Part 10

The third argument is the same used by Jefferson and his party before the War of 1812. He thought that to build war vessels was only to build them for the British, as they would be sure to take them. As to changing the policy of the nation, by increasing our navy, let us hope that it is already changed, and forever. Its policy has heretofore been a Southern policy, a slaveholders' policy; it has discouraged the navy, and kept it down to the smallest possible dimensions, because a navy is essentially a Northern institution. You cannot man a navy with slaves or mean whites; it must have a commercial marine behind it, and that the South never had. Our navy ought never again to be inferior in fighting strength to that of England. In that way we shall always avoid war.

As to the plan of defending the Lakes at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, we would ask this question: If the blockade of Wilmington was a task beyond the power of our navy, how would it be able to blockade an estuary from fifty to a hundred miles in width?

With these enlarged canals, by which gunboats and monitors could be moved from the Atlantic and the Mississippi to the Lakes, and _vice versa_, and by the system of shore defences recommended some years ago by General Totten, namely, strong fortifications at Mackinaw, perfectly commanding those straits, and serving as a refuge to war steamers, works at the lower end of Lake Huron, at Detroit, and at the entrance of Niagara River, these waters will be protected from all foreign enemies. Lake Ontario will also need a system of works to protect our important canals and railroads, which in many places approach so near the shore as to be in danger from an enterprising enemy. It is recommended by the Military Committee, that a naval depot should be established at Erie, as the most safe and suitable harbor on the lake of that name.

If, as is probable, a naval station and depot should be thought necessary on the Upper Lakes, the city of Milwaukee has strong claims to be chosen for its site. There is the best and safest harbor on Lake Michigan, so situated as to be easily defended, in the midst of a heavily timbered country, accessible to the iron and copper of Lake Superior and the coal of Illinois. Milwaukee enjoys one of the cheapest markets for food, together with a very healthy climate. Finally, she is connected by rail with the great Western centres of population, so that all the necessary troops for her defence could be gathered about her at twenty-four hours' notice.

It may be well here to remark, that as yet the Northwest has had little assistance from the General Government. Large sums of money have annually been laid out in the defences of the seaboard, both North and South, while this immense Lake region has had the annual appropriation of one eighteen pounder! Every small river and petty inlet on the Southern coast, whence a bale of cotton or a barrel of turpentine could be shipped, has had its fort; while the important post of Mackinaw, the Gibraltar of the Lakes, is garrisoned by an invalid sergeant, who sits solitary on its ruinous walls.

The result at which we arrive is, that these canal enlargements would at once be valuable, both as commercial and military works. They have a national importance, in that they will assist in feeding and defending the nation. The States interested in them have a population of ten millions, they have seventy-one representatives in Congress, and they have furnished fully one half the fighting-men who have gone to defend our flag and protect our nationality in the field. How that work has been done, let the victorious campaigns of Grant and Sherman attest. Those great leaders are Western men, and their invincible columns, who, from Belmont to Savannah, have, like Cromwell's Ironsides, "never met an enemy whom they have not broken in pieces," are men of Western birth or training.

FOOTNOTES:

[E] See Nos. for February and March, 1861,--Vol. VII. pp. 226, 313.

TO CAROLINA CORONADO.

A lily anchored by the Spanish main, Swaying and shining in the surge of youth, Yet holding in thy breast the gold of truth,--

Such didst thou seem above the waves of pain, And through the stormy turbulence of war, Until we heard thy patriot voice afar!

Now, Sister, with the burning heart of Spain, We speak to thee from this New England strand, And grasp and hold thee with a firm right hand!

For thou hast touched our people with thy word,-- Only a gentle woman's word, but one With the great work our Nation has begun.

By Liberty thy earnest soul was stirred, And waked and urged Estremadura's men To pour the heroic wine of life again.

As in the dawn of Summer flits a bird From his low nest and springs into the air, Hurrying a double concert and a prayer,--

So Liberty, with thy sweet voice allied, Walks in thy footsteps, with her laurel strows Thy footway, with thy trustful spirit glows.

Esteem her friendship with unwavering pride! Teach thou thy children what the years have brought, Wisdom and love superior to thy thought!

Once thou hast said, "All men may win her side, But women never!" Sister, do not fear, Recall thy words, since Love has made truth clear.

For Love is master, and we know no other, Save self-compelling service to the right, Which is but Love in the seraphic sight.

Teach this thy sons and to each man thy brother,-- A secret learned in silent joys of home, A secret whence the lights of being come.

So guided by this lamp, O wife and mother, Turn thine eyes hither to the Western shore, Where red streams run and iron thunders roar!

We watch the star of Freedom slowly rise And glimmer through the changes of the time, While errors beat their low retreating chime.

We ask for nought, we need not to be wise, We find both men and women at their post, Equal and different in one mighty host.

Divided suffering, unity of cries,-- Divided labor, unity of life,-- Divided struggle, one reward for strife.

As autumn winds sweep over tossing seas And reach the happy shore, and fling the flowers And lower each gorgeous head by their rude powers,--

So sweep the winds of war through quiet leas And bend our budding treasures in the dust, Yet Freedom's cause shall neither mar nor rust.

The seed shall spring where none can thirst or freeze, Shall bear a floweret fairer than the old, As lilies shine before all blossoms told:

A liberty for woman in her home, Bound by the only chains which give her peace,-- Immortal chains which death may not release:

A liberty where Justice wide may roam, And Reverence sit the chief at every feast, With Love as master, and Contempt as least:

A liberty where the oppressed may come, The black and white, the woman and the man, And recognize themselves in Heaven's wide plan

Then while the morning odors of the sea Blow from the westward and caress thy brow, Remember where thy loving sisters bow:

Perchance beneath the hand of Victory, Which leaves a tear and then a silentness, While crowds move by forgetful of one less;

Or where a burst of gracious ecstasy Rising shall fill the eastward flitting air, And with thy spirit mount the hills of prayer.

REGNARD.

Since, in modern literature, there are so few really good comedies that we may count them all upon our fingers, a man who has written two must be worth knowing. We ask permission to introduce Jean François Regnard to those who do not know him.

He comes recommended by the great critic Boileau, who liked him, quarrelled with him, and made up again. Forty years later, Voltaire wrote that the man who did not enjoy Regnard was not capable of appreciating Molière. Then came M. de La Harpe, the authority in such matters for two generations: he devotes a chapter to Regnard, and calls him the worthy successor of Molière. And Béranger, in his charming autobiography, an epilogue worthy of the noble part he had played upon the stage of the world, speaks of the unflagging gayety and abundant wit of Regnard's dialogue, and of his lively and graceful style. "In my opinion," he adds, "Regnard would be the first of modern comedians, if Molière had not been given to us."

In spite of the idle complainings into which authors are betrayed by the pleasure human nature takes in talking about self to attentive listeners, all who are familiar with the history of the brethren of the quill know, that, as a class, they have had a large share of the good things of the earth,--cheerful occupation, respected position, comfortable subsistence, and long life. France, in particular, has been the _Pays de Cocagne_ of book-makers for the last two hundred years. Neither praise, pay, nor rank has been wanting to those who deserved them. But in the long line of _littérateurs_ who have flourished since Cardinal Richelieu founded the Academy, few were so fortunate as Regnard. He entered upon his career with wealth, health, and a jovial temperament: three supreme blessings he kept through life.

He was born in Paris in 1655, three years before Molière brought his company from the provinces to the Hôtel de Bourbon, and opened the new theatre with the "Précieuses Ridicules." Regnard's father, a citizen of Paris and a shopkeeper, died when his son was a lad, leaving him one hundred and twenty thousand livres,--a fortune for a man of the middle class at that period. Like most independent young fellows, Regnard made use of his money to travel. He went to Italy, and spent a year in the famous cities of the Peninsula,--but returned home with thirty thousand additional livres in his pocket, won at play. He soon went back to the land of pleasure and of luck. At Bologna he fell in love with a lady from the South of France, whom he calls Elvire. The lady was married, the husband was with her; they were travellers like himself. Regnard joined the party, and sailed with them from Civita Vecchia in an English ship bound for Toulon. The vessel was captured, off Nice, by a Barbary corsair, and brought into Algiers; the crew and passengers were sold to the highest bidder. One Achmet Talem paid fifteen hundred livres for Regnard, and one thousand for the lady. This low price might lead us to imagine that the Moorish taste in beauty differed from that of Regnard; but the Algerine market may have been overstocked with women on the day of sale. Achmet took his new chattels to Constantinople. Perceiving Regnard's talent for _ragoûts_ and sauces, he made a cook of him. What became of Elvire history has omitted, perhaps discreetly, to relate. After two years of toil and ill-treatment, Regnard received money from home to buy his freedom. He paid twelve thousand livres for himself and the fair Provençale. Achmet more than quadrupled his investment, and no doubt thought slavery a divine institution.

In Paris once more, Regnard hung his chains in his library and was preparing to lead a comfortable life with Elvire, when the superfluous husband, whose death had been reported, most unseasonably reappeared. He had been ransomed by the Mathurins, a religious order, who believed it to be the duty of Christians to deliver their fellow-men from bondage,--Abolitionists of the seventeenth century, who, strange as some of us may think it, were honored by their countrymen and the Christian world. Regnard yielded gracefully the right he had acquired by purchase to the prior claim of the husband, and made preparations for another journey. With two compatriots, De Fercourt and De Corberon, he traversed the Low Countries and Denmark and crossed over to Stockholm. The King of Sweden received the travellers graciously and proposed a visit to Lapland. Furnished with the royal letters of recommendation, they sailed up the Gulf of Bothnia to Torneo, and thence pushed north by land until they came to Lake Tornoetrask. Eighteen miles from the lower end of the lake they ascended a high mountain which they named Metavara, "from the Latin word _meta_ and the Finlandic word _vara_, which means rock: that is to say, the rock of limits." "We were four hours in climbing to the top by paths which no mortal had as yet known. When we reached it, we perceived the whole extent of Lapland, and the Icy Ocean as far as the North Cape, on the side it turns to the west. This may, indeed, be called arriving at the end of the world and jostling the axle of the pole (_se frotter à l'essieu du pôle_)." Here they set up a tablet of stone they had brought with their luggage,--_monument éternel_, Regnard says. "It shall make known to posterity that three Frenchmen did not cease to travel northward until the earth failed them; that, in spite of the difficulties they encountered, which would have turned back most others, they reached the end of the world and planted their column; the ground was wanting, but not the courage to press on." These sounding verses were cut upon the eternal monument:--

"Gallia nos genuit; vidit nos Africa; Gangem Hausimus, Europamque oculis lustravimus omnem; Casibus et variis acti terrâque marique, Hic tandem stetimus, nobis ubi defuit orbis. De Fercourt, De Corberon, Regnard. Anno 1681, die 22 Augusti."

"The inscription will never be read, except by the bears," Regnard adds. A melancholy thought to the French mind! If nobody saw it or talked about it, half the pleasure of the exploit was gone. The Frenchmen had foreseen this difficulty, and had taken their precautions. Four days' journey to the southward stood an ancient church, near which the Lapps held their annual fair. In this church, in a conspicuous position, they had already deposited the same verses, carved upon a board. In 1718, thirty-six years after, another French traveller, La Motraye, read the lines upon the stone tablet,--too late to gratify Regnard.

"Travellers' stories,"--"_A beau mentir qui vient de loin_,"--these proverbs date from the seventeenth century. It was not expected of such adventurous gentlemen that they should tell the simple truth, any more than we expect veracity from sportsmen. We listen without surprise and disbelieve without a smile. Some exaggeration, too, was pardonable to help out the verse; but "_nobis ubi defuit orbis_" goes beyond a reasonable license. The mountain _Metavara_ is in Lat. 68° 30'; the North Cape in 71° 10'. There were still one hundred and fifty miles of solid _orbis_ before Regnard and his friends; and they had need of optics sharp to see the Cape from the spot they stood upon.

The 27th of September found the three Arctic explorers back again in Stockholm. Thence they took boat for Dantzic, travelled in Poland, Hungary, and Austria, and left Vienna for Paris a few months before the famous siege, when Sobieski, the "man sent from God whose name was John," routed the Turks and delivered Christendom forever from the fear of the Ottoman arms.

Before this time Regnard must have heard that Duquesne had avenged his African sufferings. In the autumn of 1681 the Huguenot Admiral shelled Algiers from bomb-ketches, then used for the first time. The Dey was forced to surrender. His lively conquerors treated him with the honors of wit as well as of war. They made a _mot_ for him, of the kind they get up so cleverly in Paris. When the Turk is told how much it had cost the great monarch of France to fit out the fleet which had just reduced a part of his city to ashes, he exclaims, amazed at the useless extravagance,--"For half the money I would have burned the whole town."

Cervantes was a slave in Algiers a hundred years before Regnard, and no doubt used his experience in the story of the Captive in "Don Quixote." Regnard also worked his African materials up into a tale,--"La Provençale,"--and varnished them with the sentimentality fashionable in his day. Zelmis (himself) is a conquering hero; women adore him. He is full of courage, resources, and devotion to one only,--Elvire,--who is beautiful as a dream, and dignified as the wife of a Roman Senator. The King of Algiers is on the quay when the captives are brought ashore. He falls in love with Elvire on the spot, and adds her to his collection. But his passion is respectful and pure. Aided by Zelmis, she escapes from the harem. They are retaken and brought back; but instead of the whipping usually bestowed upon returned runaways, the generous king, despairing of winning Elvire's affections, gives her her liberty. In the mean time Zelmis has had his troubles. His master has four wives, beautiful as houris. All four cast eyes of flame upon the well-favored infidel. Faithful to Elvire, Zelmis of course defends himself as heroically as Joseph. The ladies revenge the slight in the same way as the wife of Potiphar. The attractive Frenchman is condemned to impalement, when his consul interferes with a ransom, and he is released just in time to embark for France with Elvire.

Although Regnard often alludes with pride to his travels, the sketch he has left of them is meagre and uninteresting, and written in a harsh and awkward style. Lapland was a _terra incognita_,--Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia not much better known; yet this clever young Parisian has little to relate beyond a few names, which he generally misspells or misplaces. No descriptions of town or country or scenery; no traits of manners, character, or customs, except a dull page on the sorcery and the funeral ceremonies of the Lapps. The only eminent man he notices is Evelius, the astronomer of Dantzic,--one of the foreign _savans_ of distinction on whom Louis XIV. bestowed pensions in his grand manner, omitting to pay them after the second year. Regnard seems to have written to let his countrymen know where he had been,--not to tell them what he had seen. Had he made ever so good a book out of his really remarkable journey, little notice would have been taken of it. Voyages and travels were looked upon as a dull branch of fiction,--not nearly so amusing or improving as cockney excursions from one town of France to another in the neighborhood, described after the manner of Bachaumont and Chapelle: not sentimental journeys, by any means; eating, drinking, and sleeping are the points of interest:--

"Bon vin, bon gîte, bon lit, Belle hôtesse, bon appétit."

Even Regnard, who had seen so much of the world, tried his hand at this kind of travel-writing and failed lamentably.

At thirty, Regnard closed a chapter in his life, and turned over a new leaf. He gave up wandering and gambling, the ruling passions of his youth, and settled himself comfortably for the rest of his days. For occupation and official position, he bought an assistant-treasurership in the _Bureau des Finances_. His house in the Rue Richelieu became famous for good company and good things, intellectual as well as material. In the country his _Terre de Grillon_ was planted with so much taste that the lively persons who liked to visit there called it a _Séjour enchanté_. In laying out his grounds, his intimate, Dufresny, was doubtless of use to him. This spendthrift poet, reputed great-grandson of Henri Quatre and the _belle jardinière_, had great skill in landscape gardening, admitted even by those who found his verses tedious. He it was, probably, who introduced Regnard to the stage. For several years they supplied the Théatre Italien with amusing trifles,--working together in one of those literary partnerships so common among French playwrights. The "Joueur" broke up this business connection. Dufresny accused Regnard of having stolen the plot from him, and brought out a "Joueur" of his own. Regnard insisted that Dufresny was the pirate. The public decided in favor of Regnard. Dufresny's play was hopelessly damned, and no appeal ever taken from the first sentence. The verdict of the _bel-esprits_ was recorded in an epigram, which ended thus:--

"Mais quiconque aujourd'hui voit l'un et l'autre ouvrage Dit que Regnard a l'avantage D'avoir été le 'bon larron.'"[F]

Dufresny had more wit than dramatic talent. He will live in the memories of married men for his famous speech,--

"Comment, Monsieur! Vous n'y étiez pas obligé."

It was in 1696, twelve years after his return to Paris, that Regnard sent the "Joueur," a comedy in five acts, and in verse, to the Théatre Français. It was received with enthusiastic applause. Nothing equal to it had appeared in twenty-four years since the death of the great master; nor did the eighteenth century produce any comedy which can be compared with it for action, wit, and literary finish,--not excepting the "Turcaret" of Le Sage, and Beaumarchais's "Barber of Seville," which are both better known to-day.

Regnard sat to himself for the portrait of Valère. The wild and fascinating excitement of play, the gambler's exultation when he is successful, his furious curses on his bad luck when he loses, his superstitious veneration for his winnings, are drawn from the life. When Fortune smiles, Valère neglects Angélique, his rich _fiancée_; when he is penniless, his love revives, and he is at her feet until his valet devises some new plan of raising money. He swears, if she will forgive him, never again to touch dice or cards, and five minutes afterward pledges for a thousand crowns a miniature set in diamonds she has just given him to bind their reconciliation, and hurries back to the gaming-table. He wins, but thinks his gains too sacred to pay away, even to redeem the portrait of Angélique.

"Rien ne porte malheur comme de payer ses dettes,"

is his answer to the prudent Hector,--a maxim current among many who never play. At last comes a reverse of fortune so sweeping that he cannot conceal it. Angélique might have forgiven him his broken promises, but the pawnbroker enters with her picture and demands the thousand crowns. This is too much. She rejects him and gives her hand to his rival. His indignant father casts him off forever. But no feeling of regret or of repentance arises in the mind of the gambler. He turns coolly upon his heel, and calls to his valet,--

"Va! va! consolons-nous, Hector,--et quelque jour Le Jeu m'acquittera des pertes de l'amour."

Richard is the name of this prince of rascally and quick-witted valets; but he calls himself Hector, after the knave of spades, because he serves a gambler. He has good sense as well as ingenuity; for he gives his master the best advice, while he strains his invention and his impudence to help him on to destruction. Nérine, maid to Angélique, declares open war against Valère, and vows that her mistress shall not throw herself away upon a silly dandy, an insipid puppet, with nothing to recommend him but his fine clothes and his swagger.

"True enough," laughs Hector, "but

"C'est le goút d'à présent; tes cris sont superflus, Mon enfant."

"And Valère is a spendthrift, an inveterate gambler, who will bring her to misery and want."

"What of that?

"Tant que tu voudras, parle, prêche, tempête, Ta maîtresse est coiffée,... Elle est dans nos filets."

"And such an outrageous _roué_ that he cannot live in his father's house."

"We do not deny it," Hector answers. "It is no fault of ours.

"Valère a déserté la maison paternelle, Mais ce n'est point à lui qu'il faut faire querelle; Et si Monsieur son père avait voulu sortir, Nous y serions encore;... Ces pères, bien souvent, sont obstinés en diable."

Nevertheless, the obdurate parent, in the hope of reforming his son, and of providing for him by the excellent match with Angélique, hunts up the prodigal and lectures him after the manner of fathers. Hector joins in, and expresses strongly his disapprobation of games of chance; "_les jeux innocents, où l'esprit se déploie_," are the only safe pastime.

"But will our father pay our debts this time?"

"Not a crown."