PART I.—SCALES.
We were in the three-months.
There! I feel as proud of that as one of the Old Guard would have been in saying: 'I was of the Army of Italy.'
There is but one three-months (pronounced with the accent strongly resting on the numeral adverb, after the Hibernian). All others are spurious imitations. I refer to the early days of the war: the dark days that followed the first fall of Sumter, when our Southern friends had just finished the last volume of the lexicon of slavery, that for so long a time had defined away our manhood, our national honor, and our birthright of freedom, with such terrible words as 'coercion,' 'secession,' 'fratricidal war,' 'sovereign States,' and what not; before we had begun to look without fear even at the title page of the new Gospel of Liberty: the days when we were mudsills and greasy mechanics, whose pockets were to be touched: the days, in short, when we were still inclined to crawl upon our bellies, from the preference arising out of long and strong habit. Then, you remember, the rebellion was to be crushed in sixty days. So the President issued his proclamation, of date the 15th of April, A. D. 1861 (and of the independence of the United States the first), calling out SEVENTY-FIVE THOUSAND men for ninety days to do it.
On the same day we were mustered into the service as a part of this gigantic force of seventy-five thousand, at the bare suggestion of whose numbers the refractory South was confidently expected to abandon its rash enterprise, and kindly resume its sway over us. Before the awful ceremony known as 'mustering in,' we were sixty odd excited young gentlemen, hailing from and residing in all parts of the country. After it we were Company N, commanded by Captain John H. Pipes, of the First Regiment of District of Columbia Volunteers, commanded by Colonel Charles Diamond, as the muster rolls called us, or the 'American Sharpshooters,' as we called ourselves.
Major McDuff mustered us in. He did it after this fashion: First he walked out into the yard of the War Department, where the company stood at 'parade rest,' or the nearest militia approach thereto, waiting to be absorbed. Then he had us marched across the yard and halted; then up it; then down it; then back to the first position; then forward in a line a few paces; then, by the right flank, into the back yard, where he left, us, at a 'rest,' for two hours and fifty-three minutes, while he retired into the War Department building, probably to ascertain if the thing was regular. Then, at the fifty-fourth minute, or thereabout, after the second hour, he caused us to be marched into our original position. After gazing at us uneasily for a few minutes, he proceeded to inspect our arms with the utmost care: the importance of which manœuvre will more fully appear from the fact that they intended to take us, and did take many of us, sans lock, stock, or barrel. Then he told us that we were—called into the—service—of the—United States—for—three months—to serve in the District—not to go beyond the District—under any circumstances. Then he called the roll, so accurately (never having seen it before) that nearly all of us recognized our names, and in hardly more than two and three quarters the time it would have taken the orderly sergeant to do it. Then we were told to hold up our right hands, and a stout party, well known to all early volunteers, stepped forward from wherever he had been before, and, introducing himself by exclaiming, in solemn and cavernous tones, 'The following is the oath!' swore us in. Then, after another short adjournment of half an hour, we were marched to our barracks.
That was a queer organization, the 1st D.C. Vols., composed as it was of a cloud of independent companies—thirty-five, or thereabout, in all, I think—all made up of men from everywhere, largely in the tadpole stage of Unionism, and all sworn in for service in the District, not to go beyond the District. Early in May they were organized into eight battalions of four or five companies each, commanded by lieutenant-colonels, majors, or the senior captains. Nearly every company occupied its own separate 'armory' or barracks, and all the officers and men lived at home when not actually on guard or other duty!
It was an awful feeling that sandwiched the gaps of new-born exultation at finding ourselves real soldiers—that feeling of a merged identity; the individual Smith sold for glory at $11 per mensem, and lost, lost in an aggregate: become only a cog in a little machine connected with a larger machine that forms part of the great machine called an army. One thing saved us the full horror of this discovery: we were not bothered with corps, divisions, brigades, or even greatly with regiments, in those days, and if individually we were ciphers or merely recurring decimals, collectively 'our company' was of the first importance; and this reflection stiffened the breasts of our gray frock coats, and caused our scales (we wore scales!) to shine again.
First night. Everybody wants to be on guard! Think of that, old soldiers, and grin. The captain details twice as many as are necessary, to prevent clamor. Some of the more enthusiastic of the disappointed ones offer to stay at the armory all night, to be on hand in case of anything happening. We can never be certain about the enemy's crossing the Long Bridge, you know. The company, guard and all, is drilled vigorously, in squads, for two hours. Then the unhappy fellows who are to go home loiter themselves, with many wistful glances, out of the building. Then the guard plays euchre, reads, reads aloud, sings, fences, and drills. A few sleepy heads lie down in corners about one a.m., and are not going to sleep, but nevertheless shortly complain of being kept awake by the noise. 'Never mind,' growls the melancholy man of the company; 'won't hear any of this to-morrow night. D——d glad to go to sleep then.' The melancholy man, now as hereafter, is voted a bore, but, as I presently discover, turns out to be pretty nearly right, and achieves the sad triumph of being able to say, 'Told you so; wouldn't believe me; now see.'—Daylight. No one has been asleep, yet, strange to say, everyone has waked up and found everyone else snoring. No one waits for reveillé, this first morning. You stretch yourself, and endeavor to rise. Which is you, and which the board floor? You rather think this must be you that has just got up, because it aches so down the grain, and its knots or eyes—yes, they are eyes—are so full of sand. This must be how Rip Van Winkle felt after his nap in the Catskills, you think. You wonder how those fellows Boyce and Tripp can skylark so on an empty stomach. Three hours to breakfast. You police the quarters with vigor. 'Heavens, what a dust! Open the windows, somebody; and look here, Sergeant! the floor hasn't been sprinkled.' The sharp, quick tones of the sergeant of the guard (more like the sound of a tenpenny nail scratching mahogany than aught else in nature) soon set matters right. You think you have surely swallowed your peck of dirt that morning, and feel even more gastric than you usually do on an empty stomach. You can go home to breakfast now: but you hear Johnny Todd's cheery voice sing out; 'Fall in, cocktail squad!' and march off with a score of your comrades to the nearest restaurant, which, finding just open, the squad incontinently takes possession of. You take a cocktail, a whiskey cocktail, with the edge of the green glass previously lemoned and dipped in powdered sugar. 'Ah,' says Todd to everybody, and everybody, to everybody else, including Todd, 'that goes to the right place' (slapping it affectionately). Oh, reader, if wearer of p[)a]hnts, did you ever meet with a decoction, infusion, or other mixture whatsoever, vinous, alcoholic, or maltic, with or without sugar, that did not go to the right place? And if there was a fault, wasn't it in the addition of a trifle too much lemon peel? The crowd takes another of the same sort. You take another. Then you wish you hadn't.
You go to the office that day, for, in common with two-thirds of the company, you are a clerk in one of the Departments as well as a soldier; and you can think and talk of nothing but the war. The oldsters quiz your enthusiasm unmercifully, and cause your complexion to assume a red and gobbling appearance, and your conversation to limp into half-incoherent feebleness. Nevertheless everyone is very kind to you, for you are a great pet with the old fogies—their prize 'Jack;' and even old Mr. Gruff rasps down his tones, so that those harsh accents seem to pat you on the back. Your handwriting, usually so firm and easy, quavers a little, and exhibits more of the influence of the biceps muscle than of your accustomed light play of the wrist and fingers. But, you think, it's the rifle that does it, and are rather proud of this.
Second night. You rush down after an early dinner, in rash anxiety to be drilled. Arriving very red and hot at the armory, you find bales of straw and boxes on the sidewalk in front, and hear dreadful rumors that our armory is to be taken away; that we are to have regular barracks, and live there all the time; that we are to draw rations, and cook them. Dismay is on every face. The melancholy man alone seems not to be jostled from his habitual sad composure: he explains to the inquiring, doubting crowd that the ration consists of 'one and a quarter pounds of fresh beef or three quarters of a pound of salt beef, pork, or bacon, fourteen ounces of flour or twelve ounces of hard bread, with eight pounds of coffee, ten of sugar, ten of rice or eight quarts of beans, four quarts of vinegar, four pounds of soap, one and a quarter pounds candles, and two quarts of salt, to the hundred rations. But you won't get fresh meat often, nor yet flour, and I reckon you'll have to take beans instead of rice pretty much all the time, now't South Car'lina's out.' We eat salt pork! or beans either, except very occasionally. There began to be serious symptoms of mutiny. Fippany and one or two others declaimed so violently against the outrage, that the more enthusiastic of us felt bound to use our influence to prevent the spread of a disaffection that seemed to us highly calculated to embarrass the action of the Government in this crisis. The end of it was that we marched up to our new quarters, and, in the excitement of moving in and receiving our clothing and camp and garrison equipage, had forgotten our troubles, when (just as the melancholy man discovered that the overcoats were seven short of the right number, that the mess pans all leaked, and that the quarters were full of fleas) our orders to move were countermanded, and we marched back again in joy. There were fewer volunteers for guard duty that night, and the natural rest of the sergeant of the guard was undisturbed save by the occasional nightmare of having overslept the hour for relieving the meek sentinels (not yet instructed in the art of awakening drowsy non-commissioned officers by stentorian alarms, and indeed not yet knowing accurately the measure of their 'two hours on'), or by some louder howl than usual from poor Todd second, who, having continued his course of eye-opening to the hours when sober citizens and prudent soldiers incline to close theirs, spent the major portion of the night in dramatic recitations of the beauties of Shakspeare, utterly neglecting and refusing to 'dry up,' although frequently admonished thereto by the growls and eke by the curses of his comrades.
The next afternoon and evening, including in the latter elastic term many hours more properly claimed by the night, were spent in confused and bungling attempts to issue the clothing and camp and garrison equipage considerately provided for us by the Government. First everybody opened all the boxes at once, and grabbed for everything. Then everybody put his things back and petitioned for somebody else's. 'My overcoat is too big.' 'Mine is too short.' 'Golly! what sleeves!' 'What are these bags for?' 'Those things knapsacks! how you goin' to fassen 'em? no straps!' 'My canteen has no cork.' ... 'Silence!' roars the captain, and 'Silence!' rasps the orderly sergeant, three times as loudly and six as disagreeably. And then everybody being ordered to replace everything, that a proper system of distribution may be adopted, half of us hide our plunder away, and the other half dump their prizes promiscuously and in sullenness. 'Here, here!' barks Sergeant Files; 'this kind of thing's played out. There were sixty-five canteens; where's the other sixty?' Presently the confusion unravels a little, but, after a breathing spell, begins again worse than ever, when our melancholy friend, Smallweed, having signed the clothing receipt doubtfully, presently announces, with the air of an injured martyr, that he supposes it's all right, but he can't find all the things he signed for. Then everybody frantically examines into this new difficulty, and discovers that they signed for everything, and got nothing. Poor Captain Pipes scratches his head perplexedly, and smokes in anxious puffs. Sergeant Files hustles everybody about, exposes several shamefaced impostors, who have more than everything, and by the timely announcement that Smallweed's deficiency consists of two overcoat straps, which are no longer used in the service, restores comparative quiet. Smallweed, however, retires up and shakes his head dubiously, remarking in an undertone, to a weak-eyed young man, who stands in mortal awe of him, that it may be all right, but he don't see it.
Drills, drills, drills! For the next week we have nothing but drills—except guard duty. Squad drills, company drills, drills in the facings, drills under arms, drills in the morning, noonday drills, drills at night. Besides these, the office all day, and guard duty every third night. Talk about the patriotic days of '76! you think—was there ever anything like this? In less than a week everybody is played out; everybody, that is, except a lymphatic, dull-visaged backwoodsman, named Tetter, who drags through everything so slowly and heavily, that he can't get tired, and an old Polish cavalryman, named Hrsthzschnoffski, or something of the kind, but naturally called Snuffsky, who knows neither enthusiasm nor fatigue, who never volunteers for a duty nor ever begs off from it. Growls arise. Men pale about the cheeks, beady in the forehead, and dark under the eyes, begin to collect in knotlets, and talk over the situation. 'We enlisted to fight,' the bolder spirits hint; 'we came to fight, not to drill and guard armories. Why don't they take us out and let us whip the enemy, and go back to our business?' But presently comes
The 19th of April. No drill to-night. What is that? A fight in Baltimore? Nonsense! True though, for all that, as history will vouch. Six regiments of Massachusetts troops have been attacked in Baltimore by the 'Plugs,' and cut to pieces. Where was the 'Seventh!' we wonder, educated in the creed of its invincibility and omnipresence. The Seventh was there too, and has been massacred. Colonel Lefferts is killed. There is a stir around the armory door, the knot of idlers gives way respectfully, and admits a little man, the pride of the regiment, always cool, collected, handsome, and soldierly—Colonel Diamond. He says half a dozen words in a whisper to the captain, writes three lines with a pencil on the fly leaf of an old letter, gives a comprehensive glance around, in which we feel he sees everything, salutes the captain, and marches briskly, almost noiselessly, into the street. Smallweed, the melancholy man, rolls up his blanket, packs his knapsack, combs his hair sadly, and moans out: 'Detail for the guard: Private Smallweed. I'm d——d if I stand this any longer! I'll write to——'
'Fall in men; fall in under arms; fall in lively now!' barks the orderly sergeant. 'Get up here, Snuffsky. Tetter, don't you mean to fall in at all?' and so on. Volunteers are wanted for special and perhaps dangerous service. Perhaps dangerous! (Quick movement of admiration.) 'Every man willing to go will step two paces to the front.' The company moves forward in line, much to the disgust of Sergeant Files, who finds he must make a detail after all. Lieutenant Frank, Sergeant Mullins, Corporal Bledsoe, and twenty privates are presently detailed, and, after tremendous preparation and excitement, during which Smallweed discovers that some one has stolen his percussion caps, and is incontinently cursed by Sergeant Files for his pains, march off amid the cheers of the disappointed remainder. We mourn our sad lot at being left out of the detail, when presently comes a second detail: Second Lieutenant Treadwell, Sergeant Ogle, Corporal Funk, and twenty privates, of whom you, Jenkins, are one. As you get ready, you adopt stern resolves, stiffen that upper lip, and confide a short message for some one to one of the survivors, in case, as you proudly hint, you should not return. The survivor rewards you with a pressure of the hand, and a look of wonder at your coolness.
'Support—ARMS! Quick—MARCH!' the lieutenant says, almost in a whisper, as we leave the building, and are fairly in the street. Where are we going? Why do we go down Pennsylvania Avenue? This is not the way to Long Bridge. Are the enemy attacking the navy yard? all wonder; no one speaks. 'Halt!' Why, this is the telegraph office! and we take possession of it in the name of the United States. Despatches between Baltimore and Richmond have passed over the wires that very evening, and we even interrupt one with our sword bayonets. Then we hear the truth about that Baltimore business. The Southern operators and clerks crow over and denounce us. We feel gulpy about the throat, and those of us who yet tremble at the thought of 'fratricide,' wish they were out of this, until Smallweed effects a diversion by dexterously, though quite accidentally, upsetting the longest-haired, loudest-mouthed operator into the biggest and dirtiest spittoon. But worse than this is in store for the unlucky sympathizers, for, after thinking sadly over his feat, the same melancholy Smallweed suddenly asks them what tune the Southern Confederacy will adopt as its national air. One incautious Georgian suggests 'Dixie,' he reckons. ''Spittoon,' I should think,' says Smallweed mournfully. For which he is pronounced by the same gentleman from Georgia to be a divinely condemned fool. How hungry we grew, and how pale and seedy, before the relief came at 8 a.m., with the great news that the other detail had seized the Alexandria boat!
This is the age of seizures. We seize all the steamers. We seize the railroad, A train comes in, and we seize the cars. Then there is a let up: the Confederate lexicon still at work, flashing out the last feeble jerks of its poison. We release the telegraph; we release the railway; we release the steamers. One of the latter, the George Page, goes down to Alexandria, straightway to become a ram, terrible to the weak-minded, though harmless enough in reality. Then we seize them all again, and, this time, with the railway—praised be Allah!—a train of cars! Presently a detachment, envied by the disappointed, goes out from our company on this train to reconnoitre. Communication with the great North is cut off. Every stalk of corn in all Maryland rises up, in the nightmare that seems to possess the capital, a man, nay, a 'Southron,' terrible, invincible, Yankee-hating. Will relief never come? Where are those seventy-five thousand? Where is the Seventh? Officers in mufti are known to have been sent out to Annapolis and Baltimore with orders and for news. Others arrive in Washington filled with strange and vague tidings of impending disaster. But as yet these doves have no news save of the deluge. Presently an early reveillé startles us from our beds of soft plank, and, as we fall in sleepily, fagged and exhausted in mind and body by this work, so new and so trying, we are electrified by the hoarse croak of Sergeant Files—he too is used up. 'Volunteers to go beyond the District,' step two paces t'the front—H'rch!' Four men remain in the ranks. All eyes turn to this shabby remnant, but they remain immovable, with the leaden expression belonging to the victims of the Confederate lexicon, that seems to say, unaccused, 'I am not ashamed.' These men are instantly detailed for guard duty at the armory for the next twenty-four hours.
The rest of us reach the railway station shortly after daylight, are told off into platoons, and embarked on the train which the hissing engine announces to be waiting for us. Our comrades in this adventure are Captain Hoblitzel's company, the 'Swartz-Jägers,' brawny mechanics, sturdy Teutons, and all of a size. These are Germans, remember, not what we call Hessians; not the kind that are destined to make Pennsylvania a byword; not the kind that advance in clogs but retreat in seven-league boots. We part from our German friends with a rousing cheer, as heartily returned, at a bridge which they are to guard. Then we have the cars to ourselves. Surely this is the ne plus ultra of railway travelling; free tickets and a whole seat to yourself. We are to keep our rifles out of sight, unless an emergency arises. The funny men play conductor, announcing familiar stations in unintelligible roars, and singing out 'Tickets!' importunately. This is our first real danger. There is real excitement in this. We all hope there will be a fight; all except Smallweed, who remains melancholy, according to his wont, save when a sad pun breaks the surface into a temporary ripple of quiet smiles. And so, with wild jokes, mad capers, and loudly shouted songs, we whirl along, twenty miles an hour, over bridges, through cuts, above embankments, always through danger and into danger. Hoot, toot! shrieks the engine; the breaks are rasped down; the train slowly consumes its momentum in vainly trying to stop suddenly. Silence reigns. Every man nervously, as by instinct, grasps his rifle, half cocks it, looks to the cap, and thrusts his head out of the window. A shout: 'There they are!' 'Where?' Several of the more nervous rifle barrels protrude uncertainly from the windows. 'Steady men, steady!' from the clear voice of Captain Pipes. 'I see them.' 'There they are.' 'Three of them.' 'One of them has on gray clothes, and—'
'The Seventh, by——!' rings in every ear. No matter who said it. 'The Seventh,' every throat shouts. Then such a cheer, and such another, and such another after that, and such a tiger after that, and such other cheers and such other tigers!—until the train stops, and, regardless of orders, unheeding the vain protests of the captain or the curses of the lieutenants, or the objurgations of Sergeant Files, we rush madly, pellmell, from the cars. Everybody shakes hands with the Seventh man, and with everybody else. He is thirsty: sixty odd flasks are uncorked and jammed at him. Hungry, too? The men hustle him into the cars, and almost into the barrels of pork and bread, with which we came provided in quantities sufficient, as we thought in our simplicity, for a siege, though really, as I have since found reason to believe, amounting to less than a thousand rations.
'Where is the Seventh?' 'At the Junction.' We are only a mile from the Junction. All aboard again, and we steam up to the Junction, just in time to see the leading companies file into the station, from their historical march—famous from being the first of the war, twice famous because Winthrop told its story; in time to see the Eighth Massachusetts follow our favorite heroes; in time to bring the Seventh to Washington; in time thus to terminate the dark hours of anxious suspense and doubt that followed the 19th of April and the drawing of the first blood in the streets of Baltimore.
Dulness succeeds this spurt of glory, and there is nothing more interesting than guarding the Long Bridge or a steamboat, alternating with drills, drills, drills! We are initiated into the mystery of the double quick, under knapsacks and overcoats. Men begin to be detailed on extra duty. More men are detailed on extra duty. Doctor Peacack makes his appearance. The sick list becomes an institution. It is curious to notice how the same men, detailed for guard, police, or fatigue, appear on the sick list, and, being excused by the mild Peacack, straightway reappear in the 'cocktail squad.' But a wink, as good as a nod, from the captain, and the fragrant oil of the castor bean, prescribed to be taken on the spot, soon corrects these little discrepancies. The guardhouse becomes an institution. Todd second is a frequent inmate; he will drink. Swilliams is another, who takes a drink, and becomes insane; takes another, and becomes sick; takes another, and then a quiet snooze, with his head resting on the nearest curb. We call these unfortunates 'Company Q;' a splendid joke. The captain drills us as far as 'On the right, by file, into line,' and apparently can get no farther. So we think, and that the first lieutenant kn=ows twice much as the captain. And, oh! how we come to hate Sergeant Files, and his hard, carking voice, always rasping somebody about something! We have been in service a month. The city is full of troops; the heights back are covered with camps; the 'Fire Zouaves' have introduced the Five Points to our acquaintance; General Blankhed is still giving passes to go to Richmond; the enemy's pickets stare at ours from other end of Long Bridge; nobody is hurt as yet. Presently comes an order constituting the 'American Sharpshooters,' the 'Fisler Guards,' the Union Carbineers,' the 'Seward Cadets,' and the 'Bulger Guards,' a battalion, to be known as the Ninth Battalion (did I say there were only eight? no matter) of the First Regiment of District of Columbia Volunteers, and to be commanded by Major Johnson Heavysterne, the beau ideal of a militia major—fat, pompous, not much acquainted with military, but, to use his own vocabulary, knowing right smart in the fish and cheese line. But let me deal kindly with the honest old soul; he meant well, but he had bad luck; and he made me, Private William Jenkins, the writer of these disjointed phrases, sergeant-major of the battalion. Whereof, kind reader, more anon: for here I left off my scales and sewed on my chevrons. (That is, she did. Please see Part II.)
THE SACRIFICE
The blood that flows for freedom is God's blood!
Who dies for man's redemption, dies with Christ!
The plan of expiation is unchanged:
And, as One died, supremely good, for all,
So one dies still, that many more may live.
So fall our saviours on the bloody field,
In deadly swamps, along the foul lagoons,
On the long march, in crowded hospitals,
Of wounds, of weariness, of pain and thirst,
Of wasting fevers and of sudden plagues,
Of pestilence, that lurks within the camp,
Of long home-sickness, and of hope deferred,
Of languishing, in hostile prisons chained—
And, with their blood, they wash the nation clean,
And furnish expiation for the sin
That those who slay them have been guilty of.
So God selects the noblest of the land:
He culls the qualities that are His own—
Our courage, patience, love of human kind,
Our strong devotion to the cause of Right,
Our noblest aspirations for the time
When every man shall stand erect and free,
Self-elevated, God-appointed king!
Knowing no equals, save his brother men;
Ruling no lieges, save his own desires;
The undisputed sovereign of himself,
Owning no higher sovereignty but God.
God culls these qualities, that are Himself—
These sparks of Deity that live in man—
And, in man's person, offers up Himself,
A long, perpetual sacrifice for sin.
This is the plan—the changeless plan of Heav'n:
The good die, that the evil may be purged;
The noble perish, that the base may live;
The free are bound, that slaves may break their bonds;
Those who have happy homes are self-exiled,
That other exiles may have happy homes;
The bravest sons of Freedom's land are slain,
That the oppressed of tyrant realms may live;
The guilty land is washed in innocent blood;
And slavery is atoned for by the free.
Oh! desolate mother, wailing for thy son,
Be comforted. He was a chosen one.
The Lord selected him from other men,
Because the Eternal Eye discerned in him
Some noble attribute, some spark divine,
Some unseen quality, that was from God,
And is a part of God, howe'er obscured
By human weakness, or by human sin—
Something deemed worthy for the sacrifice
That shall redeem a nation. Weep no more;
For thou art blessed among womankind!
STRECK-VERSE.
The heart freezes upon the snowcapped summit of a mountain of learning.
Lead heads will not answer as plummets to fathom the depths of the Infinite.
Charitable views are enlarged by tear mists.
Thorns form footholds by which to reach the rose.
Looking up to the sun, the sad behold rainbows through their tears.
THE UNDIVINE COMEDY.—A POLISH DRAMA.
Dedicated to Mary.
'To be, or not to be, that is the question.'
'To the accumulated errors of their ancestors, they added others unknown to their predecessors Doubt and Fear;—therefore it came to pass that they vanished from the face of the earth, and a deep silence shrouded them forever.'—Koran il. 18.
In offering to the public a translation of the great drama of Count Sigismund Krasinski, a statesman and poet of Poland, it is not the intention of the translator to enter upon any detailed analysis of this widely and justly celebrated work. Such a dissection would diminish the interest of the reader in the development of the plot, and moreover pertains properly to the critics, to whom 'The Undivine Comedy' is especially commended. It is so full of original and subtile thoughts, of profound truths, of metaphysical deductions and psychological divinations, that it cannot fail to repay any consideration they may bestow upon it. A few general remarks, however, seem necessary to introduce it, in its proper light, to the reader.
It was published in 1834, and, although it appeared anonymously, it at once succeeded in attracting the attention of the readers and thinkers of Poland, Russia, France, and Germany. Its author is now known to have been Count Sigismund Krasinski, a member of one of the most ancient and distinguished families of Poland. He was equally eminent as poet, patriot, and statesman. He took an active and important part in the social and political questions of his day, many of which are ably discussed in this drama; questions which have so long disturbed the peace of Europe, and whose solution is perhaps to be finally given in our land of equality and freedom.
'The Undivine Comedy' was not intended for the stage, and, as if to sever it as widely as possible from all scenic associations, Count Krasinski makes no use of the terms 'scenes' or 'acts.' This omission gives a somewhat singular appearance to what is, in fact, a drama; the translator has, however, remained faithful throughout to the original form. As the hero, the count, is styled 'The Man' throughout the original, the name has been preserved, in spite of its awkward appearance in English: the spirit of a poetic work, full of mystic symbolism, evaporates so readily in the process of translation, that no sacrifice of the literal meaning has been made to grace or elegance.
'The Undivine Comedy,' so called in contradistinction to 'The Divine Comedy' of Dante, is the first purely prophetic play occurring in the world of art. Its scenes are indeed all laid in the time to come; its persons, actions, and events are yet to be. The struggle of the dying Past with the vigorous but immature Future, forms the groundwork of the drama. The coloring is not local, nor characteristic of any country in particular, because the truths to be illustrated are of universal application, and are evolving their own solutions in all parts of the civilized world.
The soul of the hero, 'The Man,' is great and vigorous; he is by nature a poet. Belonging to the Future by the very essence of his being, he yet becomes disgusted by the debasing materialism into which its living exponents, the 'New Men, have fallen, he loses all hope in the possible progress of humanity, and is presented to us as the champion of the dying but poetic Past. But in this he finds no rest, and is involved in perpetual struggles and contradictions. Baffled in a consuming desire to solve the perplexing religious and social problems of the day by the force of his own intellect; longing for, yet despairing of, human progress; discerning the impracticability and chicanery of most of the modern plans for social amelioration—he determines to throw himself into common life, to bind himself to his race by stringent laws and duties. The drama opens when he is about to contract marriage.
His Guardian Angel, anxious to save him, tries to lead him, through the accomplishment of human duties, safely into that mystic Future, which he had already vainly tried to find through the power of his own intellect. The Angel chants to him:
'Peace be to men of good will. Blessed is the man who has still a heart; he may yet be saved!
'Pure and true wife, reveal thyself to him; and a child be born to their house!'
Thus the words once heard by the shepherds, and which then announced a new epoch to humanity, open the drama. It is indeed only 'men of good will,' men who sincerely seek the truth, who, in great or new epochs, are able to comprehend it, or willing to receive it. And the number of those who have preserved a heart during the excitement and passions of such eras, is always very small, and without it they cannot be saved, for love and self-abnegation are the essence of Christianity.
To instil new life and hope into the wearied 'Man,' the Angel ordains that a pure and good woman shall join her fate with his; that innocent young souls shall descend and dwell with them. Domestic love and quiet bliss are the counsel of the heavenly visitant.
Immediately after the simple chant of the Guardian Angel, the voice of the Evil Spirit is heard seducing 'The Man' from the quiet path of humble human duties. The glories of the ideal realm are spread before him; Nature is invoked with all her entrancing charms; ambitious desires of terrestrial greatness are awakened in his soul; he is filled with vague hopes of paradisiacal happiness, which the Demon whispers him it is quite possible to establish on earth. In the temptations so cunningly set before him by the Father of Lies, three widely-spread metaphysical systems are shadowed forth: the ideal or poetic; the pantheistic; and the anthropotheistic (Comte's), which deifies man. The vast symbolism of this original drama is especially recommended to the attention of the critic.
Abiding by the counsel of the Angel, our hero marries, thus involving another in his fate. He makes a solemn vow to be faithful, in the keeping of which vow he takes upon himself the responsibility of the happiness of one of God's creatures, a pure and trusting woman, who loves him well. A husband and a father, he breaks his oath. Tempted by the phantom of a long-lost love, the Ideal under the form of a 'Maiden,' he deserts the real duties he has assumed to pursue this Ideal, personated indeed by Lucifer himself, and which becomes—true and fearful lesson for those who seek the infinite in the human!—a loathsome skeleton as soon as grasped. From the false and disappointing search into which he had been enticed by the demon, he returns to find the innocent wife, whom he had deserted, in a madhouse. False to human duties, his punishment came fast upon the heels of crime.
In the scene which occurs in Bedlam we find the key which admits us to much of the symbolism of this drama. We are conducted into the madhouse to visit the broken-hearted wife, and are there introduced into our still-existing society, formal, monotonous, cold, and about to be dissolved. Our hero had himself married the Past, a good and devout woman, but not the realization of his poetic dreams, which nothing could have satisfied save the infinite. In the midst of this scene of strange suffering, we hear the cries of the Future, and all is terror and tumult. This Future, with its turbulence, blood, and demonism, is represented as existing in its germs among the maniacs. Like the springs of a volcanic mountain, which are always disturbed before an eruption of fire, their cries break upon us; the broken words and shrill shrieks of the madmen are the clouds of murky smoke which burst from the explosive craters before the lava pours its burning flood. Voices from the right, from the left, from above, from below, represent the conflicting religious opinions and warring political parties of this dawning Future, already hurtling against those of the dissolving Present.
Into this pandemonium, by his desertion of her for a vain ideal, our hero has plunged his wife, the woman of the Past, whom he had sworn to make happy. And it is to be observed that she was not necessarily his inferior, but, in the world of heart, superior to himself. A true and pure character, feeling its inferiority and anxious to advance, cannot long remain in the background; it has sufficient stamina to attain the height of self-abnegating greatness. God sometimes deprives men of the strength necessary for action, but He never robs them of the faculty of progress, of spiritual elevation. Head and heart throb with the same pulsation; the brain thinks not aright without the healthful heart. Meanness and grovelling are always voluntary, and their essence is to resist superiority, to struggle against it, to try to degrade it: thus, all the bitter reactions of the Past against the changes truly needed for the development of the Future, spring from a primeval root of baseness.
An admirable picture of an exhausted and dying society is given us in the person of the precocious but decrepit child, the sole fruit of a sad marriage. Destined from its birth, to an early grave, its excitable imagination soon consumes its frail body. Nothing could be more exquisitely tender, more true to nature, than the portraiture of this unfortunate but lovely boy.
After the betrayal of our hero by his Ideal, the Guardian Angel again appears to give him simple but sage counsel:
'Return to thy house, and sin no more!
'Return to thy house, and love thy child!'
But vain this sage advice! As if driven to the desert to be tempted, we again meet our hero in the midst of storm and tempest, wildly communing with Nature, trying to read in her changeful phenomena lessons he should have sought in the depths of his own soul; seeking from her dumb lips oracles only to be found in his fulfilment of sacred duties; for only thus is to be solved the perplexing riddle of human destiny. 'Peace to men of good will!' Roaming through the wilderness, sad and hopeless, and in his despair about to fall into the gloomy and blighting sin of caring for no one but himself, the Angel again appears, and again chants to him the divine lesson that only in self-sacrificing love and lowly duties, can the true path to the Future be found:
'Love the sick, the hungry, the despairing!
'Love thy neighbor, thy poor neighbor, as thyself, and thou wilt be redeemed!'
The reiterated warning is again given in vain. The demon of ambition then appears to him under the form of a gigantic eagle, whose wings stir him like the cannon's roar, the trumpet's call; he yields to the temptation, and the Guardian Angel pleads no more! He determines to become great, renowned, to rule over men: political power is to console him for the domestic ruin he has spread around him, in having preferred the dreams of his own excited imagination, to the love and faith of the simple but tender heart which God had confided to him in the holy bonds of marriage. The love and deification of self in the delusive show of military or political glory, is the lowest and last temptation into which a noble soul can fall, for individual fame is preferred to God's eternal justice, and men are willing to die, if only laurel crowned, with joy and pride even in a bad cause.
In the beginning of the third part of the comedy we are introduced into the 'new world.' The old world, with its customs, prejudices, oppressions, charities, laws, has been almost destroyed. The details of the struggle, which must have been long and dreadful, are not given to us; they are to be divined. Several years are supposed to have passed between the end of the second and the beginning of the third part, and we are called to witness the triumphs of the victors, the tortures of the vanquished. The character of the idol of the people is an admirable conception. All that is negative and destructive in the revolutionary tendencies of European society, is skilfully seized upon, and incarnated in a single individual. His mission is to destroy. He possesses a great intellect, but no heart. He says: "Of the blood we shed to-day, no trace will be left to-morrow." In corroboration of this conception of the character of a modern reformer, it is well known that most of the projected reforms of the last century have proceeded from the brains of logicians and philosophers.
This man of intellect succeeds in grasping power. His appearance speaks his character. His forehead is high and angular, his head entirely bald, his expression cold and impassible, his lips never smile—he is of the same type as many of the revolutionary leaders during the French reign of terror. His name is Pancratius, which name, from the Greek, signifies the union of all material or brutal forces. It is not by chance that he has received this name. The profound truth in which this character is conceived is also manifested in his distrust of himself, in his hesitation. As he is acting from false principles, he cannot deceive himself into that enthusiastic faith with which he would fain inspire his disciples. He confides in Leonard, because he is in possession of this precious quality.
His monologue is very fine; perhaps it stands next in rank to that of Hamlet. It opens to us the strange secrets of the irresolution and vacillation which have always characterized the men who have been called upon by fate alone to undertake vast achievements. In proof of this, it is well known that Cromwell was anxious to conceal the doubts and fears which constantly harassed him. It was these very doubts and fears which led him to see and resee so frequently the dethroned Charles, and which at last drove the conscience-stricken Puritan into the sepulchre of the decapitated king, that he might gaze into the still face of the royal victim, whose death he had himself effected. Did the sad face of the dead calm the fears of the living?
It is well known, that Danton addressed to himself the most dreadful reproaches. Even, at the epoch of his greatest power, Robespierre was greatly annoyed because he could not convince his cook of the justice and permanence of his authority. Men who are sent by Providence only to destroy, feel within them the worm which gnaws forever: it constantly predicts to them, in vague but gloomy presentiments, their own approaching destruction.
A feeling of this nature urges Pancratius to seek an interview with his most powerful enemy, 'The Man;' he is anxious to gain the confidence of his adversary, because he cannot feel certain of his own course while a single man of intellectual power exists capable of resisting his ideas. In the interview which occurs between the two antagonistic leaders of the Past and Future, the various questions which divide society, literature, religion, philosophy, politics, are discussed. Is it not a profound truth that in the real world also, mental encounters always precede material combats; that men always measure their strength, spirit to spirit, before they meet in external fact, body to body? The idea of bringing two vast systems face to face through living and highly dramatic personifications, is truly great, suggestive, and original.
But as the Truth is neither in the camp of Pancratius nor in the feudal castle of the count, our hero, the victory will profit neither party!
The opening of the last act is exceedingly beautiful. No painter could reproduce on canvas the sublime scenery sketched in its prologue; more gloomy than the pictures of Ruysdael, more sombre than those of Salvator Rosa. Before describing the inundation of the masses, our author naturally recalls the traditions of the Flood. The nobles, the representatives of the Past, with their few surviving adherents, have taken refuge in their last stronghold, the fortress of the Holy Trinity, securely situated upon a high and rocky peak overhanging a deep valley, surrounded and hedged in by steep cliffs and rocky precipices. Through these straits and passes once howled and swept the waters of the deluge. As wild an inundation is now upon them, for the valley is almost filled with the living surges of the myriads of the 'New Men,' who are rolling their millions into its depths. But everything is hidden from view by an ocean of heavy vapor, wrapping the whole landscape in its white, chill, clinging shroud. The last and only banner of the Cross now raised upon the face of the earth, streams from the highest tower of the castle of the Holy Trinity; it alone pierces through and floats above the cold, vague, rayless heart of the sea of mist—nought save the mystic symbol of God's love to man soars into the unclouded blue of the infinite sky!
After frequent defeats, after the loss of all hope, the hero, wishing to embrace for the last time his sick and blind son, sends for the precocious boy, whose death-hour is to strike before his own. I doubt if the scene which then occurs has, in the whole range of fiction and poetry, ever been surpassed. This poor boy, the son of an insane mother and a poet-father, is gifted with supernatural faculties, endowed with second or spiritual sight. Entirely blind, and consequently surrounded by perpetual darkness, it mattered not to him if the light of day or the gloom of midnight was upon the earth; and in his rayless wanderings he had made his way into the dungeons, sepulchres, and vaults, which were lying far below the foundations of the castle, and which had for centuries served as places of torture, punishment, and death to the enemies of his long and noble line. In these secret charnel houses were buried the bodies of the oppressed, while in the haughty tombs around and above them lay the bones of their oppressors. The unfortunate and fragile boy, the last sole scion of a long line of ancestry, had there met the thronging and complaining ghosts of past generations. Burdened with these dreadful secrets, when his vanquished father seeks him to embrace him for the last time, he shudderingly hints to him of fearful knowledge, and induces his parent to accompany him into the subterranean caverns. He then recounts to him the scenes which are passing before his open vision among the dead. The spirits of those who had been chained, tortured, oppressed, or victimized by his ancestors appear before him, complaining of past cruelties. They then form a mystic tribunal to try their old masters and oppressors; the scenes of the dreadful Day of Judgment pass before him; the unhappy and loving boy at last recognizes his own father among the criminals; he is dragged to that fatal bar, he sees him wring his hands in anguish, he hears his dreadful groans as he is given over to the fiends for torture—he hears his mother's voice calling him above, but, unwilling to desert his father in his anguish, he falls to the earth in a deep and long fainting fit, while the wretched father hears his own doom pronounced by that dread but unseen tribunal: 'Because thou hast loved nothing, nor revered aught but thyself and thine own thoughts, thou art damned to all eternity!'
It is true this scene is very brief, but, rapid as the lightning's flash, it lasts long enough to scathe and blast, breaking the darkness but to show the surrounding horror, to deepen into despair the fearful gloom. Although of the most severe simplicity, it is sublime and terrible. It is so concise that our hearts actually long for more, unwilling to believe in the reality of the doom of that ghostly tribunal. It repeats the awful lessons of Holy Writ, and our conscience awakes to our deficiencies, while the marrow freezes in our bones as we read.
The close of the drama is equally sublime. Because the 'Truth' was neither in the camp of Pancratius nor the castle of the count, IT appears in the clouds to confound them both.
After Pancratius has conquered all that opposed him—has triumphantly gloated over his Fourieristic schemes for the material well-being of the race whom he has robbed of all higher faith—he grows agitated at the very name of God when it falls from the lips of his confidant, Leonard: the sound seems to awaken him to a consciousness that he is standing in a sea of blood, which he has himself shed; he feels that he has been nothing but an instrument of destruction, that he has done certain evil for a most uncertain good. All this rushes rapidly upon him, when, on the bosom of a crimson sunset cloud, he perceives a mystic symbol, unseen save by himself: 'the extended arms are lightning flashes, the three nails shine like stars—his eyes die out as he gazes upon it—he falls dead to the earth, crying, in the strange words spoken by the apostate emperor Julian with his parting breath: 'Vicisti Galilee!' Thus this grand and complex drama is really consecrated to the glory of the Galilean!
The intense melancholy characterizing every page of this drama, has its root in the character and intensity of the truths therein developed, and is not manifested in artistic declamation, in highly wrought phrases, or in glowing rhetorical passages proper for citation. It is as bitter as life; as gloomy as death and judgment. The style is one of utter, almost bald, simplicity. The situations are merely indicated, and the characters are to be understood, as are those of the living, rather from a few words in close connection with accompanying facts, than from eloquent utterances, sharp invectives, or bitter complaints. There are no highly wrought amplifications of imaginative passions to be found in its condensed pages, but every word is in itself a drop of gall, reflecting from its sphered surface a world of grief, of agony. The characters pass before us like shadows thrown from a magic lantern, showing only their profiles, and but rarely their entire forms. Flitting rapidly o'er our field of vision, they leave us but a few lines, but so true to nature, so deeply significant, that we are able to produce from these shifting and evanescent shadows a complete and rounded image. Thus we are enabled to form a vivid conception of every character—we know the history of their past, we divine the part they will play in the future. We know the friends, the godfather, the priest, in whom we find an admirable sketch from a decomposed and dying society. He who, in a proper state of things, would have been the representative of living spiritual principles, is a mere supernumerary. He makes signs of the cross, pronounces accustomed formulas, but he never once thinks of examining into the strange and contradictory relations existing between the husband, forced by his very being into the Future, and the wife, fettered by the conventions and chains of the Past. Neither does he study, with an eye enlightened by philanthropy and spirituality, the poor infant, whose mental restlessness began in the cradle, although his character and destiny seem to have been comprehended by the father. The priest, however, remains cold and indifferent throughout, never once seeking to render the two beings, whom he had himself united in a sacramental bond, intelligible to each other, nor to save the unfortunate boy brought to him for baptism, the sole fruit of this unhappy marriage.
Our author also stigmatizes the whole medical art of our day as a science of death and moral torture. While the anguished father tries to penetrate the decrees of Providence, and in his agony demands from God how the innocent and helpless infant can have deserved a punishment so dreadful as the loss of sight, the doctor admires the strength of the nerves and muscles of the blue eyes of the fair child, at the same time announcing to his father that he is struck with total and hopeless blindness. Immediately after the declaration of this fearful sentence, he turns to the distressed parent to ask him if he would like to know the name of this malady, and that in Greek it is called αμαὑρωσις
Indeed, through the whole of this melancholy scene, only one human being manifests any deep moral feeling—a woman, a servant! Falling upon her knees, she prays the Holy Virgin to take her eyes, and place them in the sightless sockets of the young heir, her fragile but beloved charge. Thus it is a woman of the people who, in the midst of the corrupt and dissolving society, alone preserves the sacred traditions of sympathy and self-sacrifice.
The cruel tyranny of Pancratius and the mob, is also full of important lessons. From it we gather that despotism does not consist in the fact of the whole power being vested in the hands of one or many, but in the truth that a government is without love for the governed, whatever may be its constitutional form. One or many, an assembly of legislators or a king, an oligarchy or a mob, may be equally despotic, if love be not the ruling principle.
With these few remarks, some of them necessary for a full comprehension of this subtile and many-sided Polish drama, we leave the reader to the pleasant task of its perusal.
He will find a full and eloquent criticism, in which its faults and beauties are ably discussed, in a course of 'Lectures on Sclavonic Literature,' delivered by the Polish poet Mickiewicz, before the College of France. Most of the above remarks have been condensed from his valuable work.