Chapter 2

THE ICE IN ITS GLORY.

_June 17._--On this anniversary of the Battle of Bunker's Hill we sailed from Sleupe Harbor. Little Mecatina, with its blue perspective and billowy surface, lifted itself up astern under flooding sunshine to tell us that this relentless coast could have a glory of its own; but we looked at it with dreamy, forgetful eyes, thinking of the dear land, now all tossed into wild surge and crimson spray of war, which, how far soever away, is ever present to the hearts of her true children.

Next day we dropped into the harbor of Caribou Island, a mission-station, and left again on the 20th, after a quiet Sunday,--Bradford having gone with others to church, and come back much moved by the bronze-faced earnestness, and rough-voiced, deep-chested hymning of the fisherman congregation. Far ahead we saw the strait full of ice. Not that the ice itself could be seen; but the peculiar, blue-white, vertical striae, which stuccoed the sky far along the horizon, told experienced eyes that ice was there. Away to the right towered the long heights of Newfoundland, intensely blue, save where, over large spaces, they shone white with snow. They surprised us by their great elevation, and by the sharp and straight escarpments with which they descended. Here and there was a gorge cut through as with a saw. We then took all this in good faith, on the fair testimony of our eyes. But experience brought instruction,--as it will in superficial matters, whether in deeper ones or no. In truth, this appearance was chiefly a mirage caused by ice.

For, of all solemn prank-players, of all mystifiers and magicians, ice is the greatest. Coming out of its silent and sovereign dreamland in the North, it brings its wand, and goes wizard-working down the coast. A spell is about it; enchantment is upon it like a garment; weirdness and illusion are the breath of its nostrils. Above it, along the horizon, is a strange columned wall, an airy Giant's Causeway, pale blue, paling through ethereal gray into snow. Islands quit the sea, and become islands in the sky, sky-foam and spray seen along their bases. Hills shoot out from their summits airy capes and headlands, or assume upon their crowns a wide, smooth table, as if for the service of genii. Ships sail, bergs float, in the heavens. Here a vast obelisk of ice shoots aloft, half mountain high; you gaze at it amazed, ecstatic,--calculating the time it will take to come up with it,--whistling, if you are still capable of that levity, for a wind. But now it begins to waver, to dance slowly, to shoot up minarets and take them back, to put forth arms which change into wands, wave and disappear; and ere your wonder has found a voice, it rolls itself together like a scroll, drops nearly to the ocean-level, and is but a gigantic ice-floe after all!

The day fell calm; a calm evening came; the sea lay in soft, shining undulation, not urgent enough to exasperate the drooping sails. The ship rose and declined like a sleeper's pulse. We were all under a spell. Soon the moon, then at her full, came up, elongating herself laterally into an oval, whose breadth was not more than three fifths its length; her shine on the water likewise stretching along the horizon, sweet and fair like childhood, not a ray touching the shadowed water between. Presently, as if she discerned and did not disdain us,--wiser than "positive philosophers" in her estimate of man,--she gathered together her spreading shine, and threw it down toward us in a glade of scarcely more than her own breadth, of even width, and sharply defined at the sides. It was a regular roadway on the water, intensest gold verging upon orange, edged with an exquisite, delicate tint of scarlet, running straight and firm as a Roman road all the way from the meeting-place of sky and sea to the ship. Or rather, not quite to the ship; for, when near at hand, it broke off into golden globes, which, under the influence of the light swell, came towards us by softly sudden leaps, deepening and deepening as they came, till at the last leap they disappeared, more shining than ever, far down in the liquid, lucent heart of the sea. It was impossible to feel that these had faded, so triumphant was their close. Rather, one felt that they had been elected to a more glorious office,--had gone, perhaps, to light some hall of Thetis, or some divine, spotless revel of sea-nymphs.

I had gone below, when, at about ten o'clock, there was a hail from the deck.

"Come up and see a crack in the water!"

"A what?"

"A crack in the water!"

"Not joking?"

"No, indeed; come and see."

Up quickly! this is the day of wonders! It was a line of brilliant phosphorescence, exceedingly brilliant, about two inches wide, perfectly sharp at the edges, which extended along the side of the ship, and ahead and astern out of sight. "Crack in the water" is the seaman's name for it. I have been a full year on the water, but never saw it save this once, and had never heard of it before.

At half past eleven, the Parson and I went on deck, and read ordinary print as rapidly as by daylight. It took some ten seconds to get accustomed to the light, being fresh from the glare of the kerosene lamp; but afterwards we read aloud to each other with entire ease and fluency.

At a quarter past two, Captain Handy, a man made of fine material, with an eye for the beautiful as well as for right-whales, broke my sleep with a gentle touch, and whispered, "Come on deck, and see what a morning it is." What a morning, indeed! Thanks, old comrade! Call me next time, when there is such to see; and if I am too weak to get out of my berth, take me up in those strong arms, across that broad, billow-like chest of yours, and bear me to the deck!

It was dead calm,--no, _live_ calm, rather; for never was calm so vivid. The swell had fallen; but the sea breathes and lives even in its sleep. Dawn was already blushing, "celestial rosy red, love's proper hue," in the--_east_, I was about to say, but _north_ would be truer. The centre of its roseate arch was not more than a point (by compass) east of north. The lofty shore rose clear, dark, and sharp against the morning red; the sea was white,--white as purity, and still as peace; the moon hung opposite, clothed and half hidden in a glorified mist; a schooner lay moveless, dark-sailed, transformed into a symbol of solitude and silence, beneath. I thought of the world's myriad sleepers, and would fain have played Captain Handy to them all. But Nature is infinitely rich, and can afford to draw costly curtains about the slumber of her darling. For, without man, she were a mother ever in anguish of travail, and ever wanting a child to nurse with entire joy at her breast. Sleep on, man, while, with shadows and stars, with dying and dawning of day, not forgetting sombreness of cloud and passion of storm, the eternal mother dignifies your slumber, and waits till her _two_ suns arise and shine together!

Morning,--ice, worlds of it, the wide straits all full! A light wind had been fanning us for the last two or three hours; and now the ice lay fair in view, just ahead. We had not calculated upon meeting it here. At Port Mulgrave they told us that the last of it had passed through with a rush about a week before. Bradford was delighted, and quickly got out his photographic sickle to reap this unexpected harvest: for the wise man had brought along with him a fine apparatus and a skilful photographer. In an hour or two the schooner was up with it, and finding it tolerably open, while the wind was a zephyr, and the sea smooth as a pond, we entered into its midst. Water-fowl--puffins, murres, duck, and the like--hung about it, furnishing preliminary employment to those of our number who sought sport or specimens. It was a delightsome day, the whole of it: atmosphere rare, pure, perfect; sun-splendor in deluge; land, a cloud of blue and snow on one side, and a tossed and lofty paradise of glowing gray, purple, or brown, on the other. The day would have been hot but for being tempered by the ice. This seasoned its shining warmth with a crisp, exhilarating quality, making the sunshine and summer mildness like iced sherry or Madeira. It is unlike anything known in more southern climates. There are days in March that would resemble it, could you take out of them the damp, the laxness of nerve, and the spring melancholy. There are days in October that come nearer; but these differ by their delicious half-languors, while, by their gorgeousness of autumn foliage, and their relation to the oldening year, they are made quite unlike in spirit. This day warmed like summer and braced like winter.

Once fairly taken into the bosom of the ice-field, we had eyes for little else. Its forms were a surprise, so varied and so beautiful. I had supposed that field-ice was made up of flat cakes,--and _cake_ of all kinds is among the flattest things I know! But here if was, simulating all shapes, even those of animated creatures, with the art of a mocking bird,--and simulating all in a material pure as amber, though more varied in color. One saw about him cliffs, basaltic columns, frozen down, arabesques, fretted traceries, sculptured urns, arches supporting broad tables or sloping roofs, lifted pinnacles, boulders, honey-combs, slanting strata of rock, gigantic birds, mastodons, maned lions, couching or rampant,--a fantasy of forms, and, between all, the shining, shining sea. In sunshine, these shapes were of a glistening white flecked with stars, where at points the white was lost in the glisten; in half shadow the color was gray, in full shadow aerial purple; while, wherever the upper portions projected over the sea, and took its reflection, they often did, the color was an infinite, emerald intensity of green; beneath all which, under water, was a base or shore of dead emerald, a green paled with chalk. Blue was not this day seen, perhaps because this was shore-ice rather than floe,--made, not like the floes, of frozen sea, but of compacted and saturated snow.

Just before evening came, when the courteous breeze folded its light fans fell asleep, we left this field behind, and, seeing all clear ahead, supposed the whole had been passed. In truth, as had soon to learn, this twenty-mile strip of shore-ice was but the advance-guard of an immeasurable field or army of floe. For there came down the northern coast, in this summer of 1864, more than a thousand miles' length, with a breadth of about a hundred miles, of floe-ice in a field almost unbroken! More than a thousand miles, by accurate computation! The courtesy of the Westerner--who, having told of seeing a flock of pigeons nine miles long, so dense as to darken the sun at noonday, and meeting objections from a skeptical Yankee, magnanimously offered, as a personal favor, to "take out a quarter of a mile from the thinnest part"--cannot be imitated here. I must still say _more_ than a thousand miles,--and this, too, the second run of ice!

Captain Linklater, master of the Moravian supply-ship, a man of acute observation and some science, had, as he afterwards told me at Hopedale, measured the rate of travel of the ice, and found it to be twenty-seven miles a day. Our passengers were sure they saw it going at the rate of three or four miles an hour. Captain Handy, looking with experienced eye, pronounced this estimate excessive, and said it went from one to one and a half miles an hour,--twenty-four to thirty-six miles a day. Captain Linklater, however, had not trusted the question to his judgment, but established the rate by accurate scientific observation. Now we were headed off by the ice and driven into as harbor on the 22d of June; we left Hopedale and began our return on the 4th of August; and between these two periods the ice never ceased running. The Moravian ship, which entered the harbor of Hopedale half a mile ahead of us, on the 31st of July, pushed through it, and found it eighty-five miles wide. Toward the last it was more scattered, and at times could not be seen from the coast. But it was there; and on the day before our departure from Hopedale, August 3, this cheering intelligence arrived:--"The ice is pressing in upon the islands outside, and an easterly wind would block us in!"

What becomes of this ice? Had one lain in wait for it two hundred miles farther south, it is doubtful if he would have seen of it even a vestige. It cannot melt away so quickly: a day amidst it satisfies any one of so much. Whither does it go?

Put that question to a sealer or fisherman, and he will answer, "_It sinks._"

"But," replies that cheerful and confident gentleman, Mr. Current Impression, "ice doesn't sink; ice floats." Grave Science, too, says the same.

I believe that Ignorance is right for once. You are becalmed in the midst of floating ice. The current bears you and it together; but next morning the ice has vanished! You rub your eyes, but the fact is one not to be rubbed out; the ice was, and isn't, there! No evidence exists that it can fly, like riches; therefore I think it sinks. I have seen it, too, not indeed in the very act of sinking, but so water-logged as barely to keep its nose out. A block four cubic feet in dimension lay at a subsequent time beside the ship, and there was not a portion bigger than a child's fist above water. Watching it, again, when it has been tolerably well sweltered, you will see air-bubbles incessantly escaping. Evidently, the air which it contains is giving place to water. Now it is this air, I judge, which keeps it afloat; and when the process of displacement has sufficiently gone on, what can it do but drown, as men do under the circumstances? This reasoning may be wrong; but the fact remains. The reasoning is chiefly a guess; yet, till otherwise informed, I shall say, the ice-_lungs_ get full of water, and it goes down.

But we have wandered while the light waned, and now return. It was a gentle evening. That "day, so cool, so calm, so bright," died sweetly, as such a day should. The moon rose, not a globe, but a tall cone of silver,--silver that _blushed_; ice-magic again. But she recovered herself, and reigned in her true shape, queen of the slumber-courts; and the world slept, and we with it; and in our cabin the sleep-talk was quieted to ripples of murmur.

_June 22._--Rush! Rush! The water was racing past the ship's side, close to my ear, as I awoke early. On deck: the strait ahead was packed from shore to shore with ice, like a boy's brain with fancies; and before a jolly gale we were skimming into the harbor of Belles Amours. Five days here: tedious. The main matters here were a sand-beach, a girl who read and loved Wordsworth, a wood-thrush, a seal-race, a "killer's" head, and a cascade.

Item, sand-beach, with green grass, looking like a meadow, beyond. Not intrinsically much of an affair. The beach, on close inspection, proved soft and dirty, the grass sedge, the meadow a bog. In the distance, however, and as a variety in this unswarded cliff-coast, it was sweet, I laugh now to think how sweet, to the eyes.

Item, girl. There was one house in the harbor; not another within three miles. Here dwelt a family who spoke English,--not a patois, but English,--rare in Labrador as politicians in heaven. The French Canadians found in Southern Labrador speak a kind of skim-milk French, with a little sour-milk English; the Newfoundland Labradorians say "Him's good for he," and in general use a very "scaly" lingo, learned from cod-fish, one would think. Here was a mother, acceptable to Lindley Murray, who had instructed her children. One of these--S----, our best social explorer, found her out--owned and read a volume of Plato, and had sent to L'anse du Loup, twenty-four miles, to borrow a copy of Wordsworth. This was her delight. She had copied considerable portions of it with her own hand, and could repeat from memory many and many a page.

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

But Heaven has its own economies; and perhaps floral "sweetness" is quite as little wasted upon the desert as upon Beacon Street or Fifth Avenue.

Item, a bird. We were seeking trout,--only to obtain a minnow tricked in trout-marks. The boat crept slowly up a deep, solemn cove, over which, on either side, hung craggy and precipitous hills; while at its head was a slope covered with Liliputian forest, through which came down a broad brook in a series of snowy terraces. It was a superb day, bright and bracing,--just bracing enough to set the nerves without urging them, and exalt one to a sense of vigorous repose. The oars lingered, yet not lazily, on the way; there seemed time enough for anything. At length we came, calm, wealthy in leisure, silently cheerful, to a bit of pleasant yellow beach between rocks. And just as our feet were touching the tawny sands,--

"The sweetest throat of Solitude Unbarred her silver gates, and slowly hymned To the great heart of Silence, till it beat Response with all its echoes: for from out That far, immortal orient, wherein His soul abides 'mid morning skies and dews, A wood-thrush, angel of the tree-top heaven, Poured clear his pure soprano through the place, Deepening the stillness with diviner calm, That gave to Silence all her inmost heart In melody."

It was a regal welcome. What is like the note of the wood-thrush?--so full of royalty and psalm and sabbath! Regal in reserve, however, no less than utterance, the sovereign songster gave a welcome only, and then was silent; while a fine piping warbler caught up the theme, and discoursed upon it with liberal eloquence. The place to hear the song of the wood-thrush is wherever you can attain to that enjoyment by walking five or ten miles; the place so to hear it that the hearing shall be, by sober estimation, among the memorable events of your life, is at the head of a solemn, sunny cove, on three yards of tawny beach, in the harbor of Belles Amours, Labrador.

Item, seal-race. The male seals fight with fury in the season of their rude loves. Two of these had had a battle; the vanquished was fleeing, the victor after him. They were bounding from the water like dolphins. For some time I thought them such, though I have seen dolphins by thousands. It was a surprise to see these leisurely and luxurious animals spattering the water in such an ecstasy of amative rage.

Item, "killer." This is a savage cetacean, probably the same with the "thrasher," about fifteen feet in length, blunt-nosed, strong of jaw, with cruel teeth. On its back is a fin beginning about two thirds the way from tip to tail, running close to the latter, and then sloping away to a point, like the jib of a ship. In the largest this is some five feet long on the back, and eight or ten feet in height,--so large, that, when the creature is swimming on the surface, a strong side-wind will sometimes blow it over. It is a blue-fish on a big scale, or a Semmes in the sea, hungry as famine, fierce as plague, dainty as a Roman epicure, yet omnivorous as time. The seal is its South-Down mutton, the tongue of the whale its venison; for whenever its numbers are sufficient, it will attack this huge cetacean, and torture him till he submits and gives a horrible feast to their greed. Captain Handy had seen thirty or forty of them at this business. They fly with inconceivable fury at their victim, aiming chiefly at the lip, tearing great mouthfuls away, which they instantly reject while darting for another. The bleeding and bellowing monster goes down like a boulder from a cliff, shoots up like a shell from a mortar, beats the sea about him all into crimsoned spray with his tail; but plunge, leap, foam as he may, the finny pirates flesh their teeth in him still, still are fresh in pursuit, until at length, to end one torment by submitting to another, the helpless giant opens his mouth, and permits these sea-devils to devour the quivering morsel they covet. A big morsel; for the tongue of the full-sized right-whale weighs a ton and a half, and yields a ton of oil. The killer is sometimes confounded with the grampus. The latter is considerably larger, has a longer and slenderer jaw, less round at the muzzle, smaller teeth, and "isn't so clean a made fish"; for, in nautical parlance, cetaceans are still fish. Killers frequently try to rob whalers of their prize, and sometimes actually succeed in carrying it down, despite the lances and other weapons with which their attack is so strenuously resisted.

Item, cascade. A snowy, broken stripe down a mountain-side; taken to be snow till the ear better informed the eye. Fine; but you need not go there to see.

_June 26._--Off to Henley Harbor, sixty-five miles, at the head of the Strait of Belle Isle. Belle Isle itself--sandstone, rich, the Professor said, in ancient fossils--lay in view. The anchor went down in deep water, close beside the notable Castle Island.

There were some considerable floes in the harbor, the largest one aground in a passage between the two islands by which it is formed. And now came the blue of pure floe-ice! There is nothing else like it on this earth, but the sapphire gem in its perfection; and this is removed from the comparison by its inferiority in magnitude. This incomparable hue appears wherever deep shadow is interposed between the eye and any intense, shining white. The floe in question contained two caverns excavated by the sea, both of which were partially open toward the ship. And out of these shone, shone on us, the cerulean and sapphire glory! Beyond this were the deep blue waters of York Bay; farther away, grouped and pushing down, headland behind headland, into the bay, rose the purple gneiss hills, broad and rounded, and flecked with party-colored moss; while nearer glowed this immortal blue eye, like the bliss of eternity looking into time!

Next day we rowed close to this: I hardly know how we dared! Heavens! such blue! It grew, as we looked into the ice-cavern, deeper, intenser, more luminous, more awful in beauty, the farther inward, till in the depths it became not only a shrine to worship at, but a presence to bow and be silent before! It is said that angels sing and move in joy before the Eternal; but there I learned that silence is their only voice, and stillness their ecstatic motion!

Meanwhile the portals of this sapphire sanctuary were of a warm rose hue, rich and delicate,--looking like the blush of mortal beauty at its nearness to the heavenly.

Bradford is all right in painting the intensest blue possible,--due care, of course, being taken not to extend it uniformly over large surfaces. If he can secure any suggestion of the subtilty and luminousness,--if he can! As I come back, and utter a word, he says that the only way will be to glaze over a white ground. It had already struck me, that, as this is the method by which Nature obtains such effects, it must be the method for Art also. He is on the right track. And how the gentle soul works!

But while outward Nature here assumed aspects of beauty so surpassing, man, as if to lend her the emphasis of contrast, appeared in the sorriest shape. I name him here, that I may vindicate his claim to remembrance, even when he is a blot upon the beauty around him. I will not forget him, even though I can think of him only with shame. To remember, however, is here enough. We will go back to Nature,--though she, too, can suckle "killers."

On the evening before our departure,--for we remained several days, and had a snow-storm meanwhile,--there was a glorious going down of the sun over the hills beyond York Bay, with a tender golden mist filling all the western heavens, and tinting air and water between. So Nature renewed her charm. And with that sun setting on Henley Harbor, we leave for the present the miserable, magnificent place.

_June 30._--Iceberg! An iceberg! The real thing at last! We left Henley at ten A. M., and were soon coming up with a noble berg. Its aspect, on our near approach, was that of a vast roof rising at one end, beside which, and about half its height, was the upper third of an enormous cylinder. Passing to the west, along one side of this roof, we beheld a vast cavernous depression, making a concave line in its ridge, and then dipping deep, beyond view, into the berg. The sharp upper rim of this depression came between us and the sky, with the bright shine of the forenoon sun beyond, and showed a skirt or fringe of infinitely delicate luminous green, whose contrast with the rich marble-white of the general structure was beautiful exceedingly. With the exception of this, and of a narrow blue seam, looking like lapis-lazuli, which ran diagonally from summit to base, the broad surface of this side had the look of snow-white marble lace or fretwork. Passing thence to the north face, we came apparently upon the part at which the berg separated from its parent glacier. Here was a new effect, and one of great beauty. In material it resembled the finest statuary marble,--but rather the crystalline marbles of Vermont, with their brilliant half-sparkle, than the dead polish of the Parian; while the form and character of this facade suggested some fascinating, supernatural consent of chance and art, of fracture with sculpturesque and architectural design.

"He works in rings, in magic rings, of chance,"--

the subtlest thing ever said of Turner,--might have been spoken even more truly of the workman who wrought this. The apparent fineness of material cannot be overstated, so soft and powerful. "A porcelain fracture," said Ph----,--well. Yet such porcelain! It were the despair of China. On the eastern, or cylinder side, there was next the water a strip of intensely polished surface, surmounted by an elaborate level cornice, and above this the marble lace again.

The schooner soon tacked, and returned. As again we pass the cathedral cliff on the north, and join the western side with this in one view, we are somewhat prepared by familiarity to mingle its majesty and beauty, and take from them a single impression. The long Cyclopean wall and vast Gothic roof of the side, including many an arched, rounded, and waving line, emphasized by straight lines of blue seam, are set off against the strange shining traceries of the facade; while the union of flower-like softness and eternal strength, the fretted silver of surface, the combination of peak and cave, the fringe of blazing emerald on the ridge, the glancing, flashing lights contrasting with twilight blues and purples of deep shadow, and over all the stainless azure, and beneath and around all a sea of beryl strown with sun-dust,--these associate to engrave on the soul an impression which even death and the tomb, I would fain believe, will be powerless to efface. And if Art study hard and labor long and vehemently aspire to publish the truth of this, she does well. Her task is worthy, but is not easy: I think a greater, of the kind, has never been attempted. The height of this berg was determined by instruments--but with a conjecture only of the distance--to be one hundred and eighteen feet. Captain Brown, however, who went aloft, and thence formed a judgment, pronounced it not less than one hundred and fifty feet. One naturally inclines to the more moderate computation. But, as subsequent experience showed me that judgments of distance in such cases are almost always below the mark, I am of opinion that here, as sometimes in politics and religion, seeming moderation may be less accurate than seeming excess.

And, by the way, Noble's descriptions of icebergs, which, in the absence of personal observation, might seem excessive, are of real value. Finding a copy of his book on board, I read it with pleasure, having first fully made my own notes,--and refer to him any reader who may have appetite for more after concluding this chapter.

Early this evening we entered between bold cliffs into Square Island Harbor, latitude about 53 deg.. It is a deep and deeply sheltered dog's hole,--dogs and dirt could make it such,--but overhung by purple hills, which proved, on subsequent inspection, to be largely composed of an impure labradorite. Labradorite, the reader may know, is a crystallized feldspar, with traces of other minerals. In its pure state it is opalescent, exhibiting vivid gleams of blue, green, gold, and copper-color, and, more rarely, of rose,--and is then, and deservedly, reckoned a precious stone. The general character of the rock here is sienitic; but, besides this peculiar quality of feldspar, the hornblende appears as actinolite, (ray-stone,) so called from the form of its crystallization; while the quartz element is faintly present, or appears in separate masses. The purple of the hills is due not only to the labradorite, which has that as a stable color, but also to a purple lichen, which clothes much of the rock on this coast. I found also fine masses of mica imbedded in quartz, edge upwards, and so compact that its lamination was not perceptible. Indeed, I did not, with my novice eyes, immediately recognize it, for it appeared a handsome copper-colored rock, projecting slightly from the quartz, as if more enduring.

Next day there was trouting, with a little, and but a little, better than the usual minnow result.

And on the next, the floe-ice poured in and packed the harbor like a box of sardines. The scene became utterly Arctic,--rock above, and ice below. Rock, ice, and three imprisoned ships; which last, in their helpless isolation, gave less the sense of companionship than of a triple solitude. And when next day, Sunday, the third day of July, I walked ashore on the ice with a hundred feet of water beneath, summer seemed a worn-out tradition, and one felt that the frozen North had gone out over the world as to a lawful inheritance.

But the new Czar reigned in beauty, if also in terror. Yard-wide spaces of emerald, amethyst, sapphire, yellow-green beryl, and rose-tinted crystal, grew as familiar to the eye as paving-blocks to the dwellers in cities. The shadows of the ice were also of a violet purple, so ethereal that it required a painter's eye at once to see it, though it was unmistakably there; and to represent it will task the finest painter's hand. Then the spaces of water between the floes, if not too large, appeared uniformly in deep wine-color,--an effect for which one must have more science than I to account. It is attributed to contrast; but if thus illusive, it is at least an illusion not to be looked out of countenance. No local color could assert itself more firmly. One marvellous morning, too, a dense, but translucent, mist hovered closely, beneath strong sunshine, over the ice, lending to its innumerable fantastic forms a new, weird, witching, indescribable, real-unreal strangeness, as if the ice and the ships it inclosed and we ourselves were all but embodied dreams, half come to consciousness, and rubbing our surprised moon-eyes to gaze upon each other. The power of this mist to multiply distance was not the least part of its witchery. A schooner ten rods off looked as far away as Cadmus and Abraham.

P---- was made happy by finding here a grasshopper, which subsequently proved, however, a prize indeed,--but not quite so much of a prize as he hoped, being probably the young of a species previously known as Alpine, rather than an adult identical with one found on the summit of Mount Washington.

During the latter part of our duress here we were driven below by raw, incessant rain, and the confinement became irksome. At length, during the day and night of July 14th, the ice finally made off with itself, and the next morning the schooner followed suit. The ice, however, had not done with us. It lingered near the land, while farther out it was seen in solid mass, making witch-work, as usual, on the northern and eastern sky; and we were soon dodging through the more open portion, still dense enough, close to the coast. It was dangerous business. A pretty breeze blew; and with anything of a wind our antelope of a schooner took to her heels with speed. Lightly built,--not, like vessels designed for this coast, double-planked and perhaps iron-prowed,--she would easily have been staved by a shock upon this adamantine ice. The mate stood at the bow, shouting, "Luff! Bear away! Hard up! Hard down!" And his voice wanting strength and his articulation distinctness, I was fain, at the pinch of the game, to come to his aid, and trumpet his orders after him with my best stentorship. The old pilot had taken the helm; but his nerves were unequal to his work; and a younger man was sent to take his place. Once or twice the ship struck smaller masses of ice, but at so sharp an angle as to push them and herself mutually aside, and slide past without a crash. But a wind from the land was steadily urging the floe-field away, and at length the sea before us lay clear.

At ten A. M., we drew up to a majestic berg, and "came to,"--that is, brought the schooner close by the wind. The berg was one of the noblest. Picture to yourself two most immense Gothic churches without transepts, each with a tower in front. Place these side by side, but at a remove equal to about half their length. Build up now the space between the two towers, extending this connection back so that it shall embrace the front third or half of the churches, leaving an open _green_ court in the rear, and you have a general conception of this piece of Northern architecture. The rear of each church, however, instead of ascending vertically, sloped at an angle of about ten degrees, and, instead of having sharp corners, was exquisitely rounded. Elsewhere also were many rounded and waving lines, where the image of a church would suggest straightness. Nevertheless, you are to cling with force to that image in shaping to your mind's eye a picture of this astonishing cathedral.

Since seeing the former berg, we had heard many tales of the danger of approaching them. The Newfoundlanders and natives have of them a mortal terror,--never going, if it can be avoided, nearer than half a mile, and then always on the leeward side. "They kill the wind," said these people, so that one in passing to windward is liable to be becalmed, and to drift down upon them,--to drift upon them, because there is always a tide setting in toward them. They chill the water, it descends, and other flows in to assume its place. These fears were not wholly groundless. Icebergs sometimes burst their hearts suddenly, with an awful explosion, going into a thousand pieces. After they begin to disintegrate, moreover, immense masses from time to time crush down from above or surge up from beneath; and on all such occasions, proximity to them is obviously not without its perils. "The Colonel," brave, and a Greenland voyager, was more nervous about them than anybody else. He declared, apparently on good authority, that the vibration imparted to the sea by a ship's motion, or even that communicated to the air by the human voice, would not unfrequently give these irritable monsters the hint required for a burst of ill-temper,--and averred also that our schooner, at the distance of three hundred yards, would be rolled over, like a child's play-boat, by the wave which an exploding or over-setting iceberg would cause. And it might, indeed, be supposed, that, did one of those prodigious creations take a notion to disport its billions of tons in a somersault, it would raise no trivial commotion.

At a distance, these considerations weighed with me. I heard them respectfully, was convinced, and silently resolved not to urge, indeed, so far as I properly might, to discourage, nearness of approach. But here all these convictions vanished away. I knew that some icebergs were treacherous, but they were others, not this! There it stood in such majesty and magnificence of marble strength, that all question of its soundness was shamed out of me,--or rather, would have been shamed, had it arisen. This was not sentiment,--it was judgment,--_my_ judgment,--perhaps erroneous, yet a judgment formed from the facts as I saw them. Therefore I determined to launch the light skiff which Ph---- and I had bought at Sleupe Harbor, and row up to the berg, perhaps lay my hand upon it.

As the skiff went over the gunwale, the Parson cried,--

"Shall I go with you?"

"Yes, indeed, if you wish."

He seated himself in the stern; I assumed the oars, (I row cross-handed, with long oars, and among amateur oarsmen am a little vain of my skill) and pulled away. It was a longer pull than I had thought,--suggesting that our judgment of distances had been insufficient, and that the previous berg was higher than our measurement had made it.

Our approach was to rear of the berg,--that is, to the court or little bay before mentioned. The temptation to enter was great, but I dared not; for the long, deep ocean-swell over which the skiff skimmed like a duck, not only without danger, but without the smallest perturbation, broke in and out here with such force that I knew the boat would instantly be swept out of my possession. The Parson, however, always reckless of peril in his enthusiasm, and less experienced, cried,--

"In! in! Push the boat in!"

"No, the swell is too heavy; it will not do."

"Fie upon the swell! Never mind what will do! In!"

I sympathized too much with him to answer otherwise than by laying my weight upon the oars, and pushing silently past. The water in this bit of bay was some six or eight feet deep, and the ice beneath it--for the berg was all solid below--showed in perfection that crystalline tawny green which belongs to it under such circumstances. I pulled around the curving rear of the eastern church, with its surface of marble lace, such as we had seen before, gazing upward and upward at the towering awfulness and magnificence of edifice, myself frozen in admiration. The Parson, under high excitement, rained his hortative oratory upon me.

"Nearer! Nearer! Let's touch it! Let's lay our hands upon it! Don't be faint-hearted now. It's now or never!"

I heard him as one under the influence of chloroform hears his attendants. He exhorted a stone. His words only seemed to beat and flutter faintly against me, like storm-driven birds against a cliff at night. My brain was only in my eyeballs; and the arms that worked mechanically at the oars belonged rather to the boat than to me.

Saturated at last, if not satiated, with seeing, I glanced at the water-level, and said,--

"But see how the surge is heaving against it!"

But now it was I that spoke to stone, though not to a silent one.

"Hang the surge! I'm here for an iceberg, not to be balked by a bit of surf! It's not enough to see; I must have my hand on it! I wish to touch the veritable North Pole!"

It was pleasant to see the ever-genial Parson so peremptory; and I lingered half wilfully, not unwilling to mingle the relieving flavor of this pleasure with the more awful delight of other impressions: said, however, at length,--

"I intend to go up to it, when I have found a suitable place."

"Place! What better place do you desire than this?"

I could but smile and pull on.

Caution was not unnecessary. The sea rose and fell a number of feet beside the berg, beating heavily against it with boom and hiss; and I knew well, that, if our boat struck fairly, especially if it struck sidewise, it would be whirled over and over in two seconds. Besides, where we then were, there was a cut of a foot or more into the berg at the water-level,--or rather, it was excavated below, with this projection above; and had the skiff caught under that, we would drown. I had come there not to drown, nor to run any risk, but to get some more intimate acquaintance with an iceberg. Rowing along, therefore, despite the Parson's moving hortatives, I at length found a spot where this projection did not appear. Turning now the skiff head on, I drove it swiftly toward the berg; then, when its headway was sufficient, shipped the oars quickly, slipped into the bow, and, reaching forth my hand and striking the berg, sent the boat in the same instant back with all my force, not suffering it to touch.

"Now me! Now me!" shouted the Parson, brow hot, and eyes blazing. "You're going to give me a chance, too? I would not miss it for a kingdom!"

"Yes; wait, wait."

I took the oars, got sea-room, then turned its stern, where the Parson sat, toward the iceberg, and backed gently in.

"Put your hand behind you; reach out as far as you can; sit in the middle; keep cool, cool; don't turn your body."

"Cool, oh, yes! I'm cool as November," he said, with a face misty as a hot July morning with evaporating dew. As his hand struck the ice, I bent the oars, and we shot safely away.

"Hurrah! hurrah!" he shouted, making the little boat rock and tremble,--"hurrah! This, now, is the 'adventurous travel' we were promised. Now I am content, if we get no more."

"Cool; you'll have us over."

"Pooh! Who's cooler?"

We went leisurely around this glacial cathedral. The current set with force about it, running against us on the eastern side. At the front we found the "cornice" again, about twenty feet up, sloping to the water, and dipping beneath it on either side; below it, a crystal surface; above, marble fretwork. This cornice indicates a former sea-level, showing that the berg has risen or changed position. This must have taken place, probably, by the detachment of masses; so an occurrence of this kind was not wholly out of question, after all. There is always, however,--so I suspect,--some preliminary warning, some audible crack or visible vibration. I had kept in mind the possibility of such changes, and at the slightest intimation should have darted away,--a movement favored by the lightness of the skiff, and the extreme ease with which, under the advantage of a beautiful model, she was rowed.

A sense of awe, almost of fear, crept over me now that the adventure was over, and I looked up to the mighty towers of the facade with a somewhat humbled eye; and so, pulling slowly and respectfully along the western side, made away, solemn and satisfied, to the ship.

I expected a storm of criticism on our return, but found calm. The boat was hoisted in silently, and I hurried below, to lie down and enjoy the very peculiar entertainment which vigorous rowing was sure to afford me.

Released after a half-hour's toasting on the gridiron, I went on deck and found the Parson surrounded by a cloud of censure. The words "boyish foolhardiness," catching my ear, flushed me with some anger,--to which emotion I am not, perhaps, of all men least liable. So I stumped a little stiffly to the group, and said,--

"I don't feel myself altogether a boy, and foolhardiness is not my forte."

"Well, success is wisdom," said the Colonel, placably. "You have succeeded, and now have criticism at a disadvantage, I own."

Another, however,--not a braver man on board,--stood to his guns.

"Experienced men say that it is dangerous; I hear to them till I have experience myself."

"Right, if so it stands in your mind. You judge thus: you follow your judgment. I judge partly so, and partly otherwise, and I follow my judgment. Mere experience is but a purblind wisdom, after all. When I do not at all see my own way, I follow that, still aware of its imperfections; where eyes are of service, I use them, learning from experience caution, not submission. The real danger in this case was that of being dashed against the berg; with coolness and some skill" (was there a little emphasis on this word _skill_?) "that danger could be disarmed. For any other danger I was ready, but did not fear it. 'Boyish?' The boyish thing, I take it, is always to be a pendant upon other people's alarms. I prefer rather to be kite than its tail only."

"Well, each of us _does_ follow his own judgment," replied Candor; "you act as you think; I think you are wrong. If it were shooting a Polar bear now,--there's pleasure in that, and it were worth the while to run some risk."

We had tried for a bear together. I seized my advantage.

"It is a pleasure to you to shoot a bear. So to me also. But I would rather get into intimacy with an iceberg than freight the ship with bears."

He smiled an end to the colloquy. As I went below, Captain Handy, the Arctic whaler, met me with,--

"I would as lief as not spend a week on that berg! I have made fast to such, and lain for days. All depends on the character of the berg. If it's rotting, look out! If it's sound as that one, you may go to sleep on it."

I hastened up to proclaim my new ally. "You heed experience; hear Captain Handy." And I launched his bolt at the head of Censure, and saw it duck, if no more.

We saw after this, going and returning, many bergs, hundreds in all. With one of the finest, a little more broken and varied than those previously described, we came up at a little past noon, and the schooner stood off and on while Bradford went in the boat to sketch it in color,--Captain Handy's steady and skilful hand upon the sculling-oar. Bradford worked at it like a beaver all the afternoon, and then directed the schooner to lie to through the night, that he might resume his task in the morning,--coveting especially the effects of early light The ardent man was off before three o'clock. Nature was kind to him; he sketched the berg under a dawn of amber and scarlet, followed by floods on floods of morning gold; and returned to breakfast, after five hours' work, half in rapture and half in despair. The colors, above all, the purples, were inconceivable, he said, and there was no use trying to render them. I reminded him of Ruskin's brave words:--"He that is not appalled by his tasks will do nothing great." But his was an April despair, after all, with rifted clouds and spring sunshine pouring through.

Another memorable one was seen outside while we were in harbor, storm-bound. A vast arch went through the very heart of it, while each end rose to a pinnacle,--the arch blue, blue! We were going out to it; but, during the second night of storm, its strength broke, and beneath blinding snow there remained only a mad dance of waves over the wreck of its majesty.

There was another, curiously striped with diagonal dirt-bands, whose fellowship, however, the greens and purples did not disdain.

Another had the shape of three immense towers, seeming to _stand on the water_, more than a hundred feet of sea rolling between. The tallest tower could not be much less than two hundred feet in height; the others slightly, just perceptibly, lower. This was seen in rain, and the purples here were more crystalline and shining than any others which I observed.

These towers were seen on our last day among the bergs. In my memory they are monumental. They stand there, a purple trinity, to commemorate the terrors and glories that I shall behold no more.

KALLUNDBORG CHURCH.

"Tie stille, barn min! Imorgen kommer Fin, Fa'er din, Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares oeine og hjerte at lege med!"

_Zealand Rhyme._

"Build at Kallundborg by the sea A church as stately as church may be, And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair," Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare.

And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said, "Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!" And off he strode, in his pride of will, To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill.

"Build, O Troll, a church for me At Kallundborg by the mighty sea; Build it stately, and build it fair, Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare.

But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is wrought By Trolls of the Hills, O man, for nought. What wilt thou give for thy church so fair?" "Set thy own price," quoth Esbern Snare.

"When Kallundborg church is builded well, Thou must the name of its builder tell, Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my boon." "Build," said Esbern, "and build it soon."

By night and by day the Troll wrought on; He hewed the timbers, he piled the stone; But day by day, as the walls rose fair, Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare.

He listened by night, he watched by day, He sought and thought, but he dared not pray; In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy, And the Neck and the Nis gave no reply.

Of his evil bargain far and wide A rumor ran through the country-side; And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair, Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare.

And now the church was wellnigh done; One pillar it lacked, and one alone; And the grim Troll muttered, "Fool thou art! To-morrow gives me thy eyes and heart!"

By Kallundborg in black despair, Through wood and meadow, walked Esbern Snare, Till, worn and weary, the strong man sank Under the birches on Ulshoi bank.

At his last day's work he heard the Troll Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole; Before him the church stood large and fair: "I have builded my tomb," said Esbern Snare.

And he closed his eyes the sight to hide, When he heard a light step at his side: "O Esbern Snare!" a sweet voice said, "Would I might die now in thy stead!"

With a grasp by love and by fear made strong, He held her fast, and he held her long; With the beating heart of a bird afeard, She hid her face in his flame-red beard.

"O love!" he cried, "let me look to-day In thine eyes ere mine are plucked away; Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy heart Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart!

"I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee! Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me!" But fast as she prayed, and faster still, Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill.

He knew, as he wrought, that a loving heart Was somehow baffling his evil art; For more than spell of Elf or Troll Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul.

And Esbern listened, and caught the sound Of a Troll-wife singing underground: "To-morrow comes Fine, father thine: Lie still and hush thee, baby mine!

"Lie still, my darling! next sunrise Thou'lt play with Esbern Snare's heart and eyes!" "Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that your game? Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his name!"

The Troll he heard him, and hurried on To Kallundborg church with the lacking stone. "Too late, Gaffer Fine!" cried Esbern Snare; And Troll and pillar vanished in air!

That night the harvesters heard the sound Of a woman sobbing underground, And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud with blame Of the careless singer who told his name.

Of the Troll of the Church they sing the rune By the Northern Sea in the harvest moon; And the fishers of Zealand hear him still Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill.

And seaward over its groves of birch Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church, Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair, Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare!

GEORGE CRUIKSHANK IN MEXICO.

And first, let it be on record that his name is GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, and not CRUICKSHANK. The good old man is seventy years of age, if not more, (the earliest drawing I have seen of his bears the date of 1799, and he could scarcely have begun to limn in his long-clothes,) yet, with a persistence of perversity wellnigh astonishing,--although his name has been before the public for considerably more than half a century,--although he has published nothing anonymously, but has appended his familiar signature in full to the minutest scratchings of his etching-needle,--although he has been the conductor of two magazines, and of late years has been one of the foremost agitators and platform-orators in the English temperance movement,--the vast majority of his countrymen have always spelt his surname "Cruickshank," and will continue so to spell it, I suppose, even should he live as long as Cornaro. I hope he may, I am sure, with or without the additional _c_ for his age and his country can ill spare him.

But George Cruikshank in Mexico! What on earth can the most stay-at-home of British artists have to do with that out-of-the-way old curiosity-shop of the American continent? One might fancy him now--but that it is growing late--in the United States. He might be invited to attend a Total Abstinence Convention. He might run Mr. J.B. Gough hard on his favorite stump. He might be tempted, perchance, to cross the ocean in the evening of his days, to note down, with his inimitable and still unfaltering pencil, some of the humors of Yankee-land. I am certain, that, were George Cruikshank or Dicky Doyle to come this way and give a pictorial history of a tour through the States, somewhat after the immortal Brown, Jones, and Robinson pattern, the Americans would be in a better temper with their brothers in Old England than after reading some long spun-out book of travels by brainless Cockneys or cynical dyspeptics. The laugh awakened by a droll picture hurts nobody. It is that ugly letter-press which smarts and rankles, and festers at last into a gangrene of hatred. The Patriarch of Uz wished that his enemy had written a book. He could have added ten thousand fold to the venom of the aspiration, had he likewise expressed a wish that the book had been printed.

You will be pleased to understand, then, that the name of the gentleman who serves as text for this essay is Cruikshank, and not Cruickshank. There is an old Scottish family, I believe, of that ilk, which spells its name with a _c_ before the _k_. Perhaps the admirers of our George wished to give something like an aristocratic smack to his patronymic, and so interpolated the objectionable consonant. There is no Cruikshank to be found in the "Court Guide," but Cruickshanks abound. As for our artist, he is a burgess among burgesses,--a man of the people _par excellence_, and an Englishman above all. His travels have been of the most limited nature. Once, in the course of his long life, and with what intent you shall presently hear, he went to France, as Hogarth did; but France didn't please him, and he came home again, like Hogarth, with all convenient speed,--fortunately, without being clapped up in jail for sketching the gates of Calais. I believe that he has not crossed the Straits of Dover since George IV. was king. I have heard, on good authority, that he protested strongly, while in foreign parts, against the manner in which the French ate new-laid eggs, and against the custom, then common among the peasantry, of wearing wooden shoes. I am afraid even, that, were George hard pressed, he would own to a dim persuasion that _all_ Frenchmen wear wooden shoes; also pigtails; likewise cocked hats. He does not say so in society; but those who have his private ear assert that his faith or his delusion goes even farther than this, and that he believes that all Frenchmen eat frogs,--that nine tenths of the population earn their living as dancing-masters, and that the late Napoleon Buonaparte (George Cruikshank always spells the Corsican Ogre's name with a _u_) was first cousin to Apollyon, and was not, upon occasion, averse to the consumption of human flesh,---babies of British extraction preferred. Can you show me an oak that ever took so strong a root as prejudice?

Not that George Cruikshank belongs in any way to the species known as "Fossil Tories." He is rather a fossil Liberal. He was a Whig Radical, and more, when the slightest suspicion of Radicalism exposed an Englishman to contumely, to obloquy, to poverty, to fines, to stripes, to gyves, and to the jail. He was quite as advanced a politician as William Cobbett, and a great deal honester as a man. He was the fast friend of William Hone, who, for his famous "Political Catechism,"--a lampoon on the borough-mongers and their bloated king,--was tried three times on three successive days, before the cruel Ellenborough, but as many times acquitted. George Cruikshank inveighed ardently, earnestly, and at last successfully, with pencil and with etching-point, against the atrocious blood-thirstiness of the penal laws,--the laws that strung up from six to a dozen unfortunates on a gallows in front of Newgate every Monday morning, often for no direr offence than passing a counterfeit one-pound note. When the good old Tories wore top-boots and buckskins, George Cruikshank was conspicuous for a white hat and Hessians,--the distinguishing outward signs of ultra-liberalism. He was, of course, a Parliamentary Reformer in the year '30; and he has been a social reformer, and a most useful one, ever since. Still is there something about this brave old English worthy that approaches the fossil type. His droll dislike to the French--a hearty, good-humored disfavor, differing widely from the polished malevolence of Mr. John Leech, who never missed an opportunity to represent the airy Gaul as something repulsive, degraded, and ungentlemanly--I have already noticed. Then George Cruikshank has never been able to surmount a vague notion that steamboats and steam-engines are, generically speaking, a humbug, and that the old English sailing craft and the old English stage-coach are, after all, the only modes of conveyance worthy the patronage of Britons. Against exaggerated hoop-skirts he has all along set his face, and seldom, if ever, condescends to delineate a lady in crinoline. His beau-ideal of female beauty is comprised in an hour-glass waist, a skirt that fits close to the form, a sandalled shoe, and very long ringlets; whereas tight lacing, narrow skirts, sandalled shoes, and ringlets have been banished from the English _modes_ any time these fifteen years. Those among George's critics, too, who are sticklers for exactitude in the "abstract and brief chronicle of the time" complain that his dandies always wear straps to their tight pantaloons in lieu of pegtops; that their vests are too short and their coat-collars too high; that they wear bell-crowned hats, and carry gold-knobbed canes with long tassels; and that they are dressed, in short, after the fashion of the year one, when Brummell or Pea-Green Haynes commanded the _ton_. It is obvious that the works of an artist who has refused to be indoctrinated with the perpetual changes of a capricious code of dress would never be very popular with the readers of "Punch,"--a periodical which, pictorially, owes its very existence to the readiness and skill displayed by its draughtsmen in shooting folly as it flies and catching the manners living as they rise, and pillorying the madness of the moment. Were George Cruikshank called upon, for instance, to depict a lady fording a puddle on a rainy day, and were he averse (for he is the modestest of artists) to displaying too much of her ankle, he would assuredly make manifest, beneath her upraised skirts, some antediluvian pantalet, bordered by a pre-Adamite frill. But the keen-eyed Mr. Leech would be guilty of no such anachronism. He would discover that the mysterious garments in question were ofttimes encircled by open-worked embroidery. _He would find out that the ladies sometimes wore Knickerbockers._ And this is what the ladies like. Exaggerate their follies as much as you please; but woe be to you, if you wrongfully accuse them! You may sneer at, you may censure, you may castigate them for what they really do, but beware of reprehending them for that which they have never done. Even Sir John Falstaff revolted at the imputation of having kissed the keeper's daughter. A sermon against crinoline, be it ever so fulminating, finds ever an attentive and smiling congregation; but venture to preach against coal-scuttle bonnets--until the ladies have really taken to wearing them--and your hearers would pull down the pulpit and hang the preacher.

Thus, although foreigners may express wonder that a designer, who for so many years has been in the front rank of English humorous artists, should never have contributed to the pages of our leading humorous periodical, astonishment may be abated, when the real state of the case, as I have endeavored to put it, is known. George Cruikshank is at once too good for, and not quite up to the mark of "Punch." His best works have always been his etchings on steel and copper; and wonderful examples of chalcographic brilliance and skill those etchings are,--many of them surpassing Callot, and not a few of them (notably the illustrations to Ainsworth's "Tower of London") rivalling Rembrandt. From the nature of these engravings, it would be impossible to print them at a machine-press for a weekly issue of fifty or sixty thousand copies. George has drawn much on wood, and his wondrous wood-cuts--xylographs, if you wish a more pretentious word--to "Three Courses and a Dessert," "The Odd Volume," "The Gentleman in Black," Grimm's "Fairy Tales," "Philosophy in Sport," and "The Table-Book," will be long remembered, and are now highly prized by amateurs; but his minute and delicate pencil-drawings have taxed the energies of the very best engravers of whom England can boast,--of Vizetelly, of Landells, of Jackson, of Thompson, and of Thurston. George Cruikshank would never suffer his drawings on wood to be slashed and chopped about by hasty or incompetent gravers; and although the ateliers of "Punch" are supplied with a first-rate staff of wood-cutters, very great haste and very little care must often be apparent in the weekly pabulum of cuts; nor should such an appearance excite surprise, when the exigencies of a weekly publication are remembered. The "Punch" artists, indeed, draw with a special reference to that which they know their engravers can or cannot do. Mr. Tenniel's cartoons are put on wood precisely as they are meant to be cut, in broad, firm, sweeping lines, and the wood-engraver has only to scoop out the white interstices between the network of lines; whereas Mr. Leech dashed in a bold pen-and-ink-like sketch and trusted to the xylographer, who knew his style well and of old, to produce an engraving, _tant bien que mal_, but as bold and as dashing as the original. The secession, for reasons theological, from "Punch" of Mr. Richard Doyle, an event which took place some fifteen years since, (how quickly time passes, to be sure!) was very bitterly regretted by his literary and artistic comrades; and the young man who calmly gave up something like a thousand pounds a year for conscience' sake lost nothing, but gained rather in the respect and admiration of society. But the wood-engravers must have held high carousal over the defection of Mr. Doyle. To cut one of his drawings was a crucial experiment. His hand was not sure in its touch; he always drew six lines instead of one; and in the portrait of a lady from his pencil, the agonized engraver had to hunt through a Cretan labyrinth of faces before he found the particular countenance which Mr. Doyle wished to be engraved.

I have strayed away, perhaps unpardonably, from George Cruikshank. To those whose only ludicrous prophet is "Punch" he may be comparatively little known. But in the great world of pictorial art, both in England and on the Continent, he worthily holds an illustrious place. His name is a household word with his countrymen; and whenever a young hopeful displays ever so crude an aptitude for caricaturing his schoolmaster, or giving with slate and pencil the facetious side of his grandmother's cap and spectacles, he is voted by the unanimous suffrage of fireside critics to be a "regular Cruikshank." In this connection I have heard him sometimes called "Crookshanks," which is taking, I apprehend, even a grosser liberty with his name than in the case of the additional _c_,--"Crookshanks" having seemingly a reference, and not a complimentary one, to George's legs.

This admirable artist and good man was the son of old Isaac Cruikshank, in his day a famous engraver of lottery-tickets, securities in which the British public are now no longer by law permitted to invest, but which, fifty years since, made as constant a demand on the engraver's art as, in our time and in America, is made by the thousand and one joint-stock banks whose pictorial promises-to-pay fill, or should properly fill, our pocket-books. The abilities of Isaac were not entirely devoted to the lottery; and I have at home, from his hand, a very rare and curious etching of the execution of Louis XVI., with an explanatory diagram beneath of the working of the guillotine. George Cruikshank's earliest pencil-drawings are dated, as I have remarked, before the present century drew breath; but he must have begun to gain reputation as a caricaturist upon copper towards the end of the career of Napoleon I.,--the "Boney" to whom he has adhered with such constant, albeit jocular, animosity. He was the natural successor of James Gillray, the renowned delineator of "Farmer George and Little Nap," and "Pitt and Boney at Dinner," and hundreds of political cartoons, eagerly bought in their day, but now to be found only in old print-shops. Gillray was a man of vast, but misapplied talents. Although he etched caricatures for a livelihood, his drawing was splendid,--wellnigh Michel-Angelesque,--but always careless and _outre_. He was continually betting crown-bowls of punch that he would design, etch, and bite in so many plates within a given time, and, with the assistance of a private bowl, he almost always won his bets; but the punch was too much for him in the long run. He went mad and died miserably. George Cruikshank was never his pupil; nor did he ever attain the freedom and mastery of outline which the crazy old reprobate, who made the fortune of Mr. Humphries, the St. James's Street print-seller, undeniably possessed; but his handling was grounded upon Gillray's style; and from early and attentive study of his works he must have acquired that boldness of treatment, that rotundity of light and shade, and that general "fatness," or _morbidezza_, of touch, which make the works of Gillray and Cruikshank stand out from the coarse scrawls of Rowlandson, and the bald and meagre scratches of Sir Charles Bunbury. Unless I am much mistaken, one of the first works that brought George into notice was an etching published in 1815, having reference to the exile of the detested Corsican to St. Helena. But it was in 1821 that he first made a decided mark. For William Hone--a man who was in perpetual opposition to the powers that were--he drew on wood a remarkable series of illustrations to the scurrilous, but perhaps not undeserved, satires against King George IV., called, "The Political House that Jack Built," "The Green Bag," "A Slap at Slop," and the like,--all of them having direct and most caustic reference to the scandalous prosecution instituted against a woman of whom it is difficult to say whether she was bad or mad or both, but who was assuredly most miserable,--the unhappy Caroline of Brunswick. George Cruikshank's sketch of the outraged husband, the finest and stoutest gentleman in Europe, being lowered by means of a crane into a pair of white kid pantaloons suspended between the posts of his bed, was inimitably droll, and clearly disloyal. But disloyalty was fashionable in the year '21.

For twenty years afterwards the history of the artist's career is but the history of his works, of his innumerable illustrations to books, and the sketchbooks, comic panoramas, and humorous cartoons he published on his own account. Besides, I am not writing a life of George Cruikshank, and all this time I have been keeping him on the threshold of the city of Mexico. Let it suffice to say, briefly, that in 1841 came a stand-point in his life, through the establishment of a monthly magazine entitled "George Cruikshank's Omnibus." Of this he was the sole illustrator. The literary editor was Laman Blanchard; and in the "Omnibus," William Makepeace Thackeray, then a gaunt young man, not much over thirty, and quite unknown to fame,--although he had published "Yellowplush" in "Fraser,"--wrote his quaint and touching ballad of "The King of Brentford's Testament." The "Omnibus" did not run long, nor was its running very prosperous. George Cruikshank seemed for a while wearied with the calling of a caricaturist; and the large etchings on steel, with which between '40 and '45 he illustrated Ainsworth's gory romances, indicated a power of grouping, a knowledge of composition, a familiarity with mediaeval costume, and a command over chiaroscuro, which astonished and delighted those who had been accustomed to regard him only as a funny fellow,--one of infinite whim, to be sure, but still a jester of jests, and nothing more. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case might be,--for the rumor ran that George intended to abandon caricaturing altogether, and to set up in earnest as an historical painter,--there came from beyond the sea, to assist in illustrating "Windsor Castle," a Frenchman named Tony Johannot. Who but he, in fact, was the famous master of the grotesque who illustrated "Don Quixote" and the "Diable Boiteux" of Le Sage? To his dismay, George Cruikshank found a competitor as eccentric as himself, as skilful a manipulator _rem acu_, the etching-point, and who drew incomparably better than he, George Cruikshank, did. He gave up the mediaeval in disgust; but he must have hugged himself with the thought that he had already illustrated Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist," and that the Frenchman, powerful as he was, could never hope to come near him in that terrific etching of "Fagin in the Condemned Cell."

Again nearly twenty years have passed, and George Cruikshank still waves his Ithuriel's spear of well-ground steel, and still dabbles in aquafortis. An old, old man, he is still strong and hale. If you ask him a reason for his thus rivalling Fontenelle in his patriarchal greenness, for his being able at threescore and ten to paint pictures, (witness that colossal oil-painting of the "Triumph of Bacchus,") to make speeches, and to march at the head of his company as a captain of volunteers, he will give you at once the why and because. He is the most zealous, the most conscientious, and the most invulnerable of total abstainers. There were days when he took tobacco: witness that portrait of himself, smoking a very long meerschaum pipe in "Love's Triumph," etched about 1845. There were times when he heard the chimes at midnight, and partook of that "richt gude willie waucht" which tipsy Scotchmen, when they have formed in a ring, standing upon chairs, each with one foot on the table, hiccoughingly declare that we are bound to take for the sake of "auld lang syne." But George Cruikshank has done with willie wauchts as with bird's-eye and Killikinick. For many years he has neither drunk nor smoked. He is more than a confessor, he is an apostle of temperance. His strange, wild, grand performances, "The Bottle" and "The Drunkard's Children,"--the first quite Hogarthian in its force and pungency,--fell like thunderbolts among the gin-shops. I am afraid that George Cruikshank would not be a very welcome guest at Felix Booth's distillery, or at Barclay and Perkins's brewery. For, it must be granted, the sage is a little intolerant. "No peace with the Fiery Moloch!" "_Ecrasons l'infame!_" These are his mottoes. He would deprive the poor man of the scantiest drop of beer. You begin with a sip of "the right stuff," he teaches us in "The Bottle," and you end by swigging a gallon of vitriol, jumping on your wife, and dying in Bedlam of _delirium tremens_. I have not heard his opinions concerning cider, or root-beer, or effervescing sarsaparilla, or ginger-pop; but I imagine that each and every one of those reputed harmless beverages would enter into his _Index Expurgatorius_. "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop [of alcohol] to drink." 'Tis thus he would quote Coleridge. He is as furious against tobacco as ever was King James in his "Counterblast." He is of the mind of the old divine, that "he who plays with the Devil's rattles will soon learn to draw his sword." In his pious rage against intemperance, and with a view to the instruction of the rising generation, he has even published teetotal versions of "Cinderella" and "Jack the Giant-Killer,"--a proceeding which Charles Dickens indignantly reprobated in an article in "Household Words," called "Frauds upon the Fairies." Nearly the last time I met George Cruikshank in London was at a dinner given in honor of Washington's birthday. He had just been gazetted captain of his rifle company, and was good enough to ask me if I knew any genteel young men, of strictly temperance principles, who would like commissions in his corps. I replied, that, so far as principles were concerned, I could recommend him five hundred postulants; but that, as regarded practice, most of the young men of my acquaintance, who had manifested an ambition for a military career, drank hard.

The which, oddly enough, leads me at last to Mexico.--We had had, on the whole, rather a hard morning of it. The Don, who was my host in the _siempre leal y insigne ciudad de Mejico_,--and a most munificent and hospitable Don he was,--took me out one day in the month of March last to visit a _hacienda_ or farm which he possessed, called, if I remember aright, La Escalera. I repeat, we had a hard morning of it. We rose at six,--and in mountainous Mexico the ground at early morn, even during summer, is often covered with a frosty rime. I looked out of the window, and when I saw the leaves of the trees glistening with something which was _not_ dew, and Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl mantled with eternal snows in the distance, I shivered. A cup of chocolate, a _tortilla_ or thin griddle-cake of Indian meal, and a paper cigar, just to break your fast, and then to horse. To horse! Do you know what it is, being a poor horseman, to bestride a full-blood, full-bred white Arab, worth ever so many hundred _pesos de oro_, and, with his flowing mane and tail, and small, womanly, vixenish head, beautiful to look upon, but which in temper, like many other beauteous creatures I have known, is an incarnate fiend? The Arab they gave me had been the property of a French general. I vehemently suspect that he had been dismissed from the Imperial army for biting a _chef d'escadron_ through one of his jackboots, or kicking in three of the ribs of a _marechal des logis_. That was hard enough, to begin with. Then the streets of Mexico are execrably paved, and the roads leading out of the city are full of what in Ireland are termed "curiosities," to wit, holes; and my Arab had a habit, whenever he met an equine brother, and especially an equine sister, on the way, of screaming like a possessed Pythoness, and then of essaying to stand on his hind legs. However, with a Mexican saddle,--out of which you can scarcely fall, even though you had a mind to it,--and Mexican stirrups, and a pair of spurs nearly as big as Catharine-wheels, the Arab and I managed to reach the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, five miles out, and thence, over tolerably good roads, another five miles, to the Escalera. I wish they would make Mexican saddles of something else besides wood very thinly covered with leather. How devoutly did I long for the well-stuffed pig-skin of Hyde Park! We had an hour or two more hard work riding about the fields, when we reached the farm, watching the process of extracting _pulque_ from the _maguey_ or cactus,--and a very nasty process it is,--inspecting the granaries belonging to the _hacienda_, and dodging between the rows of Indian corn, which grows here to so prodigious a height as to rival the famous grain which is said to grow somewhere down South, and to attain such an altitude that a Comanche perched upon the head of a giraffe is invisible between the rows. About noon we had breakfast, and that was the hardest work of all. _Item_, we had mutton-chops, beefsteaks, veal cutlets, omelets, rice, hominy, fried tomatoes, and an infinity of Mexican hashes and stews seasoned with _chiles_ or red-pepper pods. _Item_, we had a huge _pavo_, a turkey,--a wild turkey; and then, for the first time, did I understand that the bird we Englishmen consume only at Christmas, and then declare to be tough and flavorless, is to be eaten to perfection only in the central regions of the American continent. The flesh of this _pavo_ was like softened ivory, and his fat like unto clotted cream. There were some pretty little tiny kickshaws in the way of pine-apples, musk-melons, bananas, papaws, and custard-apples, and many other tropical fruits whose names I have forgotten. I think, too, that we had some stewed _iguana_ or lizard; but I remember, that, after inflicting exemplary punishment on a bowl of sour cream, we wound up by an attack on an _albacor_, a young kid roasted whole, or rather baked in a lump of clay with wood-ashes heaped over him, and brought to table on a tea-tray! Shade of Gargantua, how we ate! I blessed that fiery Arab for giving me such an appetite. There was a good deal of smoking going on at odd times during breakfast; but nobody ventured beyond a _cigarro_ of paper and fine-cut before we attacked the _albacor_. When coffee was served, each man lighted a _puro_, one of the biggest of Cabana's Regalias; and serious and solemn puffing then set in. It was a memorable breakfast. The _Administrador_, or steward of the estate, had evidently done his best to entertain his patron the Don with becoming magnificence, nor were potables as dainty as the edibles wanting to furnish forth the feast. There was _pulque_ for those who chose to drink it. I never could stomach that fermented milk of human unkindness, which combines the odor of a dairy that has been turned into a grogshop with the flavor of rotten eggs. There was wine of Burgundy and wine of Bordeaux; there was Champagne: these three from the Don's cellar in Mexico, and the last cooled, not with vulgar ice, but with snow from the summit of Popocatepetl,--snow that had been there from the days of Montezuma and Guatimozin; while as _chasse_ and _pousse_ to the exquisitely flavored Mexican coffee, grown, ground, and roasted on the _hacienda_, we had some very ripe old French Cognac, (1804, I think, was the brand,) and some Peruvian _pisco_, a strong white cordial, somewhat resembling _kirsch-wasser_, and exceeding toothsome. We talked and laughed till we grew sleepy, (the edibles and potables had of course nothing to do with our somnolence,) and then, the farm-house of the _hacienda_ having seemingly as many rooms as the Vatican, each man hied him to a cool chamber, where he found a trundle-bed, or a hammock, or a sofa, and gravely laid himself out for an hour's _siesta_. Then the Administrador woke us all up, and gleefully presented us with an enormous bowl of sangaree, made of the remains of the Bordeaux and the brandy and the pisco, and plenty of ice,--ice this time,--and sugar, and limes, and slices of pineapple, Madam,--the which he had concocted during our slumber. We drained this,--one gets so thirsty after breakfast in Mexico,--and then to horse again for a twelve miles' ride back to the city. I omitted to mention two or three little circumstances which gave a zest and piquancy to the entertainment. When we arrived at the _hacienda_, although servitors were in plenty, each cavalier unsaddled and fed his own steed; and when we addressed ourselves to our _siesta_, every one who didn't find a double-barrelled gun at the head of his bed took care to place a loaded revolver under his pillow. For accidents will happen in the best-regulated families; and in Mexico you can never tell at what precise moment Cacus may be upon you.

Riding back to the _siempre leal y insigne ciudad_ at about three o'clock in the afternoon, when the sun was at its hottest, was no joke. Baking is not precisely the word, nor boiling, nay, nor frying; something which is a compound of all these might express the sensation I, for one, felt. Fortunately, the Don had insisted on my assuming the orthodox Mexican riding-costume: cool linen drawers, cut Turkish fashion; over these, and with just sufficient buttons in their respective holes to swear by, the leathern _chapareros_ or overalls; morocco slippers, to which were strapped the Catharine-wheel spurs; no vest; no neckerchief; a round jacket, with quarter doubloons for buttons; and a low-crowned felt hat, with an enormous brim, a brim which might have made a Quaker envious, and have stricken mortification to the soul of a Chinese mandarin. This brim kept the sun out of your eyes; and then, by way of hatband, there was a narrow, but thick turban or "pudding," which prevented the rays of Sol from piercing through your skull, and boiling your brains into batter. The fact of the whole of this costume, and the accoutrements of your horse to boot, being embroidered with silver and embellished with golden bosses, thus affording a thousand tangents for Phoebus to fly off from, rather detracted from the coolness of your array; but one must not expect perfection here below. In a stove-pipe hat, a shooting-coat, and riding-cords, I should have suffered much more from the heat. As it was, I confess, that, when I reached home, in the Calle San Francisco, Mexico, I was exceedingly thankful. I am not used to riding twenty-four miles in one day. I think I had a warm bath in the interval between doffing the _chapareros_ and donning the pantaloons of every-day life. I think I went to sleep on a sofa for about an hour, and, waking up, called for a cocktail as a restorative. Yes, Madam, there are cocktails in Mexico, and our Don's body-servant made them most scientifically. I think also that I declined, with thanks, the Don's customary invitation to a drive before dinner in the Paseo. Nor barouche, nor mail-phaeton, nay, nor soft-cushioned brougham delighted me. I felt very lazy and thoroughly knocked up.

The Don, however, went out for his drive, smiling at my woful plight. Is it only after hard riding that remorse succeeds enjoyment? I was left alone in his great caravansary of a mansion. I wandered from room to room, from corridor to corridor,--now glancing through the window-_jalousies_, and peeping at the _chinas_ in their _ribosos_, and the shovel-hatted priests in the street below creeping along on the shady side of the way,--now hanging over the gallery in the inner court-yard, listening to the horses stamping in their stables or rattling their tethers against the mangers, listening now to the English grooms as they whistled the familiar airs of home while they rubbed their charges down, and now to the sleepy, plaintive drone of the Indian servants loitering over their work in the kitchens. Then I wandered back again,--from drawing-room to dining-room, from bedchamber to boudoir. And at last I found that I had crossed a bridge over another court-yard, and gotten into another house, abutting on another street. The Don was still lord here, and I was free to ramble. More drawing-rooms, more bedchambers, more boudoirs, a chapel, and at last a library. Libraries are not plentiful in Mexico. Here, on many shelves, was a goodly store of standard literature in many languages. Here was Prescott's History of the Conquest, translated into choice Castilian, and Senor Ramirez his comments thereupon. Here was Don Lucas Alaman his History of Mexico, and works by Jesuit fathers innumerable. How ever did they get printed? Who ever bought, who ever read, those cloudy tomes in dog Latin? Here was Lord Kingsborough's vast work on Mexican Antiquities,--the work his Lordship is reported to have ruined himself in producing; and Macaulay, and Dickens, and Washington Irving, and the British Essayists, and the Waverley Novels, and Shakspeare, and Soyer's Cookery, and one little book of mine own writing: a very well-chosen library indeed.

What have we here? A fat, comely, gilt-lettered volume, bound in red morocco, and that might, externally, have passed for my grandmother's edition of Dr. Doddridge's Sermons. As I live, 't is a work illustrated by George Cruikshank,--a work hitherto unknown to me, albeit I fancied myself rich, even to millionnairism, in Cruikshankiana. It is a rare book, a precious book, a book that is not in the British Museum, a book for which collectors would gladly give more doubloons than I lost at _monte_ last night; for here the most moral people play _monte_. It is _un costumbre del pais_,--a custom of the country; and, woe is me! I lost a pile 'twixt midnight and cock-crow.

"Life in Paris; or the Rambles, Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain O'Shuffleton, with the Whimsical Adventures of the Halibut Family, and Other Eccentric Characters in the French Metropolis. Embellished with Twenty-One Comic Vignettes and Twenty-One Colored Engravings of Scenes from Real Life, by George Cruikshank. London: Printed for John Cumberland. 1828." This "Life in Paris" was known to me by dim literary repute; but I had never seen, the actual volume before. Its publication was a disastrous failure. Emboldened by the prodigious success of "Life in London,"--the adventures in the Great Metropolis of Corinthian Tom and Jerry--Somebody--and Bob Logic, Esquire, written by Pierce Egan, once a notorious chronicler of the prize-ring, the compiler of a Slang Dictionary, and whose proficiency in _argot_ and flash-patter was honored by poetic celebration from Byron, Moore, and Christopher North, but whom I remember, when I was first climbing into public life, a decrepit, broken-down old man,--Mr. John Cumberland, of Ludgate Hill, (the publisher, by the way, of that series of the "Acting Drama" to which, over the initials of D--G, and the figure of a hand pointing, some of the most remarkable dramatic criticisms in the English language are appended,) thought, not unreasonably, that "Life in Paris" might attain a vogue as extensive as that achieved by "Life in London." I don't know who wrote the French "Life." Pierce Egan could scarcely have been the author; for he was then at the height of a vicious and ephemeral popularity; and any book, however trashy, with his name to it, would have been sure to sell. This "Life in Paris" was very probably the work of some obscure hack, who, when he was describing the "eccentric characters in the French metropolis," may not impossibly have been vegetating in the Rules of the King's Bench Prison. But crafty Mr. Cumberland, to insure the success of his enterprise, secured the services of George Cruikshank as illustrator. George had a brother Robert, who had caught something of his touch and manner, but nothing of his humorous genius, and who assisted him in illustrating "Life in London"; but "Life in Paris" was to be all his own; and he undertook a journey to France in order to study Gallic life and make sketches. The results were now before me in twenty-one small vignettes on wood, (of not much account,) and of as many large aquatint engravings, (George can aquatint as well as etch,) crowded with figures, and displaying the unmistakable and inimitable Cruikshankian _vim_ and point. There is Dick Wildfire being attired, with the aid of the _friseur_ and the tailor, and under the sneering inspection of Sam Sharp, his Yorkshire valet, according to the latest Parisian fashions. Next we have Dick and Captain O'Shuffleton (an Irish adventurer) "promenading in the Gardens of the Tuileries"; next, "real life" in the galleries of the Palais Royal; next, Dick, the Captain, Lady Halibut, and Lydia "enjoying a lounge on the Italian Boulevard." To these succeed a representation of a dinner at Very's; Dick and his companions "smashing the glim on a spree by lamplight"; Dick and the Captain "paying their respects to the Fair _Limonadiere_ at the Cafe des Mille Colonnes"; Dick introduced by the Captain to a _Rouge et Noir_ table; the same and his valet "_showing fight in a Caveau_"; "Life behind the Curtain of the Grand Opera, or Dick and the Squire larking with the _Figurantes_"; Dick and the Squire "enjoying the sport at the Combat of Animals, or Duck Lane of Paris"; Dick and Jenkins "in a Theatrical Pandemonium, or the Cafe de la Paix in all its glory"; "Life among the Dead, or the Halibut Family in the Catacombs"; "Life among the Connoisseurs," or Dick and his friends "in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre"; "a Frolic in the _Cafe d'Enfer_, or Infernal Cellar"; "Life on Tiptoe, or Dick quadrilling it in the Salons de Mars in the Champs Elysees"; the "_Entree_ to the Italian Opera"; the "Morning of the Fete of St. Louis"; the "Evening of the same, with Dick, Jenkins, and the Halibuts witnessing the _Canaille_ in all their glory"; and, finally, "Life in a Billiard-Room, or Dick and the Squire _au fait_ to the Parisian Sharpers."

I have said that these illustrations are full of point and drollery. They certainly lack that round, full touch so distinctive of George Cruikshank, and which he learned from Gillray; but such a touch can be given only when the shadows as well as the outlines of a plate are etched; and the intent of an aquatint engraving is, as the reader may or may not know, to produce the effect of a drawing in Indian ink.[C] Still there is much in these pictures to delight the Cruikshankian connoisseur,--infinite variety in physiognomy, wonderful minuteness and accuracy in detail, and here and there sparkles of the true Hogarthian satire.

But a banquet in which the plates only are good is but a Barmecide feast, after all. The letter-press to this "Life in Paris" is the vilest rubbish imaginable,--a farrago of St. Giles's slang, Tottenham Court Road doggerel, ignorance, lewdness, and downright dulness. Mr. John Cumberland, of Ludgate Hill, took, accordingly, very little by his motion. The "Life" fell almost stillborn from the press; and George Cruikshank must have regretted that he ever had anything to do with it. The major part of the impression must years ago have been used to line trunks, inwrap pies, and singe geese; but to our generation, and to those which are to come, this sorry volume will be more than a curiosity: it will be literarily and artistically an object of great and constantly increasing value. By the amateur of Cruikshankiana it will be prized for the reason that the celebrated Latin pamphlet proving that Edward VI. never had the toothache was prized, although the first and last leaves were wanting, by Theodore Hook's Tom Hill. It will be treasured for its scarcity. To the student of social history it will be of even greater value, as the record of a state of manners, both in England and France, which has wholly and forever passed away. The letter-press portraits, drawn by the hack author, of a party of English tourists are but foul and stupid libels; but their aquatint portraits, as bitten in by George Cruikshank, are, albeit exaggerated, true in many respects to Nature. In fact, we _were_ used, when George IV. was king, to send abroad these overdressed and under-bred clowns and Mohawks,--whelps of the squirarchy and hobbledehoys of the universities,--Squire Gawkies and Squire Westerns and Tony Lumpkins, Mrs. Malaprops and Lydia Languishes, by the hundred and the thousand. "The Fudge Family in Paris" and the letters of Mrs. Ramsbotham read nowadays like the most outrageous of caricatures; but they failed not to hit many a blot in the times which gave them birth. It was really reckoned fashionable in 1828 to make a visit to Paris the occasion for the coarsest of "sprees,"--to get tipsy at Very's,--to "smash the glims,"--to parade those infamous _Galeries de Bois_ in the Palais Royal which were the common haunt of abandoned women,--to beat the gendarmes, and, indeed, the first Frenchman who happened to turn up, merely on the ground that he _was_ a Frenchman. But France and the French have changed since then, as well as England and the English. Are these the only countries in the world whose people and whose manners have turned _volte-face_ within less than half a century? I declare that I read from beginning to end, the other day, a work called "Salmagundi," and that I could not recognize in one single page anything to remind me of the New York of the present day. Thus in the engravings to "Life in Paris" are there barely three which any modern Parisian would admit to possess any direct or truthful reference to Paris life as it is. People certainly continue to dine at Very's; but Englishmen no longer get tipsy there, no longer smash the plates or kick the waiters. In lieu of dusky billiard-rooms, the resort of duskier sharpers, there are magnificent saloons, containing five, ten, and sometimes twenty billiard-tables. The _Galeries de Bois_ have been knocked to pieces these thirty years. The public gaming-houses have been shut up. There are no longer any brutal dog-and-bear-baitings at the Barriere du Combat. There is no longer a _Belle Limonadiere_ at the Cafe des Mille Colonnes. _Belles Limonadieres_ (if I may be permitted to use one of the most inelegant, but the most expressive, of American colloquialisms) are "played out." The Catacombs have long since been shut to strangers. The _Caveau_ exists no more. Old reprobates scarcely remember the _Cafe d'Enfer_. The _Fete_ of St. Louis is as dead as Louis XVIII., as dead as the _Fetes_ of July, as the _Fetes_ of the Republic. There is but one national festival now,--and that is on the 15th of August, and in honor of St. Napoleon. There are no more "glims" to smash; the old oil _reverberes_ have been replaced by showy gas-lamps, and the _sergents de ville_ would make short work of any roisterers who attempted to take liberties with them. The old Paris of the Restoration and the Monarchy is dead; but the Thane of Cawdor--I mean George Cruikshank--lives, a prosperous gentleman.

I brought the book away with me from Mexico, all the way down to Vera Cruz, and so on to Cuba, and thence to New York; and it is in Boston with me now. But it is not mine. The Don did not even lend it to me. I had only his permission to take it from the library to my room, and turn it over there; but when I was coming away, that same body-servant, thinking it was my property, carefully packed it among the clothes in my portmanteau; and I did not discover his mistake and my temporary gain until I was off. I mention this in all candor; for I am conscious that there never was a book-collector yet who did not, at some period or other of his life, at least meditate the commission of a felony. But the Don is coming to the States this autumn, and I must show him that I have not been a fraudulent bailee. I shall have taken, at all events, my fill of pleasure from the book; and I hope that George Cruikshank will live to read what I have written; and God bless his honest old heart, anyhow!

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Aquatint engraving in England is all but a dead art. It is now employed only in portraits of race-horses, which are never sold uncolored, and in plates of the fashions. The present writer had the honor, twelve years since, of producing the last "great" work (so far as size was concerned) undertaken in England. It was a monster panorama, some sixty feet long, representing the funeral procession of the Duke of Wellington. It was published by the well-known house of Ackermann, in the Strand; and the writer regrets to say that the house went bankrupt very shortly afterwards.

LEAVES FROM AN OFFICER'S JOURNAL.

III.

CAMP SAXTON, NEAR BEAUFORT, S. C. January 3, 1864.

Once, and once only, thus far, the water has frozen in my tent; and the next morning showed a dense white frost outside. We have still mocking-birds and crickets and rosebuds and occasional noonday baths in the river, though the butterflies have vanished, as I remember to have observed in Fayal, after December. I have been here nearly six weeks without a rainy day; one or two slight showers there have been, once interrupting a drill, but never dress parade. For climate, by day, we might be among the isles of Greece,--though it may be my constant familiarity with the names of her sages which suggests that impression. For instance, a voice just now called, near my tent,--"Cato, whar's Plato?"

The men have somehow got the impression that it is essential to the validity of a marriage that they should come to me for permission, just as they used to go to the master; and I rather encourage these little confidences, because it is so entertaining to hear them. "Now, Cunnel," said a faltering swain the other day, "I want for get me one good lady," which I approved, especially the limitation as to number. Afterwards I asked one of the bridegroom's friends whether he thought it a good match. "Oh, yes, Cunnel," said he, in all the cordiality of friendship, "John's gwine for marry Venus." I trust the goddess prove herself a better lady than she appeared during her previous career upon this planet. But this naturally suggests the isles of Greece again.

_January 7._--On first arriving, I found a good deal of anxiety among the officers as to the increase of desertions, that being the rock on which the "Hunter Regiment" split. Now this evil is very nearly stopped, and we are every day recovering the older absentees. One of the very best things that have happened to us was a half-accidental shooting of a man who had escaped from the guard-house, and was wounded by a squad sent in pursuit. He has since died; and this very evening, another man, who escaped with him, came and opened the door of my tent, after being five days in the woods, almost without food. His clothes were in rags, and he was nearly starved, poor foolish fellow, so that we can almost dispense with further punishment. Severe penalties would be wasted on these people, accustomed as they have been to the most violent passions on the part of white men; but a mild inexorableness tells on them, just as it does on any other children. It is something utterly new to them, and it is thus far perfectly efficacious. They have a great deal of pride as soldiers, and a very little of severity goes a great way, if it be firm and consistent. This is very encouraging.

The single question which I asked of some of the plantation-superintendents, on the voyage, was, "Do these people appreciate _justice_?" If they did, it was evident that all the rest would be easy. When a race is degraded beyond that point, it must be very hard to deal with them; they must mistake all kindness for indulgence, all strictness for cruelty. With these freed slaves there is no such trouble, not a particle: let an officer be only just and firm, with a cordial, kindly nature, and he has no sort of difficulty. The plantation-superintendents and teachers have the same experience, they say; but we have an immense advantage in the military organization, which helps in two ways: it increases their self-respect, and it gives us an admirable machinery for discipline, thus improving both the fulcrum and the lever.

The wounded man died in the hospital, and the general verdict seemed to be, "Him brought it on heself." Another soldier died of pneumonia on the same day, and we had the funerals in the evening. It was very impressive. A dense mist came up, with a moon behind it, and we had only the light of pine-splinters, as the procession wound along beneath the mighty moss-hung branches of the ancient grove. The groups around the grave, the dark faces, the red garments, the scattered lights, the misty boughs, were weird and strange. The men sang one of their own wild chants. Two crickets sang also, one on either side, and did not cease their little monotone, even when the three volleys were fired above the graves. Just before the coffins were lowered, an old man whispered to me that I must have their position altered,--the heads must be towards the west; so it was done,--though they are in a place so veiled in woods that either rising or setting sun will find it hard to spy them.

We have now a good regimental hospital, admirably arranged in a deserted gin-house,--a fine well of our own within the camp-lines,--a ful-allowance of tents, all floored,--a wooden cook-house to every company, with sometimes a palmetto mess-house beside,--a substantial wooden guard-house, with a fireplace five feet "in de clar," where the men off duty can dry themselves and sleep comfortably in bunks afterwards. We have also a great circular school-tent, made of condemned canvas, thirty feet in diameter, and looking like some of the Indian lodges I saw in Kansas. We now meditate a regimental bakery. Our aggregate has increased from four hundred and ninety to seven hundred and forty, besides a hundred recruits now waiting at St. Augustine, and we have practised through all the main movements in battalion drill.

Affairs being thus prosperous, and yesterday having been six weeks since my last and only visit to Beaufort, I rode in, glanced at several camps, and dined with the General. It seemed absolutely like reentering the world; and I did not fully estimate my past seclusion till it occurred to me, as a strange and novel phenomenon, that the soldiers at the other camps were white.

_January 8._--This morning I went to Beaufort again, on necessary business, and by good luck happened upon a review and drill of the white regiments. The thing that struck me most was that same absence of uniformity, in minor points, that I noticed at first in my own officers. The best regiments in the Department are represented among my captains and lieutenants, and very well represented, too; yet it has cost much labor to bring them to any uniformity in their drill. There is no need of this, for the prescribed "Tactics" approach perfection: it is never left discretionary in what place an officer shall stand, or in what words he shall give his order. All variation would seem to imply negligence. Yet even West Point occasionally varies from the "Tactics,"--as, for instance, in requiring the line officers to face down the line, when each is giving the order to his company. In our strictest Massachusetts regiments this is not done.

It needs an artist's eye to make a perfect drill-master. Yet the small points are not merely a matter of punctilio; for, the more perfectly a battalion is drilled on the parade-ground, the more quietly it can be handled in action. Moreover, the great need of uniformity is this: that, in the field, soldiers of different companies, and even of different regiments, are liable to be intermingled, and a diversity of orders may throw everything into confusion. Confusion means Bull Run.

I wished my men at the review to-day; for, amidst all the rattling and noise of artillery and the galloping of cavalry, there was only one infantry movement that we have not practised, and that was done by only one regiment, and apparently considered quite a novelty, though it is easily taught,--forming square by Casey's method: forward on centre.

It is really just as easy to drill a regiment as a company,--perhaps easier, because one has more time to think; but it is just as essential to be sharp and decisive, perfectly clear-headed, and to put life into the men. A regiment seems small when one has learned how to handle it, a mere handful of men; and I have no doubt that a brigade or a division would soon appear equally small. But to handle either _judiciously_,--ah, that is another affair!

So of governing: it is as easy to govern a regiment as a school or a factory, and needs like qualities,--system, promptness, patience, tact; moreover, in a regiment one has the aid of the admirable machinery of the army, so that I see very ordinary men who succeed very tolerably.

Reports of a six months' armistice are rife here, and the thought is deplored by all. I cannot believe it, yet sometimes one feels very anxious about the ultimate fate of these poor people. After the experience of Hungary, one sees that revolutions may go backward; and the habit of injustice seems so deeply impressed upon the whites, that it is hard to believe in the possibility of anything better. I dare not yet hope that the promise of the President's Proclamation will be kept. For myself I can be indifferent, for the experience here has been its own daily and hourly reward; and the adaptedness of the freed slaves for drill and discipline is now thoroughly demonstrated and must soon be universally acknowledged. But it would be terrible to see this regiment disbanded or defrauded.

_January 12._--Many things glide by without time to narrate them. On Saturday we had a mail with the President's Second Message of Emancipation, and the next day it was read to the men. The words themselves did not stir them very much, because they have been often told that they were free, especially on New-Year's Day, and, being unversed in politics, they do not understand, as well as we do, the importance of each additional guaranty. But the chaplain spoke to them afterwards very effectively, as usual; and then I proposed to them to hold up their hands and pledge themselves to be faithful to those still in bondage. They entered heartily into this, and the scene was quite impressive, beneath the great oak-branches. I heard afterwards that only one man refused to raise his hand, saying bluntly that his wife was out of slavery with him, and he did not care to fight. The other soldiers of his company were very indignant, and shoved him about among them while marching back to their quarters, calling him "Coward." I was glad of their exhibition of feeling, though it is very possible that the one who had thus the moral courage to stand alone among his comrades might be more reliable, on a pinch, than some who yielded a more ready assent. But the whole response, on their part, was very hearty, and will be a good thing to which to hold them hereafter, at any time of discouragement or demoralization,--which was my chief reason for proposing it. With their simple natures, it is a great thing to tie them to some definite committal; they never forget a marked occurrence, and never seem disposed to evade a pledge.

It is this capacity of honor and fidelity which gives me such entire faith in them as soldiers. Without it, all their religious demonstration would be mere sentimentality. For instance, every one who visits the camp is struck with their bearing as sentinels. They exhibit, in this capacity, not an upstart conceit, but a steady, conscientious devotion to duty. They would stop their idolized General Saxton, if he attempted to cross their beat contrary to orders: I have seen them. No feeble or incompetent race could do this. The officers tell many amusing instances of this fidelity, but I think mine the best.

It was very dark the other night,--an unusual thing here,--and the rain fell in torrents; so I put on my India-rubber suit, and went the rounds of the sentinels, incognito, to test them. I can only say that I shall never try such an experiment again, and have cautioned my officers against it. 'T is a wonder I escaped with life and limb,--such a charging of bayonets and clicking of gun-locks. Sometimes I tempted them by refusing to give any countersign, but offering them a piece of tobacco, which they could not accept without allowing me nearer than the prescribed bayonet's distance. Tobacco is more than gold to them, and it was touching to watch the struggle in their minds; but they always did their duty at last, and I never could persuade them. One man, as if wishing to crush all his inward vacillations at one fell stroke, told me stoutly that he never used tobacco, though I found next day that he loved it as much as any one of them. It seemed wrong thus to tamper with their fidelity; yet it was a vital matter to me to know how far it could be trusted, out of my sight. It was so intensely dark that not more than one or two knew me, even after I had talked with the very next sentinel, especially as they had never seen me in India-rubber clothing, and I can always disguise my voice. It was easy to distinguish those who did make the discovery; they were always conscious and simpering when their turn came; while the others were stout and irreverent till I revealed myself, and then rather cowed and anxious, fearing to have offended.

It rained harder and harder, and when I had nearly made the rounds, I had had enough of it, and, simply giving the countersign to the challenging sentinel, undertook to pass within the lines.

"Halt!" exclaimed this dusky man and brother, bringing down his bayonet,--"de countersign not correck."

Now the magic word, in this case, was "Vicksburg," in honor of a rumored victory. But as I knew that these hard names became quite transformed upon their lips, "Carthage" being familiarized into Cartridge, and "Concord" into Corn-cob, how could I possibly tell what shade of pronunciation my friend might prefer for this particular proper name?

"Vicksburg," I repeated, blandly, but authoritatively, endeavoring, as zealously as one of Christy's Minstrels, to assimilate my speech to any supposed predilection of the Ethiop vocal organs.

"Halt dar! Countersign not correck," was the only answer.

The bayonet still maintained a position which, in a military point of view, was impressive.

I tried persuasion, orthography, threats, tobacco, all in vain. I could not pass in. Of course my pride was up; for was I to defer to an untutored African on a point of pronunciation? Classic shades of Harvard, forbid! Affecting scornful indifference, I tried to edge away, proposing to myself to enter the camp at some other point, where my elocution would be better appreciated. Not a step could I stir.

"Halt!" shouted my gentleman again, still holding me at his bayonet's point, and I wincing and halting.

I explained to him the extreme absurdity of this proceeding, called his attention to the state of the weather, which, indeed, spoke for itself so loudly that we could hardly hear each other speak, and requested permission to withdraw. The bayonet, with mute eloquence, refused the application.

There flashed into my mind, with more enjoyment in the retrospect than I had experienced at the time, an adventure on a lecturing tour in other years, when I had spent an hour in trying to scramble into a country tavern, after bed-time, on the coldest night of winter. On that occasion I ultimately found myself stuck midway in the window, with my head in a temperature of 80 deg., and my heels in a temperature of -10 deg., with a heavy window-sash pinioning the small of my back. However, I had got safe out of that dilemma, and it was time to put an end to this one.

"Call the corporal of the guard," said I, at last, with dignity, unwilling either to make a night of it or to yield my incognito.

"Corporal ob de guard!" he shouted, lustily,--"Post Number Two!" while I could hear another sentinel chuckling with laughter. This last was a special guard, placed over a tent, with a prisoner in charge. Presently he broke silence.

"Who am dat?" he asked, in a stage whisper. "Am he a buckra [white man]?"

"Dunno whether he been a buckra or not," responded, doggedly, my Cerberus in uniform; "but I's bound to keep him here till de corporal ob de guard come."

Yet, when that dignitary arrived, and I revealed myself, poor Number Two appeared utterly transfixed with terror, and seemed to look for nothing less than immediate execution. Of course I praised his fidelity, and the next day complimented him before the guard, and mentioned him to his captain; and the whole affair was very good for them all. Hereafter, if Satan himself should approach them in darkness and storm, they will take him for "de Cunnel," and treat him with special severity.

_January 13._--In many ways the childish nature of this people shows itself. I have just had to make a change of officers in a company which has constantly complained, and with good reason, of neglect and improper treatment. Two excellent officers have been assigned to them; and yet they sent a deputation to me in the evening, in a state of utter wretchedness. "We's bery grieved dis evening, Cunnel; 'pears like we couldn't bear it, to lose de Cap'n and de Lieutenant, all two togeder." Argument was useless; and I could only fall back on the general theory, that I knew what was best for them, which had much more effect; and I also could cite the instance of another company, which had been much improved by a new captain, as they readily admitted. So with the promise that the new officers should not be "savage to we," which was the one thing they deprecated, I assuaged their woes. Twenty-four hours have passed, and I hear them singing most merrily all down that company-street.

I often notice how their griefs may be dispelled, like those of children, merely by permission to utter them: if they can tell their sorrows, they go away happy, even without asking to have anything done about them. I observe also a peculiar dislike of all _intermediate_ control: they always wish to pass by the company officer, and deal with me personally for everything. General Saxton notices the same thing with the people on the plantations as regards himself. I suppose this proceeds partly from the old habit of appealing to the master against the overseer. Kind words would cost the master nothing, and he could easily put off any non-fulfilment upon the overseer. Moreover, the negroes have acquired such constitutional distrust of white people, that it is perhaps as much as they can do to trust more than one person at a time. Meanwhile this constant personal intercourse is out of the question in a well-ordered regiment; and the remedy for it is to introduce by degrees more and more of system, so that their immediate officers will become all-sufficient for the daily routine.

It is perfectly true (as I find everybody takes for granted) that the first essential for an officer of colored troops is to gain their confidence. But it is equally true, though many persons do not appreciate it, that the admirable methods and proprieties of the regular army are equally available for all troops, and that the sublimest philanthropist, if he does not appreciate this, is unfit to command them.

Another childlike attribute in these men, which is less agreeable, is a sort of blunt insensibility to giving physical pain. If they are cruel to animals, for instance, it always reminds me of children pulling off flies' legs, in a sort of pitiless, untaught, experimental way. Yet I should not fear any wanton outrage from them. After all their wrongs, they are not really revengeful; and I would far rather enter a captured city with them than with white troops, for they would be more subordinate. But for mere physical suffering they would have no fine sympathies. The cruel things they have seen and undergone have helped to blunt them; and if I ordered them to put to death a dozen prisoners, I think they would do it without remonstrance.

Yet their religious spirit grows more beautiful to me in living longer with them: it is certainly far more so than at first, when it seemed rather a matter of phrase and habit. It influences them both on the negative and the positive side. That is, it cultivates the feminine virtues first,--makes them patient, meek, resigned. This is very evident in the hospital; there is nothing of the restless, defiant habit of white invalids. Perhaps, if they had more of this, they would resist disease better. Imbued from childhood with the habit of submission, drinking in through every pore that other-world trust which is the one spirit of their songs, they can endure everything. This I expected; but I am relieved to find that their religion strengthens them on the positive side also,--gives zeal, energy, daring. They could easily be made fanatics, if I chose; but I do not choose. Their whole mood is essentially Mohammedan, perhaps, in its strength and its weakness; and I feel the same degree of sympathy that I should, if I had a Turkish command,--that is, a sort of sympathetic admiration, not tending towards agreement, but towards cooperation. Their philosophizing is often the highest form of mysticism; and our dear surgeon declares that they are all natural transcendentalists. The white camps seem rough and secular, after this; and I hear our men talk about "a religious army," "a Gospel army," in their prayer-meetings. They are certainly evangelizing the chaplain, who was rather a heretic at the beginning; at least, this is his own admission. We have recruits on their way from St. Augustine, where the negroes are chiefly Roman Catholics; and it will be interesting to see how their type of character combines with that elder creed.

It is time for rest; and I have just looked out into the night, where the eternal stars shut down, in concave protection, over the yet glimmering camp, and Orion hangs above my tent-door, giving to me the sense of strength and assurance which these simple children obtain from their Moses and the Prophets. Yet external Nature does its share in their training; witness that most poetic of all their songs, which always reminds me of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge" in the "Scottish Border Minstrelsy":--

"I know moon-rise, I know star-rise; Lay dis body down. I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight, To lay dis body down. I'll walk in de graveyard, I'll walk through the graveyard, To lay dis body down. I'll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms; Lay dis body down. I go to de Judgment in de evening ob de day When I lay dis body down; And my soul and your soul will meet in de day When I lay dis body down."

_January 14._--In speaking of the military qualities of the blacks, I should add, that the only point where I am disappointed is one I have never seen raised by the most incredulous newspaper critics,--namely their physical condition. They often look magnificently to my gymnasium-trained eye; and I always like to observe them when bathing,--such splendid muscular development, set off by that smooth coating of adipose tissue which makes them, like the South-Sea Islanders, appear even more muscular than they are. Their skins are also of finer grain than those of whites, the surgeons say, and certainly are smoother and far more free from hair. Their weakness is pulmonary; pneumonia and pleurisy are their besetting ailments; they are easily made ill,--and easily cured, if promptly treated: childish organization again. Guard-duty injures them more than whites, apparently; and double-quick movements, in choking dust, set them coughing badly. But then it is to be remembered that this is their sickly season, from January to March, and that their healthy season will come in summer, when the whites break down. Still my conviction of the physical superiority of more highly civilized races is strengthened on the whole, not weakened, by observing them. As to availability for military drill and duty in other respects, the only question I ever hear debated among the officers is, whether they are equal or superior to whites. I have never heard it suggested that they were inferior, although I expected frequently to hear such complaints from hasty or unsuccessful officers.

Of one thing I am sure, that their best qualities will be wasted by merely keeping them for garrison duty. They seem peculiarly fitted for offensive operations, and especially for partisan warfare; they have so much dash and such abundant resources, combined with such an Indian-like knowledge of the country and its ways. These traits have been often illustrated in expeditions sent after deserters. For instance, I despatched one of my best lieutenants and my best sergeant with a squad of men to search a certain plantation, where there were two separate negro villages. They went by night, and the force was divided. The lieutenant took one set of huts, the sergeant the other. Before the lieutenant had reached his first house, every man in the village was in the woods, innocent and guilty alike. But the sergeant's mode of operation was thus described by a corporal from a white regiment who happened to be in one of the negro houses. He said that not a sound was heard until suddenly a red leg appeared in the open doorway, and a voice outside said, "Rally." Going to the door, he observed a similar pair of red legs before every hut, and not a person was allowed to go out, until the quarters had been thoroughly searched, and the three deserters found. This was managed by Sergeant Prince Rivers, our color-sergeant, who is provost-sergeant also, and has entire charge of the prisoners and of the daily policing of the camp. He is a man of distinguished appearance, and in old times was the crack coachman of Beaufort, in which capacity he once drove Beauregard from this plantation to Charleston, I believe. They tell me that he was once allowed to present a petition to the Governor of South Carolina in behalf of slaves, for the redress of certain grievances; and that a placard, offering two thousand dollars for his recapture, is still to be seen by the wayside between here and Charleston. He was a sergeant in the old "Hunter Regiment," and was taken by General Hunter to New York last spring, where the _chevrons_ on his arm brought a mob upon him in Broadway, whom he kept off till the police interfered. There is not a white officer in this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute authority over the men; they do not love him, but his mere presence has controlling power over them. He writes well enough to prepare for me a daily report of his duties in the camp: if his education reached a higher point, I see no reason why he should not command the Army of the Potomac. He is jet-black, or rather, I should say, _wine-black_; his complexion, like that of others of my darkest men, having a sort of rich, clear depth, without a trace of sootiness, and to my eye very handsome. His features are tolerably regular, and full of command, and his figure superior to that of any of our white officers,--being six feet high, perfectly proportioned, and of apparently inexhaustible strength and activity. His gait is like a panther's; I never saw such a tread. No anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability. He makes Toussaint perfectly intelligible; and if there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king.

_January 15._--This morning is like May. Yesterday I saw bluebirds and a butterfly; so this winter of a fortnight is over. I fancy a trifle less coughing in the camp. We hear of other stations in the Department where the mortality, chiefly from yellow fever, has been frightful. Dr. ---- is rubbing his hands professionally over the fearful tales of the surgeon of a New York regiment, just from Key West, who has had two hundred cases of the fever. "I suppose he is a skilful, highly educated man," said I; "Yes," he responded with enthusiasm. "Why, he had seventy deaths!"--as if that proved his superiority past question.

_January 19._

"And first, sitting proud as a king on his throne, At the head of them all rode Sir Richard Tyrone."

But I fancy that Sir Richard felt not much better satisfied with his following than I to-day. J. R. L. said once that nothing was quite so good as turtle-soup, except mock-turtle; and I have heard officers declare that nothing was so stirring as real war, except some exciting parade. To-day, for the first time, I marched the whole regiment through Beaufort and back,--the first appearance of such a novelty on any stage. They did march splendidly: this all admit. M----'s prediction was fulfilled:

"Will not ---- be in bliss? A thousand men, every one black as a coal!" I confess it. To look back on twenty broad double-ranks of men, (for they marched by platoons,)--every polished musket having a black face beside it, and every face set steadily to the front,--a regiment of freed slaves marching on into the future,--it was something to remember; and when they returned through the same streets, marching by the flank, with guns at a "support," and each man covering his file-leader handsomely, the effect on the eye was almost as fine. The band of the Eighth Maine joined us at the entrance of the town, and escorted us in. Sergeant Rivers said ecstatically afterwards, in describing the affair,--"And when dat band wheel in before us, and march on,--my God! I quit dis world altogeder." I wonder if he pictured to himself the many dusky regiments, now unformed, which I seemed to see marching up behind us, gathering shape out of the dim air.

I had cautioned the men, before leaving camp, not to be staring about them as they marched, but to look straight to the front, every man; and they did it with their accustomed fidelity, aided by the sort of spontaneous eye-for-effect which is in all their melodramatic natures. One of them was heard to say exultingly afterwards,--"We didn't look to de right nor to de leff. I didn't see notin' in Beaufort. Eb'ry step was worth a half-a-dollar." And they all marched as if it were so. They knew well that they were marching through throngs of officers and soldiers who had drilled as many months as we had drilled weeks, and whose eyes would readily spy out every defect. And I must say, that, on the whole, with a few trivial exceptions, those spectators behaved in a manly and courteous manner, and I do not care to write down all the handsome things that were said. Whether said or not, they were deserved; and there is no danger that our men will not take sufficient satisfaction in their good appearance. I was especially amused at one of our recruits, who did not march in the ranks, and who said, after watching the astonishment of some white soldiers,--"De buckra sojers look like a man who been-a-steal a sheep,"--that is, I suppose, sheepish.

After passing and repassing through the town, we marched to the parade-ground and went through an hour's drill, forming squares and reducing them, and doing other things which look hard on paper and are perfectly easy in fact; and we were to have been reviewed by General Saxton, but he had been unexpectedly called to Ladies Island, and did not see us at all, which was the only thing to mar the men's enjoyment. Then we marched back to camp, (three miles,) the men singing the "John Brown Song," and all manner of things,--as happy creatures as one can well conceive.

It is worth mentioning, before I close, that we have just received an article about "Negro Troops," from the London "Spectator," which is so admirably true to our experience that it seems as if written by one of us. I am confident that there never has been, in any American newspaper, a treatment of the subject so discriminating and so wise.

_January 21._--To-day brought a visit from Major-General Hunter and his staff, by General Saxton's invitation,--the former having just arrived in the Department. I expected them at dress parade, but they came during battalion drill, rather to my dismay, and we were caught in our old clothes. It was our first review, and I dare say we did tolerably; but of course it seemed to me that the men never appeared so ill before,--just as one always thinks a party at one's own house a failure, even if the guests seem to enjoy it, because one is so keenly sensitive to every little thing that goes wrong. After review and drill, General Hunter made the men a little speech, at my request, and told them that he wished there were fifty thousand of them. General Saxton spoke to them afterwards, and said that fifty thousand muskets were on their way for colored troops. The men cheered both the Generals lustily; and they were complimentary afterwards, though I knew that the regiment could not have appeared nearly so well as on its visit to Beaufort. I suppose I felt like some anxious mamma whose children have accidentally appeared at dancing-school in their old clothes.

General Hunter promises us all we want,--pay when the funds arrive, Springfield rifled muskets, and blue trousers. Moreover, he has graciously consented that we should go on an expedition along the coast, to pick up cotton, lumber, and, above all, recruits. I declined an offer like this just after my arrival, because the regiment was not drilled or disciplined, not even the officers; but it is all we wish for now.

"What care I how black I be? Forty pounds will marry me,"

quoth Mother Goose. Forty _rounds_ will marry us to the American Army, past divorcing, if we can only use them well. Our success or failure may make or mar the prospects of colored troops. But it is well to remember in advance that military success is really less satisfactory than any other, because it may depend on a moment's turn of events, and that may be determined by some trivial thing, neither to be anticipated nor controlled. Napoleon ought to have won at Waterloo by all reasonable calculations; but who cares? All that one can expect is, to do one's best, and to take with equanimity the fortune of war.[D]

FOOTNOTES:

[D] In coming to the record of more active service, the Journal form must be abandoned. The next chapter will give some account of an expedition up the St. Mary's River.

THE AMERICAN METROPOLIS.

A little more than two centuries ago the site of New York City was bought by its first white owners for twenty-four dollars. The following tabular statement exhibits the steps of its progressive settlement since then.

Year. Population. Year. Population. 1656 1,000 1820 123,706 1673 2,500 1825 166,089 1696 4,302 1830 202,589 1731 8,628 1835 270,068 1756 10,381 1840 312,852 1773 21,876 1845 371,223 1786 23,614 1850 515,394 1790 33,131 1855 629,810 1800 60,489 1860 814,254 1810 96,373 1864 1,000,000+

Taking the first census as a point of departure, the population of New York doubled itself in about eleven years. During the first century it increased a little more than tenfold. It was doubled again in less than twenty years; the next thirty years quadrupled it; and another period of twenty years doubled it once more. Its next duplication consumed the shorter term of eighteen years. It more than doubled again during the fifteen years preceding the last census; and the four years since that census have witnessed an increase of nearly twenty-three per cent. This final estimate is of course liable to correction by next year's census, but its error will be found on the side of under-statement, rather than of exaggeration.

The property on the north-west corner of Broadway and Chamber Street, now occupied in part by one of Delmonico's restaurants, was purchased by a New York citizen, but lately deceased, for the sum of $1,000: its present value is $125,000. A single Broadway lot, surveyed out of an estate which cost the late John Jay $500 per acre, was recently sold at auction for $80,000, and the purchaser has refused a rent of $16,000 per annum, or twenty per cent on his purchase-money, for the store which he has erected on the property. In 1826, the estimated total value of real estate in the city of New York was $64,804,050. In 1863, it had reached a total of $402,196,652, thus increasing more than sixfold within the lifetime of an ordinary business-generation. In 1826, the personal estate of New York City, so far as could be arrived at for official purposes, amounted to $42,434,981. In 1863, the estimate of this class of property-values was $192,000,161. It had thus more than quadrupled in a generation.

But statistics are most eloquent through illustration. Let us look discursively about the city of New York at various periods of her career since the opening of the present century. I shall assume that a map of the city is everywhere attainable, and that the reader has a general acquaintance with the physical and political geography of the United States.

Not far from the beginning of the century, Wall Street, as its name implies, was the northern boundary of the city of New York. The present north boundary of civilized settlement is almost identical with the statutory limit of the city, or that of the island itself. There is no perceptible break, though there are gradations of compactness, in the settled district between the foot of the island and Central Park. Beyond the Park, Haarlem Lane, Manhattanville, and Carmansville take up the thread of civic population, and carry it, among metropolitan houses and lamp-posts, quite to the butment of High Bridge. It has been seriously proposed to legislate for the annexation of a portion of Westchester to the bills of mortality, and this measure cannot fail to be demanded by the next generation; but for the present we will consider High Bridge as the north end of the city. Let us compare the boundary remembered by our veterans with that to which metropolitan settlement has been pushed by them and their children. In the lifetime of our oldest business-men, the advance wave of civic refinement, convenience, luxury, and population has travelled a distance greater than that from the Westminster Palaces to the hulks at the Isle of Dogs. When we consider that the population of the American Metropolis lives better, on the average, than that of any earthly capital, and that ninety-nine hundredths of all our suffering poor are the overflow of Great Britain's pauperism running into our grand channels a little faster than we can direct its current to the best advantage,--under these circumstances the advance made by New York in less than a century toward the position of the world's metropolis is a more important one than has been gained by London between the time of Julius Caesar and the present century.

I know an excellent business-man who was born in his father's aristocratic residence in Beaver Street. Holborn is as aristocratic now. Another friend of mine still living, the freshest of sexagenarians, told me lately of a walk he took in boyhood which so much fatigued him, that, when he was a long way out in the fields, he sat down to rest on the steps of a suburban hospital. I guessed Bellevue; but he replied that it was the New York Hospital, standing in what we now call the lower part of Broadway, just opposite North Pearl Street. No part of the Strand or of the Boulevards is less rural than the vast settled district about the New York Hospital at this day. It stands at least four times farther within than it then did beyond the circumference of New York civilization. I remember another illustration of its relative situation early in the century,--a story of good old Doctor Stone, who excused himself from his position of manager by saying, that, as the infirmities of age grew on him, he found the New York Hospital so far out in the country that he should be obliged, if he stayed, to keep "a horse and _cheer_."

Many New-Yorkers, recognized among our young and active men, can recollect when Houston Street was called North Street because it was practically the northern boundary of the settled district. Middle-aged men remember the swamp of Lispenard's Meadow, which is now the dryest part of Canal Street; some recall how they crossed other parts of the swamp on boards, and how tide-water practically made a separate island of what is now the northern and much the larger portion of the city. Young men recollect making Saturday-afternoon appointments with their schoolfellows (there was no time on any other day) to go "clear out into the country," bathe in the rural cove at the foot of East Thirteenth Street, and, refreshed by their baths, proceed to bird's-nesting on the wilderness of the Stuyvesant Farm, where is now situate Stuyvesant Park, one of the loveliest and most elegant pleasure-grounds open to the New York public, surrounded by one of the best-settled portions of the city, in every sense of the word. Still younger men remember Fourteenth Street as the utmost northern limit of the wave of civilization; and comparative boys have seen Franconi's Hippodrome pitched in a vacant lot of the suburbs, where now the Fifth Avenue Hotel stands, at the entrance to a double mile of palaces, in the northern, southern, and western directions.

We may safely affirm, that, since the organization of the science of statistics, no city in the world has ever multiplied its population, wealth, and internal resources of livelihood with a rapidity approaching that shown by New York. London has of late years made great progress quantitively, but her means of accommodating a healthy and happy population have kept no adequate pace with the increase of numbers. During the year 1862, 75,000 immigrants landed at the port of New York; in 1863, 150,000 more; and thus far in 1864 (we write in November) 200,000 have debarked here. Of these 425,000 immigrants, 40 per cent have stayed in the city. Of the 170,000 thus staying, 90 per cent, or 153,000, are British subjects; and of these, it is not understating to say that five eighths are dependent for their livelihood on physical labor of the most elementary kind. By comparing these estimates with the tax-list, it will appear that we have pushed our own inherent vitality to an extent of forty millions increase in our taxable property, and contributed to the support of the most gigantic war in human annals, during the period that we received into our grand civic digestion a city of British subjects as large as Bristol, and incorporated them into our own body politic with more comfort both to mass and particles than either had enjoyed at home.

There are still some people who regard the settlement of countries and the selection of great capitals as a matter of pure romantic accident. Philosophers know, that, if, at the opening of the Adamic period, any man had existed with a perfect knowledge of the world's physical geography and the laws of national development, he would have been able to foretell _a priori_ the situations of all the greatest capitals. It is a law as fixed as that defining the course of matter in the line of least resistance, that population flows to the level where the best livelihood is most easily obtained. The brute motives of food and raiment must govern in their selection of residence nine tenths of the human race. A few noble enthusiasts, like those of Plymouth Colony, may leave immortal footprints on a rugged coast, exchanging old civilization for a new battle with savagery, and abandoning comfort with conformity for a good conscience with privation. Still, had there been back of Plymouth none of the timber, the quarries, the running streams, the natural avenues of inland communication, and to some extent the agricultural capabilities which make good subsistence possible, there would have been no Boston, no Lynn, no Lowell, no New Bedford, no healthy or wealthy civilization of any kind, until the Pilgrim civilization had changed its base. It may be generally laid down that the men who leave home for truth's sake exile themselves as much for the privilege to mere opportunity of living truly.

New York was not even in the first place settled by enthusiasts. Trade with the savages, nice little farms at Haarlem, a seat among the burgomasters, the feast of St. Nicholas, pipes and Schiedam, a vessel now and then in the year bringing over letters of affection ripened by a six months' voyage, some little ventures, and two or three new colonists,--these were the joys which allured the earliest New-Yorkers to the island now swarming from end to end with almost national vitalities. Not until 1836, when the Italian Opera was first domiciled in New York, on the corner of Leonard and Church Streets, could the second era of metropolitan life be said fully to have set in there,--the era when people flow toward a city for the culture as well as the livelihood which it offers them. About the same time American studios began to be thronged with American picture-buyers; and there is no need of referring to the rapid advance of American literature, and the wide popularization of luxuries, dating from that period.

Long prior to that, New York was growing with giant vitality. She possesses, as every great city must possess preeminent advantages for the support of a vast population and the employment of immense industries. If she could not feed a million of men better than Norfolk, Norfolk would be New York and New York Norfolk. If the products of the world were not more economically exchanged across her counter than over that of Baltimore, Baltimore would need to set about building shelter for half a million more heads than sleep there to-night. Perth Amboy was at one time a prominent rival of New York in the struggle for the position of the American Metropolis, and is not New York only because Nature said No!

Let us invite the map to help us in our investigation of New York's claim to the metropolitan rank. There are three chief requisites for the chief city of every nation. It must be the city in easiest communication with other countries,--on the sea-coast, if there be a good harbor there, or on some stream debouching into the best harbor that there is. It must be the city in easiest communication with the interior, either by navigable streams, or valleys and mountain-passes, and thus the most convenient rendezvous for the largest number of national interests,--the place where Capital and Brains, Import and Export, Buyer and Seller, Doers and Things to be Done, shall most naturally make their appointments to meet for exchange. Last, (and least, too,--for even cautious England will people jungles for money's sake,) the metropolis must enjoy at least a moderate sanitary reputation; otherwise men who love Fortune well enough to die for her will not be reinforced by another large class who care to die on no account whatever.

New York answers all these requisites better than any metropolis in the world. She has a harbor capable of accommodating all the fleets of Christendom, both commercial and belligerent. That harbor has a western ramification, extending from the Battery to the mouth of Spuyten Duyvil Creek,--a distance of fifteen miles; an eastern ramification, reaching from the Battery to the mouth of Haarlem River,--seven miles; and a main trunk, interrupted by three small islands, extending from the Battery to the Narrows,--a distance of about eight miles more. It is rather under-estimating the capacity of the East River branch to average its available width as low as eighty rods; a mile and a half will be a proportionately moderate estimate for the Hudson River branch; the greatest available width of the Upper Bay is about four miles, in a line from the Long Island to the Staten Island side. If we add to these combined areas the closely adjacent waters in hourly communication with New York by her tugs and lighters, her harbor will further include a portion of the channel running west of Staten Island, and of the rivers emptying into Newark Bay, with the whole magnificent and sheltered roadstead of the Lower Bay, the mouth of Shrewsbury Inlet, and a portion of Raritan Bay.

As this paper must deal to a sufficient extent with statistics in matters of practical necessity, we will at this stage leave the reader to complete for himself the calculation of such a harbor's capacity. In this respect, in that of shelter, of contour of water-front, of accessibility from the high seas, New York Harbor has no rival on the continent. The Bay of San Francisco more nearly equals it than any other; but that is on the Pacific side, for the present much farther from the axis of national civilization, and backed by a much narrower agricultural tract. We will not refer to disadvantages of commercial exchange, since San Francisco may at any time be relieved of these by a Pacific Railroad. On our Atlantic side there is certainly no harbor which will compare for area and convenience with that of New York.

It is not only the best harbor on our coast, but that in easiest communication with other parts of the country. To the other portions of the coast it is as nearly central as it could be without losing fatally in other respects. Delaware and Chesapeake Bays afford fine roadsteads; but the low sand barrens and wet alluvial flats which form their shores compelled Philadelphia and Baltimore to retire their population such a distance up the chief communicating rivers as to deprive them of many important advantages proper to a seaport. Under the influence of free ideas may be expected a wonderful development of the advantages of Chesapeake Bay. Good husbandry and unshackled enterprise throughout Maryland and Virginia will astonish Baltimore by an increase of her population and commerce beyond the brightest speculative dreams. The full resources of Delaware Bay are far from being developed. Yet Philadelphia and Baltimore are forever precluded from competing with New York, both by their greater distance from open water and the comparative inferiority of the interior tracts with which they have ready communication. Below Chesapeake Bay the coast system of great river-estuaries gives way to the Sea-Island system, in which the main-land is flanked by a series of bars or sandbanks, separated from it by tortuous and difficult lagoons. The rivers which empty into this network of channels are comparatively difficult of entrance, and but imperfectly navigable. The isolation of the Sea Islands is enough to make them still more inconvenient situations than any on the main-land for the foundation of a metropolis. Before we have gone far down this system, we have passed the centre where, on mathematical principles, a metropolis should stand.

Considered with regard to the tributary interior, New York occupies a position no less central than with respect to the coast. It is impossible to study a map of our country without momently increasing surprise at the multiplicity of natural avenues which converge in New York from the richest producing districts of the world. The entire result of the country's labor seems to seek New York by inevitable channels. Products run down to the managing, disbursing, and balancing hand of New York as naturally as the thoughts of a man run down to the hand which must embody them. From the north it takes tribute through the Hudson River. This magnificent water-course, permitting the ascent of the largest ships for a hundred miles, and of river-craft for fifty miles farther, has upon its eastern side a country averaging about thirty miles in width to the Taconic range, consisting chiefly of the richest grazing, grain, and orchard land in the Atlantic States. Above the Highlands, the west side of the river becomes a fertile, though narrower and more broken agricultural tract; and at the head of navigation, the Hudson opens into another valley of exhaustless fertility,--that of the Mohawk,--coming eastward from the centre of the State.

Thus, independent of her system of railroads, New York City possesses uninterrupted natural connection with the interior of the State, whence a new system of communications is given off by the Lakes to the extreme west and north of our whole territory.

To the northeast, New York extends her relations by the sheltered avenue of Long Island Sound,--alluring through a strait of comparatively smooth water not only the agricultural products which seek export along a double water-front of two hundred miles, but the larger results of that colossal manufacturing system on which is based the prosperity of New England. To a great part of this class of values Long Island Sound stands like a weir emptying into the net of New York.

The maritime position of New York makes her as easy an entrepot for Southern as for foreign products; and in any case her share in our Northern national commerce gives her the control of all trade which must pay the North a balance of exchange.

The Hudson, the Sound, and the line of Southern coasting traffic are the three main radii of supply which meet in New York. Another important district paying its chief subsidy to New York is drained by the Delaware River, and this great avenue is reached with ease from the metropolis by a direct natural route across the Jersey level. Though unavailable to New York as a navigable conduit, it still offers a means of penetrating to the southern counties of the State, and a passage to the Far West, of which New York capital has been prompt to avail itself by the Erie Railroad, with its Atlantic and Great Western continuation to St. Louis. This uniform broad-gauge of twelve hundred miles, which has just been opened by the energy and talents of Messrs. McHenry and Kennard, apparently decides the main channel by which the West is to discharge her riches into New York.--But we are trenching on the subject the capital's artificial advantages.

Finally, New York has been prevented only by disgraceful civic mismanagement from becoming long ago the healthiest city in the world. In spite of jobbed contracts for street-cleaning, and various corrupt tamperings with the city water-front, by which the currents are obstructed, and injury is done the sewage as well as the channels of the harbor, New York is now undoubtedly a healthier city than any other approaching it in size. Its natural sanitary advantages must be evident. The crying need of a great city is good drainage. To effect this for New York, the civil engineer has no struggle with his material. He need only avail himself dexterously of the original contour of his ground. Manhattan Island is a low outcrop of gneiss and mica-schist, sloping from an irregular, but practically continuous crest, to the Hudson and East Rivers, with a nearly uniform southerly incline from its precipitous north face on the Haarlem and Spuyten Duyvil to high-water mark at the foot of Whitehall Street. Its natural system of drainage might be roughly illustrated by radii drawn to the circumference of a very eccentric ellipse from its northern focus. Wherever the waste of the entire island may descend, it is met by a seaward tide twice in the twenty-four hours. On the East River side the velocity of this tide in the narrow passages is rather that of a mill-stream than of the entrance to a sound. Though less apparent, owing to its area, the tide and current of the Hudson are practically as irresistible. The two branches of the city-sewage, uniting at the Battery, are deflected a little to the westward by Governor's Island, and thus thrown out into the middle of the bay, where they receive the full force of the tidal impulse, retarded by the Narrows only long enough to disengage and drop their finer silt on the flats between Robin's Reef and the Jersey shore. The depurating process of the New World's grandest community lies ready for use in this natural drainage-system. If there be a standing pool, a festering ditch, a choked gutter, a malarious sink within the scope of the city bills of mortality, there is official crime somewhere. Nature must have been fraudulently obstructed in the benignest arrangements she ever made for removing the effete material of a vast city's vital processes. In the matter of climate, New York experiences such comparative freedom from sudden changes as belongs to her position in the midst of large masses of water. She enjoys nearly entire immunity from fogs and damp or chilly winds. Her weather is decided, and her population are liable to no one local and predominant class of disease. So far as her hygienic condition depends upon quantity and quality of food, her communications with the interior give her an exceptional guaranty. Despite the poverty which her lower classes share in kind, though to a much less degree, with those of other commercial capitals, there is no metropolis in the world where the general average of comfort and luxury stands higher through all the social grades. It is further to be recollected that health and the chief comforts of life are correlative,--that the squalid family is the unhealthy family, and that, as we import our squalor, so also we import the materials and conditions of our disease. This _a priori_ view is amply sustained by the statistics of our charitable institutions. Dr. Alanson S. Jones, whose position as President of the Board of Surgeons attached to the Metropolitan Police Commission combines with his minute culture in the sciences ministering to his profession to make him a first-class authority upon the sanitary statistics of New York, states that the large majority of deaths, and cases of disease, occur in that city among the recent foreign immigrants,--and that the same source furnishes the vast proportion of inmates of our hospitals, almshouses, asylums, and other institutions of charity; furthermore, that two thirds of all the deaths in New York City occur among children,--a class to which metropolitan conditions are decidedly unfavorable; and that, while the seven hundred thousand inhabitants of Philadelphia are distributed over an area of one hundred and thirty square miles, the one million inhabitants of New York are included within the limit of thirty-five square miles, yet the excess of proportionate mortality in the latter city by no means corresponds to its density of settlement. It is safe to affirm, that, taking all the elements into calculation, there is no city in the civilized world with an equal population and an equal sanitary rank.

Hydrographically speaking, either Liverpool or Bristol surpasses London in its claims to be the British metropolis. But as England's chief commerce flows from the eastward, to accommodate it she must select for her metropolis the shores of the most accessible, capacious, and sheltered water on that side of the island. The result is London,--a city backed by an almost imperceptible fraction of the vast interior which pays tribute to New York,--having a harbor of far less capacity than New York, and without any of its far-reaching ramifications,--provided with a totally inadequate drainage-system, operating by a river which New-Yorkers would shudder to accept for the purposes of a single ward,--and supporting a population of three million souls upon her brokerage in managing the world's commerce. New York has every physical advantage over her in site, together with an agricultural constituency of which she can never dream, and every opportunity for eventually surpassing her as a depot of domestic manufactures. London can never add arable acres to her suite, while only the destruction of the American people can prevent us from building ten up-country mills to every one which manufactures for her market. She has merely the start of us in time; she has advanced rapidly during the last fifty years, but New York has even more rapidly diminished the gap. No wonder that British capitalists will sacrifice much to see us perish,--for it is pleasanter to receive than to pay balance of exchange, even in the persons of one's prospective great-grandchildren.

Turning to the second great power of the Old World, we may assert that there is not a harbor on the entire French coast of capacity or convenience proportionate to the demands of a national emporium. Though the site of Paris was chosen by a nation in no sense commercial, and the constitutional prejudices of the people are of that semi-barbarous kind which affect at the same time pleasure and a contempt of the enterprises which pay for it, there has been a decided anxiety among the foremost Frenchmen since the time of Colbert to see France occupying an influential position among the national fortune-hunters of the world. Napoleon III. shares this solicitude to an extent which his uncle's hatred of England would never permit him to confess, though he felt it deeply. The millions which the present Emperor has spent on Cherbourg afford a mere titillation to his ambitious spirit. Their result is a handsome parade-place,--a pretty stone toy,--an unpickable lock to an inclosure nobody wants to enter,--a navy-yard for the creation of an armament which has no commerce to protect. No wonder that the discontented despot seeks to eke out the quality of his ports by their plenteous quantity,--seizing Algiers,--looking wistfully at the Red Sea,--overjoyed at any bargain which would get him Nice,--striking madly out for empire in Cochin China, Siam, and the Pacific islands,--playing Shylock to Mexico on Jecker's forged bond, that his own inconvenient vessels might have an American port to trim their yards in. Meanwhile, to forget the utter unfitness of Paris for the capital of any imaginary Commercial France, he plays ship with Eugenie on the gentle Seine, or amuses himself with the marine romance of the Parisian civic escutcheon.

No one will think for an instant of comparing Paris with New York in respect to natural advantages. The capitals of the other Continental nations are still less susceptible of being brought into the competition. The vast cities of China are possible only in the lowest condition of individual liberty,--class servitude, sumptuary and travel restrictions, together with all the other complicated enginery of an artificial barbarism, being the only substitute for natural cohesion in a community whose immense mass can procure nothing but the rudest necessaries of life from the area within which it is confined.

_A priori_, therefore, we might expect that the metropolis of America would arise on New York Island, and in process of time become one of the greatest capitals of the world.

The natural advantages which allured New York's first population have been steadily developed and reinforced by artificial ones. For the ships of the world she has built about her water-front more than three hundred piers and bulkheads. Allowing berth-room for four ships in each bulkhead, and for one at the end of each pier, (decidedly an under-estimate, considering the extent of some of these structures,)--the island water-front already offers accommodation for the simultaneous landing of eight hundred first-class foreign cargoes. The docks of Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Hoboken may accommodate at least as many more. Something like a quarter of all New York imports go in the first instance to the bonded warehouse; and this part, not being wanted for immediate consumption within the metropolis proper, quite as conveniently occupies the Long Island or Jersey warehouses as those on the New York shore. The warehouses properly belonging to New York commerce--containing her property and living on her business--received during 1861 imports to the value of $41,811,664; during 1862, $46,939,451; and during 1863, $61,350,432. During the year 1861, the total imports of New York amounted to $161,684,499,--paying an aggregate of duties of $21,714,981. During the year 1862, the imports amounted to $172,486,453, and the duties to $52,254,318. During 1863, the imports reached a value of $184,016,350, the duties on which amounted to $58,885,853. For the same years the exports amounted respectively to $142,903,689, $216,416,070, and $219,256,203,--the rapid increase between 1861 and 1862 being no doubt partly stimulated by the disappearance of specie from circulation under the pressure of our unparalleled war-expenses, and the consequent necessity of substituting in foreign markets our home products for the ordinary basis of exchange. In 1861, 965 vessels entered New York from foreign ports, and 966 cleared for foreign ports. In 1862, the former class numbered 5,406, and the latter 5,014. In 1863, they were respectively 4,983 and 4,466. These statistics, from which the immense wharfage and warehouse accommodation of New York may be inferred, are exhibited to better advantage in the following tabular statement, kindly furnished by Mr. Ogden, First Auditor of the New York Custom-House.

_Statistics of the Port of New York._

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | 1861. | 1862. | 1863. | |--+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------| | | | $ | $ | $ | |1 |Total value of Exports |142,903,689 |216,416,070 |219,256,203 | |2 |Total value of Imports |161,684,499 |172,486,453 |184,016,350 | |3 |Value of Goods | | | | | | warehoused during | | | | | | the entire year | 41,811,664 | 46,939,451 | 61,350,432 | |4 |Amount of Drawback | | | | | | allowed during the | | | | | | entire year | 57,326.55| 275,953.92| 414,041.44| |5 |Total amount of Duties | | | | | | paid during year | 21,714,981.10| 52,254,317.92| 58,885,853.42| |6 |No. of Vessels entered | | | | | | from Foreign Ports | | | | | | during year | 965 | 5,406 | 4,983 | |7 |No. of Vessels cleared | | | | | | to foreign Ports | | | | | | during year | 966 | 5,014 | 4,666 | |--+-----------------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+

Besides the various berths or anchorages and the warehouses of New York, commerce is still further waited on in our metropolis by one of the most perfect systems of pilot-boat, steam-tug, and lighter service which have ever been devised for a harbor. No vessel can bring so poor a foreign cargo to New York as not to justify the expense of a pilot to keep its insurance valid, a tug to carry it to its moorings, and a lighter to discharge it, if the harbor be crowded or time press. Indeed, the first two items are matters of course; and not one of them costs enough to be called a luxury.

The American river-steamboat--the palatial American _steamboat_, as distinguished from the dingy, clumsy English _steamer_--is another of the means by which Art has supplemented New York's gifts of Nature. This magnificent triumph of sculpturesque beauty, wedded to the highest grade of mechanical skill, must be from two hundred and fifty to four hundred feet long,--must accommodate from five hundred to two thousand passengers,--must run its mile in three minutes,--must be as _rococo_ in its upholsterings as a bedchamber of Versailles,--must gratify every sense, consult every taste, and meet every convenience. Such a boat as this runs daily to every principal city on the Sound or the Hudson, to Albany, to Boston, to Philadelphia. A more venturous class of coasting steamers in peaceful times are constantly leaving for Baltimore, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Key West, Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston. The immense commerce of the Erie Canal, with all its sources and tributaries, is practically transacted by New York City. Nearly everything intended for export, plus New York's purchases for her own consumption, is forwarded from the Erie Canal terminus in a series of _tows_, each of these being a rope-bound fleet, averaging perhaps fifty canal-boats and barges, propelled by a powerful steamer intercalated near the centre. The traveller new to Hudson River scenery will be startled, any summer day on which he may choose to take a steamboat trip to Albany, by the apparition, at distances varying from one to three miles all the way, of floating islands, settled by a large commercial population, who like their dinner off the top of a hogshead, and follow the laundry business to such an extent that they quite effloresce with wet shirts, and are seen through a lattice of clothes-lines. Let him know that these floating islands are but little drops of vital blood from the great heart of the West, coming down the nation's main artery to nurse some small tissue of the metropolis; that these are "Hudson River tows"; and that, novel as that phenomenon may appear to him, every other fresh traveller has been equally startled by it since March, and will be startled by it till December. Another ministry to New York is performed by the _night-tows_, consisting of a few cattle, produce, and passenger barges attached to a steamer, made up semi-weekly or tri-weekly at every town of any importance on the Hudson and the Sound. We will not include the large fleet of Sound and River sloops, brigs, and schooners in the list of New York's artificial advantages.

Turning to New York's land communication with the interior, we find the following railroads radiating from the metropolitan centre.

1. A Railroad to Philadelphia. 2. A Railroad to the Pennsylvania Coal Region. 3. A Railroad to Piermont on the Hudson. 4. A Railroad to Bloomfield in New Jersey. 5. A Railroad to Morristown in New Jersey. 6. A Railroad to Hackensack in New Jersey. 7. A Railroad to Buffalo. 8. A Railroad to Albany, running along the Hudson. 9. Another Railroad to Albany, by an interior route. 10. A Railroad to New Haven. 11. A Railroad to the chief eastern port of Long Island. 12. The Delaware and Raritan Road to Philadelphia, connecting with New York by daily transports from pier. 13. The Camden and Amboy Railroad, connecting similarly. 14. The Railroad to Elizabeth, New Jersey.

The chief eastern radius throws out ramifications to the principal cities of New England, thus affording liberal choice of routes to Boston, New Bedford, Providence, and Portland, as well as an entrance to New Hampshire and Vermont. To all of these towns, except the more southerly, the Hudson River Road leads as well, connecting besides with railroads in every direction to the northern and western parts of the State, and with the Far West by a number of routes. The main avenue to the Far West is, however, the Atlantic and Great Western Road, with its twelve hundred miles of uniform broad-gauge. Along this line the whole riches of the interior may reasonably be expected to flow eastward as in a trough; for its position is axial, and its connection perfect. All the chief New Jersey railroads open avenues to the richest mineral region of the Atlantic States,--to the Far South and the Far West of the country. Two or three may be styled commuters' roads, running chiefly for the accommodation of city business-men with suburban residences. The Long Island Road is a road without important branches; but the majority of all the roads subsidiary to New York are avenues to some broad and typical tract of the interior.

Let us turn to consider how New York has provided for the people as well as the goods that enter her precincts by all the ways we have rehearsed. She draws them up Broadway in twenty thousand horse-vehicles per day, on an average, and from that magnificent avenue, crowded for nearly five miles with elegant commercial structures, over two hundred miles more of paved street, in all directions. She lights them at night with eight hundred miles of gas-pipe; she washes them and slakes their thirst from two hundred and ninety-one miles of Croton main; she has constructed for their drainage one hundred and seventy-six miles of sewer. She victimizes them with nearly two thousand licensed hackmen; she licenses twenty-two hundred car- and omnibus-drivers to carry them over twenty-nine different stage-routes and ten horse-railroads, in six hundred and seventy-one omnibuses and nearly as many cars, connecting intimately with every part of the city, and averaging ten up-and-down trips per day. She connects them with the adjoining cities of the main-land and with Staten and Long Island by twenty ferries, running, on the average, one boat each way every ten minutes during the twenty-four hours. She offers for her guests' luxurious accommodation at least a score of hotels, where good living is made as much the subject of high art as in the Hotel du Louvre, besides minor houses of rest and entertainment, to the number of more than five thousand. She attends to their religion in about four hundred places of public worship. She gives them breathing-room in a dozen civic parks, the largest of which both Nature and Art destine to be the noblest popular pleasure-ground of the civilized world, as it is the amplest of all save the Bois de Boulogne. Central Park covers an area of 843 acres, and, though only in the fifth year of its existence, already contains twelve miles of beautifully planned and scientifically constructed carriage-road, seven miles of similar bridle-path, four sub-ways for the passage of trade-vehicles across the Park, with an aggregate length of two miles, and twenty-one miles of walk. As an item of city property, Central Park is at present valued at six million dollars; but this, of course, is quite a nominal and unstable valuation. The worth of the Park to New York property in general is altogether beyond calculation.

New York feeds her people with about two million slaughter-animals per annum. How these are classified, and what periodical changes their supply undergoes, may be conveniently seen by the following tabular view of the New York butchers' receiving-yards during the twelve months of the year 1863. I am indebted for it to the experience and courtesy of Mr. Solon Robinson, agricultural editor of the "New York Tribune."

_Receipts of Butchers' Animals in New York during 1863._

+-------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+ |Month. | Beeves. | Cows. | Calves. | Sheep. | Swine. | |-------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+ |Jan. | 16,349 | 393 | 1,318 | 25,352 | 138,413 | |Feb. | 19,930 | 474 | 1,207 | 24,877 | 98,099 | |March | 22,187 | 843 | 2,594 | 29,645 | 79,320 | |April | 18,921 | 636 | 3,182 | 18,311 | 56,516 | |May | 16,739 | 440 | 3,510 | 20,338 | 39,305 | |June | 23,785 | 718 | 5,516 | 44,808 | 56,612 | |July | 20,224 | 396 | 2,993 | 41,614 | 40,716 | |August | 20,347 | 496 | 3,040 | 49,900 | 36,725 | |Sept. | 30,847 | 524 | 3,654 | 79,078 | 68,646 | |Oct. | 24,397 | 475 | 3,283 | 64,144 | 112,265 | |Nov. | 23,991 | 557 | 3,378 | 61,082 | 183,359 | |Dec. | 26,374 | 518 | 2,034 | 60,167 | 191,641 | |-------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+ |Total | | | | | | |of each| 264,091 | 6,470 | 35,709 | 519,316 |1,101,617 | |kind, | | | | | | |-------+---------+---------+---------+---------+----------+ | | |Total of all kinds, 1,927,203. | +----------------------------------------------------------+

Of the total number of beeves which came into the New York market in 1863, those whose origin could be ascertained were furnished from their several States in the following proportions:--

Illinois contributed 118,692 New York " 28,985 Ohio " 19,369 Indiana " 14,232 Michigan " 9,074 Kentucky " 6,782

Averaging the weight of the cattle which came to New York market in 1863 at the moderate estimate of 700 lbs., the metropolitan supply of beef for that year amounted to 189,392,700 lbs. This, at the average price of nine and a quarter cents per pound, was worth $17,518,825. Proportionably with these estimates, the average weekly expenditure by butchers at the New York yards during the year 1863 was $328,865.

It is an astonishing, but indubitable fact, that, while the population of New York has increased sixty-six per cent during the last decade, the consumption of _beef_ has in the same time increased sixty-five per cent. This increment might be ascribed to the great advance of late years in the price of pork,--that traditional main stay of the poor man's housekeeping,--were it not that the importation of swine has increased almost as surprisingly. We are therefore obliged to acknowledge that during a period when the chief growth of our population was due to emigration from the lowest ranks of foreign nationalities, during three years of a devastating war, and inclusive of the great financial crisis of 1857, the increase in consumption of the most costly and healthful article of animal food lacked but one per cent of the increase of the population. These statistics bear eloquent witness to the rapid diffusion of luxury among the New York people.

From the table of classification by States we may draw another interesting inference. It will be seen that by far the largest proportion of the bullocks came into the New York market from the most remote of the Western States contributing. In other words, New York City has so perfected her connection with all the sources of supply, that distance has become an unimportant element in her calculations of expense; and she can make all the best grazing land of the country tributary to her market, without regard to the question whether it be one or twelve hundred miles off.

The foregoing butchers' estimates are as exact as our present means of information can make them. Large numbers of uncounted sheep are consumed within the city limits, and the unreported calves are many more than come to light in statistics. Besides these main staples of the market which have been mentioned, there is consumed in New York an incalculable quantity of game and poultry, preserved meats and fish, cheese, butter, and eggs.

Mr. James Boughton, clerk of the New York Produce Exchange, has been good enough to furnish me with a tabular statement of the city's receipts of produce for the year ending April 30, 1864. Such portions of it as may show the amount of staples, exclusive of fresh meat, required for the regular supply of the New York market, are presented in the opposite column.

A less important, but still very interesting, class of products entered New York during the same period, in the following amounts:--

+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | COTTON. | SEED. | ASHES. | WHISKEY. | OIL CAKE. | |-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------| | _Bales._ | _Bush._ | _Pkgs._ | _Bbls._ | _Sacks._ | | 18,193 | 7,343 | 1,401 | 21,838 | 2,329 | | 16,299 | 3,196 | 1,657 | 26,925 | 14,040 | | 13,080 | 901 | 1,175 | 19,627 | 20,120 | | 11,043 | 892 | 1,551 | 18,083 | 19,583 | | 12,874 | 2,082 | 884 | 15,781 | 4,810 | | 19,332 | 1,189 | 790 | 17,656 | 17,500 | | 26,902 | 2,318 | 1,280 | 20,098 | 10,441 | | 24,870 | 8,193 | 1,393 | 39,594 | 4,973 | | 22,010 | 8,441 | 1,163 | 32,346 | 2,676 | | 28,242 | 24,216 | 1,498 | 34,475 | 2,115 | | 39,302 | 31,765 | 1,457 | 35,575 | 2,963 | | 33,538 | 5,686 | 1,044 | 22,873 | 4,536 | |-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------+-----------| | 265,685 | 96,222 | 15,293 | 304,871 | 106,356 | +-----------------------------------------------------------+

New York, during the same period, exported,--

Of Flour 2,571,744 bbls. " Wheat 15,842,836 bushels. " Corn 5,576,836 " " Cured Beef 113,061 pkgs. " " Pork 189,757 bbls. " Cotton 27,561 bales.

Deducting from the total supply of each of these six staples such amounts as were exported during the year, we

+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MONTH. | FLOUR. | CORN | CORN | WHEAT. | CORN. | | | | MEAL. | MEAL. | | | |------------------+-----------+---------+---------+------------+------------| | | _Bbls._ | _Bbls._ | _Bags._ | _Bush._ | _Bush._ | | 1863.--May | 454,363 | 10,331 | 18,614 | 1,789,952 | 1,914,490 | | June | 636,501 | 19,283 | 7,989 | 2,853,755 | 2,262,825 | | July | 451,004 | 9,995 | 10,480 | 2,409,184 | 3,049,126 | | August | 298,097 | 9,875 | 9,226 | 1,989,839 | 2,343,899 | | September | 319,923 | 10,481 | 4,715 | 1,132,588 | 2,196,157 | | October | 451,762 | 8,673 | 13,020 | 3,052,968 | 1,265,793 | | November | 530,096 | 8,883 | 22,835 | 3,164,750 | 295,398 | | December | 429,641 | 16,301 | 45,627 | 1,396,608 | 135,907 | | 1864.--January | 266,240 | 7,987 | 43,990 | 10,244 | 145,557 | | February | 233,822 | 12,489 | 47,137 | 45,283 | 108,751 | | March | 190,785 | 14,135 | 40,510 | 108,407 | 259,547 | | April | 218,181 | 10,889 | 27,097 | 166,506 | 120,272 | |------------------+-----------+---------+---------+------------+------------+ | Total | 4,480,415 | 145,272 | 291,190 | 18,119,993 | 14,098,262 | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MONTHS. | OATS. | RYE. | MALT. | BARLEY. | BEEF. | |------------------+------------+---------+---------+-----------+---------| | | _Bush._ | _Bush._ | _Bush._ | _Bush._ | _Bbls._ | | 1863.--May | 808,233 | 28,034 | 24,034 | 4,672 | 9,428 | | June | 1,442,979 | 23,038 | 22,508 | 1,643 | 2,386 | | July | 849,831 | 52,759 | 16,710 | none. | 1,285 | | August | 1,097,223 | 68,035 | 55,453 | .... | 892 | | September | 307,025 | 9,721 | 47,048 | 7,941 | 718 | | October | 1,319,985 | 41,912 | 13,461 | 753,893 | 7,420 | | November | 2,189,719 | 36,731 | 44,322 | 441,479 | 68,391 | | December | 1,882,344 | 45,727 | 59,494 | 275,568 | 74,031 | | 1864.--January | 305,690 | 6,532 | 42,608 | 6,972 | 22,988 | | February | 209,080 | 3,554 | 63,064 | 5,105 | 6,358 | | March | 258,685 | 5,308 | 69,578 | 18,386 | 4,319 | | April | 238,344 | 6,373 | 44,383 | 41,914 | 4,654 | |------------------+------------+---------+---------+-----------+---------+ | Total | 10,909,238 | 328,619 | 502,693 | 1,557,573 | 203,270 | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | MONTHS. | PORK. | CUT | LARD. | DRESSED | | | | MEATS. | | HOGS. | |------------------+---------+---------+----------+---------| | | _Bbls._ | _Pkgs._ |100 _lbs._| _No._ | 1863.--May | 119,302 | 38,587 | 149,966 | .... | | June | 112,343 | 21,401 | 75,966 | .... | | July | 10,155 | 6,633 | 15,396 | .... | | August | 6,879 | 2,870 | 3,784 | .... | | September | 7,115 | 3,967 | 5,233 | .... | | October | 6,921 | 4,501 | 35,128 | 881 | | November | 6,916 | 11,066 | 35,997 | 755 | | December | 21,864 | 18,843 | 31,775 | 21,208 | | 1864.--January | 39,364 | 34,469 | 25,145 | 48,276 | | February | 32,144 | 42,593 | 43,245 | 59,894 | | March | 33,687 | 92,710 | 83,122 | 4,600 | | April | 12,346 | 49,399 | 90,496 | 67 | |------------------+---------+---------+----------+---------| | Total | 409,036 | 327,129 | 594,853 | 135,481 | +-----------------------------------------------------------+

find a remainder, for annual metropolitan consumption, amounting, in the case of

Flour to 1,908,671 bbls. Wheat " 2,276,257 bushels. Corn " 8,540,490 " Cured Beef " 89,209 pkgs. " Pork " 209,279 bbls. Cotton " 238,124 bales.

We have no room for the details--which would embarrass us, if we should attempt a statement--of the cost of clothing the New York people. We will merely remark, in passing, that one of the largest retail stores in the New York dry-goods trade sells at its counters ten million dollars' worth of fabrics per annum, and that another concern in the wholesale branch of the same trade does a yearly business of between thirty and forty millions. As for tailors' shops, New York is their fairy-land,--many eminent examples among them resembling, in cost, size, and elegance, rather a European palace than a republican place of traffic.

The most comprehensive generalization by which we may hope to arrive at an idea of the business of New York is that which includes in tabular form the statistics of the chief institutions which employ and insure property.

On the 24th of September, 1864, sixty-three banks made a quarterly statement of their condition, under the general banking law of the State. These banks are at present the only ones in New York whose condition can be definitely ascertained, and their reported capital amounts to $69,219,763. The national banks will go far toward increasing the total metropolitan banking capital to one hundred millions. The largest of the State banks doing business in the city is the Bank of Commerce, (about being reorganized on the national plan,) with a capital of ten millions; and the smallest possess capital to the amount of two hundred thousand dollars.

Mr. Camp, now at the head of the New York Clearing-House, has been kind enough to furnish the following interesting statistics in regard to the total amount of business transactions managed by the New York banks in connection with the Clearing-House during the two years ending on the 30th of last September. Figures can scarcely be made more eloquent by illustration than they are of themselves, I therefore leave them without other comment than the remark that the weekly exchanges at the Clearing-House during the past year have repeatedly amounted to more than the entire expenses of the United States Government for the same period.

_Clearing-House Transactions._

+-----------------------------------------------------++ | 1862. | EXCHANGES. | BALANCES. || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| |October | $ 1,081,243,214.07 | $ 54,632,410.57 || |November | 874,966,873.15 | 47,047,576.93 || |December | 908,135,090.29 | 44,630,405.43 || | | | || | 1863. | | || |January | 1,251,408,362.76 | 58,792,544.70 || |February | 1,199,249,050.07 | 51,583,913.88 || |March | 1,313,908,804.14 | 60,456,505.45 || |April | 1,138,218,267.90 | 53,539,812.46 || |May | 1,535,484,281.78 | 70,328,306.25 || |June | 1,252,116,400.20 | 59,803,975.44 || |July | 1,261,668,342.87 | 62,387,857.44 || |August | 1,466,803,012.90 | 53,120,821.99 || |September | 1,584,396,148.47 | 61,302,352.35 || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| | | $14,867,597,848.60 | $677,626,482.61 || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| | || | 306 Business days. || | || | _Average for day_, 1862-3. || | || | Exchanges $48,586,921.07 || | Balances 2,214,415.63 || +-----------------------------------------------------++

+-----------------------------------------------------++ | 1863. | EXCHANGES. | BALANCES. || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| |October | $ 1,900,210,522.77 | $ 74,088,419.08 || |November | 1,778,800,987.95 | 66,895,452.49 || |December | 1,745,436,325.73 | 60,577,884.19 || | | | || | 1864. | | || |January | 1,770,312,694.43 | 63,689,950.88 || |February | 2,088,170,989.48 | 65,744,935.13 || |March | 2,753,323,948.53 | 84,938,940.37 || |April | 2,644,732,826.34 | 93,363,526.16 || |May | 1,877,653,131.37 | 76,328,462.88 || |June | 1,902,029,181.42 | 88,187,658.93 || |July | 1,777,753,537.53 | 73,343,903.49 || |August | 1,776,018,141.53 | 69,071,237.16 || |September | 2,082,754,368.84 | 69,288,834.17 || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| | | $24,097,196,655.92 | $885,719,204.93 || |----------+----------------------+-------------------|| | || | 306 Business days. || | || | _Average for day_, 1863-4. || | || | Exchanges $77,984,455.20 || | Balances 2,866,405.19 || +-----------------------------------------------------++

+------------------------------------------------------------+ | | |Aggregate Exchanges for Eleven Years $95,540,602,384.53 | | " Balances " " " 4,678,311,016.79 | | ------------------- | | Total Transactions $101,218,913,401.32 | | | +------------------------------------------------------------+

On the 31st day of December, 1863, there were 101 joint-stock companies for the underwriting of fire-risks, with an aggregate capital of $23,632,860; net assets to the amount of $29,269,423; net cash receipts from premiums amounting to $10,181,031; and an average percentage of assets to risks in force equalling 2.995. Besides these 101 joint-stock concerns, there existed at the same date twenty-one mutual fire-insurance companies, with an aggregate balance in their favor of $674,042. The rapidity with which mutual companies have yielded to the compacter and more efficient form of the joint-stock concern will be comprehended when it is known that just twice the number now in being have gone out of existence during the last decade. There are twelve marine insurance companies in the metropolis, with assets amounting to $24,947,559. The life-insurance companies number thirteen, with an aggregate capital of $1,885,000. We may safely set down the property invested in New York insurance companies of all sorts at $51,139,461. Add this sum to the aggregate banking capital above stated, and we have a total of $120,359,224. This vast sum merely represents New York's interest in the management of other people's money. The bank is employed as an engine for operating debt and credit. Its capital is the necessary fuel for running the machine; and that fuel ought certainly not to cost more than a fair interest on the products of the engine. The insurance companies guard the business-man's fortune from surprise, as the banks relieve him from drudgery; they put property and livelihood beyond the reach of accident: in other words, they manage the estates of the community so as to secure them from deterioration, and charge a commission for their stewardship.

It is a legitimate assumption in this part of the country that the money employed in managing property bears to the property itself an average proportion of about seven per cent. Hence it follows that the above-stated aggregate banking and insurance capital of $120,359,224 must represent and be backed by values to more than fourteen times that amount. In other words, and in round numbers, we may assert that the bank and insurance interests of New York are in relations of commerce and control with at least $1,685,029,136. This measure of metropolitan influence, it must be remembered, is based on the statistics attainable mainly outside of cash sales, and through only two of the metropolitan agencies of commerce.

I do not know how much I may assist any reader's further comprehension of the energies of the metropolis by stating that it issues fifteen daily newspapers, one hundred and thirty-three weekly or semi-weekly journals, and seventy-four monthly, semi-monthly, or weekly magazines,--that it has ten good and three admirable public libraries,--a dozen large hospitals, exclusive of the military,--thirty benevolent societies, (and we are in that respect far behind London, where every man below an attorney belongs to some "union" or other, that he may have his neighbors' guaranty against the ever-impending British poor-house,)--twenty-one savings-banks,--one theatre where French is spoken, a German theatre, an Italian opera-house, and eleven theatres where they speak English. In a general magazine-article, it is impossible to review the hundreds of studios where our own Art is painting itself into the century with a vigor which has no rival abroad. We can treat neither the aesthetic nor the social life of New York with as delicate a pencil as we would. Our paper has had to deal with broad facts; and upon these we are willing to rest the cause of New York in any contest for metropolitan honors. We believe that New York is destined to be the permanent emporium not only of this country, but of the entire world,--and likewise the political capital of the nation. Had the White House (or, pray Heaven! some comelier structure) stood on Washington Heights, and the Capitol been erected at Fanwood, there would never have been a Proslavery Rebellion. This is a subject which business-men are coming to ponder pretty seriously.

After all, New York's essential charm to a New-Yorker cannot express itself in figures, nor, indeed, in any adequate manner. It is the city of his soul. He loves it with a passionate dignity which will not let him swagger like the Cockney or twitter like the Parisian. His love for New York goes frequently unacknowledged even to himself, until a necessary absence of unusual length teaches him how hard it would be to lose the city of his affections forever.

It is a bath of other souls. It will not let a man harden in his own epidermis. He must affect and be affected by multitudinous varieties of temperament, race, character. He avoids grooves, because New York will not tolerate grooviness. He knows that he must be able, on demand, to bowl anywhere over the field of human tastes and sympathies. Professionally he may be a specialist, but in New York his specialty must be only the axis around which are grouped encyclopaedic learning, faultless skill, and catholic intuitions. Nobody will waste a Saturday afternoon riding on his hobby-horse. He must be a broad-natured person, or he will be a mere imperceptible line on the general background of obscure citizens. He feels that he is surrounded by people who will help him do his best, yes, who will make him do it, or drive him out to install such as will. If he think of a good thing to do, he knows that the market for all good things is close around him. Whatever surplus of himself he has for communication, that he knows to be absolutely sure of a recipient before the day is done. New York, like Goethe's Olympus, says to every man with capacity and self-faith,--

"Here is all fulness, ye brave, to reward you: Work, and despair not!"

Moreover, the moral air of New York City is in certain respects the purest air a man can breathe. This may seem a paradox. New York City is not often quoted as an example of purity. To the philosopher her atmosphere is cleaner than that of a country village. As the air of a contracted space may grow poisonous by respiration, while pure air rests over the entire surface of the earth in virtue of being the final solvent to all terrestrial decompositions, so it is possible that a few good, but narrow people may get alone together in the country, and hatch a social organism far more morbid than the metropolitan. In the latter instance, aberrations counterbalance each other, and the body politic, cursed though it be with bad officials, has more vitality in it than could be excited by any conclave of excellent men with one idea, meeting, however, solemnly, to feed it with legislative pap.

While no man can ride into metropolitan success on a hobby-horse, popular dissent will still take no stronger form than a quiet withdrawal and the permission to rock by himself. No amount of eccentricity surprises a New-Yorker, or makes him uncourteous. It is difficult to attract even a crowd of boys on Broadway by an odd figure, face, manner, or costume. This has the result of making New York an asylum for all who love their neighbor as themselves, but would a little rather not have him looking through the key-hole. In New York I share no dreadful secrets with the man next door. I am not in his power any more than if I lived in Philadelphia,--nor so much, for he might get somebody to spy me there. There is no other place but New York where my next-door neighbor never feels the slightest hesitation about cutting me dead, because he knows that on such conditions rests that broad individual liberty which is the glory of the citizen.

In fine, if we seek the capital of well-paid labor,--the capital of broad congenialities and infinite resources,--the capital of most widely diffused comfort, luxury, and taste,--the capital which to the eye of the plain businessman deserves to be the nation's senate-seat,--the capital which, as the man of forecast sees, must eventually be the world's Bourse and market-place,--in any case we turn and find our quest in the city of New York.

To-day, she might claim Jersey City, Hoboken, Brooklyn, and all the settled districts facing the island shore, with as good a grace as London includes her multitudinous districts on both sides of the Thames. Were all the population who live by her, and legitimately belong to her, now united with her, as some day they must be by absorption, New York would now contain more than 1,300,000 people. For this union New York need make no effort. The higher organization always controls and incorporates the lower.

The release of New York commerce from the last shackles of the Southern "long-paper" system, combined with the progressive restoration of its moral freedom from the dungeon of Southern political despotism, has left, for the first time since she was born, our metropolitan giantess unhampered. Let us throw away the poor results of our last decade! New York thought she was growing then; but the future has a stature for her which shall lift her up where she can see and summon all the nations.[E]

FOOTNOTES:

[E] In addition to the obligations elsewhere recognised, an acknowledgment is due to the well-known archaeologist and statistician of New York,--Mr. Valentine,--who furnished for the purpose of this article the latest edition of his Manual, in advance of its general publication, and to the great convenience of the writer.

NEEDLE AND GARDEN.

THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A STRAWBERRY-GIRL.

WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

INTRODUCTION.

I am very sure that nothing was ever farther from my thoughts than the writing of a book. The pages which follow were never intended for publication, but were written as an amusement, sometimes in long winter evenings, when it was pleasanter to be indoors, and sometimes in summer days, when most of the circumstances mentioned in them occurred. I was a long time in writing them, as they were done little by little. There was a point in them at which I stopped entirely. Then I lent the manuscript to several of my acquaintances to read. Some of these kept it only a few days, and I feel quite sure soon tired of it, as it afterwards appeared that they had read very little of it: they must have thought it extremely dull. But these probably borrowed it only out of compliment, and so I was neither surprised nor mortified. The only surprise was, that now and then there was one who did have patience to go over it all, as it was written in a common copy-book, not in a very nice hand, and with a great many erasures and alterations. But when one has a favorite, it is grateful to find even a single admirer for it. So it was with me. I wrote from love of the subject; and when any one was kind enough to give his approval, I felt exceedingly pleased, not because I had a high opinion of the matter myself, but only because I had written it. Then it must be acknowledged that my small circle of acquaintances comprised more workers than readers. Those who had a taste for reading found their time so occupied by the labor necessary to their support that but little was left to them for indulging in books; and the few who had leisure were probably such indifferent readers as to make the task of going over a blotted manuscript too great for their patience, unless it were more interesting than mine.

At last, after a very long time, and a great many strange experiences, the manuscript fell into the hands of one who was an entire stranger to me, but who has since proved himself the dearest friend I ever had. He read it, and said it must be published. But the thought of publication so frightened me that it almost deprived me of sleep. Still, after very long persuasion, I consented, and the whole was written over again, with a great many things added. When it was all ready, he told me I must write a preface. So I was persuaded even to this, though that was a new alarm, and I had scarcely recovered from the first. I have always been retiring,--indeed, quite out of sight; and nothing has reconciled me to this publicity but the knowledge that no one will be able to discover me, unless it be the very few who had patience to read my manuscript. Even they will find it so altered and enlarged as scarcely to remember it.

Yet there is another consideration which ought to reconcile me to coming forward in a way so contrary to what I had ever contemplated. I think the story of my quiet life may lead others to reflect more seriously on the griefs, the trials, and the hardships to which so many of my sex are constantly subjected. It may lead some of the other sex either to think more of these trials, or to view them in a new and different light from any in which they have heretofore regarded them. They may even think that I have suggested a new remedy for an old evil. I know that many such have labored to remove the wrongs of which poor and friendless women are the victims. But while they have already done much toward that humane end, as much remains to do. I make no studied effort to influence or direct them. The contrast between my first and last experience was so great, that, in rewriting, I added some facts from the experience of others to give force to the recital of my own. My hope is, that humane minds may be gratified by a narrative so uneventful, and that they, fortified by position and means, will be led to do for others, in a new direction, as much as I, comparatively unaided, have been able to do for myself.