The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 2, February, 1864 / Devoted To Literature And National Policy

by Various

I.

A low English phaeton was drawn up before the door of the post office of a French seaport town. In it was seated a lady, with her veil down and her parasol held closely over her face. My story begins with a gentleman coming out of the office and handing her a letter.

He stood beside the carriage a moment before getting in. She gave him her parasol to hold, and then lifted her veil, showing a very pretty face. This couple seemed to be full of interest for the passers by, most of whom stared hard and exchanged significant glances. Such persons as were looking on at the moment saw the lady turn very pale as her eyes fell on the direction of the letter. Her companion saw it too, and instantly stepping into the place beside her, took up the reins, and drove rapidly along the main street of the town, past the harbor, to an open road skirting the sea. Here he slackened pace. The lady was leaning back, with her veil down again, and the letter lying open in her lap. Her attitude was almost that of unconsciousness, and he could see that her eyes were closed. Having satisfied himself of this, he hastily possessed himself of the letter, and read as follows:

Southampton, July 16th, 18—.

My dear Hortense: You will see by my postmark that I am a thousand leagues nearer home than when I last wrote, but I have hardly time to explain the change. M. P—— has given me a most unlooked-for congé. After so many months of separation, we shall be able to spend a few weeks together. God be praised! We got in here from New York this morning, and I have had the good luck to find a vessel, the Armorique, which sails straight for H——. The mail leaves directly, but we shall probably be detained a few hours by the tide; so this will reach you a day before I arrive: the master calculates we shall get in early Thursday morning. Ah, Hortense! how the time drags! Three whole days. If I did not write from New York, it is because I was unwilling to torment you with an expectancy which, as it is, I venture to hope, you will find long enough. Farewell. To a warmer greeting!

Your devoted C.B.

When the gentleman replaced the paper on his companion's lap, his face was almost as pale as hers. For a moment he gazed fixedly and vacantly before him, and a half-suppressed curse escaped his lips. Then his eyes reverted to his neighbor. After some hesitation, during which he allowed the reins to hang so loose that the horse lapsed into a walk, he touched her gently on the shoulder.

'Well, Hortense,' said he, in a very pleasant tone, 'what's the matter; have you fallen asleep?'

Hortense slowly opened her eyes, and, seeing that they had left the town behind them, raised her veil. Her features were stiffened with horror.

'Read that,' said she, holding out the open letter.

The gentleman took it, and pretended to read it again.

'Ah! M. Bernier returns. Delightful!' he exclaimed.

'How, delightful?' asked Hortense; 'we mustn't jest at so serious a crisis, my friend.'

'True,' said the other, 'it will be a solemn meeting. Two years of absence is a great deal.'

'O Heaven! I shall never dare to face him,' cried Hortense, bursting into tears.

Covering her face with one hand, she put out the other toward that of her friend. But he was plunged in so deep a reverie, that he did not perceive the movement. Suddenly he came to, aroused by her sobs.

'Come, come,' said he, in the tone of one who wishes to coax another into mistrust of a danger before which he does not himself feel so secure but that the sight of a companion's indifference will give him relief. 'What if he does come? He need learn nothing. He will stay but a short time, and sail away again as unsuspecting as he came.'

'Learn nothing! You surprise me. Every tongue that greets him, if only to say bon jour, will wag to the tune of a certain person's misconduct.'

'Bah! People don't think about us quite as much as you fancy. You and I, n'est-ce-pas? we have little time to concern ourselves about our neighbors' failings. Very well, other people are in the same box, better or worse. When a ship goes to pieces on those rocks out at sea, the poor devils who are pushing their way to land on a floating spar, don't bestow many glances on those who are battling with the waves beside them. Their eyes are fastened to the shore, and all their care is for their own safety. In life we are all afloat on a tumultuous sea; we are all struggling toward some terra firma of wealth or love or leisure. The roaring of the waves we kick up about us and the spray we dash into our eyes deafen and blind us to the sayings and doings of our fellows. Provided we climb high and dry, what do we care for them?'

'Ay, but if we don't? When we've lost hope ourselves, we want to make others sink. We hang weights about their necks, and dive down into the dirtiest pools for stones to cast at them. My friend, you don't feel the shots which are not aimed at you. It isn't of you the town talks, but of me: a poor woman throws herself off the pier yonder, and drowns before a kind hand has time to restrain her, and her corpse floats over the water for all the world to look at. When her husband comes up to see what the crowd means, is there any lack of kind friends to give him the good news of his wife's death?'

'As long as a woman is light enough to float, Hortense, she is not counted drowned. It's only when she sinks out of sight that they give her up.'

Hortense was silent a moment, looking at the sea with swollen eyes.

'Louis,' she said at last, 'we were speaking metaphorically: I have half a mind to drown myself literally.'

'Nonsense!' replied Louis; 'an accused pleads 'not guilty,' and hangs himself in prison. What do the papers say? People talk, do they? Can't you talk as well as they? A woman is in the wrong from the moment she holds her tongue and refuses battle. And that you do too often. That pocket handkerchief is always more or less of a flag of truce.'

'I'm sure I don't know,' said Hortense indifferently; 'perhaps it is.'

There are moments of grief in which certain aspects of the subject of our distress seems as irrelevant as matters entirely foreign to it. Her eyes were still fastened on the sea. There was another silence. 'O my poor Charles!' she murmured, at length, 'to what a hearth do you return!'

'Hortense,' said the gentleman, as if he had not heard her, although, to a third person, it would have appeared that it was because he had done so that he spoke: 'I do not need to tell you that it will never happen to me to betray our secret. But I will answer for it that so long as M. Bernier is at home no mortal shall breathe a syllable of it.'

'What of that?' sighed Hortense. 'He will not be with me ten minutes without guessing it.'

'Oh, as for that,' said her companion, dryly, 'that's your own affair.'

'Monsieur de Meyrau!' cried the lady.

'It seems to me,' continued the other, 'that in making such a guarantee, I have done my part of the business.'

'Your part of the business!' sobbed Hortense.

M. de Meyrau made no reply, but with a great cut of the whip sent the horse bounding along the road. Nothing more was said. Hortense lay back in the carriage with her face buried in her handkerchief, moaning. Her companion sat upright, with contracted brows and firmly set teeth, looking straight before him, and by an occasional heavy lash keeping the horse at a furious pace. A wayfarer might have taken him for a ravisher escaping with a victim worn out with resistance. Travellers to whom they were known would perhaps have seen a deep meaning in this accidental analogy. So, by a détour, they returned to the town.

When Hortense reached home, she went straight up to a little boudoir on the second floor, and shut herself in. This room was at the back of the house, and her maid, who was at that moment walking in the long garden which stretched down to the water, where there was a landing place for small boats, saw her draw in the window blind and darken the room, still in her bonnet and cloak. She remained alone for a couple of hours. At five o'clock, some time after the hour at which she was usually summoned to dress her mistress for the evening, the maid knocked at Hortense's door, and offered her services. Madame called out, from within, that she had a migraine, and would not be dressed.

'Can I get anything for madame?' asked Josephine; 'a tisane, a warm drink, something?'

'Nothing, nothing.'

'Will madame dine?'

'No.'

'Madame had better not go wholly without eating.'

'Bring me a bottle of wine—of brandy.'

Josephine obeyed. When she returned, Hortense was standing in the doorway, and as one of the shutters had meanwhile been thrown open, the woman could see that, although her mistress's hat had been tossed upon the sofa, her cloak had not been removed, and that her face was very pale. Josephine felt that she might not offer sympathy nor ask questions.

'Will madame have nothing more?' she ventured to say, as she handed her the tray.

Madame shook her head, and closed and locked the door.

Josephine stood a moment vexed, irresolute, listening. She heard no sound. At last she deliberately stooped down and applied her eye to the key-hole.

This is what she saw:

Her mistress had gone to the open window, and stood with her back to the door, looking out at the sea. She held the bottle by the neck in one hand, which hung listlessly by her side; the other was resting on a glass half filled with water, standing, together with an open letter, on a table beside her. She kept this position until Josephine began to grow tired of waiting. But just as she was about to arise in despair of gratifying her curiosity, madame raised the bottle and glass, and filled the latter full. Josephine looked more eagerly. Hortense held it a moment against the light, and then drained it down.

Josephine could not restrain an involuntary whistle. But her surprise became amazement when she saw her mistress prepare to take a second glass. Hortense put it down, however, before its contents were half gone, as if struck by a sudden thought, and hurried across the room. She stooped down before a cabinet, and took out a small opera glass. With this she returned to the window, put it to her eyes, and again spent some moments in looking seaward. The purpose of this proceeding Josephine could not make out. The only result visible to her was that her mistress suddenly dropped the lorgnette on the table, and sank down on an armchair, covering her face with her hands.

Josephine could contain her wonderment no longer. She hurried down to the kitchen.

'Valentine,' said she to the cook, 'what on earth can be the matter with Madame? She will have no dinner, she is drinking brandy by the glassful, a moment ago she was looking out to sea with a lorgnette, and now she is crying dreadfully with an open letter in her lap.'

The cook looked up from her potato-peeling with a significant wink.

'What can it be,' said she, 'but that monsieur returns?'

II.

At six o'clock, Josephine and Valentine were still sitting together, discussing the probable causes and consequences of the event hinted at by the latter. Suddenly Madame Bernier's bell rang. Josephine was only too glad to answer it. She met her mistress descending the stairs, combed, cloaked, and veiled, with no traces of agitation, but a very pale face.

'I am going out,' said Madame Bernier; 'if M. le Vicomte comes, tell him I am at my mother-in-law's, and wish him to wait till I return.'

Josephine opened the door, and let her mistress pass; then stood watching her as she crossed the court.

'Her mother-in-law's,' muttered the maid; 'she has the face!'

When Hortense reached the street, she took her way, not through the town, to the ancient quarter where that ancient lady, her husband's mother, lived, but in a very different direction. She followed the course of the quay, beside the harbor, till she entered a crowded region, chiefly the residence of fishermen and boatmen. Here she raised her veil. Dusk was beginning to fall. She walked as if desirous to attract as little observation as possible, and yet to examine narrowly the population in the midst of which she found herself. Her dress was so plain that there was nothing in her appearance to solicit attention; yet, if for any reason a passer by had happened to notice her, he could not have helped being struck by the contained intensity with which she scrutinized every figure she met. Her manner was that of a person seeking to recognize a long-lost friend, or perhaps, rather, a long-lost enemy, in a crowd. At last she stopped before a flight of steps, at the foot of which was a landing place for half a dozen little boats, employed to carry passengers between the two sides of the port, at times when the drawbridge above was closed for the passage of vessels. While she stood she was witness of the following scene:

A man, in a red woollen fisherman's cap, was sitting on the top of the steps, smoking the short stump of a pipe, with his face to the water. Happening to turn about, his eye fell on a little child, hurrying along the quay toward a dingy tenement close at hand, with a jug in its arms.

'Hullo, youngster!' cried the man; 'what have you got there? Come here.'

The little child looked back, but, instead of obeying, only quickened its walk.

'The devil take you, come here!' repeated the man, angrily, 'or I'll wring your beggarly neck. You won't obey your own uncle, eh?'

The child stopped, and ruefully made its way to its relative, looking around several times toward the house, as if to appeal to some counter authority.

'Come, make haste!' pursued the man, 'or I shall go and fetch you. Move!'

The child advanced to within half a dozen paces of the steps, and then stood still, eyeing the man cautiously, and hugging the jug tight.

'Come on, you little beggar, come up close.'

The youngster kept a stolid silence, however, and did not budge. Suddenly its self-styled uncle leaned forward, swept out his arm, clutched hold of its little sunburnt wrist, and dragged it toward him.

'Why didn't you come when you were called?' he asked, running his disengaged hand into the infant's frowsy mop of hair, and shaking its head until it staggered. 'Why didn't you come, you unmannerly little brute, eh?—eh?—eh?' accompanying every interrogation with a renewed shake.

The child made no answer. It simply and vainly endeavored to twist its neck around under the man's grip, and transmit some call for succor to the house.

'Come, keep your head straight. Look at me, and answer me. What's in that jug? Don't lie.'

'Milk.'

'Who for?'

'Granny.'

'Granny be hanged.'

The man disengaged his hands, lifted the jug from the child's feeble grasp, tilted it toward the light, surveyed its contents, put it to his lips, and exhausted them. The child, although liberated, did not retreat. It stood watching its uncle drink until he lowered the jug. Then, as he met its eyes, it said:

'It was for the baby.'

For a moment the man was irresolute. But the child seemed to have a foresight of the parental resentment, for it had hardly spoken when it darted backward and scampered off, just in time to elude a blow from the jug, which the man sent clattering at its heels. When it was out of sight, he faced about to the water again, and replaced the pipe between his teeth with a heavy scowl and a murmur that sounded to Madame Bernier very like—'I wish the baby'd choke.'

Hortense was a mute spectator of this little drama. When it was over, she turned around, and retraced her steps twenty yards with her hand to her head. Then she walked straight back, and addressed the man.

'My good man,' she said, in a very pleasant voice, 'are you the master of one of these boats?'

He looked up at her. In a moment the pipe was out of his mouth, and a broad grin in its place. He rose, with his hand to his cap.

'I am, madame, at your service.'

'Will you take me to the other side?'

'You don't need a boat; the bridge is closed,' said one of his comrades at the foot of the steps, looking that way.

'I know it,' said Madame Bernier; 'but I wish to go to the cemetery, and a boat will save me half a mile walking.'

'The cemetery is shut at this hour.'

'Allons, leave madame alone,' said the man first spoken to. 'This way, my lady.'

Hortense seated herself in the stern of the boat. The man took the sculls.

'Straight across?' he asked.

Hortense looked around her. 'It's a fine evening,' said she; 'suppose you row me out to the lighthouse, and leave me at the point nearest the cemetery on our way back.'

'Very well,' rejoined the boatman; 'fifteen sous,' and began to pull lustily.

'Allez, I'll pay you well,' said Madame.

'Fifteen sous is the fare,' insisted the man.

'Give me a pleasant row, and I'll give you a hundred,' said Hortense.

Her companion said nothing. He evidently wished to appear not to have heard her remark. Silence was probably the most dignified manner of receiving a promise too munificent to be anything but a jest.

For some time this silence was maintained, broken only by the trickling of the oars and the sounds from the neighboring shores and vessels. Madame Bernier was plunged in a sidelong scrutiny of her ferryman's countenance. He was a man of about thirty-five. His face was dogged, brutal, and sullen. These indications were perhaps exaggerated by the dull monotony of his exercise. The eyes lacked a certain rascally gleam which had appeared in them when he was so empressé with the offer of his services. The face was better then—that is, if vice is better than ignorance. We say a countenance is 'lit up' by a smile; and indeed that momentary flicker does the office of a candle in a dark room. It sheds a ray upon the dim upholstery of our souls. The visages of poor men, generally, know few alternations. There is a large class of human beings whom fortune restricts to a single change of expression, or, perhaps, rather to a single expression. Ah me! the faces which wear either nakedness or rags; whose repose is stagnation, whose activity vice; ingorant at their worst, infamous at their best!

'Don't pull too hard,' said Hortense at last. 'Hadn't you better take breath a moment?'

'Madame is very good,' said the man, leaning upon his oars. 'But if you had taken me by the hour,' he added, with a return of the vicious grin, 'you wouldn't catch me loitering.'

'I suppose you work very hard,' said Madame Bernier.

The man gave a little toss of his head, as if to intimate the inadequacy of any supposition to grasp the extent of his labors.

'I've been up since four o'clock this morning, wheeling bales and boxes on the quay, and plying my little boat. Sweating without five minutes' intermission. C'est comme ça. Sometimes I tell my mate I think I'll take a plunge in the basin to dry myself. Ha! ha! ha!'

'And of course you gain little,' said Madame Bernier.

'Worse than nothing. Just what will keep me fat enough for starvation to feed on.'

'How? you go without your necessary food?'

'Necessary is a very elastic word, madame. You can narrow it down, so that in the degree above nothing it means luxury. My necessary food is sometimes thin air. If I don't deprive myself of that, it's because I can't.'

'Is it possible to be so unfortunate?'

'Shall I tell you what I have eaten to-day?'

'Do,' said Madame Bernier.

'A piece of black bread and a salt herring are all that have passed my lips for twelve hours.'

'Why don't you get some better work?'

'If I should die to-night,' pursued the boatman, heedless of the question, in the manner of a man whose impetus on the track of self-pity drives him past the signal flags of relief, 'what would there be left to bury me? These clothes I have on might buy me a long box. For the cost of this shabby old suit, that hasn't lasted me a twelve-month, I could get one that I wouldn't wear out in a thousand years. La bonne idée!'

'Why don't you get some work that pays better?' repeated Hortense.

The man dipped his oars again.

'Work that pays better? I must work for work. I must earn that too. Work is wages. I count the promise of the next week's employment the best part of my Saturday night's pocketings. Fifty casks rolled from the ship to the storehouse mean two things: thirty sous and fifty more to roll the next day. Just so a crushed hand, or a dislocated shoulder, mean twenty francs to the apothecary and bon jour to my business.'

'Are you married?' asked Hortense.

'No, I thank you. I'm not cursed with that blessing. But I've an old mother, a sister, and three nephews, who look to me for support. The old woman's too old to work; the lass is too lazy, and the little ones are too young. But they're none of them too old or young to be hungry, allez. I'll be hanged if I'm not a father to them all.'

There was a pause. The man had resumed rowing. Madame Bernier sat motionless, still examining her neighbor's physiognomy. The sinking sun, striking full upon his face, covered it with an almost lurid glare. Her own features being darkened against the western sky, the direction of them was quite indistinguishable to her companion.

'Why don't you leave the place?' she said at last.

'Leave it! how?' he replied, looking up with the rough avidity with which people of his class receive proposals touching their interests, extending to the most philanthropic suggestions that mistrustful eagerness with which experience has taught them to defend their own side of a bargain—the only form of proposal that she has made them acquainted with.

'Go somewhere else,' said Hortense.

'Where, for instance!'

'To some new country—America.'

The man burst into a loud laugh. Madame Bernier's face bore more evidence of interest in the play of his features than of that discomfiture which generally accompanies the consciousness of ridicule.

'There's a lady's scheme for you! If you'll write for furnished apartments, là-bas, I don't desire anything better. But no leaps in the dark for me. America and Algeria are very fine words to cram into an empty stomach when you're lounging in the sun, out of work, just as you stuff tobacco into your pipe and let the smoke curl around your head. But they fade away before a cutlet and a bottle of wine. When the earth grows so smooth and the air so pure that you can see the American coast from the pier yonder, then I'll make up my bundle. Not before.'

'You're afraid, then, to risk anything?'

'I'm afraid of nothing, moi. But I am not a fool either. I don't want to kick away my sabots till I am certain of a pair of shoes. I can go barefoot here. I don't want to find water where I counted on land. As for America, I've been there already.'

'Ah! you've been there?'

'I've been to Brazil and Mexico and California and the West Indies.'

'Ah!'

'I've been to Asia, too.'

'Ah!'

'Pardio, to China and India. Oh, I've seen the world! I've been three times around the Cape.'

'You've been a seaman then?'

'Yes, ma'am; fourteen years.'

'On what ship?'

'Bless your heart, on fifty ships.'

'French?'

'French and English and Spanish; mostly Spanish.'

'Ah?'

'Yes, and the more fool I was.'

'How so?'

'Oh, it was a dog's life. I'd drown any dog that would play half the mean tricks I used to see.'

'And you never had a hand in any yourself?'

'Pardon, I gave what I got. I was as good a Spaniard and as great a devil as any. I carried my knife with the best of them, and drew it as quickly, and plunged it as deep. I've got scars, if you weren't a lady. But I'd warrant to find you their mates on a dozen Spanish hides!'

He seemed to pull with renewed vigor at the recollection. There was a short silence.

'Do you suppose,' said Madame Bernier, in a few moments—'do you remember—that is, can you form any idea whether you ever killed a man?'

There was a momentary slackening of the boatman's oars. He gave a sharp glance at his passenger's countenance, which was still so shaded by her position, however, as to be indistinguishable. The tone of her interrogation had betrayed a simple, idle curiosity. He hesitated a moment, and then gave one of those conscious, cautious, dubious smiles, which may cover either a criminal assumption of more than the truth or a guilty repudiation of it.

'Mon Dieu!' said he, with a great shrug, 'there's a question!... I never killed one without a reason.'

'Of course not,' said Hortense.

'Though a reason in South America, ma foi!' added the boatman, 'wouldn't be a reason here.'

'I suppose not. What would be a reason there?'

'Well, if I killed a man in Valparaiso—I don't say I did, mind—it's because my knife went in farther than I intended.'

'But why did you use it at all?'

'I didn't. If I had, it would have been because he drew his against me.'

'And why should he have done so?'

'Ventrebleu! for as many reasons as there are craft in the harbor.'

'For example?'

'Well, that I should have got a place in a ship's company that he was trying for.'

'Such things as that? is it possible?'

'Oh, for smaller things. That a lass should have given me a dozen oranges she had promised him.'

'How odd!' said Madame Bernier, with a shrill kind of laugh. 'A man who owed you a grudge of this kind would just come up and stab you, I suppose, and think nothing of it?'

'Precisely. Drive a knife up to the hilt into your back, with an oath, and slice open a melon with it, with a song, five minutes afterward.'

'And when a person is afraid, or ashamed, or in some way unable to take revenge himself, does he—or it may be a woman—does she, get some one else to do it for her?'

'Parbleu! Poor devils on the lookout for such work are as plentiful all along the South American coast as commissionaires on the street corners here.' The ferryman was evidently surprised at the fascination possessed by this infamous topic for so lady-like a person; but having, as you see, a very ready tongue, it is probable that his delight in being able to give her information and hear himself talk were still greater. 'And then down there,' he went on, 'they never forget a grudge. If a fellow doesn't serve you one day, he'll do it another. A Spaniard's hatred is like lost sleep—you can put it off for a time, but it will gripe you in the end. The rascals always keep their promises to themselves.... An enemy on shipboard is jolly fun. It's like bulls tethered in the same field. You can't stand still half a minute except against a wall. Even when he makes friends with you, his favors never taste right. Messing with him is like drinking out of a pewter mug. And so it is everywhere. Let your shadow once flit across a Spaniard's path, and he'll always see it there. If you've never lived in any but these damned clockworky European towns, you can't imagine the state of things in a South American seaport—one half the population waiting round the corner for the other half. But I don't see that it's so much better here, where every man's a spy on every other. There you meet an assassin at every turn, here a sergent de ville..... At all events, the life là bas used to remind me, more than anything else, of sailing in a shallow channel, where you don't know what infernal rock you may ground on. Every man has a standing account with his neighbor, just as madame has at her fournisseur's; and, ma foi, those are the only accounts they settle. The master of the Santiago may pay me one of these days for the pretty names I heaved after him when we parted company, but he'll never pay me my wages.'

A short pause followed this exposition of the virtues of the Spaniard.

'You yourself never put a man out of the world, then?' resumed Hortense.

'Oh, que si!.... Are you horrified?'

'Not at all. I know that the thing is often justifiable.'

The man was silent a moment, perhaps with surprise, for the next thing he said was:

'Madame is Spanish?'

'In that, perhaps, I am,' replied Hortense.

Again her companion was silent. The pause was prolonged. Madame Bernier broke it by a question which showed that she had been following the same train of thought.

'What is sufficient ground in this country for killing a man?'

The boatman sent a loud laugh over the water. Hortense drew her cloak closer about her.

'I'm afraid there is none.'

'Isn't there a right of self-defence?'

'To be sure there is—it's one I ought to know something about. But it's one that ces messieurs at the Palais make short work with.'

'In South America and those countries, when a man makes life insupportable to you, what do you do?'

'Mon Dieu! I suppose you kill him.'

'And in France?'

'I suppose you kill yourself. Ha! ha! ha!'

By this time they had reached the end of the great breakwater, terminating in a lighthouse, the limit, on one side, of the inner harbor. The sun had set.

'Here we are at the lighthouse,' said the man; 'it's growing dark. Shall we turn?'

Hortense rose in her place a few moments, and stood looking out to sea. 'Yes,' she said at last, 'you may go back—slowly.' When the boat had headed round she resumed her old position, and put one of her hands over the side, drawing it through the water as they moved, and gazing into the long ripples.

At last she looked up at her companion. Now that her face caught some of the lingering light of the west, he could see that it was deathly pale.

'You find it hard to get along in the world,' said she; 'I shall be very glad to help you.'

The man started, and stared a moment. Was it because this remark jarred upon the expression which he was able faintly to discern in her eyes? The next, he put his hand to his cap.

'Madame is very kind. What will you do?'

Madame Bernier returned his gaze.

'I will trust you.'

'Ah!'

'And reward you.'

'Ah? Madame has a piece of work for me?'

'A piece of work,' Hortense nodded.

The man said nothing, waiting apparently for an explanation. His face wore the look of lowering irritation which low natures feel at being puzzled.

'Are you a bold man?'

Light seemed to come in this question. The quick expansion of his features answered it. You cannot touch upon certain subjects with an inferior but by the sacrifice of the barrier which separates you from him. There are thoughts and feelings and glimpses and foreshadowings of thoughts which level all inequalities of station.

'I'm bold enough,' said the boatman, 'for anything you want me to do.'

'Are you bold enough to commit a crime?'

'Not for nothing.'

'If I ask you to endanger your peace of mind, to risk your personal safety for me, it is certainly not as a favor. I will give you ten times the weight in gold of every grain by which your conscience grows heavier in my service.'

The man gave her a long, hard look through the dim light.

'I know what you want me to do,' he said at last.

'Very well,' said Hortense; 'will you do it?'

He continued to gaze. She met his eyes like a woman who has nothing more to conceal.

'State your case.'

'Do you know a vessel named the Armorique, a steamer?'

'Yes; it runs from Southampton.'

'It will arrive to-morrow morning early. Will it be able to cross the bar?'

'No; not till noon.'

'I thought so. I expect a person by it—a man.'

Madame Bernier appeared unable to continue, as if her voice had given way.

'Well, well?' said her companion.

'He's the person'—she stopped again.

'The person who—?'

'The person whom I wish to get rid of.'

For some moments nothing was said. The boatman was the first to speak again.

'Have you formed a plan?'

Hortense nodded.

'Let's hear it.'

'The person in question,' said Madame Bernier, 'will be impatient to land before noon. The house to which he returns will be in view of the vessel if, as you say, she lies at anchor. If he can get a boat, he will be sure to come ashore. Eh bien!—but you understand me.'

'Aha! you mean my boat—this boat?'

'O God!'

Madame Bernier sprang up in her seat, threw out her arms, and sank down again, burying her face in her knees. Her companion hastily shipped his oars, and laid his hands on her shoulders.

'Allons donc, in the devil's name, don't break down,' said he; 'we'll come to an understanding.'

Kneeling in the bottom of the boat, and supporting her by his grasp, he succeeded in making her raise herself, though her head still drooped.

'You want me to finish him in the boat?'

No answer.

'Is he an old man?'

Hortense shook her head faintly.

'My age?'

She nodded.

'Sapristi! it isn't so easy.'

'He can't swim,' said Hortense, without looking up; 'he—he is lame.'

'Nom de Dieu!' The boatman dropped his hands. Hortense looked up quickly. Do you read the pantomime?

'Never mind,' added the man at last, 'it will serve as a sign.'

'Mais oui. And besides that, he will ask to be taken to the Maison Bernier, the house with its back to the water, on the extension of the great quay. Tenez, you can almost see it from here.'

'I know the place,' said the boatman, and was silent, as if asking and answering himself a question.

Hortense was about to interrupt the train of thought which she apprehended he was following, when he forestalled her.

'How am I to be sure of my affair?' asked he.

'Of your reward? I've thought of that. This watch is a pledge of what I shall be able and glad to give you afterward. There are two thousand francs' worth of pearls in the case.'

'Il faut fixer la somme,' said the man, leaving the watch untouched.

'That lies with you.'

'Good. You know that I have the right to ask a high price.'

'Certainly. Name it.'

'It's only on the supposition of a large sum that I will so much as consider your proposal. Songez donc, that it's a murder you ask of me.'

'The price—the price?'

'Tenez,' continued the man, 'poached game is always high. The pearls in that watch are costly because it's worth a man's life to get at them. You want me to be your pearl diver. Be it so. You must guarantee me a safe descent,—it's a descent, you know—ha!—you must furnish me the armor of safety; a little gap to breathe through while I'm at my work—the thought of a capful of Napoleons!'

'My good man, I don't wish to talk to you or to listen to your sallies. I wish simply to know your price. I'm not bargaining for a pair of chickens. Propose a sum.'

The boatman had by this time resumed his seat and his oars. He stretched out for a long, slow pull, which brought him closely face to face with his temptress. This position, his body bent forward, his eyes fixed on Madame Bernier's face, he kept for some seconds. It was perhaps fortunate for Hortense's purpose at that moment—it had often aided her purposes before—that she was a pretty woman.[C] A plain face might have emphasized the utterly repulsive nature of the negotiation. Suddenly, with a quick, convulsive movement, the man completed the stroke.

'Pas si hête! propose one yourself.'

'Very well,' said Hortense, 'if you wish it, Voyons: I'll give you what I can. I have fifteen thousand francs' worth of jewels. I'll give you them, or, if they will get you into trouble, their value. At home, in a box I have a thousand francs in gold. You shall have those. I'll pay your passage and outfit to America, I have friends in New York. I'll write to them to get you work.'

'And you'll give your washing to my mother and sister, hein? Ha! ha! Jewels, fifteen thousand francs; one thousand more makes sixteen; passage to America—first class—five hundred francs; outfit—what does Madame understand by that?'

'Everything needful for your success là-bas.'

'A written denial that I am an assassin? Ma foi, it were better not to remove the impression. It's served me a good turn, on this side of the water at least. Call it twenty-five thousand francs.'

'Very well; but not a sous more.'

'Shall I trust you?'

'Am I not trusting you? It is well for you that I do not allow myself to think of the venture I am making.'

'Perhaps we're even there. We neither of us can afford to make account of certain possibilities. Still, I'll trust you, too.... Tiens!' added the boatman, 'here we are near the quay.' Then with a mock-solemn touch of his cap, 'Will Madame still visit the cemetery?'

'Come, quick, let me land,' said Madame Bernier, impatiently.

'We have been among the dead, after a fashion,' persisted the boatman, as he gave her his hand.

III.

It was more than eight o'clock when Madame Bernier reached her own house.

'Has M. de Meyrau been here?' she asked of Josephine.

'Yes, ma'am; and on learning that Madame was out, he left a note, chez monsieur.'

Hortense found a sealed letter on the table in her husband's old study. It ran as follows:

'I was desolated at finding you out. I had a word to tell you. I have accepted an invitation to sup and pass the night at C——, thinking it would look well. For the same reason I have resolved to take the bull by the horns, and go aboard the steamer on my return, to welcome M. Bernier home—the privilege of an old friend. I am told the Armorique will anchor off the bar by daybreak. What do you think? But it's too late to let me know. Applaud my savoir faire—you will, at all events, in the end. You will see how it will smoothe matters.'

'Baffled! baffled!' hissed Madame, when she had read the note; 'God deliver me from my friends!' She paced up and down the room several times, and at last began to mutter to herself, as people often do in moments of strong emotion: 'Bah! but he'll never get up by daybreak. He'll oversleep himself, especially after to-night's supper. The other will be before him..... Oh, my poor head, you've suffered too much to fail in the end!'

Josephine reappeared to offer to remove her mistress's things. The latter, in her desire to reassure herself, asked the first question that occurred to her.

'Was M. le Vicomte alone?'

'No, madame; another gentleman was with him—M. de Saulges, I think. They came in a hack, with two portmanteaus.'

Though I have judged best, hitherto, often from an exaggerated fear of trenching on the ground of fiction, to tell you what this poor lady did and said, rather than what she thought, I may disclose what passed in her mind now:

'Is he a coward? is he going to leave me? or is he simply going to pass these last hours in play and drink? He might have stayed with me. Ah! my friend, you do little for me, who do so much for you; who commit murder, and—Heaven help me!—suicide for you!.... But I suppose he knows best. At all events, he will make a night of it.'

When the cook came in late that evening, Josephine, who had sat up for her, said:

'You've no idea how Madame is looking. She's ten years older since this morning. Holy mother! what a day this has been for her!'

'Wait till to-morrow,' said the oracular Valentine.

Later, when the women went up to bed in the attic, they saw a light under Hortense's door, and during the night Josephine, whose chamber was above Madame's, and who couldn't sleep (for sympathy, let us say), heard movements beneath her, which told that her mistress was even more wakeful than she.

IV.

There was considerable bustle around the Armorique as she anchored outside the harbor of H——, in the early dawn of the following day. A gentleman, with an overcoat, walking stick, and small valise, came alongside in a little fishing boat, and got leave to go aboard.

'Is M. Bernier here?' he asked of one of the officers, the first man he met.

'I fancy he's gone ashore, sir. There was a boatman inquiring for him a few minutes ago, and I think he carried him off.

M. de Meyrau reflected a moment. Then he crossed over to the other side of the vessel, looking landward. Leaning over the bulwarks he saw an empty boat moored to the ladder which ran up the vessel's side.

'That's a town boat, isn't it?' he said to one of the hands standing by.

'Yes, sir.'

'Where's the master?'

'I suppose he'll be here in a moment. I saw him speaking to one of the officers just now.'

De Meyrau descended the ladder, and seated himself at the stern of the boat. As the sailor he had just addressed was handing down his bag, a face with a red cap looked over the bulwarks.

'Hullo, my man!' cried De Meyrau, 'is this your boat?'

'Yes, sir, at your service,' answered the red cap, coming to the top of the ladder, and looking hard at the gentleman's stick and portmanteau.

'Can you take me to town, to Madame Bernier's, at the end of the new quay?'

'Certainly, sir,' said the boatman, scuttling down the ladder, 'you're just the gentleman I want.'

---

An hour later Hortense Bernier came out of the house, and began to walk slowly through the garden toward the terrace which overlooked the water. The servants, when they came down at an early hour, had found her up and dressed, or rather, apparently, not undressed, for she wore the same clothes as the evening before.

'Tiens!' exclaimed Josephine, after seeing her, 'Madame gained ten years yesterday; she has gained ten more during the night.'

When Madame Bernier reached the middle of the garden she halted, and stood for a moment motionless, listening. The next, she uttered a great cry. For she saw a figure emerge from below the terrace, and come limping toward her with outstretched arms.

---

'NOS AMIS LES COSAQUES!'

[In accordance with the policy embraced by The Continental, of giving views of important subjects from various stand-points, we lay before our readers the following article. It is from the pen which contributed to the 'New American Cyclopædia' the articles 'Czartoryski,' 'Francis Joseph,' 'Gōrgey,' 'Hebrews,' 'Hungary,' 'Kossuth,' 'Poland,' etc., etc. We doubt not the author gives utterance in the present contribution to the feelings which agitated the hearts of thousands of our naturalized citizens during the Russian excitement in New York. Heartily grateful as we may be to Russia for her timely sympathy, our country is pledged to Eternal Justice, and ought never to forget that she is the hope of mankind, and should be its model.]

On the evening of the thirtieth of November last, the large hall of the Cooper Institute—that forum of public opinion in the city of New York, which has so often been the theatre of interesting manifestations—witnessed a scene almost entirely novel. Flags, decorated with emblems unknown, were unfolded over the platform; young girls, daughters of a distant land, or at least of exiles from it, appeared in their national costume, and sang melodious strains in a foreign tongue, which charmed tears into the eyes of those who understood them; a straightened scythe, fixed to the end of a pole, was exhibited, not as a specimen of the agricultural implements of the country from which those homeless men and children had sprung, but as a weapon with which its people, in absence of more efficient arms, was wont to fight for liberty and independence; the bust of the father of the American republic was placed prominently in face of the large gathering, and at its side that of a man bearing the features of a different race, and apparently not less revered.

If I say that this man was Kosciuszko, I have explained all. Every reader not entirely ignorant of history will know which was the land, the people, what the meaning of the weapon, of the song. Who has never yet wept over the narrative of the fall of that unhappy country east and west of the Vistula, so shamelessly torn, quartered, and preyed upon by ravenous neighboring empires? Whose heart has never yet throbbed with admiration for the sons of that land who to this day protest with their blood, poured in streams, against that greatest of all crimes recorded in history, the partition of their country, and that blasphemous lie written upon one of its bloodiest pages: Finis Poloniæ? who, abandoned by the world, betrayed by their neighbors, trampled upon as no nation ever was before, again and again rise, and in 1794, under the lead of Kosciuszko, eclipse the deeds of those who, in 1768, flocked to the banners of Pulaski; in 1830-'31, on the battle fields of Grochow and Ostrolenka, show themselves more powerful than under the dictatorship of the disciple of Washington, and in 1863, fighting without a leader, without a centre, without arms, surprise the world with a heroism, a self-sacrificing devotion, unexampled even in the history of their former insurrections? Who has never heard of Russian batteries assaulted and carried by Polish scythes? Whose bosom is so devoid of the divine cords of justice and sympathy as never yet to have revibrated the strain of the Polish exiles: Poland is not yet lost?

Alas, the chronological dates just touched upon embrace a century! For a hundred years Poland writhes in heroic despair under the heels of Muscovite despotism, dazzles mankind by sublime efforts to recover her right to national life, liberty, and happiness, and not a hand has been stretched out to help her break her chains! All her martyrdom wrests from the better nature of mankind is a tear of mourning, when, after a superhuman struggle, she again sinks exhausted, and is believed to sink into the grave. And has Poland well deserved this heartless indifference, this pitilessness of the nations? Has she delivered none? aided none? served none? defended none? Answer, Vienna, rescued from the Turkish yoke by John Sobieski! Answer, thou monument at West Point, thou fort at the mouth of the Savannah, ye towns and counties named Kosciuszko and Pulaski! Answer, Elba and St. Helena! Answer, Hungarian companion-in-arms of Bern, Dembinski, and Wysocki! Answer, Germany, Europe, Christendom, for centuries shielded by Polish valor against Tartar barbarism and Moslem fanaticism!

Alas, Poland must beg even for sympathy! That gathering, which commemorated, on its thirty-third anniversary, the outbreak of the rising of 1830, was destined to resuscitate the feeling of the American people for the Polish cause. For the Poles sojourning in this country had reasons to believe that even that passive sentiment was on the wane, that interests, not less illusory than selfish, were working to destroy even the impressions which sacred national remembrances, by twining together the memories of Washington and Kosciuszko, had created in the American heart. Strange to say, amid the roar of cannon thundering freedom to slaves, amid streams of blood shed in the name of nationality, on this side of the Atlantic, amid daily echoes reverberating the groans of butchered martyrs, of mothers and sisters scourged, hanged, or dragged into captivity, on the other side—New York had gone mad with enthusiasm for the Muscovites! The metropolis of the freest people on the globe had prostrated herself before the shrine of semi-Asiatic despotism, had kissed the hands of the knoutbearers of the czar, had desecrated the holy memory of Washington, by coupling his name, his bust, with those of an Alexander, nay, of a Nicholas! The woes of Poland were forgotten, her cause was wantonly assailed, her fair name defamed by the very same organs of public opinion which for months and months made people shudder with daily recitals of nameless atrocities committed by the Russian hangmen, by the Muravieffs and Aunekoffs, on the defenders of their country and liberty. Unthinking scribblers and lecturers called Russia and America twin sister empires of the future, agitated for an alliance defensive and offensive between them; Poland and her defenders were calumniated. Væ victis!

There is an excuse for every folly New York commits and the country imitates, for she is blessed with papers and politicians more than others practised to flatter vanity and mislead ignorance. When New York strews palm leaves before the feet of the Prince of Wales, it is done to cement the bond of love that links the New World to its venerable mother; when she runs after the Japanese, it is in search of a trans-oceanic brother, just discovered, and soon lovingly to be embraced (witness our doings in the Japanese waters); when she kisses the knout and collects Russian relics, it is done to inaugurate a sistership of the future, already dawning upon her in Muscovite smiles of friendship, in diplomatic hints of the czar, and in the hurrahs for the Union of Lissoffski's crews! In this case she only pays with American sympathy for Russian sympathy, and at the same time frowns a rebuke upon England and France for their un-Russian-like behavior, and insinuates a threat which may save this country from the perils of European intervention.

But Russian imperial sympathy, with its diplomatic smiles and compulsory hurrahs, is nothing but a bait; he must be blind who does not see it. What is the natural tendency that would lead the czar, the upholder of despotism in the East, to sympathize with the model republic of the West? the empire which is again and again covered with the blood of Poland, divided by it and its accomplices, to have, amid its troubles, so much tender feeling for the indivisibility of this country? Is Alexander's friendship kindled by our acts of emancipation? It is true he has freed more than twenty millions of serfs in his empire, and, though following the dictates of political necessity, he may have acted with no more real anti-slavery sentiment than that which makes many avowed pro-slavery men emancipationists among ourselves, yet he certainly has achieved a noble glory, which even his monstrous reign in Poland may not entirely blot out from the pages of history. The same friendly disposition toward the United States was, however, ostentatiously evinced by Nicholas, who lived and died the true representative and guardian of unmitigated tyranny; it was as ostentatiously shown by Alexander at the time when Fremont's proclamation was repudiated as it is now, after the first of January, 1863; and it is he of all the monarchs of Europe who, as early as July, 1861, diplomatically advised this country to save the Union by compromise, as neither of the contending parties could be finally crushed down; that is to say, flagrantly to sacrifice liberty in order to save power. The Russian nobility will naturally sympathize with the slaveholders of the South, and the lower classes of the Russian people are too ignorant to think about transatlantic affairs. Russian imperial and diplomatic sympathy will cordially be bestowed upon any nation and cause which promises to become hostile to England (or, on a given time, to France), on Nena Sahib no less than on Abraham Lincoln. The never-discarded aim of Russia to plant its double cross on the banks of the Byzantine Bosporus, and its batteries on those of the Hellespont, and thus to transfer its centre of gravity from the secluded shores of the Baltic to the gates of the Mediterranean; the never-slumbering dread of this expansion, which has made the integrity of Turkey an inviolable principle with the British statesmen of every sect; and the growing inevitability of a bloody collision on the fields of central Asia of the two powers, one of which is master of the north, and the other of the south of that continent, have rendered Russia and Great Britain inveterate foes. To strengthen itself against its deadliest opponent, one courts the alliance of France, the other that of the American Union, both not from sympathy, but in spite of inveterate or natural antipathy. Against a common enemy we have seen the pope allying himself with the sultan. Russia always hates England, and from time to time fears France; both these powers continue to offend the United States, and at least one of them now threatens a Polish campaign: why should not the czar lavish his flattering marks of friendship on a great power which he hopes to entice into an unnatural alliance? It is not American freedom which the czars are fond of; they court American power as naturally antagonistic to that of England, at least on the seas. Wielded entire by a Jeff. Davis, with all the Southern spirit of aggression, it would be to them a more desirable object of an entente cordiale.

But why should we not accept the proffered aid, though the offer be prompted by selfish motives? Threatened by a wicked interference in our affairs, which might prove dangerous to our national existence, why refuse additional means to guard it, though these be derived from an impure source? Will an innocent man, attacked by assassins, repulse the aid of one hastening to save him, on the ground that he, too, is a murderer? Certainly not. History, too, proves it by noble examples. Pelopidas, the Theban hero, invokes the aid of the Persian king, the natural enemy of the Greeks; Cato, who prefers a free death by his own hand to life under a Cæsar, fights side by side with Juba, a king of barbarians; Gustavus Adolphus, the champion of Protestantism in Germany, acts in concert with Richelieu, the reducer of La Rochelle, its last stronghold in France; Pulaski, who fights for freedom in Poland and dies for it in America, accepts the aid of the sultan; Franklin calls upon the master of the Bastille to defend the Declaration of Independence; Ypsilanti raises the standard of Neo-Grecian liberty in hope of aid from Czar Alexander I, and happier Hellenes obtain it from Czar Nicholas, and conquer; the heroic defender of Rome in 1849, Garibaldi, fights in 1859, so to say, under the lead of Louis Napoleon, the destroyer of that republic.

But what has all this to do with the question before us? Has it come to this? Is the cause of this great republic reduced to such extremities? Is this nation of twenty millions of freemen, so richly endowed with all the faculties, resources, and artificial means which constitute power, unable to preserve its national existence, independence, and liberty, without help from the contaminating hand of tyranny, without sacrificing its honor by basely singing hosannas to the imperial butcher of Poland, at the very moment when the blood of the people of Kosciuszko and Pulaski cries to Heaven and mankind for vengeance? Is the peril so great? so imminent? Is Hannibal ante portas? Has the French fleet dispersed Secretary Welles's five hundred and eighty-eight vessels of war, broken the Southern blockade, and appeared before our Northern harbors? Are all Jeff. Davis's bitter complaints against the English cabinet but a sham, covering a deep-laid conspiracy with treacherous Albion? Is Emperor Maximilian quietly seated on the throne of Montezuma, and already marching his armies upon the Rio Grande? The talk of foreign intervention has been going on for years, and not a threatening cloud is yet to be seen on our horizon. Both England and France deprecate the idea of hostile interference in American affairs. It is Russia that is menaced, an alliance with her can serve only herself, and her artifices have caused all the foolish clamor that threatens to disgrace this country.

And then, accepting aid is not forming an alliance, still less an alliance defensive and offensive. Not to speak of examples too remote, every one familiar with the historical characters of the men, will know that neither Pulaski, Franklin, Ypsilanti, or Garibaldi would ever have so degraded his cause—the cause of liberty—as to promise to the despot, whose aid he desired, a compensatory assistance in trampling down a people rising for freedom. No innocent man attacked by assassins will promise, with honest intent, to one who offers to save him, his assistance in continuing a work of murder and resisting the arm of justice.

For it must be supposed that nobody is foolish enough to believe that Russia would offer us her aid—say, against France—without requiring from us a mutual service; that merely in order to inflict a punishment on Louis Napoleon for the recognition of the South, or the establishment of monarchy in Mexico, she would, still bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the Polish insurrection, madly launch her armies upon the Rhine, or start her hiding fleet from behind the fortified shelters of Cronstadt and Helsingfors, make it pass the Sound and Skager Rack, unmindful of the frowning batteries of Landscrona and Marstrand, pass the Strait of Dover, and the English Channel, and enter the Atlantic, quietly leaving behind Calais, Boulogne, Cherbourg, and Brest, and all this with the certainty of raising a storm which might carry the armies of France and her allies into the heart of Poland, and ultimately, by restoring that country, press czardom back, where it ought to be, behind the Dnieper. Such assistance she would and could not honestly promise were we even to vouch a similar boon to her in case Napoleon should really enter upon a campaign for the deliverance of Poland. For neither promise could be executed with the slightest chance of real success, and without exposing the naval and land forces despatched across the seas to almost certain total destruction. The only practical military result of a Russo-American alliance could be an attack by the forces of the United States on the French in Mexico, serving as a powerful diversion for the benefit of Russia assailed by France in Europe. This is what Russia knows and our eager demonstrationists are unable to perceive. The sword of France hangs over Russia, just engaged in finishing the slaughter of Poland. The menace of a Russo-American alliance may induce Napoleon, who is entangled in Mexico, to put that sword back into the scabbard. He is too proud and too little magnanimous to give up, yielding to our menace, his Mexican work—a work so long begun, and so costly in blood and treasure—and turn all his attention, all his forces toward Poland and Russia. He may give up Poland, for which he has not yet sacrificed anything, and turn all his attention toward Mexico and the United States. Thus our philo-Russian enthusiasm can bear no good fruits for ourselves; it can serve Russia, prevent the deliverance of Poland, and dishonor the fair name of the American republic.

Yes, dishonor it. Already, speaking of the demonstrations in favor of the Russians, that patriot soldier, Sigel, exclaims: 'They make me almost doubt the common sense of the American people.' And it is not Sigel that speaks thus: it is the voice of enlightened Germany, of the freedom-loving men of Europe.

May the people of America heed this warning before it is too late!

---

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

PART THE LAST.

'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Everyone lives it—to not many is it known; and seize it where you will, it is interesting'—Goethe.

'Successful.—Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or intended.'—Webster's Dictionary.

CHAPTER II.—continued.

As soon as they reached the room, Mrs. Meeker exclaimed, 'Augustus! tell me, what does this mean!'

The young man, thus appealed to, stopped, and, regarding his mother with a fierce expression, exclaimed:

'It means that I quit New York to-night!'

'Augustus! you are a cruel creature to alarm me in this way.'

'It is so, mother. I have got into a bad scrape.'

'Tell me just what it is, Augustus—tell me the whole truth.'

'Well, a few weeks ago, I lost a large sum of money—no matter how. I asked father to help me. I made him a solemn promise, which I would have kept, provided he had given me what I required. He refused, and I used his name to raise it.'

'O Augustus! Augustus!' exclaimed Mrs. Meeker in genuine agony.

'It's no use groaning over it,' said the young man. 'It is done; and, what is worse, it is discovered! Father will know it to-night. What I want is, money enough to take me out of the country; and if you will not give it to me, I will cut my throat before you leave the room!'

Mrs. Meeker could only reply by sobs and hysterical exclamations.

'It is of no use, mother—I mean it!' continued the young man.

'Where are you going, Augustus?' said Mrs. Meeker, faintly.

'Across the water. Give me the money, and I shall be on board ship in an hour.'

'I have only two hundred dollars in my purse,' said his mother, mournfully, producing it.

'It will serve my purpose,' answered her son. 'You can send me more after you hear from me.'

He took the money and put it into his pocket, and prepared to attend his mother to the door.

'But when shall I see you again, Augustus?' faltered Mrs. Meeker.

'Never!'

The parental feeling could no longer be restrained. She threw herself upon her son's neck, sobbing violently, and declared he should not leave her.

It did not avail. Although the young man's feelings seemed much softened, he resisted all her appeals. He unwound her arms with tenderness, and led her in silence down the staircase.

'Give my love to Harriet,' he said. 'Tell her I never will forget her.'

He opened the door into the street—a moment after, he had regained his room; and the miserable mother was driven back to her magnificent abode.

The next day an ordinary sailing vessel left New York for Liverpool, having on board the only son of Hiram Meeker.

---

When Mrs. Meeker reached her house, her husband had finished his dinner, and gone out. It was late when he returned—so late, that his wife had already retired.

In the morning, Mr. Meeker communicated to her the information of his son's disgraceful and criminal conduct. She listened with such an air of sorrow and distress, that it did not occur to him that she manifested no surprise. She prudently, perhaps, forbore communicating the incidents of the previous evening, for she knew it would lead to a terrible reproof on his part. Besides, her present interference was far beyond anything she had ever ventured on, and she stood in great terror of Hiram where important matters were concerned.

During the day, Hiram Meeker had intelligence of his son's flight. He received it with great outward composure, and with sensible inward relief.

The discovery of the fraud which Augustus had committed had also been borne with entire equanimity.

The fact is, Hiram, having thought best to conclude that his son was irreclaimable, searched the Scriptures to find the various eminent examples of disobedient, ungrateful, and wicked children; and he seemed to cherish with unction the idea of being numbered among the godly parents of a reprobate child.

His own position was so strong, so far above that of any ordinary man of wealth, that the circumstance of a dissolute son's raising a few thousand dollars by forging his name (after all, it was only a few thousand) could only produce an expression of sympathy for the honored father.

What to do with Augustus—that was the question which troubled him through the night; and the morning brought an agreeable solution of it.

His child, an only son, possessed of many noble and generous qualities, without any of his father's intense selfishness, was a wanderer and an outcast on the earth, and he unmoved, undisturbed, complacent!

It was soon known in the house what had become of Augustus. When Belle heard of it, she gave a shrug, and exclaimed, 'Poor Gus!'

Harriet, the invalid, was deeply affected. Seeing how much she was sorrowing, her mother, whose heart was still tender from the recollection of her late parting with her boy, told her, under promise of secrecy (she knew she could trust her), that she had seen Augustus before he went away, and repeated the message with which she had been charged.

'O mamma!' exclaimed the poor girl, 'we can save him—I know we can! You say he is to write you. We shall know where he is, and by-and-by he will come back.'

'Your father will never permit it.'

'Perhaps not immediately; but he will yield—I am sure he will yield.'

'You do not know him as I know him,' said Mrs. Meeker, in a tone so sepulchral, that it made her daughter start. 'He will never yield—never!'

I think from that period the conduct of Mrs. Meeker toward her daughter was much less indifferent, not to say harsh, than it had previously been. Harriet was, in a way, connected with her last recollection of Augustus. And this spark of a mother's tenderness did, to an extent, spread a diffusing warmth over her whole nature.

CHAPTER III.

Hiram Meeker had erected an entire block of buildings, which he called 'model houses for the poor.'

By this observation the reader must not suppose I mean that they were provided gratis for that ever-present class. No. But they were made on a new plan, so as to give each family comfortable quarters, as if each had a house of their own.

Hiram Meeker received great credit for the 'act of benevolence' in building these homes for poor people. Doubtless it was a very great improvement over the old arrangement. Still, Hiram's block of buildings netted him just fifteen per cent. per annum, after deducting all possible charges and expenses against the property.

To secure such a handsome return, there had, of course, to be very strict and careful management. Hiram's agent in this department was a man entirely satisfactory to him, and with whom he never interfered. Frequent complaints were made of this man's severity, to which Hiram would pay no attention. It was impossible for him to look after all the details of his various affairs. An agent once appointed, people must transact their business with him.

This was reasonable, as a rule; but Hiram's iniquity was displayed in the nature of the men whom he selected to manage for him. You see he placed exacting and relentless folks in charge, and then tried to avoid the responsibility of their acts of severity.

One day, a few weeks after the circumstances recorded in the last chapter, Hiram was seated in his inner and very private office, outside of which was his regular office, where was his confidential clerk; and beyond that the counting room of the princely house of 'Hiram Meeker'—for he admitted no partners—which several rooms were protected against persons having no business to transact with the house, but who wished to see Mr. Meeker personally.

This class found entrance very difficult. They had first to announce the nature of their business. If it required personal attention, they were introduced to a species of general agent, who was high in Mr. Meeker's confidence. If this last character was satisfied, then an interview could be had with the great man himself.

I say, one day Hiram was seated in his most private apartment, quite alone. He was engaged in calculations for some large real-estate improvements involving an outlay of at least a million of dollars. He had given orders not to be interrupted, and was deeply absorbed in his plans, when the door opened, and a young man came in with a quick step.

Hiram did not look up. He supposed it was some one connected with the establishment.

'Is this Mr. Meeker?' was asked, in a vigorous, earnest voice.

Hiram raised his head, and beheld an individual apparently five-and-twenty, dressed rather carelessly, but in the manner of a gentleman. He was of goodly proportions, and had dark hair, a clear complexion, and keen gray eyes.

Hiram made no reply to the question, except to ask, 'What is your name?'

'Dr. Ephraim Peters,' said the young man with the sparkling gray eyes.

'Who admitted you?' continued Hiram.

'I had a pressing errand of life and death, and could not wait for a formal presentation.'

'What is your business?'

Dr. Peters took a seat with considerable deliberation, while Hiram waited, with a displeased look, for him to reply.

'You are the owner of the block of 'model houses,' as they are called?'

Hiram nodded.

'A patient of mine, a laboring man, is one of your tenants. He broke his leg a few months ago, falling from a scaffolding. He has had hard work to live since. Thursday his wife was taken ill. Yesterday was rent day—he pays monthly in advance. He could not get the money, and your agent refuses to give him any grace. Now what I want to say is, the poor woman can't be moved without danger to her life.'

'Well?'

'Well,' echoed the other, 'I want to get an order from you to let her remain.'

'See the agent.'

'I have seen him; and, what is more, although I am poor enough myself—for I am just starting, you see, in New York—I offered to pawn my watch and pay the rent myself, but the man would not take it.'

'No?'

'No, he would not. He said they had gone over the time, and he did not want tenants who depended on charity to pay rent; besides he said he was afraid the woman was going to die, and he did not want a death in the building—it would give it a bad name.'

The young man paused, with the air of one who had made a successful argument, and was waiting for an auspicious result.

The only notice Hiram took of him was to say, in a decided tone, as he resumed his calculations, 'I can't interfere.'

'Can't interfere!' said the other, with naive astonishment. 'Why, what do you mean? It will kill the woman, I tell you! You must interfere.'

'Young man, you forget yourself. I repeat, go to the agent. I shall not interfere.'

'Well, well,' said the young physician, rising, 'I have heard of hard hearts and cruel men who grind the faces of the poor, but you are the first I have seen. I don't envy you, though. I would not stand in your shoes for a good deal.'

While Dr. Ephraim Peters was delivering himself of the above, Hiram had struck a small bell which stood before him, and a young man entered in response to the summons just as the doctor concluded.

'Holmes, send for a policeman.'

'Yes, sir.' And Holmes withdrew to execute the commission.

'Do you mean that for me?' exclaimed the young doctor, choking with passion, while the gray eyes flashed dangerously.

Hiram made no reply, but occupied himself intently with the figures before him.

'I say,' said the other, in a louder tone, 'do you mean that for me? I suppose you do, and I have half a mind that the errand shall not be for nothing. Yes, I have more than half a mind to break every bone in your worthless body!'

He looked at that moment, with his clenched hand, erect figure, and energetic presence, quite capable of carrying out the threat.

Still, Hiram paid not the slightest attention to this demonstration, but worked at his figures, more abstracted than ever. He knew it was merely a matter of time; the policeman would arrive in two or three minutes, and, as he hoped, would catch the doctor in the midst of his violent outburst of passion.

On the other hand, our young hero soon discovered that he was to get no satisfaction from his antagonist, as he now considered him, by the course he was pursuing. He, too, began to count the moments—well aware that he had not much time to spare.

He determined to change his tactics.

'After all,' he exclaimed, in a deliberate tone, 'I will not give you the chance for a case of assault and battery. I think better of the whole matter. Nature is slower, to be sure, but she will do the work better than I could. Do you know what an advantage I have over you? I am twenty-five, and you fifty-five. Money cannot buy back those thirty years. That's about all I have to say.

'Not quite, either,' he continued, still more deliberately. 'I am a medical man, accustomed to judge of a person's condition by observation. Do you want me to tell you what is the matter with you?'

Dr. Ephraim Peters paused, as if for a reply.

A natural instinct, which acts without our volition, took such sudden possession of Hiram, that he raised his eyes from his papers and turned them upon the questioner, as if expecting him to continue.

'I see the subject interests you,' said the doctor. 'Take my advice. Sit over your papers less, and exercise more—or you will be struck with paralysis within five years! Good-day.'

He turned and quitted the apartment with a slow and dignified step.

As he advanced a little way along the street, he encountered Holmes, still in search of a police officer.

He had been at two or three places where one was always visible; but, as usual when wanted, none were to be found.

'Holmes,' said the doctor, addressing him as if he had known him all his life, 'hurry back to your employer; he wants you particularly.'

Holmes sped off at the word, delighted to be relieved in his search; and Dr. Ephraim Peters went on his way.

He was not mistaken as to the effect of the last attack. His chance shot struck Hiram amidships. The latter continued gazing on vacancy for a moment or two after the doctor had left the room.

'Paralysis—paralysis!' he muttered. 'That is what killed mother!'

Hiram started up, and walked across the room. He pinched his arms and his legs, and both his cheeks. He fancied his left side had less sensibility than his right.

"My brain is overworked, that's a fact. Dr. Joslin has told me so frequently. I must ride every morning before breakfast; I ought not to have neglected it. Paralysis! how did he come to say paralysis?'—and he commenced pinching himself again."

In the midst of these demonstrations, Holmes entered.

Hiram turned on him angrily. He had forgotten about sending him for a police officer.

'I thought you wanted me,' said the young man, timidly.

'No, I do not!'

Holmes retreated.

Hiram Meeker put on his overcoat, took his hat, and, though still early, prepared to walk all the way to his house.

One thing was uppermost in his mind—paralysis!

---

Hiram reached his house in a very pious state of mind.

His wife and Belle were both out, and he went immediately to Harriet's room.

She was delighted to welcome her father so early, and she told him so.

Hiram regarded the attenuated form and pale, thin face of his daughter, and I hope I am right in saying that he felt a touch of pity when he reflected on her distressed situation, shut out from the world, and slowly wasting away.

At any rate, he returned her greeting with more than ordinary kindness, and seated himself by the side of the couch where she was reclining.

[Had you the power to look into the heart, even as the Omniscient regards it, which, think you, would most challenge your pity, Hiram or his daughter?]

'I fear you are lonely, Harriet, so much of the day by yourself.'

'Not very lonely, papa. You know I have a good many visits, and Margaret (the nurse) is invaluable. She reads to me whenever I desire; and she is so cheerful always, that—'

'Has your Uncle Frank been here to-day?' interrupted Hiram.

'No, papa, but he is coming in to-morrow.'

'What time, think you?'

'Uncle generally comes about six o'clock. He says he reserves his last visit before dinner for me.'

'Ask him to dine with us. Tell him I want to see him particularly.'

'Indeed, I will!' said Harriet, joyfully, for she knew there was not much cordiality between them.

Now Hiram had suddenly conceived the idea of consulting Doctor Frank about any latent tendency to paralysis in his constitution, and whether it was hereditary or not, and so forth, and so forth. Aside from his high reputation as a physician, he knew his brother could naturally judge better about that than any one else. His mind, had wandered, therefore, from his daughter back to himself.

Fortunately, she did not understand the selfish nature of the interruption.

'I wish you would come home as early every day, papa. How little you are with us!'

'It is a great self-denial, my child—very great,' responded Hiram; 'but on the rich fall a heavy responsibility—very heavy—and I must bear it. Providence has so ordered. We must uphold society. We have to sustain law and order—law and order.'

He should have said that it was law and order which sustained him.

[Ah, reader, it is a mighty moral restraint which makes the crowd wait patiently outside.]

Harriet heaved a deep sigh. She could not deny what her father had so pertinently expressed, yet these high-sounding words made no impression on her.

'Alas!' she said, mournfully, 'if I were a man, I should never wish to be rich.'

Hiram was preparing to make a harsh reply, but, looking at his daughter, her wan features at that moment were so expressive of every finer feeling, that his baser nature was subdued before it.

He took her hand kindly, and said, with a smile, 'My dear child, you know nothing about these things.'

'I suppose not, papa; but I have made you smile, and that is worth something.'

The interview was not prolonged. Hiram soon felt a restless feeling come over him. It occurred to him, just then, that he would have time before dinner to take a look at the locality which he was preparing to occupy for his real-estate improvements.

He told Harriet so, and repeating his request that she should induce her uncle to stay to dinner, he left her apartment.

As the door closed, his daughter sighed again. For a while she appeared to be absorbed in thought. Recovering, she directed the nurse to proceed with the book she had in reading.

We dare not inquire what was passing in her mind during those few moments of reflection. Perhaps, through that strange discrimination which is sometimes permitted to those appointed to die, she had a partial insight into her father's real nature.

I trust not. I hope she was spared that trial. It is an awful thing for a child to awaken to a sense of a parent's unworthiness!

CHAPTER IV.

The two brothers had met—had met more congenially than they ever met before. This was all Hiram's doings. He seemed like a new creature in his bearing toward Doctor Frank, who could not (indeed he had no wish to do so) resist the influence of his cordial treatment. After dinner, they sat together in the library. They chatted of the old, old times when Frank was in college, and Hiram, a little bit of a fellow, was his pet and plaything during the vacations.

'We have done something, Frank, to keep up the Meeker name in New York,' said the millionnaire, when that topic was exhausted. 'You are at the top of the profession, and I—I have accomplished a good deal.'

Hiram spoke in such a genial, mellow tone, that Frank was touched.

'Yes,' he replied; 'you have at least achieved wonders. Do you remember what mother used always to prophesy about you? It is fulfilled tenfold.'

'Poor mother!' sighed Hiram.

'Ah, yes! she was carried off very unexpectedly. What a vigorous constitution she had, to all appearance!'

'Do you know, Frank, they tell me I may look for a similar visitation at her age?'

'You? nonsense! Who has been filling your ears with such stuff?'

'Stuff or not, so I am advised seriously. What think you of it?'

Thus appealed to, Doctor Frank regarded his brother more critically.

'That is right,' said Hiram. 'Now that you are here, give me an examination.'

Doctor Frank thereupon asked several pertinent questions, to which satisfactory replies were made. He sounded Hiram's chest: it was responsive as a drum. Then he proceeded to manipulate him in a more professional way. He put his ear close down, and held it for a minute, to get the pulsation of the heart. This he repeated two or three times.

Hiram's face grew anxious.

'You find something wrong,' he said.

His brother made no reply, except to ask more questions.

At last he exclaimed, 'You are all right, Hiram—all right. There is a little irregularity about the action of the heart: it is not chronic, but connected with the digestive organs. You are in as good health as a man could ask to be. Only, don't use your brain quite so much; it interferes with your digestion, and that in you affects the action of the heart. It is not worth mentioning, I assure you' (Hiram was looking alarmed); 'but, since you can just as well as not, I say, take more exercise, and give your brain a holiday now and then.'

'Thank you—thank you! So you don't think there is anything in the idea that I shall be—be—struck with paralysis—at about the same age that mother was?'

'Pure nonsense, Hiram—utter nonsense!' exclaimed Doctor Frank, cheerfully. [He knew how foolish it is to alarm one.] 'Still, exercise, exercise. That we ought all to do.'

The next day, Hiram commenced his morning rides; one hour before breakfast regularly.

He had fought the battle of life, and had won. Now he was called on to go into another contest. He set to work at this with his customary assiduity.

No one who saw the millionnaire on his horse, trotting sharply over the road very early in the morning, understood really what was going on.

One day, however, Dr. Ephraim Peters caught sight of him, spurring on under full headway, as if everything depended on the work he had in hand.

'Do you know who that is, and what he is about?' asked the young doctor of his companion.

'No.'

'It is Hiram Meeker, fighting Death'

CHAPTER V.

As the gay season progressed, the love affair between Signor Filippo Barbone and the daughter of the millionnaire was not permitted to languish.

The Signor was not in society.

Much as she might desire to do so, Belle dared not venture on the hazardous experiment of introducing into her own aristocratic circle one who had so lately figured as a second-rate opera singer. He would have been recognized at once, and the whole town agitated by the scandal.

Belle knew this very well. Yet, strange to say, it did not in the least weaken her infatuation for this coarse fellow. On the contrary, I think it stimulated it. Self-willed and imperious, she tolerated with extreme impatience any restraint whatever. In this instance, it was the more tantalizing and exciting, because she felt that the world would be in opposition to her; while her lover adroitly added fuel to the flame, by protesting that he would no longer consent to be so unjust, so selfish, so criminal, as to attempt to absorb her attention, or even intrude on her notice. True, he should himself fade away and perish (he looked very much like it); what of that? What were misery and death to him, compared with her ease and peace of mind?

Thereupon he would disappear for two or three days, during which time Belle would work herself into a fever of excitement. And when he did return, unable, as he would say, to keep his oath to himself never to see her again, she would receive him with such emotion and such passionate demonstrations of delight, that the wily knave was satisfied he had completed his conquest.

Things were at just this pass, when Hiram received an anonymous letter, warning him in vague terms of what was going on, but mentioning no names.

Hiram was thunderstruck. On reflection, he was convinced that it was the work of some envious person, who had got up the note to cause him or his daughter annoyance; or else that it was a miserable joke, perpetrated by some foolish fellow. So entirely was he assured that one or the other hypothesis was correct, that he dismissed the matter from his mind. He carried the note home, however, and handed it to Belle in a playful manner, while he bestowed his customary caress, and received a kiss in return.

'Young lady, what do you think of that?' he asked.

It was fortunate—or rather most unfortunate—that Hiram did not entertain the slightest suspicion of his daughter: else he would have been led to scrutinize her countenance as he made the remark.

Like most persons who are accustomed to decide for themselves, he never questioned the correctness of his judgment after it was once formed.

Belle, for an instant, felt the floor sinking away under her feet!

It was only for an instant.

With the readiness for which the sex are so remarkable, she at once gave way to a most violent exhibition of temper. She walked up and down the room, apparently in a transport of rage; she tore the note into a hundred pieces, and threw them into the grate.

What was to be done? What would her father do to punish the miscreant who had dared take such a liberty with her name? Boldly she stepped before him, and asked the question.

During these exhibitions, Hiram stood smiling all the while. Belle was very handsome, and never, as he thought, so brilliant as at that moment, giving vent to her woman's passion.

It was really so. Her form, her face, her eyes worked so harmoniously in the scene she had got up to cover what was below the surface, that she did present, to any one whose senses were arbiters, a most beautiful display.

'You are laughing at me, papa—I see very plainly you are laughing at me! I will not endure it! I—'

'Belle,' interrupted her father, 'you little goose, what do you think I care for the scribbling of any fool that chooses to disgrace himself? What should you, my daughter, care? To be sure, I can understand why you may suddenly give way to your feelings; but there is reason in all things. Don't you think the miserable fellow who penned that scrawl (by-the-way, you have very foolishly destroyed it, provided you did wish to trace it out)—I say, don't you think the fellow who perpetrated the ridiculous joke would be pleased enough to see how you take it?'

He took his daughter by the arm—a very beautiful arm—and gave her a little shake—a playful, pleasant shake. Looking her in the face, he said: 'Answer me, Belle—am I not right? Have you not sense enough to see that I am right?'

'Oh, I suppose so, papa. You are always right. That is, I never can answer your arguments; but—'

'That will do, Belle. Run off to your room, and come down quite yourself for dinner.'

Belle gave her father an arch smile, to show how obedient she was, and bounded away.

Hiram watched his daughter with delight as she ran up the staircase, and his heart exulted in the possession of a child so charming and attractive.

---

THE ANDES.

The Andes, like a vast wall, extend along the western coast of South America. Woods cluster, like billows of foliage, around the feet of the mountains. A vast network of intersecting streams is woven by the gigantic warp and woof of these mountains. Many brooks, stealing along, scarcely heard, over the table-lands, and many fierce torrents, dashing wildly through rocky crevices, fill the great streams that roll, some into the Caribbean Sea, some into the near Pacific; while one, the mighty Amazon, stretches across the continent for more than three thousand miles, and swells the Atlantic with the torrents of the Andes. The keel of a vessel entering the Amazon from the Atlantic, may cut through waters that once fell as flakes of snow on the most western ridges of the Andes, and glistened with the last rays of the sun as he sank in the Pacific.

A spell of fascination hangs about the Amazon. Its wonders, known and unknown, have a marvellous attraction; and the perils encountered in its exploration give a throb of interest to its very name.

How terrible were the sufferings of Gonzalo Pizarro and his companions, who set forth in youth and vigor to explore the valley of the Amazon! How worn and haggard the survivors returned to Quito, leaving some of the daring cavaliers of Spain to bleach in death on the wild plain, or to moulder in the lonely glen! No river has sadder chronicles of suffering and danger than the Amazon. Still, the exploration, so hazardous, yet of such vast value, will go on. Many a hero in the great war with nature will follow the track of Herndon, the noble man as well as the brave explorer, who escaped the perils of the great river, only to sink, with his manly heart, into the great deep.

In science as in war, ranks after ranks may fall; but the living press on to fill the vacant places. The squadrons are ever full and eager for service. To search new lands through and through, or to drag old cities from the graves of centuries, men will advance as heroically as an army moves to the capture of Chapultepec. Not a flower can breathe forth its fragrance, though in marshes full of venomous serpents and of as deadly malaria, but science will count its leaves, and copy with unerring pencil the softest tints that stain them with varied bloom and beauty. Science will detect every kind of rock in the structure of the most defiant crag. Not a bird can chant or build its nest in the most leafy shade, but science will find the nest, describe every change of color on the feathers of the little singer, and set to music every tone that gushes from its tiny throat. Not a gem can repose safe from seizure, in the rocks, in the sand, or in the torrent. Not a star can twinkle in the abyss of night, but science will tell its rate of light, and describe its silent and mysterious orbit. Torrid heat, the earthquake, the tornado, the pestilence, mountains of ice, craters of flame—science will dare them all, to know one more law of nature. God speed the daring of science, if only her votaries will not place the law in the place of Him who made both it and the works which it was commissioned to guide. Science, when she has found the highest and the most comprehensive law of nature, has not touched Deity itself; she has but touched the hem of the garment of the Great Lawgiver.

One veteran of science, Alexander von Humboldt, has yielded to the great law of humanity, as inexorable as any that he found in nature. His researches in South America, though mainly confined to the valley of the Oronoco, were most thorough, and his array of facts and observations are of inestimable value. Yet, Humboldt searched into nature with the coldness of the anatomist, content with examining its material structure, rather than with the zeal of one who seeks images of Divine power impressed alike on solid rocks and gliding streams. Science, however rigid, would not have restrained the ardor of homage to the Author of creative energy and grandeur, bursting forth irrepressibly in scenes where angels would have adored the Great First Cause, and where man can do no less.

Humboldt's fame as an observer is founded on a rock which no mortal power can shake. He lacked the reverential insight into the higher and deeper powers of nature, but, so far as his mental eyes saw, he described surely and vividly the manifestations of those powers. He was an observer of wonderful skill in the outer courts of nature, though he seemed either not to seek or to be bewildered in seeking her interior shrine. He exemplified rather the talent than the genius of discovery, the patient sagacity which accumulates materials, rather than the fervid enthusiasm which traces the stream of nature's action to its spring, the great Creative Will. Yet, the very title of Humboldt's great work, the concentrated fruit of a life of toil, 'Cosmos,' meaning beauty and order, and, then, the visible world, as illustrating both, seems to show a gleam of feeling above the spirit of material research. His warmest admirer could have respecting him no worthier hope than that he, who has left the scene of earthly beauty which he so long and diligently studied, may have had the joy to discern, in the sphere of celestial order, the Cosmos of the skies, higher and deeper truths than external nature can teach.

An American artist, Church, has portrayed with great force and beauty some portions of the inspiring scenery of the Andes. Church's pictures are avowedly compositions, and not transcripts of actual views; yet, they are not more remarkable for ideal beauty than for truthfulness to nature. Although no real scenes among the Andes correspond to his painting, yet the glorious characteristics of the Andes are seen in every line, in every color, in all the strange lights and shadows of his paintings. Imagination, which sees at once the powers and proportions of things, is, when joined to a feeling heart, the surest guide to him who would describe natural truth, whether of the souls of men or of material forms. The realists of art may not be so well satisfied with a composition, as with the delineation, line by line, and point by point, of a scene in nature; yet the more comprehensive critic will own that universality will gain by the composition far more than local identity can lose. By his imaginative skill, Church has portrayed in two or three pictures those characteristics of scenery which, to be faithfully delineated in copies from actual views, would require a hundred paintings. This is alike his best defence and his highest praise.

In recalling my own observations among these noble mountains, and in striving to express them in language, I feel how much higher is the vantage ground of the painter. One may examine for hours the canvas, until every scene is fixed on the memory as on the canvas itself. Yet I will endeavor to give a general view of the scenery of the stupendous Andes—stupendous truly, yet among those mountains are scenes of such quiet beauty as to touch the heart as tenderly as softest music.

Scarcely a hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean arise some of the highest peaks of the Andes, yet the way upward is much longer. From the coast, or from the decks of ships sailing by it, may be seen, in clear weather, some of the peaks of the mountains. On the shores, hazes and mists often temper the tropical sun and obscure distant objects; but, at early morning and evening, sometimes the great snowy dome of Chimborazo may be seen afar, towering in majesty above the tropical verdure between its base and the ocean. It looks as if invading the heavens with its colossal form; and at such times it wears a vesture of glory. A few years ago, in New England, of a clear night in the depth of winter, an aurora of the north reddened the whole sky; and the earth beneath, covered with snow, was as red as the sky above. Imagine such an aurora to fall upon the snowy summit of a mountain four miles high, and you may conceive how attractive is the flush of beauty upon the brow of Chimborazo at sunrise and at sunset.

Turn from the broad Pacific, as its long waves glance in the sun; and, as the morning tide washes up the tropical rivers, go with it along one of them, a part of the way, perhaps, in a sailing vessel or a steamer, but the rest in a light canoe. Tropical shrubbery and forests line the banks of the stream. New forms and modes of life impress the traveller from the temperate zone. The scenery of the tropics, so long the wonder of the imagination, now expands in wild luxuriance before the sight. When you have gone as far as you can along the winding river, waiting, perhaps, for hours, here and there upon the bank, in some rude cabin, or under the shade of some broad fragrant tree, for the returning tide from the ocean to bear you swiftly on; disembark upon a strange soil, and prepare to pursue your journey by mules or horses.

You reach the forests, and pierce their dark recesses by narrow paths, mere winding threads of road. Great clouds of foliage press around you, and, at the slightest breeze, thrill with that murmur of myriads of trees, which is so full of mystery and awe; for there, the very forests, unbroken and unbounded, seem audibly to breathe together with mystical accord, and to blend low quivering tones with the grand chorus which swells daily upward from vales and mountains, seas and shores.

Interspersed with the thick foliage, on every hand are blossoms and fruits of every tropical kind. Pale, white bridal blossoms clothe the orange tree, or golden fruit hangs among its clusters of glossy leaves. The starry rind and pale-green crown of the pineapple tempt you to enjoy the luscious fruit. High in air the cocoanut tree lifts its palmy diadem. The long broad leaves of the plantain protect its branches of green or yellow fruit, and throw a grateful shade upon the way, open here and there. Here is, indeed "a wilderness of sweets," and the air is full of blended fragrances. While the eye ranges, seeing trees, fruits, and flowers innumerable, of glorious hues and countless kinds, most never seen by you before, or at least only as exotics, the ear also takes in varied sounds. Birds are singing, insects humming; every tree seems a choir, and the immeasurable forest a wide congregation of joyful voices.

You are now on the lowest stage of that sublime gradation of climates and scenery displayed by the Andes. You cross it in two or three days' journey (for, as in the East, so, in the mountainous regions of South America, travelling is measured less by miles than by days' journeys). You then arrive at the foot of one of the mountains. Stop and look up! A ridge covered with forests to its very top stands steep before you. The wind makes tremulous the masses of evergreen foliage, which are now shaded by the reluctant mists of the morning, slowly ascending, and now are bright with the full splendor of noon. Above that ridge rises another, and another yet, unseen at the foot. Begin the ascent. The mules tremble as they strive to keep their hold on the steep, slippery soil. Press upward in zigzag paths for hours. Reach the top of the ridge, and descend into the valley between it and another higher opposite; then, ascend again. As you thus slowly, patiently, yet surely reach the heart of the mountainous region, wild diversity of views holds you bound in wonder and strange delight. Here are level places—here pure, bright brooks glide on as smoothly as in meadows. There, a torrent rushes over crags, foaming and roaring in an everlasting cascade. Before you may be a hillside, green with luxuriant pasturage, where flocks and herds graze quietly through the day, while the shepherd, with his crook and harmonic pipe, reminds you of classic scenes. Turn aside—and you may look down into cavernous recesses, whose gloomy, depths you cannot measure. Scenes fair and fearful meet in the same horizon. So, in life, the gentle charities, that, like the face of Una, make sunshine in the shady place, are often found not far from rugged rage and black despair. Press on through glad and sombre scenery. Press upward in steep ways, miry and craggy, narrow and broad, by turns.

Now, so deep are the paths cut in the mountain, so high are the banks, so contracted is the way, that, the higher you rise, the less you appear to see; and you feel disappointed at missing the grand horizon of smaller mountains, on which, coming nearer the summit, you expected to look; but now, a shout of exultation breaks from your lips; and well it may. A new Pacific Ocean seems to expand before you, as if by some sudden enchantment. It is an ocean of constant verdure and inexhaustible fertility, spreading far, far below you, as far as you can see, on every side but that from which, high on the mountain top, you look down upon the view. The seeming ocean is the first table land, whose soft, green undulations fill the horizon, though, when the sky is clear, the snowy mountains may be seen far away, dazzling the heavens and the earth with their brightness. Spring and autumn here join hands, consecrating the double seedtime and the double harvest of the year. Yonder is a field of ripened grain. And there is the Indian laborer, near his cabin of thatch and clay, guiding the rude ploughshare through the fertile soil.

Descend the mountain, and, crossing that sea of beauty, ascend the mountains beyond. The scenes, just now all soft and pleasing, give way to others which unite the lovely and the severe. Look upward. There rises a mountain, so gently curving and so green, so alluring with its light and shade, that it seems the very emblem of graceful majesty, looking as if it must know its wondrous beauty, and as calm as if no wind strong enough to make a violet tremble could ever breathe upon its face; yet near, in vivid contrast, stands a craggy peak, towering up, up, toward the deep blue sky, so broken and so black that it seems like the very Giant Despair of mountains, frowning with unearthly fierceness upon his gentle neighbor, who returns his grim looks with meek and placid trust. Where whirlwinds and tempests await the signal for howling desolation, stands the beautiful colossal image of sublime serenity.

Again, steep, rocky roads lead over rugged cliffs. Your horses climb panting, and descend, picking their steps, upon the other side. Stop awhile on this green space, a valley between two high ridges. Countless flowers spread fragrance and beauty around. They are not those alone of the strictly tropical level, but, owing to the height above the sea, the floral wealth of the temperate zone is embosomed in the torrid region itself, and adds the charm of an almost magical diversity to the intrinsic splendors of the scene. See small objects flitting about from flower to flower. They are the smallest and most delicate of hummingbirds, nowhere found but in America. Watch their colors, changing with every changing motion, purple, crimson, golden, green. It is as if the very flowers had taken life, and were revelling with conscious glee in the soft, bright air. The hues of these birds are dazzlingly bright. The little creatures glance about like prismatic rays embodied in the smallest visible forms.

After gazing upon these hummingbirds with joy as great as theirs, as they revel like fairies in the profusion of this flowery valley, look upward on the high, grand ridges that close it in. What suddenly starts from the very top of yon cliff, and floats in the air, high, high, above you? It is the great condor, expanding his broad wings, wheeling in flight from ridge to ridge, curving with majestic motion, now poising himself upon his wings, now apparently descending, now suddenly but gracefully turning upward, until his lessening shape has gone beyond the farthest reach of sight. The hummingbird and the condor; hillsides covered with sheep; rocky ridges inaccessible to man or beast; brooks that quiver gently on; impetuous torrents; the beauty of Eden and craggy desolation like that of chaos—these all can you see among the Andes.

Let not the fascination of this valley, the songs of birds, the flowers, the hummingbirds glistening among them like gems, the soft outlines of the scenery detain you long. Harder and sterner scenes await you. The Andes are a picture of life. Every cliff records a lesson; and the unnumbered flowers interweave with their varied dyes and rich perfumes gentle suggestions, sweet similitudes for the understanding and the heart. If, as in this charming valley, the senses may be dissolved in joy, and the spirit would linger willingly in rapt delight, soon some hard experience, kindly sent, requires one to brace all manly energy for the rough encounter, the blast of peril, and duty's steep and craggy road. You ascend in narrowing ways, casting long, lingering looks upon the valley, whenever it opens to view between the cliffs.

Here, the ridges are so near together that the shrubbery from the top of each joins in an arch overhead. There, you pass along by the side of a mountain, in a path which affords scarcely room for a single horseman, and where he who enters the close defile, shouts aloud, and, if the first, thus gains a right of way through, and parties on the other side, hearing the shout, must wait their turn. Now, you leave for a while the narrow road, and descend upon a beautiful table land, bounded on the sides by parallel but distant mountains; and the open places reveal fertile plains in far perspective. Light streams through the wide, clear space in a golden tide of splendor. Again, you are partly surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, rising in gradations, and of such impressive magnitude and extent that one might imagine that here the secret forces of nature are wont to take bodily shape, to look on the grand tragic storms which their own fearful agency has raised.

Now, on one side, the mountains subside into soft undulations; on the other, the ridges are colossal, dark, and broken, and along the edges of their successive summits is a line of snow, varying with the line of the cliffs, and glittering like burnished silver in the sun, above the jagged battlements. The deep blue sky, the shining snow, the huge, dark, rocky bases, the different shades of color harmoniously blending, the soft and rugged shapes contrasting vividly—well may impress the soul with pleasure-relieving awe, with awe-ennobling pleasure.

Dismount awhile for rest. Enter this rude, thatched house by the wayside, on a level spot. Laden mules pass by in crowds, attended by Indian drivers, each of whom doffs his hat and blesses you—a mere ceremony, it may be, but one in picturesque keeping with the scenery. Invigorated by the breeze, the shade, the rest, prepare to go higher, higher, higher yet. First, pluck some of these roses that grow profusely around you, that, if you reach the line of snow that never melts, you may place upon the cold bosom of perpetual winter these blushing symbols of perpetual spring.

Again, you reach the edge of a cliff, through the deep, narrow valley between which and the cliff opposite pours a furious torrent, which, resounding louder and louder as it is approached, now drowns all other sounds in its despotic roar. But, fearful as it looks, it must be crossed. Some of these torrents are spanned by bridges; but most of them are so impetuous, especially in the rainy season, that bridges even of stone would be undermined, and those of timber would be swept away like wisps of straw. You must now trust to the sagacity of your mules or horses. You descend the precipitous side of the cliff, seeming to yourself as if about to fall headlong into the torrent; but after a painful and perilous jaunt, you reach its level. Its roar now confuses and nearly stuns you. Each side is more or less precipitous, and you seem at the mercy of the furious tide, while jutting rocks above seem just ready to be loosened by some convulsion, and to crush you with their merciless weight: meantime, your horse stands unmoved by the peril before or above him, apparently deaf to the noise of the torrent, and quietly surveys the rapids, as if to select the safest point to cross. Disturb him not. He takes his time, and places one foot and then another in the torrent. As he reaches the main current, he trembles, not with fear, but with the effort to keep himself from being swept against the rocks. He may be able to keep his footing and to walk across, though panting and shaking at every step; or the stream may be so deep that he is forced to swim. If so, he bears up manfully (if one may say so) against the rushing force, and at last scrambles up the least steep peak of the opposite bank, bearing you more dizzy than he is. But the bank itself is only the foot of a ridge as precipitous as that which you descended to reach the stream. Quietly, patiently, surely the horse ascends. A sudden misstep or unwary slip among the loose stones of the path would send you far backward into the torrent which you have just escaped. This very seldom happens, for the horses and mules have been well trained for the service. In all the perils, the horse or mule is a safer guide than you. Give him a free rein, and he will bear you up the hardest, roughest, steepest places.

You are now high among the Andes, far above every sign of tropical vegetation; and, although hourly you are approaching the equatorial line, yet hourly also it is growing colder. Look up! A snowy peak rises directly before you, and seems to challenge you with its refulgent, inaccessible majesty. The sight at first almost appals, but fascinates. The feeling of fear soon surrenders to absorbing enjoyment of the sublimity of the scene. The more you look, the more you desire to look. There stands the mountain, a single glance at which repays all the fatigue and danger of the road;—there it stands, as high above the Pacific Ocean as if Vesuvius should be piled upon itself again, and again, and yet again. Clear snow covers it with a robe of dazzling light.

The snowy peak, though it seems so near in the pure atmosphere, is a weary distance off. As you advance slowly and laboriously upward, the wind blows almost like a hurricane. You can hardly breast its force. It grows colder and colder. Here, on the equator, man may freeze to death. Bear a stout heart and a firm face against the cold and the wind.

Now it is too steep even for the horses and mules of the Andes. You are ascending toward the snowy peak whose alluring brightness has charmed the long way, since you saw it first. Dismount and climb as you can among the rocks. The glittering snow is near. You pant as if you might soon lose all power to breathe again; yet, press on, and now touch at last the pure, bright, equatorial snow.

Would you now reach the very summit which shines far, far above you, arrayed in glowing white. That you cannot do. Angels descending on ministries of grace may touch that snowy mountain top, but mortal feet it never felt. That radiant peak is sacred from bold endeavor and the assaults of battle. War's gory feet never climbed so far. War's flaming torch never stained that pure and snowy light. Swords never flashed among those white defiles. Angels of peace guard the tops of the Andes. There is truce to all the rage of earth. During the middle ages, an interval in every week was sacred from the assaults of foes. It was called the Truce of God. Not for three days, but for countless ages, from the birth of time to the final consummation, on these snowy summits of the Andes shines in pure white the Holy Truce of God.

In Italy and Sicily, an ethereal veil, a pale, blue gossamer, spreads over the scenery, as if each object had caught some delicate reflection from the blue heavens above; and the golden illumination of this misty veil causes the peculiar charm of Italian sunsets. This effect is generally wanting in the scenery of the Andes near the equator, though among the mountains more remote, a similar effect is sometimes seen. Among the Andes of the equatorial region, so pure is the air, that the farthest objects visible are exactly defined. The curves and angles of distant cliffs are as clearly seen as those of masses of rock at one's side. Hardly a ray of light is so refracted as to disturb the perfect shape and color of any object in the horizon. The splendor of the sun brings out the true colors of everything within the range of sight; and so various are these colors, and so diversified are the groupings of ridges and valleys, in the scenery of the Andes of the equator, that the pure developing and defining light and the clear air of that region produce effects as enchanting as the transforming light and the soft veiling air of Italy. At sunrise and at sunset, indeed, but especially at sunset, a rosy light tinges the snowy summits of the far-off mountains, but those near shine with pure white, like mountains of silver. The hue of every precious stone is found in the colors of the Andes. Even the crevices on the rocky sides of the mountains without verdure seem when the sun shines upon them to be filled and overflowing with warm hues, varying from the softest lilac to the deep, rich, pervading purple which the artist loves to revel in. Each of the Andes, besides his emerald or pearly crown, seems also to wear, like the high priest of old, a jewelled breastplate, reflecting on earth the glory of the skies.

The table lands of the Andes, especially when seen from above, resemble the rolling prairies of western North America. Both have the same beautiful and various undulations, though those of the table lands are bolder. The prairies are far more extensive; though, often, the table lands present as broad a horizon of gently curving land. These table lands in some places extend like vast halls between widely separate but parallel chains of the Andes—again, like broad corridors along a line of ridges—again, like wide landings to gigantic stairs, of which the stone steps are mountains—again, they expand in hollows surrounded by hills, like lakes of land. Here is one large enough for several small farms only—there, many towns and rural estates are found on the same table land. Here is one which you may traverse in an hour—there is one which may be several days' journey across.

The agricultural wealth of the Andes is mainly concentrated in these table lands, in these millions of rolling acres. The table lands are above the region of forests. About the watercourses, on the farms, and in the towns, a few trees may be found—sometimes avenues of them laid out with care and beauty; and the fruit trees of the temperate zone may here be cultivated; but the great forests of the tropical level and the pines of the mountains are absent.

The Paramos are sandy plains, in fact, mountain deserts, in the dry season liable to great droughts, and in the wet season to fearful snowstorms. The armies of Independence, during the wars between Spain and South America, suffered terrible hardships and exposures in the Paramos. The Pampas are wide and level plains, not so high as the table lands, where graze innumerable herds of wild cattle. They are beyond the ranges of mountains, in the more central parts of South America. There are none west of the Andes.

The table lands complete the sublime varieties of the scenery. Their serenity enchants, as the grandeur of the mountains that rise above them exalts the mind. The works of nature are not only adapted to human need with Omniscient skill, as these fertile lands among the sterner mountains prove; but, feelings different, yet harmonious, are excited by the combinations of Infinite Power. The emotion of awe, being one of great concentration, becomes even painful, if the tension of the mind be too long sustained; and so He who tempers the ineffable splendor of His immediate presence even to the gaze of angels, with the rainbow of emerald about his throne, with the sea of crystal, the tree of life, or the gates of precious stones, also soothes the sublimity of mountains with gentle traits of scenery and soft gradations of color which give enjoyment more passive than awe, and rather captivate than overpower the eye and soul.

From the table lands can often be seen in the distance snow-covered tops of mountains, projected in bold, white outlines against the deep-blue sky; and there the sky is really blue, not of that pale tinge that often passes for it, but of a deeper blue than even the rich October sky of North America. As if joining the sky, are the shining summits of the mountains. The two ethereal colors, blue and white, thus meet in dazzling harmony. Sometimes so many of these white, towering heights can be seen, and in so different quarters, that one may almost fancy the sky itself to be a vast dome of sapphire supported by gigantic pillars of marble.

Most of the cities, villages, and farms are on these table lands. Often, for the sake of the grand view, a villa is built on a steep ridge, within sight of the broad, undulating surface of some plateau; or, in some position of peerless beauty, the glittering cross on some convent may be seen. The Spanish race appreciate the picturesque, as is shown by their choice of sites, not only in Spain, but in Spanish America. The poetical, imaginative character which has marked Spanish annals for centuries, still marks those who have any claim to Spanish descent. The South American, though half an Indian, recognizes the grandeur of his native mountains, and the beauty of the broad, fertile valleys, while a thorough-going Anglo-Saxon of North America, in the same places, would calculate whether or not the torrent that rushes foaming and glittering down the mountain is too steep to serve a mill, or whether the smaller mountains might not be levelled for building lots; or he would gaze upon some beautiful table land with wonder indeed, but with wonder chiefly how much wheat or barley there grows to the acre, or can be made to grow. The table lands produce the grains and fruits of the temperate zone; and, accordingly, proprietors who own, as many do, estates on the tropical and on the temperate level, may supply their tables with fruits from their own grounds, for which, in other countries, the world must be brought under contribution. The soil is cultivated mainly by Indians. Descendants of the ancient rulers of the land now till the fields of the descendants of the conquerors.

Some, indeed, representing more or less the Indian part of the population, are owners of estates; yet a full Indian rarely has lands of his own. He is a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, tills the fields, and performs most of the drudgery of the country. More South Americana of Indian descent, out of the general population, have gained honor and power than could possibly have done so under the confined and absolute sway of the Incas. The Indians of all Spanish America have progressed, however slowly and rudely, in the arts, labors, culture, and faith of Christian civilization, and, in the aggregate, are in advance of the Indians of Anglo-America.

Let the imagination survey the whole range of the Andes for their vast extent of sixty degrees of latitude. On every level space are seen the signs of culture and human habitation, fields green with the early grain, or yellow with the harvest. The roads now wind through forests of constant shade, even under the burning sun of the equator; now they turn with gentle windings, or with steep abruptness, while below spread bright and beautiful lands, and interesting the more because associated with the homes and lives of men.

In the grandest scenery, some sign of man's abode will be grateful. No one, indeed, whose soul has not been warped out of all likeness to the Divine image which it once wore, can regard without abhorrence such intrusions of noisy machinery into scenes of natural sublimity as, for instance, have desecrated the neighborhood of Niagara Falls, and which would have done so yet more, but for the energetic and forever-praiseworthy resistance of the proprietors of adjacent grounds; as if America, with her thousands of miles of rivers, and almost infinite number of rapid, unfailing brooks, had not mill privileges enough, without daring to insult the Divine Majesty by wresting the Falls of Niagara from their true design. The spirit of gain, which has been eager, though—thanks be to God—it has not been able to spoil the natural glory of Niagara, is vile, degraded, base enough to sell a mother's dying gift for gold, or to seize, if it had the power, the jewelled gates of the New Jerusalem as collateral security for its meagre faith in anything divine.

But, though the presence of that sacrilegious materialism, of that practical blasphemy, which defies creative Deity at the very shrines where its infinite power is most wonderfully displayed, is a plague spot, a malignant sign of spiritual leprosy, which warns all to beware of its vile contagion; yet, the suggestions of rural toil, the sight of tilled fields, the cottage, the shepherd and his flock, are all harmonious with nature, even in her grandeur; for they show that the glorious wonders of earth were given, not, indeed, to be distorted, but to be enjoyed by man; and even the stupendous mountain derives a new charm from the reflection that it may minister daily to the elevation of the soul, while the benign fertility of the valley sustains the natural life.

How pleasantly these villages nestle upon the breasts of the mountains, as if there to find shelter from the stormy blast! Trains of mules, attended by their drivers, whose shrill shouts echo among the rocky hills, wind upward, laden with rich tropical fruits from the coast, or with goods from other lands. Other trains descend, laden with grain and the fruits of the temperate zone, from the higher districts. Well-guarded mules bear bars of precious silver from the mountain mines for the currency of the world, or to render dazzling service on the tables of nobles and kings in foreign lands. Look upon the gorgeous clouds above you, as if the snowy Andes were soaring heavenward; reach higher points, and look upon shining clouds far below, as if the same snowy mountains had descended to bow in meek devotion. The llama, the delicate beast of burden, sometimes called the Peruvian camel, with gently curving neck, moves gracefully on, turning often and quickly, from side to side, mild, plaintive eyes, as if entreating pity.

The cascade glances like a streak of silver from the mountain at your side; in the valley you see the sweet, calm lake, or you hear the torrent, sounding among shadowy woodlands, never weary, never still. Stand on a lofty ridge, and look abroad on the vast, snowy heights that appear in the horizon;—then let the 'mind's eye' look beyond the horizon, and behold similar peaks stretching three thousand miles along. Then bend reverently before Him who has made earth so grand.

Go to the galleries of Rome and Florence. It is wise to gather new beauty to the soul from works of art, and to study the exquisite graces which the great masters have gathered from nature and delineated in glowing canvas or in lasting marble; yet, here is a gallery of paintings by the Great Master and Author of all sublimity and beauty in heaven and earth, extending, not from room to room of buildings made with hands and roofed with cedar, but from hall to hall of nature's colossal cathedral, roofed by the infinite sky. Look at these pictures, ever changing, yet ever grand, of majestic mountains, of reposing valleys, of fertile plains, of rural homes, of streams and waterfalls, of vast forests, of myriad forms of life and beauty, of sunrise, sunset, and the glittering moon. What a marvellous variety in the objects portrayed! What surprises at every turn! Colors more brilliant than Titian or Allston could combine, join in harmonious effect on every side, and grace and vigor, beauty and grandeur, are blended in every scene and almost in every outline. Would you examine the famous statues of the world, and admire the symmetry of form and power of expression drawn forth by human skill from the hard, white stone? Or will the fragments of ancient art give delight for their expressive beauty, visible though in broken forms? Behold here a gallery of statuary, a line of divine masterpieces, whiter than Parian marble, wrought by the 'Ancient of Days.' Will you admire Michael Angelo's colossal 'Day and Night'? and revere the mortal genius that can so impress the soul? Give homage, then, for the majesty of power with which He who created and adorned the universe has displayed, among the Andes, Day and Night—Day robed with unutterable splendor, Night with transcendent awe.

Mountains!—the grandest of nature's visible works—ye are also the figures of majesty, of strength, of loftiness of soul! Ye are the raised letters which record on the great globe the history of man! Ye are the mighty scales in which the fate of nations has been weighed! Ye have checked the march of conquest, or inspired with new, defiant energy the conqueror's will! Your ranges are the projecting lines which mark, on the great dialplate of the world, the shadows of the rolling ages! On your steep, bleak heights empires have been lost and won! Ye show how weak is man, how great is God!

Ye are the home of meditation, the colossal pillars of the audience chamber of the Deity! The Mount of Contemplation rises far above the mists of partial opinion and the mire of conflict, the discords of jangling interests and the refractions of divided policies, girt by a serene and sublime horizon, and within hearing of Nature's everlasting song.

Behold the holy family of mountains, on which the angels look with reverential wonder: the Mount of Awe, black with clouds and vivid with lightnings, whence descended the guide of wandering Israel, with light divine reflected on his brow; the Mount of Transfiguration, where native Deity gleamed from the face of the benign Messiah on adoring, rapt disciples; the Mount of Sorrow, where the world's grief was borne, and which celestial grace has made the Mount of Joy to 'numbers without number;'—the Mount of Ascension, where last stood on earth Incarnate Mercy. Look up! look up! See how the angelic guards point with amaranthine wands afar, where glows, beyond the vale of tears, the Mountain of Immortal Life.

Behold, in exalted vision, the mountains of Asia and of the islands of the Eastern seas, of Africa, of Europe, of America;—see how they are baptized with fire, one after, another, as the sun rises, to spread around the world the light of its daily consecration. How sadly is the world's morning glory soiled and dimmed by thoughtless man ere comes again the dark and silent night!

---

NATIONAL FRIENDSHIPS.

Not long after the outbreak of the present war, the loyal portion of the country discovered that the sympathies of the British Government, and, in a great measure, of the British nation, were with the revolted States. The expectations of those who looked toward England for at least a hearty moral support, were quickly destroyed by the ill-concealed spirit of exultation which she exhibited on more than one occasion. Although it can hardly be asserted that the great body of our people expected from her more than an impartial observance of strict neutrality, it nevertheless occasioned considerable surprise that a country, called so often as herself to the task of surpressing rebellions, should be prejudiced against ourselves when similarly situated.

With France, however, it was different. We had for years been accustomed to regard the French as our natural allies. The amicable relations which had existed between us, with but comparatively little interruption, since the days of the Revolution, naturally led us to look to them for a degree of sympathy not to be expected from our constant rivals and competitors the English. It was with painful surprise therefore that we shortly perceived that the French Government was, of all others, the most hostile to our cause, and the one to be regarded with the most suspicion and distrust.

Spain also took advantage of our weakened condition to display a spirit of enmity toward us no less decided than that observed on the part of her more powerful neighbors. In short, of the whole great family of European nations scarcely one expressed a friendly interest for us in our perilous position.

It is not surprising, then, that, surrounded as we were by traitors at home, we manifested an almost unmanly regret on finding ourselves deserted by those whom we were wont to consider as friends abroad; and when we now reflect upon the bearing of those nations toward us, the inquiry naturally arises, whether there really exists no such thing as true friendship between nations. It is a mournful question; and not a few, unwilling to believe that such is the case, will at once point to frequent close alliances, to more than one example of the generous behavior of one people toward another. But our own experience has taught us that friendship exists between nations only so far as it is warranted by interest, and that all the instances referred to as proving the contrary, have been owing to the personal influence of high-minded men, who, at the time, were in power; and even in such cases a far-sighted policy will frequently prove to have been the ruling motive which prompted their apparently disinterested measures.

And here we pause to consider what considerations of interest could have stirred up such hostility to our prosperity, and caused such gratification when our very existence was threatened. In what way would our destruction benefit England? The advantages which she derives from her commercial intercourse with us are far greater than any which would accrue to her if she ruled the broken fragments of our country as she rules the oppressed provinces of India or her distant possessions in Australia. The same may be substantially said with regard to France. How far from compensated would she be for the loss of such large consumers of her staple productions as ourselves by the acquisition of portions of territory here, which would in all likelihood prove as unprofitable as her African dominions?

Spain, too, although her shadow of an excuse for her apparent ill will toward us may be a little darker than that of Great Britain or France, since she doubtless hopes that by the destruction of our power and influence, she may be able to regain her ascendency over her former colonies, can scarcely be so blind as not to perceive that but little attention would probably be paid to her claims by her more powerful coadjutors in the work of our annihilation.

It does not appear, then, that these nations can urge even self-interest as a pretext for their treacherous enmity to us; and we again return to the question, What is the cause of their continued unfriendliness?

The comparison of the nation to the individual has become hackneyed, but we are forced to the conclusion that it is not alone true in considerations of policy and self-interest. Our experience has taught us that it holds good in the fact that mere feelings of spiteful jealousy and envy can, in the most powerful communities, override the dictates of justice—nay, even of interest itself.

Again, a little examination will show that a permanent friendship is not to be expected between different nationalities, from the very nature of their structure. A nation is composed of individuals—of individuals whose pursuits and principles are widely distinct. The parties formed from these different classes are often diametrically opposed to each other in their ideas of policy and government. Moreover, their relations with foreign countries enter, to an important extent, into the counsels of every administration, and, as successive parties come into power, it is not to be expected that connections with other Governments will remain unchanged.

This does not apply to the course of those countries whose conduct we have been considering, but it teaches us that we should never place reliance upon the long continuance of the friendship of any nation.

Thus, it has already been stated, that not one of what are commonly known as the Great Powers can be depended upon for the slightest demonstration of friendship. Russia has indeed been generally regarded as bearing toward us nothing but good will; yet friendly as her feelings may be, it is owing mainly to the fact that she is so distant, and the interests of the two countries are so widely separated, that she can have no possible motive for turning against us; while, situated as she is, an object of dislike to the other European Governments, she could not be insensible to the policy of conciliating so powerful a nation as our own.

How then shall we proceed in order to preserve ourselves from difficulties in which the interests, jealousies, or changing policy of foreign countries may involve us? The answer has been made before—by being ever prepared to meet promptly all hostile demonstrations. Situated as we are, employing our resources to quell a gigantic insurrection, we have no strength to waste in an unnecessary foreign war. But it should be remembered that if we had had an adequate force to resist a foreign enemy three years ago, the existing rebellion would never have assumed its present proportions. We, who in our previous wars had made ourselves formidable, intrusted our defence to a few thousand men, distributed throughout our broad land, and, while the former valor of our sailors had enabled us to boast our superiority upon the sea, we exposed ourselves, by our reliance upon a small number of old men-of-war, scattered over the world, to the sudden loss of our naval reputation. Large standing armaments are wisely discouraged by the Constitution, but an army of one hundred thousand men, an immense force for some Governments, would be but a small one for our own.

We owe to our being situated apart from other nations, our ability to dispense with the military burdens which European rulers impose upon their subjects; but the increase of neither our land or naval power has been proportional to our own extension, or to those modern inventions and discoveries by which large forces can be easily and expeditiously moved from point to point. An army, therefore, which less than half a century ago would have been ample, is at present far from sufficient for our protection.

We must, above all, recollect that as a Government can expect the affection and support of the people only when it shows that it possesses the elements necessary to maintain itself and protect them, so it can look for the friendship of other countries only when it causes to be seen that it is able and ready to resist any encroachment upon its rights.

For the present we must depend, in a measure, for an abstinence from open demonstrations against us on the part of the nations above referred to, upon the moral sense of the world, which has doubtless, to a great extent, preserved us thus far. But while it is necessary to avoid giving any pretext for war, let no tame submission to insult or wrong lower us in the eyes of the world, and hereafter let it be our policy, by commanding the respect and fear of foreign nations, to assure ourselves of their good will.

---

NORTH AND SOUTH.

North and South the war cries come:
Sounds the trumpet, beats the drum.
Hosts contending, marshalled foes
Battle while the red blood flows.
Two great armies whose Ideal
Bursts into the earnest Real.
Ideals twain, on battle height
Flaming into radiant light!
One, is Freedom over all;
One, is Slavery's tyrant thrall:
These are written on the plain
'Mid the Battle's fiery rain.
These the Powers that must contend
To the dark and bitter end.
Look upon the Nation's dead!
Lo, the blood of martyrs shed!
Dying that our Country may
Know her Resurrection day!
What shall be the Traitor's gain?
Endless scorn, undying pain.
Ever o'er the giant wrong
Sings the Right her triumph song.
Yes, as sure as God doth reign
Right the mastery shall obtain!
Over all these beauteous lands
These two Brothers clasp their hands.
These two Brothers now at strife
Make one heart, one soul, one life!
This at last will be their song:
'One forever, free, and strong.'
Northmen, ye have not in hate
Closed the heart's fraternal gate!
Ye have not for greed, nor gold,
Forged the slave-chains manifold!
But in patience ye have wrought
Out your Godlike, freeborn thought!
Ye have toiled that man might be
Clothed with truth and liberty.
God hath answered from the skies;
Bids you for His own arise!
Now the work is at your door:
Help His meek and suffering poor!
There are hearts uncomforted,
Weeping o'er the battle-dead.
There are wounded brave ones here:
Bring your hearts of kindness near!
Freedmen shiver at your gate—
Let them not forgotten wait!
Bind the wounded heart that bleeds;
Mould your speeches into deeds!
This is what all true hearts say:
'Glorious is our work to-day!'

---

LITERARY NOTICES.

Dreamthorp; A Book of Essays written in the Country. By Alexander Smith, Author of 'A Life Drama,' 'City Poems,' etc. Boston: J.E. Tilton & Company. For sale by Walter Low, 823 Broadway. New York.

We have been very unexpectedly charmed with this volume. Inverted and fantastical as he may be in his poems, Mr. Smith's essays are fresh, natural, racy, and genial. They are models in their way, and we wish our contributors would study them as such. Each essay is complete in itself; every sentence full of interest; there is no straining for effect, no writing to astonish a blasé audience, no show of unwonted erudition; but the light of a poet's soul, the sunshine of a calm and loving heart, are streaming and brooding over all these gentle pages. Knowledge is indeed within them, but it has ripened into wisdom; culture has matured into wine with the summer in its glow—yet, notwithstanding its many excellences, the book is so quiet, true, and natural, we know not what favor it may find among us. We were pleased to see that in 'A Shelf in My Book-case' our own Hawthorne had a conspicuous place. 'Twice-Told Tales' is an especial favorite with Mr. Smith, as it indeed is with most imaginative people. His analysis of Hawthorne is very fine, and it is like meeting with an old friend in a foreign land to come across the name so dear to ourselves in these pages from across the sea. Equally pleasant to us is the Chapter on Vagabonds. 'A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind,' and, confessing ourselves to be one of this genus, we dwell with delight on our author's genial description of their naive pleasures and innocent eccentricities. Mr. Smith says: 'The true vagabond is to be met with among actors, poets, painters. These may grow in any way their nature dictates. They are not required to conform to any traditional pattern. A little more air and light should be let in upon life. I should think the world had stood long enough under the drill of Adjutant Fashion. It is hard work; the posture is wearisome, and Fashion is an awful martinet and has a quick eye, and comes down mercilessly on the unfortunate wight who cannot square his toes to the approved pattern, or who appears upon parade with a darn in his coat or with a shoulder belt insufficiently pipe-clayed. It is killing work. Suppose we try 'standing at ease' for a little?'

Scenes and Thoughts in Europe. By George H. Calvert, Author of 'The Gentleman.' Boston: Little, Brown & Company. A new edition of a work first published in 1846.

Mr. Calvert is a writer of considerable vigor, but we think these 'Scenes and Thoughts' seriously injured by the hatred of Catholicity which breathes everywhere through them. We miss in them the large, liberal, and loving spirit which characterized 'The Gentleman.' Charity is the soul of wisdom, and we can never rightly appreciate that which we hate. Mr. Calvert totally ignores all the good and humanizing effects of the Catholic Church, and sees only the faults and follies of those who minister at her altars. Not the least cheering example of the progress we are daily making, is the improvement in this respect in our late books of travels. We have ceased to denounce in learning to describe aright, and feel the pulsations of a kindred heart, though it beat under the scarlet robe of the cardinal, the dalmatic of the priest, or the coarse serge of the friar. 'My son, give me thy heart,' says our God. If we can deem from a life of self-abnegation a man has so done, we have ceased inquiring into the dogmas of his creed. It is the heart and not the intellect which is required, 'Little children, love one another,' is the true law of life, progress, and human happiness.

Soundings From the Atlantic, by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

As the title indicates, the essays contained in this volume are already known to the readers of The Atlantic.

Wherever Dr. Holmes sounds, he is sure to light upon pearls and golden sands, and scatter them about with a profusion so reckless that we feel convinced the supply is not to be exhausted. Scientist and poet, analyst and creator, full of keen satire, genial humor, and tender pathos, who may compete with him in varied gifts, or rival the charm of intellectual grace which he breathes at will into all he writes?

The contents of this volume are: 'Bread and the Newspaper,' 'My Hunt After the Captain,' 'The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,' 'Sun Painting and Sun Sculpture,' 'Doings of the Sunbeam,' 'The Human Wheel, its Spokes and Felloes,' 'A Visit to the Autocrat's Landlady,' 'A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters,' 'The Great Instrument,' 'The Inevitable Trial.'

Hints for the Nursery; or, The Young Mother's Guide. By Mrs. C. A. Hopkinson. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1863. For sale by Blakeman & Mason.

A valuable and instructive little book, eminently calculated to spare the rising generation many a pang in body and mind, and the youthful mother many a heartache.

Life and Letters of John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, at their Emigration to New England, 1630. By Robert C. Winthrop. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.

This work is dedicated to the Massachusetts Historical Society, who have honored the author with their presidency for eight years past. It is rather an autobiography than a biography, and an autobiography of the most trustworthy kind, 'written accidentally and unconsciously, as it were, in familiar letters or private journals, or upon the records of official service.' Such a Life is the volume before us. The most skilful use has been made of his material by our author. John Winthrop the elder, through contemporaneous records, in the familiar language of private correspondence and diary, tells us the story of a considerable part of his career in his own words, Cotton Mather says of him: ... 'This third Adam Winthrop was the father of that renowned John Winthrop, who was the father of New England, and the founder of a colony, which, upon many accounts, like him that founded it, may challenge the first place among the English glories of America.'

The volume also offers us in great detail a picture not only of the outward life, but of the inmost thoughts, motives, and principles of the American Puritans. Valuable to the antiquarian, it will also interest, in its naive pictures of home life, the general reader.

The brave and brilliant Theodore Winthrop, who gave up his young life to his country in the battle of Big Bethel, has rendered this name dear to all loyal Americans.

Round the Block. An American Novel. With Illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 443 and 445 Broadway.

A Novel of American life, incident, and character. The style is easy, the tale interesting, the moral healthful. There is considerable humor in the delineation of character. The people drawn are such as we have all known, sketched without exaggeration, and actuated by constantly occurring motives. The book is anonymous, but we believe the author will yet be known to fame, Tiffles and Patching are true to life, and the exhibition of the 'Pannyrarmer' worthy of Dickens.

The Life of Jesus. By Ernest Renan, Membre de l'Institut. Translated from the original French by Charles Edwin Wilbour, translator of 'Les Misérables.' New York: Carlton, publisher, 413 Broadway.

A book which has attained a sudden and wide circulation, if not a lasting popularity, in France. We look upon it as a romance based upon the Sacred History of the Gospels. It is artistically constructed, and written with considerable genius. 'It is dramatic, beginning with a pastoral and ending with the direst of human tragedies.' M. Renan we suppose to be a Pantheist. He says: 'As to myself, I think that there is not in the universe an intelligence superior to that of man.' This view of course leads him to discard supernaturalism, and write of Christ as simply man. He believes as suits his system, and refuses testimony—without condescending to tell us why it is not equally as valid as that received. He says: 'The highest consciousness of God that ever existed in the bosom of humanity, was that of Jesus.' He is the 'universal ideal'—and yet we think he strives to make of this 'universal ideal' an impostor! Christ tells us of various facts with regard to himself: of his divine Sonhood and mission—if these things are not true, then was he either weakly self-deceived or a wilful deceiver. He sets up a claim to the working of miracles, and assumes the part of the Messiah of the prophets. This want of truth M. Renan smooths over by saying: 'Sincerity with oneself had not much meaning with Orientals; they are little habituated to the delicate distinctions of the critical spirit!' The resurrection of Lazarus, as he represents it, was a pious fraud managed by the apostles, agreed to by the Master, 'because he knew not how to conquer the greediness of the crowd and of his own disciples for the marvellous.' Does not the mere fact of such an acquiescence argue the impostor? Christ seeks death to deliver himself from his fearful embarrassments! Did he really rise from the dead? M. Renan tells us, with a sickly sentimentalism worthy of Michelet: 'The powerful imagination of Mary of Magdala played in that affair a capital part. Divine power of love! Sacred moments, when the passion of a visionary gives to the world a resuscitated God.' If this be indeed the Life of Jesus, well may we exclaim with the apostle: 'If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are, of all men, the most miserable.' And is this all that the most advanced naturalism can do? All that human genius and erudition can offer us? All that artistic grace and tenderness can win for us? Clouds and darkness rise before us as we read, the mother of our Lord loses her sanctity, Jesus becomes an impostor, the apostles deceivers, human testimony is forever dishonored. A pall shrouds the infinite blue of the sky, and our beloved dead seem festering in eternal corruption!

We must confess we prefer the bold and defiant scepticism of Voltaire, to the Judas kiss of M. Renan.

---

EDITOR'S TABLE.