Chapter 6

Freed from Hiram's disagreeable presence, Sarah Burns, as soon as her visitors had left, sat down to _think_; and she experienced, as I have already remarked, a species of relief. By degrees her spirits rose to their old, natural level, and then the fact struck her that they had not of late been so elastic and joyous as formerly. Presently she jumped up, and, snatching her hat, she resolved to run into the office, as she used to do in 'old times,' and surprise her father by a little visit. She tripped cheerfully out, and was soon at the office door. Here she paused. Her heart beat loudly, but it was with pleasure. Then she quietly opened the door and stepped in.

'Good morning, sir,' she exclaimed. 'Here is your old clerk back again.'

She rushed up and gave him a kiss, and received a dozen in return.

Mr. Burns used afterward to say it was the most blissful moment of his life.

After that, how they enjoyed themselves!--like school children let loose. Sarah ran up, and down, and around the office, through the front room and the little room back, then in the closets, her father following, as much of a child as she--his heart also freed of a load, and his soul filled with sunshine--no Hiram Meeker to cast a baleful shadow over it.

There were not any explanations between those two. Explanations were not in the least necessary. Each felt that all _was_ explained, and all was right and happy again. That was enough.

After a while, some one came in to see Mr. Burns on business, and Sarah took her departure. With a light heart she retraced her steps toward home. She had reached the memorable corner where she once encountered Hiram--it was on his first visit to Burnsville--when, quite abruptly, as it seemed, a tall, handsome young man stood directly in her way.

She stopped, of course; she could not do otherwise, unless she chose to run into the arms of the stranger. A pair of bright, dark eyes were turned inquiringly on her.

'I have found you at last,' said the young man, in a pleasant tone. 'I have just left your house. I did not think you would be out so early. And now that we do meet,' he continued, 'I perceive you don't know me: that is too bad!'

Sarah stood like one in a trance. At first she thought the man was deranged; but he looked so handsome and so intelligent, she quickly abandoned that hypothesis. Then she began to think she was a little out of her wits herself. That seemed to her more probable.

Meanwhile, there he stood, directly and squarely in her path. He appeared rather to enjoy Sarah's perplexity.

'Yes, it is unkind in you to forget an old friend--one you promised to remember always.'

Sarah was beginning to recover herself. It was evident, from the whole appearance of the stranger, that he would not adopt this singular mode of addressing her, unless he had some claim to her acquaintance. So she reasoned. Resolving she would no longer play the part of a bashful miss, she said: 'I am very sorry to be obliged to confess it; but, really, I have not the slightest recollection of you.'

'Ah, that is the way with the sex!' continued the other, in the same tone. 'Who would have thought it? After bestowing on me such a precious token (here he presented a locket, in which he exhibited a curl of hair), you now propose to ignore me altogether.'

'I am inclined to think you are the one in error. I am quite sure you mistake me for some other person,' retorted Sarah, quietly.

'Possibly. Therefore, permit me to inquire whether or not I have the honor of addressing Miss Sarah Burns?'

'Yes.'

'Yet you have no recollection of presenting me with this?'

'You must have shown me the wrong locket,' said Sarah, dryly. 'The hair is several shades lighter than mine.'

'True, I did not think of that,' said the mysterious young gentleman.' I ought to have known it would be so; but it never occurred to me. Good-by!'

He bowed courteously and passed on his way, leaving Sarah in complete bewilderment. She walked slowly toward home. She roused her memory. She went through the list of her acquaintances. She endeavored to recall those she had encountered when taking some little trips with her father--but the stranger was not any of these.

A faint outline was, nevertheless, before her. A shadowy image, the same, yet not the same, with the young man who had stood in her path.

'Who? where? when?'

In vain she asked herself the questions.

Over the past hangs a dim uncertainty, like that which veils the future, and, young as Sarah was, she could already realize it. At length she stopped her efforts, and recurred to the more pleasing task of thinking about the young gentleman as he now appeared, without respect to any other circumstance. She recalled his manly form. He was nearly six feet in height. How bright his eyes were, and how mischievously they were turned on her, yet how kindly--she was almost ready to think lovingly--when the locket was produced! What about that locket? She never gave anybody a locket, never--not even Hiram Meeker. Faugh! It sickened her to think of _him_ now, and in this connection. Only imagine it! A lock of her hair. How ridiculous! No living being had a lock of _her_ hair. She knew that well enough. Besides, this was so much lighter--as light as hers was when she was a child. A sudden thought struck her. Strange; how very, _very_ strange! Yet, it was true. Once in her life she _had_ given a single curl! Was this it? Had she promised anything with the curl? And was this young man he? Sarah's heart beat tumultuously as she entered the house. She reflected on the words of the stranger as he turned to leave her. Should she see him again? * * *

A message came from her father. He would bring a gentleman to dine with him--that was all.

Who would it be? the one she had lately parted with? Not a doubt of it. _That_ she felt instinctively.

On a certain occasion, as the reader may remember, Sarah had imperceptibly prepared herself to receive Hiram Meeker. It was the first time he took tea at the house. This day she did the very same thing to receive somebody else. There is no use to deny it, for such is the fact. Yet it was but a short week since she was the betrothed of Hiram, and believed she loved him. That very morning they had separated forever!

It often happens that a young girl is deceived by or disappointed in her admirer. They may prove to be incompatible, or, what is worse, he may prove unworthy; and she discards him, but with reluctance, after a struggle, leaving a pang in her heart, while she mourns over her lost _love_--not lover. _Him_ she no longer regards with any feeling; but the memory of the old attachment is dear to her, though it be sad, and time is required before the heart will be attracted by new objects, or seek to be engrossed by a fresh passion.

The bond between Hiram and Sarah was of no such nature. He exercised a species of magnetism over her, in consequence of her lively and sympathetic nature; but it was of a kind that, when broken, neither pleasing nor mournful reminiscences remained--no recollection of past joys, no thought of former happiness and bliss. The fountains of the heart had not been reached, and when Hiram Meeker quitted her presence, she was as though she had never known him.

Thus it was, when she received her father's message, her pulses thrilled at the idea of meeting the one he was to bring with him.

Already she guessed who it was.

VATES.

Poets are never in the wrong, Whate'er the present age may say: The future only, in their song, Will see the truth of this our day; And what a BRYANT says and sings May well outweigh all false-born things.

THE PHYSICAL SURVEY OF NEW YORK HARBOR AND ITS APPROACHES.

No coast offers more admirable opportunities for the study, on a large scale, of the effects of winds, waves, and currents, tidal and others, on the movable matters which line the ocean shores, than that from New York southward. Besides the peculiar local actions, there are general ones, which are changing, slowly or rapidly, the whole of the sandy coast line. While here the pebbles of the ancient drift are being assorted by size and shape, and rolled into ridges and heaps, by the action of the waves, there heaps and ridges of wet sand are formed by the waves and travel under their motion, and the dry sand is forced along by the winds, covering up meadows and woods, and changing the ocean shore line; and in other or the same localities, sub-currents, setting in a nearly constant general direction, roll onward the movable materials of the bottom of the sea, or tidal currents roll them forward and backward, giving the general direction of the resulting motion.

The reports of the Government and State engineers and commissioners, public and private, who have studied the improvements of different localities, have given us glimpses of the local, and even of the general actions; but most commonly there has been a want of means or such preliminary experiments as were necessary fully to develop the actions, and which, like the stitch which saves nine, would often have saved the costly experiment on the full scale of construction. Remarkable instances of complete modes of investigation occur in the examination of the Mississippi River by Captain A.A. Humphreys and Lieutenant Abbot, of the Topographical Engineers, and by the commission of which General Totten, Prof. Bache, and Admiral Davis were members. As most familiar to me, from having taken an official part in the experiments and observations made, I propose to notice the Physical Surveys of New York and Boston, indicating the chief agents which are at work in destroying and building up, so as to produce the present condition of these important ports.

* * * * *

In connection with the surveys made a few years since by direction of the Commissioners on Harbor Encroachments, there was undertaken, as an incidental inquiry, an investigation into the physical conditions under which the shoals and beaches in and about New York harbor had submitted to those changes of position and area which the repeated surveys revealed. It was at the request of these Commissioners that Professor Bache, the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, gave his personal attention to this subject. He drew up a comprehensive scheme for a series of observations upon all the natural agencies at work, and, for the execution of the project, selected one of his assistants, whose experience had already been considerable in similar studies.

The investigation was commenced in the lower harbor early in the spring of 1856. Records were kept of tides, currents, winds, and waves, and the most careful notes were made on the immediate effects of these working agents as observable in the movements of the sands.

A glance at a general coast chart discovers at once a marked contrast between two different sections of our seaboard: to the eastward of us, the principal harbors of New England are rockbound, with elevated back countries; while to the southward, in the region of alluvial drift, which extends all along the coast of the Middle and Southern States, the harbors have flat and sandy shores. The harbor and neighborhood of New York, holding an intermediate position between these diverse sections, exhibit a singular combination of the leading physical features of both, and present to the hydrographer a field for research that is quite without a parallel.

We recognize in the Bar of New York simply a submerged portion of that _sandy cordon_ which skirts the coast from Montauk Point to Florida; and although, in the ordinary sense, the lower entrance to the harbor is not an _inlet_, it may nevertheless be regarded as belonging to the same class.

This _sandy cordon_, which may be said to be the principal characteristic of our coast, is an exceedingly interesting feature; it appears to have been formed by the action of the sea, which has disintegrated the borders of shallow flats, bearing away the light vegetable moulds, but suffering the coarse quartz sand to remain rolled up into ridges. In many places the dry winds have caught up these sands, when laid bare at low water, and elevated them into dunes or galls.

The distance of the sand ridge from the mainland is observed to vary with the slope of the adjacent country. It is the _motion of translation_ which a wave acquires on reaching shallow water, that gives it such great capacity for the transportation of material.

This _translative action_, as it is technically called, commences ordinarily in about three fathoms water, and is most violent in six or eight feet depths, within which the sea breaks. It is just within the breaker that the windrows of sand are observed to form on exposed flats.

This disposition of the sea to cast up well defined boundaries of sand along its margin, is so great and persistent, that the inland waters are dammed up and suffered only to escape into the ocean by narrow avenues, where their rapid currents maintain a supremacy of power--albeit with unceasing contest.

Wherever, along our coast, the waves drive _obliquely_ upon the beach, a movement of the sand takes place, and the inlets are consequently continually shifting.

The Long Island inlets are moving _westward_, and Sandy Hook advances to the _northward_, because the sea rolls in along the axis of the great bay between Long Island and New Jersey, and necessarily sweeps along the beaches, instead of taking the direction of a _normal_ to the shore line.

The movement of Sandy Hook to the northward is, however, a problem not so easily disposed of as we might conceive from the above considerations; for although, in the most general sense, its existence must be regarded as the work of the waves, there are other agents influencing materially its form and its rate of progress. The currents control, to a very great extent, the final disposition of the sands worn away or kept in motion by the waves.

Professor Bache's investigations in the neighborhood of Sandy Hook have been published, and we should not especially refer to them here, except that the recent physical changes reported by Colonel Delafield to the Engineer Department, have reawakened an interest in the matter.

The measurements of the Coast Survey, made in 1856 and 1857, showed that the Hook was being washed away on the east and west shores, but was extending slowly to the northwest, where it already encroached on the main ship channel. This order of things has continued up to the present time, and is now in progress.

The able Superintendent of the fortifications at Sandy Hook has evinced considerable alarm lest the new fort shall fall a prey to the encroachments, or be separated from the main body of the beach by slue-ways. The Coast Surrey has been notified of the matter, and the assistant to whom I have already referred has visited the Hook, and made an informal report, which agrees essentially with the statements of Colonel Delafield. A complete and reliable report can only be made upon _actual surveys_; and we trust these will be executed, and the Government placed in possession of the whole truth.

We understand that Colonel Delafield has already, upon a small scale, made some very successful experiments of curvilineal dikes, constructed with caissons of concrete; and we have no doubt that, with adequate means at his disposal, this ingenious engineer could avert the dangers which threaten, not only the fort, but the noble harbor of New York.

To return to the Physical Survey, and to speak as briefly as we may upon so extended a subject, we hold that it is possible, by a patient collection of facts and figures, to determine the natural _scheme_ of the harbor--we had almost said the _formula of its development_.

It is ascertained that the group of shoals which form the Bar--composed, as they are, for the most part, of loose and shifting sands--are not accidental accumulations, modified by violent storms and freshets, but that they are orderly arrangements, made by the currents, to whose unceasing activities are due the form and preservation of each bank and channel. The peculiar contours of the shoals given by our most ancient charts are still developed by recent surveys, although alterations in magnitude have taken place. _The order of the physical forces is unchanged, but their work is still progressing._

Now, since these currents have determinable laws, regulating their periods, durations, velocities, and directions, it was only necessary to compile observations, in order to reduce this study to a simple consideration of the _composition of forces_.

'The process by which sand is swept along by currents upon the bottom of the sea, is not unlike the motion of dunes upon the land; a ridge of sand is propagated in the direction of the current by the continual rolling of the particles from the rear to the front. This movement is exceedingly slow when compared with that of the current which induces it, and for this reason a shoal, though traversed by violent tidal currents, may, as a whole, remain stationary when the alternate drifts are equal and opposite; for in this case, though the sand upon the surface is drifted to and fro, it undergoes no more ultimate change of position than it would if the forces which acted upon it were simultaneous and in equilibrium.'[9]

Of course, so simple a case as that in which the ebb and flood forces are equal and opposite, is rarely presented; for at most of the stations on the Bar the direction of the flow varies from hour to hour, going quite round the circle in a half-tidal day: the velocities and directions also vary with the depth. These circumstances complicate the computation a little, but the problem is still simple and direct. Everything depends upon the faithfulness of the observations.

The physical diagrams which have been plotted from the results of these studies may be regarded as decided successes, for they show in most cases that the shoals lie in the foci or in the equilibrium points of the observed forces.

The current stations occupied cover a district embracing not only the immediate vicinity of the shoals, but extending many miles from them in different directions; for it was deemed necessary that each elementary force should be separately studied before it reached its working point. It has been ascertained that among the causes of the different shoal formations there exists a mutual relation and dependence, so that they may be regarded as a single physical system. _It will be seen from this consideration, that any artificial disturbance of the conditions, at a single point, may interrupt the operations of nature in other localities more or less remote, or cause general changes in the hydrogaphy of the harbor._

It is not simply the superficial drift of the tidal and other currents that these observations comprehend; but, with the use of apparatus suitably arranged, the movements at all depths have been determined, with the exact amount of power exerted by streams coursing along the bed of the sea. The necessity for this minuteness of examination has been fully shown in some of the curious discoveries that have been made.

In several parts of our harbor, systems of counter-currents have been detected, occupying strata of water at different depths, and these present, in their motions, striking contrasts of directions, velocities, and epochs. The most remarkable exhibition of these sub-currents was observed in the neighborhood of the city, in the channel between Governor's and Bedloe's Islands. In this locality, during the last quarter of the ebb, floating objects drift southward toward the sea, while the heavier material upon the bottom is borne northward toward the city piers. While, upon the surface, the ebb exceeds the flood both in velocity and duration, the motions of the lowest water-stratum are subject to the reverse conditions: it therefore follows that _the heavier deposits from the city drainage cannot be swept away through this the main avenue to the sea_. This contrast of motion between the upper and lower drifts was observed in greater or less degree throughout the entire distance from the Bar to a point in the Hudson River off Fort Washington. These results appear to us of the highest importance, since they would seem to indicate that the scouring action of the currents will not be sufficient to prevent the accumulation of certain classes of deposits in the upper harbor--as the ashes from the steamers, and the like.

The course of the land waters in their progress seaward was followed nearly sixty miles beyond the Bar, where currents of considerable velocity were still observed. At the station farthest seaward, where the sounding is thirty fathoms, the observations at different depths disclosed some very remarkable peculiarities. It was perceived that the moving stratum was not always of the same depth; the whole body of the sea moving steadily forward at one time, while at another no motion could be detected below a superficial stream.

The land waters, to which allusion has been made, augment the ebb current to such a degree, that a general eastwardly preponderance was observed in the drift along the south shore of Long Island; and this preponderance, increasing steadily from station to station at each remove, was found, at a point twenty-five miles east of Fire Island Light, to outlive the tidal currents and maintain itself as a constant coastwise stream.

One very curious discovery was made with regard to this stream along shore. It was ascertained that during easterly gales a portion of the water, crowded up into the bight of the coast, escapes seaward by a sub-current. Shells, carefully marked, were deposited in the sea during fine weather, and, after an easterly gale, were picked up on the shore of Fire Island, _four miles eastward_ of the place of deposit. There was no evidence that these shells travelled any distance during still weather.

We do not despair of the possibility of artificial improvements at the Long Island inlets.

At present the great inland basins on the southern portion of Long Island communicate with the sea only by narrow passes obstructed by bars and shoals; yet, in spite of the dangers which are always presented, large fleets of market vessels pass out daily through the inlets, laden with farm produce and shell fish. It requires no thought to perceive that if these inlets were made safe and permanent by suitable marine constructions, and were furnished with the proper buoys and beacons, there would spring up in their neighborhood great commercial enterprises.

While, in the case of the lower harbor and its approaches, it was the design of the observations to detect in the movement of the waters the causes of alterations in the physical geography, the same kind of studies, undertaken afterward in Hell Gate, had for their object the reverse inquiry, viz., to ascertain to what degree and in what manner the form of the rocky channel influenced the tides and currents, in order that some prediction might be made of the consequences likely to follow the removal of obstructions from the waterways. The propagations of the tide wave meet at Hell Gate, so that here the observations, when plotted, exhibit compound curves, in which the portion due to the wave from Sandy Hook is easily distinguishable from that due to the wave from Long Island Sound. The Sandy Hook tide wave differs so widely in height and time from that of Long Island Sound, that there is over three feet difference of level between the harbor and the Sound at certain stages of the tides; and at these times the currents rush through the Gate, vainly endeavoring to restore the inequalities.

The problem of referring a current to a _tidal head_ is a very difficult one. The current, for instance, which renders Hell Gate so dangerous, is not at any time so great as a _permanent head_, equal to the difference of the tides observed, would engender. The currents are so very slow in their movements, compared with the undulations of the tide wave, that it cannot be ascertained as yet, what are the magnitudes of such elements as _inertia_ and _friction_, and how they are to be corrected for, so as to predict the time and velocity of the current from observations of the vertical rise and fall.

It is due to the officers of the Coast Survey to state that their services to the Harbor Commissioners were rendered gratuitously; the work offered to them only an opportunity for research.

This Physical Survey must, at the outset, have held out small inducements to patient labor--the field was so large and ill defined, and had been so long the region of mere speculation; but the few simple and useful generalizations it has now grasped should, hereafter, prove the stepping stones to larger inductions, valuable alike to physical science and commercial interests.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Report of the Observations for the Completion of the Physical Survey of New York Bar and Harbor, in pursuance of the Act of the Legislature of New York, April 17, 1857, and of the authority of the Commissioners on Harbor Encroachments. By A. D. BACHE, Supt. U.S. Coast Survey.

AN ENGLISHMAN IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

DECEMBER, 1860, AND JULY, 1862.

II.

'Mornin', sa! De Cunnel send dis with his compliments. Merry Christmas, sa!' Such was the salutation arousing me on the anniversary of the birth of Him who came on earth to preach the Gospel of love and fraternity to all men--or the date which pious tradition has arbitrarily assigned to it. And Pomp appeared by the bedside of the ponderous, old-fashioned four-poster, in which I had slept, bearing a tumbler containing that very favorite Southern 'eye-opener,' a mixture of peach brandy and honey. I sipped, rose, and began dressing. The slave regarded me wistfully, and repeated his Christmas salutation.

I knew what the poor fellow meant, well enough, and responded with a gratuity sufficient to make his black face lustrous with pleasure. All through the South the system of _backsheesh_ is as prevalent as in Turkey, and with more justification. At the hotels its adoption is compulsory, if the traveller would shun eyeservice and the most provoking inattention or neglect. His coffee appears unaccompanied by milk or sugar, his steak without bread, condiments are inaccessible, and his sable attendant does the least possible toward deserving that name, until a semi-weekly quarter or half dollar transforms him from a miracle of stupidity and awkwardness into your enthusiastic and ever-zealous retainer. This, however, by the way.

My present had the usual effect; Pompey became approbative and talkative:

'You come from England, sa?' he asked, looking up from the hearth and temporarily desisting in his vigorous puffing at the fire he had already kindled for me to dress by.

'Yes,' I answered.

'Dat a long ways off, sa?'

'Over three thousand miles of salt water, Pompey.'

'Golly! I 'fraid o' dem! didn't tink dere was so much water in de world!' adding a compliment on the supposed courage involved in crossing the Atlantic. Negroes have almost no relative ideas of distance or number beyond a very limited extent; they will say 'a tousan'd,' fifty or a hundred 'tousand,' with equal inexactitude and fluency. Presently Pompey began again:

'Many colored people in England, sa?'

'Very few. You might live there a year without meeting one.'

'I'se hear dey's all free--dem what is dar? dat so?' he asked, curiously.

'Yes; just as they are at the North; only I think they're a little better treated in England. We don't make any difference between men on account of their skin. You might marry a white woman there, Pompey, if you could get her to have you.'

Pompey honored this remark with as much ready negro laughter as he seemed to think it demanded.

'I'se got a wife already, sa,' he answered. 'But 'pears to me England must be good country to lib in.'

'Why so?'

'All free dar, sa!'

'Why you'd have to work harder than you do here, and have nobody to take care of you. The climate wouldn't suit you, either, there's not enough sunshine. You couldn't have a kinder or a better master than Colonel ----, I'm sure.'

'No, _sa!_' with a good deal of earnestness; 'he fust-rate man, sa, dat a fac; and Mass' Philip and de young ladies, dey berry good to us. But--' and the slave hesitated.

'What is it, Pompey? Speak out!'

'Well, den, some day de Cunnel he die, and den trouble come, _suah!_ De ole plantation be sold, and de hands sold too, or we be divide 'tween Mass' Phil, Miss Jule, and Miss Emmy. Dey get married, ob course. Some go one way, some toder, we wid dem--nebber lib together no more. Dat's what I keep t'inkin ob, sa!'

What answer could be made to this simple statement of one of the dire contingencies inevitable to slave life? perhaps that most dreaded by the limited class of well cared-for house servants, of which Pompey was a good representative. He knew, as well as I, that his poor average of happiness was fortuitous--that it hinged on the life of his master. At his death he might become the chattel of any human brute with a white epidermis and money enough to buy him; might be separated from wife, children, companions and past associations. Suggesting the practical wisdom involved in the biblical axiom that sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, I turned the conversation and presently dismissed him. I experienced some little difficulty in accomplishing the latter, for he was both zealous and familiar in my service: indeed, this is one of the nuisances appertaining to the institution; a pet slave seems hardly to understand the desire for privacy, and is prone to consider himself ill-used if you presume to dispense with his attendance. His ideal of a master is one who needs a great deal of waiting on in trivial, unlaborious ways, who tolerates all shortcomings and slovenliness, and bestows liberal gratuities.

Descending to the breakfast parlor, I received and responded to the appropriate salutations for the day from my host and his family, who had already recognized it, English fashion, by the interchange of mutual presents, those of the Colonel to his daughters being jewelry of a handsome and expensive character. The trinkets were submitted to my inspection and duly admired.

'I must tell you something about these knick-knacks, Mr. ----,' said the evidently gratified father. 'You wouldn't suppose, now, that these mercenary girls actually asked me to give them money instead of trinkets?'

His tone and looks involved some latent compliment to the young ladies, and I said as much.

'They wanted to give it to the State, to help arm and equip some of the military companies. I couldn't let 'em suffer for their patriotism, you know; so I had to advance the money and buy the trinkets, too; though I'll do them the justice to say they didn't expect it. Never mind! the Southern Confederacy and free trade will reimburse me. And now let's have breakfast.'

The Southern Confederacy and Free Trade! During secession time in Charleston, there was displayed in front of the closed theatre, a foolish daub on canvas, depicting crowded wharves, cotton bales, arriving and departing vessels, and other indications of maritime and commercial prosperity, surmounted by seven stars, that being the expected number of seceding States, all presented as a representation of the good time coming. It remained there for over a month, when one of those violent storms of wind and rain variegating the humidity of a South-Carolinian winter tore it to pieces, leaving only the skeleton framework on which it had been supported. May not this picture and its end prove symbolical?

'Did you observe that our Charleston ladies dress very plainly, this season?' continued the Colonel, as we sat at breakfast. 'There are no silks and satins this Christmas, no balls, no concerts, no marriages. We are generally economizing for whatever may happen.'

'Why, I thought you didn't expect war?' I answered.

'No more we do; but it's well to be prepared.'

'There's to be no race ball, I understand,' said the lazy gentleman, who had appeared later than the rest of us, and was having a couple of eggs 'opened' for him into a tumbler, by Pompey. 'The girls will miss that. Can you tell me how the betting stood between _Albine_ and _Planet_?'

I could not, and observed that the Colonel changed the subject with some marks of irritation. I learned afterward that his indolent relative had an incurable passion for betting, and, when carried away by it, was capable of giving unauthorized notes upon his opulent relative, who paid them in honor of the family name, but objected to the practice. He himself affected to discourage betting, though his State pride actually induced him to risk money on the 'little mare' _Albine_, a South-Carolina horse, who subsequently and very unexpectedly triumphed over her Virginian opponent. But this by the way.

Breakfast over and cigars lighted (the Colonel imported his own from Havana, each one enwrapped in a separate leaf, and especially excellent in quality), we strolled abroad. The negroes were not at work, of course; and, early as it was, we found their quarters all alive with merriment and expectation. Some of the younger men, dressed in their best clothes--generally suits of plain, substantial homespun, white or check shirts, and felt hats--went from house to house, wishing the inmates the compliments of the season, blended with obstreperous, broad-mouthed laughter; in some instances carrying nosegays, received, in common with the givers, with immense delight and coquetry on the part of the females. These wore neatly-made, clean cotton dresses, with gaily-colored handkerchiefs arranged turban fashion upon their heads. Many of the old men and not a few of the old women were smoking clay or corncob pipes; the children laughed, cried, played with each other, rolled upon the ground, and disported themselves as children, white, black, or particolored, do all the world over; the occasional twang of a banjo and a fiddle was heard, and everything looked like enjoyment and anticipation. Of course, the huts of the future brides constituted the centre of attraction: from the chattering of tongues within we inferred that the wedding dresses were exposed for the admiring inspection of the negro population.

The Colonel had just arrived at the peroration of an eloquent eulogium of the scene, when the overseer appeared at the end of the avenue of orange trees, and presently drew rein beside us, his countenance exhibiting marks of dissatisfaction.

'I've had trouble with them boys over to my place, Colonel,' he said, briefly, and looking loweringly around, as though he would be disposed to resent any listening to his report on the part of the negroes.

'Why, what's the matter with them?' asked his employer, hastily.

'Well, it 'pears they got some rotgut--two gallon of it--from somewheres last night, and of course, all got as drunk as h----, down to the old shanty behind the gin--they went thar so's I shouldn't suspicion nothin'. They played cards, and quarrelled and fit, and Hurry's John he cut Timberlake bad--cut Wilkie, too, 'cross the hand, but ain't hurt him much!'

'Hurry's John! I always knew that nigger had a d----d ugly temper!' I'll sell him, by ---- ! I won't have him on the place a week longer. Is Timberlake badly hurt?'

'He's nigh killed, I reckon. Got a bad stick in the ribs, and a cut in the shoulder, and one in the face--bled like a hog, he did! Reckon he may get over it. I've done what I could for him.'

The Colonel's handsome face was inflamed with passion; he strode up and down, venting imprecations of an intensity only to be achieved by an enraged Southerner. Presently he stopped and asked abruptly:

'Where did they get the liquor from?'

'I don't know. Most likely from old Whalley, down to the landing. He's mean enough for anything.'

'If I can prove it on him, I'll run him out of the country! I'll--I'll--d----n it! I'll shoot him!' And the Colonel continued his imprecations, this time directing them toward the supposed vender of the whiskey.

'These men are the curse of the country! the curse of the country!' he repeated, excitedly; 'these d----d mean, low, thieving, sneaking, pilfering, poor whites! They teach our negroes to steal, they sell them liquor, they do everything to corrupt and demoralize them. That's how they _live_, by ----! The slaves are respectable, compared to them. By ----, they ought to be slaves themselves--only no amount of paddling[10] would get any work out of their d----d lazy hides! I almost wish we might have a war with the Yankees: we should get some of 'em killed off, then!'

How little Colonel ---- thought, as he uttered these words, 'so wicked and uncivic' (as Gellius says of a similar wish on the part of a Roman lady, for which she was fined the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds brass), that in the future lay such dire fulfilment of them! Apropos of the subject, what fitting tools for the purposes of rebellion have these hated 'poor whites' proved themselves!--their ignorance, their vices, their brutality rendering them all the more appropriate instruments for the work in hand. It would seem, almost, as if a diabolic providence had prepared them for this very result.

'I must ride over and see about this business at once,' resumed the Colonel. 'Mr. ----, I can very well suppose you'd rather be spared accompanying me, so make yourself at home for an hour or two. I won't be a minute longer than I can help. Perhaps you'd better not mention this unfortunate affair up at the house until I return; it'll shock the girls, and I'm very careful to keep all unpleasant things out of their way. It's the first time such an atrocity has occurred on this plantation, believe me.'

And, ordering his horse, he rode off with the overseer. I should really have preferred visiting the scene of the recent tragedy, but my host's wish to the contrary was evident, and I knew enough of Southern sensitiveness with respect to the ugly side of their 'institution' to comply. (I had been advised by a fellow countryman not to attend a slave sale in Charleston, lest my curiosity might be looked upon as impertinent, and get me into trouble; but I did it, and, I am bound to say, without any evil consequences.) So I retraced my steps toward the house, presently encountering the lazy gentleman, and one in black, who was introduced to me as the Reverend Mr. ----, an Episcopal clergyman of Beaufort, also a resident on an adjacent island.

The lazy gentleman inquired after Colonel ----. Judging that my host's caution, as to secrecy, was only intended to apply to his daughters, I made no scruple of relating what I had heard. My auditors were at once more than interested--anxious. Whenever a negro breaks bounds in the South, everybody is on the alert, a self-constituted detective, judge, inquisitor, and possible executioner. Eternal vigilance is the price of--slavery!

'That boy born on the plantation?' asked the clergyman, when the affair had been discussed at considerable length.

'Yes! He's a valuable hand, too; I've known him pick seven hundred and fifty pounds of cotton in a day--of course, for a wager.'

'The Colonel will have to sell him, I suppose? he can't keep him after this.'

'Reckon so, though he hates to part with any of his hands. This trouble wouldn't have happened, if it hadn't been for the whiskey, I've no doubt. The rascal who sold it ought to be responsible.'

'Are crimes originating in drunkenness common among the negroes?' I asked.

'Well, no!' answered the clergyman, deliberately; 'I can't say that. But most of them will drink, if they get an opportunity--the field hands especially; and then they're apt to be quarrelsome, and if there's a knife handy, they'll use it.'

'That's so,' assented the lazy gentleman, nodding. 'You Englishmen and Yankees--excuse me for coupling you together!--know very little of negro character; and, because the darkies have a habit of indulging in unmeaning laughter on all occasions, you think them the best-tempered people in existence. In reality their tempers are often execrable--infernal!' And he compacently blew a ring of tobacco-smoke into the mild, humid morning. The clergyman looked on assentingly.

'They can never be trusted with any responsibility involving the exercise of authority without abusing it. They ill use animals on all occasions--treat them with positive brutality, and sometimes whip their children so unmercifully that we have to interfere. I don't know what would become of them without us, I'm sure!'

'What do you think of their religious convictions?' I asked of the clergyman, when the speaker had arrived at his comfortable, characteristically Southern conclusion.

'Our best negroes are unquestionably pious,' he answered; 'and some of them have a very earnest sense of their duties as to this life and the next; but I regret to say that a good deal of what passes for religion among them is mere exitement, often of a mischievous and sensual character.'

'Heathenish! quite heathenish!' added the lazy gentleman. 'Did you ever see a _shout_, Mr. ----?'

I responded in the negative, and inquired what it was.

'Oh, a dance of negro men and women to the accompaniment of their own voices. It's of no particular figure, and they sing to no particular tune, improvising both at pleasure, and keeping it up for an hour together. I'll defy you to look at it without thinking of Ashantee or Dahomey; it's so suggestive of aboriginal Africa.'

I had an opportunity, subsequently, of witnessing the performance in question, and can indorse the lazy gentleman's assertion. Inheriting the saltatory traditions of their barbarous ancestry, the slaves have also a current fund of superstition, of a simple and curious character. But further ethical disquisitions were here cut short by the appearance of the Colonel's daughters, when the conversation was at once changed, as by tacit consent of all three of us. What their father had told me, relative to his solicitude to keep them in ignorance of all 'unpleasant things' accruing from the fundamental institution, was in perfect accordance with Southern instincts. I had observed similar instances of habitual caution before, reminding me of the eulogized tendency toward 'Orientalism' alluded to in the previous chapter. And, of all people, South-Carolinians possess the equally rare and admirable faculty of holding their tongues, when there is occasion for it.

We joined the ladies in a walk. As the elder had much to say to the clergyman about mutual acquaintances, while her fat relative strolled carelessly by her side, her sister naturally fell to my companionship. With a rather handsome and intelligent girl I should have preferred to converse on general topics than the one with which I had been already nauseated at Charleston--secession; but she was full of it, and would not be evaded. Very soon she asked me what I supposed would be the sentiment in England toward the seceding States, in the assumed event of their forming a confederacy.

I told her, as I then believed, that it would be adverse, in consequence of the national hostility to slavery, appealing to her own British experience for confirmation.

'Yes,' she said, 'they were all abolitionists in England, and could hardly credit us when we told them that _we_ owned negroes. They thought all Southerners must be like Legree in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_! But papa, who went to the club houses, and mixed with the aristocracy, says that _they_ are much better informed about us; that they were opposed to emancipation in the West Indies, and have always regarded it as a great mistake. And England must have cotton, you know.'

'If there's a war between the North and South, won't you find it very difficult to retain your negroes?' I asked, waiving the immediate question.

Miss ---- responded by the usual assertion of the fidelity of the slaves to their owners.

'What if the new Government resorts to emancipation as a weapon against you?' I made this inquiry, thinking it possible that this might be done _at the outset_. Like other foreigners, though familiar with the North, I had not supposed that nearly two years of civil war, with its inevitable expenditure of blood and treasure, would be needed to induce this direct and obvious means of subduing a rebellion. Englishmen, it is known, have ferocious ideas on the subject, as witness India.

'If the slaves rose, we should kill them like so many snakes!' was the answer. And the young lady's voice and flashing eyes showed that she was in earnest.

* * * * *

Our promenade lasted until the return of the Colonel, who presently took a private opportunity of informing me that the wounded slave would probably survive, and that he had sent for a surgeon from an adjoining plantation, expressing some apprehension that delay or indifference on his part might involve fatal consequences.

'It's Christmas time, you see, and perhaps he won't care about coming,' said my host. I may add that his anticipation was in part verified by the result, 'the doctor' not appearing till the following morning. Thanks, however, to a rough knowledge of surgery on the part of the overseer, aided by the excellence of his constitution, 'Timberlake' recovered. I will mention here, in dismissing the subject, that 'Hurry's John' was subsequently sold to a Louisiana sugar-planter, a fate only less terrible to a negro than his exportation to Texas.

Within an hour of our return to the house, we partook of an excellent and luxurious Christmas dinner, to which birds of the air, beasts of the earth, and fish of the sea had afforded tribute, and the best of European wines served as an appropriate accompaniment. The meal was, I think, served earlier than usual, that we might attend the event of the day, the negro weddings.

These were solemnized at a little private church, in the rear of which was absolutely the most enormous live-oak I had ever seen, its branches, fringed with pendent moss, literally covering the small churchyard, where, perhaps, a dozen of the ---- family lie buried--a few tombstones, half hidden by the refuse of the luxuriant vegetation, marking their places of sepulture. The plain interior of the building had been decorated with evergreens in honor of the time and the occasion, under the tasteful direction of the young ladies, who had also contrived to furnish white dresses and bouquets for the brides. These, duly escorted by their future husbands, clad in their best, and looking alternate happiness and sheepishness, had preceded us by a few minutes, and were waiting our arrival, while all around beamed black faces full of expectation and interest.

We walked through a lane of sable humanity--for the church was too small to contain a fourth of the assembled negroes--to the little altar, before which the six couples were presently posed by the clergyman, in front of us and himself. That done to everybody's satisfaction, the Colonel stationed to give away the brides--an arrangement that caused a visible flutter of delight among them--and as many lookers-on accommodated within the building as could crowd in, the ceremony was proceeded with, the clergyman using an abbreviated form of the Episcopal service, reading it but once, but demanding separate responses. I noticed that he omitted the words 'until death do ye part,' and I thought that omission suggestive.

The persons directly concerned behaved with as much propriety as if they had possessed the whitest of cuticles, being quiet, serious, and attentive; nor did I detect anything indecorous on the part of the spectators, beyond an occasional smile or whisper by the younger negroes, whose soft-skinned, dusky faces and white eyeballs glanced upward at the six couples with admiring curiosity, and at us, visitors, with that appealing glance peculiar to the negro--always, to my thinking, irresistibly touching, and suggestive of dependence on, humility toward, and entreaty for merciful consideration at the hands of a superior race. Perhaps, however, the old folks enjoyed the occasion most, particularly the negresses: one wrinkled crone, of at least fourscore years, her head bound in, the usual gaudy handkerchief, and her hands resting on a staff or crutch, went off into a downright chuckle of irrepressible exultation after the closing benediction, echoed more openly by the crowd of colored people peeping in at the doors and windows.

The ceremony over, the concourse adjourned to a large frame building, part shed, part cotton-house, ordinarily used for storing the staple plant of South Carolina, before ginning and pressing. The Colonel had sent his year's crop to Charleston, and the vacant space was now occupied by a triple row of tables, set out with plates, knives and forks, and drinking utensils. Here, the newly married couples being inducted into the uppermost seats, as places of honor, and the rest of the company accommodated as well as could be effected, a substantial dinner was served, and partaken of with a gusto and appreciation only conceivable in those to whom such an indulgence is exceptional, coming, like the occasion, but once in a year. Upward of a hundred and fifty persons sat down to it, exclusive of those temporarily detailed as waiters, who presently found leisure to minister to their own appetites. Their owner surveyed the scene with an air of gratification, in which I could not detect a trace of his recent serious discomposure. I am well persuaded, however, that he had not forgotten it, as that the cause of it was known among the negroes; I thought I observed evidences of it in their looks and deportment, even amid the general hilarity.

The ladies had returned to the house, and we were about following them, when the clatter of a horse's hoofs was heard without, and the officious voices of the negroes announced the arrival of a visitor or messenger for the Colonel, who stepped forward to meet him. A young man, clad in a coarse homespun gray uniform, scantily trimmed with red worsted, and a French military cap, alighted, and addressed our friend in a faltering, hesitating manner, as though communicating some disastrous intelligence. I saw the Colonel turn pale, and put his hand to his head as if he had received a stunning blow. Instinctively the three of us rushed toward him.

'My God! what's the matter? what has happened, ----?' inquired the clergyman.

'Philip! Philip! my boy's dead--shot himself by accident!' was the answer.

A very few words explained all, The young volunteer had fallen a victim to one of those common instances of carelessness in playing with loaded firearms. While frolicking with a comrade, at his barracks, he had taken up his revolver, jestingly threatening to shoot. The other, grasping the barrel of the cocked pistol, in turning it round, had caused its discharge, the bullet penetrating the breast of the unfortunate owner of the weapon. Conveyed to the hospital, he had died within an hour after his arrival.

* * * * *

Our holiday-making, of course, came to a sudden termination. Next day I accompanied the Colonel to Charleston, to claim the body of his deceased son, and not long afterward parted with him, on my return to the North.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] The paddle has superseded the cowhide in all jails, workhouses, and places of punishment in South Carolina, as being more effective--that is painful. In some instances it is used on the plantations. It consists of a wooden instrument, shaped like a baker's peel, with a blade from three to five inches wide, and from eight to ten long. There are commonly holes in the blade, which give the application a percussive effect. In Charleston this punishment is generally administered at the guardhouse by the police, who are all Irishmen. Any offended master or mistress sends a slave to the place of chastisement with a note, stating the desired amount, which is duly honored. Like institutions breed like results all over the world: in Sala's 'Journey Due North' we find the same system in operation in Russia.

PEN, PALLET, AND PIANO.

With the roar of cannon and tramp of armed men resounding through the land, and the fair young face of the Republic disfigured to our eyes by the deep furrows of war, it is pleasant to know that in certain nooks and corners, gentler sounds of harmony still linger, and that ateliers exist where men's fancies grow on canvas from day to day into soothing visions of loveliness.

The scarlet-and-gold and general paraphernalia of war are too tempting to pallet and brush, not to be seized on with avidity and reproduced with marvellous truth; but it is more agreeable to pass over accurate representations of the Irish zouave, with Celtic features, not purely classical in outline, glowing defiantly under the red cap of the Arab, and Teutonic cavalrymen, clinging clumsily to their steeds, and turn for solace to the grand, solemn Shores of Niagara, to wander amid the tangled luxuriance of the Heart of the Andes, or to bask in the sweet silence of Twilight in the Wilderness. There are Icebergs too, floating in the Arctic Sea, frozen white and mute with horror at the dread secrets of ages; but, responsive to the versatile talent of the hand that creates them, they glow with prismatic light of many colors. Mr. Church irradiates the frozen regions with the coruscations of his own genius, bringing to these lonely, despairing masses of ice the revivifying hope and promise of warmer climates.

In pondering over the sad mystery of these Icebergs, we float down again to Tropical Seas and Islands; and as we linger under the shade of palm and banana tree, the rude chant of the negro strikes the ear in the grotesque and characteristic framework of the '_Bananier_,' the plaintive melody of '_La Savane_' sighs past on the evening breeze, Spanish eyes flash out temptingly from the enticing cadence of the '_Ojos Criollos_,' and Spanish guitars tinkle in the soft moonlight of the '_Minuit a Seville,_' and Tropical life awakes to melody under the touch of the Creole poet of the piano, Mr. Gottschalk.

There are many beings, otherwise estimable, to whom the Tropical sense is wanting; who are ever suspicious of malaria lurking under the rich, glossy leaves of the orange groves; who look with disgust and loathing at the exaggerated proportions and venomous nature of all creeping things; who find the succulence of the fruit unpleasant to the taste, and the flowers, though fair to the eye, deadly as the upas tree to all other sense;--for whom it is no compensation to feel, with the first breath of morning air, the dull, leaden weight of life lifted, or no happiness to watch the sea heaving and palpitating with delight under the rays of the noon-day sun, and to know that the stars at night droop down lovingly and confidingly to the embrace of warm Tropical earth. With an insensibility to these influences, there can be but little sympathy or appreciation of the works of Mr. Gottschalk; for all that is born of the Tropics partakes of its beauties and its defects, its passionate languor, its useless profusion and its poetic tenderness. And where else in the United States, can we look for a spontaneous gush of melody? Plymouth Rock and its surroundings have not hitherto seemed favorable to the growth and manifestation of musical genius; for the old Puritan element, in its savage intent to annihilate the aesthetic part of man's nature, under the deadening dominion of its own Blue Laws, and to crush out whatever of noble inspiration had been vouchsafed to man by his Creator, rarely sought relief in outbursts of song.

Psalmody appears to have been the chief source of musical indulgence, and for many a long, weary year, hymns of praise, nasal in tone and dismal in tendency, have ascended from our prim forefathers to the throne of grace on high.

Such depressing musical antecedents have not prepared New England for greater efforts of melody than are to be found in the simple ballads supposed to originate with the plantation negro, who, in addition to his other burdens, is thus chosen to assume the onerous one of Northern song, as being the only creature frivolous enough to indulge in vain carolling. If we can scarcely affirm that the Americans are yet a musical people, that they would be is an undeniable fact, and one constantly evinced in their lavish support of artists, from the highest to the lowest grade. Among the musical aspirants to popular favor, none has of late enjoyed so large a share of notice and admiration as Mr. Gottschalk; and to return from our recent digression, we will proceed to the consideration of his compositions. Fragmentary and suggestive as are his ideas, there is infinite method and system in their treatment. Avoiding thus far what is termed '_sustained effort_,' and which frequently implies the same demands on the patience of the listener as on the creative power of the composer, Mr. Gottschalk's compositions contain just so much of the true poetic vein as can be successfully digested and enjoyed in a piano piece of moderate length. With the power to conceive, and the will and discipline of mind to execute, there is no reason why, with perhaps a diminished tendency to fritter away positive excellence at the shrine of effect, enduring proofs of the genius of our American pianist should not be given to the world.

As a mere player, the popularity of Mr. Gottschalk with the uninitiated masses is due, in a great measure, to his tact in discerning the American craving for novelty and sensation, and to his native originality and brilliancy, which allow him to respond so fully to these exigencies of public taste, as to possess on all occasions the keynote to applause. The faculty of never degenerating into dulness, the rock on which most pianists are wrecked in early youth, is another just cause for insuring to our compatriot the preeminence which he enjoys. Viewed from a critical point, the mechanical endowments and acquirements of Gottschalk are such as to enable him to subject his playing to the test of keenest analysis without detriment to his reputation. For clearness and limpidity of touch and unerring precision, for impetuosity of style, combined with dreamy delicacy, he has few rivals. The evenness and brilliancy of his trill are unequalled, the mechanical process required to produce it being lost to sight in the wonderful birdlike nature of the effect. In the playing of classical music, Mr. Gottschalk has to contend against his own individuality. This individuality, naturally intense and of a kind calculated to meet with public favor, has been cultivated and indulged in to such an extent as to prove an occasional obstacle to the exclusive absorption and utter identification with the ideas of another composer that classical music demands. In the mere matter of execution there is no difficulty which the fingers of this skilful pianist cannot overcome, and his intellectual grasp of a subject enables him to discern and interpret the beauties of all musical themes; but where an earnest, passionate interest in the music of the old masters is not felt by the performer, it is rarely communicated to his hearers.

The world of letters, however, has not seemingly regretted the inability of Byron to trammel his muse with the uncongenial fetters of Pope's metre, and has certainly never quarrelled with Tom Moore for not assuming the manners and diction of the revered Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

With due allowance for difference of latitude, and wide difference of aim and pursuit, the contemplation of the Master of Creole Melody recalls to us a genius which found utterance in song none the less melodious that it was written, not sung. The 'ashen sky' and 'crisped, sere leaves of the lonesome October,' so thrillingly pictured by Edgar Poe in his 'Ulalume,' find echo in the foreboding sadness of the opening bars to Gottschalk's 'Last Hope;' and as both poems grow in vague, dreamy sound, they culminate in a cry of smothered despair at the tomb where all hopes lie buried with the lost Ulalume. The same weird conception and eccentricity of design, with knowledge of rhythmical effect and extreme carefulness of finish, are prominent traits of both artists; and the American disregard of tradition, as evinced in all enterprises, whether literary, artistic, or commercial, and which readily infects the simple sojourner among us as well as the happy being born to republican privileges, marks alike the nationality of poet and pianist.

Edgar Poe's literary reputation undoubtedly gains additional lustre as the lapse of years permits the veil of obscurity to fall over the personal vices and irregularities which so tarnished the living fame of this great artist. Genius draws around itself a magical circle, attracting and keeping by the force of its own magnetism those whom it values, but at the same time exercising an equally repellent effect on the envious and ignorant wandering beyond the pale of its charmed precincts. Hence the difficulty of judging it by contemporaneous standards. The Hyperion head of Poe was lost to the view of many by a too persistent search for the satyr's cloven foot. In considering the poet's eccentricities, in common with other extraordinary and anomalous beings, it must be deeply deplored that one so endowed with wealth of intellect beyond his fellow men, should be still so poor in moral store that the dullest of them could dare look with disdain on this heir to gifts regal and sacred.

He could forget his deep, earnest love of order in things intellectual, in every excess of disorder in things material, and his passionate love of the beautiful could be profaned by frequent grovelling amid the hideous deformities of vice. Poe, in his reverence for Art (his only reverence), seemed generally to set greater store on the elaborate and artistic perfection of his works, than in the spontaneity of genius therein displayed. So it would seem, at least, in his voluntarily exposing the skeleton design of his greatest poem, 'The Raven,' and the various processes by which this grand shadow attained its final harmonious and terrible proportions. This may be a noble sacrifice to the principles of Art, intended as a warning to rash novices against the sin of slovenliness in composition; but the poem must be of solid fibre to resist this disenchanting test. The unveiling of hidden mysteries, the disclosure of trap doors, ropes, and pulleys, may assist in the general dissemination of knowledge; but in behalf of those who prefer to be ignorant that they may be happy, we protest against the innovation. In this dangerous experiment of Poe's, however, we are forced to do what he would have us do--admire the ingenuity of the poet, together with his knowledge of effect, rhythmical and dramatic, his flexibility and strength of versification, and marvellous faculty of word painting. This propensity to make all things subservient to the advancement of Art is not always productive of present good to one's fellow beings, whatever may be the results to posterity, as the luckless women who cross the path of such men cannot unfrequently testify--oftentimes assiduously wooed, won, and lightly discarded, to furnish an artistic study of the female capacity for suffering, as well as to supply renewed inspiration for further poetic bemoanings. In the prose narrations of Edgar Poe, the same skilful handling of mystery, and the turning to account of any incident susceptible of dramatic effect, are always apparent as in his poems. But the want of extended sympathy with mankind, the artist egotism, which looks inwardly for all material, and in truth scorns the approval of the masses, must naturally fail to secure the interest of a large class of readers. His compositions, on the contrary, which give full scope to his keen, subtle powers of analysis, and vigorous handling of the subject in question, are more widely understood and appreciated. Since the days when Poe dealt with contemporaneous literature, and literary men, in not the most temperate mood of criticism, poetic fire in America, with few exceptions, seems to have sunk into a dead, smouldering condition, and to have yielded to its sister art of painting the task of grappling with the New-World monster of utilitarianism and practical reform. The demands for indigenous painters in America being constantly greater, the result is necessarily a vast increase and improvement in this branch of Art.

New England, on whose barren musical soil we have already descanted, and who has not hitherto disputed to the Old World her privilege of pouring out on our untutored continent the accumulated wealth of years of musical study and training, has at last gone far to redeem her reputation of artistic nullity, by producing the greatest landscape painter of which the country can boast. With us, the superiority of atmospheric effects over most countries, and the great variety and originality of American scenery, have united in bringing the landscape painter into existence, and the public have assured this existence by fostering applause and pecuniary compensation. Nature, thus prodigal of gifts to America, has, in a crowning act of munificence, conferred also a painter, capable of interpreting her own most recondite mysteries, and of faithfully transcribing the beauties revealed to all eyes in their simple majesty.

Immensity of theme possesses no terrors for Mr. Church's essentially American genius; his facile brush recoils not before the gigantic natural elements of his own land, but deals as readily and composedly with the unapproachable sublimity of Niagara and the terrible beauty of icebergs as with the peace of simple woodland scenes and the glowing sentiment of the tropics. To tread the beaten path of landscape painting, and offer to the public a tame transcript of the glories he has beheld, is repugnant to the creative power of this true artist; but when form, color, and the legitimate means at his command fail to embody all he would express, his suggestive faculty is generally of force sufficient to reach all beholders, even those of feeblest imagination.

In standing before the _Falls of Niagara_, one can, in fancy, feel the cool moisture of spray, rising, incense-like, through a rainbow of promise, from the inspired canvas, together with the earth's tremor at the roar of mad waters rushing headlong to a desperate death. This inestimable quality of suggestiveness is preserved in Mr. Church's pictures when deprived of the aid of color and reduced to mere black and white in engraving, a fact bearing equally conclusive testimony to their inherent correctness of lines and elegance of composition.

Mr. Church's prominent characteristics of hardy vigor and adventurous treatment of a subject, seem to have monopolized his artistic nature, to the frequent exclusion of tenderness, either in idea or in the handling of color. The painting, in our eyes, least open to this objection, is _Twilight in the Wilderness_--a dreamy picture of inexpressible sadness, of a tearful silence that is felt, and of a loneliness too sacred to be profaned by human intrusion. The gorgeous panorama of the _Heart of the Andes_, its snowy mountain peaks, and plains glowing with tropical verdure, is too bewildering in its complicated grandeur to excite dreams of beauty so tender and sadness so touching.

In contemplating this last-named picture, the demands on the attention are so numerous and weighty,--in the first place, to comprehend the situation, and exchange at a moment's notice the stagnation of the temperate zone for the emotional excitement of the tropics; then to separate and classify the many points of beauty, to rise to the summits of distant mountains, sublime in their snowy crests, and sink again to earth at the foot of the rustic cross, by whose aid we may one day rise to sink no more,--to follow the painter successfully through this maze of thoughts, without the guiding light of his own matchless color, would seem a difficult and displeasing task. But the task has been accomplished with complete success, in an English line engraving of the _Heart of the Andes_, recently arrived in this country; which indication of popularity abroad conduces materially to the ever-growing fame of the artist. The same test, we believe, is in store for the _Icebergs_--with what result, time will show. Meanwhile, the picture itself will, on foreign soil, plead the cause of American civilization, and tend to assure those who look with dismay at the tumultuous upheavings of freedom's home, that imperishable Art still maintains her placid sway in this distracted land, and that her votaries falter not in their allegiance.

Volcanoes pour out fiery lava under the red glare of the setting sun, obedient to Church's magic touch--delicate fancies are weaved into poetic life by the fingers of Gottschalk--but the voice of Poe, alas! is mute forever. The 'Lost Lenore,' found too late, may have inspired a song far beyond the dull range of human comprehension, but poor mortals left below, can only echo, with the grim and ghastly raven: _Nevermore! Nevermore!_

LITERARY NOTICES

THE SLAVE POWER; ITS CHARACTER, CAREER, AND PROBABLE DESIGNS: BEING AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE REAL ISSUES INVOLVED IN THE AMERICAN CONTEST. By J. E. CAIRNES, M.A., Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in Queen's College, Galway, and late Whately Professor in the University of Dublin. Second edition. New York: Carleton, 413 Broadway. London: Parker and Son & Co.

It is to be sincerely hoped that the American public, in its detestation of the ungenerous, narrow-minded, and inconsistent conduct of the majority of Englishmen toward the Federal Union since the present war began, will not lose sight of the fact that, here and there in Great Britain, men of superior intelligence and information have labored strenuously to make the truth known, and to vindicate our cause. Amid a mob of ignorant and furious foes of freedom, France has seen a Gasparin rise calm and great in superior knowledge, declaring incontrovertible truths; and in like manner, the English press has given the views of Stewart Mill and Professor Cairnes to their public, at a time when it seemed as if falsehood had completely triumphed. In 'The Slave Power,' the latest work by this last-named writer, we have indeed such a searching analysis of the present American crisis, and find the history of the entire difficulty set forth so fully, yet with such remarkable conciseness, that we cannot suppress a feeling of astonishment that a country which has slandered us so cruelly should, at the same time, have given to the world by far the best vindication of our cause which has as yet appeared. For it is no undue praise to say, that in this book we have the completest defence of the Federal cause and the most effective onslaught on the Slave Power which any writer has thus far placed on record; and we cordially agree with the vigorous reviewer of the _Westminster_, in believing that a work more needed could scarcely have been produced at the present time, 'since,' as he adds, 'it contains more than enough to give a new turn to English feeling on the subject, if those who guide and sway public opinion were ever likely to reconsider a question on which they have so deeply committed themselves.'

'The Slave Power,' it is true, contains little which has not, at one time or another, been brought before the mind of the well-informed American republican; yet it is precisely in this that its chief merit consists, since it is not by idle oratory and fine writing, but by _facts_ and the plain truth, that we can be best vindicated. Englishmen are grossly ignorant of the true causes of this struggle, or of the principles involved--a matter little to be marvelled at, when we find almost a majority of professed Federal Americans, under the name of Democrats, cheerfully admitting that their confederate foes are quite in the right as far as the _main_ cause of the difficulty is concerned. For all such men, a clear exposition of facts, logically set forth, cannot be other than a real blessing; since their amiability to the South, when not based on traitorous and selfish interests, means simply nothing more nor less than ignorance--and that of a kind which is little less than criminal, let the guilt rest where it may.

Professor Cairnes begins judiciously by showing that in the beginning it was believed, not without very apparent cause, in England, that our war 'sprang from narrow and selfish views of sectional interests,' in which the free-trading South was in the right, and that the abolition of slavery was a mere pretence by which the North sought, without a color of truth, to attract foreign sympathy. And when we remember for how long a time slaves were returned by Federal officers to their owners, and how persistently anything like abolition, or even the most moderate emancipation, was earnestly and practically disowned by the Federal power, it is not wonderful, as Mr. Cairnes declares, that England should have regarded our claim to be fighting for the cause of free labor as a shallow deceit. Even as we write, we have before us a journal containing an allusion to an officer who attempted to return to slavery a contraband who had brought to him information of the greatest importance. Yet, despite the frightful appearances against us, our writer saw, through all, the truth, and declared that, as regarded the popular British abuse of this country, 'never was an explanation of a political catastrophe propounded, in more daring defiance of all the great and cardinal realities of the case with which it professed to deal.'

Slavery is the cause and core of our national difficulty. Secession and Southern Rights have flourished in strength in exact ratio to the number of slaves in the States--nay, in the very counties in which slaves abounded. Slavery early developed a sectional class of politicians devoted to one object, who, by the sheer force of intense, unscrupulous application, from the year 1819 down to 1860, swayed our councils, gave an infamous character to American diplomacy, and stained our national character. They are called the Free Trade Party: why was it, then, that they never employed their power to accomplish that object, 'or how does it happen that, having submitted to the tariffs of 1832, 1842, and 1846, it should have resorted to the extreme measure of secession while under the tariff of 1857--a comparatively Free Trade law'? 'From 1842 down to 1860, the tendency of Federal legislation was distinctly in the direction of Free Trade.' 'If Free Trade was their main object, why did the Southern senators withdraw from their posts precisely at the time when their presence was most required to secure their cherished principle?' Or why did they not apply to their supple and infamous tool, Buchanan, to veto the bill? _Because they wished it to pass_--to make political capital against the North in England; and they accordingly aided its passage, Mr. Toombs being in the Senate, and actually voting for it! Or if it was a Free Trade question, why was it that the Western States did not take part with them?

The North, however, did not take up arms to destroy slavery, but the Right of Secession, since that was the irritating _point d'honneur_, and, what was more, the real first cause of injury which at first presented itself. Mr. Lincoln had cause to know that in the beginning, even in the South itself, secession was only the work of a turbulent minority. 'To have yielded would have been to have written himself down before the world as incompetent--nay, as a traitor to the cause which he had just sworn to defend.' In short, we were misunderstood--painfully so--and it is not a matter of indifference to learn that at last there is a reaction of intelligence in our favor, and that light is breaking through the bewildering mists which once veiled the truth.

In discussing 'the economic basis of slavery,' Professor Cairnes deals out truths with a prompt vigor which is truly admirable. From Stirling, Olmsted, Sewell, and others, he disposes of the old falsehood that only the negro can endure the Southern climate--a fact but recently _generally_ made known at the North--that isothermal lines do not follow the parallels of latitude--and that it is a gross error to believe the black incapable of improvement as a freeman. He admits that slave labor has its advantages, in being absolutely controllable, and in returning the whole fruit of its labor to the owner. It may, therefore, be combined on an extensive scale, and its cost is trifling. But, on the other hand, slave labor is given reluctantly, and is consequently a losing means, unless much of it can be concentrated under the eye of one overseer. It is unskillful, because the slave cannot be educated; and, therefore, having once learned one thing, he must be kept at that for life.

The result of this is that, as the slave, unlike the free farm-laborer, cannot (with rare exceptions) be profitably employed at aught save agriculture, and indeed only at one branch of that, he soon exhausts the soil. If all the blacks in the South were capable of laboring at rotation of crops, they would soon be free. Slavery has always of itself died out in the wheat and corn regions--because, in raising cereals, labor is more widely dispersed than in cotton or tobacco planting, and the workers are more difficult to oversee. Hence the constant immigration from the wornout to the new plantation, and the cry for new land; and hence the admission, by the most intelligent men of the South, that to prevent the extension of slavery would be to destroy it. Free labor flourishes even on barren soils--ingenuity is stimulated and science developed. But slave labor requires abundance of fertile soil and a branch of culture demanding combination and organization of large masses of labor and its _concentration_.

Yet, in spite of these facts, a writer in the London _Saturday Review_ informs the English public that the rapid deterioration of the soil under slave labor is a popular fallacy! Could the gentleman who gives this information so glibly, examine, we do not say Virginia, but simply that lower county of Delaware which has adhered somewhat to the old Southern slave system, in contradistinction to its two sisters, he might have distinctly ascertained if the exhaustion of soil by slave labor be a fallacy. Again, if the profits of slavery be only for the master, it may be true that the same process which enriches him impoverishes the country at large; and this is really the case through all the South. Free labor shuns slave society: a few Northern men may here and there live in the South, but as a rule the negro makes the poor white meaner than himself. It is true that free white labor in new lands is very exhaustive--but in time it takes them up again and restores them: this the negro never does, and never can do.

The tendencies of slavery to render the white man insolent, arrogant, and oligarchical, are well pointed out by Professor Cairnes, and with them the evil tendencies of slave societies. It makes bad white men, and intolerable political neighbors. In the ancient world, slaves were constantly being educated, freed, and made equal to their masters; but in the confederacy, everything is done to crush them lower and lower; and in these facts lie _perdu_ the future further degradation of every poor white in the South, the constant increase of power and capital in the hands of a few, and the diminution in number even of these few.

The fact that Virginians breed slaves expressly for sale is well exposed in this book. Our author is kind enough to believe that they never raise a single negro for the _express purpose_ of selling him or her; but we, who live nearer the 'sacred soil,' know better. It is not many days since a farmer in our present immediate vicinity, on the Southern Pennsylvania line, found himself obliged to dismiss a fine six-foot negro runaway from Virginia, whom he had hired, on account of the entire inability of the contraband to do the simplest farm tasks. 'What _is_ the reason you can't stand work?' inquired the amazed farmer. 'Why, mass', to tell de trufe, I wasn't brought up to wuck (work), but to _sell_. If I'd been wucked too hard, it ud a spiled my looks fo' de markit.' Professor Cairnes may accept the sorrowful assurances of more than one person, who has been taken frequently enough into the councils of 'the enemy' in bygone times (_crede experto Ruperto_), that slaves _are_ begotten, born, bred, and raised for the Southern market--as much so as any pigs--and that, too, by eminently aristocratic and highly refined scions of first families. Now that we can and dare speak the truth, it is not amiss to do so. We recall the day when to have taken part in the charge of the Six Hundred would have been a trifle of bravery compared to making the above truthful statement--for any one who valued social standing, or indeed a whole skin--on the border. Whether their own children were sold may be imagined from an anecdote long current in Virginia, relative to ex-Governor Wise, who, in a certain law case where he was opposed by a Northern trader, decided of a certain slave, that the chattel, being a mulatto, was of more value than 'a molangeon.' 'And what, in the name of God, _is_ a molungeon?' inquired the astonished 'Northern man.' 'A _mulatto_,' replied Wise, is the child of a female house-servant by young master'--a molungeon is the offspring of a field hand by a Yankee peddler.'

Mr. Cairnes has, we doubt not, often heard of mulattoes--they constitute the great majority of Virginia slaves. But did he ever hear of 'molungeons'?

Mr. Cairnes justly denies the common theory that the South has maintained paramount political sway in the Union by a superior capacity for politics. He declares that men whose interests and ideas are concentrated in a very narrow range, on one object, have vast advantage over their intellectual superiors, when the latter pursue no such single course. He might have added that the young Southern gentleman, when not intended for a physician, almost invariably devotes to mere provincial politics and the arts of declamation and debate, all of those intellectual energies which the Northerner applies to business, art, commerce, literature, and other solidly useful occupations. If the Southerner has an inborn superior _talent_ for politics, why is it that, as in the case of British or French statesmen, he never develops the slightest talent for _literature_? So notoriously is this the case, that even the first writers of the South, especially for the press, are generally broken-down Northern literary hacks, or miserable Irish and English refugees. Mr. Cairnes quotes De Bow's _Review_. He might be amazed, could he examine a number of that remarkable periodical, at the quality of the English written by some of the most eminent philosophers, patriots, and politicians of the confederacy!

The history of the Slave Power, as set forth in Louisiana, Missouri and its Compromise, the Mexican war, Kansas, the rise of the Republican Party, the Dred Scott decision, the attempt of John Brown, and secession, are given in a masterly manner in this work, and with a miraculous appreciation of truths. Not less vigorous and shrewd is the chapter devoted to the designs of the Slave Power, in which the future capacity of that power to do illimitable mischief is set forth in a manner which will be new even to the great mass of American Republican readers. If we differ with him in his 'Conclusion,' it is that we may be consistent to his earlier position. We do not agree with him when he advocates the giving permission to the South to secede with the Mississippi as their western boundary. Penned up by North and West, and with their ports occupied by us, the South would soon decay. But we rather believe the North, brought to the tremendous trial of a test between aristocracy and republicanism, will yet conquer by destroying slavery and giving the poor whites of the South their rights. But we cannot conclude without expressing the earnest hope that this book will be read, and that thoroughly, by every intelligent American. There is at present a reaction rapidly forming in England in favor of the Federal cause, and we foresee that this extraordinary work--the best summary in existence of our principles, and the most overwhelming stylus-stroke which slavery has ever received--is destined to be of incalculable service to the great cause. Let it circulate by the hundred thousand!--and do you, dear reader, do your part by perusing it, and making its merits known to all. In connection with it, we commend the review in the _Westminster_ already referred to. It is pleasant to realize that we have friends among enemies. Let us hope that when brighter days come, our Government and our people will not be unmindful of those who defended us in the days of darkness and dole. We owe a great debt of gratitude to such men as Professor Cairnes, and must not be slack in paying it.

LES MISERABLES. No. IV. _St. Denis._ By VICTOR HUGO. New York: Carleton.

A great improvement on the preceding miserable trio, yet still far from fulfilling the extravagant assertions as to its merit with which the press has been deluged. We see in this novel, historic pictures, not without accuracy, details of life which are true enough, and, we might add, familiar enough, from a thousand _feuilletons_, but we find no PURPOSE, corresponding to the expectations excited. We have every variety of miserable wretch imaginable paraded before us, without a hint of any means of curing their social disease. 'There is a hammer for tearing down, but no trowel for building up,' beyond a little empty talk on the benefits to be derived from education. The truth is that Victor Hugo writes, like too many of his nation, simply for sensation and effect. The fault to be found with this series is, that, like Jack Sheppard, it degrades the taste and blunts the feelings--in a word, it vulgarizes, and is as improper reading for the young, so far as _effect_ is concerned, as the most immoral production extant. Vulgarity is the open doorway to vice, and, philosophize as we may, sketches of thieves and vagabonds, _gamins_, prostitutes and liars are vulgar and unfit reading for youthful minds, if not for any minds whatever.

ABEL DRAKE'S WIFE. By JOHN SAUNDERS. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The reader is well aware that this work has attained a great popularity--we may add that it has deserved it, being a work of marked originality; one of characters and feelings which will even bear at sundry times reperusal: as good a character as can be given to a novel, and a far better one than we are disposed to award to the majority of those which we meet. It is, we should say, in justice to the progressive powers of the author, far superior to his earlier productions.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

In the noble Message of President LINCOLN, there are two paragraphs which should be committed to memory and constantly recalled by every man:

'Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down into honor or dishonor to the highest generation.

'We say 'we are for the Union!' The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save this Union. _The world knows we know how to save it._ We--even we here--hold the power and bear the responsibility!'

'We cannot escape history.' And this is true, not only of the Congress and of the Administration, but of all men who at the present day are raised one fraction above the veriest obscurity and completest nothing-ism. You, reader, and series of those whom you daily meet, may fancy that your deeds, speeches, writings, overshadowed as they are by the greater men and events of the day, will be forgotten. It is not so.

The last age was more antiquarian, more given to collecting, searching, and recording, than its predecessor. This present one is, however, a hundredfold more seeking and more chronicling than the last, and this tendency increases every year. As it is, scarce a hero or a traitor, even of the Revolution, is escaping glory or infamy. Will it be less the case with the good and bad men of the Emancipation? There is not one among them who shall escape history.

There is no thieving contractor, no 'helping' official, no shoddy scoundrel, no unrighteously 'commission' gathering leech, who is not quietly noted down here and there, to be duly exposed, some soon--some in after years. We know that extensive researches have been undertaken, to prepare and keep in black and white a record of the rascality of this war, in high places as well as low. _They shall not escape history._

There is no cowardly, dishonest, selfish politician--be he who he may--no trimmer and truckler to the times--who will be forgotten. The most important war of all history--the greatest and most clearly outlined struggle between Aristocracy and Republicanism--will not pass away into oblivion. Men will toil away their lives that they may revive some of the salient points of this great fight for freedom. To commemorate the good, they must set forth the opposition of the bad--of those who aided the foe either by approving of endless slavery, by clogging the action of the Administration, or by turning the hardly earned income of Government, wrung from a suffering people, to their own profit. They shall not escape history.

Those who had the ability to aid the great cause of truth in any way, by brain or hand, and yet who did nothing--verily they shall not escape history.

The cautious, shrewd fellows, who hurrah loudly for the truth--after it has become safe and profitable to do so--they who run with the hound and hold with the hare--they may chuckle to themselves in their day, and rejoice at their shrewdness-but Time and GOD sift all things, however small--even such men as these. They shall not escape history.

And let them cry, 'After us the Deluge,' who will. You will live again in your children; the heritage of sin is repaid with compound interest to your name. How do you know but there is a GOD and a future knowledge of all this, that you act so boldly? What evil have your children or your name done you, that you should lay a curse on them? For if you do not put forth your hand to the great cause of truth and in the great battle of the LORD on behalf of Freedom, be certain that you are now shaping a malediction, and awaking the anathema maranatha, which shall go down into the deepest ages, and even in many lands, to cover you and yours with the dark shadow of shame forever. You shall not escape history.

But neither shall they escape who have fought the good fight for truth, for man and liberty. Truly, as the German proverb hath it, _Zeit bricht Rosen und Zeit bringt Rosen_--'Time breaks roses--but Time brings them also.' There is an age coming which will distinguish between the battles for conquest and idle glory and the honor of kings, and those which were fought for holy freedom. In that age, the great and good and wise, yes! even the smallest and weakest who chose the cause of Truth, will be prized above the men of all battles which ever were beforetime. Stand fast, O soldier! be firm, O friend of the good cause! let us see this thing bravely through to the end, come what may. GOD bless you!--and he _will_ bless you! Die on the battle field, or labor humbly at home--if your heart and your hand have been given to the good work, you shall not escape history.

'Fate for you shall sheathe her shears, You shall live some thousand years.'

* * * * *

It has been nobly proposed, and we doubt not that the proposition will be as nobly realized, that a shipload of food be sent to the relief of the starving operatives of England. If the wealthy classes of Great Britain were generous in proportion to the same order of men in this country, and in proportion to their own riches, it would be simply absurd for us to offer to relieve their paupers. But they are not so; and it is a matter to be deeply deplored, that the manufacturers who have made fortunes from their operatives, are, in Great Britain, the ones who are least inclined to relieve the sufferings of their poor dependants. And this we state entirely on the authority of the British press, and from the comments made by it on a recent and wretchedly abortive effort to collect from manufacturing capitalists somewhat to feed the poor who had enriched them. To an American, accustomed to hear of deeds of generosity and public spirit, the list of moneys subscribed for such an object, against the names of millionaires, would seem incredibly beggarly and pitiful.

However this may be, some one must feed the poor; and if John Bull cannot afford it, Jonathan must. There is a degree of suffering in which Englishman or confederate rebel becomes simply a suffering brother, and when he who would not act the good Samaritan becomes most truly an outlaw to all humanity. Therefore, let there be, not one, but many shiploads sent to the sufferers--let us cast our bread upon the waters, literally as well as figuratively, and give no heed or thought to its return. The London _Times_ will, we presume, impugn the motives of the charity--call it Pecksniffian and Heep-ish--or possibly try to prove that the Federals had no hand in the good deed. Let it rave--the business in hand is to feed starving men, women, and children, and not to make political capital, or gain glory, or please a party--for that we most assuredly shall not--but to do good and act in the large-hearted manner which gives a good conscience, and which as a national trait is the noblest characteristic of a republican.

* * * * *

The South has been quicker than the North in perceiving that public opinion in England is rapidly changing in certain quarters in favor of the Federal cause, and it is for this reason that the press in Secessia has of late been so unamiable toward Great Britain, while SEMMES has shown in his pirating so little kindness to English goods. Possibly Secessia may after all discover that she might do a more unprofitable thing than be in alliance offensive and defensive with us, and that she might go further and fare worse, either alone, or with foreign friends who are, after all, only foes in disguise.

But it is a mad and a foolish thing for England to hope to be benefited by our dissension. Have we grown weaker or less dangerous by the discovery that we are capable of raising the greatest armies and the most invincible fleets in the world? While we flourish in prosperity, we afford her an outlet for all her paupers, thieves, vagabond Bohemians, and refuse of all sorts, to say nothing of the vast mass of the really industrious poor who do well here, but who would have starved to death at home. With one person in eight in Great Britain dying as a pauper and buried at the public expense, it is hardly expedient for its people to wish to see us ruined. Were we to exclude her vagabonds and paupers by an alien act from entering this country, and at the same time close our markets to her goods, of what avail would all the cotton in the world be to her? The American public understand this thing perfectly--so perfectly that the first movement toward intervention would be to effectually shut out the offending party, to bear by itself the worst results of prostrated manufactures and a turbulent starving population.

But we trust that nothing of the kind may happen, and that England will perceive that a great, prosperous, and united America, though it covers the whole Western hemisphere, will be of more advantage to her than a divided, impoverished land, full of fighting factions. It is a bad, an inhuman, and a most un-Christian policy to set wealthy and powerful neighbors at dissensions, to rejoice at their losses, and finally hope to see them from prosperous citizens, turned into starved brigands. Envy is of the devil. And it is the more wicked, because _we_ know, and every one of our readers knows with us, that there never existed in this country, within our recollection, any desire whatever to see England impoverished, injured, or in any way 'set back' as a country. That deep-seated desire, openly avowed by her orators and press, to see our growing greatness checked, was never seriously cherished by any true American--and it could be proved that the insulting expressions of such a desire have in almost every instance originated with British _emigres_ in this country, who are notoriously the most bitter foes to their fatherland.

It is finally worth noting that the sympathy expressed by Americans for Russia during the Crimean war, has been of late frequently urged in England as a reason for withholding sympathy from the Federals. Now it is most _undeniably true_ that, with certain rare exceptions, the friendship for Russia _at that time_ came in a great measure from the Democratic party, and especially from the South. It was an Irish antipathy to England in the North, and a serf-sympathy in the South which caused it all--naturally enough, in all conscience. If any one doubts this, let him recall Roger Pryor's book, indorsing Russia as the great power destined to swallow up all Europe--written at a time when Pryor was beyond question the first and loudest exponent living of Southern feelings and principles. This is the simplest and plainest of facts, most easily susceptible of proof--and yet how many Englishmen are there who would believe it?

The truth is that the whole criticism of America by England has presented the melancholy spectacle of prejudice and envy, made maudlin by gross ignorance--and the worst of it all has been the making the North responsible for the bygone evil deeds of the South. Repudiation, protection, Russian sympathy, filibustering, and other objections--are all heaped on the Federal head alone to bear? Will the _truth_ ever come to light in England?

* * * * *

May we venture to mention to our readers that 'Among the Pines'--originally published in these pages--is now selling its _thirtieth_ thousand, with constantly increasing orders. And in connection we would add that 'Americans in Rome'--originally published in THE CONTINENTAL under the title of _Maccaroni and Canvas_ has appeared in book form, and may be obtained from George P. Putnam. This work is, we believe, one of the most remarkable collections of sketches and observation ever written on Italy; combining a very great amount of accurate personal observations of the Roman people, both in the city and country, with that of American artists' life there. The observations are throughout racily humorous, and those who have within a few years visited 'the Cradle of Art' cannot fail to recognize, as hit off with no sparing hand, more than one American notoriety. Art quackery as it exists, is well shown up in 'Americans in Rome;' the author having little in common with those amiable romancers who glorify every illiterate picture-maker, though he never fails to do justice to true genius. We believe, in short, that these sketches form a very peculiar, piquant, and _earnest_ work, as truthful as it is amusing, and as such commend it to our readers.

The

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

EDITORS:

HON. ROBERT J. WALKER, CHARLES G. LELAND, HON. FRED. P. STANTON, EDMUND KIRKE.

The readers of the CONTINENTAL are aware of the important position it has assumed, of the influence which it exerts, and of the brilliant array of political and literary talent of the highest order which supports it. No publication of the kind has, in this country, so successfully combined the energy and freedom of the daily newspaper with the higher literary tone of the first-class monthly; and it is very certain that no magazine has given wider range to its contributors, or preserved itself so completely from the narrow influences of party or of faction. In times like the present, such a journal is either a power in the land or it is nothing. That the CONTINENTAL is not the latter is abundantly evidenced _by what it has done_--by the reflection of its counsels in many important public events, and in the character and power of those who are its staunchest supporters.

By the accession of HON. ROBERT J. WALKER and HON. F. P. STANTON to its editorial corps, the CONTINENTAL acquires a strength and a political significance which, to those who are aware of the ability and experience of these gentlemen, must elevate it to a position far above any previously occupied by any publication of the kind in America. Preserving all "the boldness, vigor, and ability" which a thousand journals have attributed to it, it will at once greatly enlarge its circle of action, and discuss, fearlessly and frankly, every principle involved in the great questions of the day. The first minds of the country, embracing men most familiar with its diplomacy and most distinguished for ability, are to become its contributors; and it is no mere "flattering promise of a prospectus" to say, that this "magazine for the times" will employ the first intellect in America, under auspices which no publication ever enjoyed before in this country.

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND, the accomplished scholar and author, who has till now been the sole Editor of the Magazine, will, beside his editorial labors, continue his brilliant contributions to its pages; and EDMUND KIRKE, author of "AMONG THE PINES," will contribute to each issue, having already begun a work on Southern Life and Society, which, will be found far more widely descriptive, and, in all respects, superior to the first.

While the CONTINENTAL will express decided opinions on the great questions of the day, it will not be a mere political journal: much the larger portion of its columns will be enlivened, as heretofore, by tales, poetry, and humor. In a word, the CONTINENTAL will be found, under its new staff of Editors, occupying a position and presenting attractions never before found in a magazine.

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Peaches, Pears, Tomatoes, and every variety of fruit and vegetables is grown in great abundance, from which Chicago and other Northern markets are furnished from four to six weeks earlier than their immediate vicinity. Between the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railway and the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, (a distance of 115 miles on the Branch, and 136 miles on the Main Trunk,) lies the great Corn and Stock raising portion of the State.

THE ORDINARY YIELD

of Corn is from 50 to 80 bushels per acre. Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep and Hogs are raised here at a small cost, and yield large profits. It is believed that no section of country presents greater inducements for Dairy Farming than the Prairies of Illinois, a branch of farming to which but little attention has been paid, and which must yield sure profitable results. Between the Kankakee and Illinois Rivers, and Chicago and Dunleith, (a distance of 56 miles on the Branch and 147 miles by the Main Trunk,) Timothy Hay, Spring Wheat, Corn, &c., are produced in great abundance.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

The Agricultural products of Illinois are greater than those of of any other State. The Wheat crop of 1861 was estimated at 85,000,000 bushels, while the Corn crop yields not less than 140,000,000 bushels besides the crop of Oats, Barley, Rye, Buckwheat, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Pumpkins, Squashes, Flax, Hemp, Peas, Clover, Cabbage, Beets, Tobacco, Sorgheim, Grapes, Peaches, Apples, &c., which go to swell the vast aggregate of production in this fertile region. Over Four Million tons of produce were sent out the State of Illinois during the past year.

STOCK RAISING.

In Central and Southern Illinois uncommon advantages are presented for the extension of Stock raising. All kinds of Cattle, Horses, Mules, Sheep, Hogs, &c., of the best breeds, yield handsome profits; large fortunes have already been made, and the field is open for others to enter with the fairest prospects of like results. DAIRY FARMING also presents its inducements to many.

CULTIVATION OF COTTON.

_The experiments in Cotton culture are of very great promise. Commencing in latitude 39 deg. 30 min. (see Mattoon on the Branch, and Assumption on the Main Line), the Company owns thousands of acres well adapted to the perfection of this fibre. A settler having a family of young children, can turn their youthful labor to a most profitable account in the growth and perfection of this plant._

THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD

Traverses the whole length of the State, from the banks of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan to the Ohio. As its name imports, the Railroad runs through the centre of the State, and on either side of the road along its whole length lie the lands offered for sale.

CITIES, TOWNS, MARKETS, DEPOTS,

There are Ninety-eight Depots on the Company's Railway, giving about one every seven miles. Cities, Towns and Villages are situated at convenient distances throughout the whole route, where every desirable commodity may be found as readily as in the oldest cities of the Union and where buyers are to be met for all kinds of farm produce.

EDUCATION.

Mechanics and working-men will find the free school system encouraged by the State, and endowed with a large revenue for the support of the schools. Children can live in sight of the school, the college, the church, and grow up with the prosperity of the leading State in the Great Western Empire.

* * * * *

PRICES AND TERMS OF PAYMENT--ON LONG CREDIT.

80 acres at $10 per acre. with interest at 6 per ct. annually on the following terms:

Cash payment $48.00 Payments in one year 48.00 " in two years 48.00 " in three years 48.00 " in four years 236.00 " in five years 224.00 " in six years 212.00 " in seven years 300.00

40 acres at $10 per acre; Cash payment $24.00 Payments in one year 24.00 " in two years 24.00 " in three years 24.00 " in four years 118.00 " in five years 112.00 " in six years 106.00 " in seven years 100.00

Address Land Commissioner, Illinois Central Railroad, Chicago, Ill.

* * * * *

Number 14

25 Cents

The CONTINENTAL MONTHLY.

DEVOTED TO Literature and National Policy.

FEBRUARY, 1863.

NEW YORK:

JOHN F. TROW 50 GREENE STREET (FOR THE PROPRIETORS).

HENRY DEXTER AND SINCLAIR TOUSEY. WASHINGTON, D.C.: FRANCK TAYLOR

* * * * *

CONTENTS.--No. XIV.

Our National Finances. Robert J. Walker, 129

A Trip to Antietam. Charles W. Loring, 145

American Destiny. John Stahl Patterson, 160

The Birth of the Lily, 169

Was He Successful? Richard B. Kimball, 171

Nullification and Secession. Hon. Robert J. Walker, 179

The Sioux War. John G. Nicolay, Private Secretary

to President Lincoln, 195

"Dead!" 204

A Merchant's Story. Edmund Kirke, 206

The Consequences of the Rebellion. Hon. Frederic

P. Stanton, 223

Sunshine in Thought, 233

How they Jested in the Good Old Time. Charles G. Leland, 237

Literary Notices, 248

Editor's Table, 250

The article in this number of THE CONTINENTAL, on "Our National Finances," by Hon. ROBERT J. WALKER, will be found worthy of especial attention at the present time.

* * * * *

Our next issue will contain a valuable article on "GOLD."

* * * * *

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by JAMES R. GILMORE, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

* * * * *

INDEX TO VOLUME III.

A Chapter on Wonders. Perth Granton, 461

A Fancy Sketch, 482

A Heroine of To-Day, 543

A Merchant's Story. Edmund Kirke, 206, 289, 451, 528, 642

American Destiny. John Stahl Patterson, 79, 160

An Englishman in South Carolina, 110

A Trip to Antietam. Charles W. Loring, 145

A Winter in Camp. E. G. Hammond, 519

Cloud and Sunshine, 687

Consequences of the Rebellion. Hon. F. P. Stanton, 26, 223

Cost of a Trip to Europe, 730

"Dead," 204

Down in Tennessee, 469

Editor's Table, 126, 250, 379, 503, 747

Ethel. Mrs. Martha Walker Cook, 435

False Estimations, 274

Flag of our Union. Hon. R. J. Walker, 480

For and Against, 334

Gold. Hon. Robert A. Walker, 279

Great Heart, 629

Henrietta and Vulcan. Delia M. Colton, 421

How they Jested in the Good Old Time. Charles Godfrey Leland, 237

How the War affects Americans. Hon. F. P. Stanton, 411

How Mr. Lincoln became an Abolitionist. S. B. Gookins, 727

Huguenots of New Rochelle. Hon. G. P. Disosway, 1

Huguenots of Virginia, 348

'I;' or, Summer in the City, 40

In Memoriam. Richard Wolcott, 527

'Is there Anything in It?' 688

Last Words. Ingoldsby North, 282

Literary Notices, 122, 248, 374, 500, 630, 744

Maccaroni and Canvas. Henry P. Leland, 7

May Morning, 657

Mill on Liberty. Hon. F. P. Stanton, 674

Miriam's Testimony. M. A. Edwards, 589

Montgomery in Secession Time, 354

National Ode, 554

Nullification and Secession. Hon. Robert J. Walker, 179

Our National Finances. Hon. R. J. Walker, 129

Our Present Position, its Dangers and Duties, 488

Parting, 288

Pen, Pallet, and Piano, 117

Pictures from the North, 398

Poetry and Poetical Selections, 474

Promise. Edward S. Rend, jr., 78

Promoted, 420

Reason, Rhyme, and Rhythm. Mrs. Martha Walker Cook, 662, 698

Shylock vs. Antonio. Carlton Edwards, 539

Sunshine in Thought, 233

The Birth of the Lily, 169

The Blue Handkerchief, 279

The Buccaneers of America. Wm. L. Stone, 703

The Captain of '63 to his Men, 315

The Causes and Results of the War. Lieut. E. Phelps, U. S. A., 617

The Century of Inventions. C. G. Leland, 318

The Chained River. Charles G. Leland, 410

The Chech, 395

The Complaining Bore, 496

The Confederation and the Nation. E. Carey, 694

The Destiny of the African Race in the United States. Rev. J. M. Sturtevant, D. D., 600

The Great Prairie State. Mrs. C. M. Kirkland, 513

The Ivy. Charles Godfrey Leland, 47

The Lady and her Slave. Mrs. Martha W. Cook, 330

The Mishaps of Miss Hobbs. Wm. L. Williams, 54

The Navy of the United States, 659

The New Rasselas, 404

The Physical Survey of New York Harbor and its Approaches. Henry Mitchell, 105

The Return. E. S. Rand, jr., 464

The Sioux War. John G. Nicolay, 195

The Skeptics of the Waverley Novels. Chas. G. Leland, 439

The Soldier's Burial, 373

The Surrender of Forts Jackson and St. Philip. F. H. Gerdes, 557

The Union. Hon. R. J. Walker, 68, 366, 465, 615

The Value of the Union. W. H. Muller, 571, 633

The Vision of the Monk Gabriel. Eleanor C. Donnelly, 316

The Wonders of Words, 385

Thought, 23

Three Modern Romances, 667

Touching the Soul. Lieut. Egbert Phelps, 734

Turkey. A. Comte, jr., 257

Virginia, 714

Visit to the National Academy of Design, 718

War Song--Earth's Last Battle. Mrs. M. W. Cook, 562

Was He Successful? Richard B. Kimball, 98, 171, 611, 719

JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER.