledges or promises should be regarded as utterly worthless.
The Times, in reference to the repudiation of its Union Bank bonds by Mississippi, and the justification of that act by Jefferson Davis, says:
'Let it circulate throughout Europe that a member of the United States Senate in 1849 has openly proclaimed, that at a recent period the Governor and legislative assemblies of his own State deliberately issued fraudulent bonds for five millions of dollars to 'sustain the credit of a rickety bank;' that, the bonds in question having been hypothecated abroad to innocent holders, such holders have not only no claim against the community by whose executive and representatives this act was committed, but that they are to be taunted for appealing to the verdict of the civilized world rather than to the judgment of the legal officers of the State by whose functionaries they have been already robbed; and that the ruin of toil-worn men, of women, of widows, and of children, and the 'crocodile tears' which that ruin has occasioned, is a subject of jest on the part of those by whom it has been accomplished; and then let it be asked if any foreigner ever penned a libel on the American character equal to that against the people of Mississippi by their own Senator.'
Such was the opinion then expressed by the London Times of Jefferson Davis and of the repudiation advocated by him. It was denounced as robbery, 'the ruin of toil-worn men, of women, of widows, and of children.' And what is to be thought of the 'faith' of a so-called Government, which has chosen this repudiator as their chief, and what of the value of the Confederate bonds now issued by him? Why, the legal tender notes of the so-called Confederate Government, fundable in a stock bearing eight per cent, interest, is now worth in gold at their own capital of Richmond, less than ten cents on the dollar (2s., on the pound), whilst in two thirds of their territory such notes are utterly worthless; and it is treason for any citizen of the United States, North or South, or any alien resident there, to deal in them, or in Confederate bonds, or in the cotton pledged for their payment. No form of Confederate bonds, or notes, or stock, will ever be recognized by the Government of the United States, and the cotton pledged by slaveholding traitors for the payment of the Confederate bonds is all forfeited for treason, and confiscated to the Federal Government by act of Congress. As our armies advance, this cotton is either burned by the retreating rebel troops, or seized by our forces, and shipped and sold from time to time, for the benefit of the Federal Government. By reference to the census of 1860, it will be seen that three fourths of the whole cotton crop was raised in States (now held by the Federal army and navy) touching the Mississippi and its tributaries, and all the other ports are either actually held or blockaded by the Federal forces. The traitor pledge of this cotton is, then, wholly unavailing; the bonds are utterly worthless; they could not be sold at any price in the United States, and those who force them on the London market, in the language of the Times, before quoted, will only accomplish 'the ruin of toil-worn, men, of women, of widows, and of children.'
But the advocacy of repudiation by Jefferson Davis has not been confined to his own State, as I shall proceed to demonstrate in my next letter.
R.J. Walker.
DIARY OF FRANCES KRASINSKA.
or, life in poland during the eighteenth century,
Tuesday, March 19th.
The Prince and Princess Lubomirski left us about half an hour ago; they had decided upon going yesterday, but my father told them that Monday was an unfortunate day, and fearing that this argument would not possess sufficient weight, he ordered the wheels to be taken off their carriage.
They overwhelmed me with kindness during their sojourn in the castle; the princess, especially, treated me with great affability. Both she and the prince take a deep interest in my future lot; they endeavored to persuade my parents to send me to Warsaw to finish my education.
A foreigner, Miss Strumle, who, however, receives universally the title of madame, has recently opened a young ladies' boarding school in Warsaw. This school enjoys a high reputation, and all the young ladies of distinction are sent there to finish their education. It is the same for a young lady to have been some time at Madame Strumle's as for a young gentlemen to have been at Luneville. The prince palatine advised my mother to send me for a year to Madame Strumle. My parents prefer the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament; they say that nothing can be better than a convent.
I do not know what will be their final decision, but I feel restless and agitated. I no longer find pleasure in my reading; my work is tedious to me, and not so well executed as formerly; the future occupies my mind much more than the present; in short, I am in a constant state of excitement, as if awaiting some great event. Since the visit of the prince and princess I have an entirely different opinion of myself, and I am by no means so happy as I was before....In truth, I no longer understand myself.
Sunday, March 24th.
Ah! God be praised, my suspense is over, and we leave day after to-morrow for Warsaw. My parents have been suddenly called there on matters of business connected with the recent death of my uncle, Blaise Krasinski, who has left a large fortune and no children. I do not yet know whether I am to be placed at a boarding school or not, but I believe it will be a long time before I return to Maleszow.
Ah! how happy the idea of this journey makes me! We will go a little out of our way, that we may stop at Sulgostow. Her ladyship the starostine has at length, after a very agreeable tour, returned to her palace. The starost has introduced her to all his cousins, friends, and neighbors; she was everywhere admirably received, and will now settle down in her own mansion, at which prospect she is very well pleased; she has all the necessary qualifications for becoming a good housekeeper. The Palatine Swidzinski spoke of her so affectionately in one of his letters that my parents wept hot tears, but tears of joy, so sweet and go rare. Barbara has always been a source of happiness to her parents.
Warsaw, Sunday, April 7th.
I can scarcely believe it, but here I am fairly installed in Madame Strumle's famous boarding school. The princess palatine's advice has prevailed, and Madame Strumle has received the preference over the Sisters of the Holy Sacrament. God be praised, for I really was very anxious to come here. I received a most flattering reception.
On our way to Warsaw we stopped at Sulgustow. We found her ladyship the starostine gay and most hospitable; the presence of our dear parents filled the measure of her happiness. She assured me that the delight of receiving one's parents in one's own house could be neither expressed nor understood. 'You must yourself experience it,' added she, 'before you can form any idea of it.'
On the table were all the dishes, confections, and beverages preferred by our parents. Barbara forgot nothing which could be agreeable to them, and the starost aided her wonderfully in all her efforts. My mother remarked that Barbara was still better since her marriage than before, to which the starost replied:
'Indeed, she is no better, for thus did I receive her from the hands of your highnesses. But she gladly profits by the present opportunity to testify her gratitude; she shows here those lovely and precious qualities which you have cultivated in her soul, and during the past three days she has been for her parents what she is every day for me.'
There was no flattery in what the starost said—it came really from his heart. He adores Barbara, and she respects, honors, and obeys him as if he were her father.
She understands perfectly the whole management of a household, and does the honors of her mansion most gracefully. Every one praises her, and the young ladies and waiting women who followed her from Maleszow are delighted with their new position.
My parents regretted the necessity of parting from their daughter; they would willingly have remained longer; but I must confess I was very anxious to see Warsaw, and was charmed when they received letters obliging them to hasten their departure.
It was really a true instinct which gave me a preference for this place. I study well, and must improve. My education will be complete, and I may perhaps become a superior woman, as I have always desired to do; but I need much study and close application to bring me to that point; above all, must I chain my wandering fancies, and not suffer them to stray about so vaguely as I have hitherto done.
Yesterday my mother came to take me to church. I made my confession, and communed for the intention of using well the new acquirements which I have now the opportunity of making.
When I am well established here, I will write in my journal every day as I did at Maleszow; but I am still in a state of excitement from all I have seen, and I must first become better acquainted with my new dwelling.
Wednesday, April 17 th.
I am already quite familiar with all the regulations of the school. I am very well pleased with Madame Strumle; she has excellent manners, and is very kind to me. I might perhaps regret our court, the magnificence, bustle, and gayety of our castle, but there comes a time for everything, and we live here very happily and comfortably.
That which seems most strange and entirely new to me is, that there is not even a little boy in the house, no men servants, women always, and only women; they wait upon us even at table.
There are about fifteen boarders, all young, and belonging to the best families.
Every one speaks highly of Miss Marianne, the Starost Swidzinski's sister, now married to the Castellan of Polaniec; she spent two years at the school, and has left an ineffaceable impression in the hearts of Madame Strumle and her young companions. They say she was very accomplished, very good and sensible, very gay, and very studious.
My parents, after having made a thorough examination of the school, felt quite satisfied; and truly they might well be so, for no one could be more securely guarded in a convent than here. Madame keeps the key of the front door always in her pocket; no one can go out or come in without her knowledge, and were it not for two or three aged masters of music and the languages, we might be in danger of forgetting the very existence of man-kind.
It is expressly forbidden to receive visits even from one's male cousins within the walls of the school. The dancing master desired that the young potockis should come and learn quadrilles with their sisters and myself, but madame rejected this proposition at once, saying, 'These gentlemen are not the brothers of all my boarders, and I cannot permit them to enter my school.'
We have masters in French and German, as also in drawing, music, and embroidery. We learn music on a fine piano of five octaves and a half. What an improvement on that of Maleszow! Some of the scholars play polonaises very well, but not by rote; they read them from the notes. My master tells me that in six months I will have reached this perfection; but then I already had some ideas of music when I came.
I draw quite well from the patterns set before me, but ere I proceed any further, I wish to paint a tree in oil colors. On one of the branches I will hang a garland of flowers, encircling the cypher of my parents, and will thus testify to them my gratitude for all they have done for me, and especially for the care they have bestowed upon my education.
The young Princess Sapieha, who has been here a year, is at present employed upon such a picture, and I envy her her pleasure every time my eyes fall upon the work.
What a fine effect my picture will make in our hall at Maleszow, beneath the portrait of our good uncle, the Bishop of Kamieniec!
Our dancing master, besides the minuet and quadrilles, teaches us to walk and courtesy gracefully. To tell the truth, I was so ignorant when I came, that I knew but one mode of making a salutation; but there are several kinds, which must be employed toward personages of different ranks; one for the king, another for the princes of the blood, and still another for lords and ladies of rank.
I learned first how to salute the prince royal, and succeeded quite well; some day, perhaps, this knowledge may be useful to me.
My lessons follow one another regularly, and I am so anxious to learn that the time passes rapidly and agreeably.
My mother is very much occupied with family affairs, and has been only once to see me.
When I first entered the school, everything surprised me, but what seemed to me most strange was that I was continually reproved, and even obliged to undergo real penance. An iron cross was placed at my back to make me hold myself upright, and my limbs were enclosed in a kind of wooden box, to straighten them. I must however think that they were already quite straight enough. All that was not very amusing for me, who thought myself already a young lady. Since Barbara's marriage I had myself been asked in marriage, and the prince palatine had not treated me as if I were a child!
Madame Strumle has commanded me to omit in future these words from my prayers: 'O my God, give me a good husband,' and to say instead, 'Give me the grace to profit by the good education I am receiving.'
One must here work continually, or think of one's work, and of nothing else.
Sunday, April 28th.
I have been nearly three weeks at Madame Strumle's school, and my poor journal has been quite neglected during all that time; but the uniformity of my life, these monotonous hours, all passed in the constant repetition of the same occupations, afford no matter for interesting details or descriptions.
At this very moment, when I hold the pen in my hand, I am ready to lay it down, so great is the poverty of my observations.
My parents will soon leave. The princess palatiness has honored me with a visit; she remarked that my carriage was much improved. My masters are all satisfied with the closeness of my application. Madame is especially kind to me, and my companions are polite and friendly.... But is all this worth the trouble of writing?
I sometimes fancy that I am not really in Warsaw, so ignorant am I with regard to all political events. I have seen neither the king nor the royal family. At Maleszow we at least hear the news, and occasionally see Borne distinguished men.
The Duke of Courland is absent, and will not return for some time.
Sunday, June 9th.
If I were to live forever in this school, I should give up writing in my journal, and it really serves one very valuable purpose; for I find I am in great danger of forgetting Polish. With the exception of the letters I write to my parents, and the few words I say to my maid, I always write and speak French.
I progress in all my studies, and if I am sometimes melancholy, at least my time is not lost.
The princess palatiness has again been to see me. A month had passed since her last visit; she found me considerably taller, and was kind enough to praise my manners and bearing.
I am the tallest of all our boarders, and it really pleases me exceedingly to find that my waist is not quite a half yard round.
Summer has come, the fine weather has returned, but I cannot go out—a privation which is really quite vexatious. Ah! how I wish I were a little bird! I would fly away, far away—and then I would return to my cage.
But my days and my nights must all be spent in this dull house and in this ugly street; I believe that Cooper street (ulika Bednarska) is the darkest, dingiest, and dirtiest street in Warsaw. God willing, next year I shall be no longer here.
Friday, July 28th.
Labor has at least the good quality of making the time pass more rapidly; our days vanish one by one, without distractions or news from without.
I just now felt a desire to write in my journal, and when I consulted the almanac to find out the day of the month, I was quite surprised to find that seven whole weeks had passed since I had written a single word in my poor diary.
This day certainly deserves to be noted down, for never since I was born did such a thing happen to me as I experienced this morning. I received a letter by the mail, and the world is no longer ignorant that the Countess Frances Krasinska is now living in Warsaw! I danced with joy when I saw my letter, my own letter! It came from her ladyship, the Starostine Swidzinska; I shall keep it as a precious and delightful remembrance. My sister writes to me that she is quite well, and happy beyond all I can imagine; she was kind enough to send me four gold ducats, which she has saved from her own private purse.
For the first time in my life I have money to spend as I will, which gives me great pleasure. With the money came the desire to spend, and a variety of projects; it seemed to me as if I could buy the whole city.
Thanks to my parents, I need nothing, and I will buy nothing for myself; but I would have liked to leave a pretty remembrance to each of my companions, a gold ring, for example; but madame quite distressed me by telling me that my four ducats would only buy four rings-a real affliction to me, who had hope to purchase, besides the rings, a blonde mantle for Madame Strumle herself.... All my projects are overturned; I have learned that the mantle will cost at least a hundred ducats, and have thence determined to give one ducat to the parish church, to have a mass said in the chapel of Jesus to draw the blessing of Heaven upon the affairs now occupying my parents, and for the continuation of the happiness of her ladyship the starostine. I will have another ducat changed into small coin, to be distributed among all the servants in the house; there will still remain two ducats, which will buy a charming collation for my companions on Sunday next. We will have coffee, an excellent beverage, which we never see here, cakes, and fruit. Madame Strumle willingly consented to this last project.
May God reward my dear starostine for the happiness she has bestowed upon me! There can be no greater pleasure than that of making presents and regaling one's friends. If I am anxious to have a husband richer than I am myself, it is solely that I may be very generous.
I am not losing my time; I improve daily. I can already play several minuets and cotillons from the notes, and will soon learn a polonaise. The most fashionable one just now has a very strange name; it is called the Thousand Fiends.
In one month more I shall begin my tree in oil colors, with its allegoric garland.
Notwithstanding my more serious studies, I by no means neglect my little feminine occupations. I am embroidering on canvas a huntsman carrying a gun, and holding his hound by a leash.
I read a great deal, I write under dictation, I copy good works, an excellent method of forming one's own style. I speak French quite as well as Polish, perhaps even better; in short, I think I will soon be fitted to make my appearance in the best society.
As for dancing, I need scarcely say that that progresses wonderfully; my master, who has no reason to flatter me, assures me that in all Warsaw no one dances better than I do.
I occasionally visit the Prince and Princess Lubomirski, but at times when they have no company. I always hear there many agreeable and flattering things, especially from the prince. He is desirous that I should leave school now, but the princess and my parents wish me to remain here during the winter. It is now only the end of July! How many hours and days must pass before the winter sets in! Will that time ever come?
Thursday, December 26th
Finally, God be praised, the time has come for leaving school; a new existence is opening before me; my journal will be overflowing, and I shall have no lack of matter, but plenty of charming things to say.
The prince and princess are so kind to me; they have obtained permission from my parents for me to pass the winter with them, and they will introduce me into society. I shall leave this place day after to-morrow, and will reside with the Princess Lubomirska. I am quite sorry to part from Madame Strumle and my companions, to many of whom I am sincerely attached, but my joy is greater than my sorrow, for I shall see the world, and fly away from this narrow cage.
I shall be taken to court and presented to the king and the royal family; the Duke of Courland is expected daily; I shall see him at last!
The days have become intolerably long since I knew I was to leave school.
warsaw, Saturday, December 28th. 1759.
Never, never can I forget this day. The Princess Lubomirska came for me quite early. I bade adieu to Madame Strumle and my companions. I was glad to go, and yet I wept when I parted from them!
Before going to her own house, the princess took me to church; but I could scarcely force my recollection; there was a whole future in my brain, a whole world in my thoughts.
I am now established with the princess; her palace is situated in the quarter named after Cracow, nearly opposite to the residence of the Prince Palatine of Red-Russia, Czartoryski.
The palace in which we live is not very large, but very elegant; the windows upon one side overlook the Vistula and a handsome garden. My chamber is delightful, and will be still more agreeable in summer; it communicates on the right with the apartments of the princess, and on the left with my waiting maid's room.
The tailor came yesterday to take my measure; he is to make me several dresses. I do not know what they will be, as the princess has ordered them without consulting my taste. She inspires me with so much respect, or perhaps awe, that I do not venture to ask her the least question. I am much less afraid of the prince; his manners are so gentle and engaging. He has gone to Bialystok, where he expects to meet the Duke of Courland; he is in high favor with the duke.
We are to make some visits to-morrow, when the princess will introduce me into some of the most distinguished houses; one must thus make one's appearance, if one desires to be invited to balls and parties. I am glad, and yet I am a little frightened at the idea of these visits: I shall be so looked at, perhaps criticized; however, I shall see many new things and will have much to observe, which thought affords me much consolation in my new and trying position.
Sunday, December 29th.
At least, now I have some news to tell, and my journal will no longer be so dry and uninteresting. The prince royal, accompanied by the prince palatine, arrived yesterday about one o'clock. Indeed I am quite confused by the palatine's overwhelming kindness; he received me as if I had been his daughter, and there is no kind of friendship or interest which he has not testified toward me.
We accomplished our visits and went to about fifteen different houses, but were not everywhere admitted. At the French and Spanish ambassadors' and the prince primate's, etc., the princess merely left cards.
Our first visit was to Madame Humiecka, wife of the swordbearer to the crown; this lady is my aunt. We then went to see the Princess Lubomirska, wife of the general of the advance guard of the royal armies; she is a full cousin to the princess palatine. She was born a Princess Czartoryska, is very young and very beautiful; she holds the first rank among the younger ladies, and loves passionately everything French. I am so glad I am a proficient in the French language; besides being very useful, it will cause me to be much more sought after in society.
French is here spoken in nearly all the more distinguished houses; only the older men retain the tiresome custom of mingling Latin in their conversation; the young people avoid this pedantry and speak French, which is much better; at least, I can understand them, which I cannot the others.
We also went to see the wife of the Grand-General Branicki. Her husband is one of the most wealthy lords of Poland, but is not very favorably regarded at court.
We then visited the Princess Czartoryska, Palatiness of Red-Russia. The conversation there was held entirely in Polish; she is quite aged, and consequently no admirer of new fashions. She introduced to us her only son, a very handsome young man, with polished and elegant manners; he overwhelmed me with the most graceful compliments. This visit was more agreeable than any of the others. But no—I think I was quite as much pleased at the palace of the Castellane of Cracow, Poniatowska. She is a very superior person; she talks a great deal, it is true, but then she speaks with enthusiasm and in a very interesting manner. We found her quite elated with the pleasure of welcoming her son after a long absence. Many think that this much-loved son may one day be king of Poland; I do not believe that will ever be, but I did not the less examine him with great attention. I frankly confess that I was not pleased with him, and yet he is handsome and amiable; but he has a kind of stiffness in his manners, a pretension to dignity and to airs of grandeur, which injure his bearing.
I must not forget, in enumerating our visits, to mention that paid to the Palatiness of Podolia, Rzewuska. This visit possessed a doubled interest for me; I was anxious to see Rzewuski, the vice-grand-general of the crown, because I had heard my father speak of him so often.
The vice-grand-general, although belonging to an illustrious family, was brought up among the children of the common people; he went barefooted as they did, and shared all their pleasures (very rustic indeed, it seems to me). This strange education has given him great strength and a wonderful constitution. He is now quite aged; he is more than fifty years old, and yet he walks and rides like a young man. Following the old Polish custom, he permits his beard to grow, and this gives him a very grave appearance.
They say he has composed some very fine tragedies. We also called upon Madame Brühl, who received us most politely. Her husband, the king's favorite minister, is not much esteemed, but they are visited for the sake of etiquette, and likewise for that of Madame Brühl, who is very amiable.
We saw too Madame Soltyk, Castellane of Sandomir; she is a widow, but still young and beautiful. Her son is nine years old; he is a charming child, already possessing all the manners of the best society. As we entered, he offered me a chair, and made me, at the same time, a very graceful compliment; the castellane was kind enough to say that he was a great admirer of pretty faces and black eyes. The Bishop of Cracow is this child's uncle; he was anxious to have the charge of him, but his mother was not willing to part with him.
Of all the persons whom I saw, I was the most pleased with Madame Moszynska, the widow of the grand-treasurer of the crown. She received me most affectionately, and I feel a strong attraction toward her. She expressed much admiration for me; but indeed, I received commendation everywhere, and everywhere did I hear that I was beautiful. Perhaps I owe a great part of these praises to my costume; I was so well dressed! ... much better than at Barbara's wedding! I wore a white silk dress with gauze flounces, and my hair was dressed with pearls.
If I had seen the Duke of Courland, I should have been perfectly satisfied; but I met him in none of the houses to which I went. They say .e is so happy to be once more with his family that he devotes all his time to them. This feeling seems very natural to me, for when I was at boarding school, I was very melancholy whenever I thought of my parents, and I felt an imperative desire to see them, surpassing anything I had before experienced.
The carnival will soon begin; every one says it will be very brilliant, and that there will be many balls; it is impossible that I should not somewhere meet the Duke of Courland.
Wednesday, January 1st, 1750.
All my desires have been gratified, and far beyond my hopes; I have seen the prince royal! I have seen and spoken to him! ... I must indeed be dreaming; my mind is filled with the most lively impressions, strange and wild fancies surge through my brain, and I feel at once exalted and depressed, transported with joy and tremulous through fear. I would not dare to confide to any one that which I am about to write; it is all perhaps only illusion, deception, error.... But yet, I have always hitherto judged correctly of the effect which I produced; I instinctively divined the degree in which I pleased; I have never been deceived; can I be mistaken now? ... And indeed, why should not a prince find me beautiful, when all other men tell me that I am so? But there was more than admiration in the prince royal's eyes, which have a peculiarly penetrating expression; his look was more kind than ordinary glances, and said more than any words. Perhaps all princes may be thus!
But that I may remember during my whole life, or rather that I may one day read all this again, I will now write down a detailed account of last evening and of the few hours immediately preceding.
Yesterday morning the Princess Lubomirska sent for me and said, 'To-day is the last of the year, and there will be to-night a grand festival, a masked ball; all the nobility will be there, and even the king and his sons; at least, I think so. I have selected a dress for you; you will go as a virgin of the sun.'
I was so charmed with the choice of this costume, that I kissed the hand of the princess.
After dinner all the maids came to assist at my toilet, and most assuredly it was no ordinary toilet. My hair was not powdered and I wore no hoop, whence the prince said to me, quite gravely, 'This costume is not at all in accordance with received notions and fashions; any other woman would certainly be lost were she to wear it; but I am sure you will supply by the severity of your deportment and the propriety of your manners whatever may be lacking in dignity, or too light, in your dress.'
I did not forget his advice: notwithstanding my vivacity, I can assume upon occasion a very majestic air; and indeed, I overheard some one saying at the ball, 'Who is that queen in disguise?'
Ah! I know that I was more beautiful than I usually am. My hair, without powder and black as ebony, fell in curls over my forehead, my neck, and my shoulders; my dress was made of white gauze, and had not that long train which hides the feet and impedes the motions. I wore a zone of gold and precious stones round my waist, and was entirely enveloped in a transparent white veil; I seemed to be in a cloud. When I looked in my mirror, I could scarcely recognize myself.
The ball room, brilliantly lighted, and glittering with gold and the most gorgeous costumes, presented a dazzling spectacle; the women, nearly all robed in fancy dresses, were charming; I did not know to which one I should give the preference.
A few moments after our arrival, we learned that the Duke of Courland was in the hall; my eyes sought and found him, surrounded by a brilliant group of young men. His dress differed but little from that of the lords of his court; but I could distinguish him among them all. His figure is tall and dignified, his air noble and affable; his beautiful blue eyes and his charming smile eclipse all that approach him; where he is, no one can see anything but himself.
I looked at him until our eyes met; then I avoided his gaze, but found it always fixed upon me. But what was my confusion when I understood that he was asking the Prince Palatine Lubomirski who I was! His face lighted up with joy when he heard the answer; be made no delay in approaching the Princess Lubomirska, and saluted her with a grace peculiar to himself. After the exchange of the preliminary compliments, the princess introduced me as her niece. I do not know what kind of a courtesy I made, doubtless quite different from that which I had learned from my dancing master; I was so agitated, and still am so much so, that I cannot remember the words used by the prince as he saluted me; but the impression is not fugitive like the words.
What an evening! The prince opened the ball with the princess palatiness, and danced the second polonaise—with me; he had then time to speak to me; and I, at first so timid, embarrassed, and agitated, found myself replying to him with inconceivable assurance. He questioned me about my parents, my sister the starostine, and all the details of her marriage. I was surprised to find him so well acquainted with my family affairs; but then I remembered that Kochanowski, son of the castellan, is his favorite. What a good, forgiving soul that Kochanowski must have; not only has he digested the goose dressed with the black sauce, but he has said so many kind things of us all!
The prince danced with me nearly the whole evening, and talked all the time ... The words would seem insignificant and absurd, were I to write them down; but with him, tone, manner, expression, all speak and say more than words, and yet his very words signify more, depict better, and penetrate more deeply than those of others. I keep them in my memory, and fear to weaken their impression should I write them.
When, at midnight, the cannon were fired to announce the end of one year and the beginning of another, the prince said to me, 'Ah! never can I forget the hours I have just passed; this is not a new year which I am beginning, but a new life which I am receiving.'
This is but one of the many things he said to me; but as he always spoke French, I should find great difficulty, in my present agitated state of mind, in translating his conversation into Polish.
All that I have read in Mademoiselle Scudery, or in Madame de Lafayette, is flat, compared with what the prince himself said to me; but perhaps this may all be nothing more than simple politeness. Ah! merciful Heaven, if it should be indeed an illusion, a mere court flattery, applicable to all women, or, perhaps,—a series of empty compliments, due solely to my dress, which became me wonderfully well! I am a prey to the most inconceivable perplexities, and dare confide in no one; I should not venture to say to any one: 'Has he a real preference for me?'
My parents are far away, and the princess does not invite my confidence; I fear her as a cold, severe, and uninterested judge.... The prince palatine is very kind, but can one expose to a man all the weakness of a woman's heart? ... I am then abandoned to myself, without a standard of judgment, without experience or advice.... Yesterday, I was at school, studying as a child, and now I am thrown into a world entirely new, and in which I am playing a part envied by all my sex.... I surely dream, or I have lost my reason.
In ten days Barbara will be here, and she must be my good angel; she will guide and protect me: she is so wise, and has so much judgment! I will be so glad to lay my soul bare before her; I have no fear of her, she is so compassionate; she is beautiful and happy, and I have always remarked that such women are the best.
I have not seen my dear sister for nine months; but I see from her letters that she is every day more and more loved by her husband, and satisfied with her destiny.
Shall I again see the prince royal? Will he recognize me in my ordinary dress, and will he still think me beautiful?...
MAIDEN'S DREAMING.
Fast the sunset light is fading,
Nearer comes the lonely night,
On a maid intently dreaming
Dimly falls the evening light.
Far into the future gazing,
Heeds she not the waning light;
By the fireside softly dreaming,
Heeds she not the minutes' flight.
Heeds she not the firelight flickering
Bright upon her dark brown hair,
Tresses where the gold still lingers—
Loth to quit a home so fair.
On her lap a book is lying,
Clasped her hands upon her knee;
Dreaming of the distant future—
Wonders what her fate will be.
Dreams of knights of manly bearing,
Nodding plumes and shining casques,
Wearing all her favorite colors,
Quick to do whate'er she asks.
Dreams of castles old and stately,
Vaulted halls all life and light,
Courtly nobles stepping through them,
Smiling dames with jewels bright.
Round her own brow, in her dreaming,
She a coronet has bound;
Round her waist, so lithe and slender,
Venus' girdle she has wound.
Charms the knights of manly bearing,
Courtly nobles seek her grace,
Maidens free from envious passions
Love her kind and smiling face.
Now her dreams are growing fainter,
And her eyelids heavy grow;
Dull the waning firelight flickers
On her brow as white as snow.
Lower droop the heavy eyelids—
Weary eyes they cover quite—
And the dreamy girl is sleeping
Softly in the red firelight.
THIRTY DAYS WITH THE SEVENTY-FIRST REGIMENT.
The 71st Regiment N.Y.S.N.G. left New York to aid in repelling the invasion of Pennsylvania on the 17th of June. On the 19th, having meantime determined to 'go to the wars,' Dick and I presented ourselves at the armory, inquiring whether we could follow and join the regiment, and were told briefly to report there at one o'clock on Monday next, and go on with a squad.
So at one o'clock on Monday we stood ready in the armory, duly clothed in blue and buttons; but long after the appointed hour we waited without moving, I taking the chance to practise in putting on my knapsack and accoutrements, whose various straps and buckles seemed at first as intricate as a ship's rigging, and benefiting by the kindly hints of regular members who sent substitutes this trip.
At length came the word, 'Fall in,' and the squad formed, about a hundred. A few minutes' drill ensued, sufficing to show me that I needed considerably more, and then out—down Broadway to Cortlandt street—aboard the ferry boat—into the cars, and about half past seven actually off, amid the cheers and wavings of the bystanders, men, women, and children.
'Gone for a soger!' Should I ever come back? Perhaps I should wish myself home again soon enough. However, that couldn't be now, so good-by everything and everybody, and into it head and heels.
I went, among other reasons, chiefly to see what it was like, and I will record my experience;—for though, since the war began, tales and sketches of military life have been written and read without number, and we have all become sufficiently learned in warlike matters to see how ignorant of, and unprepared for war the nation was at the outbreak of the rebellion; yet, all I saw and learned was new to me, and may prove interesting to some others.
Tuesday morning by daylight we were in Harrisburg, and marched from the cars to the Capitol grounds through the just awaking town, escorted by one policeman armed with a musket. There a wash at a hydrant refreshed me—then to breakfast in a temporary shed-like erection near the depot.
An army breakfast! Huge lumps of bread and salt junk, and coffee. To this I knew it must come; but just then, after spending the night in the cars, the most I could do was to swallow some coffee, scorning however to join those who dispersed through the town for a civilized breakfast—wherein I intended to be soldierly, though before long I learned that your old soldier is the very man who goes upon the plan of snatching comfort whenever he can.
But the regiment was at Chambersburg; so for Chambersburg we took the cars, a distance, I believe, of about fifty miles.
Chambersburg, however, we were not destined to reach. Along the route we met all sorts of rumors: 71st cut up; six men in the 8th killed; fighting still going on a little in front, &c., &c.;—a prospect of immediate work. So in ignorance and doubt we came to Carlisle. Here we were greeted by part of the 71st, and the truth proved to be that the 8th and 71st had retreated to this place the night before. 'Not, not the six hundred,' however, for the left wing of our regiment had somehow been left behind, and nothing was certainly known of it. At all events, we were to go no farther, and out of the cars we came. Old members exchanged greetings, and recruits made acquaintances.
But what were we going to do? I could not learn. We waited, having stacked arms, some sleeping beneath the trees in the College grounds, until the lieutenant-colonel appeared upon the scene. Then we marched, back and forth; toward the cars—'going back to Harrisburg;' past the cars—'no, not to Harrisburg'—through the main street, and turned away from the town, still unconscious of officers' intentions. We privates never know anything of plans or objects. We never know where we are going till we get there, nor what we are to do till we do it, and then we don't know what we are going to do next. I soon got used to this; and although conjectures and prophecies fly through the ranks, of all kinds, from shrewd to ridiculous, I very early learned it was sheer bother of one's brains attempting to discover anything, and ceased to ask questions or form theories—getting up when I heard 'Company I, fall in,' without seeking to know whether it was for march, drill, picket duty, or what not. Company officers seldom know more about the matter than their men, and I speedily came to content myself with trying to extract from past work and present position some general notion of the 'strategy' of our movements. Nor is this ignorance wholly unblissful, as leaving always room for hope that the march is to be short or the coming work pleasant. Well, in the present case, just out of the town we halted in the Fair grounds; an ample field, a high tight face around it, a large shed in the centre. We all stacked arms—most went to sleep. I always took sleep when I could, because, in a regiment constantly on the move as ours was, if you don't want it now, you will before long.
By and by, in came the left wing, weary but safe, and were greeted with three tremendous cheers. I hastened to find Company I. The first lieutenant had come on with us—the captain I had not yet seen. To him I was now introduced.
Very soon the Fair ground was a camp; we on one side—the 8th N.Y., Colonel Varian, opposite. Tents were up, fires blazing, and cooking and eating going on. As I had not started with the regiment, I had no tent, and none could be had here, so my camping consisted of piling my traps in a heap. But I needed none, and indeed, throughout the whole time was under one but twice. Tents are all very well, when you are quietly encamped for any length, of time; but when, as with us, you are on the more continually, I consider them a humbug and nuisance. You must carry half a one all day, and at night join it with your comrade's half. The common shelter tent, which is the only one that can be so carried, is a poor protection against heavy rain, for the water can beat in at the sides and form pools beneath you; against midday sun you can guard with a blanket and two muskets, and at any other time you need no shelter.
That night I went on guard. Two hours you watch, four for sleep, and then two hours you watch again. All quiet, save that two or three prisoners are brought in from the front to be deposited in limbo, and gazed at in the morning by recruits who have never seen a live rebel.
The most surprising thing I learned in these first days, was that everything one has will certainly be stolen by his own regiment, even by his own company, if he does not watch it carefully. This practice is styled 'winning.' It is simple, naked stealing, in no wise to be excused or palliated, and utterly disgraceful. It imposes, moreover, the grievous nuisance of remaining to guard your property when you would be loafing about, or of carrying everything—no light load—with you, wherever you go. Of course, all colonels should prevent this, and one of any force and energy could easily do so; but Colonel—— is not of that kind. An excellent company officer, as I judge, he has not the activity and nerve required in the commander of a regiment, and many a wish did I hear expressed in those thirty days that his predecessor, Colonel Martin, were still in command. Confidence in his bravery before the enemy, was universal; but many things necessary to the decorum, discipline, health, &c., of the regiment devolve duties finally upon the colonel, for whose discharge other qualities than bravery are needed.
The next afternoon, the 24th, our laziness is disturbed by orders to take three days' rations; our knapsacks are to be sent to Harrisburg; we are to pack up everything, to be ready to move, Nobody knows, of course, what it means; but a decided conviction prevails that 'something heavy is up.' Presently a hollow square is 'up,' formed of the 8th and ourselves, field officers in the centre. Colonel Varian advances. Unquestionably a speech. Perhaps a few Napoleonic words on the eve of battle. No; Colonel Varian wishes to explain that it was nobody's fault that our left wing was deserted at Chambersburg, in order to prevent ill feeling between the regiments. He does so, and appeals to our lieutenant-colonel. Our lieutenant-colonel verifies and indorses. Perfectly satisfactory; in evidence of which the two commands exchange cheers.
Henceforth we and the 8th are fast friends. We have other friends also—Captain Miller's battery, of Pennsylvania, has been in front with us, and though out for 'the emergency,' declares it will stay as long as the 71st. So we all fraternize, hailing any member as '8th,' '71st,' or 'Battery,' and cheer when we pass each other. The 8th are good cheerers, and though we outnumbered them, I think they outdid us in three times three and a 'tiger,' the inevitable refrain. The 'tiger' (sounding tig-a-h-h) is the test of a cheer. If the cheer be a spontaneous burst of hearty good feeling, the tiger concentrates its energy, and is full and prolonged—if it be only the cheer courteous or the cheer civil, the tiger will fall off and die prematurely.
Just at dark we left camp, passed rapidly through the town, along the turnpike about two miles, and halted in a cornfield beside the road, where we formed line of battle. We received orders to 'load at will,' and fire low. The 8th were on the opposite side of the road, and their battery somewhere near us. After some time, nobody appearing, permission was given to thrust our muskets by the bayonets in the ground; and soon after, one by one, the men dropped off asleep. The evening had been extremely sensational. The sudden departure, the rapid march, whither and for what we knew not, yet full of momentary expectation; the orders and preparations indicating the imminence of grim, perhaps ghastly work, in the night hours; the line of men, stretching beyond sight in the darkness, far from home, and, it might be, near to death, sleeping yet waiting:—the total was singularly impressive.
Nevertheless, I too was soon asleep, and slept undisturbed till morning. Then, rebels or no rebels, we must have breakfast. There was none to be had in the regiment; but the farmhouses supplied us, and an ancient dame intermitted packing her goods for flight, to cook the pork which made part of my three days' rations. Then I stretched myself beneath the shade of a roadside house within sound of orders, and having nothing else on hand, went to sleep again.
I was now broken in. Camp rations I could eat; camp coffee, though always sans milk and often sans sugar, I deemed good; a wash was a luxury, not a necessity; and I could sleep anywhere.
When I was aroused, I found a barricade thrown up across the road, and a force of contrabands digging a trench across the field. A cavalry picket reported the enemy within half a mile, advancing. The citizens came out from Carlisle to aid us, and we went in line into the trenches. Two men were detailed from each company to carry off the wounded; the red hospital flag fluttered upon a house behind us, and the colonel, passing in front, told us they were very near, and exhorted us not to let them pass. But the day wore on to evening, and no rebels appeared, and at dark we moved again. Starting in a heavy rain, we marched nine miles to the borders of a town known as New Kingston. Here we halted while quarters were hunted up. Every man, tired with the rapid walking through rain and mud, squatted at once in the road, no matter where, and then along the whole column singing began. A soldier will sing under all circumstances, comfortable or uncomfortable.
At length we moved into the town and took possession of a church, distributing ourselves in aisles, pews, and pulpit. What little remained of the night, we were glad to have in quiet. It had been questionable whether we could reach Kingston, for on the march it was rumored that we were flanked; and a man, emerging from the shade as we passed, had asked a question of the chaplain, and, receiving no answer, had retreated a few yards, and fired his piece in the air, which looked very like a signal. The next morning, the 26th, we went into camp in woods just in front of the town, while the general and the surgeon established headquarters in the town.
Here we repeated substantially the programme of the day before, except that continuous rain was substituted for the baking sun, and proved far more endurable.
On the afternoon of the 27th we marched some seven or eight miles, and encamped at night in Oyster Point, about two miles from Harrisburg.
Sunday! the 28th of June. My first Sunday with the regiment. No rumors of the enemy reach us, and to us privates the prospect is of a quiet day. The boys gather round the chaplain for divine service. And as for a few minutes we renew our connection with civilization, and, amid stacked arms, tents, camp fires, and the paraphernalia of war, sing psalms and hymns, and listen to the chaplain's prayer, I decide that this surpasses all luxury possible in camp. I shall never forget that 'church.'
But no Sunday in camp. Hardly were the services concluded, when we went forward a little to an orchard, and then line of battle again. This performance of 'laying for a fight' which never came, had by this time grown tame, in fact intolerably stupid, and I for one was growing tired of sitting in silence, when boom! crash! a cannon shot in front of us, the smoke visible too, curling above the woods, and showing how near it had been fired. A smothered 'Ah!' and 'Now you've got it, boys,' went through the ranks. It was no humbug this time. The rebels were shelling the woods as they advanced.
But it appeared we were not to receive them at that spot, for suddenly we were ordered off again, and marched across lots, to the destruction of many a bushel of wheat, clear into the intrenchments in front of Harrisburg. There for the remainder of the day we waited in line. Other regiments, we knew not what, were near us in different positions. The signal flags were waving, and officers galloping by constantly, of whom the quartermaster was hailed with shouts of 'Grub, grub.'
That night my company and two others went out on picket, taking position near our camp of the day before. In the morning we advanced a little to a lane—a cobbler's stall was converted into headquarters, and the half of the company not on duty went foraging for dinner. Pigs and chickens were captured, and cooking began in the kitchen of a deserted house close by. Apple butter, too, the prevalent institution in Pennsylvania, was found in plenty. So the two halves of the company relieved each other in standing guard and picnicking. Meantime, however, the rebels, from the woods just in front, were paying their respects with two-inch shell, which shrieked and crashed through the branches, bursting over us, around us, and many of them altogether too near to be pleasant. Moreover, by one of those blunders which cannot always be avoided, some of our own men, mistaking us, opened fire on our rear; but to this a stop was speedily put by a flag of truce, improvised from a ramrod and a white handkerchief. We were allowed to fire only three or four volleys in return. This skirmishing tries courage, I believe, more than a pitched battle. To lie on the ground for hours, two or three miles in front of your main body, ten feet from the nearest man, and be fired at without firing yourself or making any noise, is a different thing from standing in your place amid the throng and all the noise, excitement, and enthusiasm of a battle, earnestly occupied in firing as fast as you can. In a battle all the circumstances combine to produce high excitement and drive fear out of a man, leaving room only for that kind of courage properly called fearlessness or intrepidity, belonging to men like Governor Pickens, 'born insensible to fear.' But the highest grade of courage is that which, despite of fear, stands firm. That is the courage of principle, of morale, as opposed to purely physical courage. It is the last degree—at the next step we rise into heroism.
In the afternoon we were relieved by a Pennsylvania company, and as we retired in full sight of the rebels, the rascals yelled at us, and gave us several volleys, from which it is wonderful that every man escaped.
That evening we moved to the extreme rear, into Fort Washington, on the bank of the river in front of Harrisburg. Here it was said our advance work was over, and we were promised comfortable quarters and rest.
Any one nowadays can see a camp, but only one who has seen it can understand how picturesque it is. The night scene at Harrisburg was beautiful in the extreme. Behind us slept the city—we guarded it in front, and the river rolled between. The moonlight, illuminating a most exquisite scenery, between the foliage gave glimpses of that placid stream, and shone upon the tents and bayonets of some six thousand men within the formidable works; the expiring fires sent up wreaths of smoke; grim guns looked over the ramparts down the gentle slope in front and up the beautiful Cumberland Valley; and only the occasional call of the sentry for the corporal of the guard broke the serene stillness.
Here were our friends of the 8th, and here we regained our knapsacks. Many of them had been 'gone through,' and everything 'won.' The 56th and 22d New York, the 23d and 18th Brooklyn, besides others, were encamped inside.
Here we were sworn into the United States service for thirty days from the 17th June.
On Wednesday, July 1st, all our prospect of camp life, with its regularity of drill, inspection, and, above all, of rations, was dashed by orders to move in the morning to Carlisle. General Knipe, riding through camp, was asked where he was going to take us. 'Right into the face of the enemy,' said he. 'Hi, hi!' shouted the men.
So away we went again. I was detailed to guard baggage, and remained, loading wagons, &c., subject to the quartermaster, and went on in the cars to Carlisle, where, on the evening of the 3d, I joined the regiment when it came in.
Since we left Carlisle the rebels had been there and burned the barracks. They had shelled the town the night before, and the 37th had had a sharp skirmish with them.
On the morning of the 4th July we started about ten thousand strong—a movement in force. The battle of Gettysburg had been fought, the danger to Harrisburg was past, and, without knowing exactly where we were bound, it was plain that we were to cooperate with Meade. That day we made a long march. Our knapsacks were left behind. The first six miles were well enough. We move on slowly, the sun overclouded, the road good, and marching, as always is allowed on a long march (save when we pass through a town), without order or file. The men talk, laugh, and sing, get water and tobacco from the roadside dwellers, and chaff them with all sorts of absurd questions. The first six miles are pleasant. At the foot of the South Mountains we rest. This is Papertown. Papertown, as far as visible, consists of one house. From the piazza of said house, an 8th makes a speech: I am not near enough to hear, but suppose it funny, for colonels and all laugh. Some go to eating, some to sleep, some take the chance, as is wise, to wash their feet at the stream below, the best preventive of blisters.
In an hour it begins to rain, and we start to go through the Gap, along which we meet squads of prisoners and deserters from Lee's army. Eleven miles through that rain. I have never seen such rain before; it is credited to the cannonading which for days past has been going on all around. Trudge, trudge; in fifteen minutes soaked through, in half an hour walking in six inches of water, in two hours walking in six inches of mud. Then throw away blankets and overcoats—men fall behind done up—men can go no farther for sore feet.
At Pine Grove, that night, Company I, out of seventy men, musters thirty at roll call. The different regiments scatter over half a mile of ground. Every fence about is converted into fuel. The cattle and hogs in the fields are levied upon—shot, dressed, cooked, and eaten. There is nothing else to be had, and the wagons cannot follow us for some time over such roads. So officers shut their eyes. It rains still, but we can be no wetter than we are, so we lie down and take it. This is our glorious Fourth!
In the morning—Sunday morning again—there is nothing to eat. In the town, which comprises half a dozen houses and an old foundery, the answer is, 'The rebels has eat us all out.' A few secure loaves of bread, paying as high as a dollar; another few boil what coffee they had carried with them and contrived to save from the rain. The rest have nothing. Henceforth the order of the day is march and starve, and the story is only of ceaseless fatigue, hunger, and rain. Thus far we have stood stiff and taken it cheerfully. There was growling before we got through.
Off again over the mountains.
If I have enough to eat, I can stand anything—if not, I break down. In two miles I 'caved in.' The captain thought the regiment would return shortly. So I staid behind. On Monday afternoon, however, they had not come back, and I started after them. I got a meal and passed the night in a house on the mountain, and, after some sixteen miles' walking, caught them on the broad turnpike the next day, and marched some seven miles farther, to Funkstown, Pennsylvania.
Here an episode. As we started the next morning (in the rain, of course), I was sent to the rear to report to a sergeant. The sergeant, with nine besides me, reported to the brigade quartermaster. The quartermaster distributed the ten, with an equal number of the 23d, through ten army wagons, to drive and guard. We went through Chambersburg to Shippensburg, where we loaded with provisions. Here I heard abundance of the doings of the rebels, who loaded seven hundred wagons at this place. I bought Confederate money and got meals at a hotel—at my own expense.
On Friday evening, the 10th, we rejoined the column at Waynesboro', a welcome arrival, for grub was terribly scarce. Here was the Sixth Corps, Army of the Potomac, under General Neal—'Bucky Neal,' a 'Potomaker' called him. For a time we belonged to it, and adorned our caps with the badge of the corps, cut out of cracker.
On Saturday evening we crossed the line into Maryland, fording the Antietam creek, the bridge over which the rebs had burned; and Sunday we footed it back and forth over roads and across lots, bringing up at Cavetown.
'Earthquakes, as usual,' wrote Lady Sale, in her 'Diary.' 'Rain, as usual,' wrote we. And such rain! They do a heavy business in rain in that region, and in thunder and lightning, too. I have heard Western thunder storms described, but I doubt if they surpass such as are common beneath these mountains. Four poor fellows of the 56th, who were sitting beneath a tree, were struck by lightning—one of them killed.
On Monday we camped at Boonsboro', and on Tuesday beside a part of Meade's army. When I saw all the wagons here, and what an immense job it is to move any considerable force, with all the delays that may come from broken wheels, lame horses, and bad roads, I could not but smile at the military critics at home, who show you how general this should have made a rapid movement so; or general that hurled a force upon that point, &c.
Here, near Boonsboro', on Tuesday night, the 14th, news of the riot in New York reached us. The near approach of the expiration of our time had already made much talk of home, and now anxiety was doubled. Rumors flew through camp, and all ears and mouths were open, and before we settled for the night it came. Orderlies carried directions through the ranks to have all ready and clean up pieces to go home.
In the morning our Battery friends came up to say good-by. Seventy-first buttons were exchanged for their crossed-cannon badges, songs sung and cheers given ad lib.
Soon we all started, bound, we knew, for the cars at Frederick City. The last march! It was very warm, and the road across the mountains often steep, but there was little straggling.
Most incidents of soldier life grow tame, but to the last the spectacle of the column on march retained its impressiveness for me.
We passed through Frederick just at dusk—ejaculating tenderly 'Ah! ah!' as fair damsels waved handkerchiefs at us—and went out to the junction. The cars were ready. We had done the last march. Twenty-five miles that day! And I had gone through this month of walking without foot trouble, for which I am indebted to my 'pontoons,' i.e., Government shoes. Take them large enough, and they are the only things to walk in.
Marching is the hardest thing I met with. I have always been a regular and good walker. But ordinary walking is no preparation for marching. The weight of musket and accoutrements, the dust (rain and mud in our case), the inability to see before you, and the necessity of keeping up in place, are all wearing and nervously exhausting.
We did not get off at once. Red tape delayed us, and we growled savagely. But we had plenty to eat, and a river beside us. So, bathing and eating, we passed Thursday in sight of the train. At length red tape was untied, and Thursday night the 8th and 71st set off, in cattle cars. This time the advance was a privilege. In Baltimore we were beset by women trying to sell cakes, and boys trying to beg cartridges. Along the road we ate, smoked, and slept. In Philadelphia we had 'supper' in the 'United States Volunteers' Refreshment Saloon.' I remember a bright girl there, who got me a second cup of coffee.
And so, Saturday morning, the 18th, we took the boat at Amboy, within two hours of home! But there was less hilarity than usual on the return of a regiment. Our news from the city was not the latest, and our grimmest work might be to come—and in New York! Woe to any show of a mob we had met! The indignation was deep and intense.
But in two minutes after we landed on the Battery, papers were circulated through the ranks, and we knew all was quiet.
So up Broadway. We were too early in the street to gather much of a crowd. Those who were out hailed us heartily, and at the corner of Grand street or thereabouts an ardent individual from a fourth-story window, plying two boards cymbal-wise (clap-boards, say), initiated a respectable noise. And so round the corner and into the armory at Centre Market. The campaign was over, and a few days after we were paid off and mustered out.
As I said, I went to see what it was like, and I saw. It is a strange life, but a wholesome one, if you get a tolerable sufficiency to eat, and not too heavy a dose of marching. So severe a time as we had is terribly physical, and benumbs the brain somewhat. The campaign was short, but the utmost was crowded into those thirty days.
The first portion was advance work, always arduous. General Knipe's work was to check the rebel advance. He did so by going to the front and meeting them, and then retreating slowly before them, making a stand and demonstration of fight, at which their advance would fall back on the main body, at whose approach he would up stakes, run a few miles, and make another show. Thus he gained ten days' time, which enabled General Couch, in command of the department, to fortify, and collect and organize troops, and probably saved Harrisburg. And for the manner in which he did it, without, too, the loss of a man, he deserves credit.
On the whole, did I like it? Well, I am glad I have been. But the exact answer to that question is a sentence of Winthrop's, in his paper 'Washington as a Camp': 'It is monotonous, it is not monotonous, it is laborious, it is lazy, it is a bore, it is a lark, it is half war, half peace, and totally attractive, and not to be dispensed with from one's experience in the nineteenth century.'
REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM.
CHAPTER VI.—TRUTH AND LOVE.
The Divine Attributes, the base of all true Art.
Art must be based upon a study of Nature, upon a clear and comprehensive knowledge of natural laws. No man was ever yet a great poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher, for Poetry is the blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, and human emotions. The poet must have the ability to observe things as they really are, in order to depict them with accuracy, unchanged by any passion in the mind of the describer, whether the things to be depicted are actually present to the senses, or have a place only in the memory.
Nature may be regarded either as the home of man, and consequently associated with all the phases of his existence; or as an assemblage of symbols, manifesting the thoughts of the Creator. In accordance with the first view, the poet may give it its place in the different scenes of human life, animated with our passions, sympathizing with us, and expressing our feelings; in the second, he must try to interpret this divine language, to seize the idea gleaming through the veil of the material envelope, for there is an established harmony between material nature and intellectual. Every thought has its reflection in a visible object which repeats it like an echo, reflects it like a mirror, rendering it sensible first to the senses by the visible image, then to the thought by the thought.
Genius is the instinct of discovering some more of the words in this divine language of universal analogies, the key of which God alone possesses, but some portions of whose stores he sometimes deigns to unclose for man. Therefore in earlier times the Prophet, an inspired poet; and the poet, an uninspired prophet—were both considered holy. They are now looked upon as insane or useless; and indeed, this is but a logical consequence of the so-called utilitarian views. If only the material and palpable part of nature which may be calculated, percented, turned into gold, or made to minister to sensual pleasures, is to be regarded with interest; if the lessons of the harvest, with its 'good seed and tares,' and the angels, its reapers; the teachings of the sparrow and the Divine Love which watched over them; the grass and the lilies of the field clothed in splendor by their Creator, are to awaken neither hope nor fear—then men are right in despising those who preserve a deep reverence for moral beauty; the idea of God in his creation; and respect the language of images, the mysterious relations between the visible and invisible worlds. Is it asked what does this language prove? The answer is, God and Immortality! Alas! they are worth nothing on 'Change!
Yet let him who would study his own happiness and well-being, follow the advice given in the Good Book:
'Look upon the rainbow, and bless Him that made it, for it is very beautiful.
'It encompasseth the heavens about with the circle of its glory; the hands of the Most High have displayed it.'
As creation is symbolic, and the province of the poet is humbly to imitate the works of the Great Artist, we must expect to find him also make use of symbolic language, imagery.
Metaphor (metapherô) is the application of a physical fact to the moral order; the association of an external material fact to one internal and intellectual. As this association is not reflective, but spontaneous, and is found pervading the infancy of languages; as it is intuitively and generally understood; it must take place in accordance with a mental law which establishes natural relations of analogy between the moral world and the physical. To become perceptible, thought must be imaged, reflected upon a sensuous form; the definition by an image is generally the most clear and complete. We may have clear enough ideas of some invisible truth in our own minds, but if we would convey our conception to another, we cannot give it to him by a pure idea, for then we would still be in the internal world of intellect; we must go out from this internal world, we must seek a sign in the physical world that he can see and contemplate; we select some phenomenon which can be easily observed, and in accordance with the law of analogy of which we have just spoken, we associate our thought with it, and in this manner we can clearly communicate the thought we have conceived.
Almost all the ideas we have of the moral world are expressed through metaphors: thus we say the movements or emotions of the soul; the clearness or coloring of a style; the heat or warmth of a discourse; the hardness or softness of the heart, &c., &c. Language expresses the invisible thought of the soul; in accordance with the etymology of the word (exprimere) it presses them from the soul, from the realm of internal thought, to transport them to the visible sphere. But the etymology itself is nothing but a metaphor, for the immaterial facts of the soul always remain in their own region inaccessible to the senses, and the instinctive facts of the organism always remain in the visible world, so that there can be no actual passage from one to the other, for an immaterial fact cannot be changed into a material one:—association, simultaneousness, correlation may obtain between them, but nothing more.
Saint Thomas Aquinas asserts 'that in our present state of degradation the intellect comprehends nothing without an image.' Language is in reality the association of material facts to facts of the will, heart, and intellect. Apparently insufficient to give a full idea of material things alone, it would seem almost impossible that it should ever be able to express the facts of the invisible world; but the human spirit, in accordance with the mental law impressed upon it by the Hand Divine, seizes the analogies of the moral phenomena with the phenomena of nature, and, seeing physical facts used as symbols by the Creator to convey ethical, also instinctively uses them to express the facts of the moral world; and thus is born the human Word which, invisibly ploughing the waves of the unseen air, can convey the most subtile thought, the most evanescent shade of feeling, the wildest, darkest, and deepest emotion. Language is man's expression of the finite, with its infinite meanings modified by the extent of his intelligence and his power of expression. It is truly a universal possession, but every man gifts it with his own individualities, his own idiosyncrasies. The style, one might almost say, is the man.
Thus the imagery of language finds its base in the very essence of our being. The poet is one gifted to seize upon these hidden analogies, to read these mystic symbols, and, through the force of his own imagination, to reveal them to his brethren in truth and love.
The imagination has two distinct functions. It combines, and by combination creates new forms; it penetrates, analyzes, and realizes truths discoverable by no other faculty.
An imagination of high power of combination seizes and associates at the same moment all the important ideas of its work or poem, so that while it is working with any one of them, it is at the same instant working with and modifying them all in their several relations to it. It never once loses sight of their bearings upon each other—as the volition moves through every part of the body of a snake at the same moment, uncoiling some of its involute rings at the very instant it is coiling others. This faculty is inconceivable, admirable, almost divine; yet no less an operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for by the definition of unity of membership above given, not only certain couples or groups of parts, but all the parts of a noble work must be separately imperfect; each must imply and ask for all the rest; the glory of every one of them must consist in its relation to the rest; neither while so much as one is wanting can any be right. This faculty is indeed something that looks as if its possessor were made in the Divine image!
'The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;—
The conscious stone to beauty grew.'
Emerson.
By the power of the combining imagination various ideas are chosen from an infinite mass, ideas which are separately imperfect, but which shall together be perfect, and of whose unity therefore the idea must be formed at the very moment they are seized, as it is only in that unity that their appropriateness consists, and therefore only the conception of that unity can prompt the preference. Therefore he alone can conceive and compose who sees the whole at once before him.
Shakspeare is the great example of this marvellous power. Not only is every word which falls from the lips of his various characters true to his first conception of them, so true that we always know how they will act under any given circumstances, and we could substitute no other words than the words used by them without contradicting our first impression of them; but every character with which they come in contact is not only ever true to itself, but is precisely of the nature best fitted to develop the traits, vices, or virtues of the main figure. So perfect and complete is this lifelike unity, that we can scarcely think of one of his leading characters without recalling all those with whom it is associated. If we name Juliet, for instance, not only is her idea inseparable from that of Romeo, but the whole train of Montagues and Capulets, Mercutio, Tybalt, the garrulous nurse, the lean apothecary, the lonely friar, sweep by. What an exquisite trait of the poetic temperament, tenderness, and human sympathies of this same lonely friar is given us in his exclamation:
'Here comes the lady: O, so light a foot
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.'
It also explains to us that it was the good friar's unconscious affection for Juliet, the pure sympathies of a lonely but loving heart, which so imprudently induced him to unite the unfortunate young lovers. The men and women of Shakspeare live and love, and we cannot think of them without at the same time thinking of those with whom they lived and whom they loved. Indeed, when we can wrest any character in a drama from those which surround it, and study it apart, the unity of the whole is but apparent, never vital. Simplicity, harmony, life, power, truth, and love, are all to be found in any high work of the associative imagination.
We now proceed to characterize the penetrative imagination, 'which analyzes and realizes truths discoverable by no other faculty.' Of this faculty Shakspeare is also master. Ruskin, from whom we continue to quote, says: It never stops at crusts or ashes, or outward images of any kind, but ploughing them all aside, plunges at once into the very central fiery heart; its function and gift are the getting at the root; its nature and dignity depend on its holding things always by the heart. Take its hand from off the beating of that, and it will prophesy no longer; it looks not into the eyes, it judges not by the voice, it describes not by outward features; all that it affirms, judges, or describes, it affirms from within. There is no reasoning in it; it works not by algebra nor by integral calculus; it is a piercing Pholas-like mind's tongue that works and tastes into the very rock-heart; no matter what be the subject submitted to it, substance or spirit, all is alike divided asunder, joint and marrow; whatever utmost truth, life, principle it has laid bare, and that which has no truth, life, nor principle, is dissipated into its original smoke at a touch. The whispers at men's ears it lifts into visible angels. Vials that have lain sealed in the sea a thousand years it unseals, and brings out of them genii.
Every great conception of Art is held and treated by this faculty. Every character touched by men like Æschylus, Homer, Dante, or Shakspeare, is by them held by the heart; and every circumstance or sentence of their being, speaking, or seeming, is seized by a process from within, and is referred to that inner secret spring of which the hold is never lost for a moment; so that every sentence, as it has been thought out from the heart, opens a way down to the heart, and leads us to the very centre of life. Hence there is in every word set down by the Imagination an awful undercurrent of meaning—an evidence and shadow upon it of the deep places out of which it has come.
In this it utterly differs from the Fancy, with which it is often confounded.
Fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the outside, clear, brilliant, and full of detail. The Imagination sees the heart and inner nature, and makes them felt; but in the clear seeing of things beneath, is often impatient of detailed interpretation, being sometimes obscure, mysterious, and abrupt. Fancy, as she stays at the externals, never feels. She is one of the hardest hearted of the intellectual faculties; or, rather, one of the most purely and simply intellectual. She cannot be made serious; no edge tools but she will play with; while the Imagination cannot but be serious—she sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, to smile often! There is something in the heart of everything, if we can reach it, at which we shall not be inclined to laugh. Those who have the deepest sympathies are those who pierce deepest, and those who have so pierced and seen the melancholy deeps of things, are filled with the most intense passion and gentleness of sympathy. The power of an imagination may almost be tested by its accompanying degree of tenderness; thus there is no tenderness like Dante's, nor any seriousness like his—such seriousness that he is quite incapable of perceiving that which is commonplace or ridiculous.
Imagination, being at the heart of things, poises herself there, and is still, calm, and brooding; but Fancy, remaining on the outside of things, cannot see them all at once, but runs hither and thither, and round about, to see more and more, bounding merrily from point to point, glittering here and there, but necessarily always settling, if she settle at all, on a point only, and never embracing the whole. From these simple points she can strike out analogies and catch resemblances, which are true so far as the point from which she looks is concerned, but would be false, could she see through to the other side. This, however, she does not care to do—the point of contact is enough for, her; and even if there be a great gap between two things, she will spring from one to the other like an electric spark, and glitter the most brightly in her leaping. Fancy loves to follow long chains of circumstance from link to link; but the Imagination grasps a link in the middle that implies all the rest, and settles there.
'Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
[Imagination.
The tufted crowtoe and pale jessamine,
[Nugatory.
The white pink and the pansy streaked with jet,
[Fancy.
The glowing violet,
[Imagination.
The musk rose and the well attired woodbine,
[Fancy, vulgar.
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
[Imagination.
And every flower that sad embroidery wears.
[Mixed.
Milton.
'Oh, Proserpina,
For the flowers now that frighted thou lett'st fall
From Dis's wagon. Daffodils
That come before the swallow dare, and take
The winds of March with beauty. Violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids.'
Here the Imagination goes into the inmost soul of every flower, after having touched them all with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's; and, gilding them all with celestial gathering, never stops on their spots or their bodily shape; while Milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy streak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of paper staining would have been the most precious to us of all.
'There is pansies—that's for thoughts.'
Can the tender insight of the Imagination be more fully manifested than in the grief of Constance?
'And, father cardinal, I have heard you say
That we shall see and know our friends in heaven:
If that be true, I shall see my boy again;
For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child,
To him that did but yesterday suspire,
There was not such a gracious creature born.
But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,
And chase the native beauty from his cheek;
And he will look as hollow as a ghost,
As dim and meagre as an ague's fit;
And so he'll die; and, rising so again,
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven
I shall not know him: therefore, never—never—
Shall I behold my pretty Arthur more.
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
O lord, my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort and my sorrow's cure.'
This is the impassioned but simple eloquence of Nature, and Nature's child: Shakspeare.
In these examples the reader will not fail to remark that the Imagination seems to gain much of its power from its love for and sympathy with the objects described. Not only are the objects with which it presents us truthfully rendered, but always lovingly treated.
With the Greeks, the Graces were also the Charities or Loves. It is the love for living things and the sympathy felt in them that induce the poet to give life and feeling to the plant, as Shelley to the 'Sensitive Plant;' as Shakspeare, when he speaks to us through the sweet voices of Ophelia and Perdita; as Wordsworth, in his poems to the Daisy, Daffodil, and Celandine; as Burns in his Mountain Daisy. As a proof of the power of the Imagination, through its Truth, and Love, to invest the lowest of God's creatures with interest, we offer the reader one of these simple songs of the heart.
TO A MOUSE.
On turning her up in her nest with the plough,
November, 1785.
Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hastie,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion
An' fellow mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icher in a thrave
'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin' wi' the lave
An' never miss't!
Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin'!
An' naething, now, to big anew ane,
O' foppage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin',
Baith snell and keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin' fast,
An' cozie here beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.
That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
Nor house nor hald,
To thole the winter's sleety dribble
An' cranreuch cold!
But, mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.
Still thou art blest, compared with me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear;
An' forward, though I canna see,
I guess and fear!
Poor Burns! Seventy years and more have passed since that cold November morning on which he sang this simple and tender song, yet it is as fresh in its rustic pathos, bathed in the quickening dews of the poet's heart, as if it had sprung from the soul but an hour since: and fresh it will still be long after the fragile hand now tracing this tribute to the heart of love from which it flowed shall have been cold in an unknown grave!
Such poems are worth folios of the erudite and stilted pages which are now so rapidly pouring their scoria around us. Men seem ashamed now to be simply natural. Either they have ceased to love, or to believe in the dignity of loving. The great barrier to all real greatness in this present age of ours is the fear of ridicule, and the low and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any noble work a flaw or failing, or unclipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, pointed at, buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always perverted and misunderstood. While this spirit lasts, there can be no hope of the achievement of high things, for men will not open the secrets of their hearts to us, if we intend to desecrate the holy, or to broil themselves upon a fire of thorns.
As the poet is full of love for all that God has made, because his imagination enables him to seize it by the heart, he would in this love fain gift the inanimate things of creation with life, that he might find in them that happiness which pertains to the living; hence the constant personification of all that is in his pages. He personifies, he individualizes, he gifts creation with life and passion, not willingly considering any creature as subordinate to any purpose quite out of itself, for then some of the pleasure he feels in its beauty is lost, for his sense of its happiness is in that case destroyed, as its emanation of inherent life is no longer pure. Thus the bending trunk, waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because it seems happy, though it is, indeed, perfectly useless to us. The same trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. It serves as a bridge—it has become useful, it lives no longer for itself, and its pleasant beauty is gone, or that which it still retains is purely typical, dependent on its lines and colors, not on its functions. Saw it into planks, and though now fitted to become permanently useful, its whole beauty is lost forever, or is to be regained only in part, when decay and ruin shall have withdrawn it again from use, and left it to receive from the hand of Nature the velvet moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest ideas of inherent happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of life. For the Imagination, unperverted, is essentially loving, and abhors all utility based on the pain or destruction of any creature. It takes delight in such ministering of objects to each other as is consistent with the essence and energy of both, as in the clothing of the rock by the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream.
We have seen that the soul rejects exaggeration or falsehood in Art, and indeed all high Art, that which men will not suffer to perish, has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever looking under masks and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence is incapability of being deceived; and though it may dwell upon and substantiate the fictions of fancy, yet its peculiar operation is to trace to their farthest limits the true laws and likelihoods even of such fictitious creations.
As to its love, that is not only seen in its wish and struggle to quicken all with the warm throb of happy life, but is also clearly manifested in the lingering over its creations with clinging fondness, 'hating nothing that it maketh,' pruning, elaborating, and laboring to gift with beauty the works of its patient hands, finishing every line in love, that it too may feel its creations to be 'good.' For Love not only gives wings, but also vital heat and life, to Genius.
Thus we again arrive at the fact that the two Divine attributes of Truth and Love, in their finite form indeed, but still 'images,' are absolutely necessary for the creation of any true work of Art. No work can be great without their manifestation; unless they have brooded with their silvery wings over its progress to perfection; and in exact proportion to their manifestation will be its greatness. On these two attributes in God repose in holy trust the universes He hath made; and that which typifies or suggests His faithfulness and love to the soul created to enjoy Him, must be a source, not only of Beauty, but of Delight.
'For He made all things in wisdom; and Truth is perpetual and immortal.'
'For Thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things Thou hast made; for Thou didst not appoint or make anything, hating it.'
We make no attempt to give an enumeration of the attributes on which Beauty is based; we would rather induce the reader to examine his Maker's great Book of Symbols for himself. We hope we have turned his attention to the fact that every Letter in this sacred Language is full of meaning; enough to induce him to investigate the glorious mysteries of the 'Open Secret.'
Whatever may be the decisions of the men of the senses, or the men of the schools, let him fearlessly condemn any work in which he cannot find wrought into its very heart suggestions or manifestations of the Divine attributes, or an earnest effort on the part of its author, naive and unconscious as it may be, to imitate the Spirit of the Great Artist.
We have placed the Rosetta stone of Art, with its threefold inscriptions in Sculpture, Painting and Music, with their union or resumé in Poetry, before him; we have given him the key to some of its wondrous hieroglyphics; let him study the remaining letters of this mystical alphabet for himself! These inscriptions are indeed trilingual, phonetic, and sacred, yet the simple and loving soul may decipher them without the genius of Champollion; their meaning is written within it. It will readily learn to connect the sign with the thing signified, and under the fleeting forms of rhythmed time and measured space, learn to detect the immutable principles which are to be its glory and joy for eternity!
CURRENCY AND THE NATIONAL FINANCES.
1. History of the Bank of England, its Times and Traditions, from 1694 to 1844. By John Francis. First American Edition. With Notes, Additions, and an Appendix, including Statistics of the Bank to the close of the year 1861. By J. Smith Homans, Author of the 'Cyclopædia of Commerce and Commercial Navigation.' New York. 8vo, pp.476.
2. Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury to the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, in relation to the Issue of an Additional Amount of United States Treasury Notes.
3. Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the State of the Finances of the United States for the Year ending June 30, 1862.
4. The Tariff Question considered in regard to the Policy of England and the Interests of the United States. With Statistical and Comparative Tables. By Erastes B. Bigelow. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 4to, pp. 103 and 242.
5. The Bankers' Magazine and Statistical Register. New York, monthly, 1861-2. Edited by J. Smith Homans, jr.
The Bank of England was created during the urgent necessities of national finance. It was a concession of a valuable privilege to a few rich men, in consideration of their loaning the capital to the treasury. 'The estimates of Government expenditure in the year 1694 were enormous,' says Macaulay, in his fourth volume. King William asked to have the army increased to ninety-four thousand, at an annual expense of about two and a half millions sterling—a small sum compared with what it costs in the year 1862 to maintain an army of equal numbers.
At the period of the charter of the bank, the minds of men were on the rack to conceive new sources of revenue with which to meet the increased expenditures of the nation. The land tax was renewed at four shillings in the pound, and yielded a revenue of two millions. A poll tax was established. Stamp duties, which had prevailed in the time of Charles II had been allowed to expire, but were now revived, and have ever since been among the most prolific sources of income, yielding to the British Government in the year 1862 no less than £8,400,000 sterling. Hackney coaches were taxed, notwithstanding the outcries of the coachmen and the resistance of their wives, who assembled around Westminster Hall and mobbed the members. A new duty on salt was imposed, and finally resort was had to the lottery, whereby one million sterling was raised. All these resources were not sufficient for the growing wants of the Government, and the plan of the Bank of England was devised to furnish immediate relief to the finances. Montague brought the measure forward in Parliament, and 'he succeeded,' as Macaulay remarks, 'not only in supplying the wants of the state for twelve months, but in creating a great institution, which, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, continues to flourish, and which he lived to see the stronghold, through all vicissitudes, of the Whig party, and the bulwark, in dangerous times, of the Protestant succession.'
The birth of the bank and the birth of the English national debt were both in King William's time. In 1691, when England was at war with France, the national debt unfunded was £3,130,000, at an annual interest of £232,000. In 1697, at the Peace of Ryswick, this debt had swollen to £14,522,000. At the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, it had reached £34,000,000. The war with Spain in 1718 brought it up to forty millions sterling. And here it might have rested, had the advice of Shakspeare been followed:
'Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.'
But England went to war with Spain 'on the right of search.' From 1691 to this time the debt had increased on an average about a million sterling per year. As early as 1745 the credit of the bank was so identified with that of the state, that during the invasion of the Pretender, whose forces were at Derby, only one hundred and twenty miles from London, the creditors of the bank flocked in crowds to its counter to obtain specie for its notes. The merchants intervened and signed an agreement to make the bank's notes receivable in all business transactions.
The war of the Austrian succession followed in 1742, and at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, 'forever to be maintained,' the English were saddled with a debt of £75,000,000.
'Peace hath her victories,
No less renowned than war.'
It was early in the last century that the abuse of paper money gave a lasting and unfavorable impression against such issues. The scheme of John Law and the South Sea Bubble about the same time broke and scattered their fragments over both England and France. It was in the latter scheme or folly that Pope lost a large portion of his earnings, from which we may infer that his temper was not improved. He wrote, in his Third Epistle, dedicated to Lord Bathurst:
'Statesman and patriot ply alike the stocks;
Peeress and butler share alike the box;
And judges job, and bishops bite the town,
And mighty dukes pack cards for half a crown.'
In the same 'Moral Essay' he alludes to paper money in the following lines:
'Blest paper credit! last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
Gold imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things,
Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings;
A single leaf shall waft an army o'er,
Or ship off senates to a distant shore;
A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro
Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow:
Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,
And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.'
These are among the earliest tirades against paper money; which, like many other good things, is condemned because its power has been abused and prostituted.
England's enormous debt, which should have warned the Georges against further war, was not contracted without severe sacrifices. The legal rate of interest at the opening of the funding system was six per cent. In 1714 it was reduced to five per cent. Loans during the early wars of the eighteenth century were raised on annuities for lives on very high terms, fourteen per cent. being granted for single lives, twelve per cent. for two lives, and ten per cent. for three lives. But so far was England from being awake to the enormous debt she was creating by her expensive wars, that the seventy-five millions existing in 1748 became £132,000,000 at the close of the Seven Years' War in 1763. This volume was enlarged at the end of the American Revolution to £231,000,000. During all this time the bank was the lever with which these enormous sums were raised; but the end was not yet.
The French war with Napoleon became more exhaustive, and within twenty years from the peace with America to the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, the debt went up from £231,000,000 to £537,000,000 sterling. From this period to 1815 the debt accumulated annually, until it reached its maximum, or eight hundred and sixty-one millions sterling.
During these severe changes, reverses, extravagance, and extraordinary governmental expenditure, the bank was considered the prop of national finance. The French Revolution and its consequent war with England led to many heavy outlays by the British Government. In 1795 the bank desired the chancellor of the exchequer to make his arrangements for the year without 'any further assistance' from the bank. This was again urged in 1796, and the bank appealed again to Mr. Pitt.
'The only reply from Mr. Pitt was a request for a further accommodation, on the credit of the consolidated fund, which the court refused to sanction, until they had received satisfaction on the topic of the treasury bills, and requested Mr. Pitt to enter into a full explanation on this subject, which was not even touched upon in his letter. This resolution being communicated, Mr. Pitt wrote to the governor and deputy-governor on the 12th August, that 'they might depend upon measures being immediately taken for the payment of one million, and a further payment, to the amount of one million, being made in September, October, and November, in such proportions as might be found convenient. But, as fresh bills might arrive, he was under the necessity of requesting a latitude to an amount not exceeding one million.' About the same period the court 'desired the governor and deputy-governor would express their earnest desire that some other means might be adopted for the future payment of bills of exchange drawn on the treasury.' (Vide 'History Bank of England,' pp. 114, 115.)
The circumstances of the nation and of the bank were known to the capitalists and to the people. Hence various causes of uneasiness and distress. The bank loaned the public treasury seven and a half millions in the years 1794, 1795, 1796, and the more they loaned to the exchequer, the less they could loan to the people. Thus followed a diminution of gold in the bank, and hoarding by the people. Gold was exported more freely to the Continent, and reduced accommodation was given to the merchants. Finally, on the 26th February, 1797, the king's council passed an order for the suspension of cash payments.
The bank was on the eve of suspension in the year 1847. On the 25th of October the cabinet authorized a violation of the charter, thereby acknowledging the inability of the bank to maintain specie payments. This order of Lord John Russell inspired fresh confidence, and the bank immediately recovered strength, and reduced the rate of interest from 8 per cent. in October to 7 per cent. in November, to 6 and 5 per cent. in December, to 4 per cent. in January, and to 3-1/2 in June following. The distress and revulsion of 1847 were consequent upon the over-trading and railway mania of 1844, 1845, and 1846, and the failure of crops in Ireland and England in 1847.
The distress of England in 1847 was scarcely over when France was more severely affected than at any period since the Continental War. Louis Philippe abdicated in February, 1848, when consols closed at 88-7/8. By the close of the week they fell to 83, upon the formation of a provisional government. The political dissensions and commercial revulsion led to a large withdrawal of gold from the Bank of France, and finally the Government authorized, in March, the suspension of the bank, which was followed by the suspension of the Bank of Belgium and by the Société Generale.
Again, in 1857, the Bank of England was on the verge of suspension. Lord Palmerston and the then cabinet issued an order, November 12, authorizing the bank, if they thought it advisable, again to violate the charter; but it was found at the last moment unnecessary.
November was the critical period of the year 1857. The Times of November 12, 1857, contained these announcements:
| 1. | Bank charter suspended. | |
| 2. | Interest in London, | 10 per cent. |
| 3. | Interest in Hamburg, | 10 per cent. |
| 4. | Interest in Paris, | 8-1/2 per cent. |
| 5. | Interest in New York, | 25 per cent. |
| 6. | Suspension of cash payments generally | |
| by all banks in the United States. | ||
| 7. | Two banks stopped in Glasgow, | |
| and one in Liverpool, and a great bill | ||
| panic in London. | ||
| 8. | Commercial credit and transactions | |
| almost suspended in the country. | ||
| 9. | Bullion in the bank, | £7,170,000. |
| 10. | Reserve notes in the bank, | £975,000. |
| 11. | Bank liabilities, | £40,875,000. |
'One gentleman, during the heat of the excitement at Glasgow, went into the Union Bank and presented a check for £500. The teller asked him if he wished gold. 'Gold!' replied he, 'no; give me notes, and let the fools who are frightened get the gold,' Another gentleman rushed into the same bank in a great state of excitement, with a check for £1,400. On being asked if he wished gold he replied, 'Yes.' 'Well,' said the teller, 'there is £1,000 in that bag and £400 in this one.' The gentleman was so flurried by the readiness with which the demand was granted that he lifted up the bag with the £400 only, and walked off, leaving the £1,000 on the counter. The teller, on discovering the bag, laid it aside for the time. Late in the day the gentleman returned to the bank in great distress, stating he had lost the bag with the £1,000, and could not tell whether he dropped it in the crowd or left it behind him on leaving the bank. 'Oh, you left it on the counter,' said the teller, quietly, 'and if you call to-morrow you will get your £1,000.' (Vide ' History Bank of England,' p. 429.)
The facts and statistics from the year 1844 to 1860 relating to the bank are superadded to the English work by the American editor. Of the important phases of this period the editor gives a slight sketch in the following paragraphs. The prominent financial movements in England, France, and the United States are given in the subsequent pages of the volume.
'The sixteen years which followed the last charter of the bank have been pregnant with important events of a financial character; the most important, perhaps, during the whole history of the institution. The bank has twice, during this short period, been on the brink of suspension, and was relieved only by the interference of Government. The second instance occurred after new gold, to the extent of one hundred millions sterling, or more, had been poured into Western Europe from California and Australia. The Bank of France had, during the same period, suspended specie payment. Two financial revulsions have occurred in the United States, when, with few exceptions, the banks of the whole country suspended specie payments. The production of gold and silver throughout the world, which, up to 1844, was annually about ten or twelve millions sterling, had recently advanced from twenty-five to thirty millions sterling per annum, thus stimulating industry and production largely throughout Europe and America. Sir Robert Peel, the author of the new charter of the bank, has left the world's stage, after witnessing the failure of the charter to fully accomplish the end promised; Europe and America, Asia and Europe, have been knit together by a wire cord, and capital is now subscribed to
'Put a girdle round about the earth,'
whereby London may speak to San Francisco (the prospective commercial centre of the world) in less than 'forty minutes.' During the same short space of sixteen years the suspended States of this Union (five at least) have resumed payment of their obligations; two violent wars, with sundry revolutions, have occurred in Europe; the ancient city of the Cortez has been conquered by the 'hordes of the North,' and magnanimously given up by the captors to the possession of their weaker enemy, and millions were paid to the latter for portions of their territory; the northwest passage of the American continent has been discovered; steam has accomplished wonders between Europe and America, and between Europe and their distant colonies of Asia, Africa, and Australia; Ireland has been on the verge of starvation,[6] when 600,000 of her people died from hunger alone and its effects, and her population was reduced two millions by emigration and privation; England's minister has been expelled from the capital of the United States; speculation has been rife in Europe and America, and its inevitable effects, revulsion and bankruptcy, have followed in its train; the railway and the telegraph have brought remote regions together; China, with her four hundred millions of people, has been conquered by the united forces of the English and the French.
'The Bank of England, instead of pursuing one even course, with a view to permanent commercial interests, has unfortunately, and, we fear, from selfish and individual views, fostered speculation by reducing her rate of discount to 2 per cent., and soon after, but too late, discovered the error, and forced her borrowers to pay from 6 to 10 per cent.
'We propose to give the leading events of each year, from 1844 to 1861, referring the reader to authorities where more copious information can be gained by those who wish to study the invariable connection between commerce and money.
'The bank shares in the depressed period of 1847-8 fell to 180, after having reached, in the flattering times of 1844-'5, 215 per share, or 115 per cent. advance. Consols, at the same depressed period, fell to 78-3/4, when starvation stared Ireland in its face, and the bank simultaneously sought protection from the Cabinet.'
Attention has been recently directed in this country to the premium on gold, or to the alleged fall in the value of bank paper and Government notes. Although the premium on gold as an article of merchandise has reached a high rate during the present year, it will be seen, on reference to the reliable tables in the History of the Bank of England, that a great difference occurred during the suspension of the bank in 1797 to 1819. Gold at one time (1812) reached £5 8s., a difference of 30 per cent. The annexed table shows the changes from 1809 to 1821.
| YEARS | Price of | Difference from | Nominal | Amount in | |||
| Gold. | Mint Prices. | Taxes | Gold Currency | ||||
| £ | s. | d. | £ | £ | |||
| 1809, | 4 | 9 | 10 | 16-1/3 | per cent. | 71,887,000 | 60,145,000 |
| 1810, | 4 | 5 | 0 | 9-1/10 | " | 74,815,000 | 68,106,000 |
| 1811, | 4 | 17 | 1 | 24-1/2 | " | 73,621,000 | 55,583,000 |
| 1812, | 5 | 1 | 4 | 30 | " | 73,707,000 | 51,595,000 |
| Sept. to Dec. 1812, | 5 | 8 | 0 | 38-1/2 | " | ... | ... |
| 1813, | 5 | 6 | 2 | 36-1/10 | " | 81,745,000 | 52,236,000 |
| Nov. 1812, to Mch. 1813 | 5 | 10 | 0 | 41 | " | ... | ... |
| 1814, | 5 | 1 | 8 | 30-1/3 | " | 83,726,000 | 58,333,000 |
| 1815, | 4 | 12 | 9 | 18-8/9 | " | 88,394,000 | 66,698,000 |
| 1816, | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2-1/2 | " | 78,909,000 | 72,062,000 |
| Oct. to Dec. 1816, | 3 | 18 | 6 | under 1 | " | ... | ... |
| 1817, | 4 | 0 | 0 | 2-1/2 | " | 58,757,000 | 57,259,000 |
| 1818, | 4 | 1 | 5 | 5 | " | 59,391,000 | 56,025,000 |
| 1819, 4th Feb. | 4 | 3 | 0 | 6-1/3 | " | 58,288,000 | 54,597,000 |
| 1820, | 3 | 17 | 10-1/2 | par. | 59,812,000 | 59,812,000 | |
| 1821, | 3 | 17 | 10-1/2 | par. | 61,000,000 | 61,000,000 |
The increased volume of Government and bank paper afloat in the United States since the 1st January, 1862, is conceded to be only temporary. The Government is engaged in crushing the greatest rebellion known to history; in doing this, the national expenditures are six or seven fold what they ever were before, in a time of peace. During the four years 1813 to 1816, when war raged with England, the whole expenses of the Government were $108,537,000. During the Mexican war, when the disbursements of the treasury were much heavier, the average annual expenses of the Government were about 35 to 48 millions. It will be well to recur to these tabular details for future history. They are presented as follows, for the whole period of the General Government.
EXPENDITURES of the United States, exclusive of Payments on account of the Public Debt.
| Years | 1789-1792, | Washington, | $3,797,000 |
| " | 1793-1796, | " | 12,083,000 |
| " | 1797-1800, | John Adams, | 21,338,000 |
| " | 1800-1804, | Jefferson, | 17,174,000 |
| " | 1805-1808, | " | 23,927,000 |
| " | 1809-1812, | Madison, | 36,147,000 |
| " | 1813-1816, | " | 108,537,000 |
| " | 1817-1821, | Monroe, | 58,698,000 |
| " | 1821-1824, | " | 45,665,000 |
| " | 1825-1828, | John Quincy Adams, | 49,313,000 |
| " | 1829-1832, | Jackson, | 56,249,000 |
| " | 1833-1836, | " | 87,130,000 |
| " | 1837-1840, | Van Buren, | 112,188,000 |
| " | 1841-1844, | Harrison and Tyler, | 81,216,000 |
| " | 1846-1848, | Polk, | 146,924,000 |
| " | 1849-1852, | Taylor and Fillmore, | 194,647,000 |
| " | 1853-1856, | Pierce, | 211,099,000 |
| " | 1857-1860, | Buchanan, | 262,974,000 |
During the past fiscal year, 1862-3 and the year 1863-4, the Government expenditures are estimated at ten hundred millions of dollars. These heavy disbursements cannot be carried on merely by the ordinary bank paper and the gold and silver of the country. Instead of sixty-five millions of dollars, the average annual expenditures of the Government during the last administration, these now involve the sum of five hundred millions annually. Hence the obvious obligation on the part of the Government of putting in circulation the most reliable currency, and of avoiding those of local banks, which do not possess the confidence of the people at a distance. This can be done only by maintaining a currency of Government paper which every holder will have full confidence in, and in which no loss can be sustained.
There is here no conflict or competition between the Government and the State banks. The latter have the benefit of their legitimate circulation in their own respective localities; while the national treasury furnishes to the troops and to the creditors of the nation a circulation of treasury notes which must possess confidence as long as the Government lasts.
The policy of the English Government in this respect was a wise one. At the adoption of the last charter of the bank (1844) the Government allowed the country banks to maintain from that time forward the circulation then outstanding, which was not to be increased; and as fast as the banks failed or were wound up voluntarily, their circulation was retired and the vacuum became filled by the notes of the Bank of England. The latter was forbidden by its new charter to exceed certain prescribed limits in its issues. They could issue to the amount of their capital, £14,000,000, and beyond that to the extent of gold in the vaults. Thus the bank circulation of England, Scotland, and Ireland is less now than in 1844, when the new principle was established, viz.:
BANK CIRCULATION.
| Bank of England. | Country Banks. | Ireland. | Scotland. | Total. | |
| 1844, | £22,015,000 | £7,797,000 | £7,716,000 | £3,804,000 | £41,325,000 |
| 1862, | £20,190,000 | £5,680,000 | £5,519,000 | £4,053,000 | £35,442,000 |
Had this principle been adopted in the United States at the same period, the excesses and extravagance of 1856-'7 might have been obviated, as well as the revulsion of the latter year, and the distress which followed.
Let us recur to the eventful history of the bank. Although a private institution, owned and controlled by private capital, its large profits accruing for the benefit of its own share-holders, yet it became so closely inter-woven with the commerce, manufactures, trade, and the public finances of the nation, that it may be considered as in reality a national institution. At its inception its whole capital was swallowed by the treasury. This was a part of the contract of charter. Its subsequent accumulations of capital, from £1,200,000, have likewise been absorbed by the Government, until now the bank reports the Government debt to them to be £11,015,100, and the Government securities held, to be £11,064,000. Without the aid of the bank, the national treasury could not, probably, have made the enormous disbursements which were actually made between the commencement of the American Revolution in 1776, and the termination of the continental war of 1815. The bank here furnished, almost alone, 'the sinews of war.'
During this eventful period there were large numbers of provincial banks of issue created in England and Ireland. These were managed mainly with a view to private profit, while the public interests have suffered severely from the frequent expansions and contractions of the volume of the currency through such private management, and from the numerous failures of these concerns. The evils of this system were for many years the subject of discussion in Parliament and among prominent journals. In 1826 the Edinburgh Review expressed the opinion that
'So long, therefore, as any individual, or association of individuals, may issue notes of a low value, to be used in the common transactions of life, without lodging any security for their ultimate payment, so long is it certain that those panics which must necessarily occur every now and then, and against which no effectual precaution can be devised, must occasion the destruction of a greater or smaller number of banking establishments, and by consequence a ruinous fluctuation in the supply and value of money.' (Edinburgh Review, February, 1826.)
This was a period of great speculation in England. In the year 1823 no less than 532 companies were chartered, with a nominal capital of 441 millions sterling. These speculations were fostered by the increasing volume of bank paper. The evil increased, and was allowed to exist until the year 1844, when a stop was put to the further increase of the volume of bank circulation, and to the further incorporation of joint stock banks.
We learn one lesson here, which may have a good effect upon us if we will bear it in mind in our future legislation, and take warning from the experiences of our contemporaries. We allude to the obvious necessity in a country like ours, and, indeed, in any country, of maintaining a national moneyed institution as a check upon the vacillation, expansions, and contractions which mark the policy of small banks of issue. This national institution, while free from individual profit, and without power to grant individual favors, should create and perform the functions of a national currency, and execute all the details required by or for the national treasury. Its chief utility would be as a check upon the excess to which all joint stock banks are liable—a sort of controlling and conservative power to prevent that mischief which our past experience shows has been the result of paper money when issued merely for private gain.
The advantage, the convenience, we may say the necessity, of a national circulation of paper money, are fully demonstrated by our own past history, and by the history of European nations. This circulation should be dictated by the wants of the National Government, and convertible, at the will of the holder, into specie. With these obvious restraints it would accomplish its ends and aims.
The Bank of England, in its early stages, was endangered by various and extraordinary circumstances. Within three years of its establishment it was compelled to suspend payment to its depositors in cash, and issued certificates therefor payable ten per cent. every fortnight. In 1709 the Sacheverell riots occurred in London, and fears were felt that the bank would be sacked; but this violence was obviated by well-trained troops. In 1718 John Law's bank was established in France, and for two years kept the people in a ferment. This was followed by the South Sea scheme in England, in 1720, 'a year (the historian Anderson says) remarkable beyond any other which can be pitched upon for extraordinary and romantic projects.' The bank, of course, suffered by these speculative measures, and was repeatedly exposed to a run upon its specie resources.
In 1722 the rest (or reserve fund) was established by the bank, as a measure to cover extraordinary losses in the future, and to inspire more confidence among the public as to the ability of the bank to meet reverses. This fund, in July, 1862, had accumulated to £3,132,500 sterling, or about twenty-one and a half per cent. of the capital.
The first forged note of the Bank of England was presented in the year 1758, or sixty-four years after the bank was established. In 1780 these forgeries became more numerous, and were so well executed as to deceive the officers of the bank.
Let us now recur to some of the incidents connected with the bank in early ages. Of these, the author, Mr. Francis, furnishes numerous instances.
Among other frauds upon the bank was that of clipping the guineas, by one of the clerks employed in the bullion office. This occurred in 1767.
The forgery of its notes having been made a capital offence, the waste of life in consequence was severe. During the eight years, 1795 to 1803, there were one hundred and forty executions for this crime; and two hundred and nine between 1795 and 1809; and from 1797 to 1811 the executions were 469. 'The visible connection between the issue of small notes and the effusion of blood, is one of the most frightful parts of this case.'
In 1803 a fraud on the bank to the extent of £320,000 was perpetrated by Mr. Robert Astlett, a cashier of the bank. This was in the re-issue of exchequer bills that had been previously redeemed, but which were not cancelled. This fraud amounted to about 2-1/2 per cent. of the capital, and although it did not prevent a dividend, it prevented the distribution of a bonus which would otherwise have been paid to the shareholders.
In the year 1822 another fraud on the bank came to light. This was perpetrated by a bookkeeper, and amounted to £10,000. In 1824 the fraud of Mr. Fauntleroy on the bank was discovered, amounting to £360,000. This was done by forged powers of attorney for the transfer of Government consols.
The bank was brought near suspension again in 1825 by the imprudent expansion of its notes. After the resumption of specie payments in 1820-'21, the true policy of the bank would have been to maintain an even tenor of its way; instead of which it increased its circulation twenty-five per cent. in the year 1825 (or from £18,292,000 to £25,709,000), while the issues of the country banks were equally enlarged, giving encouragement to violent speculation among the people. The specie reserve of the Bank of England fell from £14,200,000 in January 1824 to £1,024,000 in December, 1825. This difficulty of the bank was relieved by the issue of a few thousand bills of £1 and £2.
Speculation had been rife in 1824; no less than 624 companies were started with a nominal capital of £372,000,000, including mining, gas, insurance, railroad, steam, building, trading, provision, and other companies. At the same time foreign loans were contracted in England to the extent of £32,000,000, of which over three fourths were advanced in cash.
The country banks of England had increased their circulation from £9,920,000 in 1823 to £14,980,000 in 1825, or over fifty per cent., thus stimulating prices, and promoting speculation widely throughout the country.
Immediately following the revulsion at the close of the year 1825, Mr. Huskisson's free trade policy was advocated in the House of Commons by a vote of 223 to 40. In the same year lotteries were suppressed in England. In 1828 branches of the Bank of England were established—a measure, of course, unpopular among the provincial joint stock banks.
In the year 1832-'3 were brought forward three important measures in Parliament. One was the abolishment of the death penalty for forgery; another was the modification of the usury laws; the third was the re-charter of the bank.
The last criminal executed for forgery was a man by the name of Maynard, in December, 1829. Public sentiment had long been opposed to the infliction of this punishment for the offence of forgery, and transportation was now substituted in the prominent cases. England, at the same time, opened the way for a gradual abolishment of the usury laws. At first the relief was extended to short commercial paper, afterward to all paper having not over twelve months to run, 1837; and finally, in 1854, the usury laws were removed from all negotiable paper, as well as from bonds and mortgages.
By the new charter of 1833, Bank of England notes were, for the first time, made a legal tender, except at the bank itself. Joint stock banks were authorized in the metropolis, but were prohibited from issuing notes.
The English work of Mr. Francis is anecdotical in its character. The American edition conveys to the reader, for the first time, a resumé of the leading movements in Parliament on the subject of the bank, and its close connection with the Government finances. The part which Mr. Pitt, Mr. Canning, Sir Robert Peel, and other distinguished statesmen took in the relations between the bank and the exchequer, is in the supplementary portion of the new edition shown, as well as the views of Lord Althorpe, Lord Ashburton, Lord Geo. Bentinck, Mr. Thomas Baring, Lord Brougham, Mr. Gilbart, Sir James Graham, Lord King, Earl of Liverpool, Jones Loyd, Lord Lyndhurst, Mr. Rothschild, and others who exercised a large influence over the monetary interests of their day.
In the consideration of the banking and currency questions of the day and of the last and present century, it is desirable to have thus brought together in a single work, a continuous history of the institution which has had so large an influence upon the public interests of Europe, and a review of the important circumstances which marked the progress of the bank in its successful efforts to sustain England against foreign enemies and domestic revulsions, an index to the speculative movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when commerce, trade, and the vast monetary interests of Europe and America have been unnecessarily and cruelly involved.
The letter addressed by Secretary Chase, of the Treasury Department, to the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, and to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, under date June 7th, 1862, suggested the power by Congress to the treasury to issue $150,000,000 in treasury notes, in addition to this sum, authorized by the act of February 25th, 1862; also, authority to receive fifty millions of dollars on deposit, in addition to fifty millions previously authorized by Congress. These suggestions were favorably considered in both Houses, and the recommendations of the Secretary were adopted fully, leading to the adoption of a national system of finance, which will eventually reëstablish and preserve national credit. Fears have been expressed in some quarters that this increased volume of paper money would be a public evil, and serve to disturb the value of property and the price of labor. This might be reasonably anticipated if the country were at peace, and the Government expenditures were upon a peace footing.
But a state of things exists now in this country hitherto unknown. The contracts of the Government involve the expenditure of larger sums than were ever paid before in the same space of time by this or any other Government. In the disbursements of these large sums it is an obvious duty of Congress to provide a national circulation of uniform value throughout the whole country—a circulation of a perfectly reliable character, not subject in the least to the ordinary vicissitudes of trade or to the revulsions which have frequently marked our history. These revulsions have been witnessed, and their results seen by the leading public men of the century. Mr. Madison saw at an early day the importance of creating and sustaining a government circulation. His language was: 'It is essential to every modification of the finances that the benefits of an uniform national currency should be restored to the community.'
Mr. Calhoun, in 1816, said: 'By a sort of undercurrent, the power of Congress to regulate the money of the country has caved in, and upon its ruin have sprung up those institutions which now exercise the right of making money in and for the United States.'
'It is the duty of government,' says a well known writer, 'to interfere to regulate every business or pursuit that might otherwise become publicly injurious. On this principle it interferes to prevent the circulation of spurious coin.' Counterfeit coin is more readily detected than a fictitious paper currency, yet no sane man would advocate the repeal of the laws which prohibit it. Why, then, permit the unlimited manufacture of paper money of an unreliable character?
In the consideration of this subject we should divest ourselves of all selfish views of private profit and advantage. We should look only to the public good, to stability in trade and commerce, and to the general interests of the people at large as distinguished from those of a few individuals. It is clearly then the province of government to establish and to regulate the paper money of the nation, so that it shall possess the following attributes:
I. To be uniform in value throughout all portions of the country.
II. To be perfectly reliable at all times as a medium for the payment of debts.
III. To be issued in limited amounts, and under the control of the Government only.
IV. To be convertible, at the pleasure of the holder, into gold or silver.
It must be conceded that these requisites do not belong, and never can belong, to paper issued by joint stock banks, which are governed with a view to the largest profit, and which are but little known beyond their own immediate localities.
Recent history assures us that abuses have been practised in reference to the bank circulation of the country, which have led to violent revulsions and severe loss. England experienced the same results between the years 1790 and 1840, and to such an extent that in the year 1844 her statesmen devised a system whereby no further expansion of paper money should occur. The amount then existing was assumed to be a minimum of the amount required for commercial transactions, and it was ordered that all bank issues beyond that sum shall be represented by a deposit of gold.
If the Bank of England had been governed by considerations of public welfare, and not by those of private interest, it would not have reduced the rate of interest to 2-1/2 per cent. in 1844-'5, thus producing violent speculation, and leading to the revulsion of 1849. Nor would the bank have established low rates of interest only in the year 1857, thus leading this powerful institution to the verge of bankruptcy, and to the clemency of the British Cabinet in November of that year.
England has checked the paper circulation of the country, but has not withdrawn from the bank the power to promote speculation by extravagant loans at a low rate of discount.
The Governments of France and England have both assumed control of the paper currency of their respective countries. This is sound policy, and it is one of the prerogatives that must be exercised, in its full force, by the Government of the United States and by all other governments, if stability, permanency, consistency are to be observed or maintained for the people. This is obviously necessary in a time of peace and prosperity; it is perhaps more so in a time of rebellion or war, like the present. Circumstances may arise where it will be the course of wisdom and safety to suspend specie payment; and, in some extreme exigencies, to forbid the export of specie.
This position was well explained by Mr. J.W. Gilbart, manager of the London and Westminster Bank, who, in his testimony before Sir Robert Peel, in 1843, said, 'If I were prime minister, I would immediately, on the commencement of war, issue an order in council for the bank to stop payment. I stated also that I spoke as a politician, not as a banker. * * * I came to the conclusion that, under the circumstances of the war of 1797, a suspension of cash payments was not a matter of choice, but of necessity.' (Vide 'History of the Bank of England,' New York edition, p. 130.)
We come now to consider what is necessary, in order to restore the currency of the United States to a specie footing. This restoration is demanded alike by motives of justice and sound policy. No contracts can be well entered into, unless the currency of the country is upon a substantial and permanent footing of redemption. It is a matter which concerns every individual in the community; it is especially so to the General Government in view of its extraordinary expenditures: and no commercial prosperity can be maintained without it.
A restoration of public and private credit can be accomplished only by an observance of those sound principles of finance that have been announced by the wise men of our own and other countries. Mr. Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, each in his turn advocated a national institution, by which the currency of the country could be placed upon a reliable and permanent footing. Such an institution should control the currency and receive surplus capital on deposit; but need not interfere with the legitimate operations of the State banks as borrowers and lenders of money, nor encourage in the slightest degree, through loans, any speculative movements among the people.
In the next place our people must resort to and maintain more economy in their individual expenditure, and thus preserve a balance of foreign trade in our own favor. It is shown that, during the fiscal year ending 30 June, 1860, there were imported into the United States goods, wholly manufactured, of the value of ... $166,073,000, partially manufactured, 62,720,000.
We can dispense with two thirds of such articles during our present national reverses, and rely upon our own domestic labor for similar products, viz.:
| Manufactures of Wool, | $37,937,000 |
| Manufactures of Silk, | 32,948,000 |
| Manufactures of Cotton, | 32,558,000 |
| Manufactures of Flax, | 10,736,000 |
| Laces and Embroideries, | 4,017,000 |
| Gunny Cloths, Mattings, | 2,386,000 |
| Clothing | 2,101,000 |
| Iron, and Manufactures of Iron and Steel | 18,694,000 |
| China and Earthenware, | 4,387,000 |
| Clocks, Chronometers, Watches, | 2,890 |
| Boots, Shoes and Gloves, | 2,230,000 |
| Miscellaneous | 15,189 |
| —————— | |
| 166,073,000 |
besides other articles exceeding one hundred millions in value.
Rather than send abroad thirty or forty millions in gold annually, as we have done of late years, let us dispense with foreign woollen goods, silk and cotton goods, laces, &c., and encourage our own mills, at least until the war and its debt are over.
Mr. Madison said much in a few words, when he said:
'The theory of 'let us alone' supposes that all nations concur in a perfect freedom of commercial intercourse. Were this the case, they would, in a commercial view, be but one nation, as much as the several districts composing a particular nation; and the theory would be as applicable to the former as the latter. But this golden age of free trade has not yet arrived, nor is there a single nation that has set the example. No nation can, indeed, safely do so, until a reciprocity, at least, be insured to it. * * A nation, leaving its foreign trade, in all cases, to regulate itself, might soon find it regulated by other nations into subserviency to a foreign interest.'
There is much good sense, too, in the views promulgated by another president, who said, in relation to our independence of other nations:
'The tariff bill before us, embraces the design of fostering, protecting, and preserving within ourselves the means of national defence and independence, particularly in a state of war. * * * The experience of the late war (1812) taught us a lesson, and one never to be forgotten. If our liberty and republican form of government, procured for us by our Revolutionary fathers, are worth the blood and treasure at which they were obtained, it surely is our duty to protect and defend them. * * * What is the real situation of the agriculturist? Where has the American farmer a market for his surplus product? Except for cotton, he has neither a foreign nor home market. Does not this clearly prove, when there is no market either at home or abroad, that there is too much labor employed in agriculture, and that the channels of labor should be multiplied? Common sense points out the remedy. Draw from agriculture the superabundant labor; employ it in mechanism and manufactures; thereby creating a home-market for your bread-stuffs, and distributing labor to the most profitable account and benefits to the country. Take from agriculture in the United States six hundred thousand men, women and children, and you will at once give a home-market for more bread-stuffs than all Europe now furnishes us. In short, sir, we have been too long subject to the policy of British merchants. It is time that we should become a little more Americanized; and, instead of feeding the paupers and laborers of England, feed our own; or else, in a short time, by continuing our present policy, we shall be rendered paupers ourselves.'
Mr. Bigelow, in his late and highly valuable work on the tariff, says truly (p. 103):
'Can any one question that our home production far outweighs in importance all other material interests of the nation? * * * It is the nation of great internal resources, of vigorous productive power and self-dependent strength, which is always best prepared and most able, not only to defend itself, but to lend others a helping hand.'
If our people would maintain their own national integrity, their own individual independence, and their true status in the great family of nations of the earth, they will [at least until the present rebellion is crushed, and until the public debt thereby created shall be extinguished] pursue a strict course of public and private economy. Let us encourage and support our own manufactures, and thereby contribute to the subsistence and wealth of our own laborers instead of contributing millions annually to the pauper labor of European nations; especially of those nations that have failed to give us countenance in the present struggle and that have, on the contrary, given both direct and indirect aid to the rebels of the South.
The United States have within themselves, in great abundance, contributed by a bountiful Providence, the leading products of the earth. In metals and in agricultural products, we exceed any and all other countries of the earth. If we encourage the labor of our own people in the development of the great resources of the country, we shall not only preserve our own commercial independence, but we shall soon be, as we ought to be in view of such advantages, the creditor nation of the world, and compel other countries to resort to us for the raw materials for their own manufacturing districts.
With the aid of the vast iron and coal mines of our own country, we can construct and keep in force an adequate navy for peace or for war. Our skilled industry can produce firearms equal to any in the world. The vast agricultural resources of the West yield abundance for ourselves and a large surplus for other countries. The breadstuffs of the West and Northwest; the tobacco of the Middle States, and the cotton of the South are in demand, throughout nearly all Europe. Let us then be independent ourselves of foreign manufacturers, and endeavor to place the rest of the world under obligations to our own country for the necessaries of life. This will do more to preserve peace than all the arguments of cabinets or the combined navies and armies of the world.
Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell said,[7] in parliament, in 1842, five years before the famine in Ireland: 'We are not, we cannot be, independent of foreign nations, any more than they can of us: * * * two millions of our people have been dependent on foreign countries for their daily food. At least five millions of our people are dependent on the supplies of cotton from America, of foreign wool or foreign silk. * * * The true independence of a great commercial nation is to be found, not in raising all the produce it requires within its own bound, but in attaining such a preëminence in commerce that the time can never arise when other nations will not be compelled, for their own sales, to minister to its wants.'
Now this principle, enunciated twenty years ago by men, who now hold the reins of the English Government, is especially one for us to bear in mind. While England, from her limited surface, can never be independent of other countries for the supply of food, we may say, and we can demonstrate, that the United States can reach that preëminence to which the great English statesman alluded—a preëminence which he would gladly attain for his own countrymen.
To the General Government was confided by the framers of the Constitution the power to 'coin money, and regulate the value thereof;' and the States were forbidden to 'emit bills of credit;' from which we may infer that it was intended to place the control of the currency in the hands of the General Government. It will be generally conceded that it would be wiser to have one central point of issue than several hundred as at present. There should be but one form for, and one source of, the currency. It should emanate from a source where the power cannot be abused, and where the interests of the people at large, and not of individuals, will be consulted.
The people have thus an interest at stake. It is for their benefit that a national circulation, of a perfectly reliable character, should be established. The remark made by Sir Robert Peel, in parliament, in May, 1844, at the time of the recharter of the bank, applies with equal force to the national currency of this or any other country.
'There is no contract, public or private, national or individual, which is unaffected by it. The enterprises of trade—the arrangements made in all the domestic relations of society—the wages of labor—pecuniary transactions of the highest amount and the lowest—the payment of the national debt—the provision for the national expenditure—the command which the coin of the lowest denomination has over the necessaries of life—are all affected by the decision to which we may come.'
Sir Robert Peel wisely comprehended the powers and attributes of a national currency, and we may wisely adopt his idea that such a national currency, controlled by the national legislature, for the use and benefit of the people, is the only one that can be safely adopted.
The national banking system established by Congress, in the year 1863, at the suggestion of Secretary Chase, of the Treasury Department, is the initiatory step toward a highly desirable reform in the paper currency of the country. Already over seventy national banks have been organized, under the act of Congress, with a combined capital of ten millions of dollars, whose circulation will have not only a uniform appearance, but a uniform value throughout the whole country. Numerous others are in process of organization. To the community at large the new system is desirable, because it secures to the people a currency of uniform value and perfect reliability. The notes of these institutions will be at par in every State in the Union, and holders may rely upon the certainty of redemption upon demand: whether the institution be solvent or not—in existence or not—the Government holds adequate security for instant redemption of all notes issued under the law.
This feature of the paper currency of the country is one that has long been needed. For the want of it the States have been for many years crowded with a currency of unequal market value, and of doubtful security. Added to this is a marked feature of the new system which did not pertain to the Bank of the United States in its best days. Its workings are free from individual favoritism. No loans are granted to political or personal friends, at the risk of the Government, and all temptation to needless and hurtful expansion is thus destroyed. There is no mammoth institution, under the control of one or a few individuals, liable at times to be prostituted to political and personal ends of an objectionable character. While the banks under the new system are spread over a large space, they perform what is needed of the best managed institutions; and although perfectly independent of each other in their liabilities, expenses, losses, and in their action generally, yet together they form a practical unit, and will be serviceable in counteracting that tendency to inflation and speculation which has marked many years in the commercial history of this country.
We consider the Bank Act of 1863 as one of the most important features of the Thirty-seventh Congress, and of this Administration. It will create a link long wanted between the States and Territories, and do much to strengthen the Union and maintain commercial prosperity. The country will hereafter honor Secretary Chase for the conception and success of this scheme, even if there were no other distinguished traits in his administration of the Treasury and the Government finances.