Chapter 7

Ally and Rosey were to be married[3] in the little church, and, directly after supper, we all went to the wedding. The seats had been removed from the centre of the building, for, though duly consecrated to the use of the saints, the sinners were to exercise their heels in it after the ceremony was over. At its farther extremity, the carpenter's bench of which I have spoken, elongated at both ends, and covered with a white table cloth, was piled high with eatables; indicating that a time of 'great refreshment' was at hand. The bounteous supply of ham, chicken, wild duck, roast pig, fish, hoecake, wheat bread, tea, coffee, milk, and pumpkin and sweet-potato pies under which the bench groaned, showed that some liberal hand had catered for the occasion.

Black Joe, dressed in his 'Sunday best,' was seated on the rustic settee at the back of the desk, and Phyllis and Dinah occupied chairs inside the low railing, which faced the pulpit. Phyllis looked careworn and sad, but Ally's mother was as radiant as a brass kettle in a blaze of light wood. She wore a white dress, stiffly starched and expanded by immense hoops, and a crimped nightcap, whose broad border flapped about like the wings of a crowing rooster; and she looked, for all the world, like a black ghost in a winding sheet, escaped from below, and bound on a 'good time generally.' Two 'shining lights,' on either side of the pulpit, held aloft blazing torches of pine, which illuminated the sea of grinning darkness, and sent up a smoke like that arising from the pit which is said to be bottomless. About a hundred darkies were present; and the number of glossy coats, fancy turbans, gaudy bonnets, red shawls, and flaming dresses, which the light disclosed, was amazing. The poor worm that grubbed in the earth, had appeared ('for that occasion only') as a butterfly; and Lazarus, rid of his rags, had come forth dressed like a Broadway dandy.

Any person of sensitive olfactories would have halted in the doorway; but I elbowed through the woolly gathering, and followed Frank and Selma to the family pew. Tittering, laughing, and flaunting their red and yellow kerchiefs, the black people were enjoying themselves amazingly, when 'Dar dey comes,' 'Dar'm de happy pussons,' went round the assemblage, and the bride and groom, attended by two sable couples, entered the building. After some ludicrous mistakes, they got 'into position' in front of the railing, and Black Joe took a stand before them.

Rosey was dressed in white, with a neat fillet of pink and blue ribbon about her head; and Ally wore a black frock coat, with white vest, and white cotton gloves. One of the groomsmen--a rustic beau from a neighboring plantation--wore an immensely long-tailed blue coat with brass buttons, a flaming red waistcoat, yellow woollen mittens, and a neckerchief that looked like a secession flag hugging a lamp-post. Both of these gentry had hats of stove-pipe pattern, very tall, and with narrow brims; and--they wore them during the ceremony.

'Silence in de meetin',' cried Joe.

The boisterous sea of black wool subsided to a dead calm. Those not already standing rose, and Joe commenced reading the marriage service of the Episcopal Church.

The parties immediately interested appeared to have conned their lessons well; for they made all the responses with great propriety; but some of the congregation seemed less familiar with the service. When Joe repeated the words, 'If any man kin show cause why dese folks should not be lawfully jined togedder, leff him now speak, or else foreber hole his peace,' Dinah turned to the audience, and cried out:

'Yas, jess leff him come out wid it _now_. I'd like ter see de man dat's got onyting agin it.'

No one appeared to have 'onyting agin it,' and Joe proceeded to read the words: 'I require and charge you, if either of you know any impediment,' etc. In the midst of it a voice called out:

'Dar ain't no 'pedimen', Boss Joe; I knows dat. Gwo on, sar!' 'Dat's so, brudder,' said another voice. 'Dat's de Lord's trufh,' echoed a third. 'Doan't be 'sturbin' de meetin'; de young folks want de 'splicin' done,' cried a fourth; and 'Amen,' shouted a dozen.

'Shet up, all on you,' yelled Joe, turning on them with an imperious gesture; 'ef you hain't no more manners dan dat, clar out.'

Silence soon ensued, and Joe went on without interruption to the place where the minister asks the bride-groom: 'Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?' Then Dinah, unable to contain herself longer, joyfully exclaimed:

'Ob course he will--ony youn' feller'd be glad to hab _har_.'

[Never having gone through the ceremony herself, the poor woman could not be expected to know what was appropriate to the occasion.]

No further interruption occurred, and soon the happy couple were 'bone of one bone, and flesh of one flesh.' The assemblage still standing, Joe then turned to Ally and Rosey, and, with a manner so solemn and impressive that he seemed altogether a different person from the merry darky who had entered so heartily into the 'high ole heel scrapin'' of the morning; he spoke somewhat as follows:

'My chil'ren, love one anoder; bar wid one anoder; be faithful to one anoder. You hab started on a long journey; many rough places am in de road; many trubbles will spring up by de wayside; but gwo on hand an' hand togedder; love one anoder; an' no matter what come onter you, you will be happy--fur love will sweeten ebery sorrer, lighten ebery load, make de sun shine in eben de bery cloudiest wedder. I knows it will, my chil'ren, 'case I'se been ober de groun'. Ole Aggy an' I hab trabbled de road. Hand in hand we hab gone ober de rocks; fru de mud; in de hot, burnin' sand; ben out togedder in the cole, an' de rain, an' de storm, fur nigh onter forty yar, but we hab clung to one anoder; we hab loved one anoder; and fru eberyting, in de bery darkest days, de sun ob joy an' peace hab broke fru de clouds, an' sent him blessed rays down inter our hearts. We started jess like two young saplin's you's seed a growin' side by side in de woods. At fust we seemed way 'part, fur de brambles, an' de tick bushes, an' de ugly forns--dem war our bad ways--war atween us; but love, like de sun, shone down on us, and we grow'd. We grow'd till our heads got above de bushes; till dis little branch an' dat little branch--dem war our holy feelin's--put out toward one anoder, an' we come closer an' closer togedder. And dough we'm old trees now, an' sometime de wind blow, an' de storm rage fru de tops, and freaten to tear off de limbs, an' to pull up de bery roots, we'm growin' closer an' closer, an' nearer an' nearer togedder ebery day. And soon de old tops will meet; soon de ole branches, all cobered ober wid de gray moss, will twine round one anoder; soon de two ole trunks will come togedder and grow inter _one_ foreber--grow inter one up dar in de sky, whar de wind neber'll blow, whar de storm neber'll beat; whar we shill blossom an' bar fruit to de glory ob de Lord, an' in His heabenly kingdom foreber!

'Yas, my chil'ren, you hab started on a long journey, an' nuffin' will git you fru it but _love_. Nuttin' will hole you up, nuffin' will keep you faithful to one anoder, nuffin' will make you bar wid one anoder, but love. None ob us kin lib widout it; but married folks want it most ob all. Dey need it more dan de bread dey eat, de water dey drink, or de air dey breafe. De worle couldn't gwo on widout it. De bery sun would gwo out in de heabens but fur dat! An' shill I tell you why? You hab heerd massa Robert talk 'bout de great law dat make de apple fall from de tree, de rock sink in de water; dat bines our feet to de round 'arth so we don't drop off as it gwo fru de air; dat holes de sun an' de stars in dar 'pointed places, so dat, day after day, an' yar after yar, dough dey'm trabblin' fasser dan de lightnin' eber went, dey'm right whar dey should be. He call it 'traction, an' all de great men call it so; but dat ain't de name! It am LOVE. It am GOD, fur GOD am love, an' love am GOD, an' love bines de whole creashun togedder! An' shill I tell you how it do it? Does you see dis hand? how I open de fingers; how I shet'm up; how I rise de whole arm? Does you see dis foot, dat I does wid jess de same? Does you see dis whole body, how I make it, in a twinklin', do jess what I like? Now what am it dat make my hand move, an' my whole 'body turn round so sudden, dat I'se only to say: 'Do it,' an' it'm done? Why, it am ME. It'm _me_, dat libs up yere in de brain, an' sends my _will_ fru ebery part--fru ebery siner, an' ebery muscle, an' ebery little jint, an' make'm all do jess what I like. Now man am made in de image of GOD, an' dis pore, weak ole body am a small pattern ob de whole creashun. Eberyting go on jess as _it_ do. Eberyting am held togedder, an' moved 'bout, jess as _it_ am--but it'm GOD dat move it, not me! He libs up dar in de sky--which am His brain--wid de stars fur His hands, de planets fur His feet, an' de whole univarse fur His body; an' He sends His will--which am love--fru ebery part ob de whole, an' moves it 'bout, an' make it do jess as He likes. So you see, it am my will sent fru ebery muscle, an' ebery little siner, dat moves my body; so it am _His_ will sent fru what de'stronomers an' de poets call de heabenly ether, dat moves _His_ body--which am de 'arth, an' de sun, an' de stars, an' you an' me, an' ebery libin' ting in all creashun! His will move 'em all; AN' HIS WILL AM LOVE! An' don't you see dat you can't do widout His love? Dat it am de bery breaf ob life? Dat, ef it war tooken 'way from you, fur jess one moment, you'd drop down, an' die, an' neber come to life agin--no, not in dis worle, nor in any oder worle? It am so, my chil'ren; an' de more you hab ob dat love, de happier you'll be; de more you'll love one ander; de easier you'll gwo fru you' life--de more joyfuller you'll meet you' deafh--de happier you'll be all fru de long, long ages dat'm comin' in de great Yereafter! Den, O my chil'ren! Love God, Love one anoder! You can't be happy widout you love GOD, an' you can't love Him widout you love one anoder!'

When Joe had concluded, he saluted the bride in a manner that many another sooty gentleman present would have been glad to imitate, and then took a stand at the head of the supper table. An immense tureen, filled with steaming oysters, was soon brought in and placed before him, and looking up, he said grace, in which he thanked Him who feedeth the ravens for putting it into his master's heart to feed His other black creatures, the darkies present on that occasion. He asked for his master many a happy 'Chrismus down yere,' and an eternal 'Chrismus in heaben,' and he added: 'An' knowin' dat dou hatest long prayers, an' long faces, an' dose folks dat gwo 'bout grumblin', as ef dy happy 'arth war nuffin' but a graveyard; may we enjoy dis feast an' dis day as dy true chil'ren--de chil'ren ob a good Fader, who am all joy an' all gladness--an' while we'm eatin' an' drinkin' an' dancin', may we make merry in our hearts to _Thee_. Amen.'

When he concluded, Preston stepped to his side, and taking the big ladle from his hand, said:

'Stand aside, Joe, you have done work enough for to-night;' and turning to 'we white folks' in the family pew, he added: 'If any man among you would be master, let him now be the servant of all. Let him try his hand at the waiter business, and see if he can't throw these shady people into the _shade_.'

Selma, Frank, 'massa Joe,' and I went forward, and tying the negroes' aprons about our waists, took appropriate places around the table.

'Now all of you find seats,' cried Preston; and amid a hurricane of giggling and merry laughter, the black people seated themselves on the floor, on the platform, and on the row of benches ranged along the walls. Preston proceeded to fill up the bowls with the savory stew, and we dispensed the eatables among them, and for half an hour I witnessed as much enjoyment as often falls to the lot of black sinners in this 'vale of tears.'

'Now, ef dis doan't beat all,' exclaimed old Dinah, as I handed her a huge chunk of gingerbread; 'ef 'ou ain't right smart at waitin', massa Kirke, I'd like ter know it.'

'Keep dark, ole 'ooman,' shouted Black Joe; 'doan't you say nuffin' 'bout dat, or de traders'll be a hole ob him. He'd sell fur a right likely hand, _shore_.'

'I woan't do nuffin' but keep dark, Boss Joe,' rejoined Dinah, grinning till her face opened from ear to ear. 'I'll hab 'ou know, sar, dat none but white ladies paints!'

'Good fur you, ole lady,' cried the preacher. 'After dat you'll gib me de pleasure ob your hand in de fuss dance.'

'Ob course, I will, _mister_ Joe; an' ef 'ou'm tired ob de ole 'ooman, I'll gib 'ou my han' in anoder dance.'

'No, you woan't, I doan't gwo fur second marridges,' rejoined Joe, looking slyly at Preston; 'dey ain't made in heaben.'

'No more' dey ain't,' said the old woman, heaving a long sigh, and also looking at Preston.

'You ain't a gwine to leff dese folks dance in de church, am you, Boss Joe?' asked a prim, demure-looking darky, in a black suit, with a white neckerchief and stiff shirt collar; probably some neighboring preacher.

'I reckon so,' replied Joe, dryly.

'An' _I_ reckons so, too, mister I scare-you-out (Iscariot),' cried the old negress. 'Ain't de planets de Lord's feet, an' doant dey dance! I reckons we ain't no better dan de Lord is; an' ef He mobes him feet, 'ou'd better mobe 'our'n. _We_ b'lieve in sarvin' HIM wid our han's an' our feet, too; we does, mister I-scare-you-out.'

She did scare him out, for the 'pious gemman' left suddenly.

When about all of the eatables had found their way down the cavernous--and ravenous--throats of the darkies, Boss Joe rose and called out:

'Yere, you massa Joe, you pull off you' apern, an' take de big fiddle--I'm 'gaged fur de fuss dance.'

Young Preston seated himself on the platform, and several sable gentlemen with banjoes and fiddles took places beside him.

'Now all you men folks s'lect you' pardners,' cried the preacher, taking Dinah by the hand, and leading her out to the middle of the floor.

They all paired off, the fiddles broke into a merry tune, and soon the little church, which had so often echoed with the groans of the saints, shook with the heels of the sinners. When the first dance was over, Boss Joe again called out:

'Now, massa Joe, strike up de waltz--Dinah an' I am gwine to show dese folks some highfalutin dancin'.'

The waltz struck up, and off they whirled; Dinah went into it as if she were working for pay, and as Joe held her closely in his arms, her wide hoops expanded till she looked like a topsail schooner scudding under bare poles.

As Joe was wiping the perspiration from his face, at the end of the waltz, an old negro entered, and whispered something in his ear. Joe's countenance fell in an instant, and, without saying a word, he left the room.

'Massa Joe,' relinquishing the big fiddle, then took the floor with Rosey, and gave the audience a genuine breakdown. His heels bobbed around like balls at a cricket match, and Rosey's petticoats fluttered about like the contents of a clothes line caught out in a hurricane. A better-looking couple were never seen in a ball room.

'He's a natural born darky,' said his father, laughing; 'he takes to dancing as a duck takes to water.'

A general dance followed. In the midst of it the old negro who had called Joe out, again came in, and making his way to where Preston and I were standing, said, in a low tone:

'Massa Robert, Ole Jack am dyin'; will 'ou come?'

'Dying!' exclaimed Preston. 'Yes, I'll be there at once. Kirke, you remember the old man--come with me.'

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This was the conjuror's bag of the Africans. It is called 'waiter,' or 'kunger,' by the Southern blacks, and is supposed to have the power to charm away evil spirits, and to do all manner of miraculously good things for its wearer. Those that I have seen are harmless little affairs, consisting only of small pieces of rags sewed up in coarse muslin.]

[Footnote 2: The name of the African god.]

[Footnote 3: Usually there is no marriage performed at the union of slaves. They simply agree, tacitly or otherwise, to live together till death or their master parts them.]

THE CAPTAIN OF '63 TO HIS MEN.

Come to the field, boys, come! Come at the call of the stirring drum-- Come, boys, come! Yonder's the foe to our country's fame, Waiting to blot out her very name-- Where is the man that would see her shame? Come, boys, come!

Form, my brave men, form! Stand in good order to 'meet the storm'-- Form, men, form! Sacred to us is our native land! Shrivelled for aye be each traitor hand Lifted to shatter so bright a band-- Form, men, form!

Charge, my soldiers, charge! From the steep hill to the river's marge, Charge! charge! charge! Think of our wives and mothers dear; Think of the hopes that have led us here; Think of the hearts that will give us cheer-- Charge, boys, charge!

Die with me, boys, die! There's a place for all in yon bannered sky, If we die, boys, die! Think of the names that are shining bright, Written in letters of living light! Rather than give up the sacred Right, Let's die, boys, die!

THE VISION OF THE MONK GABRIEL.

'Tis the soft twilight. 'Round the shining fender, Two at my feet and one upon my knee, Dreamy-eyed Elsie, bright-lipped Isabel, And thou, my golden-headed Raphael, My fairy, small and slender, Listen to what befel Monk Gabriel, In the old ages ripe with mystery-- Listen, my darlings, to the legend tender.

A bearded man, with grave, but gentle look-- His silence sweet with sounds With which the simple-hearted Spring abounds: Lowing of cattle from the abbey grounds, Chirping of insect, and the building rook, Mingled like murmurs of a dreaming shell; Quaint tracery of bird and branch and brook Flitting across the pages of his book, Until the very words a freshness took-- Deep in his cell, Sate the Monk Gabriel.

In his book he read The words the Master to His dear ones said: 'A little while and ye Shall see, Shall gaze on Me; A little while, again, Ye shall not see Me then.' _A little while!_ The monk looked up--a smile Making his visage brilliant, liquid-eyed: 'O Thou, who gracious art Unto the poor of heart, O Blessed Christ!' he cried, 'Great is the misery Of mine iniquity; But would _I_ now might see, Might feast on Thee!' The blood, with sudden start, Nigh rent his veins apart-- (O condescension of the Crucified!) In all the brilliancy Of His Humanity, The Christ stood by his side!

Pure as the early lily was His skin, His cheek out blushed the rose, His lips, the glows Of autumn sunset on eternal snows: And His deep eyes within, Such nameless beauties, wondrous glories dwelt, The monk in speechless adoration knelt. In each fair hand, in each fair foot, there shone The peerless stars He took from Calvary: Around His brows, in tenderest lucency, The thorn-marks lingered, like the flush of dawn; And from the opening in His side there rilled A light, so dazzling, that the room was filled With heaven: and transfigured in his place, His very breathing stilled, The friar held his robe before his face, And heard the angels singing! 'Twas but a moment--then, upon the spell Of this sweet Presence, lo! a something broke: A something, trembling, in the belfry woke, A shower of metal music flinging O'er wold and moat, o'er park and lake and fell, And, through the open windows of the cell, In silver chimes came ringing.

It was the bell Calling Monk Gabriel Unto his daily task, To feed the paupers at the abbey gate. No respite did he ask, Nor for a second summons idly wait; But rose up, saying in his humble way: 'Fain would I stay, O Lord! and feast alway Upon the honeyed sweetness of Thy beauty-- But 'tis _Thy_ will, not mine, I must obey; Help me to do my duty!' The while the Vision smiled, The monk went forth, light-hearted as a child.

An hour thence, his duty nobly done, Back to his cell he came. Unasked, unsought, lo! his reward was won! Rafters and walls and floor were yet aflame With all the matchless glory of that Sun, And in the centre stood the Blessed One-- (Praised be His Holy Name!) Who, for our sakes, our crosses made His own. And bore our weight of shame! Down on the threshold fell Monk Gabriel, His forehead pressed upon the floor of clay; And, while in deep humility he lay, Tears raining from his happy eyes away, 'Whence is this favor, Lord?' he strove to say. The Vision only said, Lifting its shining head: 'If thou hadst staid, O son! _I_ must have fled!'

PHILADELPHIA

THE CENTURY OF INVENTIONS.

CONTAINING A FEW COMMENTS ON THE WORK OF THAT NAME, PUBLISHED BY THE MARQUIS OF WORCESTER, IN 1663.

There is nothing which the world dreads so much as an unpitying truth. The history of ideas is that of men trying to persuade themselves that special miracles of amiability are ever being worked, from the cradle to the grave, in their favor. Of the tremendous inconsistency and destructiveness which such miracles imply, they take no heed. The most unpalatable fact in physics is that of the Struggle for Life.

Ideas once born may never die, but it is worth noting how many men must die ere their ideas can live. The Indo-Germanic race has always been blessed with many of those self-cursed martyrs, the Anticipators, or the men who have outstripped their age. Like the advance guard of the summer swallows, they have generally died by frosts and lived in fables.

Germany is very proud of her Berchthold Schwartz, and in her pride has made a proverb declaring that his invention was the proof of supreme wisdom. When they describe a fool, they say there that he did not discover gunpowder. But 'the first handful of gunpowder' did not, as Carlyle claims, drive Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling. Long before Schwartz, lived Bacon; and a century or so before Bacon, there were in existence Norman-Latin recipes, says Palsgrave--who had seen them--_ad faciendum le craké_, for making firecrackers--at least, for making gunpowder which would crack merrily when fired. Stained glass windows, according to the cheap and easy explanations of those who used to send us to natural scenery for every origin in architecture, were suggested by beholding the winter sunset lines of the sky through the bare gothic-window tracery of a leafless forest. Recent research finds the stained window in the antique burning East, where no studies were made by frost or forest light--nay, the leaves carved by tradition-loving Gothic Free Masons in churches often keep a peculiar Eastern form.

I am not, however, lecturing of Lost Arts in the strain which sings 'there is nothing new under the sun,' and which in a chilling manner benumbs the faith in progress by shaking with a grin before the wearied inventor some skeleton puppet of buried ages, which resembles his great thought as a hut resembles a palace. On the contrary, I find in this strange frequency of anticipation among Indo-Germanic races, and in its premature failures, a vast proof of inventive vitality and of promise of great rising truths into all future ages. 'Steam power is nothing new,' say the advocates of the genius of the past. Hero of Alexandria invented a steam toy--as he who can read his _Spiritalia_ published by the Jesuits in 1693 may learn for himself. But the power now roaring and whizzing all over the world, and which would build every pyramid and every monument of Egypt now extant in twenty-four hours, is no toy. When I think of this, there is no ingenious trifle for amusement which does not inspire a droll awe. Possibly those walking dolls now performing their weary pilgrimages on level glass-pane floors in Broadway windows--gravely lifting those enormous gilded boots, which remind me of Miss Kilmansegg and Queen Berta _à grands piés_, in one--have a good reason for their dignity of gait. For may they not be golden-footed and solemn, like her who rose from the waves of old to prophesy to her son?--and if she was _silver_-footed, it makes no difference, for so are some of the _autoperiper_--nay, _that_ word finishes me, and I go no further. Such a block of Greek would bring even a German sentence down with a crash to a verbless conclusion. What I would have said was, that it may be that these dolls are heralds of greater dolls yet to come, which shall be wound up to fetch and carry, to sew on buttons--nay, it is even possible (in the wildest of dreams) that they may be made to boil potatoes properly. And I have been told that a recent improvement in boys' rocking horses, by means of which a trotting motion is given to the legs of those docile animals, has suggested to a mechanic of this city the construction of a very good automatic steed, whose only fault is slowness. May I suggest that a very great improvement indeed may yet be made on that horse, and that the two-forty of a coming generation may be the result, not of oats and hay, but of steel springs and cylinders? The first wooden horse burnt Troy--what will the last do?

I have been reminded of the strange tendency in man--but more especially of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan man--to anticipate by invention the wants of an age, sometimes centuries beforehand--by turning over that very curious work, the 'Century of Inventions,' by the Marquis of Worcester, in which, as in the commonplace book of an author, one may find jotted down many an undeveloped idea of great promise. In this connection we may be allowed to borrow somewhat from a biography by Charles F. Partington, published in 1825.

Edward Lord Herbert, the sixth earl and second Marquis of Worcester, was born at Ragland near Monmouth; and his family, long distinguished for the most devoted loyalty, possessed the largest landed estate of any then attached to the British court. What this was in those times is set forth by the fact that in 1628 the father of the marquis had a revenue of upward of twenty thousand pounds. In 1642, the year in which his son was created marquis, the young heir raised, supported, and commanded an army of 1,500 foot and near 500 horse soldiers.

He had a stormy life before him, this young marquis, with many more scenes, adventures, and changes than are to be found in Woodstock and Peveril of the Peak. How he fought well, recapturing Monmouth among other things from the Puritan General Massey, how he was appointed, in consequence of his daring cavaliering raids, by Charles II to negotiate with the Irish Catholics; how the king often visited him at Ragland, is all a fine story, well worth reading. We can get glimpses of that REGAL life--as Mr. Partington admiringly small-caps his climax, from the 'list of the Ragland household' with the earl's order of dining--castle gates closed at eleven o'clock in the morning, the entry of the earl with a grand escort, 'the retiral of the steward'--the advance of 'the Comptroller, Mr. Holland, attended by _his_ staff'--'as did the sewer, the daily waiters, and many gentlemen's sons, with estates from two to seven hundred pounds a year, who were bred up in the castle, and my lady's gentlemen of the chamber.' Therein, too, we see the rattling of trenchers, and hear the gurgling of bottles, at the first table, of the noble family, and such stray nobility as came there; at the second table, of knights and honorables--at the second 'first table' in the hall of 'Sir Ralph Blackstone, Steward; the Comptroller, the Master of the Horse, the Master of the Fish Ponds, my Lord Herbert's Preceptor,' and such gentlemen as were under degree of a knight--these all being 'plentifully served with wine.' Of the second table there is no note of much wine, but it still had 'hot meats from my Lord's table,' and at it sat the Sewer with gentlemen waiters and pages to the number of twenty-four--and even now we are not yet come to the vulgar. For at the _third_ table sat my Lord's Chief Auditor, his Purveyor of the Castle, Keeper of the Records--Ushers of the Hall--Clerk--Closet Keeper--Master of the Armory--and below these divers Masters of the Hounds--Twelve Master Grooms of the Stables, Master Falconer--Keepers of the Red Deer Park--and below these yet one hundred and fifty 'footmen, grooms, and other menial servants.'

Bright gleams vanish--the stately dinner parties grow dim, Masters of Horses and Hounds go to battle, the plate is melted down, and all is sad and sere. The young lord is sent by King Charles abroad, and Parliamentary Fairfax comes thundering at the gate, where admittance is refused by the venerable old marquis. Fairfax besieges boldly and is gallantly attacked by repeated sallies. I had rather the Puritans, with whom all my head goes, and with it half my heart, had behaved better than they did on this occasion. For after the venerable old marquis had fought nobly and surrendered on honorable terms, I am sorry to say he was most dishonorably treated, the conditions of capitulation being disgracefully violated, and the old marquis put in close prison, where he soon died in his eighty-fifth year.--Well, well--there was abundance of such false faith and dark villany on both sides ere the war was over. Be it remembered that these same nobles had kept the honor too closely to themselves, and ridiculed it out of life quite too sharply in the 'base mechanicals' to fairly expect mastery in gentility from them. And in these same Partingtonian Biographies, I am often inclined to suspect that the lions do some of their own carving.

Puritans sequestered and smashed the estate right and left--lead sold for six thousand pounds, woods cut down and sold for one hundred thousand more. 'Pity!' do you say? Reader mine, there is enough land in parks at this present day in broad England to feed that wretched one eighth of her population who are now buried at public expense. That dis-parking business was at any rate not badly done.

Little more is seen of the young lord through the war. In 1654 he is at King Charles's court in France--is sent to London to procure supplies of money for the king--is caught and Towered, where he rests for several years, sorrowfully poor, if we may judge from a letter to Colonel Copley, in which he declares that 'I am forced to begge, if you could possible, eyther to helpe me with tenne pownds to this bearer, or to make vse of the coache and to goe to Mr. Clerke, and if he could this daye helpe me to fifty pownds then to paye yourself the five pownds I owe you out of them.' A melancholy letter, after all that glittering Arthur's-court splendor of first, second, and third tables of nobility, Masters of Robes and Records--a letter in which there seems some trace of getting money by 'projects' and 'bubbles'--whether of doing little bills or by Notable Inventions, I will not say. Prison does not, it is true, last forever, but its doors open on a scene of baseness blacker than that which brought the brave old marquis with sorrow to his grave. The tale is told in a paragraph:

'On the king's restoration, the Marquis of Worcester was one of the first to congratulate his Majesty on the happy event, though the situation of the unfortunate nobleman was little bettered by the change; indeed it appeared but as the signal for new persecutions, as one of the earliest public acts of the ungrateful monarch may be characterized as an insidious attempt to set aside the claims of his earliest and best friend.'

'Put not thy trust in princes.' To contrast this treatment of poor Worcester with the fervent written promises of the ungrateful 'C. R.' or Carolus Rex, might have shook the faith of Dr. Johnson in his beloved 'merry monarch.' The earlier letters of the king to the marquis, when something was expected of the 'gallant cavalier,' and the latter had 'money to lend,' are painfully amusing:

OXFORD, _Feb. 12._ * * 'I am sensible of the dangers yu will undergo, and ye greate trouble and expences you must be at, not being able to assist yu who have already spente aboue a Million of Crowns in my Service, neither can I saye more then I well remembr to have spoke and written to you that allready words could not expresse your merits nor my gratitude: and that next to my wife and children I was most bound to take care of you, whereof I have besides others, particularly assured yor Cosin Biron as a person deare unto you. * * And rest assured, if God should crosse me wth your miscarrying I will treate your Sonne as myne owne, and that yw labour for a deare friende as well as a thankfull Master when tyme shall afforde meanes to acknowledge how much I am

'Yor most assured real constant and thankfull friend 'CHARLES R.'

There are other letters from Charles R., very little to his credit as regards the keeping of promises, and likewise several strange papers of the Worcester people, showing that they had their clouds and humors, like other families. Of our marquis--the reader will readily pardon me all that I have digressed to say of his early history--it must suffice to tell that, after the Restoration, he appears as a poor inventor, and that on the 3d April, 1663, a bill was brought into Parliament for granting to him and his successors the whole of the profits that might arise from the use of a water-raising engine, described in the last article in the 'Century' of Inventions. The 'Century' itself had been presented to the king and commons some months previously. This invention, coupled with its penultimate and antepenultimate ninety-ninth and ninety-eighth inventions, may indeed be justly considered as the wonder of the 'Century,' since, when united with the sixty-eighth, they appear, in Partington's opinion, to suggest all the data essential for the construction of a modern steam engine. The injustice which he encountered during life, seems to have followed Worcester for two centuries after death; for Lord Orford declares that the bill granting the marquis such advantages as his invention might give birth to, was passed on a simple affirmation of the discovery that he (the marquis) had made. 'His lordship's want of candour in this statement will be apparent when it is known that there were no less than seven meetings of committees on the subject, composed of some of the most learned men in the house, who, after considerable amendments, finally passed it on the 12 May.'

It is touching to see the absolute, extreme, life-giving faith in the merit of his invention which inspired the marquis--and in this strange faith, like a prophecy, even more than in his invention itself, considering the way in which he probably came by it, do we recognize that Genius which rises here and there in the past history of the Aryan races, and that so all-sidedly and confidingly as to seem miraculous. I confess that when I look closely and deeply into the knowledge of Dante and Lionardo da Vinci, of Fiar Bacon, and the Cavalier Marquis of Worcester, an awe comes over me. All of them seem to have been so great, some of their order so _unearthly_ great; and they held the keys to so many mysteries, and to doors of science which were not unlocked for long centuries after their death; and there was in all of them such a strange sympathy and knowledge with the other great men as yet unborn, who were to come after them, and for whom they seem to have labored, and to whom they talked with the confidence of friends. I never pause before a certain passage in Dante's 'Inferno,' without the feelings of one standing before a great prophet--some marvellous earthly ancient of days, who foresaw all to come:

'Di là fosti cotanto quant'io scesi: Quando mi volsi, tu possasti 'l punto Alqual si troggon d'ogni parte i pasi.'

'Thou wast on the other side so long as I Descended; when I turned thou didst o'erpass That point to which from every part is dragged All heavy unbalance!'

It was well thought by Monti that, had this passage been noted by Newton, it might have given him a better hint than the falling apple. Perhaps it did, for Newton was no poet, and it is the poetic, associative-minded men of genius who have always preceded the greatest, strictly scientific minds, and far surpassed the latter in the comprehensiveness of their views. Bear with me, ye men of Induction, for I believe in the coming age, at whose threshold we even now stand, when ye and the poets shall be one.

The Marquis of Worcester was not like the indifferentist philosopher, so well set forth by Charles Woodruff Shields in his _Philosophia Ultima_,[4] as one who would not invade, but only ignore the province of revelation, regarding its mysteries as matters entirely too vague to be taken into the slightest account in his exact science. For our good Lord Herbert thought Heaven had a great deal to do with his inventions, as is proved by his 'ejaculatory and extemporary Thanksgiving Prayer, when first with his corporeal eyes he did see finished a perfect trial of his Water-commanding Engine, delightful and useful to whomsoever hath in recommendation either knowledge, profit, or pleasure.' And--never mind the delay, reader--we will even look at that prayer, in which this world and the next blend so strangely;

'Oh! infinitely omnipotent GOD! whose mercies are fathomless, and whose knowledge is immense and inexhaustible; next to my creation and redemption I render thee most humble thanks from the very bottom of my heart and bowels, for thy vouchsafing me (the meanest in understanding) an insight in soe great a secret of nature, beneficent to all mankind, as this my water-commanding engine. Suffer me not to be puffed up, O Lord, by the knowing of it, and many more rare and unheard off, yea, unparalleled inventions, tryals, and experiments. But humble my haughty heart, by the true knowledge of myne owne ignorant, weake, and unworthy nature; proane to all euill. O most merciful Father my creator, most compassionatting Sonne my redeemers, and Holyest of Spiritts the sanctifier, three diuine persons and one God, grant me a further concurring grace with fortitude to take hould of thy goodnesse, to the end that whatever I doe, unanimously and courageously to serve my king and country, to disabuse, rectifie, and convert my undeserved yet wilfully incredulous enemyes, to reimburse thankfully my creditors, to reimmunerate my benefactors, to reinhearten my distressed family, and with complacence to gratifie my suffering and confiding friends, may, voyde of vanity or selfe ends, be only directed to thy honour and glory everlastingly. _Amen!_'

How this great invention faded and was forgotten till the days of Watt and Fulton, is hardly worth surmising. It had been born and died long before. Was it not in 1514 that Blasco de Garay set a steamboat afloat on the Tagus? Sometimes, as in the case of John Fitch, it seems to have grown spontaneously from the instinctive impulse to create, as Fichte calls art. I have seen old men, who had known Fitch: their account of his severely won improvements, and more recently his 'Life,' make me believe that he owed nothing to precedent. But the marquis, I am sorry to say, notwithstanding his prayer and his bold claim to originality, cannot come off with so clear a record, so far as invention is concerned. He certainly gave a good, plausible account of the discovery, or it was given for him, and this went current for many years in books of inventions. It was said that the marquis, while confined in the Tower of London, was preparing some food in his apartment, and the cover of the vessel, having been closely fitted, was, by the expansion of the steam, suddenly forced off and driven up the chimney. 'This circumstance, attracting his attention, led him to a train of thought, which terminated in the completion of his 'water-commanding engine.''

_E ben trovato._ Unfortunately, within a few years, and since Partington published the 'Century of Invention,' there was unearthed from the gossiping letters of a gay French court-belle, who little dreamed what ill service she was doing her gallant, and what good service to history, a chance bit of trifling, as she probably deemed it, which sends the marquis's story exploding up the chimney after the lid of his apocryphal kettle. It seems that when the marquis was in France, he, in accordance with the elegant and refined custom which prevailed there and in England, as the reader may gather from Boswell's 'Johnson'--went with this lady to visit the madmen confined in the public prison.

I have already digressed so widely in this article, that a sin more or less, of the kind, need not be noted too severely. Reader, if you are one of those who think that mankind do not progress in heart, what think you of this pretty custom of the last century, according to which gentlemen and ladies of the highest rank, 'persons of quality,' made up parties to visit public madhouses, which, by the way, were common shows, at one penny entrance fee, and where the young gentlemen poked the mad people with sticks, and pelted them, shook their chains, and jeered them, till they foamed and raved, and the young misses giggled and gave pretty screams, and cried, 'Oh, fie!' and 'lor!' and then the visitors all laughed together? Then Miss ----, a little bolder, hissed at the lunatics herself, and poked them with a stick--and then there was a fresh storm of tears and howls and blasphemy and obscenity; and the keepers, rushing in with heavy cudgels, beat the 'patients' right and left like cattle--and it was all 'so horrible!' _Bad_, think you? These were the ladies and gentlemen of the old school--the Grandisons and Chesterfields and their dames. At the present day there are still vulgar people who haunt insane asylums and prisons, and scenes of domestic affliction and courts, for the sake of gratifying a gross love of excitement, which they disguise to themselves under various ingenious pretences. But the tendency of the age is to discourage such meddling and prying into the mysteries and miseries of humanity. It is low, it is mean, and the better nurtured and higher minded leave it to boors--be they of Peoria or the Fifth avenue.

Well, our marquis, then the first gentleman in Great Britain, one of 'the barons of England who fought for the crown,' when in France as particular friend of His Majesty Charles II, went one day on such a party of pleasure, and somewhat annoyed his pretty companion by persisting in listening to the drivelling talk of a madman--one Solomon de Caus--who, while he rattled his chains, talked of a great invention he had made, whereby chariots were to go by steam, and weights be raised, and all manner of brave work be effected, at small cost or labor to man. And the marquis talked to the madman, and the lady laughed, and the chains rattled, and the straw rustled, and--well, it _has_ been made the subject of a very good picture--which you, reader, may have seen, either in original or engraving.

I will not pretend to say how far what is known of the life of this French inventor is reconcilable with this story of the madhouse. It is certain that Solomon de Caus, a French engineer, architect, and author, died about 1635, that he was born probably at Dieppe, and devoted himself to mathematics. The marquis might have met him in a better place than a bedlam, since in 1612 De Caus went to London, where he was attached to the Prince of Wales, and afterward to Charles I. From 1614 to 1620 he lived in Heidelberg at the court of the Elector Frederic V, and returned to France in 1624, where he received the title of royal engineer and architect. More than this, he wrote books on mechanics, in one of which, _Les Raysons des Forces Mouvantes_, he speaks of the expansion and condensation of steam in a manner which has been supposed to suggest the alternate action of the piston, the principle of the steam engine, and, finally, 'the great discovery' of and to the Marquis of Worcester. How far all this may be supposed to contradict the lady's story, I will not say. Certain it is, that many a man who has done quite as well in worldly honors, has, after all, come to misery and madness through unfortunately making an invention.

Inventors have, on the whole, a little easier time of it in these days--and yet not so very much easier, as the reader who has chanced, like myself, to study law in an office where there are many 'patent cases,' will bear witness. Eighteen hundred years ago, the inventor was crucified--lest his malleable glass should injure Ephesian or other silversmiths. During the middle ages, they burnt him alive. In the times of Worcester he seldom escaped prison, for to be a 'projector' was a charge which greatly aggravated that of treason; while in France, where they managed these things better, according to the views of the day, they simply cast him into a dungen among madmen. In America in the nineteenth century he has indeed occasionally better luck, and yet in most cases not so much better as most think. For, apart from the fact that he must generally sell his invention to richer men endowed with business faculty, who get nearly all the profits, and, not unfrequently, by clapping their names to the project, all the credit, he must also wage a weary, heart-breaking legal war on infringers of patents and other thieves; so that by the time his time has expired, he has seldom much to show for his brain-work.[5] 'Serves him right, he has no business capacity,' cry the multitude. We need not look far for examples. I am not sure that Eli Whitney, when he fell with his cotton gin among the thieves of the South, did not fare quite as badly and suffer quite as much as Solomon de Caus. For to be clapped fair and square into a dungeon is at all events a plain martyrdom, with which one can grapple philosophically or go mad _à discretion_, while to be only half honored and nine-tenths plundered, dragged meanwhile through courts and newspapers, may be better or worse, according to one's measure. After all, the good old Roman plan of putting a man to death for inventing malleable glass had its advantages--it was at least more merciful from a Christian point of view, and would, at the present day, save a vast amount of yards of Patent Law red tape.

_Artis et Naturæ proles_, 'the offspring of Nature and of Art.' Such is the motto with which the Marquis of Worcester prefaced his 'Century of the Names and Scantlings of such inventions as he could in the year 1663 call to mind,' and which he presented to Government in the bold hope that by their purchase or other disposition he might even out-go the six or seven hundred thousand pounds already sacrificed for the king, as he asserts, but rather meaning, I imagine, that he might get some portion of it back again. Let no one laugh at the character of many of these 'Scantlings.' Science was young then; thaumaturgy, or the working of mere wonders, was still the elder sister of art; astrology might be found in every street; alchemists still labored in lonely towers all over England; and witches were still burned to the glory of GOD. The 'Mathematicall Magick, or the Wonders that may be performed by Mechanicall Geometry'--now by chance open before me--by Bishop Wilkins, the brother-in-law of Cromwell, with its disquisitions on 'Perpetuall Motion,' 'Volant Automata,' and 'Perpetuall Lamps,' passed for sound sense, and with it passed much occult nonsense of a darker dye. Manners and morals were as yet badly organized. Gambling was a daily amusement with all the gentry, and its imitators; for the Revolution, though it had very promptly driven out of England the very little merriment and cheerfulness which the Reformation had spared, had by no means taken away vice, and to cheat at cards was a part of all play in the best society--which it had not been in the olden time. Political plots were still rife, and cipher alphabets, signals by knots and signs, deadly secret weapons, and devices to escape prison were in daily demand, just as patent apple-parers and ice-cream freezers are at the present day. The marquis, who had lived well through his times, knew what would be popular, and, though a man of honor as times went, and a pious Christian, never dreamed that he did not play his part as a good citizen in supplying such grotesque wants.

First among his Inventions is one which, revived in modern times, meets the eye of every one daily on the face of every letter. As he designed it, it was, however, very elaborate, embracing 'several sorts of seals, some showing by screws, others by gauges, fastening or unfastening all the marks at once: others by additional points and imaginary places, proportionable to ordinary escutcheons and seals at arms, each way palpably and punctually setting down (yet private from all others but the owner, and by his assent) the day of the month, the day of the week, the month of the year, the year of our Lord, the names of the witnesses, and the individual place where anything was sealed, though in ten thousand several places, together with the very number of lines contained in a contract, whereby falsification may be discovered and manifestly proved.' Upon these seals, too, one could keep accounts of receipts and disbursements, from one farthing to millions, and, finally, as a climax to their mystery, by their means any letter, 'though written but in English, may be read and understood in eight several languages, and in English itself, to clear contrary and different sense, unknown to any but the correspondent, and not to be read or understood by him neither, if opened before it arrive unto him.'

It is believed that the secret of these seals is simply this: a number of movable metallic circles are made to slide within each other, on one common centre, the whole being enclosed in an outer frame. Within these circles may be placed either movable types, or letters and figures may be engraved on the circles themselves, and these, according to a key, of which the corresponding parties must possess a duplicate. To fully understand the secret of the composition of a sentence 'in eight several languages,' we must have recourse to invention No. 32 of the 'Century,' teaching 'how to compose an universal character, methodical and easily to be written, yet intelligible in _any_ language .... distinguishing the verbs from the nouns, the numbers, tenses, and cases, as properly expressed in their own language as it was written in English.' Such a system was composed by the Bishop Wilkins already referred to; Bacon had busied himself with a 'pasigraphy' long before; Leibnitz, Dalgaru, Frischius, Athanasius Kircher, Pére Besnier, and some twenty others have done the same. The most practical solution of the problem seems to have been that of John Joachim Becher, who in 1661 published a Latin folio, which, apart from its main subject, is valuable from its observations on grammar, and on the affinities existing between seven of the ancient and modern tongues. With this he gives a Latin dictionary, in which every word corresponds with one or more Arabic numerals. 'Every word is assumed as distinctive, or denoting the same word in all languages; and consequently nothing more is required than to compose a dictionary for each, similar to that which he has given for the Latin.' Certain determinate numbers being given for the declensions and conjugations, and the cases, moods, tenses, and persons, the whole grammar becomes extremely easy of acquisition. Let us suppose that a Frenchman wishes to write to a German: _La guerre est un grand mal_--'War is a great evil.' He seeks in his index _guerre_, and finds 13. The verb _etre_, 'to be,' is 33. _Grand_, or 'great,' is 67; and _mal_, or 'evil,' is 68. The sentence then reads:

13. 33. 67. 68.

The sentence might be understood by these four numbers, but the author perfects it. _Guerre_, or 'war,' is the nominative case, and is appropriately designated by the Arabic numeral 1. The third person, singular, present tense, of the indicative mood of a verb, is characterized by 15. _Grand_ and _mal_ being each in the nominative case, also require the figure 1. He will therefore write:

13. 1 | 33. 15 | 67. 1 | 68.1

--the numbers being separated by a vertical dash, to avoid confusion. The German, inverting the process, turns to _his_dictionary, and finds _Der Krieg ist ein grosses Uebel_.

If the world were to be persuaded to adopt these dictionaries, and with them some uniform oral system of counting, such as might be learned in a day, who shall say in what conversation might result! Fancy an orator counting '83.1--10.16--225.2'--interrupted by enthusiastic cries of '2.30' and '11.45!' Fancy a lover breathing his tender passion in '837.25--29.1,' and extracting a reluctant '12' from his adored. Fancy a drunken Delaware Democrat--a SAULSBURY--flourishing a revolver, and gurgling out '54.40' to the Sergeant-at-Arms in particular, and decency in general, as a proof of his fitness to be regarded as a mate for his Southern colleagues. Fancy Brignoli singing '1.2.3,' as he reminds us by his good singing and wooden acting of a nightingale imprisoned in a pump--

Or fancy the appearance of a page of Shakspeare or Homer thus metamorphosed.

'He lisped in numbers for, the numbers came.'

It is something to the marquis's credit that he evidently, to judge from the sixth article of his 'Century,' had discovered the telegraph, an invention not much used in Europe until the commencement of the French Revolution. It had indeed been understood in a rude form by the ancients. 'Polybius describes a method of communication which was invented by Cleoxenus, which answered both by day and night,' but that of Worcester's is thought to have been far superior to anything known before his time. The following paragraphs all indicate inventions greatly in advance of his age:

'No. IX.--An engine portable in one's pocket, which may be carried and fastened in the inside of the greatest ship, _tanquam aliud agens_, and at any appointed minute, though a week after, either of day or night, it shall irrecoverably sink that ship.'

A bombshell filled with gunpowder, a gunlock, and a small clock, have been suggested as forming the components of this invention. I am satisfied however, that several very dangerous detonating powders were well known to the alchemists; and the condensed pocket size of the machine described, would evidently require some such preparation.

'No. X.--A way from a mile off to dive and fasten a like engine to any ship so as it may punctually work the same effect either for time or execution.'

Precisely the same experiment has within a week of the time at which I am now writing, been made at Washington, as it was by Mr. Fulton half a century ago with his Torpedo-harpoon. If the marquis contemplated simply human agency as the aid to apply his portable powder-machine, it must be admitted that he had at least contemplated a more effective diving bell than any known to modern times. Submarine transit was indeed a subject to which he had devoted special study.

'No. XI.--How to prevent and safeguard any ship from such an attempt by day or night.

'No. XII.--A way to make a ship not possible to be sunk, though shot at an hundred times between wood and water by cannon, and should she lose a whole plank, yet, in half an hour's time, should be made to sail as fit as before.'

It is thought that a great number of airtight compartments was the secret here hinted at; but the spirit of positive confidence with which the marquis speaks, and the great number of successful shots which he defies, seems to hint at something like the Ericsson Monitor of these days. Not without interest is the following:

'No. XIII--How to make such false decks as in a moment should kill and take prisoners as many as should board the ship, without blowing the real decks up, or destroying them from being reducible; and in a quarter of an hour's time should recover their former shape, and to be made fit for any employment, _without discovering the secret_.'

The words italicized set forth the startling marvel of the whole. It is said that a false deck of thick plank may be easily blown into the air, when a number of small iron boxes, open at the top, and filled with gunpowder, are placed beneath. How this could be done and yet kept secret is indeed a wonder, and we must therefore conjecture that the marquis had some other device in his mind. Certain it is, that the idea of converting vessels into traps of destruction, or of so defending them as to destroy assailants after boarding the decks, has not been very extensively developed.

'No. XVI.--How to make a sea castle or a fortification _cannon proof_, capable of a thousand men, yet sailable at pleasure to defend a passage, or in an hour's time to divide itself into three ships, as fit and trimmed to sail as before; and even whilst it is a fort or castle, they shall be unanimously steered, and effectually be driven by an indifferent strong wind.'

It is to be regretted that Parliamentary or other inducements were not employed to obtain from the marquis, at least the publication of his views as regards making vessels cannon proof. From the general character of his inventions, and from comparison of them, it appears he had full faith in cannon-proof floating batteries as a means of defence, and, we may consequently and justly infer, as superior to the latter. Among his inventions there are but two in reference to 'fortifications,' and both of these are after a manner a transfer of the floating battery to land, or an application of the principle of mobile defences. These are as follows:

'No. XXIX.--A portable fortification, able to contain five hundred fighting men, and yet, in six hours' time, may be set up and made cannon proof, upon the side of a river or pass, with cannon mounted upon it, and as complete as a regular fortification, with halfmoons and counterscarps.

'No. XXX.--A way in one night's time to raise a bulwark, twenty or thirty foot high, cannon proof, and cannon mounted upon it; with men to overlook, command, and batter a town, for though it (the bulwark) contain but four pieces, they shall be able to discharge two hundred bullets each hour.'

There can be but little question, from all I have cited, that the Marquis of Worcester was singularly in advance of his age as regarded the great principles of warfare. We have found him thus far, in all probability, acquainted with the construction of permutable seals, and indeed of the grand principle of permutation applied to technology in several respects (vide "Century" Nos. III, IV, V,) of the telegraph, of sinking vessels by torpedoes, and, finally, of floating batteries and cannon-proof vessels. In No. 30, we have, however, a hint that the marquis had studied the principles of revolving firearms, when he speaks of four cannon discharging two hundred bullets each hour. That he had, theoretically, at least, anticipated Colt, appears from

'No. LVIII.--How to make a pistol discharge a dozen times with one loading, and without so much as once new priming requisite, _or to change it out of one hand into the other_, or stop one's horse.'

I call attention to the words which I have italicized. It is well known that the mere principle of revolving barrels in firearms was already old, even when Worcester wrote. I have seen guns of the kind over three hundred years old, and they are not uncommon in foreign museums. But it would appear that the marquis was acquainted with the principle of the self-cocking pistol. How else could he propose to discharge a gun a dozen times, without changing it from one hand to another? And this, I believe, was not known before his day. But how this could have been conveniently carried out, without some application of detonating powders in place of flint, steel, and gunpowder, I do not understand. That he was very probably familiar with the application of such chemical detonating agents has already been suggested. In another number, he suggests the application of this principle to 'carbines.' So in No. LXII, he proposes 'a way for a harquebuss, a crock, or ship musket, six upon a carriage, shooting with such expedition as, without danger, one may charge, level, and discharge them sixty times in a minute of an hour, two or three together.' To which he adds the following:

'No. LXIV.--A seventh, tried and approved before the late king (of ever blessed memory), and an hundred lords and commons, in a cannon of eight inches and half a quarter, to shoot bullets of sixty-four pounds weight, and twenty-four pounds of powder, twenty times in six minutes; so clear from danger, that after all were discharged, a pound of butter did not melt, being laid upon the cannon britch, nor the green oil discoloured that was first anointed and used between the barrel thereof, and the engine having never in it, nor within six foot, but one charge at a time.'

Several improvements of this kind are suggested in the 'Century,' which evidently involve different principles from that of the modern revolver, in reference to which difference we are informed in a 'note by the author,' that 'when I first gave my thoughts to make guns shoot often, I thought there had been but one only exquisite way inventible; yet, by several trials, and much charge, I have perfectly tried all of these.'

I cannot venture in a single article to exhaust the suggestions in the Century, and must refer my reader to the volume himself, assuring him that he will there find many curious hints, several of which have, since its publication, been very practically realized. It is worth noting, however, that the author seems to have fully anticipated a very remarkable modern invention, in declaring that 'a woman even may with her delicate hand, vary the ways of coming to open a lock ten millions of times, beyond the knowledge of the smith that made it, or of me who invented it.' From this, as I have already suggested, it appears that he had, far in advance of his age, mastered a very great principle in mechanics; and as he appears to have understood, in theory at least, several others, it is no more than justice to rank him far above those mere charlatans of science, and hunters for marvels by means of isolated observation and experiment, with whom many would place him. That the 'Century' contains much which would be very discreditable to any man of science at the present day, is very true. Perpetual motion, perfect aerostation, devices for idle tricks and mere thaumaturgy, appear in company with schemes to take unfair advantages at card playing, and for the construction of false dice boxes--of which latter it is indignantly observed by honest Partington, that, there are few who profess the science of cheating at cards or dice, or to be encouragers of those who do; and it may fairly be conceded that there are not two periods in our regal annals, in which this detestable meanness had become fashionable enough to sanction a nobleman in inscribing to a king and his parliament a method by which it might be advantageously effected! We may, however, believe that a second period has at the present dawned over England, not much inferior as regards 'detestable meanness,' to that of Charles the Second. A recent transaction has shown that noblemen and their friends in the year 1862, are not above ascertaining from Johnson's Dictionary, the obsolete spelling of a word, such as _rain_-deer, betting a hundred pounds with an American as to its true orthography, and agreeing with him to abide by Johnson's authority; a piece of swindling quite as detestable in its meanness as the using of loaded dice. Neither can I see that the conduct of a majority of the British people, in fomenting Abolition for many years, and then giving her aid and countenance to our Southern rebels, on the flimsy, and, at best, brazenly selfish plea of the Morrill Tariff, is less detestable or less mean. We may regret to see a vice in individuals tolerated in high places; but when the blackest inconsistency, and the most contemptible avarice are elevated by a Christian nation into principles of conduct toward another nation struggling to free the oppressed, we may well doubt whether another period has not approached in England, over which the future historiographer may not sigh as deeply as over that of Charles the Second.

I attach no serious value to the efforts of the Marquis of Worcester, save as illustrating the principle with which I prefaced this article: that according to the mental peculiarities of the most vigorous of races--the Indo-Germanic above others--there is a tendency in certain active minds to generalize and draw practical conclusions, not unfrequently centuries in advance of the wants of their age. The partial and premature forcing of these principles into practice, is sometimes quoted in after years as derogatory to the merit due to modern inventors, and as illustrating to a degree never contemplated by him who uttered it, the maxim that there's 'nothing new under the sun.' _Nothing?_ Why, _everything_ is new under the sun when it first assumes fit time and place. Were this not true, we might as well return to 'Nature's Centenary of Inventions,' as set forth by a pleasant pen in _Household Words_:

'Before the first clumsy sail was hoisted by a savage hand, the little Portuguese man-of-war, that frailest and most graceful nautilus boat, had skimmed over the seas with all its feathery sails set in the pleasant breeze; and before the great British Admiralty marked its anchors with the Broad Arrow, mussels and pinna had been accustomed to anchor themselves by flukes to the full as effective as the iron one in the Government dockyards. The duck used oars before we did; and rudders were known by every fish with a tail, countless ages before human pilots handled tillers; the floats on the fishermen's nets were pre-figured in the bladders on the sea weed; the glowworm and firefly held up their light-houses before pharas or beacon-tower guided the wanderer among men; and, as long before Phipps brought over the diving bell to this country as the creation, spiders were making and using airpumps to descend into the deep. Our bones were moved by tendons and muscles long before chains and cords were made to pull heavy weights from place to place. Nay, until quite lately--leaving these discoveries to themselves--we took no heed of the pattern set us in the backbone, with the arching ribs springing from it, to construct the large cylinder which we often see now attaching all the rest of a set of works. This has been a very modern discovery; but, prior even to the first man, Nature had cast such a cylinder in every ribbed and vertebrate animal she had made. The cord of plaited iron, too, now used to drag machinery up inclined planes, was typified in the backbone of the eels and snakes in Eden; tubular bridges and hollow columns had been in use since the first bird with hollow bones flew through the wood, or the first reed waved in the wind. Strange that the principle of the Menai Straits' railway bridge, and of the iron pillars in the Crystal Palace, existed is the Arkite dove, and in the bulrushes that grew round the cradle of Moses! Our railway tunnels are wonderful works of science, but the mole tunnelled with its foot, and the pholas with one end of its shell, before our navvies handled pick or spade upon the heights of the iron roads: worms were prior to gimlets, ant-lions were the first funnel makers, a beaver showed men how to make the milldams, and the pendulous nests of certain birds swung gently in the air before the keen wit of even the most loving mother laid her nursling in a rocking cradle. The carpenter of olden time lost many useful hours in studying how to make the ball-and-socket joint which he bore about with him in his own hips and shoulders; the universal joint, which filled all men with wonder when first discovered, he had in his wrist; in the jaws of all flesh-eating animals his huge one-hinge joint; in the graminivora and herbivora the joint of free motion; for grinding millstones were set up in our molars and in the gizzards of birds before the Egyptian women ground their corn between two stones; and the crushing teeth of the hyena make the best models we know of for hammers to break stones on the road. The tongue of certain shell fish--of the limpet, for instance--is full of siliceous spines which serve as rasp and drill; and knives and scissors were carried about in the mandibles and beaks of primeval bees and parrots.

Yes, they were all there--and if the undeveloped germ may be taken for the great fruit-bearing tree, there is nothing new under the sun, labor and effort are of no avail, and it is not worth while for man to live threescore years and ten, since a much less time would suffice to show his utter worthlessness. But the bee and the wild bird, the pearly nautilus driving before the fresh breeze, and the reed waving in the wind, should teach us a higher lesson. They teach us that life is beautiful and to be enjoyed, that infinite laws and infinite ingenuity were not displayed to be called idle and vain, and that, as the insect works according to his instinct, man should labor, from the dictates of reason, with heart and soul to do his best to turn to higher advantage the innumerable advantages afforded him.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: _Philosophia Ultima_, CHARLES WOODRUFF SHIELDS. Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott, 1861.]

[Footnote 5: One of the greatest inventors of this or of any age, and one whom the world regards as 'successful,' is said to have advised an ingenious friend, never in any case or under any circumstances to take out a patent for an invention. He 'had been through the mill,' and knew what it cost.]

THE LADY AND HER SLAVE.

A Tale.

LOVINGLY DEDICATED TO MY SISTERS IN THE SOUTH.

'Nor private grief nor malice holds my pen, I owe but kindness to my fellow men. And, South or North, wherever hearts of prayer Their woes and weakness to our Father bear, Wherever fruits of Christian love are found In holy lives, to me is holy ground.'

--WHITTIER.

My young mistress! frown not on me! come! my heart is beating low! Softly raise the quilt--my babe! Ah, smile on her ere I go!

Yes, the smile comes warm as sunshine, and it falls on my sick heart As if Heaven were shining through it, and new hopes within me start.

Your clear eyes shine blue upon me through the clouds of sunny curls, Sadder now, but still as kindly, as when we were little girls.

Your poor slave and you, fair mistress, were born in the same hour, As if God himself had marked me from my birth to be your dower.

Oft have I laid my dusky hand upon your neck of snow, To see it sparkle through the jet--how long that seems ago!

So long! before young master came to woo Virginia's daughter, And tempt her to the cotton fields on Mississippi's water.

I could not leave you, mistress, so I followed to the swamp, Where fevers fire the burning blood and the long moss hangs damp.

I left poor Sam, he loved me well, but you were my heart's god; My mother's tears fell hot and fast--I followed where you trod.

Sin and sorrow fell upon me! and soon you felt it shame To have lost Amy near you, and you blushed to hear her name.

Reared near virgin purity, you could not understand How I could break from virtue's laws, and form a lawless band.

Then you questioned kindly, sternly,--but you could not make me tell; I would not wring your trusting heart with tales scarce fit for hell!

You deemed me hardened, sunk in vice; I choked down every moan, Turned from your breast the poisoned dart to bury in my own.

Driven from your presence, mistress, in agony and shame I bore a wretched infant--she must never know her name!

How I crawled around your windows when your joyous boy was born, To hear your voice, to catch a glimpse,--the sun rose fair that morn.

Ah! not mine to hold your darling! not mine to soothe his cries When the stern death-angel seized him and bore him to the skies!

Then judgment came--the fever fell--young master gasped for breath-- God's hand was on him--vain were prayers,--how still he lay in death!

I heard you shriek--I rushed within--I held you in my arms That frenzied night when sudden woe had wrought its worst of harms.

When reason dawned on you again, sweet pity stirred within, You heard my cough, my labored breath, and saw me ghastly, thin.

Then you took my hand so kindly, gazing on my faded face: 'Speak, and tell me truly, Amy, how you fell in such disgrace.'

If he had lived, sweet mistress, I had borne it to the grave; I would not mar your happiness, child, self or race to save.

Say! must I speak of one you loved now sleeping 'neath the sod? Your 'yes' is bitter; but we owe the naked truth to God!

The truth to God, for guiltless you must stand before His face, Nor wrong my pallid baby, nor scorn my suffering race.

Am I too bold? Death equals all--my heart beats faint and low; Turn not away, sweet mistress, hear the truth before I go!

Gaze upon my shivering baby, scan the little pallid face, Mark the forehead, eyes of azure--Ha! you do the likeness trace!

Nay, start not in horror from me! Oh, it was no fault of mine; I would have died a thousand deaths ere wronged a thought of thine.

He came at midnight to my hut--abhorrent to my sense-- Force--threats of shame--foul violence--a slave has no defence!

Wronged--soiled--and outraged--sick at heart--what right had I to feel? He deemed his chattel honored,--God! how brain and senses reel!

We're women, though our hair is crisped, and though our skin be black: Men, ask your virgin daughters what's the maiden's deadliest rack!

I scorned myself! I hated him! but felt a living goad Writhe and crawl beneath my bosom--shameful burden! sinful load!

Sick and faint, I loathed my master, loathed his inant, loathed my life Till its flame burned dim within me, choked by shame, rage, hate, and strife.

Better feelings woke within me when the helpless girl was born; Mother's love poured wild upon her: how love conquers rage and scorn!

But my tortured heart was broken, and a slave girl ought to die When a tyrant master wrongs her, and she dreads her mistress' eye:

Dreads one she loves may read in her, in spite of silence deep, That which would blight all happiness, and pale the rosy cheek:

Dreads that a wife may shuddering read a husband's naked heart-- Humbled and crushed by treachery, may into madness start.

But Amy dies: she has forgiven--forgive with her the wrong! Smile on the helpless baby--make her truthful, pure, and strong.

Let her wait upon you, mistress; twine your ringlets golden still; Take her back to old Virginia, to the homestead by the hill.

My heart clings to you with wild love--wherefore I scarce dare whisper-- Forgive--I am your father's child! pity your ruined sister!

The hot white blood in my baby's veins, though mixed with duskier flow, Will make her wretched if a slave; let her in freedom go!

Oh make her free, sweet mistress, that such a fate as mine Blanch not her cheek with agony, nor blast her ere her prime!

You smile--I need no promise; angel-like to me you seem; Will you open heaven for me? bring the seraphs? how I dream!

I go to God. He made me. All His children, black and white, Will meet in heaven if pure and true, clad in the eternal Light.

I die--God bless you, mistress!'... Sigh, and gasp--then all is o'er! And the lady kneels beside a corpse upon the cabin floor.

Her thoughts are busy with the past, with love in falsehood spoken, While her dusky sister's faithful heart had in silent anguish broken.

She takes the cold hand in her own: 'Poor Amy, can it be That thou wert of a race accursed, unworthy to be free?

Man's falsehood! God! Thy right hand rests upon the dusky brow; Thou starr'st it round with virtues brighter than our boasted snow!

I have learned a bitter lesson; to my slave I've been to school; God has humbled me, but chastened; I will keep His Golden Rule.

Slaves and chattels! God forgive us! they are men and women--Thine! If Christ may dwell within them, shall I dare to call them _mine_?

No woman must be outraged, nor owned by man, if we Would hold _our_ sanctity intact--all women must be free.

Sacred from every touch profane, yes, holy things and pure; A wrong to one is wrong to all; we must the weak secure.

United we must strike the shame; if known aright our power, Slavery and crime would perish: Sisters, peal their final hour!

Mothers, maidens, wives, no longer aid your dusky sisters' shame! Strike for our common womanhood, uphold our spotless fame!

Its majesty is in your hands, trail it not in the dust, Nor keep your shrinking slaves as prey for lovers', husbands' lust!

All womanhood is holy! it shall not be profaned! Our sanctity is threatened: Men! it shall not thus be stained!

Break up your harems! free our slaves! we will not share your shame! O mothers of the living, chaste must be life's sacred flame!

Fathers, brothers, sons, and husbands, their chains must be untwined! Touch not the ark where purity in woman's form is shrined!

Poor Amy! love has conquered! the veil is raised, I see Sister spirits 'neath the dusky hue; thy people shall go free!'

The lady rose with high resolve upon her pale sad face; And moved among the slave girls, the angel of their race.

Angel of freedom, charity, she breathes, and fetters melt, And the holy might of Purity in Southern heart is felt.

Ah! the stars upon our banner, driven apart and dimmed with blood, Might again in glory cluster through a perfect womanhood!

FOR AND AGAINST.

When his father called Fred Fontevrault, then a boy of fifteen, into his sick chamber, and made him subscribe to the whimsical conditions of the will, the female _gendarmerie_, so well versed in my affairs, declared that my husband had wretchedly repented his early marriage, and resolving his son should walk into fate with eyes unbandaged, forbade his alliance before the age of twenty-six. Though Mr. Fontevrault was fifty and I sixteen when I married him, he was not unhappy. He occupied himself in looking after his money, and making a collection of mosaics. We never had any matrimonial disturbances. I think they are vulgar. Any woman can do as she pleases without a remonstrant word, provided she has mind enough. It is the brainless women who scold. But scolds do not rule.

Fred was unreasonably fond of his father, and assented to his wishes without demur, even when the great Fontevrault estates hung on his fidelity to a useless oath. Then he died, and I settled into the blank stupidity of my widowhood. I, who had known no master but my own sweet will, now found myself in a hundred ways restricted. I was ruled through Fred. He must graduate at Harvard; the great establishment, splendid but tedious, must be maintained. So our residence in Boston was necessitated. I shut myself up in the legitimate manner, and--mourned of course. If it had not been for novels, worsted work, and my beauty, I should have gaped myself out of existence the first year. What nonsense it is to say the prime of a woman's loveliness passes before the thirties! For, look at me, am I old or faded? Would you believe that Fred, so tall and splendidly developed, was my son? From me he took his wealth of nature, for Mr. Fontevrault was one of those dried, wrinkled old men, women like me often marry; not because of the settlements only, but because of the foil. My figure was moulded like the Venus they copied in the colder marble from Pauline. Shoulders and arms, delicious in their curves, shining with a rosy fairness. A creamy skin, with a faint coralline tinge in the cheeks. The forehead is too low, some say; and yet artists have praised its bend, and the Greek line of the nose; not intellectual, but womanly, you know. Hair of a bright brown, feeling like floss silk. Eyes, I believe, few people ever fairly saw. Men are bewitched by them, women cannot understand their charm. Perhaps you have seen Wilson's portrait of me, the one with the grayish green background; you notice that the eyes were turned from the spectator, and half shaded by white lid and gilded lash. He could not catch the flitting spark that made them mine, and refused to paint them at all. My son promises to be as perfect in his way as I in mine. Just now a student, he is too Raphael-angel-like to suit me; but the very fellow to bewilder girls and set the boarding schools crazy. Luckily he is bound against inthralment.

By and by the house grew so lonely that I was fain to send for Leonora to make durance less vile. It was positively refreshing to hear her voice sing through the solemn old hall. Very warm was the welcome she received from both Fred and me. He had often said she was the only woman he could talk to without suppressing a yawn. It was ungallant of him, but I could sympathize with the sentiment. Women usually weary me. I told Leonora she must make up her mind to stay with me, as long as she remained unmarried.

Fred, holding her hand, laughingly made her promise never to take a husband without his consent. While I passed on, he drew her back; the mirror above the door framed a picture prettier than I liked to see.

'There is but one man I will authorize you to marry,' said my son.

Then it suddenly flashed on my mind that Fred was of the age of Scott's heroes, and would be sure to fall in love with a woman older than himself. The love did not matter so much, but marriage would be an absurdity. I expected to have a daughter-in-law some day or other; but it was never to be Leonora. In a hundred ways she had resisted me, and overcome me. I was as resolutely opposed to her, as if she had been my enemy. She was a connection of the family, independent, yet in some sort alone in the world. If it had been conferring a favor on her, to ask her to stay with me, be sure I never would have uttered a persuasive word. But it was asking her to leave gay society, and the incense of admiration, to bury herself in a dull house. Then she was 'ornamental;' I liked to see her about; she was satirical, and pleased me by a little spicy abuse. They called her handsome. She _was_ too small, I think, too slight, perhaps; and then her complexion was almost swarthy. But her hair was fine, her eyes large and brilliant, and her mouth mobile and sweet. The face was nothing to me; but her companionship was enlivening.

The young lady professed herself glad of a winter of exclusion, and when I saw how she set herself at work with books and embroidery, I confess I was astonished at her resignation. Then I saw her look at my son, and perceived she did not find it so _very_ stupid after all. Slowly she snarled him in her meshes.

One time my husband had a friendless youth for his secretary, called Denis Christopher. His name attracted me before his person. Mr. Fontevrault became so deeply interested in his character and talents, that he used his extensive influence, and gave Mr. Christopher an enviable lift over the world's rough places. Fontevrault was like a grieved child when he left us. I was sorry, but concealed it. One of the young man's agreeable privileges had been to attend me in public, thus relieving Mr. Fontevrault. I assure you he was more knightly than his master, whose stiff protection I never missed while under Launcelot's tender care. I never fully admitted to myself the power I found in the hitherto unknown fascination of a _young_ man's society; nor how much pleasure I took in touching those hidden chords that only respond to a woman's touch. That he adored me, I saw in his eyes. I liked it well, and the strange, unwonted feeling that shivered through me, now, when by chance my hand touched his.

Well--people began to talk, as people will, and Mr. Fontevrault sent him to Malaga. He came to bid me good-by; 'forever,' he thought; ah me! It was forever in one sense. Fred was a mere boy then, who heard and saw everything. I had hard work to get him out of the house that morning. I wanted Denis's last look all to myself. Before he left me, Christopher offered me a bracelet of cornelians, cut rarely as seals. Each gem bore an exquisite device. On one were a few words in Latin. When I was alone, I pressed the seal on a drop of hot wax, and read his dedication.

All that was years ago; he is here again, and I am free. I sat before the glass long the day I expected him, threading my brown hair, and longing to wear his color--blue. But then the widow's cap suited me divinely, and the folds of crape set off my peculiar tints as nothing else can. I came before him; he started forward to seize both hands, and gaze in my face, to find no change. Then he pressed his lips to my warm white fingers. A new boldness became his, a new timidity mine.

Fresh from lessons of my own, I could read a change in Leonora, and perceive mischief in the air. Her extreme quietness when my son entered the apartment, the faint shade of shyness in his manner of addressing her attracted me curiously. He began to linger in our haunts so long and on such frivolous pretexts, that I began seriously to think what was to be done with such a lovesick page. To oppose Fred would be worse than useless. Opposition determined him. If I could have sent her away, solitude would be my bane; for not one of the Fontevraults could I endure. Then as I pondered, I laughed at the absurdity of the whole thing. Not only was Leonora older than the student, a woman in society, but she had been engaged (with that fact I resolved to frighten Fred), nor would she wait five years for him to declare his passion. And his flickering fancy the slightest breath of doubt would change: a nature easily moulded by the inexorable. I resolved to let affairs take their own course, and trust her common sense, and my own gentle diplomacy.

What memorable meetings had we four during those sharp winter days! I lived as in an Arabian dream. There was Denis Christopher, with his brown face and thrilling eyes; Fred lackadaisical, but handsome as Antinous; Leonora, and I.

A very orderly company, but what hot feeling repressed, what romantic possibility, what fates unfulfilled lay under the courteous conventionality of the time! Fred leaned over Leonora at the piano. Their voices sounded well together, and if he could not declare his admiration of her, no doubt he conveyed it to her in some tender refrain or serenade. Their blended, passionate voices often moved me in a strange excitement, for I was not musical. I had no way of relieving myself, as these singers and painters have, who crystallize an emotion or a sorrow into a picture or a cadence. I can only gnaw the bedpost, or tear up something, in the mere need of expression. Denis watched them awhile, and then it became a trio instead of a duet. Mr. Christopher brought Spanish music. Light, rippling airs, dances, whose strange swaying rhythm had been borne to his ears in the Malaga nights.

My son grew jealous, therefore unreasonable. He would not play subordinate, so left Leonora no choice but to lend herself gracefully to Denis's companionship. These two were sure to misunderstand one another. Fred was contradictory. With intense and variable feeling, he possessed the traits of slower natures. A kind of natural prudence retarded him. He puzzled Leonora. One moment he cooed over her, the next became Horatian. Painfully sensitive, and proud withal, she was never sure of his opinion of her. Having little faith in the firmness of any man's admiration of _her_, she believed less than was avowed. And Fred, exacting much, was too inexperienced to understand her. They were drifting apart, I thought; but in avoiding Scylla, had I not plunged into Charybdis?

I had been a widow a year when Mr. Christopher left Spain. Another had now passed, and with it my seclusion. While Denis had talked to me, I had cared to hear no other man speak; but now, in a kind of thirst, I drank deep of pleasure. I played with the warm avowals of men past the reasoning age, and made Fred's classmates melancholy. Denis did not even disapprove. He was often near me now, but silent as a shadow.

How it stormed the night of the seventh of February, and like the whirling snow I danced! Christopher led me through the last Lancers, and then we stopped to rest. Hanging on his arm, and heedless of to-morrow, was I not happy? We passed through the long rooms, while the soft waltz music began to swell, and the untiring dancers took the floor.

I remember he asked for Leonora, and then if Fred meant to marry her. I would not say no, but would acknowledge that his fancy was heated.

'She will be a pleasant vision of boy-love a few years hence,' I said. 'Leonora has too much good sense to marry him, Mr. Christopher.'

'I don't know,' said he, meditatively, and drew my hand through his arm. The cornelian bracelet slipped into view. 'Mrs. Fontevrault,' uttered he, in a ceremonious tone--my warm pulse grew still--'do you never forget?'

'Do you desire it?' I answered, gaily:

''If to remember, or forget, Can give a longing, or regret,

command me.'

He smiled, and, stopping at a side table, poured out two glasses of wine.

'Here's to the past,' said he, eagerly; 'drink Lethe.'

We drained the glasses. Then I understood he withdrew his claim.

I wanted to go home after _that_; so Mr. Christopher summoned the carriage. The walks were white, and I trembled--was it with cold?--as he handed me in, and bade me good night.

The house at midnight was silent and warm. I went up stairs, and stood in the threshold of the library. The sleet driving against the window panes prevented their hearing me, I suppose. They seemed to be translating something or other. Fred's arm lay over the back of her chair. Very fast and earnestly he was talking. Marginal notes suggested by the text of Sismondi?

'What, home so early!' was his exclamation, on discovering me.

Leonora looked, up with a deep rose in her dark cheeks, a dangerous fire melting in her eyes. I had left her pale, with a headache.

'You are better, I conclude. I expected to find you among your pillows,' said I, accusative.

'I have cured her,' said Fred, coming forward and clasping my hands in his firm, cool hold. 'What ails you, mamma? You look as if you had a fever, and wickedly handsome. What have you been about?' He slipped off my ermine cloak, and kissed me with a mixture of pride and love. The boy bewildered me.

As fate would have it, Fred was right. I felt very ill. I believe I _resisted_ a fever, for I have a sensation of struggle connected with that sickness. But I cannot separate the pictures of my distempered fancy from the actualities of the time. Leonora took devoted care of me. Night after night Fred sat by me, and they relieved each other. Like one bound in an enchantment, I lay unable to prevent their mutual confidence, and the return of her young lover's adoring regard.

He sat beside her as the fire burned low; his blonde hair touched her dusky cheek as he bent over her.

'Leo, darling, I wish I was sick, like mamma.'

'Hush!' said she.

'Then you would soothe me, and part my hair with your soft fingers, that refuse to touch mine now. You would be sorry for me, and give me a little caressing, and I should be so happy I would not get well.'

'Don't talk so, Fred. You used to be an even-tempered, comfortable kind of young man to know. But now you are really teasing.'

'Do I really annoy you?'

'Very much.'

'And you don't believe in me. Sometimes a dumb kind of philosophy possesses me, and I say to myself, let her think of me as she will. I cannot be frank, and must take the consequences. Then again----'

Here she rose, and he put both arms around her. Audacious boy!

'Fred!' was uttered in a stifled voice.

'Promise me to send off Christopher,' ejaculated the young man.

The corners of the room seemed to stretch away indefinitely. A heavy perfume suffocated me. I groaned. In another moment Leonora was beside me, and the fresh air was blowing in from a window my son had opened.

I made haste to get well. The physicians say my constitution and good nursing saved me; but it was all resolution. My _will_ was stronger than the disease. As soon as I could sit up and see him, Denis Christopher was admitted. I used to hear a dulcet strain on the stairs, formed by her delicate note and his melodious base, and then he would follow Leonora in to pay his respects to me; always bringing something to brighten up my boudoir, and render her imprisonment less unendurable. Afterward he would never be exiled to the drawing rooms. Fred frowned at the ease with which he invaded our retirement, but only frowned. He and I began to wonder if Christopher would win her. Valiantly but cautiously was he wooing. Fred went off on a boating excursion, and I grew weary. I wished I had died. The secret of my good looks was confessed. Perfect health had kept my beauty undimmed. But colorless and hollow-eyed the fever left me. I could look at myself no more; so I looked at Leonora. She was pretty, with a charm that did not depend on tint or outline. Her new friend was penetrated by her real graces and his ideal rendering of them; but would he conquer? I was sure not. Because separation is sure alienation at a certain age, I resolved on Fred's speedy withdrawal from the scene. Why not go abroad immediately after his graduation, which was to occur in a few weeks? On his return I suggested it. He gloomily consented.

'Will you come, too, mamma?'

'Not yet; in the course of a year perhaps;' and I looked over to the corner where Leonora was winding worsted from Mr. Christopher's fingers.

'Come, now,' said he, 'take Leonora, and we will set up housekeeping in the easy continental style.'

'She has her hands full just now.' Literally as well as figuratively true, for she had wound two enormous green balls.

'Perhaps she will go over with Mr. Christopher. Would you like a call from the bride and groom?'

My young Fontevrault looked at me.

'Do you speak as you know, mamma?'

'Look for yourself, my hoodwinked Cupid. Girls are all alike, Fred. He can ask her to marry him, and has that advantage over you.'

So it was decided that Fred should go to Paris, and be happy. Mrs. Blanchard gave him a farewell party, and all the young ladies were at their sweetest. Fred behaved with sullen dignity, as a lion should. He refused to be comforted by Adelaide and Rose, walking about with one or another, and looking at Leonora, at whom all mankind were gazing that night. She was in dashing spirits, a glorious color diffused her cheeks, her eyes fairly danced. Her dress was of feathery black tulle, and a broad silver ribbon, like an order, went over her shoulders. In the shining black braids glistened fern leaves of silver filigree. Fortunately, Fred and I discovered them--Leonora and her inseparable cavalier, Denis, I mean--in an alcove of roses and jessamines. She admiring the flowers, and he talking with a fervor very easy to read. She listening, as women always listen when the pleader is eloquent. But in her downcast face I read only pain, while my son translated the deep blush differently. When we were at home, and I waited to bid him good night, he took me in his strong arms:

'You love me, mamma, don't you?'

He was all I had in the world, so I told him.

Then followed a week we long remembered--the first week of Denis's absence. Leonora was gloomy and _distraite_; Fred cool as a peak of the Andes, and about as unapproachable; I immersed in the hurry and confusion of my son's departure. He had a suite of rooms over mine, and, the night before he went away, leaned over the ballusters, and called, as in old time:

'Leonora!'

She gave a glad start, and ran up to him. So I followed, of course. I wanted to put some flannels into his trunk, which stood in his bedroom. The doors were open between us. He had a bundle of her letters tied up in a bulky packet, and began to talk with great discretion.

'I have been putting my affairs in order,' said the systematic young man. 'I may never come back, and at any rate, my absence will be long. I thought it would be better to give you these, lest they fall into alien hands.'

'Why not burn them?' suggested his listener.

'I could not, Leo.'

'I am not so sentimental,' she returned, taking up the packet. 'They shall blaze directly. Do you want your own?'

'Oh, Fred, what a bungler you are!' I thought.

'You misunderstand,' he began, in a desperate tone.

'Fred!' I screamed, as if I were twenty rods distant, 'do come and open this bureau drawer. I can't move it.'

He came, pulling it open, with such needless strength, that all the toilette bottles garnishing the top were shaken off, and lay in fragments on the floor. She followed to note the disaster, and I took her down stairs, and watched over her like a dragon all that evening. I would not let Leonora go to the steamer with us, but compelled him to say farewell in my presence, I _like_ a scene. He held her hand long, uttering some incoherent sentences. Admirable was the self-composure she showed! The delicate muscles about the mouth were as steady as if she did not love him. She never raised her eyes until the last. As I saw their sad beauty, a pang seized me, and I turned away. He came after, hurried me into the carriage, and off we whirled.

'Are you going to write to her?' I asked.

'She says no,' Fontevrault answered, and looked vigorously out of the window.

* * * * *

One evening, two years after my son left me, we were sitting round the library fire. Christoper, now a captain in one of the famous Massachusetts regiments, sat near me, a little older and a little graver than when I saw him last. We were talking with flushed cheeks and beating hearts of the subject nearest our hearts just then--war.

A familiar foot pressed the stair. All the color left Leonora's lips; she knew who was coming. In another moment I was in my darling's arms. He shook hands with Leonora, but neither of them spoke a word; then turned to Cristopher, who welcomed him with the hearty cordiality men use.

'You have come home to fight, I know, Fontevrault.'

'So I have,' answered my son. 'Every true-hearted American should be striking his blow. I couldn't travel fast enough. Mother, are you a Spartan?'

He looked at Leonora. What did she think of this magnificent-mustached Saxon? Not much like the fair-cheeked student we remembered.

'Let us be army nurses,' said Leonora, when they had gone to Washington. Indeed we could not stay where we were, nor flit off to Newport to banish care. I grew sleepless, and a sudden sound would send the blood to my heart. Leonora maintained an undaunted front, but she grew thin in spite of her cheerfulness. At last I said:

'We will follow the army; I shall die to live in this way.'

So, just before the battle of Antietam, we were in Washington.

Just after--ah me!--a singular scene occurred. We four had met again, not as in the happy nights long gone. Denis, the veteran of seven battles, still stood unscathed; but my boy could fight no more. Manfully he bore his affliction; I only wept.

This morning of which I write, he was so bright, that we admitted Denis at once, who came to bid us farewell before leaving to join his regiment.

'Stop a minute,' said Fred. 'Leonora.' She came toward him with a face of gentle inquiry.

'To-day is my birthday,' prefaced the soldier. 'I am twenty-six, and a free man to say I love you.' Denis minced and motioned to withdraw his hand. (Not so fast, old fellow.) This I say because I have been waiting years to speak my mind on this day. But now, I have nothing to offer you. I have no future. I am a cripple; even my love for you has been a cheat to you; and now is selfishness in me. Here stands a man as true to you as I; I know how he loves you. Which of us will you marry, Leonora?'

While he was speaking, the lost carnation came back to her cheeks. The soft eyes kindled to a languid fire. She never looked at Denis, who stood in his erect strength, his worshipping eyes on her face. She came to Fred's bedside, and knelt down there. Denis dropped his hand.

'You do not answer,' Fred whispered; 'I cannot bear suspense.'

How did she satisfy him? I do not know. In emotion that almost overmastered me, I snapped the bracelet--Denis's bracelet; it lay upon the floor. He passed me without a word, without a look. His heavy heel ground the enchased seal to rosy dust. I heard the door swung loudly to, and then the clatter of his horse's hoofs, as he rode rapidly away.

EUROPEAN OPINION.

We are indebted to an accomplished gentleman in Philadelphia for the following translation from the _Revue Nationale_ of M. Laboulaye. Any extended comment from our pen would only serve to weaken the effect of this eloquent and truthful passage. We may, however, express our gratification to find that some generous spirits in Europe still remain superior to the jealousies and the malevolence which have so largely affected the ruling classes there, and led them so generally to hope for and to predict the downfall of our suffering country. Hitherto we have indeed recognized the truth that 'the opinion of Europe is a power;' but we have felt it chiefly in its worst influence, against us, and in favor of the rebellion. Now, however, in this the darkest hour of our mortal struggle, it affords real relief to hear the most enlightened men of that continent proclaiming that 'the arguments of the South are beginning to fail,' and 'that all the ingenuity in the world cannot lift up its fallen cause.' Nor is it at all difficult to give entire credence to these statements, for there is evidently an altered tone even in those organs of European opinion which have been, and still are consistently hostile to us. It was perhaps unavoidable that misunderstanding should prevail in the outset, and that the ear of Europe should have been complacently open to the representations of the plausible South, urged as they were by the ablest and most unscrupulous of her advocates. But truth was destined certainly to make its way in the end. It was only doubtful whether the triumph of right would take place soon enough to bring the force of European opinion to bear on the contest and to deprive the South of that moral support which alone has enabled her to prolong the hopeless struggle to the present time. But, according to M. Laboulaye, the 'fatal service' which its advocates have done the South, is just now about to bear its appropriate fruit; for the delusive promise of support which has thus far sustained the rebel cause is utterly gone, and with it, all possibility of ultimate success.

Seldom have we read a nobler passage than that in which this accomplished writer appeals to the French sentiment of national unity to justify our Northern people in their mighty struggle to subdue this 'impious revolt.' Americans themselves, though fully imbued with the instinctive feeling which it defends, could not more forcibly have presented the point. And, indeed, if we may believe the statements now prevalent, attributing to eminent statesmen and large parties a disposition to accede to the separation of the sections, the very sentiment of nationality has lost it force among us, and we would be compelled to acknowledge our obligations to this eminent Frenchman for stimulating our expiring patriotism and awakening us to the vital importance of our national unity and to the shame and disgrace of surrendering it. If any American has ever, for a moment, admitted the idea of consenting to a separation of the Union, let him read the burning words of this enlightened and disinterested foreigner, and blush for his want of comprehension of the true interests and glory of his country. It is not a mere sentimental enthusiasm which leads us to combat disunion and to cherish the greatness and oneness of our country. Our dearest rights and our noblest interests are alike involved, and we would be craven wretches, unworthy of our high destiny, if we did not risk everything and sacrifice everything to preserve them. 'The North only defends itself,' says M. Laboulaye. 'It is its very life that it wishes to save.'

Briefly, but with the hand of a master, does this article point out the consequences of disunion. The touches by which the sketch is drawn, are few and rapidly made; but they faithfully portray the great features of the case, and present a true and living picture to the mind of every thoughtful man. The jealousies, the rivalries, the antipathies of the sections; the foreign intrigues and eventual foreign domination among our fragmentary governments; the large standing armies, and the competing naval forces; and finally, 'the endless war and numberless miseries' which will inevitably result--all these mighty evils will not only afflict our own unhappy country, but 'peace will be exiled from the world.' The interests of mankind are involved in this tremendous struggle.

But we no longer keep our readers from the perusal of this interesting extract. Let it be remembered that it comes from the quarter understood to be most unfriendly to us, where the wily emperor of the French is supposed to be plotting for the destruction of our nationality and power. The appeal to the interests of France against the ambition of England is striking and powerful. Whatever disposition the emperor may cherish against us, the French people ought to be our friends; they have a common interest in maintaining the freedom of the seas, and we have yet to complain that any port of France has sent out cruisers to assail our commerce on the ocean.

Let us take courage, even in this hour of disaster. Noble spirits abroad are still watching us with generous sympathy and praying for the success of our sacred cause. Let us be true to ourselves and to our country, and the hour of final triumph will soon be at hand. Though dissensions tend now to distract and weaken us, and though darkness, more impenetrable than ever before, seems lately to have gathered around us, we already discern the first glimmerings of the dawn in the east. The full day will soon break upon us, and we shall rejoice in the splendor of returning peace and renewed prosperity.

REASONS WHY THE NORTH CANNOT PERMIT SECESSION.

(_From the French of_ EDOUARD LABOULAYE, _published in the_ 'Revue Nationale,' _December 10th, 1862._)

The civil war which has been dividing and ruining the United States for two years also affects us in Europe. The scarcity of cotton causes great suffering. The workmen of Rouen and Mulhouse are as severely tried as the spinners and weavers of Lancashire; entire populations are reduced to beggary, and to exist through the winter they have no resource and no hope save in special charity or assistance from the government. In so severe a crisis, and in the midst of such unmerited sufferings, it is but natural that public opinion should become restless in Europe, and condemn the ambition of those who prolong a fratricidal war. Peace in America, peace is a necessity at any price, is the cry of thousands of men among us who are suffering from hunger, innocent victims of the passions and madness which steep the United States in blood.

These complaints are only too just. The civilized world is at present, so bound together, that peace is one great condition of the existence of modern industrial nations; unhappily, although it is easy to point out the remedy, it is almost impossible to apply it. Just now it is by war alone that ending of the war may be looked for. To throw herself armed between the combatants would be an attempt in which Europe would exhaust her strength; and to what purpose? As Mr. Cobden has justly said, it would be less costly to feed the work people who are ruined by the American crisis _on game and champagne_. To offer to-day our friendly mediation is not only to expose ourselves to a refusal, and perhaps so exasperate one of the parties as to push it to more violent measures, but to diminish the chances of our mediation being accepted at a more favorable moment. Thus we are forced to remain spectators of a deplorable war, which is the cause of infinite evil to us; thus forced to offer up prayers that exhaustion and misery may appease these mortal enemies and oblige them to accept either reunion or separation. A sad situation, doubtless, but one which neutrals have always occupied, and from which they cannot depart without throwing themselves among unknown dangers.

If we have not the right to interfere, we can at least complain, and try to discover those who are really wrong in this war, which so affects us. The opinion of Europe is a power. It can hasten matters and restore peace better than arms can. Unfortunately, for two years opinion has wandered from the proper path, and by taking the wrong side of the question, prolongs instead of stopping resistance. The South has found many and clever advocates in England and in France, who have presented her cause as that of justice and liberty. They have proclaimed the right of secession, and have not feared to apologize for slavery. Their arguments to-day are beginning to fail. Thanks to those publicists who do not traffic with humanity; thanks to M. de Gasparin, above all, the light has made things clear; we know now how things stand as to the origin and character of the rebellion. To every disinterested observer, it is evident that the South is wrong in every way. It needs not a Montesquieu to understand that a party not menaced in the least, which, through ambition or pride, tears its country to pieces and destroys its national unity, has no right to the sympathies of the French. As to declaring slavery sacred, that is a work which must be left to the preachers of the South. All the ingenuity in the world cannot lift up this fallen cause. Had the confederates a thousand reasons for complaint and for revolt, there would always rest on their rebellion an indelible stain. No Christian, no liberal person will ever interest himself for men who, in this nineteenth century, insolently proclaim their desire to perpetuate and extend slavery. Though it is still permitted to the planters to listen to theories that have infatuated and lost them, such sophistries will never cross the ocean.

The advocates of the South have done it a fatal service; they have made it believe that Europe, enlightened or seduced, would range itself on its side and finally throw into the balance something more than empty promises. This delusion has and still maintains the resistance of the South, it prolongs the war, and with it our sufferings. If, as the North had a right to expect, the friends of liberty had, from the first, boldly pronounced against the policy of slavery, if the advocates of peace upon the seas, if the defenders of the rights of neutrals had spoken in favor of the Union and rejected a separation, which could only profit England, it is probable that the South would have been less anxious to start on a journey without visible end. If, in spite of the courage and devotion of its soldiers; if, in spite of the ability of its generals, the South fails in an enterprise which, in my opinion, cannot be too much blamed, let it lay the fault on those who have so poor an opinion of Europe as to imagine that they will subject _its_ opinion to a policy against which patriotism protests, and which the gospel and humanity condemn.

We will grant, they may say, that the South is altogether wrong; nevertheless it wishes to separate, it can no longer live with the people of the North. The war alone, whatever may be its origin, is a new cause of disunion. By what right can twenty millions of men force ten millions (of those ten millions there are four millions of slaves whose will is not consulted in the least) of their countrymen to continue a detested alliance, to respect a contract which they wish to break at any price? Is it possible to imagine that after two or three years of fighting and misery, conquerors and conquered can be made to live harmoniously together? Can a country two or three times the size of France be subjugated? Would there not always be bloodshed between the parties? Separation is perhaps a misfortune, but now it is an irreparable one. Let us grant that the North has law, the letter and spirit of the Constitution on her side; there always remains an indisputable point--the South wishes to govern itself. You have no right to crush a people that defends itself so valiantly. Give it up!

If we were less enervated by the luxury of modern life and by the idleness of a long peace, if there still lingered in our hearts some remnant of that patriotism which, in 1792, urged our forefathers to the banks of the Rhine, the answer would be simple; to-day I fear it will not be understood. If the south of France should revolt to-morrow and demand a separation; if Alsace and Lorraine should wish to withdraw, what would be, I will not say our right only, but our duty? Would we count voices to see if a third or a half of the French had a right to destroy our nationality, to annihilate France, to break up the glorious heritage our sires bought for us with their blood? No! we would shoulder our muskets and march. Woe to the man who does not feel his country to be sacred, and that it is a noble act to defend it, even at the price of extreme misery and every danger!

'America is not like France; it is a confederation, not a nation.' Who says this? It is the South, and to justify its faults; the North asserts the contrary, and for two years she has declared, by numberless sacrifices, that the Americans are one people, and that no one shall divide their country. This is a grand and noble sentiment, and if anything astonishes me, it is that France can witness this patriotism unmoved. Is not love of country the crowning virtue of the Frenchman?

What is this South, and whence does it derive this right of secession it proclaims so loudly? Is it a conquered nation which resumes its independence, as Lombardy has done? Is it a distinct race which will not continue an oppressive alliance? No! it is a number of colonies, established on the territory of the Union by American hands. Take a map of the United States. Except Virginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia, which are old English colonies, all the rest of the South is situated on lands purchased and paid for by the Union. This proves that the North has sustained the greatest part of the expense. Ancient Louisiana was sold to the Americans, in 1804, by the first consul at a price of fifteen millions of dollars; Florida was bought from Spain, in 1820, for five millions; and it required the war with Mexico, a payment of ten millions, and heavy losses besides, to acquire Texas. In a few words, of all the rich countries which border on the Mississippi and Missouri, from their sources to their mouths, there is not one inch of ground for which the Union has not paid, and which does not belong to her. The Union has driven out or indemnified the Indians. The Union has built fortifications, constructed shipyards, light-houses, and harbors. It is the Union that has made all this wilderness valuable and rendered its settlement possible. It is the men of the North as well as those of the South who have cleared and planted these lands, and transformed them from barren solitudes to a flourishing condition. Show us, if you can, in old Europe, where unity is entirely the result of conquest, a title to property so sacred, a country which is more the common work of one people! And shall it now be allowed to a minority to take possession of a territory which belongs to all, and, moreover, to choose the best portion of it? Shall a minority be permitted to destroy the Union, and to imperil those who were its first benefactors, and without whom it would never have existed? If this does not constitute an impious revolt, then any whim that seizes a people is just and right. It is not only political reasons that oppose a separation; geography, the positions of places force the United States to form a single nation. Strabo, meditating on this vast country now called France, said, with the certainty of genius, that, to look at the nature of the territory, and the course of the waters, it was evident that the forests of Gaul, inhabited by a thinly scattered people, would become the abode of a great people. Nature has disposed our territory to be the theatre of a great civilization. This is also true of America, which is really but a double valley, whose place of separation is imperceptible, and which contains two large water courses, the Mississippi, and the St. Lawrence. There are no high mountains which isolate and separate the people, no natural barriers like the Alps and Pyrenees. The West cannot live without the Mississippi; it is a question of life and death to the Western farmers to hold the mouth of the river. The United States felt this from the first day of their existence. When the Ohio and Mississippi were yet but streams lost in the forest, when the first planters were only a handful of men scattered in the wilderness, the Americans already knew that New Orleans was _the key of the house_. They would not leave it either to Spain or France. Napoleon understood this; he held in his hands the future greatness of the United States; he was glad to cede this vast territory to America, with the intention, he said, 'to give to England a maritime rival which sooner or later would lower the pride of our enemies.' (Here the author refers to his pamphlet, entitled, _Les Etats Unis et la France_, and to _L'histoire de la Louisiane_, by Barbé Marbois.) He could have satisfied the United States by only giving up the left bank of the river, which was all they asked for then; he did more (and in this I think he was very wrong), with a stroke of his pen he ceded a country as large as the half of Europe, and renounced our last rights on this beautiful river which we had discovered. Sixty years have quickly passed since this cession. The States which are now called Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Oregon, and the territories of Nebraska, Dacotah, Jefferson and Washington, which will soon become States, have been established on the immense domain abandoned by Napoleon. Without counting the slaveholding population which wishes to break up the Union, there are ten millions of free citizens between Pittsburg and Fort Union, who claim the course and mouth of the Mississippi as having been ceded to them by France. It is from us that they hold their title and their possession. They have a right of sixty years, a right consecrated by labors and cultivation, a right which they have received from a contract, and, better still, from nature, and from God.

See what it is they are reproached for defending; they are, forsooth, usurpers and tyrants, because they wish to hold what is their own, because they will not place themselves at the mercy of an ambitious minority. What would we say, if, to-morrow, Normandy, rising, should pretend to hold for herself alone Rouen and Havre, and yet what is the interest of the Seine compared to that of the Mississippi, which has a course of two thousand two hundred and fifty miles, and which receives all the waters of the West?

To possess New Orleans is to command a valley which embraces two thirds of the United States.

They say 'we will neutralize the river.' We know what such promises are worth. We have seen what Russia did at the mouth of the Danube; the war of the Crimea was necessary to give to Germany the free use of her great river. If a new war were to break out between Austria and Russia, we might be sure that the possession of the Danube would be the stake played for. It could not be otherwise in America, from the day the Mississippi would flow for more than three hundred miles between two foreign servile banks: the effect of the war has already been to prevent the exportation of wheat and corn, the riches of the West. In 1861 it was necessary to burn useless harvests, to the great prejudice of Europe, who profited by their exportation. The South itself feels the strength of its position so well that its ambition is to separate the valley of the Mississippi from the Eastern States, and to unite itself to the West, consigning the Yankees of New England to a solitude which would ruin them. With the Mississippi for a bait, the Confederates hope to reestablish to their profit, that is, to the profit of slavery, the Union which they have broken for fear of liberty[6]. We now see what is to be thought of the pretended tyranny of the North, and if it is true that it wishes to oppress and to subjugate the South. On the contrary, the North only defends itself. In maintaining the Union, it defends its rights, and it is its very life that it wishes to save.

Thus far I have only spoken of the material interests--interests which are lawful, and which, founded on solemn titles, give sacred rights; but if we examine moral and political interests which are of a superior order, we will understand better still that the North cannot give up without destroying itself. The United States is a republic, the most free, and at the same time the mildest and most happy form of government the world has ever seen. Whence comes this prosperity of the Americans? Because they are alone upon an immense territory; they have never been obliged to concentrate their power and enfeeble liberty in order to resist the jealousy and ambition of their neighbors. In the United States there was no standing army, no naval force; the Americans employed the immense sums which we expend to avert or to sustain war, in opening schools, and in giving to all their citizens, poor or rich, that education and that instruction which form the moral greatness and the true riches of the people. Their foreign policy was comprised in this maxim: 'Never to mingle in the quarrels of Europe on the sole condition that Europe will not interfere with their affairs, and will respect the liberty of the seas.' Thanks to these wise principles, which Washington left them in his immortal testament, the United States have enjoyed, for eighty years, a peace which has only been disturbed by Europe when, in 1812, they were forced to resist England and sustain the rights of neutrals. We must count by hundreds of millions those sums that we have used during the last seventy years in the upholding our liberty in Europe; these hundreds of millions the United States have employed in improvements of every description. Here is the secret of their prodigious fortune; it is their perfect independence which makes their prosperity.

Let us now suppose the separation finally accomplished, and that the new confederation comprises all the Slave States; the North has at once lost both its power and the foundations of that power. The Republic has received a mortal blow. There are in America two nations, side by side, two jealous rivals who are always on the point of attacking each other. Peace will not remove their antipathies; it will not efface the memory of the past greatness of the Union now destroyed; the victorious South will, without doubt, be quite as friendly toward slavery, and as fond of domination as ever. The enemies of slavery, now masters of their own policy, will certainly not be soothed by the separation. What will the Southern confederacy be to the North! It will be a foreign power established in America, with a frontier of one thousand five hundred miles, unprotected on every side, and consequently continually threatening or menaced. This power, hostile, because of its vicinity alone, and still more so by its institutions, will possess a very considerable portion of the New World; it will have half the coasts of the Union; it will command the Gulf of Mexico, an inland sea one third the size of the Mediterranean; it will be the mistress of the mouths of the Mississippi, and can ruin at its pleasure the inhabitants of the West. The fragments of the old Union will have to be always ready to defend themselves against their rivals. Questions of customs and of frontiers; rivalries, jealousies, in fact all the scourges of old Europe will overwhelm America at once and together; she will have to establish custom houses over an extent of five hundred leagues; to build and arm forts on this immense frontier, to keep on foot large standing armies, to maintain a naval force; in other words, she will have to renounce her old Constitution, to weaken her municipal independence by the centralization of power. Farewell to the old and glorious liberty! Farewell to those institutions which made America the common refuge of all who could not exist in Europe! The work of Washington will be destroyed; the situation will be full of dangers and difficulties. I understand how the prospect of such a future can delight those who have never been able to forgive America her prosperity and greatness; history is full of such sad jealousies. Still better I understand and approve of this, that a people accustomed to liberty should risk its last man and give its last dollar to preserve the inheritance of its fathers. I do not understand why there are persons in Europe who believe themselves liberal when they reproach the North for its generous resistance by advising her disgracefully to relinquish her rights. War is certainly a frightful evil, but from war a durable peace may issue, the South may tire of a struggle which exhausts its strength, the old Union may again arise in its glory, and the future may be saved. What but endless war and numberless miseries can result from a separation? This dismemberment of a country is an irreparable evil; no people, no nation, will submit to such a calamity until it no longer has any power to resist.

Up to this time I have reasoned in the supposition that the South would remain an independent power. But unless the West joins the confederates, and the Union reestablishes itself against New England, this independence is a chimera: it might last for some time; but in ten or twenty years, when the free population of the West would have doubled or trebled itself, how would the South, necessarily much enfeebled by slave culture, compare with a people, thirty millions in number, enclosing it on two sides? To resist successfully, the South would be forced to rely on Europe; it could only live when protected by a great naval power, and England is the only one in a condition to guarantee for it its sovereignty. Here is a new danger for free America and for Europe. The South has no commercial marine, nor with slavery ever will have; England will at once seize the monopoly of cotton, and will furnish capital and vessels to the South. In two words, the triumph of the South is the reinstatement of England on the continent, whence the policy of Louis XVI and Napoleon has driven her; it is enfeebled neutrality; it is France plunged anew into all the questions concerning the liberty of the seas, which have already cost her two centuries of struggles and suffering. In defending its own rights, the American Union assured the independence of the ocean. The Union once destroyed, the English will again resume their preponderance, peace will be exiled from the world, and a policy will return which has only benefited our rivals.

This is what Napoleon felt; this is what is forgotten to-day. It would seem that history is but a collection of frivolous tales, good enough, perhaps, to amuse children; it would seem that no one wishes to understand the lessons of the past. If the experience of our fathers were not lost on our ignorance, we would see that, while fighting for her independence, while upholding her national unity, the North is defending our cause as well as her own. All our prayers should be for our old and faithful friends. The weakness of the United States will be our weakness, and on the first quarrel with England, we will too late regret having abandoned a policy that for forty years has been our security.

In writing these pages, I do not expect to convert those persons who have in their hearts an innate love of slavery; _I_ write for those honest souls who allow themselves to be captivated by the grand visions of national independence which are continually shown to them in order to dazzle and mislead. The South has never been menaced, and at this late hour can return to the Union even with her slaves [the reader will remember that this article was published in December, 1862], and is only required not to destroy the national unity, and not to ruin political liberty. It cannot be repeated too often that the North is not an aggressor--it only defends what every true citizen will defend--the national compact, the integrity of the country. It is very sad that it should have found so little sympathy in Europe, and, above all, in France. It counted on us, its hopes were in us; we have forsaken it, as if those sacred words Country and Liberty no longer found an echo in our breasts. Where is the time when all France cheered the young Lafayette giving his sword to serve the Americans? Who has imitated him? Who has recalled this glorious memory? Have we become so old that our memory has failed?

It is impossible to foresee what will be the issue of this war. The South may succeed; the North may split up, and wear itself out in internal struggles. Perhaps the Union is already but a great memory. But, whatever fortune may have in the future, it is the plain duty of every man who has not allowed himself to be carried away by present successes, to sustain and encourage the North to the last, to condemn those whose ambition threatens the most beautiful and patriotic work the world has ever beheld, to remain faithful until the end of the war, and even after defeat, should it come, to those who will have fought to the last for the right and for liberty.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: This point of view has been thoroughly exposed by one of the wisest citizens of America, EDWARD EVERETT, in 'The Questions of the Day,' New York, 1861.]

THE HUGUENOTS OF VIRGINIA.

The warmer climes of the South induced many Huguenots to settle in the colony of Virginia, and their neat little cottages, covered with French grapevines, and the wild honeysuckle, might be seen scattered along James river, not far above Richmond. One writer of that day, says: 'Most of the French who lived at that town (_Monacan_) on James river, removed to Trent river, in North Carolina, where the rest were expected daily to come to them, when I came away, which was in August, 1708.' In 1690, King William sent to Virginia many of the Huguenot Refugees, his followers, who had taken shelter in England. Here they were naturalized by an especial act in 1699. Six hundred more came over, conducted by their pastor, Philip de Richebourg, locating themselves, about twenty miles above Richmond, on lands formerly occupied by a powerful tribe of Indians. There is a church now near the spot, retaining its Indian name to this day. In 1700, the Virginia assembly exempted these French settlers from taxation, and fully protected their rights.

We have seen a curious relic of the Huguenots in Virginia, which was found in the family of a descendant. It is entitled: 'A register, containing the baptisms made within the church of the French Refugees, in the Manakin town, in Virginia, within the parish of King William, in the year of our Lord 1721, the 25th of March. Done by Jacques Soblet, clerk.' This manuscript contains about twenty-five pages of foolscap paper, and remains a standing evidence of the fidelity of the Virginia Huguenots to their Christian duties and ordinances. As a specimen of their entries, we copy the following, literally, not even correcting their orthography:

'Jean Chastain fils de Jean ett de Marianne Chastain les pere et mere nee le 26 Septembre, 1721, est baptise le 5 Octobre, par M. Fountaine. Ils ava pour parun et marene Pierre David et Anne sa femme le quels ont declaree que cest enfan nee le jour et an que deshus.

Segnee JACQUE SOBLET, Clerk.'

John Chastain, son of John Chastain and of Marianne Chastain, the father and mother, born the 26th of September, 1721, was baptized the 5th of October, by Mr. Fontaine. He had for godfather and godmother Peter David and Anne, his wife, who have declared that this infant was born the day and year aforesaid.

Signed, JACQUE SOBLET, Clerk.

Two or three of the pages contain records of deaths. Here is one:

'Le 29 de Janvier, 1723-4, morut le Sieur Authonoine Trabue, agee danviron sinquaint six a sept annees fut en terree le 30 du meme moy.

J. SOBLETT, Clerk.'

Jan. 29th, 1723-4, died Sir Anthony Trabue, aged about fifty six or seven years. He was buried the 30th of the same month.

J. SOBLETT, Clerk.

Huguenot names found in this old register of baptism:

'Chastain, David, Monford, Dykar, Neim, (_Minister_) Dupuy, Bilbo, Dutoi, Salle, Martain, Allaigre, Vilain, Soblet, Chambou, Levilain, Trabu, Loucadon, Harris, Gasper, Wooldridge, Flournoy, Amis, Banton, Ford, Laisain, Lolaigre, Givodan, Mallet, Dubruil, Guerrant, Sabbatie, Dupre, Bernard, Amonet, Porter, Rapine, Lacy, Watkins, Cocke, Bondurant, Goin, Pero, Pean, Deen, Robinson, Edmond, Brook, Brian, Faure, Don, Bingli, Reno, Lesuer, Pionet, Trent, Sumpter, Moiriset, Jordin, Gavain.

Names of Negroes: Thomberlin (Northumberland), Ivan, Jaque, Janne, Anibal, Guillaume, Jean, Pierre, Olive, Robert, Jak, Julienne, Francois, Susan, Primus, Moll, Chamberlain, Dick, Pegg, Nanny, Tobie, Dorole, Agar, Agge, Pompe, Frank, Cæsar, Amy, Joham, Debora, Tom, Harry, Cipio, Bosen, Sam, Tabb, Jupiter, Essek, Cuffy, Orange, Robin, Belin, Samson, Pope, Dina, Fillis, Matilda, Ester, Yarmouth, Judy, and Adam.'

We find in Beverly's 'History of Virginia,' a very interesting account of the Manakin French Refugees: 'The assembly was very bountiful to those who remained at this town, bestowing on them large donations, money and provisions for their support; they likewise freed them from every public tax for several years to come, and addressed the governor to grant them a brief to entitle them to the charity of all well-disposed persons throughout the country, which, together with the king's benevolence, supported them very comfortably, till they could sufficiently supply themselves with necessaries, which they now do indifferently well, and begin to have stocks of cattle, which are said to give abundantly more milk than any other in the country. I have heard that these people are upon a design of getting into the breed of buffaloes, to which end they lay in wait for their calves, that they may tame and raise a stock of them; in which, if they succeed, it will in all probability be greatly for their advantage; for these are much larger than other cattle, and have the benefit of being natural to the climate. They now make many of their own clothes, and are resolved, as soon as they have improved that manufacture, to apply themselves to the making of wine and brandy, which they do not doubt to bring to perfection.' The Rev. J. Fontaine, a Calvinistic clergyman, first preached to his Refugee French brethren in England and Ireland (1688). Then his sons emigrated to Virginia, and became settled ministers. From this stock alone, including his son-in-law, Mr. Maury, have descended hundreds of the best citizens of that commonwealth--ministers, members of the bar, legislators, and public officers. The Rev. Dr. Hawks estimates the relations of these Fontaine families, in the United States, at not less than _two thousand_.

A few years ago, he found in a family under his parochial charge, a manuscript autobiography of one of its ancestors. This was a James Fontaine, who was a persecuted Huguenot, and endured much for the sake of his religion. The work has been translated and published, and is full of interest--'A Tale of the Huguenots; or, Memoirs of a French Refugee Family, with an Introduction, by F. L. Hawks, D.D.'

M. Fontaine was a noble example of a true Huguenot. In his early life, he was accustomed to the enjoyments of wealth, education, and refined society; but, for conscience' sake, he was stripped of them all, and forced to leave his native land. An exile in England, ignorant of its language, and unaccustomed to labor, he soon accommodated himself to his altered circumstances. He became a skillful artisan, and worked successfully at his trade; at first he opened a little store, with a school also, to teach the French language, and he says: 'We were in great hopes, that with both together we should be able to pay our way.' M. Fontaine next undertook the manufactory of worsted goods, which he profitably carried on for some time, but became tired of the business. He was anxious to unite with a French church, and, knowing that there were many Refugees in the land, went to Cork in 1695.

At first he preached in the English church, after its regular pastor had finished his services. Next, the French Refugees obtained the court room for their worship, and, finally, he gave up a large apartment on the lower floor of his own house, which was properly arranged with a pulpit and seats for religious meetings. M. Fontaine writes at the time: 'I was now at the height of my ambition; I was beloved by my hearers, to whom I preached gratuitously. Great numbers of zealous, pious, and upright persons had joined our communion. This state of things was altogether too good to last. My cup of happiness was now full to overflowing, and, like all the enjoyments of this world, it proved very transitory.' Dissensions grew up; M. Fontaine was a Presbyterian, and some of his hearers required him to receive Episcopal ordination, and this circumstance produced discussion, until he felt it his duty to resign his charge. In answer to his request, his elders gave a reluctant and sorrowful consent, thanking him most humbly for the service he had rendered to this church, during two years and a half, without receiving any stipend or equivalent whatsoever for his unceasing exertions. '... We have been extremely edified by his preaching, which has always been in strict accordance with the pure Word of God. He has imparted consolation to the sick and afflicted, and set a bright example to the flock of the most exemplary piety and good conduct.'

Our French Refugee next removed to Bear Haven, and entered largely into the fishing business; and now he became a justice of the peace, exerting himself to break up the contraband traffic, which he found generally carried on 'between the Irish robbers and the French privateers,' then swarming the Irish coast. From eight to ten of these desperate characters were sent to Cork for trial at every assize of Bear Haven. They swore vengeance upon the upright magistrate; and in the year 1704, a French privateer hove in sight--soon anchoring, he faced M. Fontaine's house. The vessel mounted ten guns, with a crew of eighty seamen. The Huguenot mustered all his men, amounting to twenty, and, sending the Papists away, he supplied the Protestants with muskets. This reduced his force to seven men, besides himself, wife, and children, and four or five of these were of but little use.

Fontaine posting himself in a tower over the door, the rest of the party occupied the different windows. The lieutenant now landed with twenty men, and, approaching the dwelling, he took aim and fired at M. Fontaine, but missed him. The Huguenot then discharged a blunderbuss, with small leaden balls, one of which entered the neck of the privateersman, and another his side, when his men carried him back wounded to the ship. This unexpected resistance from a minister made the captain furious, when he sent to the attack twenty more men, under another commander, with two small cannons. 'I must acknowledge,' he says, 'that being unaccustomed to this sort of music, I felt some little tremors of fear when the first cannon ball struck the house; but I instantly humbled myself before my Maker, and having committed myself, both soul and body, to His keeping, my courage revived, and I suffered no more from fear. I put my head out of the window to see what effect the ball had produced on our stone wall, and when I perceived it had only made a slight scratch, I cried out for joy, 'Courage, my dear children, their cannon balls have no more effect on our stone walls than if they were so many apples.'

The wife of M. Fontaine displayed the greatest self-possession and bravery on this trying occasion, carrying ammunition, acting as surgeon, and encouraging all by her words and actions. 'Courage, my children,' said she, 'we are in the hands of God, and it is not fear that will insure our safety; on the contrary, God will bless our courage. If you cannot fire yourselves, you can load the muskets for your father and others who are older and stronger than you are; drive away all fear, if you can, and leave the care of your persons to God.' The fight continued from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon, without intermission. Only two of the Huguenot family were wounded--a man, and one of the children slightly in his finger. The pirates finally withdrew, with three men killed and seven wounded. During the whole action the Huguenot minister did not permit any one 'to taste a drop of wine or spirits, or strong beer.' A second attack was feared, but soon the privateer weighed anchor and sailed away; when the pious family returned thanks to God for their 'glorious deliverance.'

A full account of this bold and courageous affair was transmitted to Lord Cox, then chancellor of Ireland, and the Duke of Ormond, the lord lieutenant. Fontaine recommended to them that a fort should be built there, when 'it would be a great place for the settlement of French Refugees, and would also prove a safeguard to the commerce of the whole kingdom.' In the year 1704, he himself erected a fortification at the back of his house, purchased some six-pounders, which had been obtained from a vessel lost on the Irish coast, and the Government supplied him with powder and balls. The Council of Dublin also voted him £50, and Queen Anne, in 1705, granted him a pension of five shillings a day for his services, and as a French Refugee.

From this daring defence, the name of M. Fontaine and wife became known and famous throughout all Europe. The French corsairs especially remembered it, and threatened another attack. Indeed, the family constantly apprehended such a visit, and it did take place in 1704. Leaving their vessels at midnight, the enemy soon reached the dwelling of the Huguenot, and, firing the outbuildings and stacks of grain, in less than half an hour the whole were completely enveloped in flames. On this occasion, the entire garrison consisted of the two parents, children, with four servants, two of whom were cowboys. By two o'clock in the afternoon, the pirates had made a breach through the wall of the house; but the children, protected by a mattress, in front of the opening, fired one after another at the assailants as they possibly could. The Huguenot leader, having overcharged his musket, it burst, throwing him down, and broke three of his ribs and right collar bone. For a short time he was insensible, but remarks: 'I had already done my part, for, during the course of the morning, I had fired five pounds of swan shot from my now disabled piece. Notwithstanding this unfortunate accident, an incessant fire was kept up on both sides, until a parley took place. Life and liberty were then guaranteed to the family, as the terms of capitulation, while the pirates were to have the plunder; and they swore to these conditions as Frenchmen and men of honor. When the officer and men entered the dwelling, and, looking anxiously around, saw only five youths, and four cowherds, they suspected that an ambush had been laid for them.

'You need not fear anything dishonorable from me,' said the French preacher; 'you see all our garrison.'

'Impossible!' he replied; 'these children could not possibly have kept up all the firing.'

The house was then stripped of everything, not excepting the coats, which had been thrown off in the heat of the action; and the booty filled six boats. When they departed, M. Fontaine with his two eldest boys and two servants were taken away as prisoners. In vain did the brave good man protest that this was an infraction of the treaty. The remonstrance availed nothing with the freebooters. In a few days, the children with the servants were set ashore, but he was detained, when orders were given to raise the anchor. During all these severe trials, his noble and pious companion did not sit down, quietly lamenting her misfortunes. She first went to the parish priest, who was under great obligations to her husband, entreating him for his liberation. But he positively refused. Perceiving the privateer under sail, she resolved to follow it along the shore, as long as she could, and, reaching a promontory, she made a signal with her apron, on the top of a stick. A boat came near the shore, and she carried on a conversation with its crew through a speaking trumpet. After much bargaining, they agreed to set M. Fontaine at liberty, upon the payment of £100 sterling. Of this sum the excellent lady could only borrow £30, and the captain of the privateer consented to take this amount, with one of her sons as a hostage, until the remaining £70 were paid, calling her at the same time 'a second Judith.'

Mrs. Fontaine repaired forthwith to Cork, for the purpose of raising the sum wanted, and could easily have obtained it, but the merchants of that city objected to any payment of the kind. The privateer hovered about the Irish coast for some time, expecting the ransom money; but when the governor of Brest heard the circumstances, he condemned the captain strongly for bringing a hostage away with him, contrary to the law of nations. The difficulty did not terminate here. As soon as he was able, the French preacher visited Kinsale, and made an affidavit of the outrage he had suffered. At this place were a government officer and a prison, and immediately all the French officers who had been taken in the war then existing were ironed. Numbers of the same description were treated in a similar manner. These retaliatory measures excited great public feeling against the captain of the privateer, and he was summoned to appear before the governor of Brest, who imprisoned and even threatened to hang him. Upon his promising to set at liberty the young hostage, and convey him to the place from whence he had been taken, the officer was liberated.

M. Fontaine now determined to live in Dublin, and support his family by teaching the Latin, Greek, and French languages; and in the mean time the grand jury of Cork awarded him £800 for his losses at Bear Haven. In his new abode he was able to give his children an excellent education; one became an officer in the British service, and three entered college. The former was John Fontaine, and the family determined that he should visit America for information; and after travelling through Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, he purchased a plantation in Virginia. Peter, another brother, received ordination from the bishop of London, and with Moses, who studied law, both embarked for Virginia in 1716. Francis, the last son, remained at college.

There were two daughters in his family. The eldest, Mary Anne, married Matthew Maury, a Protestant Refugee from Gascony, in 1716, and the next year he joined his relations in this country. His son was the Rev. James Maury, of Albemarle, Virginia, a very estimable and useful clergyman of the Church of England. James was another son of the French preacher who made America his home, bringing with him his wife, child, mother-in-law, and thirteen servants, in 1717. Francis, in 1719, was ordained by the Bishop of London, on the particular recommendation of the Archbishop of Dublin, and then also sailed for Virginia. He became a very eloquent and popular preacher, and settled in St. Margaret's parish, King William county.

In the year 1721, Mr. Fontaine lost his most faithful, exemplary, and pious companion. 'A melancholy day,' he records in his autobiography, 'it was, that deprived me of my greatest earthly comfort and consolation. I was bowed down to the very dust; but it made me think of my own latter end, and made preparations to join her once more.' At the conclusion of his memoirs, he uses the following remarkable language:

'I feel the strongest conviction, that if you will take care of these memoirs, your descendants will read them with pleasure; and I here declare that I have been most particular as to the truth of all that is herein recorded.

'I hope God will bless the work, and that by His grace it may be a bond of union among you and your descendants, and that it may be an humble means of confirming you all in the fear of the Lord.

I am, dear children, 'Your tender father, 'JAMES FONTAINE.'

Little did the faithful Huguenot preacher imagine that a century after he wrote thus kindly to his own children, myriads who have been born from the same noble and holy ancestry would be animated, cheered, and profited by his useful life and example. Though dead he yet speaketh.

We have dwelt thus at length upon the heroic history of this Huguenot minister and his family; for where can we find an example so worthy of imitation? He was a Huguenot in its fullest sense, bearing himself, at all times, with a noble spirit of the true man, for the work before him. Never losing trust in God, nor proper confidence in himself, he proved that, when thus true, no man need ever despair. His long line of descendants in the United States may well cherish and honor his memory.

As we have said before, we dwell more particularly upon the character and history of Mr. Fontaine, as a striking example of a true Huguenot; and how truth and the right will finally triumph over all obstacles. Wherever the French Protestants settled in America, they exhibited this same excellent trait; and among their families of Virginia were those who distinguished themselves as brave soldiers and able magistrates in the councils of the then young Republic.

TO-MORROW!

[G. H. BOKER.]

'The sun is sinking low, Upon the ashes of his fading pyre; The evening star is stealing after him, Fixed, like a beacon on the prow of night; The world is shutting up its heavy eye Upon the stir and bustle of _to-day_;-- _On what shall it awake?_'

MONTGOMERY IN SECESSION TIME.

In the beginning of the year 1860, there existed in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, a strong, active, and apparently indestructible Union party. Three months after the close of the year there remained in the city no trace of Union sentiment. To show how this feeling was destroyed, sinking slowly, and with many reactions, under influences in themselves insignificant, and to narrate, as they fell under personal observation, that short train of events which make up the historic period of this first capital of the Southern confederacy, will be the object of the present sketch.

Early in the summer of 1860 it became evident to every dispassionate observer in the South that the country was swiftly approaching a great crisis. So dexterously had politicians managed the excitement which arose on the discovery of the plot of John Brown, that at the very beginning of the year a small and united party had been formed, having for its aim the immediate separation of the States. This party, following this well-defined object, was the only fixed thing in Southern society during the year. In the midst of all changes it was permanent. Even before the presidential election, when men's minds wavered about things so permanent as party lines and party creeds, about old political dogmas associated with favorite political leaders, it remained unaffected. The presence of this restless and determined insurrectionary element in the party politics of the time gave to the struggle preceding the presidential election a character of unusual intensity. The city of Montgomery, as the home of Mr. Yancey, and consequently of his warmest admirers, and most bitter opponents, felt the full influence of this excitement, and soon became one of the natural centres of the growing struggle of opinions.

From causes difficult then to trace, there appeared early in the year in the money market of the South an unusual condition of prostration. Banks were unaccountably cautious. Money was scarce. Debts of more than a year's standing were unpaid, and business of all kinds languished. Not even were the customary advances made by the banks in the East for the purchase of cotton, nor did the money scattered through the country by those sales which did take place relieve the financial pressure under which everything labored. In October capitalists refused to venture their funds on anything which did not promise the most immediate return.

In these signs, in the inexplicable shrinking of capital to its hiding places, and in the universal darkening of business, it would seem that all might have discovered the approach of that storm which has since burst with such fury upon the land. But this was not the case. Although every one looked forward with anxiety to the time of election, it was only a portion of the so-called BRECKINRIDGE party who saw with any distinctness the point toward which all things were tending. Nor did these men make public the extent of their hopes.

They were satisfied at first to do nothing more than familiarize the minds of the people with the idea of secession. They spread the doctrine that the only hope of Union lay in the defeat of Mr. Lincoln. Expressing the worst fears of all, this doctrine was thought to be peculiarly calculated to increase the numbers of the Union or Bell party, and was therefore readily adopted by those who would at first have repelled with patriotic horror the alternative it suggested.

It is impossible to estimate the influence of this lurking fallacy. Not merely were multitudes of well-meaning, but unreasoning men, who were confident of the success of their party, brought to acquiesce in a proposition utterly false in its base, but the whole conservative element in society was placed in a position from which it would be thrown by defeat into a most dangerous reaction. Thus consciously or unconsciously all parties were using every effort in their power to prepare the popular mind for the question of secession.

But the period was not without its traits of patriotism. In October strong efforts were made in the States of Alabama and Georgia to unite the three parties in the South on one of the three candidates; thus securing a President to the South, and the certainty of the Union. The Breckinridge Democrats, however, contemptuously refused to be party to every arrangement of the kind. The insurrectionary element, gathering to itself the excitable and disaffected spirits of every class, had now gained the command of this party, and no longer attempted to conceal its revolutionary intentions. At the head of this element, exercising a vast influence over all its movements, and embodying in himself, more than any other man (except, perhaps, Mr. Yancey), the fierceness of its spirit, stood Mr. Toombs, of Georgia. He was now invited to speak in Montgomery. As a man of large political experience, some statesmanship, and master of a grave and sonorous eloquence, it was expected that he would influence a class of men who had hitherto held themselves studiously aloof from the insurrectionary ranks--that calm, conservative class, which is recognized by all as the basis of every society which has acquired, or having acquired, hopes to retain, stability of government and security of morals. The sentiments of the speaker were too well known to admit of any doubts as to the probable character of his address. He appeared as the undisguised advocate of secession. No form of appeal or argument was neglected which could have had weight with a people peculiarly susceptible to the influence of oratory. Setting aside the question of the approaching election, to which he scarcely alluded, the orator strove only to show that it was an imperative social necessity that the South should have a vast and constantly increasing slave territory; that in the path of this necessity the only obstacle was the Federal Union, and that the time for its destruction had now come. These were the representative arguments of his party before the election, and he did not speak to an unsympathizing audience. For when toward the close, raising his voice until it broke almost in a scream, he exclaimed, 'Let the night which decides the election of Mr. Lincoln be ushered in by the booming of the hostile cannon of the South,' the hall rang again and again with the shouts of his excited hearers. But _nemo repente turpissimus semper fuit_. These were not the sentiments of all. There was a large class present who did not applaud--but neither did they hiss. They seemed for the time overawed by the energy of the spirit which had suddenly sprung up among them.

In the following week, however, a singular, though, unfortunately, but momentary check was given to the progress of insurrectionary sentiments in the vicinity of the city. Senator DOUGLAS, who had been slowly advancing, in his oratorical tour, down the coast, was about this time announced to speak in Montgomery. Since his speech in Norfolk, where he was thought to have expressed himself too clearly against secession, a strong prejudice had grown up in the South against him, and it now threatened to manifest itself in acts of positive violence. Such was the state of popular feeling, that for a time it seemed uncertain whether it would be desirable for him to attempt to speak. Hints of peculiar personal outrages were thrown out by men of a certain class; and threats were made of something still more ominous in case he should attempt to repeat the sentiments of his Norfolk speech.

He arrived in the evening, and was met at the cars by a large crowd, and a procession formed from a coalition, for the occasion, of his party with that of Mr. Bell. It was feared that the short ride to the hotel would not be accomplished without some act of violence on the part of the excited throng by which his carriage was surrounded. A few eggs were thrown, but otherwise the ride was performed without interruption. From further outrages the crowd restrained itself until something positive should appear on the part of the orator himself. Unintimidated, however, by these unmistakable evidences of the public feeling, Mr. Douglas on the following morning presented himself on the steps in front of the capitol, where it had been announced that his speech would be delivered. The city was filled with strangers, who had come from all parts of the country to be present at the State fair which was held there that week. On Capitol Hill, therefore, an immense throng was early assembled, which coldly awaited the arrival of the orator. Everything was chilly and unfavorable. But the spirit of the obstinate debater seemed to rise with the difficulties by which he was surrounded. At first even his manner of speaking operated to his disadvantage. The sharp, syllabic emphasis, which he was accustomed to adopt in addressing large assemblages in the open air, grated harshly on ears accustomed to the smooth and carefully modulated elocution of Mr. Yancey. Beginning, however, by enunciating general principles of government, in which all could agree, he gradually conciliated, by an unexpected appearance of moderation, the favorable attention of his audience. As he advanced upon his customary sketch of the history of the different political parties during the past few years--a work which a hundred repetitions enabled him to perform with a dramatic energy of style and expression singularly effective--he was occasionally interrupted by exclamations of acquiescence. As he described the various successes of the Democratic party, these became frequent, and before he had finished the _resumé_, his voice was drowned amid the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd.

It was a triumph of oratory. He repeated every sentiment of his Norfolk speech, and the men who in the morning had thrown out dark hints of 'stoning,' joined in the applause. He accepted as a certainty the election of Mr. Lincoln, but caused the crowd to shout with exultation at the prospect of tying all his activity by the constitutional check of a Democratic majority in Congress. In short, he came amid general execration, and departed amid universal regret. I had heard Mr. Douglas before, but never when he gave any evidence of the wonderful power which he exhibited on this occasion. With few tricks of rhetoric, with no extraordinary bursts of eloquence, he accomplished all the results of the most impassioned oratory. The qualities of a great debater--unshaken presence of mind, tact in adapting himself to his audience, the power of arranging facts in a form at once simple and coherent, and yet most favorable to his own cause, the strange influence by which one mind compels from others the recognition of its supremacy--have long been conceded to the late Senator from Illinois, but never did he exhibit these qualities with greater effect than before the excited populace of Montgomery.

This was the last strictly Union speech which was delivered in that city. No one after this was found bold enough to stand up in the defence of the cause that from this day began slowly to succumb to the fierce spirit to which it was opposed. For several days the effects of the speech were visible in the moderate tone of 'popular feeling;' but they were soon lost in the tumultuous excitement attending the return of Mr. Yancey from his tour in the North, and the still more intense feeling produced by the election which immediately followed.

It was impossible in these last hours of distinct political organizations not to be struck with the differences that characterized the opposing parties--differences which, both before and since, have had much to do with the progress of the rebellion. The Union gatherings were easy, jovial, fond of speeches adorned with the quips and turns of political oratory, and filled with the spirit 't'will all come right in the end.' In the Breckinridge--or, as they had now practically become--the secession meetings, a different spirit prevailed. It was the spirit of insurrection, fierce, stormy, unrestrained. It was the spirit of hatred; hatred of the North, hatred of the Union, hatred of Mr. Bell, whose success would deprive them of their only weapon for the destruction of that Union.

But with the 4th of November came a change. Three days after election there remained in Montgomery no trace of party organizations. All the widely divergent streams of public opinion seemed suddenly to have joined in one, and that running fiercely, and unrestrained toward disunion. The election of Mr. Lincoln united the people. On all sides prevailed the deepest enthusiasm in favor of secession. Mass meetings, attended by all parties, were held, and passed resolutions advocating in the strongest terms immediate disunion. Secessionists were astonished at the change, and in their anxiety to avoid anything which might shock the newly awakened sentiment, appeared in many cases the most conservative members of the community. But indeed nothing was too violent for the state of public feeling. War committees were appointed, and active measures taken to put the State in a position to maintain her independence as soon as the ordinance of secession should have received the sanction of the convention. Troops were despatched to take possession of the arsenal, and agents were sent North to purchase additions to the already large supply of arms in the State. Immediate secession seemed to be the desire of every class. But this condition of things was not always to continue. The reaction which had carried the Unionists from a state of perfect confidence in the success of their candidate, to one of deep disappointment, and of rage at the section to which they attributed their defeat, having at length spent itself, signs of a returning movement began to make their appearance. At first these were not strongly marked. All were yet in favor of secession, but a large party, composed of most of the former partisans of Mr. Bell, together with the conservative element of every class, began at length to object to a too great precipitancy, and finally to demand that the action of Alabama should be made to depend upon the decision of the other Southern States. This movement was understood by the secessionists to have for its ultimate object the defeat of their hopes of disunion; and such, unquestionably, was its aim; for whatever may have been the plans of some of the leaders of the Coöperationists, as this party was called, it is certain that the great body of the party had no other end in view, and was sustained in its action by no other hope than the perpetuation of the Union.

At the caucus meetings which preceded the election of delegates to the State convention the two parties, as now formed, first came into conflict. At once important differences became apparent. Although nearly equal in numbers, in spirit the two parties were signally unequal. While the secessionists were bold, vigilant, and uncompromising, the Coöperationists were timid and passionless, though full of a passive confidence that the Union would in some way be preserved. A knowledge of this difference explains many things, in themselves apparently inexplicable. It shows how it was possible that a State so confessedly loyal that it would have rejected the ordinance of secession if it had been submitted directly to the people, could yet, on this very issue, elect a convention with a majority in favor of disunion. The whole question was decided in the caucus meetings. The secessionists of all parts of the State were bound together by watchful associations, and were everywhere on the alert. In counties where by their number they were entitled to no representative, attending the caucus meeting in force, they effected--as they easily could while there was no distinct party organization--a union of the tickets, and thus secured to themselves one of the two candidates. So frequently was this repeated in different parts of the country, that it was afterward estimated that by this simple expedient of a union ticket the whole question of the secession of this State was decided.

From these political struggles, however, the interest of the community was suddenly withdrawn by an event which instantly absorbed all attention, and struck terror into every household. In the little town of Pine Level, a village situated a few miles from Montgomery, traces were discovered of a plot having for its object a general uprising of the negroes on the evening preceding Christmas.

In the progress of the investigations which were immediately begun, it came to light that the plot was not simply local, but extended over many counties, including in its circuit the city of Montgomery, and involving in its movements many hundred negroes. Further examination revealed all the horrible details which were to attend the consummation of the plot--the butchery of the whites, the allotment of females, the division of property. The whole surrounding country was alive with excitement. Active measures were taken to crush at once the spirit of insurrection. The ringleaders and some of the poor whites, with whom the plot is said to have originated, were seized and, after a brief trial, immediately hung. In Montgomery feeling was such as to demand the adoption of the most stringent precautionary measures. Military companies were called out and placed in nightly guard over the capitol and arsenal. On Christmas eve the plot was to go into execution, and as the time approached, the anxiety became painfully intense. It was whispered that one of Mr. Yancey's slaves had been detected in an attempt to poison her master. The police was doubled, soldiers with loaded muskets were stationed in all the prominent streets, while mounted guards ranged the thinly inhabited section of the outskirts. The night, however, passed without alarm, and the excitement from that time slowly subsided.

It is scarcely worthy of notice, perhaps, that with the returning sense of security came also the flippant confidence which had been for a time put to flight. The blacks were again a timid and affectionate race, and it was soon not difficult to find multitudes who declared themselves willing to meet alone a hundred insurrectionary slaves. Sitting in this evening calm, listening to such remarks, it was difficult to accept as real the events of the hot and excited day which had gone before. Surely they were dreams--the hurried trials, the hangings, the nightly tread of soldiers, the brooding terror that whitened the lips of mothers. A home guard, however, was immediately formed, including all citizens, irrespective of age or station, capable of bearing arms, and not in other military organizations.

On the 7th of January, the convention met. South Carolina had already passed her ordinance of secession; but what others would follow the example of this excitable State was yet uncertain. All eyes were now anxiously directed toward Alabama, upon whose decision would to a great degree depend that of the two great conservative States, Louisiana and Georgia. Nor was this anxiety diminished by the accounts given of the composition of the convention of this State. Both sides claimed a majority; and it was evident that, without some unexpected defection, the two parties would narrowly escape a tie. This singular uncertainty was soon, however, to cease. Immediately on convening, it became evident that the command of the body lay with the secessionists. It was found by secret estimates that the two parties were divided by ten votes. Of the hundred delegates, fifty-five were in favor of disunion. Although this majority gave the secessionists power to carry their wishes into instant effect, it was not thought politic to do so while the difference between the two parties remained so small. The passage of the ordinance was, therefore, for several days delayed, while the Coöperationists were plied with arguments to induce them to acquiesce in that which it was now impossible for them to prevent. At length, after four days of deliberation, it became evident that all of this party had succumbed whom it seemed possible to change, and on the morning of the 11th of January it was publicly announced that the ordinance of secession had passed the convention by a vote of sixty-one in the affirmative against thirty-nine in the negative.

By the insurrectionists the announcement was received with transports of joy, but by the Unionists it was met with demonstrations of grief, which they made no efforts to conceal. Women wept, and houses were closed as for a day of mourning. In the northern part of the State the manifestations of disappointment were still more unmistakable. Indignation meetings were held, and one of the delegates received a telegram from his constituents, charging him with having betrayed them on the very issue for which he was elected, and demanding explanations. At length the loyal feeling of the State seemed aroused, and had the ordinance of secession been now submitted to the people, all admitted that it would have been rejected by an unquestionable majority. But the ordinance was not submitted to the people, and the Union sentiment, which had already, within the interval of a few weeks, passed through two complete oscillations--vibrating from the loyalty which preceded the presidental election through all the changes of the strong disunion reaction which followed--was now again in the ascendant. But from this point it soon began to recede, descending slowly along an arc of which no eye can see the end, with a momentum that permits no prediction as to the time of its return.

A multitude of influences began at once to weaken the energy of the Union sentiment. From the first, it had been the policy of the disunion leaders to represent the question of secession as lying wholly with the South. In case this section should decide upon disunion, there would be little reason, it was said, to fear any prolonged opposition on the part of the North--least of all a war. Nothing appeared on the part of the Federal Executive to refute these assertions. It was by a large class believed, therefore, that the leaders were right when they said that the secession would be a mere withdrawal of the Southern States, for the formation of a government perfectly friendly to the North, with which, indeed, a board of commissioners would soon arrange the terms of a peaceful international trade. After the passage of this ordinance, however, a slight modification of this argument became necessary. Peace was conditioned upon unanimity. Unionists were now called upon to render their support to the new government in order to secure peace. If it was clear that the State was united in favor of the changed condition of things, there would be no difficulty, it was said, to procure, amid the divisions of the North, a peaceful recognition of the confederacy. The factions of the Northern States would never allow the Federal Government to attempt to coerce a united people. Thus the very weapons which loyalty had used to arm herself were here wrested to her own destruction. To insure peace, men became insurrectionists.

It is useless now to surmise what would have been the result if the action of the Federal Government in reference to the question of secession at the beginning of the rebellion, had been less ambiguous. It is enough to know, what was for many weeks so painfully realized by every Northerner in the South, that had the Southern people, by any means, been brought to understand that Federal laws were protected by sanctions, and that an attempt at disunion would certainly be followed by war, the question of secession would never have become a formidable issue. But while men believed, as many of the Unionists did, that secession was an experiment, attended with no danger to themselves, and which would more than likely result, after a few years, in a peaceful reconstruction of the Union on terms more favorable to the South, there is little occasion for wonder that the cause of disunion met with no very earnest, or, at least, prolonged opposition.

The passage of the ordinance of secession gave to the disunionists an incalculable advantage. It is true, the Union feeling was deep, and in many places strongly aroused, but the State had seceded, the new government was quietly and apparently solidly forming itself, profitable offices were in its gift, and, added to all, the conservative spirit whispered its old motto, _quieta non movere_, and the hands which had been raised in weak resistance fell harmlessly back.

In the mean while, at the capitol, another work was going on. The convention, having established by ordinance the independence of the State, was now engaged in tearing down and remodelling to meet the petty wants of the Republic of Alabama the august structure of the Federal Constitution. The work was soon completed, and on the 29th of January this body, which in a brief session of three weeks had carried through measures involving some of the most stupendous changes possible to a civil State, adjourned to meet again on the 4th of March, cutting off, by this, all possibility of any of the questions which it had discussed being brought before the people by a new election. On the week following the adjournment of the convention, the confederate congress assembled in Montgomery.

This body immediately showed a fine appreciation of the state of public feeling, and drew to itself the confidence of the people by selecting for president and vice-president of the temporary government men who were thought to represent the more conservative element in community. Mr. Davis, at the time of his election, was in Mississippi, but on receiving the official announcement of the event, started at once for Montgomery, passing through Southern Tennessee, then a loyal State, along a path nearly parallel to the one in which Mr. Lincoln was at the same time moving a little farther north.

He reached the city in the night, but a large crowd was awaiting his arrival at the depot. A procession of carriages, filled with members of the confederate congress, led the way to the hotel. It was preceded by a military band, and at regular intervals rockets were discharged, announcing to the distant beholder the progress of the procession. All felt that by attention to these honorary details they were assisting to give dignity to the newly formed confederacy. On arriving at the hotel, Mr. Davis was announced to speak from the balcony. The crowd pressed curiously forward. Two candles threw a faint, yellow light over a spare, angular form, rather below the medium height, lighting up, at the same time, the sunken cheeks and strongly marked jaws of a face now working with the emotions which the unusual events of the evening were so well calculated to excite.

The ceremonies of inauguration were postponed to the beginning of the following week. Early on Monday morning, however, the hill before the capitol was covered with a vast throng, collected from all parts of the new confederacy. For the accomodation of the members of congress, a temporary platform had been erected in front of the capitol. Standing on this, and glancing over the city, the eye rested on the rich valley of the Alabama, stretching away many miles to the north, broken here and there by the dark green foliage of the pine forests, which now twinkled in the soft light of a day mild even for the latitude. At the extreme rear of the platform, behind a small table, was seated the chairman of the congress, Howell Cobb. Corpulent even to grossness, he formed a curious contrast to the small and wasted forms of the two presidents elect, who sat at his side. The events of this day have given to every trait of these men a lasting and unenviable interest. Neither looked like a great man, neither like a man thoroughly bad. All the impressions produced by the first appearance of Mr. Davis were strengthened, without being changed, by a farther acquaintance. To a physique by no means imposing, he joins a manner too reserved to make him at any time a favorite of the populace. His whole bearing, in fact, declares him a stranger to that deep and contagious enthusiasm which has so often in enterprises like this drawn to a leader the admiration and unconquerable fidelity of the common people. Nor, on the other hand, is there anything in his appearance to indicate the presence of the broad and comprehensive energy which, in the mind of the thoughtful, can take the place of such an enthusiasm. Still, he is in many respects peculiarly suited to take the head of the rebellion. Elected at a time when State distinctions were lost sight of in the warmth of the first formation of the confederacy, he soon lost his sectional character, and represents, as no one now elected could, the people alike of Virginia and those along the Gulf. He is shrewd, cautious, determined. But his caution may easily become scarcely distinguishable in its results from timidity. His determination is never far removed from stubbornness. Mr. Stevens, who sat, or, rather, had sunk, in his chair by the side of Mr. Davis, was a thin, sickly looking man, whose small round face was characterized by the pallid self-concentrated expression peculiar to invalids. On rising at the administration of the oath, which he did with the laborious movement of one to whom weakness had become a habit, he revealed a form of about the medium height, but broken, as by some physical disfigurement. During most of the ceremonies, he wore the air of an uninterested spectator, amusing himself with the head of a slight and rather jaunty cane, which he held between his knees. Although greatly inferior, so far as mere physical appearances are concerned, to his colleague, there is yet something in the expression and bearing of Mr. Stevens which suggests a depth and comprehensiveness of intellect for which one searches in vain the face of Mr. Davis. On the platform were gathered nearly all those restless spirits which have, during the past twenty years, disturbed the peace of the country. Conspicuous among them appeared the bristling head of Mr. Toombs. He sat during the whole ceremony, with his face, wearing the imperious expression which had become habitual to it, turned upon the people. With uncovered heads, and in perfect silence, the crowd listened to the oath of office. Immediately on the completion of this ceremony the two presidents and the congress withdrew to the senate chamber.

A levee was announced for the evening. The hall which had been selected for this gathering was a large, low room in the upper story of a building near the centre of the city.

Some efforts had been made by the ladies to conceal the rudeness of the apartment, but it was expected that every deficiency of this kind would be forgotten in the presence of that courtly society which had hitherto given all the attractiveness to occasions like this on the banks of the Potomac. It is but fair to suppose that these expectations were disappointed, for early in the evening the hall was crowded with a throng of men and boys, who, standing with uncovered heads, talking loudly of the hopes of the new confederacy, or moved uneasily about, seeking a favorable position from which to watch the 'president shake hands.' This was the ambition of the evening. Every standing point in the vicinity of Mr. Davis was taken advantage of. Chairs and benches served as footstools to elevate into positions of prominence long rows of men dressed in the yellow jeans of the country, who stood, during all the long hours of the evening, watching with unchanging countenances the multiplied repetitions of the short double shake and spasmodic smile which Mr. Davis meted out to each of the constantly forming column that filed before him. The platform was filled with the same class, and even the arch of evergreen, under which it was intended that Mr. Davis should stand, was pushed aside, to give place to those unwinking faces which pressed to every loophole of observation. The ladies, who appeared here and there in the crowd, sparkling with jewels, and dressed in the rich robes naturally suited to the occasion, only increased by their presence the rude incongruities of the gathering. Men were surprised at the manifestations on every hand of a vulgarity and coarseness which they had been accustomed to think the natural products and exclusive characteristics of a state of society farther north. To the eyes of the fastidious, a new class had suddenly arisen in their midst. Perhaps the lesson was not a new one. Many nations before, when in the midst of revolutions, have been called mournfully to learn that there are grades in every society, that rebellions are not always tractable, and that the class which guides their opening rarely controls their close. But if the scene of the evening had any prophecies of this kind--and I do not say that it had--it wailed them, like Cassandra, to ears divinely closed.

From this time the ferment of public opinion disappeared. A tangible government existed, against which to speak was treason, and the friends of the Union--and in spite of all changes, the number of these was yet considerable--now for the first time ceased from the expression of those objections by which they had hitherto indicated the direction of their sympathies. All classes of men were longing for something permanent, and eagerly grasped at these appearances of a settled government, as promising to supply that which they so much desired. The establishment of a calm and united state of public feeling seemed, therefore, the almost instant effect of the inauguration of Mr. Davis. As might be expected, the events which have been related had not taken place in the South without affecting the condition of the Northern stranger who chanced to be within the gate. To him every change had been for the worse. During the fluctuations of public opinion in the early part of the season, his position, though unpleasant, had still some relieving circumstances; the condition of the country was not yet utterly hopeless, and the vanity of being stable in the midst of universal change, ministered a mild though secret pleasure, which, in the painful anxieties of the period, was not without its consolatory value. But when the tide of public opinion had turned strongly in one direction, and that in favor of secession, all those pleasures, so mild and spiritual, were at once destroyed. Nor was this a condition without change. Every week added some new restraints to those by which the Unionist was already surrounded. But never was the pressure of these restraints felt to be so great as in this singular calm, which followed the inauguration of Mr. Davis. The loyal spirit seemed extinct. Union sentiments were no longer expressed in even the private circles. Now, however, hints were occasionally dropped of the possibility of a future reconstruction, and in this direction it was evident the small remnant of the Union party was now turning its hopes.

Notwithstanding the general appearance of unanimity, one thing remained which seemed to indicate a want of perfect confidence on the part of the people generally in the permanency of the new order of affairs. This was, the little interest which was manifested in the transactions of the rebel congress. With nothing else to occupy their minds, the people allowed the most important measures of public policy to pass almost without remark. To the congress itself this apathy did not extend. There appeared here, on the contrary, a germ even of the old State antagonisms; for when Mr. Toombs, carrying out the former policy of his State, introduced a bill imposing a tax on imports, declaring, at the same time, that no government could ever be sustained without depending chiefly upon this source of revenue, every member from South Carolina was on his legs. After a warm debate, and against the strongest protests of these members, the bill was carried and went into effect. Notwithstanding this, many in England still secretly believe that the Federal tariff was the real cause of the secession.

The astonishing promptness with which the rebel government, immediately after the fall of Fort Sumter, equipped and placed upon the field an enormous and fairly organized army, has given rise to a strong impression concerning the energy put forth by the executive department during the two months which intervened between this event and the inauguration. No mistake could be greater. On the very day of the election of Mr. Lincoln the South possessed a military establishment quite equal, in proportion to its population, to that of either France or Russia. At the time of the John Brown excitement, a rumor was spread through the South that large bodies of men were gathering in different parts of the North, having for their object an invasion of the Southern States. Among all the reports which this excited period produced, none was more sedulously diffused, and none more generally believed.

Whatever had been the original design of the story, its instant effect, in the excited state of the public mind, was the formation of companies in every county and village throughout the South for military drill.

These organizations, of which there were frequently several in a single village, were equipped entirely at the expense of the individual members. As they were under constant drill during the winter and summer, they presented at the opening of the year 1861 the singular spectacle of a great army, organized and equipped at its own expense, ready at any moment to march at the command of the recognized government. This, it is unnecessary to say, was the grand basis of that army which was afterward placed upon the field; and thus it was that a secretary of war so palpably inefficient as Mr. Walker was able, with an empty treasury, for many months to surpass the North in the supply of troops, equipped, and at once prepared for duty.

It was in full appreciation of this great armed mass that lay at his hand in a condition to be easily formed into an organized and efficient army, that Mr. Davis, after much entreaty, and repeated postponement, reluctantly gave his assent to the first strong act of the executive department, and ordered the attack upon Fort Sumter.

Without anticipating what were to be the effects of this act in the North, which was, indeed, open to the conjecture of no man, Mr. Davis on this occasion simply exhibited a hesitancy in venturing on extreme measures, which will be found to be a characteristic feature of his administration.

For several days the city was filled with rumors concerning the anticipated attack, but early on Friday morning it was announced that the bombardment had already begun. In the general excitement, business was suspended. Crowds filled the streets. The war department was in constant receipt of telegraphic messages announcing the progress of the bombardment. But nothing came during the day to diminish the growing anxiety. It was found that the fleet of war vessels said to be outside the bar would take advantage of the night to come to the succor of the fort. Sleep was impossible. Men who had gone to bed arose again and joined the crowd which thronged the streets. At length, shortly after midnight, Mr. Walker came forth and announced the last and most favorable telegraphic report concerning the progress of the siege, uttering at the same time the famous boast which has linked his name with an indissoluble association of folly. Shortly past noon on Saturday, the message came which announced the surrender of the fort. The city was frantic with joy. For hours, no forms of manifestation seemed adequate to express the excitement which filled all classes of society. Standing on the housetop in the evening, a wild crowd could be seen flitting before bonfires, or ranging the streets, and shouting in the ecstasy of an excitement which none could control. Immediately on the arrival of the despatch, messengers had started into the country with the welcome tidings, and deep in the night the ear was startled by the dull roar of the cannon announcing the arrival in some distant village of the joyful intelligence.

'That will be the end of the war,' said a man of well known conservatism, who stood by at the announcement in Montgomery of the surrender of the fort. It was the last expression of that fatal fallacy which had lured so large a class quietly to acquiesce in the fact of secession in the hope of thus securing the peaceful recognition of the North. In a few days more, the whole deception had passed away. But the correction had come too late. The Union party was extinct. Twice, in the course of that great change, by the progress of which, a people, in majority loyal, was converted into one totally disloyal and revolutionary, it lay within the power of the Federal Executive, by firmness and a proper exhibition of its powers, to have sustained the Union party in the South and crushed the rebellion--before the election of Mr. Lincoln, and at the time of the strong Union reaction in the election of delegates to the State convention. At both these periods the Union feeling was strong and increasing, immediately after each; pressed upon by arguments which the course of the Executive had failed to answer, it slowly declined. But no great sentiment is destroyed at once. There is reason to believe that, if left to itself, the tide of Union feeling might again have flowed back, and the faint traces of a reconstruction party which appeared in the short interval of quiet that belonged to the rebel confederacy indicates, perhaps, the path along which it would have returned. But the time for these things had passed.

The fall of Sumter brought the doctrines of secession into instant popularity, and roused a spirit of military enthusiasm in the South scarcely less intense than that which the same event excited in the North. At once, in every direction, disappeared all those sober scruples which, during the hottest excitement of the preceding months, had quietly controlled the judgment of a small but influential class in every community. The change in north Alabama and central Tennessee, where the principles of secession had been steadily rejected by the people, was almost instantaneous. The excitement and pride of a sectional victory, and a false sympathy for the individuals who had ventured their lives in a cause in itself, perhaps, objectionable, effected what the most cunning fallacies of the leaders had been unable to accomplish. As this movement of the popular feeling had many points of resemblance with the revolution of feeling which took place just after the election of Mr. Lincoln, there were some who believed that it would be followed by a similar reaction. The excitement of the war into which the whole country was immediately precipitated, cut off, however, every chance of any such retrogressive movement. No reaction took place. The surrender of Fort Sumter completed the change of opinion which had been so long progressing in the South.

Those who look for an immediate restitution of Union feeling in the South, as a result of Federal victories, will be disappointed. It will be the result of a gradual movement--a movement resembling in every important particular that by which the secession sentiment was established in the interval between the election of Mr. Lincoln and the surrender of Fort Sumter. Operating particularly upon that class in society which is by nature passive rather than active, conservative rather than headlong, the movement, as in that case, will be at first slow and attended with many reactions, but the result will not be uncertain. Already the progress of the war has destroyed nearly all the motives by which the Union party of the South was formerly led to adopt the cause of secession. This great party, therefore, stretching through all parts of the South, forming an important element in the population of every village and county which threatened at one time with its passive resistance to overturn the whole scheme of the rebellion, stands now exposed to the full influence of the reactionary tide which has now begun to set back toward the Union. The change may not be at once, but the same motive which led the Union man of Tennessee to return to loyalty, will prove equally effective with his whole party, wherever distributed.

SHAKSPEARE FOR 1863.

'O England!--model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with, a mighty heart,-- What might'st thou do, that honor would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural! But see thy fault! the SOUTH in thee finds out A nest of hollow bosoms, which it fills With treacherous crowns! they would o'erthrow our country, And by their hands the grace of Freedom die, If hell and treason hold their promises.'

_Henry V_, Act II, Scene i.

THE UNION.

V.

ILLINOIS AND MISSOURI COMPARED.

My previous numbers, comparing the progress, in the aggregate, of all the Slave States, with all the Free States, of Massachusetts and New Jersey, with Maryland and South Carolina, and of New York with Virginia, demonstrate the fatal effect of slavery upon material advance, and moral and intellectual development. In further proof of the uniformity of this great law, I now institute a similar comparison between two great neighboring Western States, Missouri and Illinois. The comparison is just, for while Missouri has increased since 1810, in wealth and population, much more rapidly than any of the Slave States, there are several Free States whose relative advance has exceeded that of Illinois. The rapid growth of Missouri is owing to her immense area, her fertile soil, her mighty rivers (the Mississippi and Missouri), her central and commanding position, and to the fact, that she has so small a number of slaves to the square mile, as well as to the free population.

The population of Illinois, in 1810, was 12,282, and in 1860, 1,711,951; the ratio of increase from 1810 to 1860 being 13,838.70. (Table 1, Cens. 1860.) The population of Missouri in 1810, was 20,845, and in 1860, 1,182,012; the ratio of increase from 1810 to 1860 being 5,570.48. (Ib.) The rank of Missouri in 1810 was 22, and of Illinois 23. The rank of Missouri in 1860 was 8, and of Illinois, 4.

AREA.--The area of Missouri is 67,380 square miles, being the 4th in rank, as to area, of all the States. The area of Illinois is 55,405 square miles, ranking the 10th. Missouri, then, has 11,975 more square miles than Illinois. This excess is greater by 749 square miles than the aggregate area of Massachusetts, Delaware, and Rhode Island, containing in 1860 a population of 1,517,902. The population of Missouri per square mile in 1810 exceeded that of Illinois .08; but, in 1860, the population of Missouri per square mile was 17.54, ranking the 22d, and that of Illinois, 30.90, ranking the 13th. Illinois, with her ratio to the square mile and the area of Missouri, would have had in 1860 a population of 2,082,042; and Missouri; with her ratio and the area of Illinois, would have had in 1860 a population of 971,803, making a difference in favor of Illinois of 1,110,239 instead of 529,939. The absolute increase of population of Illinois per square mile from 1850 to 1860 was 15.54, and of Missouri 7.43, Illinois ranking the 6th in this ratio and Missouri the 14th. These facts prove the vast advantages which Missouri possessed in her larger area as compared with Illinois.

But Missouri in 1810, we have seen, had nearly double the population of Illinois. Now, reversing their numbers in 1810, the ratio of increase of each remaining the same, the population of Illinois in 1860 would have been 2,005,014, and of Missouri, 696,983. If we bring the greater area of Missouri as an element into this calculation the population of Illinois in 1860 would have exceeded that of Missouri more than two millions and a half.

MINES.--By Census Tables 9, 10, 13 and 14, Missouri produced, in 1860, pig iron of the value of $575,000; Illinois, none. Bar and rolled iron--Missouri, $535,000; Illinois, none. Lead--Missouri, $356,660; Illinois, $72,953. Coal--Missouri, $8,200; Illinois, $964,-187. Copper--Missouri, $6,000; Illinois, none. As to mines, then, Missouri has a decided advantage over Illinois. Indeed, the iron mountains of Missouri are unsurpassed in the world. That Illinois approaches so near to Missouri in mineral products, is owing to her railroads and canals, and not to equal natural advantages. The number of miles of railroad in operation in 1860 was, 2,868 in Illinois, and 817 in Missouri; of canals, Illinois, 102 miles; Missouri, none. (Tables 38, 39.) But if Missouri had been a free State, she would have at least equalled Illinois in internal improvements, and the Pacific Railroad would have long since united San Francisco, St. Louis, and Chicago.

Illinois is increasing in a _progressive_ ratio, as compared with Missouri. Thus, from 1840 to 1850 the increase of numbers in Illinois was 78.81, and from 1850 to 1860, 101.01 per cent., while the increase of Missouri from 1840 to 1850 was 77.75, and from 1850 to 1860, 73.30. Thus, the ratio is augmenting in Illinois, and decreasing in Missouri. If Illinois and Missouri should each increase from 1860 to 1870, in the same ratio as from 1850 to 1860, Illinois would then number 3,441,448, and Missouri, 2,048,426. (Table 1.) In 1850, Chicago numbered 29,963, and in 1860, 109,260. St. Louis, 77,860 in 1850, and 160,773 in 1860. (Table 40.) From 1840 to 1850 the ratio of increase of Chicago was 570.31, and from 1850 to 1860, 264.65, and of St. Louis, from 1840 to 1850, 372.26 per cent., and from 1850 to 1860, 106.49. If both increased in their respective ratios from 1860 to 1870 as from 1850 to 1860, Chicago would number 398,420 in 1870, and St. Louis, 331,879. It would be difficult to say which city has the greatest natural advantages, and yet when St. Louis was a city, Chicago was but the site of a fort.

PROGRESS OF WEALTH.--By Census Table 36, the cash value of the farms of Illinois in 1860, was $432,531,072, and of Missouri, $230,632,126, making a difference in favor of Illinois, of $201,898,946, which is the loss which Missouri has sustained by slavery in the single item of the value of her farm lands. Abolish slavery there, and the value of the farm lands of Missouri would soon equal those of Illinois, and augment the wealth of the farmers of Missouri over two hundred millions of dollars. But these farm lands of Missouri embrace only 19,984,809 acres (Table 36), leaving unoccupied 23,138,391 acres. The difference between the value of the unoccupied lands of Missouri and Illinois, is six dollars per acre, at which rate the increased value of the unoccupied lands of Missouri, in the absence of slavery, would be $138,830,346. Thus, it appears, that the loss to Missouri in the value of her lands, caused by slavery, is $340,729,292. If we add to this the diminished value of town and city property in Missouri, from the same cause, the total loss in that State in the value of real estate, exceeds $400,000,000, which is nearly twenty times the value of her slaves. By Table 35, the increase in the value of the real and personal property of Illinois from 1850 to 1860, was $715,595,276, being 457.93 per cent., and of Missouri, $363,966,691, being 265.18 per cent. At the same rate of increase from 1860 to 1870, the total wealth of Illinois would then be $3,993,000,000, and of Missouri, $1,329,000,000, making the difference against Missouri, in 1870, caused by slavery, $2,664,000,000, which is much more than three times the whole debt of the nation, and more than twice the value of all the slaves in the Union. While, then, the $20,000,000 proposed to be appropriated to aid Missouri in emancipating her slaves, is erroneously denounced as increasing federal taxation, the effect is directly the reverse. The disappearance of slavery from Missouri would ensure the overthrow of the rebellion, and the perpetuity of the Union, and bring the war much sooner to a close, thus saving a monthly expenditure, far exceeding the whole appropriation. But this vast increase of the wealth of Missouri, caused by her becoming a free State, if far less than one billion of dollars, would, by increasing her contribution to the national revenue, in augmented payments of duties and internal taxes, diminish to that extent the rate of taxation to be paid by every State, Missouri included.

The total wealth of the Union in 1860 exceeded $16,000,000,000. If this were increased $1,000,000,000 in time, by the augmented wealth of Missouri, and our revenue from duties and taxes should be $220,000,000, as estimated by the Secretary of the Treasury, the increased income, being one-seventeenth of the whole, would exceed $12,000,000 per annum; or, if the increase of wealth should be only $200,000,000, then the augmented proportional annual revenue would be $2,750,000, or nearly one-eightieth part of the whole revenue, thus soon extinguishing the principal and interest of the debt of $20,000,000, and leaving a large surplus to decrease the percentage of taxation in every State, Missouri included. The bill then might be justly entitled, _an act to restore the Union, to advance the public credit, to hasten the overthrow of the rebellion, to augment the national wealth, and_ DECREASE THE RATE OF TAXATION. By overthrowing the rebellion, the taxes to pay the national debt will be collected from all the States, instead of being confined to those that are loyal. The rebel confederate debt, never having had any existence in law or justice, but having been created only to support a wicked rebellion, will of course be expunged by the reëstablishment of the Union. Indeed, by a new mathematical and philosophical principle, far transcending the most sublime discoveries of Newton, Leibnitz, or La Place, the rebel debt is redeemable six months _after the end of eternity_, namely, six months after it is an _independent nation_, they shall have ratified a _treaty_ of peace with us! All the rebel State debts incurred since the revolt, for the purpose of overthrowing the Government, will, of course, have no legal existence. Under the Federal Constitution, no State Legislature can have any lawful existence, except in conformity with its provisions, accompanied by a prior oath of every member to support the Constitution of the United States. These assemblages, then, since the revolt in the several States, calling themselves State Legislatures, never had any legal existence or authority, and were mere assemblages of traitors. Such is the clear provision of the Federal Constitution, and of the law of nations and of justice. It would be strange, indeed, if conventicles of traitors in revolted States, could legally or rightfully impose taxes on the people of such States, loyal or disloyal, to overthrow the Government. Indeed, if justice could have her full sway, the whole debt of this Government, incurred to suppress this rebellion, ought to be paid by the traitors alone.

With a restoration of the Union, the prosperity of all sections will be enormously increased. The South, with peace and with ports reopened, relieved from rebel taxes and conscription, will again have a profitable market for their cotton, rice, naval stores, sugar, and tobacco; the West for breadstuffs and provisions; the North for commerce, navigation and manufactures; and our revenue, from duties, would be vastly augmented, soon justifying a reduction of internal taxation. There is one item of almost fabulous value that must not be omitted. The cotton now in the Confederate States, of the unsold crops of 1860-'61, 1861-'62, and 1862-'63, exceeds 5,000,000 of bales. This cotton, sold at present prices, payable in federal paper, would be worth $1,800,000,000, or $1,134,000,000 in gold. If we diminish this one-half, as cotton might fall in price from time to time by the gradual reopening of our ports, this cotton would still be worth $900,000,000 in our paper, and $567,000,000 in gold. This cotton, while putting all our spindles and those of the world into full operation, would turn the balance of foreign trade at once immensely in our favor, and bring back streams of gold to our shores. We would at once commence the liquidation of the national debt, with a large sinking fund, as a sacred trust applicable to that important subject.

Next to maintaining our finances and the public credit, followed by decisive victories in the field, the speedy success of emancipation in Missouri is most important. Missouri is larger by more than 6,000 square miles than any State east of the Mississippi, and occupies a central position between the North and the South, the East and the West. She is larger by 16,458 square miles than England proper, containing a population of nineteen millions. She is larger by 1,098 square miles than New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Delaware. She is larger by 5,264 square miles than all the New England States. She has a greater white population than the aggregate numbers of North and South Carolina and Florida, or of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, or of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, or of Florida, Arkansas, South Carolina and Mississippi, or Louisiana; and a larger white population than all Virginia, East and West. She had, if disloyal, by her position and large white population, more power to imperil the Union than any of the slaveholding States. She has been true--she has suffered much in our cause, her fields and towns have been laid waste, thousands of her brave sons now fill our armies, and thousands more have fallen in our cause, and we will be recreant to truth and justice, to the safety of the Union, and forfeit the nation's pledge, if we do not now aid her in becoming a Free State. The southern boundary of Missouri (lat. 36°) is several miles south of Nashville, Tennessee; but, if we take altitude also into consideration, then, according to well established meteorological principles, the southern boundary of Missouri is at least a degree south of Nashville, reaching the northern boundary of Alabama. There is then a very large area of Missouri well calculated for the production of cotton. To accomplish this, the levee system of the Mississippi must be extended from the southern boundary of Missouri to the first highlands in that State, above the mouth of the Ohio; and a proper system of drainage adopted. These lands would thus be entirely secured from overflow, and greatly improved in salubrity. With these improvements, Missouri would contain an area of rich alluvial lands, well adapted to the profitable culture of cotton, embracing an extent capable of producing at least one million of bales of the great staple. These lands, considering latitude and altitude, would possess a climate similar to that of Middle Tennessee and North Alabama, where cotton is already cultivated with great profit. If emancipation prevailed in Missouri, these lands would soon be cultivated in cotton by free labor, and its immense superiority over the servile system would soon be demonstrated. Such a proof of the superiority of free over slave labor, even in the culture of cotton, would soon have an immense effect in reconciling the South to the disappearance of a system so fatal to her own prosperity, and endangering so much the harmony and perpetuity of the Union. This Missouri cotton would be nearer the North and Northwest than that grown in any other part of the Southwest, and thus supplied at a cheaper rate to our manufacturers, while opening new and augmented markets for the provisions and breadstuffs of the Northwest. This cotton would, in part, pass up the Ohio to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, and thence to New York, Philadelphia, and New England. It would also in part pass through Indiana and Ohio by their railroads and canals. The great central railroad of Illinois would carry large portions of it also from Cairo to Chicago; but perhaps the largest portion eventually would pass up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers and enlarged canals to Chicago, and thence eastward. With the proposed enlargement of the canal connecting the Illinois river with Lake Michigan, and the enlargement of the locks of the great Erie canal, extended by a similar enlargement of the Chenango branch, and down the Susquehanna to tide water, cotton steam propellers would carry the great staple by this route to the Hudson and New England, to Baltimore or Philadelphia, at a rate much lower than any other Southwestern cotton. The Mississippi would thus have a _quintuple_ outlet, as well into the lakes and the Hudson, the St. Lawrence, the Delaware, and Chesapeake, as into the Gulf of Mexico, and Missouri would be united by new ties with the North, and Northwest, as well as with the Middle States. Cairo, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Buffalo would become considerable cotton depots, and slave labor would cease to monopolize the cotton culture. But there are other considerations still more momentous. Missouri extends from the 36th parallel to 40-1/2, and from the 89th meridian to the 96th, thus embracing four degrees and a half of latitude, and seven degrees of longitude. She fronts for many hundred miles upon the great Mississippi, and commands its western shore; she commands also the mouth of the Missouri river, and both its banks for several hundred miles, and all its tributaries. The Missouri river and its tributaries are nearly double the length of the Mississippi and its branches. Missouri by her position dominates the whole valley of her great river, and commands Kansas and Western Iowa, and Nebraska, and Colorado, Dacotah and New Mexico. If Missouri had joined the Southern confederacy, and its power had ever been established, she would have forced with her all the vast region to which we have referred, containing, including Missouri, an area equal to twenty States of the size of Ohio. To separate Missouri forever from the proposed Southern confederacy, is to render the permanent establishment of such a government impossible. It not only severs Missouri from them, but all the vast region identified with the destiny of that great State. Secure Missouri permanently and cordially to the Union, and the rebellion is doomed to certain overthrow. With the fall of slavery in Missouri by her consent, and her cordial coöperation and sympathy with the North and Northwest, the days of the rebellion are numbered. With Missouri as a Free State, Arkansas, adjacent, cannot retain the institution. Such a result, aided by victories, and the reëstablishment of our finances, would soon give full effect to the edict of emancipation in Arkansas, and Louisiana would soon follow. With Missouri as a Free State by her consent, and her cordial coöperation and sympathy, slavery would soon disappear from the whole region west of the Mississippi, and Louisiana cordially be reunited to the Republic. With such a result, holding New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi and all the region west of that great stream, how could Tennessee or Mississippi remain in the Southern confederacy? The truth is, Missouri is the pivot upon which the rebellion turns. Had she gone with the South, and given to its cause a cordial support, it would have been difficult to subdue the rebellion. That she has gone with the Union is a momentous fact, and demands for her our heartfelt gratitude. I have shown, it is true, how greatly it is the interest of Missouri to become a Free State; but it is still more the interest of the nation to secure this great result. Give her what is needed to render emancipation certain, and we shall have secured the perpetuity of the Union. Missouri had no participation in introducing African slaves into this continent. The slaves that cultivate her soil are the descendants of those who were forced here under the British flag, or by the ships of the North, then in a state of colonial dependence; and it is just, and the national honor demands, that she should receive full compensation. As the existence of slavery in any State is a great evil and reproach, and a source of much weakness to the whole country, so should the nation compensate for any loss that may be occasioned by the abandonment of the system in any loyal State. Not only is this just, but the faith of the nation is solemnly pledged by resolutions adopted by Congress at its last session to carry this policy into full effect with the consent of any State. Twenty millions of dollars to secure such a result should be regarded as of little moment. Gladly would the nation pay a much larger sum for a single victory. But the moral and geographical and strategical victory secured by emancipation in Missouri by her consent, will be far more important than any triumph yet achieved by our arms. It is a victory that relieves a great State now and forever from the curse of slavery. It is a victory that secures the whole valley of the mighty Missouri to the Union. It is a triumph that sweeps slavery from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, dissevers the Southern confederacy, and restores the whole Mississippi, from its mouth to its source, to the Union.

The entire constitutionality of such a proceeding by _compact with a State_, was demonstrated by me in the November number of the CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, p. 575. Referring to the case of Texas, I there said: 'The principle, however, was adopted of State action by irrevocable _compact_ with the Federal Government, by which provision therein was made for abolishing slavery in all such States, north of a certain parallel of latitude (embracing a territory larger than New England), as might be thereafter admitted by the subdivision of the State of Texas. The power of action on this subject, by compact of a State with the General Government, was then clearly established, in perfect accordance with repeated previous acts of Congress then cited by me. The doctrine rests upon the elemental principle of the combined authority of the nation, and a State, acting by compact within its limits.' When Missouri, with her consent, shall have become a Free State, the leaders of the Southern rebellion will feel that they have received a mortal blow. Especially will this be the case in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. We shall have cut the gordian knot of slavery, and the death agonies of the hydra would soon be visible. The importance of the result would be felt in the North also, and the wretched traitors there, far more guilty even than those of the South, will shrink from their atrocious conspiracy to dissolve this Union. The dark plot of severing New England from the Republic and of reuniting the rest of the States with the Southern confederacy, will be abandoned. That such a scheme is contemplated by Northern traitors, and that it is tolerated in the South, _on condition_ that all shall become Slave States, is beyond controversy. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the Northwest are to abandon their free institutions, become slaveholding States, and be admitted as such into the Southern confederacy. I had supposed that crime had achieved its climax when the Southern rebellion was inaugurated; but something more base, more vile, more cowardly, debasing, and pusillanimous, it seems, is now contemplated. It is that New England shall be expelled, and that the rest of the Free States shall come under the dominion of the Southern confederacy. But the leaders of this scheme seem to have forgotten the fact, that New England, to a vast extent, has peopled the Northwest, and carried there their love of free institutions. The descendants of the pilgrims are scattered throughout the Northwest, and churches, and free schools, and love of liberty have gone with them. The scheme is as base and cowardly as it is impracticable. No! New England can never be expelled from this Union. There the grand idea of the American Union was first conceived; there the cradle of liberty was first rocked, before as well as amid the storms of the Revolution; there the first blood was shed, the first battles fought, the first flag of Union and Liberty unfurled, and there it shall float forever. There are Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker Hill, and no traitor hand shall ever sever them from the American Union. Not an acre of the soil of New England or a drop of all its waters shall ever be surrendered by this great Republic; and from Lake Champlain and the Housatonick to the St. Croix and St. Johns, the flag of the Union shall ever float in undiminished glory. Lake Champlain unites Vermont and New England with the Hudson, the lakes, and St. Lawrence; and Long Island Sound, commanding the deepest approaches to New York, completes the connection, which is a geographical and political necessity. I am not a New Englander by parentage, birth, or education, but if the other Free States of the North and Northwest should submit to the disgrace of uniting themselves with a Southern confederacy, I should remove to New England, and breathe an air uncontaminated by slavery or treason. And there are hundreds of thousands who would pursue the same course. When, in 1798, the great Washington feared that the South might be separated by traitors from the Union, he declared that, in such an event, he would remove to the North; and, in such a contingency, there are thousands, even in the South, who would remove to New England.[7]

Those of the North and Northwest, who should remain and carry their States into the Southern confederacy, would be regarded in the South with loathing and contempt; the whole civilized world would consider their degradation as complete and eternal. They would soon loathe themselves, and feel that it was not only the negroes who were enslaved, but that they had put fetters upon their own limbs, and rendered themselves worthy to be worked as slaves on the plantations of Southern masters. I do not believe any of the Free States of the North and Northwest can thus be disgraced and humiliated. There is one of these States, I am sure, that will never submit to such degradation. It is the State of Pennsylvania. There the Declaration of American Independence was first proclaimed. There the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution were framed. There are Germantown, Paoli, and Brandywine: there Washington crossed the Delaware at midnight, and fought the two great battles of the war of independence. There Franklin sleeps within her soil, the great patriot, philosopher, and statesman whom New England gave to Pennsylvania, the Union, and the world. No! No! from the Delaware and Susquehanna to the Ohio and Lake Erie, the people of a mighty State would consign to the scaffold and the block the wretched traitors who would attempt to sever Pennsylvania from New England. Ice and granite are called the principal products of New England, but our Revolution and this rebellion prove that her great staples are intellect, education, liberty, courage, and patriotism. She is said to have Puritan angularities and to love money; but she pours out now, as in 1776, lavish expenditures of her treasure in defence of the Union; and the blood of her sons empurples the ocean and the lakes in every naval conflict, and moistens all the battle fields of the nation. No! all the traitors of the South, and all the Burrs, Arnolds, and Catalines of the North can never sever New England from the Republic. And now, in this hour of our country's peril, Missouri stretches her hands to New England, and to all the free and loyal States, and proposes, with their assistance, to abolish slavery, and link her destiny with theirs in the bonds of a perpetual Union. And shall we hesitate for a moment, on such a question? The money consideration is far less than a month's cost of the war, and sinks into insignificance compared with the momentous results and consequences. Emancipation in Missouri, with her consent and the aid of Congress, is the first grand decisive victory of the Union in this contest, insures eventual success, and must now be placed beyond all hazard or contingency.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: 7th vol. Hamilton's 'Republic,' p. 189, and Jefferson's 'Autograph.']

THE SOLDIER'S BURIAL.

Where shall we lay our comrade down? Where shall the brave one sleep? The battle's past, the victory won, Now we have time to weep! Bury him on the mountain's brow, Where he fought so well; Bury him where the laurels grow-- There he bravely fell!

There lay him in his generous blood, For there first comes the light When morning earliest breaks the cloud, And lingers last at night!

What though no flow'ret there may bloom To scent the chilly air, The sky shall stoop to wrap his tomb, The stars will watch him there!

What though no stone may mark his grave, Yet Fame shall tell his race Where sleeps the one so kind, so brave, And God will find the place! Bury him on the mountain's brow, Where he fought so well; Bury him where the laurels grow-- There he bravely fell!

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE RESULTS OF EMANCIPATION, by AUGUSTIN COCHIN, Ex-Mayor and Municipal Councillor of Paris. Work crowned by the Institute of France. Translated by MARY L. BOOTH, translator of Count de Gasparin's works on America, &c. Boston: Walker, Wise & Co. 1863.

AUGUSTIN COCHIN, author of the work before us, is a man of a class in France from which we are specially well pleased to see vindications of Emancipation and of the policy of the Federal Union arise. His position is well and briefly stated in the preface as that of a Legitimist, a fast friend and ally of Count de Montalembert in his effort to raise up a Catholic Liberal party for the development of republican sentiments and institutions, and the ardent coadjutor of Pére Lacordaire, Monseigneur d'Orleans, Viscount de Melun, and a host of other moderate reformers in behalf of freedom. He has some little reputation as a writer on public and political topics; is highly connected, and, what is perhaps more to the purpose than aught else, is a very practical man, and son-in-law to Benoist d'Azy, who, possessed of an immense fortune, an extensive landowner and proprietor of iron forges, has done perhaps more than any other man to advance the material interests of his country by railway building, mining, and agricultural improvements. We say that this is more to the purpose, since it is of importance that the men who _actively_ employ capital should understand the falsehood of slavery as a productive force in any system of labor, anywhere, at the present day. And it is highly significant when we find such men so far enlightened in France at this time, where, although, as we learn, very advanced views in political economy are set forth, we have still apprehended that a deeply based attachment to slavery, common to all the Latin races, prevails. That the Radicals should oppose slavery is but natural, but such views among the highly cultivated aristocracy are indeed encouraging.

We cannot agree with M. Villemain, who, in his report from the Academy, decreeing a prize of three thousand francs to M. Cochin for this work, speaks of it as inspired with 'eloquent zeal' and 'ardor.' It is very far from what it might have been as a _literary_ production; and to one not interested in the facts and subject, is even--with the exception of its excellent Introduction--dry. The author is decidedly an economist, but he is _not_ 'an apostle,' as his eulogist claims, unless it be in the sense in which any great collector and publisher of truths may be termed such. But on its true basis the work is indeed a great one, fully deserving the publisher's advertisement words, 'opportune and important.' The volume before us is a complete history, in a minor degree, of Slavery, and to a very full degree of Emancipation in the English and French colonies, with some account of the same in those belonging to Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. Having made for many years a specialty of the subject, and having had placed at his disposal the published and unpublished papers and records of every ministry of Europe, as, for instance, of the English Board of Trade, M. Cochin has accumulated a mass of extremely valuable material--all of which is presented in a very clear, perfectly well arranged form--and which we need not say should be read by every one in public, since there is certainly no intelligent American at the present day on whom the necessity of acquiring full information on this subject is not almost a solemn duty. Next after crushing rebellion, the great task of the Federal Government should be to organize labor and adopt a vigorous _central_ and _industrial_ policy. To do this, the relations of free and of slave labor to circumstances should be extensively studied. As in the case of all wars involving an institution, the question between the North and the South at the present day is simply one between ignorance and knowledge--knowledge such as books like this are eminently adapted to disseminate.

Passing by religious and philosophic argument, neither of which has been of much practical avail in this country, since we see the Church of the South quite as zealous in upholding slavery on Biblical grounds as that of the North is in opposing it, we come to Cochin's first real argument--that political economy affirms the superiority of free over forced labor. Policy and charity unite in this--'charity detests slavery because it oppresses; policy, more elevated, condemns it _because it corrupts the inferior race_.'

We call attention to this sentence because it accurately expresses the difference between mere 'Abolition,' which regarded only the sufferings of the blacks, and that higher and more comprehensive policy of 'EMANCIPATION FOR THE SAKE OF THE WHITE MAN,' which declares that slavery always in time inevitably makes of the slaveholder an intolerable neighbor to the free white laborer. From this point our author sets forth the gradual growth of the aversion to slavery all over the Continent, with the reactionary tendency in its favor in the Cotton United States and in England. It is needless to say that, before the overwhelming light of _facts_ presented, especially when these facts are drawn from the past as well as the present, and from every country instead of _one_, slavery is shown to be more than deadly-conservative; more than cruel; more than a mere dead wall in the way of the onward march of the century. The time will come when such a curse will be rooted out of a country by the strong hand of all civilized nations. Had England and France been truly enlightened to their own interests, this war would never have taken place.

The history of the African slave trade and the efforts to destroy it, the Emancipation of the French Convention and the reëstablishment of slavery by the Consulate, from 1794 to 1802, form the first chapter of this work. Hence we have its history, its abolition in 1848, and, after this, that most important part, a careful examination of the results of Emancipation, showing--as Sewall and others have done--the grossness of the current falsehood to the effect that it has led to evil results. For those who can see only a part instead of the whole, who regard the amount of good done to themselves as the test of everything, who make no allowance for a social transition, or for a future (like our own 'treason-Democrats'), and who see in the black, whether slave or free, simply a creature whose whole mission is to benefit the white, it is true that Emancipation in certain isolated cases may not appear to have fully succeeded. The _truth_ is, that freed labor has nowhere diminished--it has simply assumed _new forms_, more advantageous, for the time, to the laborer, while in most cases it has increased its profits. If slaves were overworked, there was no real gain;--if schools and marriage, cleanly independence and good clothing have increased tenfold among those who were once naked, starved, and ignorant, there has been a gain, although here and there less sugar is exported. And so the reader may trace the arguments and facts to the end.

Yet, after all, we feel almost ashamed that such a book should be really needed! What true _scholar_ and honest man requires arguments of this kind? A thousand or two years ago, any king's daughter, any young lady, anybody walking in a lonely spot, was in danger of being kidnapped and sold to prostitution or slavery. Philosophers, poets, and artists were owned by brutal wretches; pious priests purchased gentlemen of noble birth for slaves. The pirate's galley swept every coast to steal any human being. Time rolled on, and slavery was modified. White slaves became serfs, serfs became free. The cause of emancipation is clear as that of any progressive reform--and yet, right in the face of history and God's truth, we see the Southern Confederacy and the British people daring to put themselves forward as the advocates of a crime so rapidly becoming obsolete. Yes--that is what the land of Wilberforce is now _practically_ doing, while several of her writers, turning on their tracks, are beginning to 'reconsider' the subject in their writings!

WAR SONGS FOR FREEMEN. Dedicated to the Army of the United States. Third Edition. Printed for the New York Volunteers. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

Have you a friend in the army, especially one who sings occasionally, or if he be not canorous, say a friend who likes to read songs and hear them sung by others? In other words, would you, young lady reader (or any other reader), like to give some soldier at least half an hour's amusement for a very trivial outlay? In such case we recommend you to purchase this little pamphlet, and investing in a postage stamp, send it off without delay to the Army of the ----, whatever _that_ may be.

The work in question contains thirty songs of the war, mostly written expressly for the book, and each accompanied by the music, in nearly all cases with the bass. Among the contributors are Dr. O. W. Holmes, who has given two capital lyrics, 'Union' and 'Liberty,' and a superb trumpet song, well adapted to _Was blasen die Trompeten?_ or 'What are the trumpets blowing?' a spirited German air. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe contributes a 'Harvard Student's Song', which is of course brilliant, earnest, and beautiful. It is set to the glorious old Slavonian--subsequently German air:

'Denkst du duran mein tapf'rer Lagienka?'

which no one ever heard without loving. C. T. Brooks, has given to the grand and swelling _Landesvater_ words in every way worthy of it:

'Comrades plighted, Fast united, Firm to death for Freedom stand! See your country torn and bleeding, Hear a mother's solemn pleading! Rescue Freedom's promised land.'

The same author also gives the well known 'Korner's Prayer,' and 'The Vow.' From Mrs. T. Sedgwick we find a fine bold song, 'For a' that and a' that,' of course to the good old air of that name--a lyric of such decided merit in most respects that we regret to notice in it the venerable bull of 'polar stars,' quizzed long ago in another writer. Our contributor, Henry Perry Leland, has in this collection two songs, both strongly marked with the camp, neither setting forth the slightest earthly claim to be regarded as 'elevated poesie,' yet both remarkably sing-able, and probably destined to become broadly popular. Of these, 'Bully Boy Billy,' is set to a lilting 'devil may care' Low-Dutch camp tune--one of the kind which 'sings itself,' and is well adapted to a roaring chorus. From the same we find a lyric detailing the loss of a briarwood pipe stolen in a raid, which the grieving 'sojer' trusts (as we most sincerely do with him) may be found when Richmond's taken. Among the remaining lyrics are five by Charles Godfrey Leland, including 'We're at War,' to the bold French air of the _Choeur des Girondins_, 'Northmen Come Out,' to the _Burschen heraus_, and 'Shall Freedom Droop and Die?' to the fine old air of 'Trelawney.' 'The Cavalry Song' has a brave air, composed for it by John K. Paine. Very spirited and merry is 'Overtures from Richmond,' set to the quaint air of '_Lilliburlero, bullen a la_,' which is said to have 'sung a deluded prince out of three kingdoms.' We trust that some of the old charm still sticks to the magic words, and that it may do as much for King Jeff. as it once did for King James. Among the remaining lyrics are the following: 'Put it Through,' and 'Old Faneuil Hall,' by E. E. Hale; 'Our Country is Calling,' to '_Wohlauf Kameraden!_' by Rev. F. H. Hedge, and a translation of Luther's _Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott_ by the same; Hauff's 'Night Guard,' an exquisite German air, and 'I'll be a Sergeant,' and 'Would you be a Soldier, Laddy?' both of them capital spirited soldier-songs. Last, not least, we have the 'Lass of the Pamunkey,' by F. J. Child. We know not whether the incident detailed be strictly autobiographic or borrowed; it is at any rate well told and merrily music-ed.

The reader will do well to observe that this collection, which has already become immensely popular, and has furnished material for more than one excellent patriotic concert, is prepared solely for the benefit of the solders, _and that the proceeds of the sale of the book are all devoted to distributing it in the army_. All who wish to make a most acceptable little gift at a trifling price; all who are 'sending things' to the army; all who would secure an interesting specimen of the songs of the war, and, finally, all who would own a really excellent musical work, should send an order for the above mentioned to Messrs. Ticknor & Fields.

THE NATIONAL ALMANAC AND ANNUAL RECORD FOR 1863. 12mo, pp. 704. Philadelphia: George W. Childs. New York: Charles T. Evans.

If Dickens's illustrious statistician, Mr. Gradgrind, were in the flesh to-day, how he would gloat over this book! The 'facts' presented in its seven hundred double-columned pages would satisfy, even to repletion, his voracious cravings; and once crammed with them, he would go forth into society a walking cyclopedia of all that appertained to the civil, military, agricultural, industrial, financial, educational, charitable, and religious condition of these United States.

But though we make no claim to belong to the Gradgrind family, we acknowledge with pleasure our gratification with this book. It has long been matter of reproach against us on the part of foreign writers on commerce and statistical science, that we produced no statistical works worthy the name. The publication of this work will forever put that reproach to silence. We have examined the book with care, and have been at a loss which most to admire, the patient and extraordinary labor which had brought together so vast a collection of important facts, or the complete and exhaustive treatment of every subject.

It is a marked characteristic of the work that, while omitting nothing necessary to a full elucidation of the past condition of the country, it brings all its statistics up to the latest dates. The United States debt is given to December 1, 1862; the Government receipts and expenditures for the financial year 1862; the issues of the mint to the autumn of 1862; the contributions of each State to the volunteer army to December, 1862; the finances of most of the States to the same date; even the Pacific States being brought up to last autumn; and the condition of the Rebel army and finances to January 1, 1863. Such enterprise deserves, and must achieve success.

Noticeable, too, for its completeness and thoroughness, is the 'Record of Events' of the war, occupying nearly eighty pages, and forming a continuous and admirable journal of the war up to the close of last year. In the States, also, the fulness and variety of detail of the finances, debts, banks, railroads (a new feature), educational institutions, charitable and correctional organizations, agriculture, manufactures, and military organization of each State, possess a deep interest to any man who desires to know the actual condition and resources of his country. We were particularly pleased with a series of diagrams, prepared by Prof. Gillespie of Union College, illustrating at a glance the changes which have taken place in the relative population of the different States, the relative proportion of increase of white and of slave population, and the effect produced by this upon different sections. We have not, at the late hour at which we write, time or room to indicate a tithe of the valuable features of this remarkable book; we can only say, that whoever expends the small sum necessary for its purchase, will most assuredly obtain an ample equivalent for his money.

THE ORPHEUS C. KERR PAPERS. Second Series. New York: Carleton, 413 Broadway. 1863.

During the present decade the American public has welcomed almost annually a new humorist. Thus we have seen in rapid succession John Phoenix, Doesticks, Fanny Fern, and Artemus Ward enjoying extraordinary popularity, and then new 'lords of misrule' 'reigning in their stead.' The last popular favorite is 'Orpheus C. Kerr'--a name thinly disguising that of Office Seeker, and which is not indeed too well chosen, since in the volume before us little or nothing relative to the very suggestive subject of office-seeking, on the part of the author at least, is to be found. The book itself is, however, marvellously laugh provoking, abounding in the oddest conceits, strangest stories, and drollest extravaganzas in the most ultra American vein. If the men who best ridicule great failures in war and in politics, are the ones most to be dreaded, it must be admitted that 'Orpheus C. Kerr' is the sharpest thorn which has been as yet planted in the side of the 'Young Napoleons' of our army, whose ability seems to consist in building up the strength of the enemy by delay and in canvassing indirectly for the Presidency. There is no cause so good as to be without abuses, and the abuses which have crept into our management of the war are touched off in these papers as merrily as unmercifully. They have done 'yeoman's service' in the press, hitting all sides, but bearing most heavily on 'Young Napoleon' and the _status quo_ Democracy. It cannot be denied that the humor of these sketches is often merely extravagant, sometimes harshly strained, and occasionally bare and thin enough in all conscience, while the stories of the Cosmopolite Club seem like mere 'filling up' to 'make pages;' yet with all this there is more real wit, humor, and life-knowledge in this volume than would give tone and strength to half a dozen ordinary popular essayists of the Country Parson school. Extravagance is however to American narrative what it is to Arab conversation, something much less _outré_ to those who are born to it than to strangers, who are unable to discount like the natives as fast as the sums total are set down. Making every allowance for every defect, there remains in 'Orpheus C. Kerr' a residuum of irresistible humor, provoking scores of hearty laughs, and many indications of a basis of thought and of literary ability which place him far in advance of the later writers of his school. He takes a wider range, too wide indeed at times, since he occasionally becomes 'Cockneyfied.' We wish that 'Villiam' and the Willis-y 'my boy' were less frequently mentioned. Yet as all this is atoned for by abundance of true American fun, we readily pardon such echoes, trusting that in his future writings our humorist will endeavor to be in all things truly original. He can be so by the very simple process of pruning.

POEMS. By THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. New York: Carleton. 1863.

Most of these very pleasant little strains of word-music and of graceful thought have been frequently brought before the American public, and become familiar favorites. They now reappear to advantage in a delicate blue-and-gold volume, with a medallion portrait of the poet.

MODERN WAR: Its Theory and Practice Illustrated from Celebrated Campaigns and Battles. With Maps and Diagrams. By EMERIC SZABAD, Captain U. S. A. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1863.

An excellent work, of an eminently practical nature, which may be read with interest and profit by every one in a time when there are so few who do not assume to be more or less critical in the art of war.

THE PIRATES OF THE PRAIRIES; or, Adventures in the American Desert. By GUSTAVE AIMARD. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson. New York: Frederic A. Brady. 1863.

A very trashy wildcat romance, highly spiced with sensation sentiment, "r-r-revenge," and other melo-dramatic attributes. Its author is well known as an extensive contributor to what may be called the Sadly-Neglected-Apprentice school of literature and of readers.

ANDREE DE TAVERNEY, or the Downfall of French Monarchy. By ALEXANDER DUMAS. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 1863.

When we, on the publishers' authority, inform the reader that this is really 'the _final_ conclusion' of the 'Countess of Charny,' the 'Memoirs of a Physician,' and a small library of other works, we shall doubtless send a thrill of joy to more than one heart. Incredible as it may appear, the Dumas factory, as _Maquet_ termed it, has actually finished one of its valuable historical series--unless indeed the director-in-chief should see fit to republish the long-forgotten first volume, as a subsequent final conclusion to this of 'Andree de Taverney.'

VERNER'S PRIDE; a Tale of Domestic Life. By Mrs. HENRY WOOD. In two volumes. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers. 1863.

A decidedly English novel, of a type well known to our public, embracing few novelties of character, yet well written, with the story well told. It has, we believe, been so fortunate as to secure a wide circulation.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

It is a dangerous task for the editor of a monthly review, in times like these, to comment on what has been or is likely to be done by the army, when no one knows what a day may bring forth. But, as regards those of the enemy among us who are scheming to aid and abet their Southern friends, we may speak more confidently. These traitors, though they have of late cast off the mask, and no longer pretend to aid the Administration and the cause of the Union, are still obliged to move with the caution without which trachery and cowardice would soon perish. It is, however, a bitter and a humiliating thought that they are so openly active among us, that they hold meetings where the ruin of the country is calmly meditated, that they form clubs, that they stir up the mob of their degraded hangers-on to hurrah for JEFFERSON DAVIS in our streets, and that finally no amount of exposure and of denunciation in the patriotic press seems to have the slightest effect in attracting to them the punishment they deserve.

The traitors of whom we speak are of two classes, the leaders and the dupes. The latter, careless of the fact that even if a _sudden_ peace could be brought about it must overwhelm the country in financial ruin, believe in a restitution of the _status quo ante bellum_. They think that their leaders will, in unison with DAVIS and his colleagues, reunite, annul Emancipation, disavow the acts of the Lincoln Administration, and reëstablish Slavery. Cotton is again to be king, and all go on as of old, save that New England is to be thrown out of the confederacy. They are encouraged in this belief by lying or cunningly managed letters from the South, and by assurances that the confederate leaders are secretly working to this end and aim. 'We got along very well before the war,' is their constant complaint, 'and we could do as well again, were it not for the Emancipationists.' Among the lukewarm, the cowardly, the meanly selfish and avaricious, and the habitual grumblers, such doctrines are readily made plausible. Those especially, who measure the propriety of carrying on a war solely by the amount of success which they desire, and who are incapable of great thoughts and principles, are easily duped by intriguing villany.

The leaders of these dupes have no faith whatever in restoring the Union. They have no desire to restore it. Men like Fernando Wood hope from their very hearts for a complete disintegration--the more thorough, for them, the better. They could never expect to command the ship, and so they are willing to wreck her, in the hope of each securing a fragment. Ruined in character in the eyes of all honest men, their names a byword for treason, and in most cases for literal crimes, political outcasts of the stamp who are said to vibrate between the legislature and the penitentiary, these desperadoes are now working with all their might to mass the cowardice of the North into a body powerful enough to do collectively, that for which an individual has in all countries and in all ages been judged worthy the gallows. But for this war they must have been confined to representing the dangerous classes of our cities--the ignorance and vice which finds in them congenial leaders. As it is, they hope for wider fields and more absolute sway.

There is reason to apprehend that the men who are really true to the Union do not appreciate the extent to which treason is working among us. Worse than all, there are many, who, while believing themselves true to the good cause, are, by constant grumbling and complaint, aiding the very worst form of disunion. Could we prevail with one prayer upon the heart of every Federal freeman, it would be to implore him in this hour of trial not to withold his warmest support from the Administration and to fall into the common weakness of fault-finding and despairing. Such enormous wars as this never have been ended in a few months; wars especially which involve the deepest antagonism of social principles in existence. And our winnings have been neither few nor light. The Southern Border States, with little exception, are now ours, and will inevitably be fully won in time: New Orleans is a pledge, with other important points, and the enemy admit that every Southern seaboard town is destined to be taken. Does this look like the wild boasting of the South two years ago, when the North was to be plundered, Washington taken, and the Free States trampled under the heel of a chivalry fiercely crying, _Væ victis!_'--'Woe to the conquered!'? There is no danger now from the enemy: as he himself admits, two years more of the war would not, at the rate in which we progress, leave him a single State; and be it borne in mind that a _speedy_ return to peace is only to be purchased at the price of a terrible financial crisis.

But we are in danger from the traitors _at home_. JEFFERSON DAVIS is less deadly to the Federal Union and less to be dreaded than the men who are scheming to make of New York a free city, and of every State and county a feudal principality.

* * * * *

The intentions of Louis Napoleon as regards Mexico are beginning to excite interest. Whatever they may be, there is one thing which it would be well for the French Emperor never to forget. He holds France simply as a pledge to the Revolution. So long as he remains true to the cause of liberty--and, despite names and circumstances, he has been truer to it than many suppose--he will remain in power. When he is false to it he will perish. It was through forgetting this that his uncle died at St. Helena--it was through forgetting this that Louis Philippe quitted Paris in a very citizenly but most un-kingly manner. The _bourgeoisie_ of France and the gossips of Paris may storm at the Federal Union, _épiciers_ may growl for our sugar, and operatives for cotton, but this class--on whom Louis Philippe made the mistake of solely relying, with a little help from the aristocracy--are not the men who guide the storms of revolution in France. The arch spirits of mischief are more secret, and of late years they have learned much. They are no longer so much inclined to Socialism, Père Cabét and 'national ateliérs,' still less to guillotines and noyades. But they are firm as ever, as jealous of despotism as ever, and, for an oppressor, as powerful as ever. And we believe that this class of men are firmly attached to the great cause of progressive freedom as represented by the Federal States and by the present Administration. Every day sees the truth spreading in France, and with its extension goes a deeply seated interest in the abolition of slavery. France--unlike England--feels shame at the idea of being chronicled in history as aiding oppression. The Frenchman is not so enormously conceited, so pitiably vain as to believe, like the Briton, that a crime is a virtue when for _his_ own peculiar interest. Vain as the French may be, they have not quite come to _that_.

It must be admitted that the French are a shrewd nation. We were wont to think of old that there was more spite than intelligence in the epithet by which they characterized John Bull as 'perfidious.' They were right, for time has shown us that Venice, in the full bloom of her night-shade iniquity and poniard policy, was never falser at heart than this great, brawling, boasting, beef-eating England--this 'merry England' of paupers and prisons, where one man in every eight is buried at public expense--this Mother England, which starves away annually half a million of emigrants--this Honest Old England, which floods the world with pick-pockets, burglars, and correspondents for the _Times_.

It was a trifling thing which brought on the French Revolution of 1848--the return of foreign refugees to Austria, and other significant indications of joining with the old powers in oppressing freedom. Let Louis Napoleon beware of an anti-American policy--for to every such policy there will be an opposition, with a spectre of the Revolution in the background.

* * * * *

When these remarks meet the eye of the reader, the infamous conduct of the drunken Delaware Southern-ape Senator, SAULSBURY, will in all probability have been forgotten. We have for so many years been so familiarized with the ribald or rowdy pranks of the chivalry, and of those more miserable wretches their Northern servants, that the mass of the public seems even yet quite willing to endure, for the poor payment of an apology, conduct which should anywhere have promptly consigned to imprisonment, at least, the guilty one. Not but that the apology of SAULSBURY was humble enough in all conscience. But it is time that our halls of legislation were thoroughly purified, now that 'chivalric' brigandage and the Southern system of personal retaliation no longer prevail. The first legislator who shall dare to draw a weapon in a place sacred to the councils of his country, should be permanently expelled from those councils, and made to feel by rigorous imprisonment, and life-long disfranchisement, the enormous infamy of his offence. We wonder that the English press treats us as a nation of boors and fools, and yet permit a representative on the floor of the Senate to set forth in his own person the worst of which a boor or fool is capable, and accept as full reparation a drunken-headaching apology!

These are the days of reform, and we sincerely trust that the reform will extend to the conduct of all our representatives, especially in Congress. The man who shall dare to apply, not merely to the President, but to any fellow member, while in either House, any terms of personal abuse, should incur a punishment which would teach him for the future to keep a civil tongue in his head, and make him endeavor to assume in future, at least the outward deportment of a gentleman. The going armed into such an assembly should however be promptly visited with a penalty of the extremest severity. It is time that the North freed itself entirely of these Southern 'dead rabbits' of the Saulsbury stamp, and indicated by every means in its power its determination to progress in the path of justice, order, and civilization.

* * * * *

All contributions, letters, &c., intended for the editors of THE CONTINENTAL MAGAZINE, should be addressed to the care of JOHN F. TROW, Esquire, No. 50 Greene street, New York. Correspondents directing to Mr. LELAND are particularly requested to bear this address in mind, as that gentleman is no longer a resident of Boston.

* * * * *

We publish the poetical tale, THE LADY AND HER SLAVE, by an American lady, subscribing herself _Incognita_. This is a poem of great genius and power. Whilst it possesses the inspiration of poetry, it has all the merits of a truthful and most interesting tale, combined with a splendid intellectual argument against slavery. This poem unites the logic of Pope with the genius and poetical inspiration of Goldsmith. It is a tragedy, and might be transferred to the stage. We trust _Incognita_ will continue her favors to THE CONTINENTAL.

R. J. W.

* * * * *

The rise in specie and in exchange is, we observe, spoken of as 'unprecedented'. The following extract from a work entitled, 'The British Empire in America,' written in 1740, shows that we are as yet far from having attained the differences in these respects:

'As to Money, they have none, Gold or Silver: About 50 Years ago they had some coined at _Boston_; but there's not enough now for Retailers. All Payments are in Province Bills, even so low as _Half a Crown_; thus every Man's Money is his Pocket Book. This makes the Course of Exchange so exorbitant, that 100_l._ in _London_ made out lately 225_l._ in _New-England_; and if a Merchant sells his Goods from _England_ at 220_l._ Advance upon 100_l._ in the Invoice, he would be a Loser by the Bargain, considering the incidental Charges on his Invoice.'

So that after all, they had as great 'ups and downs' of old as do we of the present day.

Apropos of the old book in question, it abounds in quaint bits of information, given in a dry, free and easy style seldom found at the present day in any work of the kind. Thus it tells us, among the anecdotes of ELLIOT the missionary, that an Indian in a religious conference asked how GOD could create man in his own image, since according to the second commandment it was forbidden to make any such image?

'To qualify him for the Work he was going about, Mr _Elliot_ learnt the _Indian_ Language as barbarous as can come out of the Mouth of Man, as will be seen by these Instances:

'_Nummatchekodtantamoonganunnonash_, is in English, _Our Lusts_; a Word that the Reverend Mr _Elliot_ must often have occasion to make Use of. As long as it is, we meet with a longer still:

'_Kummogkodonattoottummoooctiteaongannunonash_, meaning Our Question.

'_Gannunonash_' seems to be 'our,' because we find it in the End of the First Word, as well as the second, * * and this appears again in another Word:

'_Noowomantammooonkanunnonash_, 'Our Loves.'

'The longest of these _Indian_ Words is to be measured by the Inch, and reaches to near half a Foot; and if Mr _Elliot_ did put as many of these Words in a Sermon of his, as Mr _Peters_ put _English_ Words in one of his Sermons, everyone of them must have made a sizeable Book and have taken up three or four Hours in utterance.'

The Peters referred to was the celebrated Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain. Our author vindicates this clergyman from certain scandalous charges, declaring that he had asked of his daughter, Miss Peters, if they were so, which she had utterly denied! Less credulous is he as regarded 'William Pen' (with whom he seems to have been on terms of great personal intimacy), since he hints very broadly in one passage, that he put no faith whatever in a certain assertion of 'Pen' as to his own (Penn's) good behavior when amiably smiled on by a _belle sauvage_, who, as the French would say, was not savage at all. 'Scandal, scandal all,' we doubt not. There are gossipers in every age, tattlers in every corner of history, and who escapes them? Cato did not, Washington could not, and 'Mr Pen' even must fill his place with the great maligned. Let us trust that our incautious dip from the old work may not, suggest to any novel maker 'Penn and the Princess,--a Tale of the Olden Time.'

* * * * *

The following poem, which we find in the Philadelphia _Press_, is among the best of the many sad lyrics which the war has inspired. The music of the refrain is remarkable:

DIRGE FOR A SOLDIER.

By George H. Boker

Close his eyes; his work is done! What to him is friend or foeman, Rise of moon, or set of sun, Hand of man, or kiss of woman? Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow: What cares he? he cannot know: Lay him low!

As man may, he fought his fight, Proved his truth by his endeavor; Let him sleep in solemn night, Sleep forever and forever. Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow: What cares he? he cannot know: Lay him low!

Fold him in his country's stars; Roll the drum and fire the volley! What to him are all our wars, What but death bemocking folly? Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow: What cares he? he cannot know: Lay him low!

Leave him to God's watching eye; Trust him to the Hand that made him. Mortal love weeps idly by: God alone has power to aid him. Lay him low, lay him low, In the clover or the snow: What cares he? he cannot know: Lay him low!

* * * * *

Much has been said of the high price paid to opera singers. The celebrated BERLIOZ once reduced it to details in the following word:

'The first tenor,' he said, 'has 100,000 frcs. per annum, and he sings for it about seven times during the month, or eighty-four times during the year. This would be about 1,100 francs per evening. Admitted then that his part would contain 1,100 notes or syllables, the price of each syllable would be 1 franc. Consequently in William Tell:

'Ma (1 fr.) presence (3 fr.) pourvous est peut etre un outrage (9 fr.) Mathilde (3 fr.) mes pas indiscret (100 sous). On osée jusqu'a vous se frayer une passage! (13 fr.)

'These three lines therefore cost 34 francs. A great sum! Engaging under these circumstances a Prima Donna, at the miserable pittance of 40,000 francs, the answer of Mathilde amounts to much less, for every syllable would then cost but 8 sous: but even that is not so bad after all.

'We laugh,' adds Berlioz, 'but the theatres have to pay. They will pay until the treasury is empty, and after that the 'Immortals' will have to condescend to give singing lessons (i.e., those who know enough for it), or to sing at public places with accompaniment of one guitar, four candles, and a green carpet. After that we may be able to construct the Temple of Music on a firmer basis.'

At these rates, the old form of declaring that any thing went for 'a mere song,' would not say much for its cheapness. But if--as Berlioz seems to think--these high prices are to be regretted, we still cannot see how they are to be remedied. The public, for want of better amusement, keep up the opera, and the different opera houses keep up the prices by outbidding each other. When municipal governments shall recognize the fact that amusement is a constant quantity in the administration of a state, and provide first-class entertainments _gratis_ or at nominal rates, there will be much vice done away with and many rum shops closed--which would be bad, by the way, for the Democrato-Rum-elected Governor Seymour, for the whole alcoholic vote was cast in his favor. There will, we believe, come a time when the party of progress will urge an enlarged provision of education and recreation for the people, with the same earnestness which it now shows in forwarding Emancipation.

* * * * *

England has by her Southern sympathy fairly put a serpent girdle of her treachery around the earth. For further particulars consult the following:

TO JOHN BULL.

Oh don't you remember sweet Ireland, John Bull? Green Erin beyond the blue sea? And the patriots there whom you starved, hung, and shot, Because they desired to be free. On the lone heather wild, in the dark silent glen, The peasant still shows you the graves Of the heroes who fell in the year ninety-eight And died ere they'd live as your slaves.

And don't you remember your own words, John Bull, Of the Southern Confed--er--a--cie? When you said in the _Times_, that your heart went of course With a brave race which sought to be free. Oh what do you think of Old Ireland, John Bull? There's a race that's as brave as your own, And one that would like very well to be free, If you only would let it alone.

And don't you remember great India, John Bull? With the Sepoys you blew from your guns, And the insult and murder of Brahmins, John Bull, For some outrage endured from their sons? The outrage was proved a black lie, as you know, A lie, as your own books declare: Your hell-hounds of HAVELOCKS stirred up the war, And what business had they to be there?

And don't you remember great China, John Bull, Where you smeared yourself blacker with sin? Where the Emperor tried to keep opium out, And you fought to force opium in? It was _Government_ opium from India, too, Which poisons both body and soul; You have fought against freedom with steel, Johnny Bull; With the steel and the cord and the bowl.

And do you believe in a GOD, Johnny Bull, Or _anything_ after the grave? Then tell us what waits for the sinner who aids The tyrant to trample the slave? I'll not ask if you've faith in a Devil, John Bull: One might think he were laid on the shelf, To see you unpunished--but now I believe That you are the False One himself.

* * * * *

We are indebted to a friend for the following tales of foraging, which are vouched for as authentic:

A company of the Two--th cavalry of volunteers, no matter in what State, were out on a forage, with the usual orders to respect the enemy's property. But coming on a plantation where chickens and turkeys were dallying in the sunshine, the officer in command, tired of pork and plaster-pies, alias hard biscuit, gave the boys leave to club over as many of the 'two-legged things in feathers' as they could conveniently come at. The result was that a good number were despatched, and being tied together by the legs, were slung over the pommel of the saddle of 'Benny,' an old _sabreur_, who had frontiered it for years, been in more Indian fights than you could shake a stick at, and could tell, if he wanted to, of some high-old-hard times with these same Mdewakantonwar, Wahpekute, Ihanktonwannas, and Minnikanyewazhipu red-skinned fiends.

Returning to camp, as ill luck would have it, they met the colonel of their regiment riding out to a neighboring camp. Just before they met him, in fact when they were nearly up to him, for a curve in the road had hid him from sight till then, the officer in command rode by Benny with the command:

'D--n it, man, why don't you sling those chickens the other side your saddle? The colonel will see them, hanging that way.'

'Can't be done! got fourteen turkeys _there_ on a balance!'

By remarkably good fortune the colonel did not see the chickens, so they and the turkeys were safely smuggled into camp, Benny getting full credit for maintaining the balance of power, when the odds were dead against him.

Story ye second:

When the Forty-eleventh P.M. were camped near Boonesboro', what time the rebels were driven out of Maryland, the colonel of the said regiment duly issued orders that all provender taken by troops under his command should be fairly paid for without defalcation for value received. Now it happened one bright morning that the major of the aforesaid regiment riding out near camp, saw a private deliberately lift up what is known in Southern tongue as a 'rock,' and throwing the same with great skill, instantly kill a small pig that with half a dozen other small pigs were following their mother at full speed away from the neighborhood of this same private.

The soldier, who was an Irishman, picked up the pig, and hiding it under his army sack, was returning to camp, when, lifting up his head, he saw before him the major, who, assuming his most solemn look, thus spoke to him:

'What have you under your coat, there?'

'Shure it's an empty stomach, sirr!--and a small pig that's hurted itself--poor little thing!--and I'm taking it home to mend its leg, to be sure:--the poor crayture wud be after dying if left all alone in the cold, the raw morning.'

The major dearly relished the joke, but discipline is discipline, and there was but one way to overlook this breach of it: that was to punish Paddy by giving him a three-mile walk down the road, and over the fields back to camp, before he could bring his pig in.

'You say the pig is lame?' asked the officer.

'Shure, that's the truth, sirr; and I'm afther belaving it'll niver be able to run any more at all, at all: be the same token its tail's out of curl entirely; and had'nt I better be afther taking it home than letting it die like a haythin in the road here?'

'Do you see that old sow down the road there with those other pigs? you follow her home at _once_, sir, and leave the lame pig _there_!'

Saying which, the major continued his ride, and the Irishman duly followed the old sow to--a turn in the road, when he 'obeyed orders,' and left the lame pig 'at home,' where that night at least one mess had roast pig with '_ubi_ beans _ibi patria_,' sauce at discretion.

* * * * *

TO

THE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

ON BOARD THE PRINCESS ROYAL

Ye Mariners of England, That shame your country's fame; That peddle chains to bind the slave, In the blood-royal name! Your glorious standard hide away, Hoist slave flags in its place, And steal o'er the deep, With our Yankee ships in chase: And ye peddlers, shun the starry flag, While the Yankee cruisers chase.

The spirits of your fathers Shall start from every wave! For the ocean was their field of fame, And ye insult their grave. Where they like bold men fought and fell, Ye take a part that's base, And steal o'er the deep With our Yankee ships in chase: And ye peddlers, shun the starry flag, While the Yankee cruisers chase.

Britannia needeth cotton, And so your honor'll sleep; Your market's o'er the mounting wave, Your greed of gain lies deep. Your sovereign bids you walk upright;-- Her fair fame you disgrace, And steal o'er the deep, With our Yankee ships in chase: And ye peddlers, shun the starry flag, While our Yankee cruisers chase.

The meteor flag of England Should redder burn for shame, When it waves o'er chains for slaves In Princess Royal's name. Mourn, mourn, ye ocean hucksters! Your goods and ships are lost: To the shame of your name Get you home and count the cost: For your Princess Royal's gone for good; Get you home and count the cost.

* * * * *

The Continental Monthly.

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.

Though but little more than a year has elapsed since the CONTINENTAL was first established, it has during that time acquired a strength and a political significance elevating it to a position far above that previously occupied by any publication of the kind in America. In proof of which assertion we call attention to the following facts:

1. Of its POLITICAL articles republished in pamphlet form, a single one has had, thus far, a circulation of _one hundred and six thousand_ copies.

2. From its LITERARY department, a single serial novel, "Among the Pines," has, within a very few months, sold nearly _thirty-five thousand_ copies. Two other series of its literary articles have also been republished in book form, while the first portion of a third is already in press.

No more conclusive facts need be alleged to prove the excellence of the contributions to the CONTINENTAL, or their _extraordinary popularity;_ and its conductors are determined that it shall not fall behind. Preserving all "the boldness, vigor, and ability" which a thousand journals have attributed to it, it will 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 the men most familiar with its diplomacy and most distinguished for ability, are among 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.

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.

TERMS TO CLUBS.

Two copies for one year, Five dollars. Three copies for one year, Six dollars. Six copies for one year, Eleven dollars. Eleven copies for one year, Twenty dollars. Twenty copies for one year, Thirty-six dollars. PAID IN ADVANCE

_Postage, Thirty-six cents a year_, to be paid BY THE SUBSCRIBER.

SINGLE COPIES.

Three dollars a year, IN ADVANCE. _Postage paid by the Publisher_.

JOHN F. TROW, 50 Greene St., N. Y., PUBLISHER FOR THE PROPRIETORS.

~EQUAL TO ANY IN THE WORLD!!!~

MAY BE PROCURED

~At FROM $8 to $12 PER ACRE,~

Near Markets, Schools, Railroads, Churches, and all the blessings of Civilization.

1,200,000 Acres, in Farms of 40, 80, 120, 160 Acres and upwards, in ILLINOIS, the Garden State of America.

* * * * *

The Illinois Central Railroad Company offer, ON LONG CREDIT, the beautiful and fertile PRAIRIE LANDS lying along the whole line of their Railroad. 700 MILES IN LENGTH, upon the most Favorable Terms for enabling Farmers, Manufacturers, Mechanics and Workingmen to make for themselves and their families a competency, and a HOME they can call THEIR OWN, as will appear from the following statements:

ILLINOIS.

Is about equal in extent to England, with a population of 1,722,666, and a soil capable of supporting 20,000,000. No State in the Valley of the Mississippi offers so great an inducement to the settler as the State of Illinois. There is no part of the world where all the conditions of climate and soil so admirably combine to produce those two great staples, CORN and WHEAT.

CLIMATE.

Nowhere can the Industrious farmer secure such immediate results from his labor as on these deep, rich, loamy soils, cultivated with so much ease. The climate from the extreme southern part of the State to the Terre Haute, Alton and St. Louis Railroad, a distance of nearly 200 miles, is well adapted to Winter.

WHEAT, CORN, COTTON, TOBACCO.

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 60 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 any other State. The Wheat crop of 1861 was estimated at 35,000,000 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

Payment 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

40 acres, at $10 00 per acre:

Cash payment $24 00

Payment 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

* * * * *

Number 16. 25 Cents.

THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY.

DEVOTED TO Literature and National Policy.

APRIL, 1863.

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

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

* * * * *

CONTENTS.--No. XVI.

The Wonders of Words, 385

The Chech, 395

Pictures from the North, 398

The New Rasselas, 404

The Chained River. By Charles Godfrey Leland, 410

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

Promoted, 420

Henrietta and Vulcan. By Delia M. Colton, 421

Ethel. By Martha Walker Cook, 435

The Skeptics of the Waverley Novels. By Charles Godfrey Leland, 439

A Merchant's Story. By Edmund Kirke, 451

A Chapter on Wonders. By Perth Granton, 461

The Return. By Edward Sprague Rand, jr., 464

The Union. By Hon. R. J. Walker, 465

Down in Tennessee, 469

Poetry and Poetical Selections, 474

Flag of our Sires. By Hon. R. J. Walker, 480

A Fancy Sketch, 482

Our Present Position; its Dangers and its Duties, 488

The Complaining Bore, 496

Literary Notices, 500

Editors' Table, 503

* * * * *

'MY SOUTHERN FRIENDS,' by the author of 'Among the Pines,' is just issued from the press of G. W. CARLETON, 413 Broadway, N. Y. Price, $l, cloth; 75 cts., paper covers.

* * * * *

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.

JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER.