THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

Literature and National Policy.

Vol. II.—NOVEMBER, 1862.—No. VI.

CONTENTS

THE UNION.

III.

On the 10th of April last, upon the recommendation of the President of the United States, Congress offered pecuniary aid to such States as would gradually abolish slavery within their limits. The colonization, from time to time, of the manumitted slaves, with their consent, by the Government, beyond our boundaries, was also contemplated as a part of the system. By the President's proclamation of September last, this offer is still made to loyal States, and practical measures suggested for carrying it into execution. As to the States persisting in rebellion after the close of this year, the President, as a military necessity, has announced a different measure, that is, general emancipation in all such States, with compensation only to loyal masters. Immediate emancipation of all slaves, with compensation for all, costing, as it would, twelve hundred millions of dollars, is now beyond the power of the Government, burdened as it is by an enormous and increasing debt. Nor was such a measure ever wise or expedient. That subject I will discuss hereafter, but will speak now of the plan proposed by the President, and sanctioned by Congress on the 10th of April last.

If this measure seems slow in securing total manumission and colonization, it would be progressive and certain. God works out the destiny of nations by no sudden or spasmodic action. His great and beneficent changes are generally slow and gradual, but when he wills destruction, it is sudden as the lightning's flash, the crash of the earthquake, or the sweep of the hurricane, marked by ruin and desolation. Would we avoid like disasters in solving this stupendous problem, we must follow, in humble faith, the ways of God, and thus by gentle, but constant and successive movements, reach the grand result.

History, however, exhibits a few extraordinary cases, in which man, as an instrument in the hands of Providence, sometimes punishes great crimes, eradicates great evils, and accomplishes great national reforms by acts as sudden as the devastating career of the tempest in sweeping away pestilential vapors. Such may be the case with the revolted States, if they should persist in this wicked rebellion beyond the close of the period of solemn warning.

The coming year may be the great crisis of human destiny. It may see our rivers, like those of Egypt, turned into blood. It may witness similar loathsome plagues, and pestilence, and fiery hail, and darkness palpable. But may it never behold the dread work of the destroying angel as of old, at the midnight hour, in every dwelling whose lintels were unmarked by the typical blood of the Paschal sacrifice! Avoiding the last dread scene of the great Egyptian drama, may we have, not the Jewish Passover, but the grand American jubilee, when we may hail the South redeemed from the curse of slavery, and forever united with the North, as the one blessed home of universal freedom.

As the South was as earnest as the North in protesting against the landing upon our shores of the first cargo of African slaves, and the continuance of the traffic so long forced upon us under the British flag, and as they all united in excluding the word 'slave' from the Federal Constitution, so will they ultimately coöperate in expunging from our system the institution of slavery.

I shall discuss this question as to the border States under no sectional or party aspect, no influence of passion or prejudice, or any motive but the desire to promote the good of my country. Our national and material interests must be fully considered, as also those great moral principles and intellectual developments which exalt and dignify the character of man. I shall examine the subject inductively and deductively, the facts and the causes.

That a return to the Union with gradual emancipation and colonization by the rebel States would be best for them and for us is certain. But in justice to loyal citizens and communities, and to avoid the danger of foreign intervention by prolonging the contest, it is our duty, after the close of this year, to withdraw the slaves in the rebel States from the culture of the crops used to support their armies, which can only be done by general emancipation in such States persisting then in the rebellion. This is a necessary war measure, designed, like battles or blockades, to suppress the rebellion (alike ruinous to North and South), and which must no longer be permitted to accumulate an immense debt and oppressive taxation, and to exhaust our blood and treasure. The census shows that very few slaves are held by the deluded masses of the South, that the slaveholders are few in number; and full compensation is contemplated by Congress and the President, in all cases of the manumission by us of the slaves of loyal citizens.

By the census of 1790, all the sixteen States then enumerated held slaves, except Massachusetts (then including Maine, although numbered separately), where the institution was abolished by a judicial construction of their constitution of 1780. The following table, from the census, shows the gradual disappearance of slavery from seven of these States, the remaining eight States still continuing the institution:

Illinois, by her constitution of 1818, continued slavery in the State, but declared that 'children hereafter born shall be free.' An effort was made in Congress to defeat the admission of Illinois, on the ground that its constitution 'did not conform to the ordinance of 1787.' But it was then decided by the House of Representatives (117 to 54) that 'the ordinance did not extend to States.' In the Senate the vote was unanimous. (See Niles's Register, vol. xix. p. 30.) Rhode Island adopted the Pennsylvania system. Connecticut declared free, at the age of 26, all born after the 1st March, 1784. Indiana pursued in its results the course of Illinois. By the census, Illinois had 917 slaves in 1820, 747 in 1830, 331 in 1840; and Indiana had 190 slaves in 1820, 3 in 1830, and 3 in 1840. New York in 1799 continued in bondage the slaves then living, but those born after the date of the law were emancipated at the age of 28; and in New Jersey, the males at 25 and the females at 21. This slow and gradual process in States having so few slaves, should inculcate kinder and more indulgent feelings as to those loyal communities where the slaves are so much more numerous, and the time and mode of action so vital.

The great model act of gradual emancipation, drawn by Benjamin Franklin, the great leader on this question, approved by the Quakers, and adopted by Pennsylvania in 1780, liberated all the descendants of slaves born after that date within the limits of the State. To avoid circumlocution, I shall call those born before the date of emancipating laws the ante nati, and those born after the date of such laws, post nati.

I shall consider first the question of gradual emancipation and colonization in connection with Maryland, and afterward apply the same principles to other States.

If the Pennsylvania system of liberating immediately only the post nati, so much more liberal than that of most of the free States, were adopted by Maryland, the cost of manumission there would be very small. In the execution of the emancipation act of Congress in this District, infant slaves were valued officially this year by sworn experts at $50 each. Now by the census of 1860, the infant slaves of Maryland, under one year old, surviving on the 1st June, 1860, numbered 2,391, which, at $50 each, would cost $119,550. This would be the actual expense for the first year in Maryland, but decreasing every year, and ceasing altogether in little more than a generation. Now the total number of slaves under one year of age, born in all the slave States, and surviving on the 1st June, 1860, was, by the census, 113,581, which, at $50 each, would cost $5,679,050, for the first year, and decreasing annually as above stated. The post nati numbered in Delaware 40, in Kentucky 7,281, in Missouri 3,377, and in Virginia 13,850, making the first year's cost as follows:

Now then, applying this principle to Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri, the cost, the first year, would be $654,450, and, if we included Virginia, $1,346,950. This sum, we have seen, would decrease every year. According then to the annual tables, and those of expectancies of life (as calculated for me), the sum of fifteen millions of dollars of United States stock, issued now, and bearing interest at the rate of six per cent, per annum, would make all the border States free States, in the same sense in which Pennsylvania and other Northern free States became so; and less than half this sum, if Virginia should not adopt the measure. The case, then, as regards the border States, presents no financial difficulty whatever. If this plan were adopted, the same just and humane course would doubtless be pursued as in the North, by which the emancipated post nati would remain apprentices until they reached twenty-one years of age, under the same regulations, mainly, as were applicable to white children, bound out by the overseers of the poor. Should the border States consent to proceed more rapidly, I have no doubt the Government would cheerfully pay to loyal masters such additional sum as would give freedom to every slave in all the border States, on the 4th of July, 1876, our first centennial anniversary of the Declaration of American Independence. That day, then, already so distinguished in the annals of humanity, would become the great epoch in the history of our race.

And now let us examine the cost of all these measures. If the seceded States, including Virginia, should persist in the rebellion until after the close of this year, the sum to be paid the loyal owners of slaves manumitted under the President's war proclamation would probably reach $100,000,000. The emancipation of the post nati, in the four remaining border States, would cost §7,288,132. The manumission in those States, of all the surviving slaves, on the 4th July, 1876, according to the same tables and estimates, would cost a sum equal to $65,000,000, issued now as United States six per cent. stock, making a total for complete emancipation in all the slave States of $172,288,132. This is a smaller sum than four months' cost of the war, whilst wholly and forever removing the discordant element which produced the rebellion, commencing a new and glorious career of material, moral, and intellectual progress, greatly exalting the character of the nation, invoking the blessing of God, securing the future harmony and perpetuity of the Union, and the ultimate fraternity of man. Never, before, would any nation have made so grand an investment in the gratitude of emancipated millions, the thanks of a world redeemed from bondage, the applause of the present age and of posterity—the exchequer of time and eternity. It would live forever in history, and the recording angel would inscribe it in God's eternal archives. Statesmen, scholars, savans, philosophers, poets, patriots, orators, and divines would proclaim its glory. The new drama of man's political redemption would be witnessed by the audience of the world. Music would chant its praise in every clime, and all peoples would swell the chorus. The painter would give it immortality, and the sculptor monuments more enduring than the pyramids, statues more godlike and sublime than ever crowned Grecian Parthenon, or adorned with Parian marble the temples of Augustan Rome. The press would glow with enthusiasm, and the procession of nations march in the grand ovation, not to national airs, or under national banners, but under the world's new flag, and to the music of the world's new anthem of universal freedom and regenerated man.

The census proves that our progress as a nation has been greatly retarded by slavery. If the North had retained, and the South had abolished slavery, their relative positions would have been reversed. Virginia would have taken the place of New York, Maryland of Massachusetts, Delaware of Rhode Island, Kentucky of Ohio, Missouri of Illinois, and Tennessee of Indiana.

I begin with Maryland, because, in proportion to her area, she has greater natural advantages than any one of the thirty-four States, and, if the comparison with the free States is most unfavorable to her, it will be more so as to any other Southern State, as the census shows that, from 1790 to 1860, and from 1850 to 1860, Maryland increased in population per square mile more rapidly than any other slaveholding State.

Maryland borders for two hundred miles the great free State of Pennsylvania, and Delaware one hundred and thirty miles, whose slaves have decreased from 8,887 in 1790, to 1,798 in 1860, and where slavery now exists in name only. Delaware, like Maryland, is also a loyal State, and would be the last to leave the Union, which it was her glory first to enter under the Constitution of 1787. On the west, Maryland is bounded by Preston county, Virginia, containing in 1860 a free population of 13,312, and 67 slaves only. Western Virginia, bordering Maryland on the south, has voted with great unanimity to become a free State, and all appearances indicate that slavery will disappear from Virginia with the close of this year. Maryland then would be surrounded entirely by non-slaveholding States.

Within the heart of Maryland stands this District, where slavery is now abolished, producing serious losses and embarrassments to the State. The two counties of Prince George and Montgomery, adjoining this District, contained in 1860, 17,790 slaves, being more than one fifth of the slaves of the State. How long can slavery endure, and of what value is it in these counties, where every slave brought or sent to the District is free, and where it is already seriously contended that the language of the Constitution, 'slaves in one State, escaping into another,' cannot apply to this District? With the feeling so intensified already by this rebellion against slavery, it cannot long exist in Maryland. By advancing legislation, and public sentiment, the fugitive slave law is becoming inoperative, and slaves in Maryland are now held by a most precarious tenure. Indeed, unforeseen events, as this terrible rebellion progresses, may sweep slavery from Maryland without compensation or colonization.

But, independent of present or future perils, it is proposed to prove, mainly by the census, that all the material interests of Maryland would be greatly promoted by her prompt acceptance of the offer of Congress. We must consider the area, soil, climate, mines, hydraulic power, location, shore line, bays, sounds, and rivers, and such other causes as affect the advance of wealth and population.

The relative progress of Maryland has been slow indeed. The population of the Union, by the census of 1790, was 3,929,827, of which Maryland, containing then 319,728, constituted a twelfth part (12.29). In 1860, the Union numbered 31,445,080, and Maryland 687,034, constituting a forty-fifth part (45.76). In 1790, the free States numbered 1,968,455, Maryland's population then being equal to one sixth (6.12); but, in 1860, the population of the free States was 18,920,078, Maryland's number then being equal to one twenty-seventh part (27.52). But, if Maryland had increased as rapidly from 1790 to 1860 as the whole Union, her proportion, one twelfth part, would have made her numbers in 1860, 2,620,315; and if her proportional increase had equalled that of the free States, her ratio, one sixth, would have made her population in 1860, 3,153,392. She might not have reached either of these results; but, before closing these articles, it will be proved that, in the absence of slavery, her population, in 1860, would have been at least 1,755,661, or the same per square mile as Massachusetts; and Baltimore, bearing the same ratio to this number as to Maryland's present population, would have contained in 1860, 542,000, instead of 212,000, her present number.

I take the areas from the able report (November 29, 1860) of the Hon. Joseph S. Wilson, then Commissioner of the General Land Office, where they are for the first time accurately given, 'excluding the water surface.' The population is taken from the census, the tables of 1850 and 1860 being compiled with great ability, by the present superintendent, the Hon. J. C. G. Kennedy. I compare first Massachusetts and Maryland, because they are maritime and old States, and both in 1790 had nearly the same population, but, as will be shown hereafter, with vastly superior natural advantages in favor of Maryland.

Area of Maryland, 11,124 square miles; shore line, by tables of United States Coast Survey, viz.: main shore, including bays, sounds, &c., 503 miles, islands 298, rivers to head of tide water 535; total, 1,336 miles.

Area of Massachusetts, 7,800 square miles; shore lines, by tables of United States Coast Survey, viz.: main shore, including bays, sounds, &c., 435 miles, islands 259, rivers to head of tide water 70; total, 764 miles. When we mark the Potomac and its tributaries, the lower Susquehanna, the deep and numerous streams of the Chesapeake, the commercial advantages of Maryland over Massachusetts are vast indeed. Looking at the ocean shore of Maryland, and also at the Chesapeake bay, the largest and finest estuary in the world, indented with numerous sounds and navigable inlets, three fourths of its length for both shores being within Maryland, and compare this deep and tranquil and protected basin, almost one continuous harbor, with the rock-bound coast of Massachusetts, lashed by the stormy Atlantic, the superiority of Maryland is striking.

Mortality in Maryland, by the late census, viz.: deaths from 1st June, 1859, to 31st May, 1860, 7,370 persons. Same time in Massachusetts, 21,303; making the ratio of deaths to the number living in Maryland, one to every 92, and in Massachusetts one to every 57; and the percentage of deaths in Maryland 1.09, and in Massachusetts 1.76. This rate of mortality for Massachusetts is confirmed by the late official report of their Secretary of State to the Legislature.

As to area, then, Maryland exceeds Massachusetts 43 per cent.; as to the shore line, that of Maryland is nearly double that of Massachusetts, having 68 miles more of main shore, bays, and sounds, 38 miles more for islands, and nearly eight times the number of miles for rivers to head of tide water. As to climate, that of Maryland, we have seen, is far the most salubrious. This is a vast advantage, not only in augmented wealth and numbers, from fewer deaths, but also as attracting capital and immigration. This milder and more salubrious climate gives to Maryland longer periods for sowing, working, and harvesting crops, a more genial sun, larger products, and better and longer crop seasons, great advantages for stock, especially in winter, decreased consumption of fuel, a greater period for the use of hydraulic power, and of canals and navigable streams. The area of Maryland fit for profitable culture is more than double that of Massachusetts, the soil much more fertile, its mines of coal and iron, with the fluxes all adjacent, rich and inexhaustible; whereas Massachusetts has no coal, and no valuable mines of iron or fluxes. When we reflect that coal and iron are the great elements of modern progress, and build up mighty empires, this advantage of Maryland over Massachusetts is almost incalculable. The hydraulic power of Maryland also greatly exceeds that of Massachusetts. Such are the vast natural advantages of Maryland over Massachusetts. Now let us observe the results. Population of Maryland in 1790, 319,728; in 1860, 687,034; increase 367,300. Population of Massachusetts in 1790, 378,717; in 1860, 1,231,065—increase 852,348; difference of increase in favor of Massachusetts, 485,048; excess of Massachusetts over Maryland in 1790, 58,989, and in 1860, 544,031. This result is amazing, when we regard the far greater area of Maryland and her other vast natural advantages. The population of Maryland in 1790 was 28 to the square mile (28.74), and in 1860, 61 to the square mile (61.76); whereas Massachusetts had 48 to the square mile in 1790 (48.55), and 157 to the square mile in 1860 (157.82). Thus Massachusetts had only 20 more to the square mile in 1790, and 96 more to the square mile in 1860. But if the areas of Maryland and Massachusetts had been reversed, Massachusetts, with the area of Maryland, and the population of Massachusetts of 1860 to the square mile, would have numbered then 1,755,661, and Maryland, with the area of Massachusetts and the population of Maryland of 1860 to the square mile, would have had then a population of only 481,728 upon that basis, leaving Massachusetts in 1860, 1,273,393 more people than Maryland. Thus is the assertion in a former part of this article now proved, 'that in the absence of slavery, the population of Maryland in 1860 would have then been at least 1,755,661, and Baltimore at least 542,000.' But, in view of the many other natural advantages of Maryland, as shown in this article, viz.: in climate and salubrity, in shore line and navigable rivers, in fertility of soil, and hydraulic power, in a more central location for trade with the whole Union, and especially with the West, and nearer supplies of cotton, and, above all, in coal and iron, it is clear, in the absence of slavery, Maryland must have contained in 1860 a population of at least two millions. By the census of 1790, Massachusetts was the fourth in population of all the States, and Maryland the sixth; but in 1860, Massachusetts was the seventh, and Maryland the nineteenth; and if each of the thirty-four States increases in the same ratio from 1860 to 1870, as from 1850 to 1860, Maryland will be only the twenty-fifth State.

These facts all conclusively attest the terrible effects of slavery on Maryland, and this is only one of the dreadful sacrifices she has made in retaining the institution. As to wealth, power, and intellectual development, the loss cannot be overstated.

Nor can manufactures account for the difference, as shown by the still greater increase of the agricultural North-West. Besides, Maryland (omitting slavery) had far greater natural advantages for manufactures than Massachusetts. She had a more fertile soil, thus furnishing cheaper food to the working classes, a larger and more accessible coast, and nearly eight times the length of navigable rivers, greater hydraulic power, vast superiority in mines of coal and iron, a far more salubrious climate, cotton, the great staple of modern industry, much nearer to Maryland, her location far more central for trade with the whole Union, and Baltimore, her chief city, nearer than Boston to the great West, viz,: to the Ohio at Pittsburg and Cincinnati, the Mississippi at St. Louis, and the lakes at Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago, by several hundred miles. Indeed, but for slavery, Maryland must have been a far greater manufacturing as well as commercial State than Massachusetts—and as to agriculture, there could be no comparison.

But Massachusetts did not become a manufacturing State until after the tariff of 1824. That measure, as well as the whole protective policy, Massachusetts earnestly opposed in 1820 and 1824, and Daniel Webster, as her representative, denounced it as unconstitutional. From 1790 to 1820 Massachusetts was commercial, not manufacturing, and yet, from 1790 to 1820, Massachusetts increased in numbers 144,442, and Maryland in the same time only 87,622. Yet, from 1790 to 1820, Massachusetts, the most commercial State, was far more injured by the embargo and the late war with England than any other State.

It is clear, then, that the accusation of the secession leaders that the North was built up at the expense of the South, by the tariff, can have no application to the progress of Massachusetts and Maryland, because the advance of the former over the latter preceded by more than thirty years the adoption of the protective policy, and a comparison of the relative advance of the free and slave States, during the same period, exhibits the same results.

There is one invariable law, whether we compare all the slave States with all the free States, small States with small, large with large, old with old, new with new, retarding the progress of the slaveholding States, ever operating, and differing in degree only.

The area of the nine free States enumerated in 1790, is 169,668 square miles, and of the eight slaveholding States 300,580 square miles, while the population of the former in 1790 was 1,968,455, and of the latter, 1,961,372; but, in 1860, these nine free States had a population of 10,594,168, and those eight slave States only 7,414,684, making the difference in favor of these free States in 1860 over those slave States, 3,179,844, instead of 7,083 in 1790, or a positive gain to those free States over those slave States of 3,172,761. These free States, enumerated in 1790 and 1860, were the six New England States—New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; and the slave States were, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky—yet we have seen that the area of those slave States was nearly double that of those free States, the soil much more fertile, the climate more salubrious, as shown by the census, and the shore line, including main shore, bays, and sounds, islands and rivers, to head of tide water, was, for those free States, 4,480 miles, and for those slave States, 6,560 miles. Thus, it is clear, that the increase of population of these slave States should have far exceeded that of those free States. The population of these slave States per square mile in 1790 was six (6.52), and in 1860, 24 (24.66), and of those free States in 1790, was 11 per square mile (11.60), and in 1860, 62 per square mile (62.44). Thus, while the increase of those slave States from 1790 to 1860 was only 18 per square mile, that of those free States was nearly 51 per square mile (50.84), or in very nearly a triple ratio, while in wealth and education the proportionate progress was much greater.

No cause except slavery can he assigned for this wonderful difference, for the colonists of Maryland were distinguished for education, intelligence, and gentle culture. Lord Baltimore was a statesman and philanthropist, and his colony was a free representative government, which was the first to repudiate the doctrine of taxation without representation, and the first to introduce religious toleration. While Maryland has produced many of the most eminent soldiers, statesmen, and jurists, her relative decline in power, wealth, and population, has been deplorable, and is attributable exclusively to the paralyzing effect of slavery.

While the advance of Massachusetts, with her limited area and sterile soil, especially in view of the thousands of her native sons who have emigrated to other States, is one of the wonders of the world, yet, the relative increase of the population of New Jersey, from 1790 to 1860, compared with that of Maryland, is still greater than that of Massachusetts. The law is inflexible wherever slavery disappears. Population of New Jersey in 1790, 184,139, in 1860, 672,035, being an increase of 264 per cent. (264.96) for New Jersey, of 225 per cent. (225.06) for Massachusetts, and for Maryland 114 per cent. (114.88). The ratio of increase per square mile from 1790 to 1860 was: Massachusetts, 48.55 in 1790, and 157.82 in 1860; Maryland, 28.74 in 1790, and 61.76 in 1860; and New Jersey, 22.01 in 1790, and 80.70 in 1860. Thus, while Maryland from 1790 to 1860, little more than doubled her ratio of increase per square mile (28.74 to 61.76), and Massachusetts a little more than tripled her ratio (48.55 to 157.82), New Jersey very nearly quadrupled hers (22.01 to 80.70). It must be conceded, however, that the natural advantages of New Jersey are far greater than those of Massachusetts, whose material and intellectual progress, in defiance of such serious obstacles, now is, and, most probably forever will be, without a parallel. Now the area of New Jersey is but 8,320 square miles; the soil of Maryland is far more fertile, the hydraulic power much greater, the shore line much more than double, viz.: 531 for New Jersey, to 1,336 for Maryland; while New Jersey, with rich iron mines, has no coal, and one third of her area is south of the celebrated Mason and Dixon's line, the northern boundary of Maryland. The comparison, however, which I shall present hereafter, of New York and Virginia, will be the most astounding, while little less remarkable will be found that of North Carolina with Pennsylvania, Kentucky with Ohio, Tennessee with Indiana, Georgia and Missouri with Illinois, Arkansas with Michigan, Alabama and Texas with Iowa or Minnesota, Mississippi and Louisiana with Wisconsin, Delaware with Rhode Island, South Carolina with Maine or Vermont. All, however, prove the same law, and exhibit the same paralyzing effect of slavery. While the free States have accomplished these miracles of progress, they have peopled seven vast Territories (soon by subdivision to become many more States), immigration to which has been almost exclusively from the North, as compared with the South. It is clear, that if the South retains the institution, it will, before the close of this century, sink into comparative insignificance, and contain less than a sixth in population of the Union. After the calamities which slavery has brought upon the South, the ruin and desolation the rebellion has already accomplished there, who from the North or from Europe would hereafter immigrate to any State retaining the system?—while thousands of the native sons of the South have already fled North or to Europe, and hundreds of thousands will follow.

The slave State which has increased most rapidly to the square mile of all of them from 1790 to 1860, has had a smaller augmentation per square mile than that free State which has increased most slowly per square mile during the same time of all the free States, and the result is the same as to wealth and education also. Under the best circumstances for the slave States, and the worst for the free States, this result proves the uniformity of the rule (like the great law of gravitation), knowing no exception to the effect of slavery, in depressing the progress of States in population, wealth, and education. Would we then in all these advance more rapidly, we must remove slavery and negroism, the retarding cause. I know it is asked, how shall we then cultivate the cotton lands of the South without slaves? This does not apply to the border States; but before closing these letters, I will prove conclusively, by the census and other statistics, what, from long residence in the South, and from having traversed every Southern State, I know to be true, that cotton is now raised there most extensively and profitably by non-slaveholders, and upon farms using exclusively white labor. Indeed the cotton raised on small farms in the South where there are no slaves and exclusively by free white labor, commands a price from five to ten per cent. greater than the slave grown cotton. In Texas, especially, it is a great truth, that skilled, educated, persevering, and energetic free labor, engaged voluntarily for wages or its own use, would, in time, when aided by improved culture and machinery, produce much larger crops and better cotton than now raised by the forced and ignorant labor of slaves, and at a much cheaper rate, at a far greater profit, than any crop now produced in the North, and in a more salubrious climate. In western Texas, counties on the same parallel with New Orleans, and a little north and south, cultivated mainly by Germans without slaves, produced large quantities of the best cotton, and the supply with augmented labor might be increased almost indefinitely. Having thrice visited Texas, and traversed nearly the whole State, north, south, east, and west, I speak from personal knowledge. In one county, I observed first rate wheat, cotton, and sugar cane growing in adjacent fields, and the soil and climate well adapted for all three crops. In Texas, the product of wheat has increased from 41.79 bushels in 1850, to 1,464,273 bushels in 1860, and the number of bales of cotton from 58,072 in 1850, to 405,100 bales in 1860, far exceeding the rate of increase in any other State. (See table of Census, No. 36, pp. 200, 210.) Having very nearly six times the area of New York, Texas, when cultivated by free labor, can produce cotton enough to clothe the people of the world, and supply all Europe with wheat also. The rapid colonization of Texas by freemen ought to add to our wealth, in this decade, a sum equal to the present debt of the United States, and terminate in our favor the effort to supplant us in the supply of cotton for the world.

The isothermals of the great Humboldt (differing so widely from parallels), which trace the lines of temperature on the earth's surface, prove, as to heat, the climate of the South (running a line from Charleston to Vicksburg) to be substantially the same as that of Greece and Italy—each, in its turn, the mistress of the world. I know, when, the term isothermal was used in my inaugural as Governor of Kansas, it was represented by some of our present rebel leaders, to the masses of the South, as some terrible monster, perhaps the Yankee sea serpent; but I now use the term again in no offence, from its important application to the present case, and knowing that what I now advise would produce incalculable benefits to the whole country, but especially to the South. Indeed, if Texas, with her 274,356 square miles of area, with her salubrious climate, and fertile soil, already worked to a great extent by free labor, were a free State, she would, in time, contain a larger population than any State of the Union. Texas has much more than five times the area of England proper, and, with the same population to the square mile, would contain more than one hundred millions of people. Having, in 1837, offered in the Senate of the United States, and carried, the resolution, recognizing the independence of Texas, first proposing in my letter of the 8th January, 1844, the mode, by compact (alone practicable), by which, on my motion, Texas was admitted into the Union, distinctly advocating, in this letter, the reannexation of Texas, with, a view to secure the ultimate disappearance of slavery and negroism from the whole country, in opposition to the object officially avowed by Mr. Calhoun, to annex Texas for the purpose of perpetuating slavery, I shall, in a future letter, discuss this subject, involving not only our furnishing a certain abundant supply of cheap cotton, but securing the real monopoly of this great product, due to our peculiar soil and climate, and thus ultimately increasing our products and manufactures thousands of millions of dollars, and giving us the control of the commerce of the world.

If Maryland would only initiate this policy, and come now to the rescue of the Union from rebellion and foreign intervention, she would inscribe her name first of all the States on the page of history and in the gratitude of our country and mankind. The position of Maryland upon the Chesapeake, the Potomac, the Susquehanna, and Atlantic, is most commanding. She surrounds the Capitol. It was her own noble donation, and she is its natural guardian and sentinel. Her waters, cutting the Blue mountains and the Alleghany, flow into the Atlantic and Mississippi, thus making her an eastern and a western State. Throughout all her borders, not a citizen would lose anything by the change proposed, but all would be enriched. Take down the barriers of slavery, and a new and unprecedented current of population and capital would flow into the State. Property would rise immensely in value, the price of her lands would soon reach those of Pennsylvania, new towns and cities would spring into life, Cumberland would soon equal the great manufacturing sites of the North, and the railroad to Pittsburg would soon be completed. Baltimore would fulfil her mighty destiny, and the present canal up the Susquehanna, easily enlarged, so as to equal the grand work of New York, would connect her with Lakes Erie and Ontario. That canal already unites the Susquehanna from the Chesapeake with the lakes by the Seneca route (as it should by the Chenango also), and only requires to be enlarged to the extent of the Erie Canal, and the locks also, as wisely proposed in regard to that great work. This would at once develop the great iron and coal mines of the Susquehanna (anthracite and bituminous), supply western and central New York, and the great region of the lakes, and the Chesapeake with these articles, so essential in war and peace. Let the locks of the Erie Canal be enlarged as proposed, and the ship canal from the Illinois river to Chicago constructed; but in justice to Pennsylvania and Maryland, as vastly important for commerce and revenue, and as a war measure for the cheap construction of iron-clad gunboats in the great coal and iron region, and the defence of the lakes, the Chesapeake, the Delaware, the Albemarle, and of the capital of the Union, let this canal be enlarged also.

While this system of gradual emancipation would greatly promote the material interests of Maryland, and of all the border States, the President does not overstate its influence in crushing the rebellion and restoring peace.

Maryland, the border States, and the South would then indeed commence a new career of progress, by removing slavery and negroism; and their augmented wealth, and that of the whole country, would soon return to the Government, in increased revenue, a sum far exceeding the cost of gradual emancipation and colonization. Indeed, if, as a mere financial question, I was devising the most effective plan for liquidating the national debt and reducing our taxes, it would be thus vastly to augment our wealth and population by adopting this system.

The census of 1860 exhibits our increase of population from 1790 to 1860 at 35.59 per cent., and of our wealth 126.45. Now, if we would increase the wealth of the country only one tenth in the next ten years, by the gradual disappearance of slavery and negroism (far below the results of the census), then, our wealth being now $16,159,616,068, the effect of such increase would be to make our wealth in 1870, instead of $36,593,450,585, more than sixteen hundred millions greater, being more than three times our present debt, and in 1880, instead of $82,865,868,849, over three billions six hundred millions more, or more than seven times our present debt.

Before the close of this letter, it will be shown that the difference, per capita, of the annual products of Massachusetts and Maryland exceeds $120. As to the other Southern States, the excess is much greater. Now, if the annual products of the South were increased $120 each per capita (still far below Massachusetts) by the exclusion of slavery, then multiplying the total population of the South, 12,229,727, by 120, the result would be an addition to the annual value of the products of the South of $1,467,567,240, and in the decade, $14,675,672,400; the first amount being three times our debt on the 1st July, 1862, and the last sum thirty times our debt on that day. This change would not be immediate, but there can be no doubt that, with the vastly greater natural advantages of the South, the superiority of free to slave labor, the immense immigration, especially from Europe to the South, aided by the Homestead bill, and the conversion of large plantations into small farms, an addition of at least one billion of dollars would be made, by the exclusion of slavery, to the value of the products of the South, in the ten years from 1870 to 1880, which sum is more than double our public debt on the 1st July last.

Having considered the relative progress in population of Massachusetts and Maryland, I will now examine their advance in wealth.

By tables 33 and 36, census of 1860, the value of the products of Massachusetts that year was $283,000,000; and of Maryland, $65,583,000. Table 33 included domestic manufactures, mines, and fisheries (p. 59); and table 36, agricultural products. Dividing these several aggregates by the total population of each State, the value of that year's product of Massachusetts was $229.88 per capita, and of Maryland, $95.45, making the average annual value of the labor of each person in the former greatly more than double that of the latter, and the gross product more than quadruple. This is an amazing result, but it is far below the reality. The earnings of commerce and navigation are omitted in the census, which includes only the products of agriculture, manufactures, the mines, and fisheries. This was a most unfortunate omission, attributable to the secession leaders, who wished to confine the census to a mere enumeration of population, and thus obliterate all the other great decennial monuments which mark the nation's progress in the pathway of empire.

Some of these tables are given as follows:

First, as to Railroads.—The number of miles in Massachusetts in 1860 (including city roads) was 1,340, and the cost of construction $61,857,203 (table 38, pp. 230, 231). The value of the freight of these roads in 1860 was $500,524,201 (p. 105). The number of miles of railroad in Maryland at the same time was 380, the cost of construction $21,387,157, and the value of the freight (at the same average rate) $141,111,348, and the difference in favor of Massachusetts $359,412,883. The difference must have been much greater, because a much larger portion of the freight in Massachusetts consisted of domestic manufactures, worth $250 per ton, which is $100 a ton above the average value.

The passengers' account, not given, would vastly swell the difference in favor of Massachusetts.

The tonnage of vessels built in Massachusetts in 1860 was 34,460 tons, and in Maryland, 7,798 tons (p. 107).

The number of banks in Massachusetts in 1860 was 174; capital, $64,519,200; loans, $107,417,323. In Maryland, the number was 31; capital, $12,568,962; loans, $20,898,762 (table 34, p. 193).

The number of insurance companies in Massachusetts 117; risks, $450,896,263. No statement given for Maryland, but comparatively very small, as the risks in Massachusetts were nearly one sixth of all in the Union.

Our exports abroad, from Massachusetts, for the fiscal year ending 30th June, 1860, were of the value of $17,003,277, and the foreign imports $41,187,539; total of imports and exports, $58,190,816; the clearances 746,909 tons, the entries 849,449; total entered and cleared, 1,596,458 tons. In Maryland, exports $9,001,600, foreign imports $9,784,773; total imports and exports, $18,786,323; clearances, 174,000 tons; entries, 186,417; total of entries and clearances, 360,417 (table 14, Register of Treasury). Thus, the foreign imports and exports abroad, of Massachusetts, were much more than triple those of Maryland, and the entries and clearances very largely more than quadruple. The coastwise and internal trade are not given, as recommended by me when Secretary of the Treasury, but the tables of the railroad traffic indicate in part the immense superiority of Massachusetts.

These statistics, however, prove that, if the earnings of commerce and navigation were added, the annual value of the products of Massachusetts per capita would be at least $300, and three times that of Maryland. In estimating values per capita, we must find the earnings of commerce very large, as a single merchant, in his counting house, engaged in an immense trade, and employing only a few clerks, may earn as much as a great manufacturing corporation, employing hundreds of hands. Including commerce, the value per capita of the products and earnings of Massachusetts exceeds not only those of any State in our Union, BUT OF THE WORLD; and would, at the same rate, make the value of its annual products three hundred millions of dollars; and of our own country, upward of nine billions of dollars per annum. Such, under great natural disadvantages, is the grand result achieved in Massachusetts, by education, science, industry, free schools, free soil, free speech, free labor, free press, and free government. The facts prove that freedom is progress, that 'knowledge is power,' and that the best way to appreciate the value of property and augment wealth most rapidly, is to invest a large portion of it in schools, high schools, academies, colleges, universities, books, libraries, and the press, so as to make labor more productive, because more skilled, educated, and better directed. Massachusetts has achieved much in this respect; but when she shall have made high schools as free and universal as common schools, and the attendance on both compulsory, so as to qualify every voter for governing a State or nation, she will have made a still grander step in material and intellectual progress, and the results would be still more astounding. She can thus still more clearly prove the fact, establish the law, and give us the formula demonstrating that taxes for the increase and diffusion of knowledge are the best investment for the increase of national, state, and individual wealth. Then all would acknowledge the harmony of labor and capital, their ultimate association in profits for mutual benefit. This social as well as political union, together with the specializing and differentiation of pursuits, and observing duties as rights, would falsify the gloomy dogma of Malthus, founded on the doctrine of the eternal and ever-augmenting antagonism of wages and money, and solve, in favor of humanity, the great problem of the grand and glorious destiny of the masses of mankind. The law of humanity is progress, onward and upward, and will, in time, crush all opposing obstacles. If all—all were fully educated, what miracles would be accomplished, how great the increase of important inventions and discoveries, and how many new and sublime truths in science, sociology, and government would be developed! Would not the progress of the State or nation approximate, then, a ratio depending on its numbers? If all the States had contributed as much as Massachusetts to the treasury and diffusion of knowledge, our whole country, North and South, would have been advanced a century, and this rebellion, based upon the ignorance, imperfect civilization, and semibarbarism produced by slavery, could never have occurred.

By table 35 of the census, p. 195, the whole value of all the property, real and personal, of Massachusetts, in 1860, was $815,237,433, and of Maryland, $376,919,944. We have seen that the value of the products that year in Massachusetts was $283,000,000 (exclusive of commerce), and of Maryland, $65,583,000. As a question, then, of profit on capital, that of Massachusetts was 34 per cent., and of Maryland 17 per cent. Such is the progressive advance (two to one) of free as compared with slave labor. The same law obtains in comparing all the free with all the slave States. But the proof is still more complete. Thus, Delaware and Missouri (alone of all the slave States) were ahead of Maryland in this rate of profit, because both had comparatively fewer slaves; and all the other slave States, whose servile population was relatively larger than that of Maryland, were below her in the rate of profit. The law extends to counties, those having comparatively fewest slaves increasing far more rapidly in wealth and population. This, then, is the formula as to the rate of profit on capital. First, the free States; next the States and counties of the same State having the fewest relative number of slaves. The census, then, is an evangel against slavery, and its tables are revelations proclaiming laws as divine as those written by the finger of God at Mount Sinai on the tables of stone.

For seventy years we have had these census tables, announcing these great truths more and more clearly at each decade. They are the records of the nation's movement and condition, the decennial monuments marking her steps in the path of empire, the oracles of her destiny. They are prophecies, for each decade fulfils the predictions of its predecessor. They announce laws, not made by man, but the irrevocable ordinances of the Almighty. We cannot, with impunity, refuse to obey these laws. For every violation, they enforce their own penalties. From these there is no escape in the present or the past, nor for the future, except in conformity to their demands. These laws condemn slavery; and the punishment for disobedience is recorded in the result of every census, and finally culminated in the rebellion. Slavery and freedom are antagonistic and discordant elements: the conflict between them is upon us; it admits of no neutrality or compromise, and one or the other system must perish.

We have seen that slavery is hostile to the progress of wealth and population: let us now ascertain its influence on moral and intellectual development.

By table 15 of the census of 1860, the result for that year was as follows: In Massachusetts, value of books printed, $397,500; jobs, 529,347; newspapers, $1,979,069; total, $2,905,916. Same year in Maryland, books printed, $58,000; jobs, $122,000; newspapers, $169,000; total, $350,155. By table 37, census of 1860, Massachusetts had 222 newspapers and periodicals, of which 112 were political, 31 religious, 51 literary, miscellaneous, 28. Maryland had only 57, all political. The whole number of copies issued in Massachusetts in 1860 was 102,000,760, and in Maryland, 20,721,472. Of periodicals, Massachusetts has monthly, 1 political, 10 religious, 18 literary, 7 miscellaneous; quarterly, religious 3, literary 2, miscellaneous 1, and 1 annual. Maryland had none. Not a religious, literary, scientific, or miscellaneous periodical or journal in the State! What terrible truths are unfolded in these statistics! None but a political party press in Maryland, all devoted, in 1860, to the maintenance, extension, and perpetuity of slavery, which had 57 advocates, and not one for science, religion, or literature.

We have seen that the circulation in 1860 of the press in Massachusetts exceeded that of Maryland by more than eighty-one millions of copies. These facts all prove that slavery is hostile to knowledge and its diffusion, to science, literature, and religion, to the press, and to free government.

For schools, colleges, libraries, and churches, I must take the tables of the census of 1850, those of 1860 not being yet published. There were in 1850, in Massachusetts, 3,679 public schools, 4,443 teachers, 176,475 pupils; native adults who cannot read or write, 1,861. In Maryland, 907 public schools, 1,005 teachers, 33,254 pupils; native adults who cannot read or write, 38,426, excluding slaves, to teach whom is criminal.

Thus, then, slavery is hostile to schools, withholding instruction from the children of the poor.

The number of public libraries in Massachusetts was 1,462, volumes 684,015. In Maryland, 124, and 125,042 volumes. Value of churches in Massachusetts, $10,206,000. In Maryland, $3,947,884, of which $2,541,240 is in Baltimore (which has very few slaves), and the remainder is mainly in the seven counties (from which slavery has nearly disappeared) adjoining Pennsylvania.

As to schools, colleges, books, libraries, churches, newspapers, and periodicals, it thus appears that Massachusetts is greatly in advance of Maryland.

Now then, let us contrast loyal Maryland with rebel South Carolina, the author of secession, and assuming for many years to instruct the nation. By the census of 1860, she had a population of 703,708, of whom 402,406 were slaves; and Maryland, numbering 687,049, had 87,189 slaves. Now, by the census of 1860, South Carolina had 45 journals and periodicals, and her annual circulation was 3,654,840 copies. The circulation therefore of Massachusetts exceeded that of South Carolina more than ninety-eight millions of copies, while Maryland exceeded South Carolina more than seventeen millions of copies. So much for South Carolina as a great political teacher. As to schools in 1850: South Carolina had 724 public schools, 739 teachers, 17,838 pupils. Massachusetts, then, had 158,637 more pupils at public schools than South Carolina, and Maryland 15,416 more pupils at public schools than South Carolina.

The press of Massachusetts, we have seen, circulated in 1860 upward of one hundred and two millions of copies, equal to 279,454 per day, including journals and periodicals, each read, on an average, by at least two persons. This is independent of books and pamphlets, and of the very large circulation of papers from other States and from Europe. What a flood of light is thus shed daily and hourly upon the people of Massachusetts! This intellectual effulgence radiates by day and night. It is the sun in its meridian splendor, and the stars in an ever unclouded firmament. It has a centre and a circumference, but knows no darkness. Ignorance vanishes before it; wealth follows in its train; labor rejoices in its association, and finds its products more than doubled; freedom hails its presence, and religion gives it a cordial welcome; churches, schools, academies, colleges, and universities acknowledge its mighty influence. Science penetrates the secrets of nature, and unfolds each new discovery for the benefit of man. Coal, the offspring of the sun, develops its latent energy, and water contributes its untiring hydraulic power. Machinery takes more and more the place of nerves and muscles, cheapens clothing and subsistence and all the necessaries of life, and opens new fields of industry, and more profitable employment for labor. Steam and lightning become the slave of man. He performs the journey of a day in an hour, and converses in minutes around the globe. The strength of man may not have been much increased, but his power is augmented a thousand-fold. His life may not have been materially lengthened, but, in the march of knowledge, a year now is as a century, compared with man's progress in the darkness of the middle ages. The eternal advance toward omniscience goes on, but is like that of the infinite approach of the asymptote, which never reaches the hyperbolic curve. The onward march of science is in a geometrical ratio, so that in time, the intellectual progress of a day in the future, must exceed that of a century in the past. Knowledge is enthroned as a king, and grand truths and new ideas are his ministers. Science takes the diameter of the earth's orbit as a base line and unit of measurement, and with it spans infinity, and triangulates the nebulous systems amid the shadowy verges of receding space. Its researches are cosmical upon the earth and the heavens, and all the elements minister to its progress. Sink to the lowest mine, or fathom the ocean's depth, or climb the loftiest mountains, or career through the heavens on silken wings, and it is there also. On—on—on; nearer—nearer—still nearer it moves forever and forever, with accelerated speed, toward the infinite eternal. Such are the triumphs of knowledge; and he who diffuses it among our race, or discovers and disseminates new truths, advances man nearer to his Creator. He exalts the whole race; he elevates it in the scale of being, and raises it into higher and still higher spheres.

It is science that marks the speed of sound and light and lightning, calculates the eclipses, catalogues the stars, maps the heavens, and follows, for centuries of the past and the future, the comet's course. It explores the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. With geology, it notes the earthquake, upheaval of mountains, and, with mineralogy, the laws of crystallization. With chemistry, it analyzes, decomposes, and compounds the elements. If, like Canute, it cannot arrest the tidal wave, it is subjecting it to laws and formulas. Taking the sunbeam for its pencil, it pictures man's own image, and the scenery of the earth and the heavens. Has science any limits or horizon? Can it ever penetrate the soul of man, and reveal the mystery of his existence and destiny? It is certainly exploring the facts of sociology, arranging and generalizing them, and deducing laws. It regards man in his social relations, in families, tribes, and governments, savage, semi-barbarous, and civilized; beginning with the most simple, advancing to the chief, the patriarch, the king, the feudal military, the regal aristocratic, the pure democracy by popular assemblages, as in Athens and the school towns of Massachusetts, rising higher to the central representative, and to the highest, although necessarily more complex, the federal constitutional representative, carrying out the organic division, and the subdivision of legislative and administrative action—regarding the state, the national, and international policy, and, in the lapse of centuries, the confederacy, fusion, and unification of nations. The constitution of empires, with the legislative, judicial, and executive functions, furnish some of the elements of sociology. But we must take the history of man, past, present, and future, note and arrange and generalize the facts, and thence deduce laws and formulas. Sociology is not a mere accidental and disconnected series of facts, but it has laws, although far less known than those appertaining to the physical sciences. The work is commenced, and progresses here and in Europe. But, at this moment, at least in administrative action, Massachusetts is ahead of all the world in the science of sociology.

Man, elevated by knowledge in the scale of being, controls the forces of nature with greater power and grander results, and accumulates wealth more rapidly. The educated free labor of Massachusetts, we have seen, triples the products of toil, per capita, as compared with Maryland, and quintuples them (as the census shows) compared with South Carolina. One day's labor of a man in Massachusetts is equal to three in Maryland, and five in South Carolina. So, if we take our savage tribes, with their huts and tents, their rude agriculture, their furs, their few and simple household manufactures, their hunting and fishing, the average product of their annual labor, at four cents a day each, would be $14.60 a year, or more than a fourth of that of South Carolina (56.91). So that Massachusetts, in material progress, is farther in advance of South Carolina than that State is of the savage Indians. Thus, we have the successive steps and gradations of man: Massachusetts, with free labor and free schools, having reached the highest point of civilization; South Carolina, with slavery and ignorance (except the few), in a semi-barbarous stage; and the lowest savage condition, called barbarous, but nearer to South Carolina than that State to Massachusetts.

Slavery, then, the census proves, is hostile to the progress of wealth and population, to science, literature, and education, to schools, colleges, and universities, to books and libraries, to churches and religion, to the press, and therefore to free government; hostile to the poor, keeping them in want and ignorance; hostile to labor, reducing it to servitude, and decreasing two thirds the value of its products; hostile to morals, repudiating among slaves the marital and parental condition, classifying them by law as chattels, darkening the immortal soul, and making it a crime to teach millions of human beings to read or write. And shall labor and education, literature and science, religion and the press, sustain an institution which is their deadly foe?

But slavery is the enemy of free government. It has commenced and now wages an unholy war against this Union, and thus assails the liberty of our country and of mankind. It has framed a government based on the eternity of chattel slavery, and demands in its name to rule the larger portion of the Union. It seeks to sever the lakes from the gulf, and the mighty Mississippi and its vast arterial tributary system. It asks to be let alone in the commission of all these heaven-daring crimes. In the name of my bleeding country, of the millions whom it has doomed to death, or wounds, or chains, or misery; in the name of the widows and orphans it has made, whose bitter tears and agonizing sighs now fill our land with sorrow; in the name of the free and blessed government it seeks to overthrow, and the glorious Union it strives to dissolve; in the name of God and man, of religion and liberty, the world arraigns the criminal at the bar of justice. Now is the day of trial: humanity hopes and fears, mankind await the verdict. It is rendered: Guilty upon every charge of the indictment; and heaven records the righteous sentence—Slavery must die, that the Union and liberty may live forever!

SOMETHING WE HAVE TO THINK OF, AND TO DO.

The President's order for a draft—aside from its immediate purpose—has an important bearing in a more general view on the education of the public mind. It is an impressive enforcement of the great principle that every able-bodied man in the nation owes military service to his country as sacredly as he owes obedience to his God. This is a principle which probably few persons will hesitate to admit when plainly confronted with it. But the conviction of it has slumbered in the mind of the people during the long years of peace we have enjoyed. There has been almost nothing to remind us of it for fifty years past. The draft is an emphatic proclamation of it. It brings it home to the conscience of the nation; and thousands, who might otherwise have scarcely thought of it, will be led to recognize and to feel it.

It is to be hoped that we shall go further—that the quickened sense of obligation will make us consider what we must do to make the discharge of it of the greatest service to the nation; that we shall learn the lessons of wisdom which the present struggle enforces on us, and see to it, that in the future, by better military organization and instruction, the able-bodied men of the country are rendered more capable of effective military service at a moment's call.

Oar military system, and the enrolment of the people under it, goes indeed upon this principle of the obligation of military service by every able-bodied citizen—and so is a constant testimony to it; but in point of fact it has done comparatively little toward cherishing the military spirit, cultivating the military virtues, and securing an effective military force, ready at any moment for active service in the field. Dreading nothing from foreign nations on this side of the ocean, counting on the obvious policy of the nations of the old world to keep the peace with us, and never dreaming of such a rebellion as has broken out in our midst—we have not only neglected but discountenanced the cultivation of the military spirit. Our men of education and high social position, instead of contributing to make the militia system respectable by the personal performance of military duty, and by using all their influence to give a high tone to the service, have evaded its requirements on themselves, and done all they could to sink it into disregard and contempt: a dereliction of duty as unwise as wrong.

It is a miserable thing for a country to have to get ready for war when war is forced upon it. This was the case when the rebellion broke out. We were not ready for it. There was indeed no lack of men. Hundreds of thousands responded to their country's call; and the great body of the people were carried away with the delusion that men with arms in their hands are soldiers, and that massing them in great numbers makes them a great army. Wise men—men of military judgment and experience—knew better. But the popular clamor for onward offensive operations prevailed; with disastrous result in the first instance. Not on the whole perhaps to be regretted. It did what nothing else could have done—it dispelled the popular delusion. It did something toward teaching the nation a lesson indispensably necessary to be learned—that a million men with arms in their hands without discipline, are nothing but an armed mob, and that the discipline which alone makes an effective army, implies a great deal more than is gotten in company trainings and regimental parades under our old militia system.

Discipline—discipline—discipline; these are the first, second, and third requisites to make men into soldiers. With it the poorest materials can be made effective. Napoleon made good soldiers of the Italian lazaroni—and a poorer material can scarcely well be conceived. It is Napoleon that said: 'discipline is the first requisite for a soldier—bravery is only secondary.' Indeed the more there is of bravery in an army composed of such men as the New England States and the rural districts of New York send to the war—'reasoning bayonets,' as Napoleon called them, bayonets in the hands of men with heads on their shoulders, and heads that have the habit of doing their own thinking—the more there is of bravery in such a soldiery, the greater the need of discipline. Not only thorough training in the use of arms, but a habit of implicit obedience is indispensable to make good soldiers.

There can be no doubt this war is destined to make us a more military people than we have been before. And good reason we should be. In the first place, because the prevalence of a higher military tone and the maintenance of a more effective military force are indispensable for the national security and defence. Until the millennium comes we shall always be liable to foreign invasions or internal rebellion. In either case there is nothing before us but to fight, and nothing but successful fighting can save us. But how can we fight successfully if we have only raw recruits or an ill-trained militia, and officers better skilled to handle the yard stick than the sword, to marshal a column of figures than a body of men? In the nest place, because the military virtues—courage, fortitude, endurance, subordination, and obedience; the military habits—promptitude, vigilance, order, attention to details; and the physical developments—health, strength, and heightened muscular activity, which come from military discipline—all these are no less valuable as elements of the morale or general character of a nation than indispensable in a merely military view, to a nation's security and success in arms.

To form a disciplined army was the first thing we had to do when the rebellion broke out. It was a great pity, and a sad necessity to have to begin to do it then. We have paid dearly for our folly and neglect. If we had been as well prepared for war as the Swiss always are, it would have saved us millions of treasure, and many score thousands of lives. Let us at least now not fail to learn the lesson of wisdom for our future guidance which the past forces upon us. Let us look out for having a good military organization—a permanent system that shall give us hereafter not the show only but the reality of an effective force; not muster rolls of names of companies, regiments, brigades, but well-disciplined citizen soldiers, with good officers able to handle and lead them. This is something that can be done—something that ought to be done.

It is a matter for consideration what is the military system that will best keep us ready for war if war be forced upon us, and at the same time with the least detriment or danger to the people or the Government. Is it a large regular force, a standing army, adequate to the defence of the country always on foot and in the pay of the General Government? I think not. The number of regular troops in the service of the Union doubtless will and should be considerably increased. But to keep a large standing army, as many of the great powers of Europe do, is what I hope we shall never come to. I do not so much object to the great expense of it—for that is not worth consideration if it be the only or the best way to provide for the defence of the nation. But it is foreign to the genius and spirit of our institutions, and involves dangers to our liberties. Human nature is human nature—and is pretty likely to continue to be. What history has recorded more than once, it may have to record again.

Shall we then adhere to our present militia system? Not, it is to be hoped, without very great modifications, additions, and improvements. If we do, we shall show ourselves as incapable of learning by our own experience as by the wisdom of history. At the same time, our militia organization furnishes the basis of a military system adapted to the genius of our institutions, fully adequate to our national defence, and one that will save us from the expense and dangers of a standing army large enough for the need of the country in a time of war.

In reorganizing our military system on this basis, I would go to Switzerland for suggestions and guidance. The Swiss system, with certain changes and with some features adopted from the English, is the one most fitted for our country. In Switzerland the motto is: 'No regular army, but every citizen, a soldier.' This motto lies at the basis of their system. But then the system makes every citizen really a soldier. It is a system that has shown itself adequate and admirably adapted for the defence of the country against foreign foes and internal rebellion. Not their mountains merely, but their hearts and arms—and a knowledge on the part of their neighbors what those hearts and arms were capable of—have preserved their independence. And as to internal safety, let any one read the story of the rebellion of 1847, when under Jesuit influence seven of the Swiss cantons formed a secession league (Sonder-Bund), and rose in arms. Immediately an army of more than one hundred thousand men from the loyal cantons was in the field, summoned from their ordinary callings, and in seventeen days the whole struggle was over, despite the strong force and almost impregnable position of the rebels, and despite the menaces of Austria and her offers of help to the insurgents. In seventeen days their citadels were taken, the traitors' league broken, and the loyal army (all but nine thousand men left to see to the expulsion of the Jesuit conspirators and the restoration of order) disbanded to seek their homes and renew their ordinary occupations.

I shall not pretend to go into the details of such a system as we should adopt, but confine myself to such observations as every man of general intelligence, moderately acquainted with military history, is competent to appreciate.

In the first place, there can be no doubt of the importance of a good system for the enrolment of the rank and file, with effective provisions for a certain amount of instruction and drill every year.

The next thing, and which is of still greater importance, is the adoption of a system that shall secure the formation of proper officers. Dividing each State in the Union into a proper number of military districts, there should be in every district a perfect organization of officers, staff, brigade, regimental, and line—what the French call cadres, the nucleus or skeleton of brigades and regiments—with special provision for their thorough and effective instruction and discipline in all their respective duties. This was a great point in the policy of Napoleon. 'When a nation,' said he, 'possesses neither cadres nor the principles of military organization, it is extremely difficult to organize an army.' Attaching the rank and file to these cadres—whenever and as often as there is need—they can soon be made good soldiers, even if they have had but little training before; and there is no way in which discipline can be so speedily and effectively instilled. The cadre is not only the frame, joint, or articulation, but the system of veins and arteries and nerves of an army. All the military systems of Europe rest upon this principle. To prepare officers fit to be organized into these cadres, they have schools for special instruction—the school of the staff, and of every branch of service—including everything relating to the subsistence and movement of armies.

This brings us to the consideration of a point of fundamental importance. We have no such schools. We have nothing but West Point, and that is nothing to the needs of the country. In every State there ought to be schools to prepare officers for the cadres—special schools for every department of military science and art, either separately or united in one comprehensive institution. The rebels have been wiser than we of the North. For twenty years past, looking forward to this day, the conspirators and traitors now in arms for the overthrow of the Government, and the dismemberment of the nation, have been assiduously training officers. In nearly every Southern State they have had one, and in some States more than one special military school, founded and fostered by the State—beside introducing more or less of military drill into their other schools, and in every way cultivating a military spirit among the people. And they have reaped the advantage of having at the outset of the contest a better supply of competent officers and materials for officers than we had.

But not only should there be such special military schools—one in every State, but there should also be institutions where a sufficient number of young men can get the preliminary education necessary to fit them to enter the schools of officers—an education which, beside being as complete and thorough a literary one as officers ought to have, should also be such in point of military discipline and instruction as shall lay a good foundation for building themselves up and perfecting themselves as officers by subsequent instruction and experience. It is not absolutely necessary to establish institutions exclusively or specially for this purpose. The end might be attained, if sufficient amount of military instruction, drill, and discipline were added to the present course of education in the schools, academies, and colleges of the land. This perhaps would be the best way. It would accomplish the object of preparing a sufficient number of young men to enter the State schools of officers, and would beside tend to diffuse throughout the body of the educated class of the people something of military knowledge and of the spirit of the military virtues—to the great advantage of the nation in any times, but especially in critical emergencies demanding great and heroic sacrifices.

So horrible a thing is war, and so dreadful are its inevitable miseries, that there is at first thought something shocking to many persons, in the idea of making military instruction a part of the system of public education—in cultivating the military spirit, and training the children and youth of a nation to science and skill in the arts of carnage. The kind and gentle-hearted find little consolation in being reminded that war is one of God's agencies. They acknowledge that the earthquake, the pestilence, the tornado, are His agencies. They find no difficulty in saying, with Wordsworth, in regard to these:

'We bow our hearts before Thee, and we laud
And magnify Thy Name, Almighty God!'

Yet when he adds:

'But Thy most dreaded instrument
In working out a pure intent,
Is man arrayed for mutual slaughter—
Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter.'

they shrink from the thought and the image. It is too dreadful for ready acquiescence.

But there is another side to the subject, and a deeper view. See how the hero preacher, the saintly-hearted Robertson—as pure and tender a spirit as ever breathed—puts the matter:

'Take away honor and imagination and poetry from war, and it becomes carnage. Doubtless. And take away public spirit and invisible principles from resistance to a tax, and Hampden becomes a noisy demagogue. * * * * Carnage is terrible. Death, and human features obliterated beneath the hoof of the war horse, and reeking hospitals, and ruined commerce, and violated homes, and broken hearts—they are all awful. But there is something worse than death. Cowardice is worse. And the decay of enthusiasm and manliness is worse. And it is worse than death—aye, worse than a hundred thousand deaths—when a people has gravitated down into the creed that the wealth of nations consists not in generous hearts, in national virtues, and primitive simplicity, and heroic endurance, and preference of duty to life—not in MEN, but in silk and cotton, and something they call 'capital.' Peace is blessed—peace arising out of charity. But peace springing out of the calculations of selfishness is not blessed. If the price to be paid for peace is this, that wealth accumulate and men decay, better far, that every street in every town of our country should run blood.'

Now it may be that it is God's purpose to save us by the war we are now engaged in from such a 'gravitation'—to save us by war from calamities far worse than any that war can bring upon us. But be this as it may, one thing we must all admit, that horrible as war is, and dreadful as are its miseries, no nation is fit to be a nation that will not defend itself by arms, if war is forced upon it. And no nation is safe, or worthy of a place among nations, if it is not prepared to maintain its existence against invasion from without or rebellion from within. Beside, to be prepared for war is one of the best securities against war.

But the best, the only sufficient foundation for this preparation, must be laid in the education of the young—an education not exclusively military for any, but while professionally military for a sufficient number, yet as to the rest, military in just and due proportion—an education which, as John Milton says, 'fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both public and private, of peace and of war.' 'The nation,' says Wordsworth, in the preface to one of his grand odes, 'the nation would err grievously, if she suffered the abuse which other states have made of the military power, to prevent her from perceiving that no people ever was or can be independent, free, or secure, much less great in any sane application of the word, without martial propensities and an assiduous cultivation of the military virtues.'

THE NOBLE DEAD.

'Those great spirits, that went down like suns
And left upon the mountain-tops of death
A light that made them lovely.'

CAMBRIDGE AND ITS COLLEGES.

I love Cambridge, and must write very kindly about it. For in the first place, I met there with some of the best men I have ever known. And secondly, it has educated some very noted geniuses and fine poets. I do not envy the American who can linger in its cloisters, ramble in the college walks and survey the colleges themselves with an unmoved spirit. Out of its courts marched Bacon, Newton, Milton, and Jeremy Taylor; Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron issued from it but the other day, for what are a few years in the biography of genius? And was it not but yesterday that Tennyson wrote his prize poem there? It was hallowed ground to me, worthy of not unmixed reverence, but of much reverence was it worthy.

I went straightway to the residence of Dr. Whewell, master of Trinity College, and he received me very cordially. His works are well known in America, and I knew them, and directly made complimentary allusions to them, which, did not displease him. 'Sir, you are welcome,' he said, pressing my hand. 'You are very welcome, sir.' He proceeded to talk of America, and spoke of Edward Everett, and his visit to Cambridge in 1842, and of the speech he made. Everett made a decidedly favorable impression. 'We had a visit from another of your countrymen, last year,' said Dr. W. 'Parker of Boston—Theodore Parker. A man of genius, but I believe a rationalist in religion. He saw but few of our men, and, indeed, we were not disposed to receive him. It would have created a scandal. But he is a very clever man.' After tea, I repaired with the Doctor to his study, and had a pleasant chat with him about American literature. We discussed the merits of Longfellow, Bryant, Irving, Cooper, Channing, Bancroft and Emerson. Of the last-mentioned writer, he said, 'He is not like Carlyle, though the newspaper critics are constantly associating them together. I have no sympathy with his opinions, but I am refreshed by reading him. He is a strong man, sir, and your country will be proud of him. Amongst our young men here his opinions are making great strides. 'Tis the vice of the age. Germany has had the disease, and is near recovery. England and America have caught the epidemic. But pantheism, sir, will not live, though here and at Oxford the students are reading Hegel, Strauss, Bruno-Bauer, and Feuerbach. At Oxford,' he added, 'these pernicious doctrines are demoralizing the university. Blanco White and John Sterling were but the pioneers of a large party of university men, who are preparing to avow their disbelief in Christianity.' The Doctor was right. Francis Newman, brother of the Puseyite Newman, who seceded to the Romish Church, and belongs now to the Oratory of St. Philip Neri,—Froude, brother of the deceased Puseyite Froude,—Foxton, an ordained priest of the Church of England, and Travers, another priest and vicar, have quitted Oxford and the Church, and published heretical works, or are preaching heretical doctrines; while, according to the testimony of Archdeacon Wilberforce, and Dr. Vaughan of Harrow, the doctrines of the German theologists have been embraced by half the undergraduates there.

The town of Cambridge is uninteresting. The streets are narrow and dismal, nor have they any ancient buildings or architectural oddities, except the Round Church, to arrest the stranger's attention, as Shrewsbury and Chester have. The surrounding country is level as a prairie, broken only toward the southeast, by the ridiculous dustheaps called the Gog-Magog Hills. These hills belong to the curiosities of Cambridge, and are as famous in university annals as the colleges themselves. Robert Hale scarcely joked when he said to a friend who visited him during his residence at Cambridge, and who asked him for these hills, 'When that man yonder moves out of the way, you will see them.' They are four miles from the town, and on the estate of the Godolphin family, of which the Rev. Sydney Godolphin Osborne, the S. G. O. of the London Times newspaper, is the present representative.

I was greatly disappointed with the Cam. It is a narrow, muddy stream, varying in depth from five to twenty feet. There is a deep pool near the village of Grantchester, two miles from the town, in which Byron used to bathe, and which bears his name. I would have the stranger that visits Cambridge go to see Grantchester churchyard. It is reached by a pleasant walk across fields, and is really a beautiful spot. Many students who have died at college are buried here. Another walk of three miles along the old coach road, leading to Oxford, will bring him to the Madingley, with its park and mansion, the seat of the Cotton family. Before he leaves this part of the country he should also visit Ely, distant twelve miles, and see the venerable cathedral.

There are seventeen colleges and halls at Cambridge. The halls enjoy equal privileges with the colleges, which is not the case at Oxford. The colleges are: Trinity, St. John's, King's, Queen's, Jesus, Corpus Christi, Caius (pronounced Keys), Sydney-Sussex, Magdalene (pronounced Maudlen), Christ's, Pembroke, Emmanuel, St. Peter's and Downing. The halls are: Trinity, Catherine, and Clare. Bacon, Newton, Byron, Tennyson, and Macaulay were of Trinity College; Milton was of Christ's, Gray of Pembroke, Wordsworth of St. John's, and Coleridge of Jesus. There is an amusing anecdote of Byron current in the university, which I do not remember to have seen in print. The roof of the library of Trinity College is surmounted by three figures in stone, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. These figures are accessible only from the window of a particular room in Neville's Court, which was occupied by Byron during his residence at college. The adventurer after getting out of this window has to climb a perpendicular wall, sustaining himself by a frail leaden spout. He has then to traverse the sloping roof of a long range of buildings, by moving carefully on his hands and knees, at the imminent risk of being precipitated fifty feet into the court beneath. When the library is gained, a stone parapet has to be crossed, a bare glance at which sends a thrill through the spectator who surveys it from below. This feat Byron performed one Sunday morning, while the heads of the dons and dignitaries were yet buried in their pillows, 'full of the foolishest dreams.' He had abstracted three surplices from the college chapel, which he bore with him along the dangerous route I have described. When the bell, at eight o'clock, rung out its deep-toned summons to the usual morning devotions, and the fellows and undergraduates hurried on their way to the chapel, they were startled to behold Faith, Hope, and Charity clad in surplices which reached in snowy folds to their feet, while their heads were surmounted, helmet-wise, with bedchamber waterewers. An inquiry was instituted by the indignant college authorities. A few select friends knew, and the rest of the college guessed, that Byron was the author of the outrage, but it was never brought home to him. No undergraduate beholds these statues now without a hearty laugh.

When I was at Cambridge, the poet's statue by Thorwaldsen had just been rescued from the cellar of the London custom house, where it had lain for years amongst rubbish of all kinds, because the bigots of Westminster Abbey would not permit it to be erected in the Poet's Corner of that edifice. Dr. Whewell, much to his honor, though he is no admirer of Byron's poetry, procured it for the library of the college, where the poet was educated.

Many college anecdotes are related of Coleridge in Gilman's unfinished life of him. (When will it be finished?) These, though they are not much known in this country, I shall not repeat; but there is one current at Cambridge which has never yet been published, from deference to the feelings of the descendants of a vain, but otherwise worthy man. Dr.——, the master of —— College, it was known, aspired to a bishopric, but for a long time he had been disappointed, though he had assiduously paid court to the Tory ministry, and intimated, in various ways, that he would have no objection to pronounce the nolo episcopari. Was not Dr. Mansell, the master of Trinity, bishop of Bristol? Watson, bishop of Llandaff, the apologist for the Bible, never strove harder for the archbishopric of York than did Dr. —— to get appointed bishop of any see that might fall vacant. It happened that the see of Durham, the richest in all England, worth at that time, $400,000 a year, did fall vacant, and Coleridge, with borrowed money, posted up to London. In two days the master received a letter, offering him the bishopric—it was a private, friendly letter from the first Lord of the Treasury—on condition that he would support the ministry in more liberal measures than they had yet resorted to. He assembled his friends, and communicated the happy tidings. The next mail conveyed to the Prime Minister his grateful acceptance of the dignity. He was liberal at heart, and had always been so. His vote would be always at the service of the minister and his party whether in or out of office. The pleasing illusion was soon dissipated, and Dr. ——- never held up his head again. Coleridge wrote the Prime Minister's private and friendly letter.

I gathered anecdotes of Bulwer, Macaulay, and Tennyson, that are perhaps not worth the telling. Bulwer was of Trinity Hall. He went one day to bathe in the Cam at Grantchester, and was robbed of his clothes. Before he could emerge from the water, the future dandy author of Pelham had to borrow a suit of corduroys from a rustic. He crept down by-lanes till he reached his rooms, but a friend met him, who teased him into an explanation, and afterward spread the story. He was noted at Cambridge for his foppishness, and for wearing scented kid gloves. Tennyson was manly there, and gentlemanly, as he always is. I shall have something to say about him hereafter.

Connop Thirlwall, the present bishop of St. David's, one of the translators of Niebuhr's 'History of Rome,' and author of the best history of Greece that had appeared before the publication of Mr. Grote's magnificent work, used to say of the fellows of Trinity, when he was tutor of that college, that they were the wittiest companions when drunk, that he had ever met with. It is certain that, thirty years ago, they used to drink to excess, and the Combination Room was the scene of numerous debauches that would have discredited a common tavern. Everybody has heard of Professor Person's reputation in this way. He was a famous compounder of whiskey toddy, and under its influence scattered puns and witticisms in the purest attic Greek. Since his day, the drinking custom is abated, and even Dr. Thirlwall would find in the present fellows of Trinity College a race of men altogether unlike those who frequented the Combination Room, and called for their third bottle, in his time.

I was at much pains to acquire correct information respecting the system of education pursued in the university. The son of poor parents, I found, has but a small chance of receiving classical instruction in England. At Cambridge the sizars, and at Oxford the servitors, form the lowest grade of students. Formerly menial tasks were imposed upon them, and amongst other duties, they had to wait upon the fellows of their colleges at the dinner table—to bear the dishes and fill the goblets. This custom has long since been discontinued; nor are the sizars of Trinity and St. John's any longer distinguished from the great body of the students by any external mark of inferiority. At the small colleges, however, they wear different gowns, and are recognized without difficulty in the street. Of course, in aristocratic England they are shunned by the richer students. Their expenses for the first year of their college residence ought not to be over $300, and are frequently kept below $200 by the prudence of the individual. If, at the first annual examination of the college they obtain a place in either the first, second, or third classes, they are entitled to receive assistance from the college funds. So privileged, they pay no rent for their rooms, and their commons, or food, is furnished to them free of expense. They are, however, made to feel the humiliation of their position. They dine off the remnant dishes of the fellows' table, after the latter have risen. There is certainly no lack of provisions, which are of a luxurious quality, and are cooked in the best style. The head cook of Trinity College receives a salary of $3,500 a year, and has about thirty assistants.

The educational system pursued at Cambridge is open, I think, to one very grave objection. Unless the student is tolerably wealthy, he is deprived of the advantages which his richer companions enjoy. The brief lectures—of one hour's duration only—delivered daily by the college tutors to a crowd of undergraduates, are ill calculated to benefit the striving individual student. As far as the college is concerned, the youth is left to himself. If he cannot afford the expense of a private tutor, his attainments are due to solitary application, and he is self taught within the very walls of a college. The private tutors reap a rich harvest from this careless system. They are usually members of the university who have recently taken their first degree, and prefer the large recompense of tuition to the miserable stipend of a curacy. To each of their pupils—and a popular private tutor has usually eight or ten—they devote one hour daily, and their charge is $70 for the term. As a term sometimes expires at the end of seven weeks, they receive about $2 an hour. This sum is beyond the poor scholar's means, and he has to run an unequal race at the examinations with his more fortunate competitor.

If appearances are to be trusted, the Trinity undergraduates are not untiring students. They seem to pass their days and nights in the pursuit of pleasure. The great evil of the English universities is the credit system, and though Dr. Whewell endeavored to show me that it was thoroughly discountenanced by the college authorities, he did not succeed in convincing me that they were dealing properly with the difficulty. A student, in defiance of all the restrictions imposed upon his intercourse with the tradesmen of the town, may contract debts to almost any amount. It is notorious that parents are brought to the verge of ruin every year by their sons' misconduct at college, unless they choose to contest the demands of the tradesmen in a court of law, by pleading the infancy of the debtor when he has not attained his majority. The college regulations demand that every tradesman licensed by the university—and with none other is the student authorized to deal—shall send to the tutor, at the expiration of each term, the bills of the respective undergraduates who have been his customers. From the position occupied in society by the friends of the student, the tutor is enabled to judge whether he is exceeding his income. The expenditure which would be excessive for the son of a clergyman, with a small living, would be moderate for the heir to a peerage. It is further required that the expenses of each term shall be paid before the undergraduate recommences his studies, and any tradesman who is known to withhold from the tutor's knowledge any debt, or portion of a debt, owing him by any student, is immediately deprived of his license. Nevertheless, all but a few of the more wealthy tradesmen conduct their transactions with the students on the understanding that these regulations are to be violated at pleasure. Thus, from term to term, debt is added to debt, until the student is preparing to leave the university. Then the tradesman becomes eager for a settlement. The student endeavors to put him off with promises. The tradesman hurries to a lawyer. A writ is issued, judgment is delivered, and the student has to fly from the university without taking his degree, in order to escape a prison. Or, if he is in his minority, proceedings are commenced against his father, who, if he is a proud man, will rather pay the bill than contest it, though the entire amount will seriously impair the fortunes of his other children. Or he may deny his liability, plead that his son is a minor, and that the articles furnished were not necessaries. In this way, it has been argued by barristers on the plaintiff's side that wine, cigars, jewels, and hired horses were necessaries of life, and the presiding judge has sometimes ruled on one side that they were, and sometimes on the other, that they were not. Hundreds of young men have had their prospects in life blasted by this system, and yet, no cure has been found. I heard of one instance, and it was only one of many nearly similar, where an undergraduate had contracted debts amounting to upward of $10,000 beyond his ability to pay. Of this sum, I recollect some of the items: $1,000 was for cigars, $3,000 for wine, $2,500 for the hire of horses, $1,900 for rings, pins, and other trinkets, and only $200 for books. He had attained his majority, and was sent to prison, his father resolutely refusing to pay his debts. He languished in prison for two years, and died there.

Nor does it always follow that the undergraduate may be saved from this disgrace and ruin by firmness and honorable principles. He is, for the first time in his life, his own master. The superintendence of the college tutor amounts to just nothing at all. Immediately he arrives at the university, he is besieged by tradesmen. It is particularly impressed upon him, that money is not necessary to conclude a bargain. He can pay when he likes. Three years hence will do. The youth is sorely tempted. He finds his new college acquaintance sailing under press of canvas, over the sea of extravagance. They give splendid wine parties, and invite him to the jovial board. He is bound to return the hospitality of these prime fellows. One extravagance leads to another. The port and sherry, that he could afford, shine no more upon his table. He drinks hock now, and claret, and princely champagne, at two dollars and fifty cents a bottle. He smokes cigars at $10 a pound. He is living like a gentleman. Let the poor sizar toil over musty books; he will have a race horse. 'Tis a fine life. How much better than a schoolboy's. He speaks of his father as the governor, and talks in a flash manner of the girls he is acquainted with. He thinks he will marry one of them, but his choice is not determined. The college dons, professors, tutors, fellows, know the temptations, know the risk, know the ruinous goal, but no one arrests his career. Which is most to blame; the raw, undisciplined boy, or the evil university system?

I passed a rare time at Cambridge. What delight it was in those cold mornings to take a bracing walk into the country, and looking back over miles of level land, to behold the chapel of King's College, and the tower of St. Mary's church, which had been the land beacons of aspiring students for so many generations! I verily believe that the chapel of King's College is the finest piece of modern architecture in the world. It is a poem in stone! Teaching so much—not of this earth, only; least of this earth, perhaps. I never wearied of walking in it, and around it, repeating Wordsworth's sonnet, and feeling that 'for a few white-robed scholars only,' it was not built; but as an utterance of man's spirit, more fervent than he could express in the articulate speech of man. The soul of the individual, nurtured by any semblance of culture, who can stand unmoved beneath that fretted roof, must be cold as the frozen zone. It remains with me, like Niagara.

As a college, Trinity is the most interesting. The chapel is very inferior to that of King's, but it is hallowed by the memory of Newton. Roubiliac's statue of the philosopher is the chief object of interest, and the Trinity men do not envy the scholars of King's their chapel, when they behold that statue. The dean of Trinity, the Rev. W. Carns, author of the 'Life of Simeon,' is the present possessor of the rooms once occupied by Newton. The little watch tower where he pierced the heavens with his telescope is still standing. One ascends it, and surveys the firmament, not without a reverential feeling. Cambridge abounds with the associations of genius. Chaucer studied here, and at Oxford also, it is said; and in treading the great court of Trinity, one cannot help thinking of Bacon. Milton's mulberry tree is yet standing, and puts forth a few fresh leaves every spring in the garden of Christ's College. His manuscript of 'Comus,' partly in his own writing, partly in that of his amanuensis—of one of his daughters, it is probable—is in the library of Trinity College, and may be seen by the curious. The spirits of these venerable men still haunt the scenes of their studious youth, and with their mighty shadows brooding over us, what is the value of dollars and dimes?

A PHYSICIAN'S STORY.

'Phil, keep the office door shut and the windows open. None of your sacrilegious games of marbles on the front steps. Behave yourself respectably, and wash bottles till I come back, or I'll turn you off to-morrow. Have an eye to Mrs. Thompson's gate, and if anybody should call for me, you know where I am to be found, I suppose?

Phil responded by a grinning nod, the question was superfluous. It is an attribute of boys of fourteen that they know everything they should not know, and if there be one of the class who excels his fellows in useless knowledge, my Phil is that lad. Apparently busied forever in those light but continuous labors which pertain to an office boy, he contrived to keep a far more watchful eye upon my movements than I was able to do upon his, and could tell (probably did) exactly in what direction I usually bent my steps after the above formula, whether I walked on the right or left hand side of the street, and how soon I reached my destination—the number of times my tender knuckles came in contact with a certain hard green door, and the reception that awaited me inside it, the length of my stay—the only thing he had a legitimate right to know—and the mien, cheerful or dejected, according to the fortunes of the day, with which I returned to the empty office and full bottles, over which he was supposed to mount guard during my absence.

Preferring not to notice the peculiarity of my assistant's manner, as it might involve awkward explanations, I closed the door of his prison with an authoritative bang, that shook the slate outside it, and strode with hasty steps down the village street. There was no occasion for hurry, the business I had on hand was not of a kind to demand it, and had been pending a reasonable time; nor would any more haste on my part be lively to advance it much, but would rather verify the old proverb, of 'less speed.' I therefore walked fast purely as a matter of principle, in the hope, that the village dames, who I knew were watching my progress from behind the green paper curtains of their 'sittin' room' windows, might possibly judge from my speed, that I had been called to a patient at last. Vain hope! idle precaution! every one of those astute matrons knew at least as well as myself the errand upon which I was bound, and far better than I, as I own in all humility, the state of health in the neighborhood, which precluded all possibility of any professional exertion on my part.

And here I may remark, literally en passant, that the town in which I had chosen to locate was salubrious to a painful and unnatural degree, the very last place in the world for a young physician in ordinary circumstances to seek his fortune, but my circumstances were peculiar—it was not so much fortune that I sought—in short, I had my reasons—and a large practice would have greatly interfered with my more serious occupation. Still, I do not deny that a slight modicum of professional business, just to fill up the intervening time and save appearances, would not have been amiss, and I had been in fact rather anxiously looking for some symptoms of the sort for a considerable time, without any result at all. The inhabitants all took Hall's 'Journal of Health;' they cherished Buchan's 'Domestic Medicine,' they studied the 'Handbook of Hygiene;' they were learned in the works of Fowler. Cold water was cheap and plentiful, they used it externally and internally—exercise was fashionable and inevitable, where every lady was her own help, and every gentleman his own woodsawyer; food was just dear enough to make surfeits undesirable, and medicine was so unpopular that nobody before me ever ventured to open a drug store; the old ladies dispensed a few herbs privately, and that was the end of it. People did not seem to die; if anything was the matter with them, they perseveringly 'kept on,' till it stopped, the disease retiring in despair from their determination to be well. Fat parties, who ought to have been dropsical, were not so at all—they grew fatter, and flourished like green bay trees; lean persons, threatening to go off in a decline, declining to do so, remained. Adventurous little boys, falling from the tops of high trees to the stony ground, sustained no injuries beyond the maternal chastisement and brandy-and-brown-paper of home; babies defied croup and colic with the slender aid of 'Bateman's Drops,' and 'Syrup of Squills,' dispensed by a wise grandma, and children of mature years went through the popular infant disorders as they went through their grammars, and with about as much result; mumps and measles, chills and chicken pox, prevailed and disappeared without medical assistance, and though all the children in the village whooped like wild Indians, no anxious parent ever thought it necessary to call in a physician. There was but one in the place before my advent, a comfortable, elderly man, who selected the profession, as practised in his native town, because it interfered less than any other with his punctual habits of sleeping and eating, and was a gentlemanly sinecure, possessing peculiar privileges. No patient of his ever dreamt of calling him out at night, or keeping him away from his meals; the person to be ill, chose a convenient hour between dinner and tea, and gave respectful notice at a reasonable time beforehand. No extraordinary accidents, requiring wonderful feats of surgery, were ever permitted in his practice; no stranger shocked his nerves by dying suddenly at the village hotel; no mysterious diseases, unknown of science, baffled his skill, or defied it; the locality was too far south for bronchitis and consumption, too far north for poisonous malaria fevers and coups de soleil; and being inland, just inside the line of the coast scourges of cholera and yellow Jack. In short, to quote the only epitaph in the village churchyard, 'Physicians was in vain.'

It was a beautiful morning on which I took my way through this healthful town—I mean, of course, professionally speaking, a very fine morning, indeed. The air was warm and damp, as if laden with pleurisy and ague; the ground soft and oozy, seemed a sure thing for rheumatism and influenza. The sun unseasonably hot; fever and rush of blood to the head. Old Captain Hopkins is constitutionally inclined to gout—he never had a twinge through the rainy season, but it is just possible that this may settle him. Mother Hawks is rheumatic, is she? if she is about, disseminating scandal to-day, I shall be avenged for her slandering me; and the Sessions girls come out to get the news in all weather. That vicious child of Mrs. Thompson, after keeping me in suspense four months, will probably 'croup up' to-night, and its grandmother Banks is off on a visit, and Dr. Coachey never goes out after dark, and I live right over the way! With these encouraging reflections, and a grateful glance upward, where a copper-colored sun blazed through a sea of purple mist, I pursued my way to the mansion of Colonel Marston, father to Miss Dora Marston, to whom I am honorary cousin.

Colonel Marston's house is situated on a fine grassy knoll, shaded by handsome trees, and inclosed with a well kept hedge; it is just out of reach of village eyes and ears, but not beyond the pale of village curiosity. Anybody there can tell you by what right I address good Mrs. Marston as my aunt, and pretty Dora as my cousin, while being not in the least related to either. My dear mother, now deceased, when a young widow, possessed of some property and a little boy, married Miss Dora's uncle, and became her aunt, thus making me, as I consider, virtually her cousin. At any rate, for twenty years I have been a frequent visitor at the dear old house, recognized in my cousinly capacity by the family, and treated accordingly, and for more than half that time like a wolf in sheep's clothing, have I sought the avuncular mansion with an eye to Miss Dora, a fact she seems surprisingly unconscious of, considering how many times, by hint and innuendo, by sigh and look, and tender courtesy, and honest speech, I have shown her the place she occupies in my mind, and given her, as it appears, the right to drive me out of it, if possible. Tom Hayes is her favorite instrument of torture. He is the young lawyer of the place, as I am the young doctor, and is advancing about as fast in his profession. He is considered a good-looking fellow, though I don't see it, and has undoubtedly a fine voice, upon which pretext he spends about half his time twanging away upon Dora's guitar, and waking Col. Marston from his afternoon nap. It would look better, I must say, for a young man in his position, to be at home, waiting for practice; but I have heard that he says the same of me, and perhaps with equal justice. At all events, it was hard to find his horse already tied to the gate post on that particular spring day, when warm and weary, I arrived on the battle ground, prepared to put my fate to the touch at once.

On one side of the house lay the broad white public road, from which one deviated to approach this earthly paradise; on the other, a narrower private one, a mere cart track, grass-grown, cool, and shady, leading down to the mill stream that ran behind the grounds, brawling and seething and swelled by the spring rains into quite a respectable torrent. Down this path Dora always took me to walk when she wanted me to say anything uncommonly foolish, which could serve her as food for laughter, and down this path again we must always go when that villain Hayes was of the party, and she wanted to play me off against him, or him against me, or both against her womanly vanities. Accordingly I found them equipped for a walk, loitering on the front piazza, not waiting for me, however, as Dora took pains to explain, and as I could readily believe, for they were flirting over a new song. Not in the best of humor, I took the offered seat near them, wiped my heated brows, and advised my fair cousin not to saunter through the damp woodland paths on this most unhealthy morning. 'I advise you as a physician, mind you,' said I, to give weight to the opinion which might be denied it in my cousinly capacity; but she received it with utter contempt and ridicule of my pretensions, gladly joined by Mr. Hayes, whose white teeth gleamed wolfishly behind a long black mustache, at my expense. We had shaken hands with great cordiality; I had inquired after his clients, he had professed interest in my patients; I had asked him how he had enjoyed the ride with Miss Julia Stevens last evening, and he had just remembered seeing me, as he drove past Mrs. Hedge's in the front garden with Anna Hedge; a reminiscence which went a thought too far, for I had been, at the time of which he spoke, seated on this very piazza beside the innocent young lady opposite, who now showed no tokens of the sweet confusion, with which she listened to my broken confidence last night, and only glanced from one to the other with guileless interest and wondering simplicity.

Now I had said enough to her on that occasion to make me feel some anxiety concerning her demeanor to-day, and some resolution concerning my own. I had a right to expect, after the way in which she then treated me, that if my cheeks burned and my ears tingled, and my heart beat faster, at the remembrance of that sweet meeting, hers would at least betray some consciousness of the fact. But not a fleeting tremor shook her little hand, not a shade of color deepened the rose of her round cheek, not a passing emotion of bashfulness weighed down her curly eyelashes. She was serenely self-possessed, superbly cool, and attentive to the obnoxious Hayes, in proportion as she was disregardful of me.

Burning with suppressed indignation, I accepted her careless invitation, and followed the precious pair into the shrubbery, there being no other way of obtaining the explanation I was determined to have this morning. I had often seen such demonstrations before, and borne them with comparative patience, knowing how well worth the trouble of winning, how true and tender after all, if only it could be reached under these disguising caprices, was the wayward little heart that had tested my love and tried my temper all these years. From her very cradle she provoked me, from the frills of her baby cap she mocked me; and, grown into the ranks of little girlhood, systematically aggravated me by artful preference of all the little boys I most hated, for whose infant attentions she unceremoniously deserted my elder claim and assured protection. And yet, in all her childish troubles, from torn frocks to Latin lexicons, she flew to me for aid, counsel, sympathy, and protection, repenting of all her sins against me, and walking in a straight path again, till between her sweet eyes, and her pretty confessions, her helpless reliance, and gentle ministering to my vanity, she had regained a larger place than before in my alienated heart, and could afford to play the very deuce with it again.

'Twenty years of this sort of thing must have settled the question one way or another,' I argued; 'there is no use in my putting up any longer with this bewitched town, and my empty slate, Phil's nonsense, and Tom Hayes's impudence, my aunt's sermons, and my uncle's lectures, and Miss Dora's caprices; she has either flirted with me, or she has loved me from her cradle.' I have sometimes thought the latter, but I greatly suspect it is the former. Grand query, which is it? and I resolved to know to-day.

It was in vain, however, that I tried during the shady walk to gain a moment's conversation with Dora, a whisper in her ear, a look of her eye, or a touch of her hand; such favors were reserved for the military cavalier who walked at her side, exultant and triumphantly good-natured, though I seemed to read sneering and defiance in the very cock of his hat. Sullen and morose, as I saw her lifted over muddy places in his proud arms, or climbing a stile by his gallant assistance, I followed more slowly, and completing this pleasant party behind me and before me, and about me, wherever he could get within stumbling reach, trotted my favorite aversion, Rover, an ugly, awkward, senseless, and ill-conditioned puppy, whom Dora had elected her prime pet and favorite, for no better reason apparently than that we all hated him. The colonel kicked him, Mrs. Marston chased him, the cook scalded him, the boys stoned him, and I could hardly refrain from giving public utterance to the anathemas that burned on my tongue, when the wretched animal, who seemed to have an insane attraction to me, floundered about my legs as I moved, or flapped his stump tail under my chair when I sat still. Dora alone, with strange perversity, persisted in ignoring his bad habits, his vulgar manners, his uselessness, his ugliness, and his impudence, and set me at defiance when I objected to him, by pressing him in her beautiful arms—happy cur that he was!—and laying her soft cheek against his villainous bristles, till in very disgust and jealousy I ceased to complain, and learned to submit quietly to his revolting familiarities.

On the present occasion the few private kicks and pinches which I ventured to bestow, availed nothing against his clinging affection, till we drew near the water, and the sight of a rabbit's white tail further up the bank effected my release from his attentions, for he immediately galloped in pursuit of it, and a similar happy accident left me for a moment free to approach Dora without the intervention of my friend, Mr. Hayes, who had gallantly volunteered to scramble up a steep bank for a cluster of pink flowers which Miss Dora persistently admired, as they waved in inaccessible beauty above her head, though sister blossoms bloomed all about her feet. Being thus freed from the attendance of both puppies, as I suitably classed them in my mind, I approached the little queen of my heart, who stood on the very verge of the wet sand, where she had planted herself in express defiance of my professional warning, with the water gently oozing up around her thin slippers.

'Don't come here, cousin! I'm afraid you'll wet your feet!' she called out impertinently as I drew near; but her eyes were not lifted, and such a rosy flush crept up her face as she said it, that I forgot my hot walk and hotter indignation, and glowed less with anger and more with love. I laid my hand lightly on her shoulder, looking down on her mocking lips, and stooping, whispered something in her ear—in spite of female coquetry (in her person), and her uneasy pretexts to escape, in spite of Tommy Hayes, in spite of Rover, that marplot puppy, I had a moment's hearing, and used it manfully, and as I whispered, my heart beat thick with triumph, for she could not raise her eyes to mine, they were pensively watching the source of the rippling flood, and bright tears seemed quivering on the silken lashes, her cheeks wore a warmer scarlet, her pretty lips trembled with the fateful answer, and I was sure it wasn't no, and saw them pout, gracious heavens! to suit one of those shrill female screams which more than trump of war or voice of cannon strike panic into the bold heart of man, and unnerve him to the finger ends. 'My dog, my puppy!' she sobbed, 'he'll be drowned, he can't swim! He's coming down stream, tail first, poor fellow! I knew it was Rover! Oh why don't you go and save him?'

This passionate appeal was addressed to the sympathizing Hayes, I being in disgrace on account of an unfortunate ejaculation, wrung from me in the first surprise, an impoliteness in strong contrast to the graceful gallantry of the hero of the cliff, who supported the weeping maiden in his arms, and tenderly soothed her excitement, as the unhappy Rover wheeled and eddied toward us.

'Why don't you go?' she reiterated impatiently, stamping her little foot, and as her eyes this time wandered toward me, I responded by throwing off my cap and coat, and preparing to obey; it was of no use to remonstrate or to explain to her that it was almost impossible to rescue the dog, and that the attempt would involve great risk of my own life—what did she care for that? The emotion I had so proudly misinterpreted on her lovely face, was for a blundering senseless puppy; the heart I had so faithfully served to win, was given to a miserable dandy: what remained to me, but to finish a life devoted to an unworthy object, by consistently sacrificing it in the same worthless cause; and with the bitter hope that my failures would end here, I prepared to plunge into the rushing water.

I could not help looking back at Dora, who, tightly clinging to her lover's arm, had been hidden from me during my rapid preparations by his tall figure and ample white linen robes. 'Don't you go,' she had said to him; 'let George go; if he can swear, he can swim—don't you try, Mr. Hayes!'

Mr. Hayes had no idea of trying; he risk his life, a life so precious to a world of spinsters, for a miserable fellow puppy! he wash the dye from those perfumed whiskers—dear to the hearts of so many maidens—he ruin those freshly laundered clothes, he abandon those new French boots! Ridiculous! He glanced down into his companion's pale face with a smile of exquisite amusement, as she said it, but Dora's eyes were tightly shut, and she did not see him; so the sneer travelled to me, who was about to drown in his stead for his lady's pleasure, and gave my heart its last dying pang as I quitted the shore.

A cry of terror and recall, from what had been a dear voice, followed my splashing descent into the deep water, and thrilled my nerves a moment; but I struck out bravely for the whirlpool, where, plunging, yelping, struggling, revolved the wretched beast, to whom my cousin had resolved to sacrifice my life, and for whose sake she was crying on the beach. Much time was lost in reaching, more in capturing the blundering fool, who, mad with fear and fright, dreaded me more than the water, and when I had him in my arms at last, we were rapidly shooting toward the cruel wheel that splashed and creaked a hundred rods below, ready to suck us in to certain death. Well, what would it matter? Dora would be sorry perhaps, at least for the dog, and so desperately bitter and vengeful was I that I was glad her clumsy pet, since she loved him so much, was to drown in my company, that she too might feel what it was to mourn the loss of something dearly loved, and that my death would be associated in her mind with a painful event—in short, I despised the weakness and felt my mad folly, but it would have its way. I closed my eyes upon the shifting scene, and tried to prepare for death, unconscious that the current was bearing me close to the shore, and that my only chance of escape was near. Something struck my face, a thrilling voice called my name, I raised my heavy gaze, and there, clinging to the farthest branches of an old tree that had fallen over into the water, and stretching out her arms to me, was Dora, her cheeks wet, her lips pale, her eyes imploringly fixed on me, or on the burden I carried, regardless of the rushing flood that saturated her floating dress and tiny feet, and threatened to bear her away from the frail support to which she clung. Feeble, exhausted, despairing, as I was, there was a magnetic power in that dear voice, in that beautiful pale face, that inspired me with hope, and drew me back to life.

A few strokes impelled me nearer, the stream drifted me among the sweeping branches, I was clasped in those beautiful arms, then seized and dragged along by a stronger gripe, and presently lay half senseless and wholly exhausted on the sandy beach.

I was content to lie there while I fancied I felt soft hands press mine, warm tears baptize my face, and gentle touches extricate the gasping Rover from my drowning gripe on his hair; but after he was removed, I seemed to be more roughly handled by less tender fingers, and opened my eyes to find the zealous Mr. Hayes kneeling by my side, and, under his fair mistress's orders of course, doing his duty toward my resuscitation, while at a safe distance stood Dora, her dripping favorite sneezing and floundering in her arms, and her happy face beaming rosier and fairer than ever, by contrast with her soiled and bedraggled garments, as she pressed the precious rescued treasure to her heart, and received her lover's congratulations on its restoration, with only an occasional furtive glance at me, as I lay slowly coming back to life under his active treatment.

So the tears, the pallor, the heroism, the daring rescue, were for the sake of that worthless dog. I was saved incidentally with her interesting favorite, as I might have drowned in his cause, and no questions asked, and having accomplished my high mission, and preserved the stupid brute, lay untended and uncared-for on the sand, dependent on the kind offices of my successful rival! The blood rushed back to my heart, the fiery strength to my nerves, as I slowly drank in the bitterness of this cup.

'Your cousin's better, Miss Dora,' said the benignant Hayes. 'Aren't you going to thank him?'

She moved nearer in instinctive obedience to him, bashful, tearful, trembling, confused, but radiant and lovely as I had never seen her, and lifting her timid eyes to his, as it seemed for further instructions, with a gentle deprecating grace, while she carefully averted them from me. I could bear it no longer, and with an energetic oath sprang up, knocking the astonished Tom back into my place, and extorting a little cry of surprise from Miss Dora, as I strode away toward the village, determined to shake its dust from my feet, and never again look upon the faces of the precious couple I had left. I rushed through my aunt's kitchen like a whirlwind, on my way, and bade her good-by.

'Good-by, Georgy? what does the boy mean?' said she. She was phlegmatic and slow.

'I mean I shall never see you again, aunty. God bless you, I'm going away.'

'Hoity-toity, nonsense!' said she; 'some folly of yours and Dora's; never mind her, a silly girl! you'll be my own boy yet, my dear; but you're dripping wet, George; you have been in the water, you'll take cold, child; here swallow this,' and mingling spirituous with spiritual comfort, the good old lady poured a fiery glass of brandy down my throat, and I poured out my sorrowful story into her motherly ear, as I had done when an orphan boy, and all my life since, waxing warm with anger and contempt as I told it, while her benignant face showed no symptom of the indignation that glowed in mine; she pitied and soothed me, but made no comment.

'So good-by, aunty,' said I, as I finished, in a tone tremulous with weakness and wrath; 'you love me, if Dora does not, and you will remember me kindly I know.' I wrung her hand and kissed her cheek, but she never shed a tear; she had been wont to weep like a watering pot when I went back to school or college after a visit, and I had always left her, loaded with biscuits and blessings, thankless prodigal that I was! and disposed to laugh at her display of maternal sorrow. How grateful to my wounded and sorrowful spirit, my outraged heart, would such a demonstration of love now have been! but all were alike heartless and cold to-day, and she smiled serenely under my parting kiss, and said, as I ran down the steps, 'Promise me not to go before you are well rested in the morning, Georgy; the coach does not pass through till eleven, and you'll come back, if I have occasion to send for you—before then—professionally?'

I bowed assent; what could I do? and, cut to the heart, went slowly and wearily home. I do not know how or by which way I arrived there, or whom or what I passed upon the road; I saw nothing but the darkness of my fortune, and felt nothing but the terrible sorrow that consumed my heart. Phil was astonished at the gentleness of the reproof he received for being discovered with a crowd of young vagabonds playing pitch-penny in my very office; but I was too broken in spirit to administer justice on him—how could I expect him to be true when all others were faithless?—and quite subdued and conscience-stricken he waited upon me assiduously, till my last bottle was packed at midnight and I sent him to bed, with orders to call me at sunrise. The stage came through at eleven, and I usually rose at nine; but I scorned to comply with my aunt's injunction, to take my ordinary rest, and was bent upon the additional misery of rising early in the morning.

What weary, dreary hours! I heard every one of them strike, as I lay tossing on the patent spring mattress, in that darkly shaded and sacredly secluded room, where I was wont to sleep the sleep of the sluggard, until I saw the day break, for the first time in my life, I think, and the novelty put me to sleep, and thence into a dismal dream, from which I was awakened by a tremendous thumping at the office-door, and the shrill voice of my Phil, in communication with the person outside.

'I shan't open the door for nobody,' that faithful janitor was announcing, 'and if you don't stop knockin' on it, I'll come out and make ye. He's asleep, I tell yer; goin' away to-day, and wants to get up in time for the stage, but I shall let him oversleep hisself, and he'll think better of it by to-morrow. Come this afternoon if you want to see him; that'll do for you.'

'But I tell you it won't do,' returned a gruff voice, which I recognized as that of Colonel Marston's hired man. 'Miss Dora's sick with pleurisy, she catched her death of cold yesterday, fishin' her puppy out of the river. Dr. George was in it, too, and you'd better let me in, for he'll be ravin' when he knows she is out of her head with a fever this mornin', and Mrs. Marston sent me herself, and told me to bring him back, and no excuse.'

I sprang out of bed, and was down stairs questioning the messenger before Phil could invent any more excuses for keeping him out. Dora sick of a fever, and I called in? my pride rebelled at entering the house again, after the treatment I had received from its inmates; but I had promised Mrs. Marston to return whenever 'sent for professionally,' and my promise was sacred; the other doctor was worse than useless, and if Dora should be dangerously ill—lovely, brave Dora, who perilled her life for mine yesterday—for mine and the dog's-but never mind that now, she was heartless, but could I find it in my heart to turn away from her in her sorrow? Alas! I was still so weak, that my love drew me more than my pledged word, along the well-known road that yesterday I had vowed never to tread again.

My aunt met me at the door. I was breathless and agitated, but she seemed more cheerful than I had expected; her eyes were full of tears, for she had just come from the sick room, but there was a smile on her kind face as it looked pleasantly into mine. 'Is she very ill?' I stammered.

'Not very,' she said, coolly; 'come here a moment, Georgy,' and taking my hand, she drew me into her own little sitting-room, and shut the door. 'My dear boy,' she continued, placing both her soft hands on my shoulders, 'I sent you rather an urgent message, for fear you wouldn't come back in spite of your promise, and I want this settled about you and Dora; you have tormented each other long enough, you with your exactions and jealousy, she with her flirting and all that; I don't say she was not the worst of the two, but that's over. No, she's not very sick—don't interrupt me! She caught cold yesterday, as I thought she would, in that foolish, wicked business you were all engaged in, tempting of Providence I call it, but I hope it will do you good, and learn you a lesson. What, Georgy! you expected a wild, shy young girl to show you her heart without asking? you expected a spoiled, flattered child, whom you have done the most to spoil and flatter, not to tease and torment you when she had it in her power, and could you not bear it better from your little wayward favorite, who, you know, was always true-hearted after all? Pshaw, my dear boy, I needn't plead for our dear baby. Poor Dora has a sore heart, for she thinks you have gone away in anger forever, and her sins against you are all badly punished already. I think you'll forgive her, and I won't tell you if it's worth your while. She looks dreadfully, and feels badly, and as she has hardly been sick a day in her life, thinks she is going to die, or she never would have told me what she did tell me. I'm her mother, it's not for me to betray her; but you're my son, too, and I wish you both happy. Go in now and forgive your old aunty's long speeches; do what you can for my poor little girl, and don't ever give me reason to repent putting so much power into your hands. Georgy, my dear, bless you.'

She gave me an affectionate kiss, under more excitement than I had ever seen her, and fluttered into an inner room, just as the stage rolled by the door; to be saluted by a burst of sobs, and a strange muffled voice asking, hardly intelligibly, 'Wasn't that the coach, mother?'

'Yes, dear.'

'Then he's gone, mother; George is gone, and he'll never come back—do you think he ever will? I treated him so badly; I have been so hateful to him you don't know, even when he nearly drowned saving Rover's life.'

'Poor Rover! he wants to come in and see you.'

'Don't let him in, don't you, mother; I hate the sight of him, ugly, awkward fellow! he nearly drowned poor George, yesterday, and I never can bear to see him again now George is gone; beside, I believe I only loved Rover to plague poor George. Oh! oh, I feel so dreadfully, mother; do you think I'm going to die?'

'Not just yet, my dear. Shall I send for the doctor?'

'No, ma'am, I don't want any doctor. I had as lief die as not, I'm so miserable; beside, if I hadn't, Dr. Coachey would kill me, poking and preaching over me. Oh, if George was only here!'

'George is here, Dora.'

'Oh, is he really?' and she cried harder than ever. 'Well, I can't see him, mother;' after a pause: 'Does he want to see me?'

'No, I sent for him professionally. I can tell him to go away.'

'No, wait a minute, mother; do I look so very badly? Please make the room darker; oh, I don't want to see him at all! I'm ashamed to see him, but I will. I must beg his pardon for all my wickedness, before I get worse, or he poisons me with his dreadful drugs; he hasn't had a patient yet, and he'll be glad of the chance to practise on me, I know; he will dose me with everything. And, mother, if George is coming in, please turn in Rover.'

Quietly laughing, my aunt came out and ushered me with due ceremony beyond the door, and shut it after her. In a darkened chamber, dim and dismal, before a lowly, slowly smouldering fire, in a great stuffed chair of state, sat poor little Dora, swathed in blankets, and muffled in shawls. Her tiny feet were wrapped in a woollen bundle, and rested on hot bricks, and her aching head was tied up in red flannel bandages that smelled of brandy; she had a mustard plaster on her chest, a cayenne pepper 'gargle' for her throat, and a cup of hot ginger tea stood at her elbow; her pretty nose was swollen out of shape, her bright eyes were red and inflamed, and little blisters had broken out all over those kissable lips; a very damp white handkerchief lay in her lap, and two great tears, that it had not yet wiped away, ran down her flushed cheeks. Poor child! she put up both her small hands when I came in, to hide her little red face; but I could see the 'salt pearls' that rolled between her slender fingers, and melted my heart at once. Sorry and ashamed, and afraid to speak, but more hopeful and happy than I had often felt, I went quietly, and stood behind her chair.

'George!' she said presently, in her poor little broken voice. 'Are you there?'

'Yes, Dora.'

'Are you very angry with me?'

I put one of my hands down over the chair-back, and drew both hers away from before her face, and then came round and kissed it; I could not think of anything better to do.

'Yon are not going away?'

I shook my head. 'That is not for me to say.'

'Who then? Will you please tell me what you mean, George?' She was very gentle and submissive, but the coaxing voice trembled painfully, and the burning hand I touched began to grow cold.

'It is for you to say, Dora, dear! Did you need to ask me that, after all these years?'

Without a single word, but with a fond impulsive movement, that answered quite well instead, she turned to me, and putting both her little arms around my neck, laid her feverish cheek against mine, and cried, as if her heart were breaking.

'My dearest! what is the matter?'

'I thought you were angry with me, and had gone for good; I though I had worn your patience out at last, and you would never forgive me or come back again. Why did you come back, Georgy?'

'Because I loved you, Dora, and couldn't stay away.'

'Yes, you would, if I had not been sick—mother told me so. I had treated you too shamefully, and wounded you too cruelly; but it hurt me, too, and I deserved to have you not forgive me for all I must have made you suffer. You were proud, but you were very patient, Georgy; how long have I plagued you?'

'Twenty years!'

'Then I have loved you twenty years, and tried not to let you know it. I was very proud, very wicked, very mean, but I am sorry now. I was ashamed to have you or anybody see how much I liked you; but now I don't care, I'll tell the truth before I die. I am glad I am sick, George; for if I don't get well, you will remember what I said, and will have thought better of me; and if I live—'

'My dear Dora, you are to marry me in three weeks, so don't let us talk about dying; you have a little cold, that is all, and I'll give you time to get over it, and recover your voice, and get those ugly blisters off your face.'

'Is it very ugly?' she whispered, hiding it against my shoulder.

'Very ugly, indeed, and I hope it will stay so, till we are married; then we shall have no more flirting with Tom Hayes; I would like to have murdered him yesterday, when—when you wanted me to drown, and not him, Dora.'

'Oh, George! I didn't know the dreadful danger till it was too late, and you were gone. I knew you were brave, and could swim, and he wasn't or couldn't; I thought you would do it easily, and never dreamed you could be drowned, till you were in the water, and he told me, and then—'

'And then my little heroine risked her life to save me.'

'I wouldn't have cared to live without!'

'And cried over me when I was landed?'

'I was so glad and thankful, dear George.'

'But was ashamed to let Tom Hayes see it afterward.'

'No, only ashamed to speak to you, because I had behaved so badly; afraid you would order me away from your sight forever, as soon as you were able. I am bad, I know; but indeed, indeed I am not so bad as you think me!'

Ah! how easy it was to believe it, with that sweetly humble voice whispering in my ear; those pleading eyes truthfully looking into mine; the new charm of her timid, deprecating manner, going straight to my unfortunate, yielding heart, and conquering at once all the territory that had not succumbed to her earlier graces, when in health and spirits. Yet I had seen something of this 'death-bed repentance' before, and I should have preferred to marry her at once, while the swelled nose and the weakened eyes disabled her from coquetry, rather than to use my humble skill to restore her to health and beauty, and the society of Mr. Hayes—rewarded by having my marriage indefinitely postponed, and my promised bride infinitely tormenting me. A physician is accustomed to see promises, made in sickness, unperformed in health, and the debt of gratitude, or otherwise, to the medical attendant left unacknowledged and unpaid: he is obliged to calculate the chances of his fees pretty closely, you see. These thoughts I was weakly about to reveal to Dora, when a tumbling and snorting at the door announced Rover, and happily prevented me.

'Shall I let him in?' I politely inquired of the invalid.

'Just as you please, dear,' she gently answered; 'if he is so disagreeable to you, perhaps I had better give him away,' she added timidly.

Heavens! what a change! I was completely subdued by that last convincing proof of affection; though as to giving him away, what mortal in his senses would take him? Of course he remained, to become a member of my family, growing dearer to us both as he broke uncounted crockery, involved us in innumerable quarrels with our neighbors, and fattened upon meat at ten cents a pound, like the favorite of a Chinese epicure. At the very altar, or rather, I should say, the piano, before which we stood to be married, he interfered with the happy arrangement of the bridal party, with his ill-timed blandishments; but afterward did rue good service by getting under the feet of my groomsman, Mr. Hayes, and endangering his equilibrium as he was about to salute the bride.

'Poor Hayes!' I said, pityingly alluding to this failure afterward with her.

'Oh you needn't pity him,' she answered spitefully, but fortunately proving that the offence which produced the spite was not mine, by standing on tiptoe to kiss me; 'he'll be married to Julia Stevens before the month is out.' And so he was.

Some time has elapsed since the occurrence I have here narrated, gave me my first patient, and decided me to remain in this neighborhood, with or without others; it is fortunate I did so, for the spell is broken that held us in supernatural health, and no invalid reader of the Continental need address me for the proper name of the locality, with a view of removing to its salubrious air. My practice is increasing rapidly, in spite of Mrs. Thompson's baby, which has hitherto disappointed my expectations of croup, but promises in time a beautiful case of hereditary asthma. Captain Hopkins is on his last legs with the gout, unless he soon resolves to spend part of his income in improving mine; and nine of the Sessions girls have had the scarlet fever. Rheumatism begins to rage among the old ladies, and 'neurology' is greatly in vogue among the young ones; the late fine fruit season has produced much cholera infantum among the juvenile population, with a special tendency to cramps in the cases of the little boys; and the recent fall in the prices of provisions has induced a similar decline in health with certain of the rural economists. A railroad is projected through our midst, which will bring foreign diseases and habits among us, and turn our peaceful Arcadia into a miniature New York. I see, in imagination, a busy and prosperous future in store for me; I see my handsome and hitherto unused sets of surgical instruments often taken from their case, for 'disasters,' 'collisions,' 'smashes,' and 'shocking accidents.' I see fashion reigning in our humble streets, with her neuralgic little bonnets, her consumptive thin shoes, her lung-compressing corsets, and fever-tempting bodices, her unseasonable hours, and unreasonable excitements and unnatural quantities and qualities of food and drink; I see my little stock of drugs increased to a mighty establishment; my Phil, of some use at last, dispensing them rapidly, and Rover, hoarse with barking at the ringing of the night bell. I see Dr. Coachey retiring in despair to his whist and his sangaree, and myself sole autocrat of the village health; and brightest of all these bright visions, I see my pretty Dora, the beautiful spirit of all light and love in my household, infinitely lovelier and more charming than even in her girlish days, but without the faintest symptom of the coquetry that marked her then—blind to all fascinations but mine, and such a tender wife, that she upholds my whiskers (which are inclined to be reddish) to be of the finest auburn, and does not envy Mrs. Tom Hayes the sable splendors which adorn her husband's face; in short, I see daily more occasion to thank heaven for all the happy consequences of Dora's cold.

THE TIDE.

The rising tide sighs mournfully
Under the midnight moon;
The restless ocean scornfully
Dashes its surging billows down
On a jewelled beach, at the dead of night,
That in the soft and silvery light
That flits and fades, is sparkling bright,
Laved by the changing sea!

LA VIE POÉTIQUE.

He is not blind who seeth nought;
Or dumb, who nothing can express;
And sight and sound are something less
Than what is inwardly inwrought.
So seems it foremost of my joys,—
Not ranking those that from above
Assume on earth the name of Love,
The feast which never ends or cloys.
Nor is it less a feast to me
If he, my neighbor, cannot break
The bread with me, or with me take
The wine of all my mystery.
Not less a feast, if so well off
He deems himself in worldly goods,
That at unseen beatitudes
He blindly flings an aimless scoff.
Not theirs the blame who thus disown
The wealth they see not as they walk,
Nor mingle in their household talk
What all to them is all unknown.
Mine be the greater joys that tend
To give me what I cannot give,
And what in living makes me live,
And what I best can comprehend.
And though, amid the daily dust
Of moving men, I move a moat
Within the sunbeam where we float,
With mutual needs and mutual trust,—
Though outward unto outward shows
The kindred claims of sympathy,
And hand to hand and eye to eye
The generous meed of Faith bestows,—
Yet am I conscious that I bear
A something in me dumb and blind
To all the rest of human kind,
And which but one can partly share.
Though in the turbulent stream of change,
The pressing wants of flesh and sense
Conceal my inward opulence,
And clog the life that else would range;
Yet am I conscious that below
The turbid tide, as through the straits
Of Bab-el-Mandeb's tearful gates,
Strong counter currents constant flow.
Nor do I love that man the less,
Because, in our companionship
There lieth behind the eye and lip,
That something, neither can express.
For inasmuch as mortal love,
Being mortal, cannot fill our need,
I feel the Goodness that can feed
With droppings from the feast above.
Whereby, in Heaven's perfected plan,
Which saves from spoil of worldly flaw,
I read the inevitable law
Of compensation unto man.
Thus, though I grope in darkest night,
Of what men call a world of ills,
The closer concentration fills
My inmost with benignant light.
And though I sit in dull routine
Schooled to the scholarship of books,
My truant spirit outward looks
And Fancy fills the village green!
Yet not in pride, oh, understand,
Not pride of merit do I boast,
Of that, which at its uttermost,
Is of me part, like eye or hand.
In awe, not pride, doth Fancy wield
The sceptre of her gorgeous realm,
Whose revelations overwhelm
With sense of greatness unrevealed.
Thus, whatsoever good is gained
In fantasies of fresh delights,
But wings us to diviner flights
Unto the ever unattained.
Nor need I more than this to show
All proof of that astounding bliss,
Which from the world of worlds to this,
Through lowliest mind, sends conscious glow.
Not clearer through the density
Of darkling woods, do I behold
The intervening flecks of gold
Reveal unseen intensity.
In this deep truth I hold the key
That locks me from a world of pain,
And opens unto boundless gain
Of sweet ideal mystery.
And though I may not hope to climb
Above the level commonplace,
Or touch that vital growth of grace
Which shapes the fruit of deathless rhyme,
Yet, will I bless the Gracious Power
Which giveth strength to walk the mead,
And catch the sometime wafted seed
That ripens to the quiet flower.
Or, when, foot-weary with the day,
My longing spirit only feels
The tremor of the distant wheels
That bear some poet on his way;
I'll deem it very kindly chance
That gives the apprehension clear
To feel the pageant, far or near,
That moves to other's utterance.
And if I can but feebly keep
With reverent grace my share of good,
And kneeling, gather daily food
By gleaning, where my betters reap,
Yet will I bless the Hand Divine
That with the appetite for least,
Transforms into perpetual feast
The homely bread, the household wine;
And place it foremost of my joys,—
Not ranking those that from above
Assume on earth the name of Love,—
That feast, which never ends or cloys.

THE ASH TREE.

'The Ash for nothing ill.'—Spenser.

'The Ash asks not a depth of fruitful mould
But, like frugality, on little means
It thrives; and high o'er creviced ruins spreads
Its ample shade, or on the naked rock,
That nods in air, with graceful limbs depends.'—Bidlake's Year.

'Nature seems t' ordain
The rocky cliff for the wild Ash's reign.'—Dryden's Virgil.

Those who would seek the primitive signification of all objects in Nature, unroll their symbolism, and thereby attain the first historical groundwork of poetry, must bear in mind that this system was formed, and, indeed, ripely developed, in an age anterior to all written records of humanity. By ascertaining what words are common to the Indo-Germanic languages, we may easily find how far in civilization those had progressed who spoke the old Aryan, the common mother of the languages of Europe, India, and Persia, ere they parted to form new tribes, with new tongues. So, by comparing the mythologic legends of these later races, we may, with strictest accuracy, determine what was the parent stem. That the religion of the British Celts had striking points of resemblance with that of the Ph[oe]nicians and the Baal-worshipping Shemitic races, with India and Scandinavia and the Greek and Roman systems, is apparent enough to any one who will compare the names, customs, and legends common to all. It was something more than a mere coincidence which gave to Bal of the East and Bal-der of the West the same significant syllable.

Yet it must be remembered that the further back we go to the primæval age of one language and one religion, the more obscure becomes our medium of vision. We see that tribes intermingled, exchanging and distorting traditions of their gods; that migrations disturbed the local force of legends; that the time for celebrating the birth of Spring in the far South or East became sadly misplaced when transplanted to the North; and that, finally, the deep reverence and strange tales attached to trees, flowers, and minerals, being too deeply seated to perish, were fed by being transferred to other objects more or less similar. Thus Christmas, derived from the old heathen Yule or Wheel feast of the Seasons and of Time, and which, like all feasts, was founded in the celebration of the revival of Spring, was actually held at last in mid-winter. So the holly and ivy, expressive of the male and female principles of generation, and of the great mystery of reproduction and revival most in force during the Spring, were substitutes for other symbols—possibly the fig leaves, lettuce, and roses which in milder climes had at that season been employed to set forth the loves of Venus and Adonis—of reviving and of receptive nature.

The most striking illustration of this transfer of earnest religious devotion to such objects is furnished by the Ash Tree. In the far East, men had, during the course of ages, learned to attach extraordinary significance to trees, which, growing, decaying, and dying like man, yet outliving him by centuries, seemed, like animals, to be both far below and yet far above him in many of the conditions of life. In those glowing climes the Banyan was regarded as the tree of trees, and the mighty centre of vegetating life. Hence it was worshipped with such deep reverence that even in modern botany we find it named the ficus religiosa; and it was called by the earlier Christians the Devil's Tree, in accordance with their belief that all heathen rites were offered to Satan. For it was beneath the Banyan that Vishnu was born, and under it that Buddha taught his sacred lore; it is in it that Brahmins love to dwell; it is the living, green cathedral of God—the leafy cloister of sacred learning, ever holy, ever beautiful, never dying. Like God and Nature, it is ever re-born; it falls drooping to earth to take fresh root, and is, on that account, as well as from its immense size, a wonderfully apt symbol of God renewing himself—of revival and of eternity. It is named from some saint, whose soul is believed to flit through its solemn shades, nay, to animate the tree itself: no wonder that in the laws of Menu it was made the sacred, never-to-be-injured monument of a boundary.[1]

Time rolled on—for the world was old then, though thousands of years have since faded—and from the East there was a mighty emigration to lands far away. What were the causes of this mighty movement—what was it which transplanted the seeds of new nations and new races into the distant Norway and Sweden? As yet, only dim, very dim conjecture can be made. The Mahabharata tells us of a mighty battle which sent forth hero-sages with their armies into the wide world; others have traditions of divisions between the worshippers of the Lingam and Yoni, who alternately contended for the supremacy of the male or female principle in creation. Whatever the causes may have been—priest warring with soldier for power, or a newer and a milder code casting off the older and more aristocratic rulers into outer darkness—one thing is certain, that they went forth strong in faith, fearless of destiny; for the religion of primeval times was terrible and tremendous. It was such religion, such absolute, undoubting slavery to faith, which wore away millions on millions of lives in carrying out in dim, old, barbarous days the rock sculptures of the temples of Ellora—which dug Sibyls' grots, and piled together Cyclopean walls, and pierced Cimmerian caves of awful depth and solid gloom, in the fair isles of the Mediterranean; and which, it may have been at the same time, it may have been at a later day, massed together the miracles of Stonehenge, the enormous dragon rows of Brittany, and the almost indentically similar serpent mounds of our own West. They are all of one faith.

Westward went the Æsir—the children of Light—from the land of the Banyan—In die weite weite Welt hinaus—out into the wild, brave world! Some went Greekward. There is a curious book, by an English scholar, attempting to prove that the names of hill and valley, mountain and seas, in Greece, and of the countries which lead eastward to it, are all those of India but little changed. A problem awaiting the scientific accuracy of a Max Muller or a Grimm, and not to be handily tossed into shape by a poetic Faber, or guessed at by a wild-Irish O'Brien or Vallancey, or a lunatic Betham. It is, however, worth noting that over those South Slavonian provinces, via Greece, flowed for many centuries northward a strangely silent stream of Orientalism, but little disturbed by the outer or upper currents of history. He who has dabbled in Servian-Croat-Illyrian—twin sister to Bohemian—has doubtless been amazed at the wealth of Sanscrit words it contains, albeit he may not go so far as Pococke, who asserts that with Sanscrit alone one may travel in those countries and be understood. Over this path it was, however, even down to the middle ages, that a rich store of Oriental heresies and forbidden lore flowed into freemasonry, into Waldense and Albigense sects, into many a hidden doctrine and strange brotherhood now forgotten or veiled under some horrible outbreaking of stifling passion and terrible ante-Protestantism. Over this path, on which, in earlier ages, the mitre and rosary and violet robe and confessional, and doctrines of celibacy and monkery and nun-nism, and bell and consecrated taper, and still deeper dogmas or doctrines, wandered from the East into the Church, came also heresies, terrible as Knights Templars', which in due time warred against the Church, and cleft it in twain. The doctrines of wild sects, more or less Manichæan, which came forth strangely to upper life during the fever of the Crusades, all seem to tend obscurely from a Slavonic source. The vices with their adepti were reproached by the Church, gave to most of the languages of Europe a revolting word, modified from the name 'Bulgarian.' The origin of the earlier Bohemian Hussite sects, with their strange devil-worship and doctrine of transmigration, was manifestly Oriental. At a later date the very name of the mystic Jacob Böhme—Jacob the Bohemian—indicates some secret alliance with Slavonian associations; and if the connection of the name with strange Oriental speculations be obscure, that of the teachings of 'the inspired shoemaker' with those of the East is not—witness the often marvellous identity of tone of The Aurora with that of Hermes Trismegistus. It is worth while in this connection to trace the influence of Böhme-ism on 'the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany,' on Anabaptism, and on the illuminati of the ultra Puritans in England, bringing forth Independent Fifth Monarchy men, George Fox, Flood, Law, and Pordage. The seeds of this mystical heresy were obscurely transmitted to New England, which has always had some 'God-Smith,' or Mathias with his 'Impostures,' lurking among the vulgar. I have no doubt that, through traditional influence at least, a Joe Smith and the beginning of Mormonism might be found to have a direct descent from the doctrines of early times.

Let the reader pardon the digression. I am about to speak of the Ash tree—the successor of the Banyan—which has also its connection with English popular superstition. However it was, when the wave of Oriental emigration reached the utmost limits of Northern Europe, it changed its character with the climate. From a vast pantheism of fire, it became one of ice and of snow. In the grammar of its mythology, only a little of the vocabulary was retained, but the grand system of construction remained on the whole unchanged. There is the same stupendous ground-plan of a cosmogony founded on a sublime view of the powers of Nature, and the same exquisitely poetic elaboration of details in the Edda as in the Sacred Books of India, though the one is illumined by the burning sun of the tropics, and the other by the Northern Lights of a winter midnight.

So the children of Odin needed a tree signifying All Creation, All Time, All Nature, and they chose the Ash. Its picturesque beauty, its lightness and easy flowing lines, combined with great strength, and at times with enormous size; its elegant depending foliage and lithe vigor in its prime, and its gnarled, ancient expression when old, well fitted it to set forth the extremes of existence. The firm hold of these trees in the earth, 'their obstinate and deep rooting—tantus amor terræ,' as Evelyn expresses it, gives us a reason why the Ash of their mythology was fabled to reach down to hell; while its stern vitality, expressed by Horace, fitted it to be called the tree of life:

'Per damna, per cædes, ab ipso
Ducit opes animumque ferro.'
'By havoc, wounds, and blows
More lively and luxuriant grows.'

So the Ash became the Banyan of Northern faith, and the great meeting place of the gods—as the reader may see in the following extracts from the Edda:

Gangler demanded: 'Which is the capital of the Gods, or the sacred city?' Har answereth: 'It is under the Ash-tree Ydrasil, where the Gods assemble every day and administer justice.' 'But,' sayeth Gangler, 'What is there remarkable about that place?' 'That Ash,' answereth Jarnhar, 'is the greatest and best of all trees. Its branches extend themselves over the whole world, and reach above the heavens. It hath three roots, extremely different from each other; the one of them is among the Gods; the other among the Giants, in that very place where the abyss was formerly; the third covereth Neflheim, or Hell, and under this root is the fountain Vergelmer, whence flow the infernal rivers: this root is gnawed upon below by the monstrous serpent Nidhoger. Under that root which stretcheth out toward the land of the Giants, is also a celebrated spring, in which are concealed Wisdom and Prudence. He who hath possession of it is named Mimis: he is full of wisdom, because he drinketh thereof every morning. One day the Universal Father (Al-Fader) came and begged to drink a cup of this water; but he was obliged to leave in pledge for it one of his eyes, according as it is said in the Voluspa: 'Where hast thou concealed thine eye, Odin? Lo! I know where; even in the limpid fountain of Mimis. Every morning doth Mimis pour Hydromel upon the pledge he received from the Universal Father. Do you, or do you not understand this?' The third root of the Ash is in Heaven, and under it lieth the holy fountain of Time-Past (fons præteriti temporis—Urdar Brun). 'Tis here that the Gods sit in judgment. Every day they ride hither on horseback, passing over the Rainbow, which is the Bridge of the Gods. * * * * As for Thor, he goeth on foot to the tribunal of the Gods, and fordeth the rivers Kormt and Gormt. These he is obliged to cross every day on foot, on his way to the Ash Ydrasil, for the Bridge of the Gods is all on fire. * * * *

'Near the fountain which is under the Ash, stands a very beautiful city, wherein dwell three virgins, named Urda, or the Past; Verdandi, or the Present; and Sokulda, or the Future. These are they who dispense the ages of men; they are called Norn[=a]s, that is, Fates. But there are indeed very many others besides these, who assist at the birth of every child, to determine his fate. Some are of celestial origin; others descend from the Genii, and others from the dwarfs.' * * * *

'Gangler proceeds, desiring to know something more concerning the Ash. Har replied: 'What I have farther to add concerning it is, that there is an eagle perched upon its branches, who knows a multitude of things, but he hath between his eyes a sparrow-hawk (qui Vederloefner vocatur). A squirrel runs up and down the Ash, sowing misunderstanding between the eagle and the serpent, which lies concealed at its root. Pour stags run across the branches of the tree, and devour its rind. There are so many serpents in the fountain whence spring the rivers of hell, that no tongue can recount them, as is said in these verses:

'Fraxinus Ygdrasil plura patitur,
Quam ullus mortalium
Cogitatione assequi valeat.
Cervus depascitur inferius (rectius cacumen)
Sed circa latera putrescit.
Nidhoggius (the serpent) arrodit subtus.'

'The Destinies, who reside near the fountain of the Past, draw up water thence, with which they bedew the Ash, to prevent its branches from growing withered and decayed. Of so purifying a nature is that water, that whatever it touches becomes as white as the film which is within an egg.

'Fraxinum novi stantem,
Vocatem Ygdrasil
Proceram et sacram albe luto,
Hinc venit ros,
Qui in valles cadit,
Stat super virente
Urdar fonte.'

'Men call this the honey-dew, and it is the food of bees. There are also in this fountain two swans, which have produced all the birds of that species.'

Does the reader care to know the meaning of all this? It is hardly worth while, since to those who feel its grotesque poetry quite enough of the symbolism is already revealed. But let the plodding German Friedreich 'have his say.' 'The name of the Ash, Yggdrasil,' he tell us, 'signifies God's Horse, from Yggr, a name of the god Odin, and drasil, the poetic term for a horse. With this name one hath God's rule over all things, since he ruleth them even as a rider controls his steed, and by Yggdrasil is consequently signified the almighty power of God. The Ash is the Universe, its twigs are the Ether, spread over the World-all; the eagle is the Infinite glance, penetrating heaven and earth; and the squirrel the medium by which the deeds and condition of the Gods are brought to men. The stags, whose swiftness betokens the restless, rapid passions of man, are the ailments of the soul; and the green leaves which they devour, are sound, healthy thoughts.' According to Hauch (Die Nordische Mythenlehre, Leipsic, 1847, p. 28), these swift stags are the four winds of heaven which scatter the leaves. The snake is the destroying force in Nature, and in the clear fountain lies wisdom—which at least teaches us the highly respectable origin of the assertion that 'truth lies at the bottom of a well.' In the next spring lies the knowledge of the future—hinting at much fortune telling by means of pools, and faces of future husbands in basins of water and mirrors; while the three virgins are the Parcæ—the goddesses of destiny. You know these ladies, reader; but here they are grander, gloomier, diviner than were our old friends Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. And the endless strife between the eagle and the serpent, stirred up by the squirrel, is the 'ever-battling, interchangeable action between Spirit and Matter, the ever hence-and-hither rolling, as of waves, to good or evil in the human heart.'

Quaint enough, yet strong, wild, and beautiful. One more explanation is however worth the giving. In all countries and in all ages, writers, from Pliny and Dioscorides down to the genial poet-author of 'Elsie Venner,' have said or hinted that the Ash is abhorred by serpents—an antipathy ridiculed by Evelyn, yet which I have heard maintained to be true by an eminent botanist. In our Edda legend, we find an enmity between the Serpent—the evil principle, and a foe to life and peace—and the Ash—the tree of fresh, vigorous life; the first ever striving to destroy the latter. Is this the origin of the old belief? So in the 'Arcana against Enchantment,' a German book of 1715, we are told that 'the antipathy between the Ash tree, blessed of God, and the Serpent, which so hateth man, is so great that a serpent would rather spring into the fire than into the shadow of an Ash tree.' And in Froschmäusler the same idea is expressed in these quaint verses:

'Ich bin von den Alten gelart,
Der Eschenbaum hab diese Arth,
Dass keine Schlang unter ihm bleib;
Der Schatten sie auch hinweg treib,
Ja die Schlang eher ins Feuer hinleufft,
Ehe sie durch seinen Schatten schleyfft.'
'I have been by ancients told,
The Ash tree hath this gift of old,
That snake may never 'neath it stay,
The shadow drives it, e'en, away.
Sooner a snake in fire would dash,
Than through the shadow of an Ash.'

There is yet another strange superstition connected with the Ash, which one hardly cares to grapple with—so vast is the mass of obscure myths and doctrines which it involves. Let it suffice to say, that from tradition and monuments, in vast variety, it appears that in very ancient times the Passing Through anything was a ceremony of deepest significance and solemnity. To go through a door, to put on a ring, to pass between upright stones (as for instance, the dolmen, or those of the serpent circle of Stonehenge), to wear armlets, all referred to going from death into life, from ignorance to knowledge, from an unregenerate condition to reconciliation. It referred to the life passing into the womb and coming forth as birth. Going into an ark and quitting it, was one form of this Passing Through. Caves were also very holy, because they furnished apt illustrations of it. Spring was typified as going down into the womb or cave or ark or casket or goblet of the earth, and coming forth or being poured out again in fresh beauty. Hence it came that marriage was surrounded in earliest times by symbols of transit, or Passing Through. Lovers plighted their troth in Great Britain, as is yet done in some remote districts of Scandinavia, by joining their clasped hands through holes in the so-called Odin stones. As the Regenerate in the mysteries were obliged to pass through passages in rocks, it was naturally enough believed that those who were ill might be benefited in like manner. Of course the Ash—the tree of Odin and of all the gods—was hallowed in popular belief by healing virtues; and Evelyn tells us that 'the rupture, to which many children are obnoxious, is healed by passing the infant through a wide cleft made in the hole or stem of a growing Ash tree. It is then carried a second time round the Ash, and caused to repass the same aperture as before.' This act of being borne or passing around a stone or stick against the course of the sun, is a ceremony common to certain rites among almost all nations. It was known to Druids and Hindoos—traces of it may be found even among the debased Fetishism which lingers among American negroes. According to the old philosophy of planetary influences, the Ash tree is peculiar to the sun; whereas serpents are consecrated to dark and gloomy Saturn—another cause for the antipathy between them, and illustrative of the reason why the ailing child should be borne around in reference to the imaginary sympathetic solar rays of the tree.

All trivial enough, doubtless; no longer a matter worthy of deep research and wise marvelling. It is not even worth the while now for scholars to inveigh against the folly of such superstition. There was indeed enough of it. It was believed that by boring a hole in an ashen bough and imprisoning a mouse in it, a magic rod was obtained which would cure lameness and cramps in cattle—the ailments being transferred to the poor mouse, who was the supposed cause of them all. 'There is a proverb, says Loudon (Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, p. 1223, edition of 1838), 'in the midland countries, that if there are no keys on the Ash trees, there will be no king within the twelvemonth.' Lightfoot says that in many parts of the Highlands of Scotland, at the birth of a child, the nurse or midwife puts one end of a green stick of this tree into the fire, and, while it is burning, gathering in a spoon the sap or juice, which oozes out at the other end, administers this as the first spoonful of food to the newly-born baby.' Trivial enough, yet worth noting as the fragments and humble remains of what was once the mighty mythology of the Northmen, hinting at the faith in the life-giving and life-preserving qualities of the great tree of life—the tree of knowledge of good and evil—the eritis sicut Deus of Runic lore.

Among the strangest and most beautiful after-echoes of this old Norse faith in the magic Ash as the great tree of life, is to my mind, one which has been preserved by Grimm in his 'Mythology' (2d edition, 2d book, page 912), and which the German poet Hoffmann has happily turned in a poem full of spirit and grace. The legend is as follows:

In the churchyard at Nortorf will one day be an Ash,
No human eye hath seen it, yet silently it grows
Among the graves, and every year it bears a single sprout.
Each New Year's night a rider white upon a snow-white steed,
Comes silently among the graves to hew the sprout away;
But there comes a coal-black rider upon a coal-black horse,
And he strives to save the new-born tree and drive the foe afar:
Long they fight till the New Year's dawn—until black knight yields,
And the foeman hews away the twig, and rides into the dawn,
But there will come a time,'tis said, when the white knight must yield,
And the twig will grow and its leaves will blow until the trunk is great:
So great that a proud war horse 'neath its lower branch may go.
And when the branch is grown and blown will come the world's great fight;
The fiercest of her battles, the last great strife of dread;
And the war horse of the mighty king will stand beneath the tree,
And the king will win, and all the world will be his heritage.

'The White Knight,' saith a commentator, 'is Freyr, one of the most glorious among Norse Asen, or children of the gods—he who rules over rain, sunshine, and earth's fruitfulness. His adversary is Surtur, the Black Demon—a pitiless foe of the Asen, who in the great battle will fight with the evil Loki—'the curse and shame of gods and men'—and set heaven and earth afire. But then there will come a new heaven and a new earth, in which eternal justice shall reign, and the 'Great King'—he whose steed shall wait beneath the Ash of Life—'will rule forever in peace and holiness.'

Dear reader, the battle between Freyr and Surtur is ever raging—in your heart as in all the world. But whenever a great strife for freedom and truth and man's rights is battled out, then the branch has grown, and the horse of the Great King is saddled beneath the Ash, and his rule draws nearer than ever. Even as I write the battle rages, as it never raged before on earth, between the infernal Loki and Surtur and the glorious Asen—the great children of light and of truth. You, soldier of the Lord, who read these lines—you, whose musket is borne in defence of the Union, are as true a child of the great race of light as was ever Odin or Balder, and you are in this great fight fulfilling the prophecies of a thousand years aforetime, which foretold the final battle of freedom. You too are of the Northmen, the children of Odin and of Freyr, the inexhaustible race of warriors and of workmen—the free laborers who forged the swords they wielded against the dark and wily fiend who stole his weapons from the foe ere the war began. And the Horse so easily ruled—the all-powerful Will—stands bridled beneath the eternal Ash Tree of Life; and while he lives and the tree grows, hope need not perish, and freedom cannot die.

In a Floral Lexicon I find it stated that the Ash tree signifies 'grandeur.' E ben trovato—it is not badly imagined—but its real meaning is life, and that not mere existence, but fresh, vigorous, exuberant life, the life of action and of enjoyment. The shaft of the Greek spear, which healed the wound given by the point, was, I doubt not, made of Ash, even as was that which slew Achilles. Thus the Ash, it will be seen, was an important letter in the ancient alphabet of the mysteries. May I hope that when you next sit beneath its graceful boughs, you will recall some of the lore which hallows it, and makes it a strange, living antique, not less curious than coin, weapon, or gem. Read it in all the significance, all the strange spirit of the old mythology, and then think what Nature must have been—or what it may yet be—to men finding as deep a symbol as even the Ash in every high place above the valleys, in every stream, cave, and rivulet, and in every green tree.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] 'On an island of the river Nerbudda, twelve miles beyond Broach, in the presidency of Bombay, stands the Banyan-tree, long since mentioned by Milton, and more recently described by Heber. It is called Kureor Bur, after the Hindu saint who planted it.'

Dierbach, Flora Mythologica, page 22.

THE DRUM.

[RÜCKERT.]

'On, the drum—it rattles so loud!
There's no such stirring sound
Is heard the wide world round,
As the drum——.'

AN ENGLISHMAN IN SOUTH CAROLINA. DECEMBER, 1860, AND JULY, 1862.

CHAPTER FIRST.

'The happiest people on the face of the earth, sir!'

I had heard the assertion in almost all of the slave States, and knew something of the institution on which it was based: I was now listening to the familiar sentence at an epoch that has become historical. I sat in Charleston, South Carolina, during Secession time, December, 1860.

'They are better fed and better treated than any peasantry in the civilized world. I've travelled in Europe and seen for myself, sir. What do you think of women—white women—working in the fields and living on nothing better than thin soup and vegetables, as they do in France, all the year round? And a man, with a family of nine children to support, breaking stones on the high road, in winter, for eight English shillings a week? Such a thing couldn't happen in South Carolina—in all the South, sir!'

'Perhaps not!' I didn't add that worse social wrongs might and did occur daily, in the eulogized region; knowing the utter unprofitableness of any such discussion, not to mention its danger at a period rife with excitement.

'You are an Englishman,' continued my interlocutor—a portly, middle-aged, handsome man, to whom I had been introduced just before the hotel dinner, toward the close of which our colloquy occurred—'and therefore a born abolitionist—as a matter of sentiment, that is. You know nothing at all about the workings of our institution, excepting what the d—d Yankees please to write about us, and the word slavery shocks you. Call it servitude, vassalage, anything else, it might be endurable enough. One of the advantages, by the way, that Secession is going to bring with it is, that the world will be brought into direct contact with us, and thus see us as we are, not through the eyes of the North.'

'You are in earnest about Secession, then?'

'In earnest! by —— I should think we were! Don't you know we are, from what you have seen here?'

I did, and a moment's reflection might have checked my thoughtless inquiry. I said so.

'Yes, South Carolina's going out of the Union, with or without backers, and she intends to stay out, too; never were people more unanimous. The North has got so far toward being abolitionized as to elect a man avowedly hostile to our institutions, and we are only providing for our safety by seceding. It's quite time. Essentially we are a different people: we shall be the best friends in the world separate. It's all a question of difference of opinion about labor; the North prefers a system regulated by the mercenary dictates of traffic, ruled by capital, and subject to the chronic difficulties of strikes and starvation; the South, a simpler relation, binding master and slave together for their mutual benefit, abolishing pauperism, and dividing society into two unmistakable, harmonious classes—the well-fed, well-cared for, happy negro, and the wealthy, intelligent slaveowner.'

I thought I had read something very like the speaker's sentiments in that morning's Mercury, but didn't say so. I thought also of the existence of another class at the South besides the two so favorably characterized, of which I had seen a good representative in a coarse, half-inebriated, shabbily dressed individual, who, just after breakfast, had reeled through the crowd always assembled in the large hall of the hotel to exchange and discuss the news, boasting that a son of his had 'cut a man's throat the other day, down on the island,' and admiringly wondering whether it was the paternal or maternal side that he got his bravery from. I deemed it, however, advisable to be reticent on this head. And my reward followed.

'Come, Mr.——, you have been in most of the Mississippi States, I believe, but were never in the Carolinas before, so you don't know how we old-fashioned folks live on our plantations. Suppose you pay me a visit at my place on —— Island, and see? I come of English blood, myself; my grandfather was a Tory in the Revolution'—with a laugh—'and you'll find us a good deal more British than you think possible here in America. England and South Carolina are mother and daughter, you know; and under the influence of free trade, we're bound to be very intimate. All we of the South ask is that our institutions shall speak for themselves, and I can trust a Britisher's proverbial love of fair play to report us as he finds us. What do you say? I'm going down to the island for a week on Wednesday; will you spend your Christmas with me?'

The invitation was given with an offhand cordiality decidedly prepossessing. Expressing my thanks, I at once accepted it in the spirit it was offered.

'That's right! you're my guest, then;' and the Colonel—he had been presented to me by that military designation—shook me by the hand. 'Will you walk?' And we strolled out together into the hall before mentioned.

If I were writing an article on Charleston in Secession time, now, here was an opportunity for description. What a strange, what a memorable period it was! involuntarily reminding one of an historic parallel in the roseate aspect presented by the early days of the first French revolution, when everybody had hailed as the dawning of a celestial morrow the putrescent glow of old corruption blending into the lurid fire of the coming sans-culottic hell. In this case also an infernal ignis fatuus had arisen to tempt its deluded followers toward a selfish fool's paradise, only to be obtained by wading through seas of fratricidal blood. And how they believed in this impossible future in 'the cradle of the rebellion!' Only a minority of darker conspirators apprehended—hoped for—war, thinking it necessary to precipitate the remainder of the Southern States into revolution, and the establishment of a separate nationality; the great majority of South Carolinians accepting Secession with an enthusiasm (or rather self-exaltation) and confidence astounding to witness. There would be no collision; the North could not and dared not push it to the extreme issue; she must endure the punishment due to her 'fanaticism' in inevitable bankruptcy and beggary, while the South, the seat of 'a great, free, and prosperous people, whose renown must spread throughout the civilized world, and pass down to the remotest ages' (I quote from the ordinance of Secession), had infinite possibilities before it. Jack Cade's commonwealth, Panurge's 'world, in which all men shall be debtors and borrowers,' Gonzalo's imaginary kingdom in the Tempest, were not a whit more extravagant than what was hourly talked of and expected from this longed-for slaveholding confederacy at this time in Charleston. But enough of digression on a subject merely incidental to this narrative.

Three days after my conversation with the Colonel, when the city was jubilant with the passage of the act of Secession, I accompanied him to the plantation spoken of. It involved a little steamboat journey, sundry rides in chaise or buggy, and the crossing of more than one of the many creeks or rivers intersecting the low, sandy, swampy coast. I purposely abstain from particularizing the locality. It was toward the close of a mild, humid day when we reached the Colonel's residence.

Suppose an old-fashioned two-story house, one of a very common pattern in this region, built of wood, and standing on an open foundation of brick, with a tall, formal chimney projecting at either end, a broad piazza, and a great flight of wooden steps in front and rear, the latter looking seaward. Like the house of Chaucer's Reeve, in summer it must have been all 'yshadowed with greene trees,' the cedar, the cottonwood, the liveoak, fig, mulberry, and magnolia, growing in the sand or light soil accruing from vegetable decomposition; and as the evergreens predominated, its winter aspect was yet pleasant and rural, notwithstanding a certain air of dilapidation and decay, so common in Southern dwellings that the inhabitants seem to be unconscious of it. Adjacent, beyond the short avenue of orange trees by which we had approached, was a double row of negro huts, with little gardens between them, forming a rustic lane; farther on, corn and cotton fields. The geography of the island might be stated as follows: interior woods, girdled by plantations, with houses on the seaboard or shores of the river or inlets; a road circumscribing it, and one running across it.

We were welcomed by the appearance of two or three decently clad house-servants, mulattoes, and an athletic negro, of average nigritude,[2] every tooth in whose head glistened, as his black face rippled into a laugh, when his master favored him with some familiar and approving jocularity. Officiously taking charge of the horse and buggy, he conveyed them to a spacious but dilapidated stable (the door of which, I remarked, hung only by its lower hinge), while the servants were equally zealous in transporting what little baggage we had into the house. There the Colonel presented me to his daughters, two tall and rather handsome girls of the ages of eighteen and twenty, dressed in deep mourning (their mother had died but recently), their aunt, a staid, elderly matron, who seemed installed as housekeeper, and a fat, careless gentleman in shirt sleeves, with a cigar in his mouth, who impressed me as an indolent and improvident poor relation of my host, as, indeed, he proved. There was present, also, the child of a neighbor, a little fair-haired girl, called Nelly, who, hearing my nationality mentioned, would not approach me, which the Colonel accounted for by surmising that she had received 'Tory' impressions of Britisher's from her parent's negroes.

A sincere, if a quiet welcome, and an excellent dinner, comprising fish, game, chickens, bacon, hominy, corn and wheaten bread, and sweet potatoes of a succulence and flavor only attainable in Dixie, all served by decorous and attentive negroes, made me feel very contented with my position. Nor were the surroundings inharmonious. We sat by a wood fire, burning in a fireplace which contained, instead of a grate, old-fashioned iron dogs: most of the furniture, with the exception of a handsome piano, was ancient, and the room ornamented with books, pictures, and mineral curiosities. Among the former I noticed a row of volumes of British parliamentary debates in old print, contemporary with the age succeeding Johnson. Really, as my host had boasted, his household gods were decidedly English—colonial English; and I began to understand the peculiar, ante-revolutionary, patrician characteristics on which he and his class evidently prided themselves. He showed me a portrait of an ancestor who had held high office in the days of Governor Oglethorpe, an old-fashioned miniature on ivory, charmingly painted, in the style of Malbone, and one could easily recognize in it the features of his descendant. In conversing, too, on the early history of the State, of which he had much to say that I found interesting, he always assumed that a popular, democratic form of government was rather a mistake than otherwise,[3] and, without absolutely condemning the Revolution, implied that South Carolina had been moved to her limited share in it against her direct interests, by a high-spirited patriotism and sympathy with the at present ungrateful and venal North. I do not think that the fact of my nationality influenced him in this; he evidently spoke his convictions.

The ladies were at first reserved, acting, I believe, under the impression that their father's brief knowledge of me hardly warranted my introduction to his family; indeed, I am sure it was exceptional, from all I have since learned of South Carolinian society. The casual mention, however, of the names of a few mutual acquaintances, of unexceptional 'blue blood,' and the fact that both ladies had visited Europe, establishing topics of conversation, they presently warmed into cordiality. I found them well informed and agreeable, less demonstrative in their self-assertion than their Northern sisterhood, but latently wilful, and assumptive of a superior elevation hardly justified by their general air of languid refinement. It reminded me, on the whole, of what I had heard complacently eulogized in Charleston as a tendency toward 'Orientalism' on the part of the women, of which the characteristics were repose, fastidiousness, and exclusiveness—one of the many admirable results of the fundamental institution.

The ladies were, of course, ardent secessionists, expressing themselves with a bitterness, an acrimony, an unreasonableness, which might have astonished me, had I been capable of such a feeling on the subject. Inevitably we slid on to it, when I learnt that their only brother was away doing military duty on Sullivan's Island, and so zealous in the discharge of his assumed obligations that he intended to spend his Christmas in camp, not, as usual, upon the plantation.

'You'll be sorry to hear that, Pomp,' said the Colonel to an evidently favorite servant, who had waited upon us most assiduously, and who was then kneeling before the fat gentleman, and putting a pair of slippers on his feet. He, by the way, had contributed very little to the conversation, only assenting, smiling, and looking the picture of ease and good humor, as he sat lazily beaming behind a tumbler full of Bourbon whiskey and water.

'Yes, sar!' the negro answered, 'too bad, mass' Philip not come home for de holidays. All de people 'spect him.'

'That's a first-rate boy,' said his master, as the negro left the room to fetch something; 'I wouldn't take two thousand dollars for him.' (Every one familiar with the South, must have heard similar encomiums hundreds of times: each household appears to pride itself on the possession of some singularly admirable negro, whose capacity, honesty, and fidelity are vaunted with an air of conscious magnanimity edifying to witness. The desired inference is that the institution, productive of so much mutual appreciation, must be excellent. It never seems to occur to the eulogists that the good is exceptional, or that the praised characteristics might be alleged as an argument for emancipation.)

'That boy has been North with me,' the Colonel continued, 'to Washington, Philadelphia, and as far as New York. The abolitionists got hold of him at the last place, and wanted to run him off to Canada, but Pomp preferred old Carolina. You don't want to be free, do you, Pomp?'

This was a leading question. The slave hesitated a moment, grinned, and evaded it,

''Pears like de colored people at de Norf was mostly a mis'able set,' he answered: 'can't shum!/'

'You can't see it!' said his master, delighted, and translating a very popular negro phrase for my benefit. And incontinently he launched into a defence and eulogium of slavery, which I shall not oblige my readers to skip by recording. The topic is one on which Southerners are never wearied; and a more uneasy people on the subject than South Carolinians it would be impossible to imagine: long before Secession, they existed in a state of chronic distrust and suspicion about it amounting to monomania.

Next day I accompanied the Colonel over his plantation. It was a large one, somewhat over seven hundred acres, inclusive of forest land, about two thirds being reclaimed upland swamp soil growing seaisland cotton. An old family estate, most of the negroes belonging to it had been born there or in the immediate vicinity; there were about two hundred of them, some living near their master's house, as has been mentioned, the rest in a sort of colony at the other end of the plantation, under the eye of the overseer. These negro settlements merit a paragraph of description.

Their huts were of wood, separate, and standing in little gardens, in which each family enjoyed the privilege of cultivating patches of corn, sweet potatoes, and such vegetables as they chose, a street of about a hundred feet wide dividing the houses. Midway, under the shade of a magnificent liveoak, whose branches were mournful with the funereal moss (always suggestive to my fancy of the 'little old woman,' whose employment in the nursery legend is 'to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky,' having executed her task in a slovenly manner), was a simple apparatus for grinding corn, consisting of two heavy circular stones, placed horizontally in a rude frame under a shed, to be worked by manual power, by upright wooden handles. This served as a mill for the entire negro population.

Entering their huts, you were first conscious of a large brick fireplace, in which a fire was almost constantly burning, though it scarcely lit up the generally dark interior, always much, more picturesque than comfortable, for negroes have little if any notion of ventilation, and can hardly be too warm: they will kindle great blazing fires to lie down by or to heat their food, in the open fields in summer. A few roughly fashioned seats and tables, and a ladder staircase, leading upward to an attic or cockloft, completes the inventory of the interior.

We had passed the inhabitants of these huts, at work in the fields, under the direction of the overseer, a strong, spare man, in a suit of homespun, who rode about among them on horseback, carrying in his hand a cowhide whip, which he had exhibited to me with a smile, and the remark that 'that was the thing the Yankees made so much noise about.' It was a sufficient instrument of punishment, I thought and said, adding that I trusted he found infrequent occasion for the exercise of it.

'Well, they're a pretty well behaved lot generally,' he answered, with that peculiar accent derived from almost exclusive association with negroes common throughout the South; 'but sometimes it 'pears as if the devil had got in among 'em, and I has to lay on all round. A nigger will be a nigger, you know.'

The subjects of this ethical remark were rather raggedly dressed, the men in coarse jackets and trousers, the women in soiled and burnt gowns of indefinite color, generally reefed up about the hips for convenience in working. (Their dilapidation, it may be remarked, was due to the close of the year; they would get new clothes, the Colonel remarked, at Christmas.) They seemed, however, well fed, not too hardly tasked, and, from a sensual point of view, happy and contented. The Colonel spoke to those nearest him patronizingly, asked after absent or sick members of their families, joked about the coming Christmas, and the 'high time' impending, and inquired how many marriages were to come off on the occasion—the negroes generally deferring their nuptials till the great holiday of the year. He was answered by a perfect shout of negro laughter, hearty, infectious, irresistible.

'Come, how many is there to be?' he repeated, joining in their mirth.

'Six!' the overseer responded, seeing that the negroes did not reply except by continued guffaws.

'Yes, sa! ya! ya bound to have a high old Secesshum time dis Christmas! ya! ya!' added a gray-headed old darky, quite overcome with merriment.

'Why, you'll ruin the young ladies in finding frocks for the girls!' said the Colonel; 'who are these future happy couples, eh?'

'Sal's Joe, sa!' 'Polly's Sue!' 'Big Sam!' 'Pinckney!' 'Cal!' 'Peter!' 'Jule!' and a variety of names were shouted out, not by the owners of them. With a great deal of shyness and simpering and half-suppressed grinning, and real or affected modesty on the part of the women, and equal mirth and awkward self-consciousness on that of the aspirant bridegrooms, the candidates for matrimony—or at least such of them as were present, one couple and a 'boy' being away—were got together and ranged in a row before us, hoes in hand, where they stood, to their own and the boisterous delight of their colaborers. They appeared generally young, healthy, and well-looking negroes, some of them handsome in an African sense. The Colonel surveyed them with much good nature and satisfaction; he was evidently gratified at the prospect of so many marriages among his own negroes; unions 'off the plantation' being looked on with disfavor by proprietors, for obvious reasons.

'Well,' he said, after addressing a few remarks to them, individually; 'I must talk with the young ladies, and see what we can do for you. If Bones (the sobriquet of a negro-preacher, belonging to the estate) won't be jealous, I think I'll try and get Mr. —— over, to marry the whole batch of you in high style, eh?'

The prospect of a white clergyman, an honor generally reserved only for the marriages of favorite house-servants, seemed to afford unmitigated satisfaction to the field hands. They laughed again, thanked their master, assured him of the perfect willingness of their colored pastor to resign his functions for the time being, in view of the superior dignity accruing to the occasion from the presence of Mr.——, and we rode off amid a chorus of jubilations.

'What would an abolitionist say to that scene, do you think?' asked the Colonel, as we galloped homeward to dinner.

'Probably he'd admit that slavery has its pleasant side, but insist on looking at both,' I answered.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] An inquiry instituted by Gen. Hunter, at Hilton Head, S. C., during the past summer, for eight negroes of unmixed African descent, resulted in the total failure of the discovery of even one. So much for practical Southern amalgamation.

[3] It was generally credited in Charleston, that, subsequent to Secession, the convention had debated the advisability of attempting some monarchical experiment.

WHO BEAT?