CHAPTER XXV.

How did poor, faulty Griffith receive it?

He raised his head, and turned his brown eye gentle but full upon her. "My poor girl," said he, "I see what you are driving at. But that will not do. I have nothing to give you in exchange. I hate my wife that I loved so dear: d--n her! d--n her! But I hate all womankind for her sake. Keep you clear of me. I would ruin no poor girl for heartless sport, I shall have blood on my hands erelong, and that is enough."

And, with these alarming words, he seemed suddenly to recover all his vigor; for he rose and stalked away at once, and never looked behind him.

Ryder made no further attempt. She sat down and shed bitter tears of sorrow and mortification.

After this cruel rebuff she must hate somebody; and, with the justice of her sex, she pitched on Mrs. Gaunt, and hated her like a demon, and watched to do her a mischief by hook or by crook.

* * * * *

Griffith's appearance and manner caused Mrs. Gaunt very serious anxiety. His clothes hung loose on his wasting frame; his face was of one uniform sallow tint, like a maniac's; and he sat silent for hours beside his wife, eying her askant from time to time like a surly mastiff guarding some treasure.

She divined what was passing in his mind, and tried to soothe him; but almost in vain. He was sometimes softened for the moment; but _hæret lateri lethalis arundo_; he still hovered about, watching her and tormenting himself; gnawed mad by three vultures of the mind,--doubt, jealousy, and suspense.

* * * * *

Mrs. Gaunt wrote letters to Father Leonard: hitherto she had only sent him short messages.

Betty Gough carried these letters, and brought the answers.

Griffith, thanks to the hint Ryder had given him, suspected this, and waylaid the old woman, and roughly demanded to see the letter she was carrying. She stoutly protested she had none. He seized her, turned her pockets inside out, and found a bunch of keys; item, a printed dialogue between Peter and Herod, omitted in the canonical books, but described by the modern discoverer as an infallible charm for the toothache; item, a brass thimble; item, half a nutmeg.

"Curse your cunning," said he; and went off muttering.

The old woman tottered trembling to Mrs. Gaunt, related this outrage with an air of injured innocence, then removed her cap, undid her hair, and took out a letter from Leonard.

"This must end, and shall," said Mrs. Gaunt, firmly; "else it will drive him mad and me too."

* * * * *

Bolton fair-day came. It was a great fair, and had attractions for all classes. There were cattle and horses of all kinds for sale, and also shows, games, wrestling, and dancing till daybreak.

All the servants had a prescriptive right to go to this fair; and Griffith himself had never missed one. He told Kate over-night he would go, if it were not for leaving her alone.

The words were kinder than their meaning; but Mrs. Gaunt had the tact, or the candor, to take them in their best sense. "And I would go with you, my dear," said she; "but I should only be a drag. Never heed me; give yourself a day's pleasure, for indeed you need it. I am in care about you: you are so dull of late."

"Well, I will," said Griffith. "I'll not mope here when all the rest are merry-making."

Accordingly, next day, about eleven in the morning, he mounted his horse and rode to the fair, leaving the house empty; for all the servants were gone except the old housekeeper; she was tied to the fireside by rheumatics. Even Ryder started, with a new bonnet and red ribbons; but that was only a blind. She slipped back and got unperceived into her own bedroom.

Griffith ran through the fair; but could not enjoy it. _Hærebat lateri arundo._ He came galloping back to watch his wife, and see whether Betty Gough had come again or not.

As he rode into the stable-yard he caught sight of Ryder's face at an upper window. She looked pale and agitated, and her black eyes flashed with a strange expression. She made him a signal which he did not understand; but she joined him directly after in the stable-yard.

"Come quietly with me," said she, solemnly.

He hooked his horse's rein to the wall, and followed her, trembling.

She took him up the back stairs, and, when she got to the landing, turned and said, "Where did you leave her?"

"In her own room."

"See if she is there now," said Ryder, pointing to the door.

Griffith tore the door open; the room was empty.

"Nor is she to be found in the house," said Ryder; "for I've been in every room."

Griffith's face turned livid, and he shivered and leaned against the wall. "Where is she?" said he, hoarsely.

"Humph!" said Ryder, fiendishly. "Find _him_, and you'll find her."

"I'll find them if they are above ground," cried Griffith, furiously; and he rushed into his bedroom, and soon came out again, with a fearful purpose written on his ghastly features and in his bloodshot eyes, and a loaded pistol in his hand.

Ryder was terrified; but instead of succumbing to terror, she flew at him like a cat, and wreathed her arms round him.

"What would you do?" cried she. "Madman, would you hang for them? and break my heart,--the only woman in the world that loves you? Give me the pistol. Nay, I will have it." And, with that extraordinary power excitement lends her sex, she wrenched it out of his hands.

He gnashed his teeth with fury, and clutched her with a gripe of iron; she screamed with pain: he relaxed his grasp a little at that; she turned on him and defied him.

"I won't let you get into trouble for a priest and a wanton," she cried; "you shall kill me first. Leave me the pistol, and pledge me your sacred word to do them no harm, and then I'll tell you where they are. Refuse me this, and you shall go to your grave and know nothing more than you know now."

"No, no; if you are a woman, have pity on me; let me come at them. There, I'll use no weapon. I'll tear them to atoms with these hands. Where are they?"

"May I put the pistol away then?"

"Yes, take it out of my sight; so best. Where are they?"

Ryder locked the pistol up in one of Mrs. Gaunt's boxes. Then she said, in a trembling voice, "Follow me."

He followed her in awful silence.

She went rather slowly to the door that opened on the lawn; and then she hesitated. "If you are a man, and have any feeling for a poor girl who loves you,--if you are a gentleman, and respect your word,--no violence."

"I promise," said he. "Where are they?"

"Nay, nay. I fear I shall rue the day I told you. Promise me once more: no bloodshed--upon your soul."

"I promise. Where are they?"

"God forgive me; they are in the Grove."

He bounded away from her like some beast of prey; and she crouched and trembled on the steps of the door: and, now that she realized what she was doing, a sickening sense of dire misgiving came over her, and made her feel quite faint.

And so the weak, but dangerous creature sat crouching and quaking, and launched the strong one.

Griffith was soon in the Grove; and the first thing he saw was Leonard and his wife walking together in earnest conversation. Their backs were towards him. Mrs. Gaunt, whom he had left lying on a sofa, and who professed herself scarce able to walk half a dozen times across the room, was now springing along, elastic as a young greyhound, and full of fire and animation. The miserable husband saw, and his heart died within him. He leaned against a tree and groaned.

The deadly sickness of his heart soon gave way to sombre fury. He came softly after them, with ghastly cheek, and bloodthirsty eyes, like red-hot coals.

They stopped; and he heard his wife say, "'T is a solemn promise, then: this very night." The priest bowed assent. Then they spoke in so low a voice, he could not hear; but his wife pressed a purse upon Leonard, and Leonard hesitated, but ended by taking it.

Griffith uttered a yell like a tiger, and rushed between them with savage violence, driving the lady one way with his wrists, and the priest another. She screamed: he trembled in silence.

Griffith stood a moment between these two pale faces, silent and awful.

Then he faced his wife. "You vile wretch!" he cried: "so you _buy_ your own dishonor, and mine." He raised his hand high over her head; she never winced. "O, but for my oath, I'd lay you dead at my feet! But no; I'll not hang for a priest and a wanton. So, this is the thing you love, and pay it to love you." And with all the mad inconsistency of rage, which mixes small things and great, he tore the purse out of Leonard's hand: then seized him felly by the throat.

At that the high spirit of Mrs. Gaunt gave way to abject terror. "O mercy! mercy!" she cried; "it is all a mistake." And she clung to his knees.

He spurned her furiously away. "Don't touch me, woman," he cried, "or you are dead. Look at this!" And in a moment, with gigantic strength and fury, he dashed the priest down at her feet. "I know ye, ye proud, wanton devil!" he cried; "love the thing you have seen me tread upon! love it--if ye can." And he literally trampled upon the poor priest with both feet.

Leonard shrieked for mercy.

"None, in this world or the next," roared Griffith; but the next moment he took fright at himself. "God!" he cried, "I must go or kill. Live and be damned forever, the pair of ye." And with this he fled from them, grinding his teeth and beating the air with his clenched fists.

He darted to the stable-yard, sprang on his horse, and galloped away from Hernshaw Castle, with the face, the eyes, the gestures, the incoherent mutterings of a raving Bedlamite.

WHAT WILL IT COST US?

If we take the arm of Mr. Smith, who is one of many perplexed at this time by the cost of living, and go round with him to rebuke the tradesmen who oppress and devour him by overcharges of every kind, we shall find these obdurate persons very quick upon their defence, and full of admirable justification of their supposed extortion.

The wicked grocer, who in these piping times of peace makes Mr. Smith pay twenty cents a pound for sugar, fifty-five cents for coffee, and a dollar and a half for tea, replies, when reproached with his heartlessness, that Mr. Smith gives him depreciated paper, not gold, for his sugar, while he must pay the importer for prime cost, freight, and duty, with the added premium on gold, and the importer's profit on the aggregate, as well as the new duty on refining; and that as to coffee, it has actually risen in price at Java through the Dutch government's monopoly of the entire product, while our own law has imposed a duty of five cents in gold upon it. This abandoned tradesman declares that he must have a large profit to cover risks in holding such articles as tea and coffee, when trade is unsettled and gold falling; and asserts that he makes no more on tea now than he did in the days when it cost Mr. Smith only thirty-five or forty cents a pound. The duty of twenty-five cents, and the withdrawal and destruction by privateers of many ships formerly engaged in the trade, have brought up the price of tea, and the grocer is none the richer, though Mr. Smith is considerably the poorer.

Equally unblushing is the butcher,--a man who ought to have finer feelings and some sense of remorse. Steak, he tells us, is thirty, second cut of the rib twenty-eight, mutton twenty-eight, and poultry thirty cents a pound, because, as he pretends, the farmers exhausted their supply of cattle in feeding the army for so long a time, and now find it more profitable to raise their lambs, and keep and shear their sheep, than to kill them. To which he adds a note in the minor key concerning the price of gold, and the increased expenses of living, which he has himself to meet, and drives us in despair to the pitiless merchant of whom we buy our dry-goods. _He_ evidently expects Mr. Smith, for he says, with a shameless frankness and readiness: "I admit that I have doubled my prices, but fifty per cent of the rise is due to the premium on gold. Then there come in the war duties, and then the internal revenue taxes. Don't you know that Congress has put taxes on the materials, and upon every process of manufacture, and a further tax of six per cent on sales, to say nothing of stamps and licenses? Look at the report of the Revenue Commission,[F] which tells us that most of the duties are duplicated, till they lap over like shingles and slates, and come to ten or twenty per cent on manufactures. Look at their story of the umbrella! Think of Webster's Spelling-Book printed in London for our schools, to evade the taxes! Think of the men who go to Montreal, Halifax, and even to London, for new suits, in consequence of the duties, and of others who once came to me quarterly for a new coat and gave away their worn garments, and who now come yearly! Please examine this bill for coal at fifteen dollars instead of six dollars a ton, and do not forget the city, State, and national taxes."

Incensed to the last degree by the merchant's effrontery, Mr. Smith hurries us to the den which the cruel coal-dealer calls his office, and demands to know how it is that, when the nation no longer requires coal for the uses of war, and coal ought, in the very nature of things, to come down, he has actually raised the price of it to fifteen dollars a ton?

"Gentlemen," answers the coal-dealer, with a hardness not equalled by the hardest clinker in his own anthracite,--"gentlemen, it's true the war is over, but there are taxes on cars, engines, repairs, and gross receipts, that add fifty per cent to transportation, while for five years past the nation has required so much coal and iron to carry on the war and to repair Southern tracks that few coal railways have been built and few mines opened. There must be rivalry and increased production to put down prices. New mines and railways cannot be opened with gold at the present rates, or while the internal taxes, direct and indirect, add fifteen dollars to the cost of each ton of bar-iron. Nor can there be a great fall while there is a prospect that the coal from Nova Scotia is to be excluded or raised in price by the repeal of the Reciprocity Treaty. Freights have risen to the unprecedented rate of four or five dollars per ton between Philadelphia and Massachusetts and Maine; and if we wish for former freights of two dollars per ton and lower prices, we must build steam colliers like those which run between Newcastle and London, and bring back the coasters that left the trade and took shelter under the flag of England. But the first thing is to bring down the price of gold, which will bring down both freight and profits, and enable the poor to enjoy the sparkle of the black diamonds. And now, Mr. Smith, let me say that what with the city, the State, and the national taxes, I am obliged to raise my rents, and I take the liberty to notify you that houses are scarce; and although I regret to disturb an old tenant and customer, I must add another hundred to the rent of the house you occupy. Houses are in demand; few dare to build while materials are so dear. And there are the Shoddies, who would take mine to-morrow at any rent."

Not in the least consoled, but rather exasperated by this suggestion, Mr. Smith fails to recover his spirits, even on the assurance of the city official whom we meet, that the city, impoverished by payment of soldiers' bounties and allowances to soldiers' families, as well as the payment of the interest of her debt in gold throughout the war, still hopes to reduce the interest to five per cent, and, when gold falls, to diminish the taxes.

But if our course of inquiry into the causes of the present ruinous cost of living has not given much solace to Mr. Smith, we may, nevertheless, from the facts elicited and from the arguments of the different tradesmen draw a few useful conclusions and decide what are the evils to be removed or obviated before we can reduce the cost of living; and the chief of these, we have learned, are the following:--

The premium on gold.

The taxes on productions.

The duties on materials.

The charges on transportation.

The duties and taxes which absorb income.

Let us consider whether these evils may not be boldly met and surmounted, and this, too, without impairing the ability of the nation to meet the interest of the debt incurred as the price of freedom, or interfering with the payment of army and navy pensions, and similar expenses.

RESUMPTION.

What is there to prevent the nation from resuming specie payments during the present year?

There are those who profit by the fluctuations of gold; who gamble in gold, and would make fortunes regardless of the consequences to others; who control the columns of venal papers and write financial articles; who claim to be the leaders of opinion, and tell their confiding readers that Great Britain did not resume for a quarter of a century; that resumption implies contraction and portends ruin; that we have a thousand millions to fund within three years, and therefore cannot resume.

But is not all this fallacious? Our position is not that of the British Isles half a century since, exhausted by a war of twenty years, without a railway, with less than half the wealth and half the population, and one twentieth of the land and mineral resources that we possess, while their debt was fifty per cent more than our own. They were almost stationary, and we are progressive. In descending from a premium of 180 to 30 on gold, we have already accomplished five sixths of the journey towards specie payment without serious disaster and with an easy money-market.

As respects contraction, the instructive report lately addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury by Mr. Carey, the veteran advocate of manufactures, shows that the compound-interest notes are withdrawn; that a large portion of the greenbacks is held as a reserve fund by the banks, another large portion is locked up in the sub-treasury, and the actual circulation of the Union but $460,000,000,--really less than that of France or Great Britain, although our population exceeds that of either of those countries. And Mr. Carey, in his instructive letter, offers proof that our circulation, although in excess of the gold, silver, and bills circulating before the war, is not disproportionate to our commercial transactions. When the Secretary of the Treasury is ready, no serious contraction will probably be required, and no ruin will follow, if our merchants move with caution, and prepare for a return to the only safe standard of values. Let the manufacturer accumulate no stocks, but continue to make goods to order, to sell in advance. Let him cover his sales by the purchase of the materials as the wise and sagacious have done ever since the surrender of Lee, and we shall be ready for the notice that, after an interval of three or four months, the United States will meet their notes and contracts with specie.

Commerce will gradually adapt itself to this notice, as it has done to the decline of gold from 285 to 130 in less than a year. But it is urged that we have a thousand millions of debt to fund within three years, and therefore cannot resume. Did we not fund nearly a thousand millions at par in 1865, and most of this after gold fell to 30 per cent premium? Then the amount was drawn from hoards and commerce; but now our income exceeds expenditures, and we are reducing the debt ten or twenty millions a month; we require no funds for war or unproductive investments, and when we pay one hundred millions, we return it to those who will seek new loans for investment, and doubtless lend on more favorable terms.

At Paris, Brussels, and Frankfort, the average rate of interest last year was less than five per cent. Give Mr. McCulloch power to go there, to issue bonds for one twentieth part of our debt payable there in the currency of the country; and with such a fund at his disposal, he can at once reduce interest and bring back specie, or rather retain it; for we need not seek it abroad. When the Committee of Ways and Means intimate that they will give him this power, gold and exchange fall; if a doubt is expressed, both advance; and the simple question before the public is, whether we shall cripple the Minister of Finance and give the power to Wall Street;--whether our finances are to be governed by the Jews of the gold board and the speculators of the stock exchange, or by the Secretary of the Treasury. If we ended the war by placing one man on the field to direct every movement,--after we had tried in vain to conduct it by committees of Congress and rival generals,--will not one statesman, with plenary power, be equally effective on the field of finance?

The man who carried a Western State through the revulsion of 1857, and maintained specie payments when Boston and New York succumbed,--who has so well and so successfully wielded the limited power we have given him,--well deserves the confidence of the country. Let him have power at once to go to the fountain-head for the small balance we may require from the Old World; let him have the authority to raise funds to meet the floating debt and temporary loan, and to replace the seven-thirties and compound-interest notes as they mature, and we may confidently anticipate both an early resumption of specie payments and reduced rates of interest, and consequent diminution of debt. With a return to specie payments, our current expenses must fall from thirty to forty per cent, and we can well afford to resign any premium on gold we now enjoy.

TAXES ON PRODUCTION.

The Revenue Commission enlighten us on this point. In their very able and luminous Report they say:--

"The diffuseness of the present revenue system of the United States is doubtless one of its greatest imperfections, and under it the exemption of any article from taxation is the exception rather than the rule. To assert this, however, is no reflection on the judgment or skill of its authors. The system was framed under circumstances of such pressing necessity as to afford but little opportunity for any careful and accurate investigation of the sources of revenue; but it has most certainly accomplished the end designed, namely, the raising of revenue; and the country to-day is undoubtedly receiving by taxation far more revenue than is necessary for its legitimate expenditures. As a success, therefore, our present revenue system is a most honorable testimonial, not only to the wisdom of its authors, but to the patriotism of the people, who not only _endured_, but _welcomed_, the burdens it imposed upon them.

"A system of taxation, however, so diffuse as the present one, necessarily entails a system of duplication of taxes, which in turn leads to an undue enhancement of prices; a decrease both of production and consumption, and consequently of wealth; a restriction of exportations and of foreign commerce; and a large increase in the machinery and expense of the revenue collection.

"In respect to the injurious influence of this duplication of taxes upon the industry of the country, the Commission cannot speak too strongly. Its effect has already been most injurious. It threatens the very existence (even with the protection of inflated prices and a high tariff) of many branches of industry; and with a return of the trade and currency of the country to anything approximating its normal condition, it must, by checking development, prove highly disastrous.

"The influence of the duplication of taxes in sustaining prices is also, in the opinion of the Commission, far greater than those not conversant with the subject generally estimate; and were the price of gold and of the national currency made at once to approximate, and the present revenue system to continue unchanged, it would be impossible for the prices of most products of manufacturing industry to return to anything like their former level."

The Commission arrive at the conclusion, that all our manufactures are by these taxes increased in cost from ten to twenty per cent. In the language of Senator Sherman, when defending the Internal Tax Bill in the Senate last year, the nation required funds to maintain its armies in the field; it had put forth its arms and grasped the money of the country, and would reduce and equalize the taxes when the war was ended. The Revenue Commission find the taxes on our manufactures and their materials an incubus upon the industry and a check to the progress of the country, and recommend their remission. And this we may reasonably expect from Congress at its present session. But, it may be urged, how are we to meet the interest on our debt and current expenses of $284,000,000 in the aggregate, if we repeal these taxes? The answer is a simple one. The Commission estimate our imports at $400,000,000, and our duties now average forty-seven per cent. Should this continue, we should draw from this source alone $188,000,000. There is also the revenue from public lands and miscellaneous sources, which the Secretary and the Revenue Commission both rate at $21,000,000, making an aggregate of $209,000,000; although the Commission, to guard against the effects of any change in the tariff, modestly rate these items at only $151,000,000.

To these they add for excise, viz.:--

From five cents per pound on Cotton, $40,000,000 One dollar per gallon on Spirits, 40,000,000 Duties on Tobacco, 18,000,000 Malt Liquors at one dollar only per barrel, 5,000,000 Twenty cents per gallon on Refined Petroleum, 3,000,000 From Spirits of Turpentine and Rosin, 2,000,000 ----------- $108,000,000

Licenses, $15,000,000 Stamps, 20,000,000 Banks, 15,000,000 Salaries, Sales, and Successions, 9,000,000 ----------- $59,000,000

They thus provide a revenue of $318,000,000, or $30,000,000 more than that required by the Secretary,--a surplus which, with the annual excess of duties, to say nothing of the future growth of revenue, would extinguish our debt in little more than thirty years. But to guard against all contingencies, they propose to levy on incomes taxes to the amount of $40,000,000; and on the gross receipts of railways, bridges, canals, and stages, $9,000,000. These change the aggregate to $367,000,000; an excess of $81,000,000 over the estimate of our requirements by the Secretary.

* * * * *

The Commission give us the Budget of France in the following summary, viz.:--

Direct Taxes, $63,072,280 Registry Stamps and Public Domains, 81,537,833 Forests, 8,051,300 Customs and Duties on Salt, 29,485,000 Indirect Taxes, 115,600,400 Post-Office, 14,482,000 Sundry Revenues, 26,441,989 Miscellaneous, 11,736,360 ----------- Total, $350,407,212

Also, the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland for 1865, viz.:--

Customs, $115,023,808 Excise, 97,048,180 Stamps, 47,659,870 Fund and assessed Taxes, 16,439,670 Income and Property Taxes, 39,928,865 Post-Office, 20,852,197 Grain Lands, 2,212,000 Miscellaneous, 14,967,183 ----------- Total $354,131,773

If from these returns we deduct the earnings of the Post-Office Department, which are not included in the Commission's estimate of revenue for the United States, that estimate will exceed the returns of revenue for France or the United Kingdom by more than thirty millions, although the expenses of each of these countries are at least fifty millions more than the computed expenses of our own. It is obvious, therefore, from the Report of the Commission, that we may dispense with the fifty-nine millions from income tax and the duties on transportation, and still have a margin of more than thirty millions to cover contingencies and provide for the gradual reduction of the debt. Such a victory in finance achieved the first year after the war would give us a second great national triumph.

The system proposed by the Commission is entitled to the most favorable consideration. The taxes levied during the war were multifarious in their character. Although effective in producing revenue, they were imposed without discrimination, and they bear heavily alike both on producer and consumer, checking the industry of the one and swelling unduly the expenditures of the other. The plan of the Commission strikes the handcuffs from industry, lessens the expenses of collection, enables our artisan to compete with the foreigner, and, as most of the manufactures of the country are consumed at home, consequently reduces the cost of living. It seems from the Report of the Commission, that their leading idea is to simplify the system and reduce the number of taxes; to shift them from the producer to the consumer, and thus stimulate the creation of wealth; to diminish charges, and at the same time lighten the weight of the impost as it falls on the consumer. Another leading idea is to transfer a portion of our burdens to the foreign consumers of cotton, and at the same time stimulate our manufactures, and the production of cotton, by a remission of the tax on cloth exported; while yet another part of their plan was to take from the illicit trader and give to the public coffers the profit he now realizes upon spirits, and to restore alcohol to the arts.

Let us give to each of these measures the attention it deserves; and inquire if we may not take at once the steps, which the Commission defer for the present, toward the discontinuance of all charges upon transportation and incomes. In recommending the entire removal of taxes on production as the first measure to be adopted, the Commissioners advise: "That the capital stock of the country in the interval between 1850 and 1860, deducting the value of the slaves, increased at the rate of 158 per cent, or from $5,533,000 to $14,282,000; and that, if a development in any degree approximating to the past can be maintained and continued, then the extinguishment of the national debt in a comparatively brief period becomes a matter of no uncertainty. To secure this development, both by removing the shackles from industry, and by facilitating the means of rapid and cheap intercommunication between the different sections of the country, is to effect at the same time a solution of all the financial difficulties that now press upon us."

The policy of the Commission is the speedy abolition or reduction of all taxes which tend to check development. This policy is eminently wise and statesman-like; for while it removes some of our most onerous burdens, it gives a stimulus to the creation of wealth that must annually alleviate our taxes, and is entitled to the approval of an enlightened nation.

The second great measure of the Commission is to increase to five cents the tax on cotton, which has, since the close of our last financial year, begun to aid our revenue. The soil, climate, and seasons of our Southern States are peculiarly adapted to the culture of cotton. In India the fields are parched by the extreme heats of summer, and the staple shortened; in Algiers, the rains of autumn, which favor the young wheat, prevent the opening of the cotton-balls; but in the cotton States of the South, the moisture of the spring, the heats and showers of summer, and the dry weather and late frosts of autumn, all contribute to the full development of the cotton-plant; and the yield is twice or three times as great as in the cotton districts of the East. The staple, too, is much more valuable, and the yield and the quality of the staple are both improved by the application of guano. In 1859 the yield of the United States rose to 2,080,000,000 pounds, while the consumption of the civilized world was as follows:--

In Great Britain, 1,050,000,000 lbs. On the Continent, 700,000,000 " In the United States, 400,000,000 " ------------- Total, 2,150,000,000 lbs.

During the five years of war, the consumption was reduced more than one half by the deficiency; Great Britain was compelled to pay twice the usual amount for half the usual quantity, and cotton rose from ten cents to sixty cents in gold. The world was ransacked for cotton, and the whole addition made to the supply (chiefly from India and Egypt) did not exceed the increase of three years in the United States previous to the war. The Revenue Commission have made a very elaborate report upon this subject, and base their conclusions upon the advice and opinions of the chief manufacturers of New England, who concur in the opinion that the tax will be chiefly paid by the foreign consumer; that it will not give an undue stimulus to the culture of cotton abroad; that Japan and China have, since the decline of cotton to twenty pence in England, ceased to ship it, and are drawing upon Surat and Bombay; that Egypt, our chief rival, has nearly or quite reached her full capacity of production, while India makes little progress.

The late Confederacy, by imposing an export duty of twenty cents per pound, to be paid in gold; France, by her export duty on linen and cotton rags and skins of animals; Russia, by various export duties; Portugal, by her duties on wine exported; Great Britain, by her export duties, imposed in India, on gunny-cloth, linseed, jute, saltpetre, and opium; and Holland, by her monopoly and export duties on the coffee of Java,--give precedents for a tax on cotton. The United States are prohibited by the Constitution from levying an export duty, but may nevertheless impose an internal tax which will cling to the cotton both abroad and at home. A tax of five cents a pound will add but one cent to the cost of a yard of calico; and with a crop of 2,000,000,000 pounds, like that of 1859, will yield a revenue of $100,000,000, although the Commission do not anticipate more than half that revenue for a few years to come. It seems but reasonable that King Cotton, who made the war, should aid in defraying its expenses; and it is also just that England and France, his chief allies, should pay their tribute for the suppression of the revolt they did so much to encourage. The planters and free blacks of the South have sufficient incentives to the culture of cotton in the high prices it must bear for years to come; and the Commission have very wisely recommended a remission of the tax on all cotton cloth or yarn exported, which will give a stimulus to manufactures both at the South and the North, and enable our merchants to meet those of Great Britain in successful competition in all parts of the globe. The cotton tax, as a substitute for taxes on sales and manufactures, will meet the cordial support of our countrymen; and, if it oppose a slight check to production, they have already learned that half a crop gives more dollars than a whole one.

SPIRITS.

Another change of great importance recommended by the Commission, both in their general Report, and in a special report devoted to this subject, is a reduction of the duty on spirits from two dollars to one dollar per gallon _as a revenue measure_, the higher duty having proved an utter failure. For some months past the average quantity that has monthly paid duty has been less than half a million gallons, or at the rate of six millions of gallons per year, while the entire annual product, by the census of 1860, exceeded ninety-two millions of gallons, and, at the customary rate of increase, would have amounted to one hundred and twenty millions of gallons, or ten millions a month, in place of half a million in 1866. It has been ascertained that in 1860 more than half the annual production was consumed in the arts. As alcohol it was used for ether, spirit-lamps, camphene, and burning-fluid; by apothecaries for tinctures and medicinal preparations; by hair-dressers for lotions; and it was also consumed in many manufactures. The duty has carried alcohol to five dollars per gallon, and nearly stopped its use in the arts, while it has not stopped the use of spirits as a beverage. It has drawn a revenue from the pockets of the people, and transferred it from the government to the illicit trader. While the duty ranged from twenty to sixty cents per gallon, the amount assessed was from six to seven million gallons per month; but the returns nearly ceased with the advance of duty two years since. Efforts have been made to sustain the present duty by reference to the practice of Great Britain, where a duty of $2.40 is imposed upon the imperial gallon; but the imperial gallon is more than twenty per cent larger than the wine gallon of America. The average prime cost of good spirits there being sixty cents a gallon, while it has been but twenty cents in the West, the percentage of the British duty is but 400 per cent, while the duty of the United States is 1000 per cent, or a rate 150 per cent above the rate abroad. Great Britain, in her compact territory, has employed 7,200 men in the preventive service, and 66 cruisers to check the evasions of her duties on spirits and tobacco; and it is estimated by good judges that a large part of the spirits, and more than half the tobacco, consumed in England escape the duty. Several thousand seizures are made annually, and it has been testified before Parliament that not one evasion in sixteen is detected. If this be so in Great Britain, it is not surprising that the government has failed, in this country, with its sparse population, to collect a duty of 1000 per cent, or that the experiment has cost the nation more than fifty millions. Such excessive duties may well be styled over-taxation, and tend to demoralize and corrupt our revenue officers, to encourage fraud, and to enrich illicit traders. The Commission believe that the reduction of the duty will restore alcohol to the arts, diminish fraud, and give us a revenue of at least $40,000,000 annually,--a sum nearly equal to the proceeds of the income tax.

INCOME TAX.

The Revenue Commission clearly demonstrate by their Report and table of income, that this tax will not be required to meet our interest and current expenses, and they apparently retain a portion of it as a flank guard for their other items of revenue; but it is obvious from their very guarded Report that this flank guard may be dispensed with. The Commissioners very properly suggest that it is better to place this tax upon created wealth and net income than to levy it upon production, and in this all sensible men will concur; but we require at this time no surplus revenue of $81,000,000. Our revenue from foreign duties must exceed their estimate; and if it did not, a sinking fund of $32,000,000 is ample for a debt of $2,700,000,000, $400,000,000 of which draws no interest, and the residue of which we may well presume will soon be permanently funded at reduced interest. The income tax in Great Britain is but 1-2/3 per cent, and it is wise to reduce our own tax on the surplus incomes of the rich from ten to five per cent; but the suggestion that an income tax should be imposed on rents exceeding $300 is in conflict with the Commissioners' suggestion, at page 60 of their Report: "The general government has taken to itself nearly every source of revenue, except the single one of real estate, which had been before burdened with large expenditures for schools, roads, and other things with which the local governments stand charged," and "cases can be cited in which taxation upon real estate even now falls little short of confiscation. Justice and wise policy, therefore, would seem to demand that the national government should not now adopt any measures calculated to maintain or increase these burdens, but, on the contrary, do all in its power to diminish them."

Let the nation follow this judicious advice, and dispose of the additional charge on real estate by repealing the income tax, which we cease to require, or reducing it to a tax of three or four per cent upon dividends and coupons, which will yield at least ten millions. This will furnish a sufficient rear-guard for the corps which the Commission has marshalled.

To use another happy expression in the very able Report of the Commission,--"Freedom from multitudinous taxes, espionage, and vexations; freedom from needless official inquisitions and intrusions; freedom from the hourly provocations of each individual in the nation to concealments, evasions, and falsehoods; freedom for industry, circulation, and competition,--everywhere give the nation these conditions, and it will give in return a flowing income."

We indorse the conclusions of the Commission, but would carry them to their legitimate results,--the repeal of the inquisitorial tax on incomes.

One of the Commissioners, Mr. J. S. Hayes, in a special report upon the subject, proposes to draw some part of the revenue from the national bonds. Those which are now reached by the income tax when the holders are residents here should be reached hereafter by an impost on dividends and coupons, according to Mr. Hayes's idea. He urges that these bonds were issued when the currency was depreciated to 73 per cent, or 27 per cent below par; but it was the government paper that depreciated it, and the loyal men who subscribed for the national bonds in many instances used funds drawn from mortgages upon which they had advanced in gold the money they invested. Great Britain realized only 63 per cent or less in depreciated currency from her three-per-cents, but redeems them at par, or buys them in open market. There may be instances in which individuals evade local taxes by such investments, but even this tends to popularize the loans and reduce interest; and it may well be asked whether it would not be wiser for the nation to make the loan popular, treating it as sacred, and thus save twenty or thirty millions in interest annually by reducing interest one per cent, than to attempt to save two thirds that amount by taxes, which would inspire lenders with distrust, injure the credit of the nation, and weaken its resources in a future exigency.

TAXES ON GROSS RECEIPTS.

The Commission, while they condemn charges on transportation, continue for the present nine millions in taxes on the gross receipts of steamers, ships, and railways, which it would be wise to relinquish at the earliest moment. The railways to earn one dollar must charge two, which doubles these taxes to the public, and adds to the cost of delivering each ton of coal and each bushel of grain at the seaports, so that our internal commerce now presents the strange anomaly of Indian corn selling at one dollar per bushel in Boston, and at thirty-six cents in Chicago, or less than the price in gold before the Insurrection. Such charges are an incubus on trade, and may wisely be abandoned.

PROVINCIAL COMMERCE.

For the past ten years the Central and Eastern States have drawn large supplies of breadstuffs, animals, lumber, and other materials for our manufactures, from the Provinces; and under the Treaty of Reciprocity our fisheries have grown vastly in importance. The whole amount of this commerce, including the outfits and returns of the fishermen, is close upon $100,000,000, and the tonnage of arrivals and departures exceeds 7,000,000 tons. Under the Treaty we have imported Canadian and Morgan horses, oats for their support, barley of superior quality for our ale, lustre-wool for our alpacas, and boards and clapboards for our houses and for the fences and corn-cribs of our Western prairies. Indeed, the facilities for communicating with the Provinces are so great, that for some years past we have imported potatoes, coal, gypsum, and building stone to supply the wants of New York and New England. Is it wise, then, to cripple this growing trade by placing a duty of fifty per cent on the spruce and pine we require for the new houses whose construction the war has delayed, and by denying to Maine and Massachusetts the privilege of sending their pine down the Aroostook and St. John, as those who own townships on the waters of the Penobscot propose?

When Mr. Sumner moved the repeal of the Treaty, it was upon the ground that it prevented us from levying a tax on lumber. The Ministers of Canada have at once conceded this, and agree that internal duties may be levied on all they send to us, and thus meet in advance the position of Mr. Sumner. They have shown a desire to revive the Treaty, and to cherish the great commerce between contiguous states. Mr. Derby reports to the State Department that they will extend the free list, and include our manufactures; that they will discourage illicit trade, and repeal all discriminating tolls and duties. The position taken by the Ministers of Canada is eminently wise and judicious. While we may not concede all the privileges they ask, is it our policy to decline to negotiate,--to shut out the materials we require and can command at low rates? Is it wise to propose, as a committee of Congress has done, to reduce a free commerce of seven millions of tons to a traffic in plaster and millstones, and thus jeopard our fisheries and stimulate smuggling? The Canadian Ministers, who visited Washington on business connected with the Treaty, were kindly received by our Executive. They placed the Provinces on the true ground by their proffered concessions and offers to negotiate, and can stand at home upon the ground they took, while their course in retiring after the rebuff they received from the committee was dignified and judicious. When Congress has disposed of reconstruction, and found leisure to attend to revenue and finance; when it sees that we need new materials for our rising manufactures, and require access both by the east and the west to the exhaustless pine forests of Canada,[G] to provincial oats and barley, purchasable at rates lower than those at which the West can afford to send them, and to coal on coasts which Nature designed for the supply of the gas-works and steamers of New England; when it finds proclamations issued excluding our fishermen from the waters to which the mackerel resort,--then Congress at last will doubtless be willing to resume negotiations, and to give to us coal, wood, butter, grain, fish, lumber, and horses at reasonable prices.

* * * * *

Eliminating from the summary of the Commission the items which are condemned by their Report, we have the following result:--

REVENUE LIST OF COMMISSIONERS, EXCLUDING TAXES ON INCOME AND TRANSPORTATION.

Customs, $130,000,000 Excise on Spirits, Tobacco, Malt Liquors Cotton, Refined Oil, Spirits of Turpentine, and Rosin, 108,000,000 Licenses, 15,000,000 Salaries, 2,000,000 Banks, 15,000,000 Stamps, 20,000,000 Sales, Legacies, &c., 7,000,000 Add Tax on Dividend and Coupons, 10,000,000 Miscellaneous, 21,000,000 ----------- Total $328,000,000

Amount deemed necessary by the Secretary of the Treasury to meet Interest and Expenses of Government annually, 284,000,000 ----------- Surplus, $44,000,000

We thus deduce from the estimate of the Secretary and the conclusions to which we are led by the Commission a surplus revenue or sinking fund of $44,000,000, and this, too, after discontinuing all taxes on production, income, and transportation, and liberating industry from the trammels imposed by war. In addition, we may expect from cotton, whenever the crop exceeds two millions of bales, a further revenue from the five-cent tax, while the income from customs, which we rate at $130,000,000, has actually been increased since June, 1865, to the amount of $58,000,000 more.

These results, achieved by the country while emerging from the smoke of the battle-field, and disbanding its troops and placing army and navy on a peace footing, are in the highest degree reassuring. What is there, then, to prevent the nation's prompt return to specie?

Our chief bankers estimate their annual remittances to American citizens for foreign travel and residence abroad at less than five millions yearly. Our exports again exceed our imports, and foreign exchange is at 7-1/4 in gold, or two per cent below par. An emigration, chiefly from Germany, greatly in excess of any former year is predicted. It has been well ascertained that each emigrant brings, on the average, seventy dollars in funds to this country, and these funds alone will suffice to meet our interest abroad. What period could be more auspicious for a gradual return, say in six months, to specie? Of course there would be some decline in merchandise, but the loss would fall on declining stocks, often sold in advance, and would not reach stocks in bond, the price of which is to be paid in specie. The improvident might suffer a little; but when the first shock was past, would not a strong impulse be given to industry? Would not enterprise be at once directed to the erection of the houses, factories, ships, steamers, locomotives, and railways which our growth demands? Would not the community immediately seek to renew their wardrobes and furniture, now worn out or exhausted by the war? Our mutual friend Mr. Smith might then meet his friend the coal-merchant with a smile, and cheer himself with his open fireplace, putting away his stifling but economic stove; he might postpone his retirement from the three-story brick to the wooden two-story in the suburbs, eat his roast beef again on Sunday, and regale himself with black coffee after dinner, without a thought of the slow but sagacious Dutchman, who is transferring at his expense a national debt of $800,000,000 from the sea-girt dikes of little Holland to the populous and fertile isles and spice groves and coffee plantations of Sumatra and Java.

FOOTNOTES:

[F] Report of the United States Revenue Commission to the Secretary of the Treasury, January 29th, 1866.

[G] The annual product of lumber in Maine is rated at 1,100,000,000 feet, worth $20,000,000. By the census of 1860, the lumber produced by all the States was valued at $95,000,000. The consumption was at least $100,000,000, or five times the amount furnished by Maine. Canada has 287,000 square miles of pine forest on the waters of the St. Lawrence.

MEPHISTOPHELEAN.

You have been, I presume, Madam, among the crowds of young and old, to the musical revival of the great wonder-work of the last century. You have heard the Frenchman's musical expression of the German poet's thought, uttered by the motley assemblage of nationalities which constitutes an opera troupe in these latter days. You have seen the learned Dr. Faustus's wig and gown whisked off behind his easy chair, and the rejuvenated Doctor emerge from his antiquated apparel as fresh and sprightly as Harlequin himself, to make love in Do-di-pettos. You have seen the blonde young Gretchen, beauteous and pure at her spinning-wheel, gay and frolicsome before that box looking-glass and that kitchen table,--have heard her tender vows of affection and her passionate outbursts of despair. You have heard the timid Siebel warble out his adolescent longings for the gentle maid in the very scantiest of tunics, as becomes the fair proportions of the stage girl-boy. You have seen the respectable old Martha faint at the news of her husband's death, and forthwith engage in a desperate flirtation with the gentleman who brings the news. You have seen the gallant Valentin lead off the march of that band of stalwart warriors, who seem to have somehow lost the correct step in their weary campaigns. Your memory, even now, has a somewhat confused impression of Frederici, moonlight, Mazzoleni, Kermesse, Sulzer, gardens, Kellogg, churches, Himmer, flaming goblets, Stockton, and an angelic host with well-rounded calves in pink tights, radiant in the red light that, from some hidden regions, illuminates the aforesaid scantily clad angels, as they hang, like Mahomet's coffin, 'twixt heaven and earth.

But I question, Madam, whether the strongest impression which your memory retains be not exactly the one personage in the drama whom I have omitted to mention,--the red-legged, gleaming-eyed, loud-voiced gentleman who pulls the hidden wires which set all the other puppets in motion,--Mr. Mephistopheles himself. Marguerite, studied, refined, unimpassioned in the pretty Yankee girl,--simple, warm, outpouring in the sympathetic German woman,--and Faust, gallant, ardent, winning in the bright-eyed Italian,--thoughtful, tender, fervent in the intelligent German,--are background figures in the picture your memory paints; while the ubiquitous, sneering, specious, cunning, tempting, leering, unholy Mephistopheles is a character of himself, in the foreground, whose special interpreter you do not care to distinguish.

Ring down the curtain. Put out the lights. We will leave the mimic scene, and return to the broad stage of life, whereon all are actors and all are audience. There are Gretchens and Fausts everywhere,--American, English, French, German, Italian,--of all nations and tongues,--but there is only one Mephistopheles. They have lived and loved and fallen and died. But he, indestructible, lives on to flash fire in the cups of beings yet unborn, and lurk with unholy intent in hearts which have not yet learned to beat. There is only one Mephistopheles; but he is protean in shape. The little gentleman in black, the hero of so many strange stories, is but the Teutonic incarnation of a spirit which takes many forms in many lands. Out of the brain of the great German poet he steps, in a guise which is known and recognized wherever the story of love and betrayal finds an echo in human hearts. Poor Gretchen! She had heard of Satan, and had been rocked to sleep by tales of the Loreley, and knew from her Bible that there was an evil spirit in the world seeking whom he might devour. But little did she dream, when she stopped her spinning-wheel to think for a moment of the gallant young lover who wooed her so ardently, that the glance of his eye was lighted with the flame of eternal fire, and that the fond words of love he spoke were hot breathings from the regions of the accursed. Poor Gretchen!

But, my dear Madam, this is all a fable. Mephistopheles--the real, vital, moving Mephistopheles--has outlived Goethe, and will outlast the very memory of the unhappy heroine of his noble poem. He walks the streets to-day as fresh and persuasive as when, in ophidian form, he haunted that lovely garden which is said to have once stood near the banks of the Euphrates, and there beguiled the mother of mankind. Your friend Asmodeus--albeit not the quondam friend of that name for whose especial amusement he unroofed so many houses in the last century, when he was suffering from severe lameness--has a discerning eye to pierce his many disguises. He does not walk our streets now-a-days in red tights or with tinsel eyes; he does not limp about with a sardonic laugh; nor could you see the cloven hoof which is said to betray his identity. Were such the case, the little street-boys would point him out, and the daily papers, with which his friend Dr. Faustus had so much to do in their origin, would record his movements with greater eagerness than they do the comings and goings of generals and governors. No, my dear Madam, he assumes no such striking costumes. But he brushes by you in your daily walks, he sits beside you in the car, the theatre, and even in the church, in respectable, fashionable attire. Frank dickers with him in his counting-room, Tommy chases him in the play-ground, Mrs. Asmodeus makes him a fashionable call, and--God help us all!--we sometimes find him sitting domiciliated at our hearthstones. He changes like the wizard we used to read of in our wonderful fairy books, who was an ogre one moment and a mouse the next. He is more potent than the philosopher's stone; for that changed everything into gold only, while he becomes, at will, all the ores and alloys of creation. Fortunatus's wishing-cap and Prince Hussein's tapestry were baby toys to him. They whisked their owners away to the place where they wished, at the moment, to be. He is ubiquitous.

He lurks under the liberty-cap of the goddess whose features are stamped in the shining gold, and his laugh is the clink of the jingling pieces. He turns himself into a regal sceptre that sways the gaping crowd, and it becomes a magnet that draws with resistless power the outstretched, itching palms of men. He takes the witching form of woman, paints her pulpy cheek with peachy bloom, knots into grace her mass of wavy hair, lights in her sparkling eye the kindling flame, hangs on her pouting lip the expectant kiss, and bids her supple waist invite caress; and more seductive far than gold or power are these cunning lures to win men to bow down in abject, grovelling worship of his might. My dear Madam, I would not imply that your beauty and grace are exhibitions of his skill. By no manner of means! I faithfully believe that Frank was drawn to you by the holiest, purest, best of emotions. But then, you know, so many of your lovely sex are under the influence of that cunning gentleman while they least suspect it. When a poor girl who owns but one jewel on earth--the priceless one that adorns and ennobles her lowliness--barters that treasure away for the cheap glitter of polished stones or the rustling sweep of gaudy silk, is not the basilisk gleam of the Mephistophelean eye visible in the sparkling of those gewgaws and the sheen of that stuff? When your friend Asmodeus, honest in his modest self-respect, is most ignominiously ignored by the stylish Mrs. Money,--her father was a cobbler,--more noted for brocades than brains,--or the refined Miss Blood,--her grandfather was third-cousin to some Revolutionary major,--more distinguished for shallowness than for spirit,--does he not smile in his sleeve, with great irreverence for the brocades and the birth, at the easy way in which the old fellow has wheedled them into his power by tickling their conceit and vanity? He creeps into all sorts of corners, and lurks in the smallest of hiding-places. He lies _perdu_ in the folds of _figurante's_ gauze, nestles under the devotee's sombre veil, waves in the flirt's fan, and swims in the gossip's teacup. He burrows in a dimple, floats on a sigh, rides on a glance, and hovers in a thought.

But I would not infer, Madam, that he is the particular pet of the fair, or that he specially devotes himself to their subjugation. It is certain that he employs them with his most cunning skill, and sways the world most powerfully by their regnant charms. But the lords of creation are likewise the slaves of his will and the dupes of his deception. He bestrides the nib of the statesman's pen and guides it into falsehood and treason. He perches on the cardinal's hat and counsels bigotry and oppression. He sits on the tradesman's counter and bears down the unweighted scale. He hides in the lawyer's bag and makes specious pleas for adroit rogues. He slips into the gambler's greasy pack and rolls over his yellow dice. He dances on the bubbles of the drunkard's glass, swings on the knot of the planter's lash, and darts on the point of the assassin's knife. He revels in a coarse oath, laughs in a perjured vow, and breathes in a lie. He has kept celebrated company in times gone by. He was Superintendent of the Coliseum when the Christian martyrs were given to the wild beasts. He was long time a familiar in the Spanish Inquisition, and adviser of the Catholic priesthood in those days, and Governor of the Bastile afterwards. He was the king's minister of pleasure in the days of the latter Louises. He was court chaplain when Ridley and Latimer were burned. He was Charles IX.'s private secretary at the time of the St. Bartholomew affair, and Robespierre's right-hand man in the days of Terror. He was Benedict Arnold's counsellor, Jefferson Davis's bedfellow, and John Wilkes Booth's bosom friend.

A personage, and yet none ever saw him. His cloven hoof, his twisted horns, his suit of black, his gleaming eyes, his limbs of flame, are but the poet's dream, the painter's color. Mephistopheles is but the creature of our fancy, and exists but in the fears, the passions, the desires of mankind. He is born in hearts where love is linked with license, in minds where pride weds with folly, in souls where piety unites with intolerance. We never meet the roaring lion in our path; yet our hearts are torn by his fangs and lacerated by his claws. We never see the sardonic cavalier; yet we hear his specious whisperings in our ears. The sunlight of truth shines forever upon us; yet we sit in the cold shadow of error. We put the cup of pleasure to our lips, and quaff, instead of cooling draughts, the fiery flashes of searing excess. We long for forbidden delights, and when the fiend Opportunity places them within our reach, we sign the compact of our misery to obtain them. The charmed circle this unholy spirit draws around his fatal power is traced along the devious line that marks our weakness and our ignorance. Storm as we may, he stands intrenched within our souls, defying all our wrath. But he shrinks and crouches before us when, bold and fearless, we lift the cross of truth, and bid him fly the upborne might of our intelligence. Mephistopheles is an unholy spirit, nestling in the hearts of myriads of poor human beings who never heard of Goethe. Long after the mimic scene in which he shares shall have been forgot,--long after the sirens who have warbled poor Gretchen's joys and sorrows shall have mouldered in their graves,--long after the witching beauty of the Frenchman's harmony shall have been forever hushed,--long after the very language in which the German poet portrayed him shall have passed into oblivion,--will Mephistopheles carry his diabolisms into the souls of human kind, and hold there his mystic reign. Yet there are those, and you find Asmodeus is one, who dream of a day when the Mephistophelean dynasty is to be overthrown,--when the sappers and miners of the great army of human progress are to besiege him in his strong-holds, and to lead him captive in eternal bondage. Of all the guides who lead that mighty host, none rank above the Faust of whom tradition tells such wondrous tales. Not the bewigged and motley personage Gounod has sung, not the impassioned lover Goethe drew, but the great genius who first taught mankind to stamp its wisdom in imperishable characters, and to bequeath it unto races yet to rise. The Faust of history shall long outlive the Faust of wild romance. The victim in the transient poem shall be a conqueror in the unwritten chronicles of time.

My dear Madam, let us draw around us a charmed circle; not with the trenchant point of murderous steel, but with the type that Faust gave to the world. Within its bounds, intelligence and thought shall guard us safe from Mephistopheles. Come he in whatever guise he may, its subtile potency shall, like Ithuriel's spear, compel him to display his real form in all its native ugliness and dread. And we must pass away; yet may we leave behind, secure in the defence we thus may raise, the dear ones that we love, to be the parents of an angel race that, in the distant days to come, shall tread the sod above our long-forgotten dust.

MR. HOSEA BIGLOW'S SPEECH IN MARCH MEETING.

Jaalam, April 5, 1866.

MY DEAR SIR,--

(an' noticin' by your kiver thet you're some dearer than wut you wuz, I enclose the diffrence) I dunno ez I know jest how to interdroce this las' perduction of my mews, ez Parson Willber allus called 'em, which is goin' to _be_ the last an' _stay_ the last onless sunthin' pertikler sh'd interfear which I don't expec' ner I wun't yield tu ef it wuz ez pressin' ez a deppity Shiriff. Sence M^r Wilbur's disease I hevn't hed no one thet could dror out my talons. He ust to kind o' wine me up an' set the penderlum agoin' an' then somehow I seemed to go on tick as it wear tell I run down, but the noo minister ain't of the same brewin' nor I can't seem to git ahold of no kine of huming nater in him but sort of slide rite off as you du on the eedge of a mow. Minnysteeril natur is wal enough an' a site better'n most other kines I know on, but the other sort sech as Welbor hed wuz of the Lord's makin' an' naterally more wonderfle an' sweet tastin' leastways to me so fur as heerd from. He used to interdooce 'em smooth ez ile athout sayin' nothin' in pertickler an' I misdoubt he didn't set so much by the sec'nd Ceres as wut he done by the Fust, fact, he let on onct thet his mine misgive him of a sort of fallin' off in spots. He wuz as outspoken as a norwester _he_ wuz, but I tole him I hoped the fall wuz from so high up thet a feller could ketch a good many times fust afore comin' bunt onto the ground as I see Jethro C. Swett from the meetin' house steeple up to th' old perrish, an' took up for dead but he 's alive now an' spry as wut you be. Turnin' of it over I recclected how they ust to put wut they called Argymunce onto the frunts of poymns, like poorches afore housen whare you could rest ye a spell whilst you wuz concludin' whether you'd go in or nut espeshully ware tha wuz darters, though I most allus found it the best plen to go in fust an' think afterwards an' the gals likes it best tu. I dno as speechis ever hez any argimunts to 'em, I never see none thet hed an' I guess they never du but tha must allus be a B'ginnin' to everythin' athout it is Etarnity so I'll begin rite away an' any body may put it afore any of his speeches ef it soots an' welcome. I don't claim no paytent.

THE ARGYMUNT.

Interducshin, w'ich may be skipt. Begins by talkin' about himself: thet 's jest natur an'

most gin'ally allus pleasin', I b'leeve I 've notist, to _one_ of the cumpany, an' thet 's more than wut you can say of most speshes of talkin'. Nex' comes the gittin' the goodwill of the orjunce by lettin' 'em gether from wut you kind of ex'dentally let drop thet they air about East, A one, an' no mistaik, skare 'em up an' take 'em as they rise. Spring interdooced with a fiew approput flours. Speach finally begins witch nobuddy need n't feel obolygated to read as I never read 'em an' never shell this one ag'in. Subjick staited; expanded; delayted; extended. Pump lively. Subjick staited ag'in so 's to avide all mistaiks. Ginnle remarks; continooed; kerried on; pushed furder; kind o' gin out. Subjick _re_staited; dielooted; stirred up permiscoous. Pump ag'in. Gits back to where he sot out. Can't seem to stay thair. Ketches into Mr. Seaward's hair. Breaks loose ag'in an' staits his subjick; stretches it; turns it; folds it; onfolds it; folds it ag'in so 's 't no one can't find it. Argoos with an imedginary bean thet ain't aloud to say nothin' in repleye. Gives him a real good dressin' an' is settysfide he 's rite. Gits into Johnson's hair. No use tryin' to git into his head. Gives it up. Hez to stait his subjick ag'in; doos it back'ards, sideways, eendways, criss-cross, bevellin', noways. Gits finally red on it. Concloods. Concloods more. Reads sum xtrax. Sees his subjick a-nosin' round arter him ag'in. Tries to avide it. Wun't du. _Mis_states it. Can't conjectur' no other plawsable way of staytin' on it. Tries pump. No fx. Yeels the flore.

You kin spall an' punctooate thet as you please. I allus do, it kind of puts a noo soot of close onto a word, thisere funattick spellin' doos an' takes 'em out of the prissen dress they wair in the Dixonary. Ef I squeeze the cents out of 'em it's the main thing, an' wut they wuz made for; wut 's left 's jest pummis.

Mistur Wilbur sez he to me onct, sez he, "Hosee," sez he, "in litterytoor the only good thing is Natur. It 's amazin' hard to come at," sez he, "but onct git it an' you 've gut everythin'. Wut's the sweetest small on airth?" sez he. "Noomone hay," sez I, pooty bresk, for he wuz allus hankerin' round in hayin'. "Nawthin' of the kine," sez he. "My leetle Huldy's breath," sez I ag'in. "You 're a good lad," sez he, his eyes sort of ripplin' like, for he lost a babe onct nigh about her age,--"You 're a good lad; but 't ain't thet nuther," sez he. "Ef you want to know," sez he, "open your winder of a mornin' et ary season, and you 'll larn thet the best of perfooms is jest fresh air, _fresh air_," sez he, emphysizin', "athout no mixtur. Thet 's wut _I_ call natur in writin', and it bathes my lungs and washes 'em sweet whenever I git a whiff on 't," sez he. I offen think o' thet when I set down to write, but the winders air _so_ ept to git stuck, and breakin' a pane costs sunthin'.

Yourn for the last time,

_Nut_ to be continooed,

HOSEA BIGLOW.

I don't much s'pose, hows'ever I should plen it, I could git boosted into th' House or Sennit,-- Nut while the twolegged gab-machine 's so plenty, 'Nablin' one man to du the talk o' twenty; I 'm one o' them thet finds it ruther hard To mannyfactur' wisdom by the yard, An' maysure off, acordin' to demand, The piece-goods el'kence that I keep on hand, The same ole pattern runnin' thru an' thru, An' nothin' but the customer thet 's new. I sometimes think, the furder on I go, Thet it gits harder to feel sure I know, An' when I 've settled my idees, I find 'T war n't I sheered most in makin' up my mind; 'T wuz this an' thet an' t' other thing thet done it, Sunthin' in th' air, I could n' seek nor shun it. Mos' folks go off so quick now in discussion, All th' ole flint locks seems altered to percussion, Whilst I in agin' sometimes git a hint Thet I 'm percussion changin' back to flint; Wal, ef it's so, I ain't agoin' to werrit, For th' ole Oueen's-arm hez this pertickler merit,-- It gives the mind a hahnsome wedth o' margin To kin' o' make its will afore dischargin': I can't make out but jest one ginnle rule,-- No man need go an' _make_ himself a fool, Nor jedgment ain't like mutton, thet can't bear Cookin' tu long, nor be took up tu rare.

Ez I wuz say'n', I ha'n't no chance to speak So 's 't all the country dreads me onct a week, But I 've consid'ble o' thet sort o' head Thet sets to home an' thinks wut _might_ be said, The sense thet grows an' werrits underneath, Comin' belated like your wisdom-teeth, An' git so el'kent, sometimes, to my gardin Thet I don' vally public life a fardin'. Our Parson Wilbur (blessin's on his head!) 'Mongst other stories of ole times he hed, Talked of a feller thet rehearsed his spreads Beforehan' to his rows o' kebbige-heads, (Ef 'twarn't Demossenes, I guess 'twuz Sisro,) Appealin' fust to thet an' then to this row, Accordin' ez he thought thet his idees Their diff'runt ev'riges o' brains 'ould please; "An'," sez the Parson, "to hit right, you must Git used to maysurin' your hearers fust; For, take my word for 't when all 's come an' past, The kebbige-heads 'll cair the day et last; Th' ain't ben a meetin' sense the worl' begun But they made (raw or biled ones) ten to one."

I 've allus foun' 'em, I allow, sence then About ez good for talkin' to ez men; They 'll take edvice, like other folks, to keep, (To use it 'ould be holdin' on 't tu cheap,) They listen wal, don' kick up when you scold 'em, An' ef they 've tongues, hev sense enough to hold 'em; Though th' ain't no denger we shall loose the breed, I gin'lly keep a score or so for seed, An' when my sappiness gits spry in spring So 's 't my tongue itches to run on full swing, I fin' 'em ready-planted in March-meetin', Warm ez a lyceum-audience in their greetin', An' pleased to hear my spoutin' frum the fence,-- Comin', ez 't doos, entirely free 'f expense. This year I made the follerin' observations Extrump'ry, like most other tri'ls o' patience, An', no reporters bein' sent express To work their abstrac's up into a mess Ez like th' oridg'nal ez a woodcut pictur' Thet chokes the life out like a boy-constrictor, I've writ 'em out, an' so avide all jeal'sies 'Twixt nonsense o' my own an' some one's else's.

My feller kebbige-heads, who look so green, I vow to gracious thet ef I could dreen The world of all its hearers but jest you, 'T would leave 'bout all tha' is wuth talkin' to, An' you, my venerable frien's, thet show Upon your crowns a sprinklin' o' March snow, Ez ef mild Time had christened every sense For wisdom's church o' second innocence, Nut Age's winter, no, no sech a thing, But jest a kin' o' slippin'-back o' spring,-- We 've gathered here, ez ushle, to decide Which is the Lord's an' which is Satan's side, Coz all the good or evil thet can heppen Is 'long o' which on 'em you choose for Cappen.

Aprul 's come back; the swellin' buds of oak Dim the fur hillsides with a purplish smoke; The brooks are loose an', singing to be seen, (Like gals,) make all the hollers soft an' green; The birds are here, for all the season 's late; They take the sun's height an' don' never wait; Soon 'z he officially declares it 's spring Their light hearts lift 'em on a north'ard wing, An' th'ain't an acre, fur ez you can hear, Can't by the music tell the time o' year; But thet white dove Carliny scared away, Five year ago, jes' sech an Aprul day; Peace, that we hoped 'ould come an' build last year An' coo by every housedoor, is n't here,-- No, nor won't never be, for all our jaw, Till we 're ez brave in pol'tics ez in war! O Lord, ef folks wuz made so 's 't they could see The bagnet-pint there is to an idee! Ten times the danger in 'em th' is in steel; They run your soul thru an' you never feel, But crawl about an' seem to think you 're livin', Poor shells o' men, nut wuth the Lord's forgivin', Till you come bunt agin a real live fact, An' go to pieces when you 'd ough' to act! Thet kin' o' begnet 's wut we 're crossin' now, An' no man, fit to nevvigate a scow, 'Ould stan' expectin' help from Kingdom Come While t' other side druv their cold iron home.

My frien's, you never gethered from my mouth, No, nut one word ag'in the South ez South, Nor th' ain't a livin' man, white, brown, nor black, Gladder 'n wut I should be to take 'em back; But all I ask of Uncle Sam is fust To write up on his door, "No goods on trust"; Give us cash down in ekle laws for all, An' they 'll be snug inside afore nex' fall. Give wut they ask, an' we shell hev Jamaker, Wuth minus some consid'able an acre; Give wut they need, an' we shell git 'fore long A nation all one piece, rich, peacefle, strong; Make 'em Amerikin, an' they'll begin To love their country ez they loved their sin; Let 'em stay Southun, an' you 've kep' a sore Ready to fester ez it done afore. No mortle man can boast of perfic' vision, But the one moleblin' thing is Indecision, An' th' ain't no futur' for the man nor state Thet out of j-u-s-t can't spell great. Some folks 'ould call thet reddikle; do you? 'T wuz commonsense afore the war wuz thru; _Thet_ loaded all our guns an' made 'em speak So 's 't Europe heared 'em clearn acrost the creek; "They 're drivin' o' their spiles down now," sez she, To the hard grennit o' God's fust idee; "Ef they reach thet, Democ'cy need n't fear The tallest airthquakes _we_ can git up here."

Some call 't insultin' to ask _ary_ pledge, An' say 't will only set their teeth on edge, But folks you 've jest licked, fur 'z I ever see, Are 'bout ez mad ez they know how to be; It 's better than the Rebs themselves expected 'Fore they see Uncle Sam wilt down henpected; Be kind 'z you please, but fustly make things fast, For plain Truth 's all the kindness thet 'll last; Ef treason is a crime, ez _some_ folks say, How could we punish it a milder way Than sayin' to 'em, "Brethren, lookee here, We 'll jes' divide things with ye, sheer an' sheer, An' sence both come o' pooty strongbacked daddies, You take the Darkies, ez we 've took the Paddies; Ign'ant an' poor we took 'em by the hand, An' the 're the bones an' sinners o' the land." I ain't o' those thet fancy there 's a loss on Every inves'ment thet don't start from Bos'on; But I know this: our money 's safest trusted In sunthin', come wut will, thet _can't_ be busted, An' thet 's the old Amerikin idee, To make a man a Man an' let him be.

Ez for their l'yalty, don't take a goad to 't, But I do' want to block their only road to 't By lettin' 'em believe thet they can git More 'n wut they lost, out of our little wit: I tell ye wut, I 'm 'fraid we 'll drif' to leeward 'Thout we can put more stiffenin' into Seward; He seems to think Columby 'd better act Like a scared widder with a boy stiff-necked Thet stomps an' swears he wun't come in to supper; She mus' set up for him, ez weak ez Tupper, Keepin' the Constitootion on to warm, Till he 'll accept her 'pologies in form: The neighbors tell her he 's a cross-grained cuss Thet needs a hidin' 'fore he comes to wus; "No," sez Ma Seward, "he 's ez good 'z the best, All he wants now is sugar-plums an' rest"; "He sarsed my Pa," sez one; "He stoned my son," Another edds. "O, wal, 't wuz jest his fun." "He tried to shoot our Uncle Samwell dead." "'T wuz only tryin' a noo gun he hed." "Wal, all we ask 's to hev it understood You'll take his gun away from him for good; We don't, wal, nut exac'ly, like his play, Seein' he allus kin' o' shoots our way. You kill your fatted calves to no good eend, 'Thout his fust sayin', 'Mother, I hev' sinned!'"

The Pres'dunt _he_ thinks thet the slickest plan 'Ould be t' allow thet he 's our only man, An' thet we fit thru all thet dreffle war Jes' for his private glory an' eclor; "Nobody ain't a Union man," sez he, "'Thout he agrees, thru thick an' thin, with me; War n't Andrew Jackson's 'nitials jes' like mine? An' ain't thet sunthin' like a right divine To cut up ez kentenkerous ez I please, An' treat your Congress like a nest o' fleas?" Wal, I expec' the People would n' care, if The question now wuz techin' bank or tariff, But I conclude they 've 'bout made up their mind This ain't the fittest time to go it blind, Nor these ain't metters thet with pol'tics swings, But goes 'way down amongst the roots o' things; Coz Sumner talked o' whitewashin' one day They wun't let four years' war be throwed away. "Let the South hev her rights?" They say, "Thet's you! But nut greb hold of other folks's tu." Who owns this country, is it they or Andy? Leastways it ough' to be the People _and_ he; Let him be senior pardner, ef he 's so, But let them kin' o' smuggle in ez Co; Did he diskiver it? Consid'ble numbers Think thet the job wuz taken by Columbus. Did he set tu an' make it wut it is? Ef so, I guess the One-Man-power _hez_ riz. Did he put thru' the rebbles, clear the docket, An' pay th' expenses out of his own pocket? Ef thet 's the case, then everythin' I exes Is t' hev him come an' pay my ennooal texes. Was 't he thet shou'dered all them million guns? Did he lose all the fathers, brothers, sons? Is this ere pop'lar gov'ment thet we run A kin' o' sulky, made to kerry one? An' is the country goin' to knuckle down To hev Smith sort their letters 'stid o' Brown? Who wuz the 'Nited States 'fore Richmon' fell? Wuz the South needfle their full name to spell? An' can't we spell it in thet short-han' way Till th' underpinnin' 's settled so 's to stay? Who cares for the Resolves of '61, Thet tried to coax an airthquake with a bun? Hez act'ly nothin' taken place sence then To l'arn folks they must hendle facts like men? Ain't _this_ the true p'int? Did the Rebs accep' 'em? Ef nut, whose fault is 't thet we hev n't kep' 'em? War n't there _two_ sides? an' don't it stend to reason Thet this week's 'Nited States ain't las' week's treason? When all these sums is done, with nothin' missed, An' nut afore, this school 'll be dismissed.

I knowed ez wal ez though I 'd seen 't with eyes Thet when the war wuz over copper 'd rise, An' thet we 'd hev a rile-up in our kettle 'T would need Leviathan's whole skin to settle; I thought 't would take about a generation 'Fore we could wal begin to be a nation, But I allow I never did imegine 'T would be our Pres'dunt thet 'ould drive a wedge in To keep the split from closin' ef it could, An' healin' over with new wholesome wood; For th' ain't no chance o' healin' while they think Thet law an' gov'ment 's only printer's ink; I mus' confess I thank him for discoverin' The curus way in which the States are sovereign; They ain't nut _quite_ enough so to rebel, But, when they fin' it 's costly to raise h----, Why, then, for jes' the same superl'tive reason, They 're most too much so to be tetched for treason; They _can't_ go out, but ef they somehow _du_, Their sovereignty don't noways go out tu; The State goes out, the sovereignty don't stir, But stays to keep the door ajar for her. He thinks secession never took 'em out, An' mebby he 's correc', but I misdoubt; Ef they war n't out, then why, 'n the name o' sin, Make all this row 'bout lettin' of 'em in? In law, p'r'aps nut; but there 's a diffurence, ruther, Betwixt your brother-'n-law an' real brother, An' I, for one, shall wish they 'd all ben _som'eres_, Long 'z U. S. Texes are sech reg'lar comers. But, O my patience! must we wriggle back Into th' ole crooked, pettyfoggin' track, When our artil'ry-wheels a road hev cut Stret to our purpose ef we keep the rut? War 's jes' dead waste excep' to wipe the slate Clean for the cyph'rin' of some nobler fate.

Ez for dependin' on their oaths an' thet, 'T wun't bind 'em more 'n the ribbin roun' my het; I heared a fable once from Othniel Starns, Thet pints it slick ez weathercocks do barns: Once on a time the wolves hed certing rights Inside the fold; they used to sleep there nights, An', bein' cousins o' the dogs, they took Their turns et watchin', reg'lar ez a book; But somehow, when the dogs hed gut asleep, Their love o' mutton beat their love o' sheep, Till gradilly the shepherds come to see Things war n't agoin' ez they 'd ough' to be; So they sent off a deacon to remonstrate Along 'th the wolves an' urge 'em to go on straight; They did n' seem to set much by the deacon, Nor preachin' did n' cow 'em, nut to speak on; Fin'ly they swore thet they 'd go out an' stay, An' hev their fill o' mutton every day: Then dogs an' shepherds, arter much hard dammin', Turned tu an' give 'em a tormented lammin', An' sez, "Ye sha' n't go out, the murrain rot ye, To keep us wastin' half our time to watch ye!" But then the question come, How live together 'Thout losin' sleep, nor nary yew nor wether? Now there wuz some dogs (noways wuth their keep) Thet sheered their cousins' tastes an' sheered the sheep; They sez, "Be gin'rous, let 'em swear right in, An', ef they backslide, let 'em swear ag'in; Jes' let 'em put on sheep-skins whilst they 're swearin'; To ask for more 'ould be beyond all bearin'." "Be gin'rous for yourselves, where _you_ 're to pay, Thet 's the best practice," sez a shepherd gray; "Ez for their oaths they wun't be wuth a button, Long 'z you don't cure 'em o' their taste for mutton; Th' ain't but one solid way, howe'er you puzzle: Till they 're convarted, let 'em wear a muzzle."

I 've noticed thet each half-baked scheme's abetters Are in the hebbit o' producin' letters Writ by all sorts o' never-heared-on fellers, 'Bout ez oridge'nal ez the wind in bellers; I 've noticed, tu, it 's the quack med'cines gits (An' needs) the grettest heaps o' stiffykits; Now, sence I lef' off creepin' on all fours, I ha' n't ast no man to endorse my course; It 's full ez cheap to be your own endorser, An' ef I 've made a cup, I 'll fin' the saucer; But I 've some letters here from t' other side, An' them 's the sort thet helps me to decide; Tell me for wut the copper-comp'nies hanker, An' I 'll tell you jest where it 's safe to anchor. Fus'ly the Hon'ble B. O. Sawin writes Thet for a spell he could n' sleep o' nights, Puzzlin' which side wuz preudentest to pin to, Which wuz th' ole homestead, which the temp'ry leanto; Et fust he jedged 't would right-side-up his pan To come out ez a 'ridge'nal Union man, "But now," he sez, "I ain't nut quite so fresh; The winnin' horse is goin' to be Secesh; You might, las' spring, hev eas'ly walked the course, 'Fore we contrived to doctor th' Union horse; Now _we_ 're the ones to walk aroun' the nex' track: Jest you take hold an' read the follerin' extrac', Out of a letter I received last week From an ole frien' thet never sprung a leak, A Nothun Dem'crat o' th' ole Jarsey blue, Born coppersheathed an' copperfastened tu."

"These four years past, it hez been tough To say which side a feller went for; Guideposts all gone, roads muddy 'n' rough, An' nothin' duin' wut 't wuz meant for; Pickets afirin' left an' right, Both sides a lettin' rip et sight,-- Life war n't wuth hardly payin' rent for.

"Columby gut her back up so, It war n't no use a tryin' to stop her,-- War's emptin's riled her very dough An' made it rise an' act improper; 'T wuz full ez much ez I could du To jes' lay low an' worry thru', 'Thout hevin' to sell out my copper.

"Afore the war your mod'rit men Could set an' sun 'em on the fences, Cyph'rin' the chances up, an' then Jump off which way bes' paid expenses; Sence, 't wuz so resky ary way, _I_ did n't hardly darst to say I 'greed with Paley's Evidences.

"Ask Mac ef tryin' to set the fence War n't like bein' rid upon a rail on 't, Headin' your party with a sense O' bein' tipjint in the tail on 't, And tryin' to think thet, on the whole, You kin' o' quasi own your soul When Belmont's gut a bill o' sale on 't?

"Come peace, I sposed thet folks 'ould like Their pol'tics done ag'in by proxy, Give their noo loves the bag an' strike A fresh trade with their reg'lar doxy; But the drag 's broke, now slavery 's gone, An' there 's gret resk they 'll blunder on, Ef they ain't stopped, to real Democ'cy.

"We've gut an awful row to hoe In this 'ere job o' reconstructin'; Folks dunno skurce which way to go, Where th' ain't some boghole to be ducked in; But one thing 's clear; there _is_ a crack, Ef we pry hard, 'twixt white an' black, Where the old makebate can be tucked in.

"No white man sets in airth's broad aisle Thet I ain't willin' t' own az brother, An' ef he 's heppened to strike ile, I dunno, fin'ly, but I 'd ruther; An' Paddies, long 'z they vote all right, Though they ain't jest a nat'ral white, I hold one on 'em good 'z another.

"Wut _is_ there lef' I 'd like to know, Ef 't ain't the difference o' color, To keep up self-respec' an' show The human natur' of a fullah? Wut good in bein' white, onless It 's fixed by law, nut lef' to guess, Thet we are smarter an' they duller?

"Ef we 're to hev our ekle rights, 'T wunt du to 'low no competition; Th' ole debt doo us for bein' whites Ain't safe onless we stop th' emission O' these noo notes, whose specie base Is human natur', 'thout no trace O' shape, nor color, nor condition.

"So fur I 'd writ an' could n' jedge Aboard wut boat I 'd best take pessige, My brains all mincemeat, 'thout no edge Upon 'em more than tu a sessige, But now it seems ez though I see Sunthin' resemblin' an idee, Sence Johnson's speech an' veto message.

"I like the speech best, I confess, The logic, preudence, an' good taste on 't, An' it 's so mad, I ruther guess There 's some dependence to be placed on 't; It 's narrer, but 'twixt you an' me, Out o' the allies o' J. D. A temp'ry party can be based on 't.

"Jes' to hold on till Johnson's thru' An' dug his Presidential grave is, An' _then_!--who knows but we could slew The country roun' to put in ----? Wun't some folks rare up when we pull Out o' their eyes our Union wool An' larn 'em wut a p'lit'cle shave is!

"O, did it seem 'z ef Providunce _Could_ ever send a second Tyler? To see the South all back to once, Reapin' the spiles o' the Freesiler, Is cute ez though an engineer Should claim th' old iron for his sheer Because 't wuz him that bust the biler!"

Thet tells the story! Thet 's wut we shall git By tryin' squirtguns on the burnin' Pit; For the day never comes when it 'll du To kick off Dooty like a worn-out shoe. I seem to hear a whisperin' in the air, A sighin' like, of unconsoled despair, Thet comes from nowhere an' from everywhere, An' seems to say, "Why died we? war n't it, then, To settle, once for all, thet men wuz men? O, airth's sweet cup snetched from us barely tasted, The grave's real chill is feelin' life wuz wasted! O, you we lef, long-lingerin' et the door, Lovin' you best, coz we loved Her the more, Thet Death, not we, had conquered, we should feel Ef she upon our memory turned her heel, An' unregretful throwed us all away To flaunt it in a Blind Man's Holiday!"

My frien's, I 've talked nigh on to long enough. I hain't no call to bore ye coz ye 're tough; My lungs are sound, an' our own v'ice delights Our ears, but even kebbigeheads hez rights. It 's the las' time thet I shell e'er address ye, But you 'll soon fin' some new tormentor: bless ye!

QUESTION OF MONUMENTS.

In the beautiful life which the English-speaking foreigners lead at Rome, the great sensations are purely æsthetic. To people who know one another so familiarly as must the members of a community united in a strange land by the ties of alien race, language, and religion, there cannot, of course, be wanting the little excitements of personal gossip and scandal; but even these have generally an innocent, artistic flavor, and it is ladies' statues, not reputations, which suffer,--gentlemen's pictures, not characters, which are called into question; while the events which interest the whole community are altogether different from those which move us at home. In the Capital of the Past, people meeting at the _café_, or at the tea-tables of lady-acquaintance, speak, before falling upon the works of absent friends, concerning the antique jewel which Castellani lately bought of a peasant, and intends to reproduce, for the delight of all who can afford to love the quaint and exquisite forms of the ancient workers in gems and gold; or they talk of that famous statue of the young Hercules, dug up by the lucky proprietor, who received from the Pope a marquisate, and forgiveness of all his debts, in return for his gift of the gilded treasure. At the worst these happy children of art, and their cousins the connoisseurs, (every English-speaking foreigner in Rome is of one class or the other,) are only drawn from the debate of such themes by some dramatic aspect of the picturesque Roman politics: a scene between the French commandant and Antonelli, or the arrest of a restaurateur for giving his guests white turnips, red beets, and green beans in the same revolutionary plate; or the like incident.

At home, here, in the multiplicity of our rude affairs, by what widely different events and topics are we excited to talk! It must be some occurrence of very terrible, vile, or grotesque effect that can take our minds from our business. We discuss the ghastly particulars of a steamboat explosion, or the evidence in a trial for murder; or if the chief magistrate addresses his fellow-citizens in his colloquial, yet dignified way, we dispute whether he was not, at the time of the speech, a martyr to those life-long habits of abstinence from which he is known to have once suffered calamities spared the confirmed wine-bibber. Once, indeed, we seemed as a nation to rise to the appreciation of those beautiful interests which occupy our Roman friends, and once, not a great while ago, we may be said to have known an æsthetic sensation. For the first time in our history as a people, we seemed to feel the necessity of art, and to regard it as a living interest, like commerce, or manufacturing, or mining, when, shortly after the close of the war, and succeeding the fall of the last and greatest of its dead, the country expressed a universal desire to commemorate its heroes by the aid of art. But we do not husband our sensations as our Roman friends do theirs: the young Hercules lasted them two months, while a divorce case hardly satisfies us as many days, and a railroad accident not longer. We hasten from one event to another, and it would be hard to tell now whether it was a collision on the Saint Jo line, or a hundred and thirty lives lost on the Mississippi, or some pleasantry from our merry Andrew, which distracted the public mind from the subject of monumental honors. It is certain, however, that, at the time alluded to, there was much talk of such things in the newspapers and in the meetings. A popular subscription was opened for the erection of a monument to Abraham Lincoln at his home in Springfield; each city was about to celebrate him by a statue in its public square; every village would have his bust or a funeral tablet; and our soldiers were to be paid the like reverence and homage. Then the whole affair was overwhelmed by some wave of novel excitement, and passed out of the thoughts of the people; so that we feel, in recurring to it now, like him who, at dinner, turns awkwardly back to a subject from which the conversation has gracefully wandered, saying, "We were speaking just now about"--something the company has already forgotten. So far as we have learned, not an order for any memorial sculpture of Lincoln has been given in the whole country, and we believe that only one design by an American sculptor has been offered for the Springfield monument. There is time, however, to multiply designs; for the subscription, having reached a scant fifty thousand dollars, rests at that sum, and rises no higher.

But we hope that the people will not altogether relinquish the purpose of monumental commemoration of the war, and we are not wholly inclined to lament that the fever-heat of their first intent exhausted itself in dreams of shafts and obelisks, groups and statues, which would probably have borne as much relation to the real idea of Lincoln's life, and the war and time which his memory embodies and represents, as the poetry of the war has borne. In the cool moments of our convalescence from civil disorder, may we not think a little more clearly, and choose rather more wisely than would have been possible earlier?

No doubt there is in every epoch a master-feeling which art must obey, if it would flourish, and remain to represent something intelligible after the epoch is past. We know by the Gothic churches of Italy how mightily the whole people of that land were once moved by the impulses of their religion (which might be, and certainly was, a thing very different from purity and goodness): the Renaissance temples remind us of a studious period passionately enamored of the classic past; in the rococo architecture and sculpture of a later time, we have the idle swagger, the unmeaning splendor, the lawless luxury, of an age corrupted by its own opulence, and proud of its licentious slavery. Had anything come of the æsthetic sensation immediately following the war, and the spirit of martial pride with which it was so largely mixed, we should probably have had a much greater standing-army in bronze and marble than would have been needed for the suppression of any future rebellion. An excitement, a tumult, not a tendency of our civilization, would thus have been perpetuated, to misrepresent us and our age to posterity; for we are not a military people, (though we certainly know how to fight upon occasion,) and the pride which we felt in our army as a body, and in the men merely as soldiers, was an exultation which has already in a great part subsided. Indeed, the brave fellows have themselves meantime given us a lesson, in the haste they have made to put off their soldier-costume and resume the free and individual dress of the civilian. The ignorant poets might pipe of the glory and splendor of war, but these men had seen the laurel growing on the battle-field, and knew

"Di che lagrime grondi e di che sangue"

its dazzling foliage. They knew that the fighting, in itself horrible, and only sublime in its necessity and purpose, was but a minor part of the struggle; and they gladly put aside all that proclaimed it as their vocation, and returned to the arts of peace.

The idea of our war seems to have interpreted itself to us all as faith in the justice of our cause, and in our immutable destiny, as God's agents, to give freedom to mankind; and the ideas of our peace are gratitude and exultant industry. Somehow, we imagine, these ideas should be represented in every memorial work of the time, though we should be sorry to have this done by the dreary means of conventional allegory. A military despotism of martial statues would be far better than a demagogy of these virtues, posed in their well-known attitudes, to confront perplexed posterity with lifted brows and superhuman simpers. A sublime parable, like Ward's statue of the Freedman, is the full expression of one idea that should be commemorated, and would better celebrate the great deeds of our soldiers than bass-reliefs of battles, and statues of captains, and groups of privates, or many scantily-draped, improper figures, happily called Liberties.

With the people chosen to keep pure the instinct of the Beautiful, as the Hebrews were chosen to preserve a knowledge of the Divine, it was not felt that commemorative art need be descriptive. He who triumphed the first and second time in the Olympic games was honored with a statue, but not a statue in his own likeness. Neither need the commemorative art of our time be directly descriptive of the actions it celebrates. There is hardly any work of beautiful use which cannot be made to serve the pride we feel in those who fought to enlarge and confirm the freedom of our country, and we need only guard that our monuments shall in no case express funereal sentiment. Their place should be, not in the cemeteries, but in the busy hearts of towns, and they should celebrate not only those who fought and died for us in the war, but also those who fought and lived, for both are equally worthy of gratitude and honor. The ruling sentiment of our time is triumphant and trustful, and all symbols and images of death are alien to it.

While the commemoration of the late President may chiefly take visible shape at the capital, or at Springfield, near the quiet home from which he was called to his great glory, the era of which he was so grand a part should be remembered by some work of art in every community. The perpetuation of the heroic memories should in all cases, it seems to us, be committed to the plastic arts, and not, as some would advise, to any less tangible witness to our love for them. It is true that a community might endow a charity, to be called forever by some name that would celebrate them, or might worthily record its reverence for them by purchase of a scholarship to be given in our heroes' names to generations of struggling scholars of the place. But the poor we have always with us; while this seems the rare occasion meant for the plastic arts to supply our need of beautiful architecture and sculpture, and to prove their right to citizenship among us, by showing themselves adequate to express something of the spirit of the new order we have created here. Their effort need not, however, be toward novel forms of expression. That small part of our literature which has best answered the want of our national life has been the most jealous in its regard for the gospels of art, and only incoherent mediums and false prophets have disdained revelation. Let the plastic arts, in proving that they have suffered the change which has come upon races, ethics, and ideas in this new world, interpret for us that simple and direct sense of the beautiful which lies hidden in the letter of use. There is the great, overgrown, weary town of Workdays, which inadequately struggled at the time of our national æsthetic sensation, in all its newspapers, pulpits, and rostrums, with the idea of a monument to the regiments it sent to the war. The evident and immediate want of Workdays is a park or public garden, in which it can walk about, and cool and restore itself. Why should not the plastic arts suggest that the best monument which Workdays could build would be this park, with a great triumphal gateway inscribed to its soldiers, and adorned with that sculpture and architecture for which Workdays can readily pay? The flourishing village of Spindles, having outgrown the days of town-pumps and troughs, has not, in spite of its abundant water-power, a drop of water on its public ways to save its operatives from drunkenness or its dogs from madness. O plastic arts! give Spindles a commemorative fountain, which, taking a little music from the mills, shall sing its heroes forever in drops of health, refreshment, and mercy. In the inquiring town of Innovation, successive tides of doubt and revival and spiritualism have left the different religious sects with little more than their names; let Innovation build a votive church to the memory of the Innovators sent to the war, and meet in it for harmonious public worship. At Dulboys and Slouchers, it must be confessed that they sadly need a new union school-house and town-hall, (the old school-house at Dulboys having been at last whittled to pieces, and no town-hall having ever been built in Slouchers,) and there seems no good reason why these edifices should not be given the honor to proclaim the pride of the towns in the deeds of their patriots.

On their part, we hope none of these places will forget that it is bound to the arts and to itself not to build ignobly in memory of its great. A commemorative edifice, to whatever purpose adapted, must first be beautiful, since a shabby or ugly gateway, fountain, or church would dishonor those to whom it was dedicated; a school-house or town-hall built to proclaim pride and reverence cannot be a wooden box; but all must be structures of enduring material and stately architecture. All should, if possible, have some significant piece of statuary within or upon them, or at least some place for it, to be afterwards filled; and all should be enriched and beautified to the full extent of the people's money and the artist's faculty.

For the money, the citizens will, of course, depend upon themselves; but may we pray them to beware of the silliness of local pride--(we imagine that upon reading this paper the cities and towns named will at once move in the business of monuments, and we would not leave them unadvised in any particular)--in choosing their sculptors and architects? Home talent is a good thing when educated and developed, but it must be taught in the schools of art, and not suffered to spoil brick and mortar in learning. Our friends, the depraved Italian popes and princes (of whom we can learn much good), understood this, and called to their capitals the best artist living, no matter what the city of his birth. If a famous sculptor or architect happens to be a native of any of the places mentioned, he is the man to make its monument; and if he is a native of any other place in the country, he is equally the man, while home talent must be contented to execute his design.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Mind in Nature; or the Origin of Life, and the Mode of Development of Animals._ By HENRY JAMES CLARK, A. B., B. S., Adjunct Professor of Zoölogy in Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

When all lower branches of Natural History have been finally exhausted, and we begin upon the Natural History of Scientific Men, we shall no doubt discover why it is necessary for each _savant_ to season his mild pursuits by some desperate private feud with the nearest brother in the service. The world of scoffers no doubt revels in this particular weakness, and gladly omits all the rest of the book, in haste to get at the personalities. But to the sedate inquirer it only brings dismay. How painful, as one glides pleasantly on amid "concentric vesicles" and "albuminous specialization," tracing the egg from the germinal dot to the very verge of the breakfast-table, to be suddenly interrupted, like Charles O'Malley's pacific friend in Ireland, by the crack of a duelling-pistol and the fracture of all the teacups! It makes it all the worse to know that the brother professor thus assailed is no mean antagonist, and certainly anything but a non-resistant; and that undoubtedly in his next book our joys will again be disturbed by an answering volley.

Yet it should be said, in justice to Professor Clark, that all this startling fusillade occurs at two or three points only, and that reading the rest of the book is like a peaceful voyage down the Mississippi after the few guerilla-haunted spots are passed. The general tone of the book is eminently quiet, reasonable, and free from partisanship. Indeed, this studied moderation of statement sometimes mars even the clearness of the book, and the reader wishes for more emphasis. Professor Clark loves fact so much better than theory, that he sometimes leaves the theory rather obscure, and the precise bearing of the facts doubtful. To this is added the difficulty of a style, earnest and laborious indeed, but by no means luminous. In a treatise professedly popular, one has a right to ask a few more facilities for the general reader. It can hardly be expected of all scientific men to attain the singular success, in this direction, of Professor Huxley; but the art of popularization is too important a thing to be ignored, and much may be done to cultivate the gift by literary training and by persistent effort. The new researches into the origin of life are awakening the interest of all; and though the popular tendency is no doubt towards the views mainly held by Professor Clark, yet most men prefer an interesting speech on the wrong side of any question to a dull speech in behalf of the right.

When one takes the book piecemeal, however, the author's statements of his own observations and analysis are so thorough and so admirable, his drawings so good, and the interest of many separate portions so great, that it seems hardly fair to complain of the rather fragmentary effect of their combination, and the rather obscure tenor of the whole. Professor Clark holds that the old doctrine, _Omne vivum ex ovo_, is now virtually abandoned by all, since all admit the origin of vast numbers of animated individuals by budding and self-division. There are, in fact, types of animals, as the Zoöphyta, where these appear the normal modes of reproduction, and the egg only an exceptional process. From this he thinks it but a slight step to admit the possibility of spontaneous generation, and he accordingly does admit it. Touching the development theory, his conclusion is that the barriers between the five great divisions of the animal world are insurmountable, but "that, by the multiplication and intensifying of individual differences, and the projection of these upon the branching lines of the courses of development from a lower to a higher life, the diverse and successively more elevated types among each grand division have originated upon this globe." (p. 248.) This sentence, if any, gives the key-note of the book. To say that this is one of its clearest statements, may help to justify the above criticisms on the rest.

_A Noble Life._ By the Author of "John Halifax, Gentleman," etc. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1866.

The story of a man born cruelly deformed and infirm, with a body dwarfish, but large enough to hold a good heart and clear brain,--and of such a man's living many years of pain, happy in the blessings which his great wealth and high rank, and, above all, his noble nature, enable him to confer on every one approaching him,--could hardly have been told more simply and pathetically than it is in this book, but it might certainly have been told more briefly. The one slight incident of the fiction--the marriage of the Earl of Cainforth's _protégée_ and protectress and dearest friend to his worthless cousin, who, having found out that the heirless Earl will leave her his fortune, wins her heart by deceit, and then does his worst to break it--occurs when the book is half completed, and scarcely suffices to interest, since it is so obvious what the end must be; while the remaining pages, devoted to study of the Earl's character, do not develop much that is new in literature or humanity. Still, the story has its charm: it is healthful, unaffected, and hopeful; and most people will read it through, and be better for having done so.

_Literature in Letters; or, Manners, Art, Criticism, Biography, History, and Morals, illustrated in the Correspondence of Eminent Persons._ Edited by JAMES HOLCOMBE, LL. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866.

The very comprehensive title of this work leaves us little to say in explanation of its purpose, and we can only speak in compliment of the taste with which the editor has performed a not very arduous task. As a matter of course, the famous epistles of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Pope, Horace Walpole, Madame de Sévigné, Miss Burney, Lady Russell, and Hannah More go to form a large part of the collection; but Mr. Holcombe has drawn from other sources epistolary material of interest and value, and has performed a service to literature by including in his book the occasional letters of great men not addicted to letter-writing, but no doubt as natural and true to themselves and their time as habitual letter-writers. It is curious to note the deterioration in the artistic quality of the letters as the period of their production approaches our own, when people dash off their correspondence rapidly and incoherently, instead of bestowing upon it the artifice and care which distinguished the epistolarians of an elder date, whose letters, fastidiously written, faithfully read, and jealously kept and shown about in favored circles, supplied the place of newspapers. The lowest ebb of indifference seems to be reached in a letter by Daniel Webster, written from Richmond, and devoted to some very commonplace and jejune praises of morning and early rising. Except as an instance of our epistolary degeneracy, we could hardly wish it to have a place in Mr. Holcombe's collection, which is otherwise so judiciously made.

_The Criterion; or the Test of Talk about Familiar Things. A Series of Essays._ By HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. New York: Hurd and Houghton. 1866.

Mr. Tuckerman's books, if they possess no great value as works of original thought, are characterized by the hardly less desirable quality of unfailing good taste. He has a quiet and meditative way of treating those topics of literature and art with which he chiefly loves to deal, and has much in him which reminds of the race of essayists preceding the brilliant dogmatists of our time; and we confess that we find a great enjoyment in the lazy mood in which he here gossips of twenty desultory matters. The name of the present work is, to be sure, a somewhat formidable mask under which to hide the cheerful visage of a rambler among Inns, Pictures, Sepulchres, Statues and Bridges, and a tattler of Authors, Doctors, Holidays, Lawyers, Actors, Newspapers, and Preachers; but it is only a mask after all, and the talk really tests nothing,--not even the reader's patience. With much charming information from books concerning these things, Mr. Tuckerman agreeably blends personal knowledge of many of the subjects. Bits of reminiscence drift down the tranquil current of story and anecdote, and there is just enough of intelligent comment and well-bred discussion to give each paper union and direction. In fine, "The Criterion" is one of the best of that very pleasant class of books made for the days of unoccupied men and the half-hours of busy ones,--which may be laid down at any moment without offence to their purpose, and taken up again with profit to their readers.

_The History of Henry the Fifth: King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Heir of France._ By GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

The doubt whether Mr. Towle is writing historical romance or romantic history must often embarrass the reader of a work uniting the amiable weaknesses of both species of composition, and presenting much more that is tedious in narration, affected in style, and feeble in thought, than we have lately found in any large octavo volume of five hundred pages. We begin with four introductory chapters recounting the events which led to the usurpation of Bolingbroke, and the succession of Mr. Towle's hero to the English throne; we go on with two chapters descriptive of the youthful character and career of Henry the Fifth; we end with six chapters devoted to the facts of his reign. Through all this, it appears to us, we are conducted at a pace of singular equality, not to be lightened by the triviality of minor incidents, nor greatly delayed by the most important occurrences. Nearly all the figures of the picture are in the foreground, and few are more prominent than the least significant accessory of the landscape; and, for once, it is scarcely possible to say that the picture would have been better if the painter had taken more pains. Indeed, we incline to think the contrary, and would have been willing to accept a result somewhat less labored than that given us. We confess, for example, that it is a matter of small interest to us to know that the Duke of Lancaster's wife is the "fair Blanche"; that, when Katharine consented to wed Henry, "a blush mounted her clear temple"; that over every part of her wedding dress "glittered the rarest gems of Golconda"; that Henry's heart "ever beat affectionately for his beloved isle" of England; that at a certain moment of the battle of Agincourt a large body of the French forces "shook in their shoes"; that the crossbow was "an object of wonder and delight to the children of olden chivalry"; that Shakespeare "caressed the fame of the hero-king with the richest coruscations of his genius";--not to name a multitude of other facts stated with equal cost of thought and splendor of diction. But Mr. Towle spares us nothing, and sometimes leaves as little to the opinion of his readers as to their imagination. Having to tell us that Henry learned, in his boyhood, to play upon the harp, he will not poorly say as much, but will lavishly declare, "He learned, with surprising quickness, to play upon that noblest of instruments, the harp"; which is, indeed, a finer turn of language, but, at the same time, an invasion of the secret preference which some of us may feel for the bass-viol or the accordion.

The same excellent faculty for characterization serves our historian on great occasions as well as small ones. Of an intriguing nobleman like the Duke of Norfolk, he is as prompt to speak as of the harp itself: "He was one of those politicians who are never contented; who plot and counterplot incessantly; who are always running their heads fearlessly, to be sure, but indiscreetly, into danger of decapitation." This fine analytic power appears throughout the book. Describing the enthusiasm of the Londoners for Henry of Bolingbroke, and their coldness towards the captive King Richard, the historian acutely observes: "Ever thus, from the beginning of the world, have those been insulted who have fallen from a high estate. The multitude follows successful usurpation, but never offers a shield to fallen dignity." The bashfulness and silence of Prince Henry an ordinary writer would perhaps have called by those names; but Mr. Towle says: "He was neither loud nor forward in giving his views; he apparently felt that one so young should never seem dogmatic or positive on questions in regard to which age and learning were in doubt." Such a sentence might perhaps suggest the idea that Mr. Towle's History was intended for the more youthful reader, but when you read, farther on, in the analysis of Henry's character, "It was fitting that so fine a soul should be illustrated by brilliancy of intellect and eloquence of speech, that so precious a jewel should be encased in a casket of beauty and graceful proportion,"--or when you learn, in another place, that "the eloquence of Stephen Partington stirred the religious element of Henry's _character, which appreciated and admired_ superior ability of speech,"--we say, you can no longer doubt that Mr. Towle addresses himself to minds as mature as his own. It is natural that an historian whose warmth of feeling is visible in his glow of language should be an enthusiastic worshipper of his hero, and should defend him against all aspersions. Mr. Towle finds that, if Henry was a rake in youth and a bigot in manhood, he was certainly a very amiable rake and a very earnest bigot. "There can be no doubt," says our historian, in his convincing way, "that he often paused in his reckless career, filled with remorse, wrestling with his flighty spirit, to overcome his unseemly sports"; and as to the sincerity of his fanaticism, "to suppose otherwise is to charge a mere youth with a hypocritical cunning worthy of the Borgias in their zenith." Masterly strokes like these are, of course, intended to console the reader for a want of distinctness in Mr. Towle's narrative, from which one does not rise with the clearest ideas of the civilization and events of the time which he describes.

We can understand how great an attraction so brilliant and picturesque an epoch of history should have for a spirit like Mr. Towle's; but we cannot help thinking it a pity that he should have attempted to reproduce, in such an ambitious form, the fancies which its contemplation suggested. The book is scarcely too large for the subject, but it is much too large for Mr. Towle, whose grievous fashion of _padding_ must be plain enough, even in the few passages which we have quoted from his book. A writer may, by means of a certain dead-a-lively expansive style of narration, contrived out of turns of expression adapted from Percy's Reliques, the Waverly Novels, the newspapers, and the imitators of Thackeray's historical gossip, succeed in filling five hundred pages, but he will hardly satisfy one reader; and we are convinced by Mr. Towle's work that, whatever other species of literature may demand the exercise of a childish imagination,--a weak fancy easily caught with the prettiness as well as the pomp of words,--a slender philosophy incapable of grasping the true significance of events,--a logic continually tripped upon its own rapier,--and a powerful feeling for anti-climax, with no small sentiment for solecism,--History, at least, has little to gain from them.

_War of the Rebellion; or, Scylla and Charybdis. Consisting of Observations upon the Causes, Course, and Consequences of the Late Civil War in the United States._ By H. S. FOOTE. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1866.

The slight value which this volume possesses is of a nature altogether different from that which the author doubtless ascribes to it, though we imagine most of his readers will agree with us in esteeming it chiefly for its personal reminiscences of great events and people. As for Mr. Foote's philosophization of the history he recounts, it is so generally based upon erroneous views of conditions and occurrences, that we would willingly have spared it all, if we could have had in its place a full and simple narrative of his official career from the time he took part in secession up to the moment of his departure from the Rebel territory. We find nothing new in what he has to say concerning the character of our colonial civilization and the unity of our colonial origin; and, as we get farther from the creation of the world and approach our own era, we must confess that the light shed upon the slavery question by Mr. Foote seems but vague and unsatisfactory. A few disastrous years have separated us so widely from all the fallacies once current here, that Mr. Foote's voice comes like an utterance from Antediluvia, when he tells us how compromises continually restored us to complete tranquillity, which the machinations of wicked people, North and South, instantly disturbed again. There was once a race of feeble-minded politicians who thought that, if the Northern Abolitionists and Southern fire-eaters were destroyed, there could be no possible disagreement between the sections concerning slavery; and Mr. Foote, surviving his contemporaries, still clings to their delusions, and believes that the late war resulted from the conflict of ambitious and unscrupulous men, and not from the conflict of principles. Now that slavery is forever removed, it might seem that this was a harmless error enough, and would probably hurt nobody,--not even Mr. Foote. But the fact is important, since it is probable that Mr. Foote represents the opinions of a large class of people at the South, who were friendly to the Union in the beginning of the war, but yielded later to the general feeling of hostility. They were hardly less mischievous during the struggle than the original Secessionists, and, now that the struggle is ended, are likely to give us even more trouble.

Mr. Foote offers no satisfactory explanation of his own course in taking part in the Rebel government, which was founded upon a principle always abhorrent to him, and opposed to all his ideas of good faith and good policy; but he gives us to understand that he was for a long time about the only honest man unhanged in the Confederacy. Concerning the political transactions of that short-lived state, he informs us of few things which have not been told us by others, and his criticism of Davis's official action has little to recommend it except its disapproval of Davis.

We must do Mr. Foote the justice to say that his book is not marred by any violence towards the great number of great men with whom he has politically differed; that he frankly expresses his regret for such of his errors as he now sees, and is not ashamed to be ashamed of certain offences (like that which won him a very unpleasant nickname) against good taste and good breeding, which the imperfect civilization of Southern politicians formerly tempted them to commit. Remoteness from the currents of modern thought--such as life in a region so isolated as the South has always been involves--will account for much cast-off allusion in his book to Greece and Rome, as well as that inflation of style generally characteristic of Southern literature.

_Poems in Sunshine and Firelight._ By JOHN JAMES PIATT. Cincinnati: R. W. Carroll & Co. 1866.

Among the best poems of the earlier days of the Atlantic was Mr. Piatt's "Morning Street," which we think some of our readers may remember even at this remote period, after so much immortality in all walks of literature has flourished and passed away. Mr. Piatt later published a little volume of verses together with another writer of the West; and yet later, "The Nests at Washington,"--a book made up of poems from his own pen and from that of Mrs. Piatt. He now at last appears in a volume wholly his, which we may regard as the work of a mind in some degree confirmed in its habits of perception and expression.

We must allow to the author as great originality as belongs to any of our younger poets. It is true that the presence of the all-pervading Tennyson is more sensibly felt here than in the first poems of Mr. Piatt; but even here it is very faint, and if the diction occasionally reminds of him, Mr. Piatt's poems are undoubtedly conceived in a spirit entirely his own. This spirit, however, is one to which its proper sense of the beautiful is often so nearly sufficient, that the effort to impart it is made with apparent indifference. The poet's ideal so wins him and delights him, in that intangible and airy form which it first wore to his vision, that he seems to think, if he shall put down certain words by virtue of which he can remember its loveliness, he shall also have perfectly realized its beauty to another. We do not know one poem by Mr. Piatt in which a full and clear sense of his whole meaning is at once given to the reader; and he is obscure at times, we fear, because he has not himself a distinct perception of that which he wishes to say, though far oftener his obscurity seems to result from impatience, or the flattery of those hollow and alluring words which beset the dreams of poets, and must be harshly snubbed before they can be finally banished. There are many noble lines in his poems, but not much unity of effect or coherence of sentiment; and it happens now and then that the idea which the reader painfully and laboriously evolves from them is, after all, not a great truth or beauty, but some curious intellectual toy, some plaything of the singer's fancy, some idle stroke of antithesis.

In the poem called "At Evening," in which the poet can be so preposterous as to say,

"Twilight steals Great stealthy veils of silence over all,"

occur the following lines, full of the tranquil sweetness and the delicacy of feeling characteristic of Mr. Piatt's best mood:--

"O, dear to me the coming forth of stars! After the trivial tumults of the day They fill the heavens, they hush the earth with awe, And when my life is fretted pettily With transient nothings, it is good, I deem, From darkling windows to look forth and gaze At this new blossoming of Eternity, 'Twixt each To-morrow, and each dead To-day; Or else, with solemn footsteps modulate To spheral music, wander forth and know Their radiant individualities, And feel their presence newly, hear again The silence that is God's voice speaking, slow In starry syllables, forevermore."

Such thoughts as these are themselves like the star-rise described, and shine out distinctly above the prevailing twilight of the book, everywhere haunted by breaths of fragrance, and glimpses of beautiful things, which cannot be determined as any certain scent or shape. For example, who can guess this riddle?

"Come from my dreaming to my waking heart! Awake, within my soul there stands alone Thy marble soul; in lonely dreams apart, Thy sweet heart fills the stone!"

It is altogether probable that here the poet had some meaning, though it is entirely eclipsed in its expression. At other times his meaning is not to be detached from the words by any violence of utterance; and if, speaking of the winged steed, he says,

"When in the unbridled fields he flew,"

we understand perfectly that the steed flew unbridled in the limitless fields. But no thanks to the poet!

Among the poems of Mr. Piatt which we understand best and like most, "Riding the Horse to Market"--or the poet's experience of offering his divine faculty to the world's rude uses--is in a spirit of fine and original allegory; "September" and "Travellers" are very noble sonnets; "Fires in Illinois," though a little thin in thought, is subtly and beautifully descriptive, and so is "Sundown," with the exception of a few such unmeaning lines as

"Where the still waters glean The melancholy scene."

"The Ballad of a Rose" is lovely and pathetic; and in "Riding to Vote" the poet approaches the excellent naturalness and reality of "The Mower in Ohio," which is so simple and touching, so full of homelike, genuine feeling, unclouded by the poet's unhappy mannerism, that we are tempted to call it his best poem, as a whole, and have little hesitation in calling it one of the few good poems which the war has yet suggested. "The Pioneer's Chimney," which is the first thing in the present book, is almost as free from Mr. Piatt's peculiar defects as "The Mower in Ohio," and it is a very charming idyl. We observe in it no strife for remote effect, while there is visible, here and there, as in the lines below, a delicate and finely tempered power of expression, which can only come from the patient industry of true art, and from which we gather more hope for the poet's future than from anything else in the present book:--

"The old man took the blow, but did not fall,-- Its weight had been before. The land was sold, The mortgage closed. The winter, cold and long, (Permitted by the hand that grasped his all, That winter passed he here,) beside his fire, He talked of moving in the spring....

"In the spring, When the first warmth had brooded everywhere, He sat beside his doorway in that warmth, Watching the wagons on the highway pass, _With something of the memory of his dread In the last autumn._"

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