"When, in later years, he revisited the scenes of his childhood, he made no effort to conceal his affection for them; as he wandered among the mountains and along the valleys, so dearly remembered, his eye would grow bright, his face beam with pleasure, and his voice sound with the tone of deep sensibility. He grew eloquent as he described the beauty spread out before him, and lovingly dwelt on the majesty and grandeur of the mountain at the foot of which his infancy was cradled. It was high companionship to be with him at such times. His ear was open to catch the note of every bird, which came to him like voices of well-beloved friends; he knew the brooks from their sources to their mouths, and the rivers murmured to him the songs they sang in the Auld Lang Syne. But deep as was the joy of these visits, they did not allure him from the more rugged paths of labor and duty."
The wisdom of Nelson's selection, if it need vindication, is abundantly established by the memorial of him reported by a committee, of which Lewis S. Dabney was chairman, and adopted by the Suffolk Bar. The Bar, speaking of the doubt expressed in the beginning by those who feared an inland lawyer on the Admiralty Bench, goes on to say:
"Those who knew him well, however, knew that he had been a successful master and referee in many complicated cases of great importance; that his mathematical and scientific knowledge acquired in his early profession as an engineer was large and accurate, and would be useful in his new position; that he who had successfully drawn important public acts would be a successful interpreter of such acts; that always a student approaching every subject, not as an advocate but as a judicial observer, he would give that attention to whatever was new among the problems of his judicial office that would make him their best master and interpreter, and that what in others might be considered weakness or indolence was but evidence of a painful shrinking from displaying in public a naturally firm, strong, earnest and persistent character, a character which would break out through the limitations of nature whenever the occasion required it.
"Those who, as his associates upon the Bench, or as practitioners before him at the Bar, have had occasion to watch his long and honorable career, now feel that the judgment of his friends was the best and that his appointment has been justified; and those who have known him as an Associate Justice of the Circuit Court of Appeals have felt this even more strongly."
Another striking figure of my time was Horace Gray. He was in the class before me at Harvard, though considerably younger. I knew him by sight only in those days. He was very tall, with an exceedingly youthful countenance, and a head that looked then rather small of so large-limbed a youth—rather awkward in his gait and bearing. But after he reached manhood he grew into one of the finest-looking men of his time. I believe he was the tallest man in Boston. He expanded in every way to a figure which corresponded to his stately height. He was the grandson of the famous William Gray, the great merchant and ship-owner of New England, who was an important figure in the days just preceding and just following the War of 1812. Many anecdotes are still current of his wise and racy sayings. His sons inherited large fortunes and were all of them men of mark and influence in Boston. Francis C. Grey, the Judge's uncle, was a man of letters, a historical investigator. He discovered the priceless Body of Liberties of 1641, which had remained unprinted from that time, although the source from which our Bill of Rights and constitutional provisions had been so largely drawn.
Judge Gray's father was largely employed in manufacturing and owned some large iron works. The son had been brought up, I suppose, to expect that his life would be one of comfort and ease, free from all anxieties about money, and the extent of the labor of life would be, perhaps, to visit the counting- room a few hours in the day to look over the books and see generally that his affairs were properly conducted by his agents and subordinates. He had visited Europe more than once, and was abroad shortly after his graduation when the news reached him that the companies in which his father's fortune was invested had failed. He at once hurried home and set himself resolutely to work to take care of himself. He was an accomplished naturalist for his age and time, and had a considerable library of works on natural history. He exchanged them for law-books and entered the Law School. I was splitting wood to make my own fire one autumn morning when my door, which was ajar, was pushed open, and I saw a face somewhere up in the neighborhood of the transom. It was Gray, who had come to inquire what it was all about. He had little knowledge of the rules or fashions of the Law School. I told him about the scheme of instruction and the hours of lectures, and so forth. We became fast friends, a friendship maintained to his death. He at once manifested a very vigorous intellect and a memory, not only for legal principles, but for the names of cases, which I suppose had been cultivated by his studies in natural history and learning the scientific names of birds and plants. At any rate, he became one of the best pupils in the Law School. He afterward studied law with Edward D. Sohier, and immediately after his admission became known as one of the most promising young men at the Bar. Luther S. Cushing was then Reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court. He was in poor health and employed Gray to represent him as Reporter on the Circuit. Gray always had a marvellous gift of remembering just where a decision of principle of law could be found, and his thumb and forefinger would travel instantly to the right book on the obscurest shelf in a Law Library. So nothing seemed to escape his thorough and indefatigable research. When he was on the Circuit, learned counsel would often be arguing some question of law for which they had most industriously prepared, when the young Reporter would hand them a law-book with a case in it which had escaped their research. So the best lawyers all over the State got acquainted at an early day with his learning and industry, and when Cushing soon after was obliged to resign the office of Reporter, Gray was appointed by the general consent of the best men of the profession, although he had as a competition Judge Perkins, a very well known lawyer and Judge, who had edited some important law-books and was a man of mature age. This was in 1854, only three years after his admission to the Bar. The office of Reporter was then one of the great offices of the State, almost equal in dignity to that of the Judge of the Supreme Court itself. Four of our Massachusetts Reporters have been raised to that Bench. He was quite largely retained and employed during that period, especially in important questions of commercial law. He resigned his office of Reporter about the time of the breaking out of the war. Governor Andrew depended upon his advice and guidance in some very important and novel questions of military law, and in 1864 he was appointed Associate Justice of the Court. In 1873 he became its Chief Justice, and in 1882 was made Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The extent of his learning and the rapidity and thoroughness of his research were marvellous. But it is not upon this alone, or chiefly, that his fame as one of the great Judges of the world will rest. He was a man of a native, original intellectual power, unsurpassed by any man who has been on the Bench in his time, either in this country or in England. His decisions have been as sound and as acceptable to the profession upon questions where no authority could be found upon which to rest, and upon questions outside of the beaten paths of jurisprudence as upon those where he found aid in his great legal learning. He was a remarkably acceptablenisi-priusJudge, when holding court in the rural counties, and, though bred in a city, where human nature is not generally learned so well, he was especially fortunate and successful in dealing with questions of fact which grow out of the transactions of ordinary and humble life in the country. He manifested on one or two occasions the gift of historical research and discussion for which his uncle Francis was so distinguished.
It was my sorrowful duty to preside at a meeting of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States to express their sense of their great loss and that of the whole country, after Gray's death.
I add some extracts from the remarks which I made on that occasion:
The Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States come together to pay a tribute of honor to a great lawyer and Judge. I shall have, I am sure, another opportunity to put on record my own sense of the irreparable loss of a dear friend and comrade of more than fifty years. To-day we are to speak, as members of the Bar, of an honored Judge whom the inexorable shaft has stricken in his high place.
He was in his seat in the Supreme Court of the United States for the last time Monday, February 3, 1902. On the evening of that day he had a slight paralytic shock, which seriously affected his physical strength. He retained his mental strength and activity unimpaired until just before his death. On the 9th day of July, 1902, he sent his resignation to the President, to take effect on the appointment and qualifying of his successor. So, he died in office, September 15, 1902.
On his mother's side Judge Gray was the grandson of Jabez Upham, one of the great lawyers of the day, who died in 1811, at the age of forty-six, after a brief service in the National House of Representatives. He was settled in Brookfield, Worcester County. But the traditions of his great ability were fresh when I went there to live, nearly forty years after his death. The memory of the beauty and sweetness and delightful accomplishment of Mr. Upham's daughter, Judge Gray's mother, who died in the Judge's early youth, was still fragrant among the old men and women who had been her companions. She is mentioned repeatedly in the letters of that accomplished Scotch lady —friend of Walter Scott and of so many of the English and Scotch men of letters in her time—Mrs. Grant of Laggan. Mrs. Grant says in a letter published in her Memoir: "My failing memory represents my short intercourse with Mrs. Gray as if some bright vision from a better world had come and, vanishing, left a trail behind." In another letter she speaks of the enchantment of Mrs. Gray's character: "Anything so pure, so bright, so heavenly I have rarely met with."
The title, which the kindness of our countrymen has given to Massachusetts, that of Model Commonwealth, I think has been earned largely by the character of her Judiciary, and never could have been acquired without it. Among the great figures that have adorned that Bench in the past, the figure of Justice Gray is among the most conspicuous and stately.
Judge Gray has had from the beginning a reputation for wonderful research. Nothing ever seemed to escape his industry and profound learning. This was shown on a few occasions when he undertook some purely historical investigation, as in his notes on the case of the Writs of Assistance, argued by James Otis and reported in Quincy's Reports, and his recent admirable address at Richmond, on Chief Justice Marshall. But while all his opinions are full of precedent and contain all the learning of the case, he was, I think, equally remarkable for the wisdom, good sense, and strength of his judgments. I do not think of any Judge of his time anywhere, either here or in England, to whom the profession would ascribe a higher place if he be judged only by the correctness of his opinions in cases where there were no precedents on which to lean and for the excellent original reasons which he had to give. I think Judge Gray's fame, on the whole, would have been greater as a man of original power if he had resisted, sometimes, the temptation to marshal an array of cases, and had suffered his judgments to stand on his statement of legal principles without the authorities. He manifested another remarkable quality when he was on the Bench of Massachusetts. He was an admirablenisi-priusJudge. I think we rarely have had a better. He possessed that faculty which made the jury, in the old days, so admirable a mechanism for performing their part in the administration of justice. He had the rare gift, especially rare in men whose training has been chiefly upon the Bench, of discerning the truth of the fact, in spite of the apparent weight of the evidence. That Court, in his time, had exclusive jurisdiction of divorces and other matters affecting the marital relations. The Judge had to hear and deal with transactions of humble life and of country life. It was surprising how this man, bred in a city, in high social position, having no opportunity to know the modes of thought and of life of poor men and of rustics, would settle these interesting and delicate questions, affecting so deeply the life of plain men and country farmers, and with what unerring sagacity he came to the wise and righteous result.
Judge Gray's opinions for the eighteen years during which he sat on the Bench of Massachusetts constitute an important body of jurisprudence, from which the student can learn the whole range of the law as it rests on principle and on authority.
And so it came to pass when the place of Mr. Justice Clifford became vacant that by the almost universal consent of the New England Circuit, with the general approval of the profession throughout the whole country, Mr. Justice Gray became his successor. Of his service here there are men better qualified to speak than I am. He took his place easily among the great Judges of the world. He has borne himself in his great office so, I believe, as to command the approbation of his countrymen of all sections and of all parties. He has been every inch a Judge. He has maintained the dignity of his office everywhere. He has endeared himself to a large circle of friends here at the National Capital by his elegant and gracious hospitality. His life certainly has been fortunate. The desire of his youth has been fulfilled. From the time, more than fifty years ago, when he devoted himself to his profession, there has been, I suppose, no moment when he did not regard the office of a Justice of the Supreme Court as not only the most attractive but also the loftiest of human occupations. He has devoted himself to that with a single purpose. He has sought no fame or popularity by any other path. Certainly his life has been fortunate. It has lasted to a good old age. But the summons came for him when his eye was not dimmed nor his natural force abated. He drank of the cup of the waters of life while it was sweetest and clearest, and was not left to drink it to the dregs. He was fortunate also, almost beyond the lot of humanity, in that by a rare felicity, the greatest joy of youth came to him in an advanced age. Everything that can make life honorable, everything that can make life happy— honor, success, the consciousness of usefulness, the regard of his countrymen, and the supremest delight of family life— all were his. His friends take leave of him as another of the great and stately figures in the long and venerable procession of American Judges.
Next to Judge Wilde in seniority upon the Bench among the associate Judges was Mr. Justice Charles A. Dewey of Northampton. He had had a good deal of experience as a prosecuting attorney in a considerable general practice in the western part of the State. He was careful in his opinions never to go beyond what was necessary for the case at bar. It is said that there is no instance that any opinion of his was ever overruled in a very long judicial service.
Judge Dewey was a man of absolute integrity and faithful in the discharge of his judicial duty. He had no sentiment and, so far as I ever knew, took little interest in matters outside of his important official duties. He was very careful in the management of property. When the Democrats were in power in Massachusetts in 1843 they reduced the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Court in violation of the Constitutional provision. Chief Justice Shaw refused to touch a dollar of his salary until the Legislature the next year restored the old salary and provided for the payment of the arrears. Judge Dewey held out for one quarter. But the next quarter he went quietly to the State House, drew his quarter's salary, went down on to State Street and invested it, and did the same every quarter thereafter.
In the days of my early practice the Supreme Court used to sit in Worcester for about five or six weeks, beginning in April. It had exclusive jurisdiction of real actions, and limited equity jurisdiction. All suits where the matter in issue was more than three hundred dollars might be brought originally in that court or removed there by the defendant from the Common Pleas if the plaintiff began it below. So the court had a great deal of business. It also had jurisdiction of divorce cases, appeals from the Probate Court and some special writs such as habeas corpus, certiorari and mandamus. But after all, the old Court of Common Pleas was the place where the greater part of the law business of the county was transacted. There were at first four civil terms in the year, and, after Fitchburg became a half shire, there were two more terms held there. The Common Pleas had jurisdiction of all crimes except capital.
There were some very interesting characters among the old Judges of the Common Pleas. Among the most remarkable was Judge Edward Mellen, who was first side Judge and afterward Chief Justice. He was a man of great law-learning, indefatigable industry and remarkable memory for cases, diffuse and long- winded in his charges, and apt to take sides. He took everything very seriously. It is said that he would listen to the most pathetic tale of human suffering unmoved, but would burst into tears at the mention of a stake and stones or two chestnut staddles.
Mellen with the other Judges of the old Common Pleas Court was legislated off the Bench by the abolition of that court in 1858. He moved from Middlesex to Worcester and resumed practice, but was never largely employed. He was a repository of the old stories of the Middlesex Bar, many of which died with him.
A Lowell lawyer told me this story of Judge Mellen. My informant had in his office a law student who spent most of his time in reading novels and poetry and writing occasionally for the newspapers. He was anxious to get admitted to the Bar and had crammed for the examination. In those days, unless the applicant had studied three years, when he was admitted as of course, the Judge examined him himself. The Judge was holding court at Concord, and an arrangement was made that the youngster should go to the Judge's room in the evening and submit himself to the examination. He kept the appointment, but in about ten minutes came out. My informant, who had recommended him, asked him what was the matter. He said he didn't know. The Judge had asked him one question only. He was sure he answered it right, but the Judge immediately dismissed him with great displeasure. The next morning the lawyer went up to Judge Mellen in court and said, "Judge, what was the matter with the young man last night? Did you not find him fitted?"
"Fitted?" said the Judge. "No sir. I asked him what was the rule in Shelley's Case, and he told me the rule in Shelley's Case was that when the father was an atheist the Lord Chancellor would appoint a guardian for his children."
"Ah," was the reply. "I see. The trouble is that neither of you ever heard of the other's Shelley."
Judge Byington of Stockbridge in Berkshire used to come to Worcester a great deal to hold the old Common Pleas Court. He was an excellent lawyer and an excellent Judge—dry, fond of the common law, and of black letter authorities. He had a curious habit of giving his charge in one long sentence without periods, but with a great many parentheses. But he had great influence with the juries and was very sound and correct in his law. I once tried a case before him for damages for the seizure of a stock of liquors under the provisions of the Statute of 1852, known as the Maine Liquor Law, which had been held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. He began: "The Statute of 1852 chapter so-and-so gentlemen of the jury commonly known as the Maine Liquor Law which has created great feeling throughout this Commonwealth some very good men were in favor of it and some very good men were against it read literally part of it would be ridiculous and you may take your seats if you please gentlemen of the jury I shall be occupied some time in my charge and I do not care to keep you standing and some of it would be absurd and some of it reads very well." And so on.
A neighbor of Judge Byington from Berkshire County was Judge Henry W. Bishop of Stockbridge. He was an old Democratic politician and at one time the candidate of his party for Governor. He was not a very learned lawyer, but was quick- witted and picked up a good deal from the arguments of counsel. Aided by a natural shrewdness and sense, he got along pretty well. He had a gift of rather bombastic speech. His exuberant eloquence was of a style more resembling that prevalent in some other parts of the country than the more sober and severe fashion of New England. Just before he came to the Bench he was counsel in a real estate case in Springfield where Mr. Chapman, afterward Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was on the other side. The evidence of recent occupation and the monuments tended in favor of Chapman's client. But it turned out that the one side had got a title under the original grant of the town of Blandford, and the other under the original grant of an adjoining town, and that the town line had been maintained from the beginning where Bishop claimed the true line to be. When he came to that part of the case, he rose mightily in his stirrups. Turning upon Chapman, who was a quiet, mild-mannered old gentleman, he said: "The gentleman's eyes may twinkle like Castor and Pollux, twin stars; but he can't wink out of sight that town line of Blandford. He may place one foot on Orion and the other on Arcturus, and seize the Pleiades by the hair and wring all the water from their dripping urns; but he can't wash out that town line of Blandford." The local newspaper got hold of the speech and reported it, and it used to be spoken occasionally by the school boys for their declamation. Bishop is said to have been much disturbed by the ridicule it created, and to have refused ever to go to Springfield again on any professional employment.
Judge Aldrich was appointed to the Bench of the Superior Court of Massachusetts by Governor William B. Washburn after I left the practice of law for public life. I appeared before him in a very few cases and must take his judicial quality largely from the report of others. He was a very powerful and formidable advocate, especially in cases where moral principles or the family relations were concerned, or where any element of pathos enabled him to appeal to the jury. The most tedious hours of my life, I think, have been those when I was for the defendant and he for the plaintiff, and I had to sit and listen to his closing argument in reply to mine. He had a gift of simple eloquence; the influence with juries which comes from earnestness and the profound conviction of the righteousness of the cause he had advocated, and the weight of an unsullied personal character and unquestioned integrity.
Mr. Aldrich's appointment to the Bench came rather late in his life, so he was not promoted to the Supreme Court, which would undoubtedly have happened if he had been younger. He was an excellent magistrate and the author of one or two valuable law books. Although my chief memories of him are of the many occasions on which I have crossed swords with him, and of battles when our feelings and sympathy were profoundly stirred, still they are of the most affectionate character. He had a quick temper and was easily moved to anger in the trial of a case. But as an eminent western Judge is reported to have said in speaking of some offence that had been committed at the Bar, "This Court herself are naterally quick-tempered." So the sparks of our quarrels went out as quickly as they were kindled. I think of P. Emory Aldrich as a stanch and constant friend, from whom, so long as his life lasted, I received nothing but friendliest sympathy and constant and powerful support.
Judge Aldrich, as I just said, was a man of quick temper. He was ready to accept any challenge to a battle, especially one which seemed to have anything of a personal disrespect in it. I was present on one occasion when the ludicrous misspelling of a word, it is very likely, saved him from coming to blows with a very worthy and well-known citizen of Worcester County. Colonel Artemus Lee, of Templeton, one of the most estimable citizens of northern Worcester County, a man imperious and quick-tempered, who had been apt to have his own way in the region where he dwelt, and not very willing to give up to anybody, employed me once to bring suit for him against the Town of Templeton to recover taxes which he claimed had been illegally assessed and collected. He was a man whose spelling had been neglected in early youth. Aldrich was for the Town. All the facts showing the illegality of the assessment, of course, were upon the Town records. So we thought if the parties met with their counsel we could agree upon a statement of facts and submit the question of law to the court. We met in Judge Aldrich's office, Colonel Lee and myself and Judge Aldrich and some of the Town officers, to make up the statement. But Mr. Aldrich had not had time to look very deeply into the law of the case, and made some difficulties in agreeing upon the facts, which we thought rather unreasonable. We sat up to a late hour in a hot summer evening trying to get at a statement. At last Lee's patience gave out. He had had one or two hot passages at arms with Mr. Aldrich in the course of the discussion already. He rose to his feet and said in a very loud and angry tone—his voice was always something like that of a bull of Basham—"This is a farce." Aldrich rose from his seat and to the occasion and said very angrily, "What's that you say, Sir?" Lee clenched both fists by his side, thrust his own angry countenance close up to that of his antagonist, and said, "A farce, Sir—F-A-R-S- E, Farce." Aldrich caught my eye as I was sitting behind my client and noticed my look of infinite amusement. His anger yielded to the comedy of the occasion. He burst into a roar of laughter and peace was saved. If Lee had spelled the word farce with a "c," there would have been a battle royal.
I close this book with a statement of the political principles which I think define the duty of the American people in the near future, and from which I hope the Republic will not depart until time shall be no more; and of the simple religious faith in which I was bred, and to which I now hold.
They cannot to my mind be separated. One will be found insome resolutions offered in the Senate December 20, 1899.The other in what I said on taking the chair at the NationalUnitarian Conference, at Washington, in October 1899.
"Mr. Hoar submitted the following resolution:
"WHEREAS the American people and the several States in the Union have in times past, at important periods in their history, especially when declaring their Independence, establishing their Constitutions, or undertaking new and great responsibilities, seen fit to declare the purposes for which the Nation or State was founded and the important objects the people intend to pursue in their political action; and
"WHEREAS the close of a great war, the liberation by the United States of the people of Cuba and Porto Rico in the Western Hemisphere and of the Philippine Islands in the far East, and the reduction of those peoples to a condition of practical dependence upon the United States, constitute an occasion which makes such a declaration proper; Therefore, be it
"Resolved,That this Republic adheres to the doctrines which were in the past set forth in the Declaration of Independence and in its National and State constitutions.
"Resolved,That the purpose of its existence and the objects to which its political action ought to be directed are the ennobling of humanity, the raising from the dust its humblest and coarsest members, and the enabling of persons coming lawfully under its power or influence to live in freedom and in honor under governments in whose forms they are to have a share in determining and in whose administration they have an equal voice. Its most important and pressing obligations are:
"First. To solve the difficult problem presented by the presence of different races on our own soil with equal Constitutional rights; to make the Negro safe in his home, secure in his vote, equal in his opportunity for education and employment, and to bring the Indian to a civilization and culture in accordance with his need and capacity.
"Second. To enable great cities to govern themselves in freedom, in honor, and in purity.
"Third. To make the ballot box as pure as a sacramental vessel, and the election return as perfect in accord with the law and the truth as a judgment of the Supreme Court.
"Fourth. To banish illiteracy and ignorance from the land.
"Fifth. To secure for every workman and for every working woman wages enough to support a life of comfort and an old age of leisure and quiet, as befits those who have an equal share in a self-governing State.
"Sixth. To grow and expand over the continent and over the islands of the sea just so fast, and no faster, as we can bring into equality and self-government under our Constitution peoples and races who will share these ideals and help to make them realities.
"Seventh. To set a peaceful example of freedom which mankind will be glad to follow, but never to force even freedom upon unwilling nations at the point of the bayonet or at the cannon's mouth.
"Eighth. To abstain from interfering with the freedom and just rights of other nations or peoples, and to remember that the liberty to do right necessarily involves the liberty to do wrong; and that the American people has no right to take from any other people the birthright of freedom because of a fear that they will do wrong with it."
"The part assigned to me, in the printed plan of our proceedings, is the delightful duty of bidding you welcome. But you find a welcome from each other in the glance of the eye, in the pressure of the hand, in the glad tone of the voice, better than any that can be put into formal words.
From hand to hand the greeting goes;From eye to eye the signals run;From heart to heart to bright hope glows;The seekers of the light are one.
Every Unitarian, man and woman, every lover of God or HisSon, every one who in loving his fellow-men loves God andHis Son, even without knowing it, is welcome in this company.
"We are sometimes told, as if it were a reproach, that we cannot define Unitarianism. For myself, I thank God that it is not to be defined. To define is to bound, to enclose, to set limit. The great things of the universe are not to be defined. You cannot define a human soul. You cannot define the intellect. You cannot define immortality or eternity. You cannot define God.
"I think, also, that the things we are to be glad of and to be proud of and are to be thankful for are not those things that separate us from the great body of Christians or the great body of believers in God and in righteousness, but in the things that unite us with them. No Five Points, no Athanasian Creed, no Thirty-nine Articles, separate the men and women of our way of thinking from humanity or from Divinity.
"But still, although we do not define Unitarianism, we know our own when we see them. There are men and women who like to be called by our name. There are men and women for whom Faith, Hope, and Charity forever abide; to whom Judea's news are still glad tidings; who believe that one day Jesus Christ came to this earth, bearing a Divine message and giving a Divine example. There are women who bear their own sorrows of life by soothing the sorrows of others; youths who, when Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,' reply, "I can'; and old men to whom the experience of life has taught the same brave lesson; examples of the patriotism that will give its life for its country when in the right, and the patriotism that will make itself of no reputation, if need be, to save its country from being in the wrong.
"They do not comprehend the metaphysics of a Trinal Unity, nor how it is just that innocence should be punished, that guilt may go free. They do not attribute any magic virtue to the laying on of hands; nor do they believe that the traces of an evil life in the soul can be washed out by the sprinkling of a few drops of water, however pure, or by baptism in any blood, however innocent, in the hour of death. But they do understand the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, and they know and they love and they practise the great virtues which the Apostle tells us are to abide.
"I think there can be found in this country no sectarianism so narrow, so hide-bound, so dogma-clad, that it would like to blot out from the history of the country what the men of our faith have contributed to it. On the first roll of this Washington parish will be found close together the names of John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams. John Quincy Adams had learned from his father and mother the liberal Christian faith he transmitted to his illustrious son. If we would blot out Unitarianism from the history of the country, we must erase the names of many famous statesmen, many famous philanthropists, many great reformers, many great orators, many famous soldiers, from its annals, and nearly all of our great poets from its literature.
"I could exhaust not only the time I have a right to take, but I could fill a week if I were to recall their names and tell the story of their lives. Still less could I speak adequately of the men and women who, in almost every neighborhood throughout the country, have found in this Unitarian faith of ours a stimulant to brave and noble lives and a sufficient comfort and support in the hour of a brave death. As I stand here on this occasion, my heart is full of one memory,—of one who loved our Unitarian faith with the whole fervor of his soul, who in his glorious prime, possessing everything which could make life happy and precious, the love of wife and children and friends, the joy of professional success, the favor of his fellow-citizens, the fulness of health, the consciousness of high talent, heard the voice of the Lord speaking from the fever-haunted hospital and the tropical swamp, and the evening dews and damps, saying, 'Where is the messenger that will take his life in his hand, that I may send him to carry health to my stricken soldiers and sailors?' When the Lord said, 'Whom shall I send?' he answered, 'Here am I: send me.'*
[Footnote]* Sherman Hoar, who after a brilliant public and professional career,gave his life to his country by exposure in caring for the sick soldiersof the Spanish war.[End of Footnote]
"The difference between Christian sects, like the difference between individual Christians, is not so much in the matter of belief or disbelief of portions of the doctrine of the Scripture as in the matter ofemphasis.It is a special quality and characteristic of Unitarianism that Unitarians everywhere lay special emphasis upon the virtue of Hope. It was said of Cromwell by his secretary that hope shone in him like a fiery pillar when it had gone out in every other.
"There are two great texts in the Scripture in whose sublime phrases are contained the germs of all religion, whether natural or revealed. They lay hold on two eternities. One relates to Deity in his solitude—'Before Abraham was, I am.' The other is for the future. It sums up the whole duty and the whole destiny of man: 'And now abideth Faith, Hope, and Charity,—these three.' If Faith, Hope, and Charity abide, then Humanity abides. Faith is for beings without the certainty of omniscience. Hope is for beings without the strength of omnipotence. And Charity, as the apostle describes it, affects the relations of beings limited and imperfect to one another.
"Why is it that this Christian virtue of Hope is placed as the central figure of the sublime group who are to accompany the children of God through their unending life? It is because without it Faith would be impossible and Charity would be wasted.
"Hope is that attribute of the soul which believes in the final triumph of righteousness. It has no place in a theology which believes in the final perdition of the larger number of mankind. Mighty Jonathan Edwards,—the only genius since Dante akin to Dante,—could you not see that, if your world exist where there is no hope and where there is no love, there can be no faith? Who can trust the promise of a God who has created a Universe and peopled it with fiends? The Apostle of your doleful gospel must preach quite another Evangel: And now abideth Hate, and now abideth Wrath, and now abideth Despair, and now abideth Woe unutterable. With Hope, as we have defined it,—namely, the confident expectation of the final triumph of righteousness,—we are but a little lower than the angels; without it we are but a kind of vermin.
"The literature of free countries is full of cheer: the story ends happily. The fiction of despotic countries is hopeless. People of free countries will not tolerate a fiction which teaches that in the end evil is triumphant and virtue is wretched. Want of hope means either distrust of God or a belief in the essential baseness of man or both. It teaches men to be base. It makes a country base. A world wherein there is no hope is a world where there is no virtue. The contrast between the teacher of hope and the teacher of despair is to be found in the pessimism of Carlyle and the serene cheerfulness of Emerson. Granting to the genius of Carlyle everything that is claimed for it, I believe that his chief title hereafter to respect as a moral teacher will be found in Emerson's certificate.
"But I must not detain you any longer from the business which waits for this convention. It is the last time that I shall enjoy the great privilege and honor of occupying this chair.
"Perhaps I may be pardoned, as I have said something of the religious faith of my fellow Unitarians, if I declare my own, which I believe is theirs also. I have no faith in fatalism, in destiny, in blind force. I believe in God, the living God, in the American people, a free and brave people, who do not bow the neck or bend the knee to any other, and who desire no other to bow the neck or bend the knee to them. I believe that the God who created this world has ordained that his children may work out their own salvation and that his nations may work out their own salvation by obedience to his laws without any dictation or coercion from any other. I believe that liberty, good government, free institutions, cannot be given by any one people to any other, but must be wrought out for each by itself, slowly, painfully, in the process of years or centuries, as the oak adds ring to ring. I believe that a Republic is greater than an Empire. I believe that the moral law and the Golden Rule are for nations as well as for individuals. I believe in George Washington, not in Napoleon Bonaparte; in the Whigs of the Revolutionary day, not in the Tories; the Chatham, Burke, and Sam Adams, not in Dr. Johnson or Lord North. I believe that the North Star, abiding in its place, is a greater influence in the Universe than any comet or meteor. I believe that the United States when President McKinley was inaugurated was a greater world power than Rome in the height of her glory or even England with her 400,000,000 vassals. I believe, finally, whatever clouds may darken the horizon, that the world is growing better, that to-day is better than yesterday, and to-morrow will be better than to-day."
To give a complete and truthful account of my own life, the name of Edward Everett Hale should appear on almost every page. I became a member of his parish in Worcester in August, 1849. Wherever I have been, or wherever he has been, I have been his parishioner ever since. I do not undertake to speak of him at length not only because he is alive, but because his countrymen know him through and through, almost as well as I do.
He has done work of the first quality in a great variety of fields. In each he has done work enough to fill the life and to fill the measure of fame of a busy and successful man. I have learned of him the great virtue of Hope; to judge of mankind by their merits and not their faults; to understand that the great currents of history, especially in a republic, more especially in our Republic, are determined by great and noble motives and not by mean and base motives.
In his very best work Dr. Hale seems always to be doing and saying what he does and says extempore, without premeditation. Where he gets the time to acquire his vast stores of knowledge, or to think the thoughts we all like to hear, nobody can tell. When he speaks or preaches or writes, he opens his intellectual box and takes the first appropriate thing that comes to hand.
I do not believe we have a more trustworthy historian than Dr. Hale, so far as giving us the motive and pith and essence of great transactions. He is sometimes criticised for inaccuracy in dates or matters that are trifling or incidental. I suppose that comes from the fact that while he stores away in his mind everything that is essential, and trusts to his memory for that, he has not the time, which less busy men have, to verify every unsubstantial detail before he speaks or writes. Sir Thomas Browne put on record his opinion of such critics in the "Christian Morals."
"Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition and human Lapses, may make not only Moles but Warts in learned Authors, who notwithstanding, being judged by the capital matter, admit not of disparagement. I should unwillingly affirm that Cicero was but slightly versed in Homer, because in his WorkDe Gloriahe ascribed those verses unto Ajax, which were delivered by Hector. Capital Truths are to be narrowly eyed, collateral Lapses and circumstantial deliveries not to be too strictly sifted. And if the substantial subject be well forged out, we need not examine the sparks which irregularly fly from it."
When Dr. Hale was eighty years old, his countrymen manifested their affection for him in a manner which I think no other living man could have commanded. It was my great privilege to be asked to say to him what all men were thinking, at a great meeting in Boston. The large and beautiful hall was thronged with a very small portion of his friends. If they had all gathered, the City itself would have been thronged. I am glad to associate my name with that of my beloved teacher and friend by preserving here what I said. It is a feeble and inadequate tribute.
The President of the United States spoke for the whole country in the message which he sent:
WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, Mar. 25, 1902.
My dear Sen. Hoar:I very earnestly wish I could be at the meeting over which you are to preside in honor of the eightieth birthday of Edward Everett Hale. A classical allusion or comparison is always very trite; but I suppose all of us who have read the simpler classical books think of Timoleon in his last days at Syracuse, loved and honored in his old age by the fellow citizens in whose service he had spent the strength of his best years, as one of the noblest and most attractive figures in all history. Dr. Hale is just such a figure now.
We love him and we revere him. We are prouder of our citizenship because he is our fellow citizen; and we feel that his life and his writing, both alike, spur us steadily to fresh effort toward high thinking and right living. To have written "The Man Without a Country" by itself would be quite enough to make all the nation his debtor. I belong to the innumerable army of those who owe him much, and through you I wish him Godspeed now.
Ever faithfully yours,THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
I spoke as follows:
"If I try to say all that is in my heart to-night, I do not know where to begin. If I try to say all that is in your hearts, or in the hearts of his countrymen, I do not know where to leave off. Yet I can only say what everybody here is silently saying to himself. When one of your kindred or neighbors comes to be eighty years old, after a useful and honored life, especially if he be still in the vigor of manly strength, his eye not dim or his natural force abated, his children and his friends like to gather at his dwelling in his honor, and tell him the story of their gratitude and love. They do not care about words. It is enough if there be pressure of the hand and a kindly and loving glance of the eye. That is all we can do now. But the trouble is to know how to do it when a man's friends and lovers and spiritual children are to be counted by the millions. I suppose if all the people in this country, and, indeed in all the quarters of the globe, who would like to tell their gratitude to Dr. Hale, were to come together to do it, Boston Common would not hold them.
"There is once in a while, through the quality is rare, an author, a historian, or a writer of fiction, or a preacher, or a pastor, or an orator or poet, or an influential or beloved citizen, who in everything he says or does seems to be sending a personal message from himself. The message is inspired and tinctured and charged and made electric with the quality of the individual soul. We know where it comes from. No mask, no shrinking modesty can hide the individuality. Every man knows from whom it comes, and hails it as a special message to himself. We say, That is from my friend to me! The message may be read by a million eyes and reach a million souls. But every one deems it private and confidential to him.
"This is only, when you come to think of it, carrying the genius for private and personal friendship into the man's dealing with mankind. I have never known anybody in all my long life who seemed to me to be joined by the heart- strings with so many men and women, wherever he goes, as Dr. Hale. I know in Worcester, where he used to live; I know in Washington, where he comes too seldom, and where for the last thirty-three years I have gone too often, poor women, men whose lives have gone wrong, or who are crippled in body or in mind, whose eyes watch for Dr. Hale's coming and going, and seem to make his coming and going, if they get a glimpse of him, the event they date from till he comes again. To me and my little household there, in which we never count more than two or three, his coming is the event of every winter.
"Dr. Hale has not been the founder of a sect. He has never been a builder of partition walls. He has helped throw down a good many. But still, without making proclamation, he has been the founder of a school which has enlarged and broadened the Church into the Congregation, and which has brought the whole Congregation into the Church.
"When he came, hardly out of his boyhood, to our little parish in Worcester, there was, so far as I know, no Congregational church in the country whether Unitarian or of the ancient Calvinistic faith, which did not require a special vote and ceremonial of admission to entitle any man to unite with his brethren in commemorating the Saviour as he desired his friends and brethren to remember him by the rite of the last supper. Until then, the Christian communion was but for a favored few. Mr. Hale believed that the greater the sinfulness of the individual soul the greater the need and the greater the title to be taken into the fellowship and the brotherhood of the Saviour of souls. So, without polemical discussion, or any heat of controversy, he set the example which has been so widely followed. This meant a great deal more than the abolition of a ceremonial or the change of a rubric. It was an assertion of the great doctrine, never till of late perfectly comprehended anywhere, that the Saviour of men came into the world inspired by the love of sinners, and not for an elect and an exclusive brotherhood of saints.
"We are not thinking chiefly of another world when we think of Dr. Hale or when we listen to him. He has been telling us all his life that what the theologians call two worlds are but one; that the Kingdom of God is here, within and around you; that there is but one Universe and not two; that the relation of man to God is that of father and child, not of master and slave, or even of sovereign and subject; that when man wields any of the great forces of the Universe, it is God also who is wielding them through him; that the power of a good man is one of God's powers, and that when man is doing his work faithfully the supreme power of God's omnipotence is with him.
"Dr. Hale has done a good many things in his own matchless fashion. He would have left a remarkable name and fame behind him if he had been nothing but a student and narrator of history, as he has studied and told it; if he had been nothing but a writer of fiction—the author of 'The Man Without a Country,' or 'Ten Times One is Ten,' or 'In His Name'—if he had done nothing but organize the Lend a Hand clubs, now found in the four quarters of the world; if he had been nothing but an eloquent Christian preacher; if he had been nothing but a beloved pastor; if he had been only a voice which lifted to heaven in prayer the souls of great congregations; if he had been only a public-spirited citizen, active and powerful in every good word and work for the benefit of this people; it he had been only the man who devised the plan that might have saved Texas from slavery, and thereby prevented the Civil War, and which did thereafter save Kansas; if he had been only remembered as the spiritual friend and comforter of large numbers of men and women who were desolate and stricken by poverty and sorrow; if he had been only a zealous lover of his country, comprehending, as scarcely any other man has comprehended, the true spirit of the American people; if he had been any one of these things, as he has been, it would be enough to satisfy the most generous aspiration of any man, enough to make his life worth living for himself and his race. And yet, and yet, do I exaggerate one particle, when I say that Dr. Hale has been all these, and more?
"Edward Everett Hale has been the interpreter of a pure, simple loving and living faith to thousands and thousands of souls. He has taught us that the fatherhood and tenderness of God are manifested here and now in this world, as they will be hereafter; that the religion of Christ is a religion of daily living; that salvation is the purifying of the soul from sin, not its escape from the consequences of sin. He is the representative and the incarnation of the best and loftiest Americanism. He knows the history of his country, and knows his countrymen through and through. He does not fancy that he loves his country, while he dislikes and despises his countrymen and everything they have done and are doing. The history he loves and has helped to write and to make is not the history of a base and mean people, who have drifted by accident into empire. It is the history of such a nation as Milton conceived, led and guided by men whom Milton would have loved. He will have a high and a permanent place in literature, which none but Defoe shares. He possesses the two rarest of gifts, that to give history the fascination of fiction, and that to give fiction the verisimilitude of history. He has been the minister of comfort in sorrow and of joy in common life to countless persons to whom his friendship is among their most precious blessings, or by whose fireside he sits, personally unknown, yet a perpetual and welcome guest.
"Still, the first duty of every man is to his own family. He may be a warrior or a statesman, or reformer, or philanthropist, or prophet or poet, if he careth not first for his own household, he is worse than an infidel. So the first duty of a Christian minister is still that of a pastor to his own flock. You know better than I do how it has been here in Boston; but every one of our little parish in Worcester, man or woman, boy or girl, has felt from the first time he or she knew him, ever afterward, that Dr. Hale has been taking hold of his hand. That warmth and that pressure abide through all our lives, and will abide to the end. There are countless persons who never saw his face, who still deem themselves his obedient, loving and perpetual parishioners.
"I knew very well a beautiful woman, left widowed, and childless, and solitary, and forlorn, to whom, after every other consolation seemed to have failed to awake her from her sorrow and despair, a friend of her own sex said: 'I thought you were one of Edward Hale's girls.' The appeal touched the right chord and brought her back again to her life of courage and Christian well-doing.
"He has ever been a prophet of good hope and a preacher of good cheer. When you have listened to one of his sermons, you have listened to an evangel, to good tidings. He has never stood aloof from the great battles for righteousness or justice. When men were engaged in the struggle to elevate the race for the good of their fellow men, no word of discouragement has ever come from his lips. He has recalled no memory of old failure in the past. He has never been found outside the ranks railing at or criticising the men who were doing the best work, or were doing the best work they knew how to do. He has never been afraid to tackle the evils that other men think hopeless. He has uttered his brave challenge to foemen worthy of his steel. Poverty and war and crime and sorrow are the enemies with whom he has striven.
"I do not know another living man who has exercised a more powerful influence on the practical life of his generation. He has taught us the truth, very simple, but somehow nobody ever got hold of it till he did, that virtue and brave living, and helping other men, can be made to grow by geometrical progression. I am told that Dr. Hale has more correspondents in Asia than the LondonTimes.I cannot tell how many persons are enrolled in the clubs of which he was the founder and inspirer.
"But I am disqualified to do justice to the theme you have assigned to me. For an impartial verdict you must get an impartial juryman. You will have to find somebody that loves him less than I do. You cannot find anybody who loves him more. To me he has been a friend and father and brother and counsellor and companion and leader and instructor; prophet of good hope, teacher of good cheer. His figure mingles with my household life, and with the life of my country. I can hardly imagine either without him. He has pictured for us the infinite desolation of the man without a country. But when his time shall come, what will be the desolation of the country without the man?
"And now what can we give you who have given us so much? We have something to give you on our side. We bring you a more costly and precious gift than any jewel or diadem, though it came from an Emperor's treasury.
Love is a present for a mighty King.
"We bring you the heart's love of Boston where you were born, and Worcester where you took the early vows you have kept so well; of Massachusetts who knows she has no worthier son, and of the great and free country to whom you have taught new lessons of patriotism, and whom you have served in a thousand ways.
"This prophet is honored in his own country. There will be a place found for him somewhere in the House of many Mansions. I do not know what will be the employment of our dear friend in the world whose messages he has been bringing to us so long. But I like to think he will be sent on some errands like that of the presence which came to Ben Adhem with a great wakening light, rich and like a lily in bloom, to tell him that the name of him who loved his fellow men led all the names of those the love of God had blessed."
The Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, is one of the very few primeval Forests of Britain that have survived to this century. It has just been my privilege to accompany Senator Hoar on a drive through a portion of it, and he has asked me to write a few notes on this visit, for the American Antiquarian Society, in the hope that others of its members may share in the interest he has taken in its archaeology.
I am indebted for many years' acquaintance with George F. Hoar, through Oliver Wendell Holmes, to the circumstance that the Hoar family lived in Gloucester from the time of the Tudors, if not earlier; and this has led him to pay repeated visits to our old city, with the object of tracing the history of his forefathers. In doing this he has been very successful; and only within the last few months my friend H. Y. J. Taylor, who is an untiring searcher of our old records, has come upon an item in the expenses of the Mayor and Burgesses, of a payment to Charles Hoar, in the year 1588, for keeping a horse ready to carry to Cirencester the tidings of the arrival of the Spanish Armada. And Charles Hoar's house is with us to this day, quaintly gabled, and with over-hanging timber-framed stories, such as the Romans built here in the first century. It stands in Longsmith Street, just above the spot where forty years ago I looked down on a beautiful tessellated pavement of, perhaps, the time of Valentinian. It was eight feet below the present surface; for Gloucester, like Rome, has been a rising city.
Senator Hoar had been making his headquarters at Malvern, and he drove over from there one afternoon, with a view to our going on in the same carriage to the Forest. A better plan would have been to run by rail to Newnham or Lydney, to be met by a carriage from the "Speech House," a government hotel in the centre of the woods; but as the arrangement had been made we let it stand.
To give a general idea of the positions of the places we are dealing with, I may say that Upton Knoll, where I am writing, stands on the steep edge of a spur of the Cotteswold Hills, three and a half miles south of Gloucester. Looking north, we have before us the great vale, or rather plain, of the Severn, bounded on the right by the main chain of the Cotteswolds, rising to just over one thousand feet; and on the left by the hills of Herefordshire, and the beautiful blue peaks of the Malverns; these last being by far the most striking feature in the landscape, rising as they do in a sharp serrated line abruptly from the plain below. They are about ten miles in length, and the highest point, the Worcestershire Beacon, is some fourteen hundred feet above the sea. It is the spot alluded to in Macaulay's lines on the Armada—
Till twelve fair counties saw the blaze on Malvern's lonely height;
and two hundred years before the Armada it was on "Malvern hulles" that William Langland "forwandered" till he fell asleep and dreamed his fiery "Vision of Piers Plowman"—
In a somere season, when softe was the sonne
when, looking "esteward, after the sonne" he beheld a castle on Bredon Hill
Truth was ther-ynne
and this great plain, that to him symbolized the world.
A fair feld ful of folke fonde ich ther bytwyne;Alle manere of men; the meme and the ryche.
Now, in the afternoon light, we can see the towns of Great and North Malvern, and Malvern Wells, nestling at foot of the steep slant; and eight miles to the right, but over thirty from where we stand, the cathedral tower of Worcester. The whole plain is one sea of woods with towers and steeples glinting from every part of it; notably Tewkesbury Abbey, which shines white in the sunlight some fourteen miles from us. Nearer, and to the right, Cheltenham stretches out under Cleeve Hill, the highest of the Cotteswolds; and to the left Gloucester, with its Cathedral dwarfing all the buildings round it. This wooded plain before us dies away in the north into two of the great Forests of ancient Britain; Wyre, on the left, from which Worcester takes its name; and Feckenham, on the right, with Droitwich as its present centre. Everywhere through this area we come upon beautiful old timber-framed houses of the Tudor time or earlier; Roman of origin, and still met with in towns the Romans garrisoned, such as Chester and Gloucester, though they have modernized their roofs, and changed their diamond window panes for squares, as in the old house of Charles Hoar's, previously mentioned.
Now if we turn from the north view to the west, we get a different landscape. Right before us, a mile off, is Robin's Wood Hill, a Cotteswold outlier; in Saxon times called "Mattisdun" or "Meadow-hill," for it is grassed to the top, among its trees. "Matson" House, there at its foot, was the abode of Charles I. during his siege of Gloucester in 1643. To the left of this hill we have again the Vale of the Severn, and beyond it, a dozen miles away, and stretching for twenty miles to the southwest are the hills of the Forest of Dean. They are steep, but not lofty—eight hundred or nine hundred feet. At their foot yonder, fourteen miles off, is the lake-like expanse of the Severn; and where it narrows to something under a mile is the Severn Bridge that carries the line into the Forest from the Midland Railway. Berkeley Castle lies just on the left of it, but is buried in the trees. Thornbury Tower, if not Thornbury Castle, further south, is visible when the sun strikes on it. Close to the right of the bridge is an old house that belonged to Sir Walter Raleigh; and, curiously enough, another on the river bank not far above it is said to have been occupied by Sir Francis Drake just before the coming of the Armada. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, who commanded the Spanish fleet, was ordered to detach a force as soon as he landed, to destroy the Forest of Dean, which was a principal source for timber for the British navy; and it is probable that the Queen's ministers were aware of this and took measures in defence, with which Drake had to do.
Two miles lower than the bridge is the Forest port of Lydney, now chiefly used for shipping coal; and as the ex-Verderer of the Forest resides near it, and he would be able to furnish information of interest to our American visitor, we decided to drive to Lydney to begin.
It was too late to start the same day, however; and Senator Hoar stayed at Upton, where his visit happens to mark the close of what is known as the "open-field" system of tillage; a sort of midway between the full possession of land by freehold, and unrestricted common rights. The area over which he walked, and which for thousands of years has been divided by "meres" and boundary stones, is now to be enclosed, and so will lose its archaeological claims to interest. In one corner of it, however, there still remains a fragment of Roman road, with some of the paving stones showing through the grass of the pasture field. The name of this piece of land gives the clue to its history. It is called Sandford; a corruption of Sarn Ford, fromsarnu(pronounced "sarney")to pave;andfford,a road. These are Celtic Cornish and Welsh words; and it should be noted that the names of the Roman roads in the Island as well as those of the mountains and rivers, are nearly all Celtic, and not Latin or Saxon.*
[Footnote] * The Whitcombe Roman Villa, four miles east of Upton, stands in a field called Sandals. In Lyson's description of it, written in 1819 it stands as _Sarn_dells. The paved road ran through the dell. [End of Footnote]
We made a short delay in the morning, at Gloucester, to give Senator Hoar time to go on board the boat "Great Western" which had just arrived in our docks from Gloucester, Massachusetts, to visit the mother city, after a perilous voyage across the Atlantic by Captain Blackburn single-handed. Senator Hoar having welcomed the captain in his capacity of an old Englishman and a New Englander "rolled into one," we set out for Lydney, skirting the bank of one arm of the Severn which here forms an island. It was on this Isle of Alney that Canute and Edmund Ironside fought the single-handed battle that resulted in their dividing England between them.* We pass on to the Island at Westgate Bridge; and a quarter of a mile further leave it by Over Bridge; one of Telford's beautiful works. Just below it the Great Western Railway crosses the river by an iron bridge, the western piers of which rest upon Roman foundations.
[Footnote]* Sharon Turner's "Anglo Saxons," Vol. III., Chap. XV.[End of Footnote]
One remarkable thing which I believe I forgot to mention to George Hoar as we crossed the Island, is, that the meadows on both sides of the causeway belong to the "Freemen" of the city; and that, go back as far as we may in history, we cannot find any account of the original foundation of this body. But we have this clue to it—that Gloucester was made into a Colony in the reign of Nerva, just before the end of the first century; and in each Roman colony lands were allotted to the soldiers of the legions who had become freemen by reason of having served for twenty-five years. These lands were always on the side of the city nearest the enemy; and the lands we are crossing are on the western side of Glevum, nearest theSilures,or South Welsh, who were always the most dangerous enemies the Romans had in Britain. Similarly, at Chester, the freemen's lands are on the west, or enemy's side, by the Dee. In Bath it was the same.
Immediately after passing "Over" Bridge we might turn off, it time permitted, to see Lassington Oak, a tree of giant size and unknown age; but as Emerson says—
There's not enough for this and that—Make thy option which of two!
and we make ours for Lydney. A dozen miles drive, often skirting the right bank of the Severn, brings us to Newnham, a picturesque village opposite a vast bend, or horse-shoe, of the river, and over which we get a beautiful view from the burial ground on the cliff. The water expands like a lake, beyond which the woods, house-interspersed, stretch away to the blue Cotteswold Hills; the monument to William Tyndale being a landmark on one of them—Nibley Knoll. Just under that monument was fought the last great battle between Barons. This battle of Nibley Knoll, between Lord Berkeley and Lord Lisle, left the latter dead on the field, at night, with a thousand of the men of the two armies; and made Lord Berkeley undisputed master of the estates whose name he bore.
We now leave the river, and turn inland; and in a short time we have entered the Forest of Dean proper; that is, the lands that belong to the Crown. Their area may be roughly set down as fifteen miles by ten; but in the time of the Conqueror, and for many years after, it was much larger; extending from Ross on the north, to Gloucester on the east, and thence thirty miles to Chepstow on the south-west. That is, it filled the triangle formed by the Severn and the Wye between these towns. It is doubtless due to this circumstance of its being so completely cut off from the rest of the country by these rivers that it has preserved more remarkably than any other Forest, the characteristics and customs of ancient British life, to which we shall presently refer; for their isolation has kept the Dean Foresters to this hour a race apart.
Sir James Campbell, who was for between thirty and forty years the chief "Verderer," or principal government officer of the Forest, lives near Lydney. He received us with great kindness, and gave us statistics of the rate of grown of the oak, both with and without transplantation. Part of them are published in an official report on the Forest (A 12808. 6/1884. Wt. 3276. Eyre & Spottiswoode, London) and part are in manuscript with which Senator Hoar has been presented. Briefly, the chief points are these:
In 1784 or thereabouts acorns were planted in "Acorn Patch Enclosure" in the Forest; and in 1800 trees marked A and B were taken from this place and planted opposite the "Speech House." Two, marked D and F, were drawn out of Acorn Patch in 1807 and planted near the Speech House fence. Another, marked N, was planted in 1807, five and one-half feet high, in the Speech House grounds, next the road; and L, M, N, X, have remained untransplanted in the Acorn Patch.
The dimensions were (circumference, six feet from the ground),in inches—A B D F L M N XIn 1814, Oct. 5, 14-3/4 14 11 9-1/2 15-5/8 18-1/2 13 24-1/21824, Oct. 20, 29-1/2 28-3/4 25-3/8 22-1/8 22-1/2 23-3/4 30-1/8 32-1/81844, Oct. 5, 58-1/2 58 45 46 35 34-1/2 57 44-1/21864, Oct. 1, 73-1/2 71 59-1/2 67-3/4 46-1/2 44 73-1/4 56
Another experiment tried by Sir James Campbell himself gave the following results:
Experiment begun in 1861 to test the value, if any, of merely lifting and replanting oak trees in the same holes without change of soil, situation, or giving increased space; as compared with the experiment already detailed, which was begun in 1800.
In 1861, twelve oak trees of about 25 years' growth, which had been self-sown (dropping from old trees afterwards cut down) in a thick plantation, were selected, all within gunshot of each other, and circumferences measured at five feet from the ground. Of these, six were taken up and immediately replanted in the same holes. The other six were not interfered with at all.
Aggregate admeasurement of six Aggregate admeasurement of sixdug up and replanted. Marked not interfered with. Marked ininwhitepaint 1, 2, 3, &c.redpaint 1, 2, 3, &c.1861, 24-1/2 inches 27 inches (i. e., 2-1/2 inches morethan the transplanted ones,at starting.)1866, 37-3/4 " 46-1/2 " (i. e., 10-7/8 inches morethan the transplanted onesat starting.)1886, 118-1/4 " 118-5/8 " (i. e., the transplantedones had nowregained10-1/2 inches.)1888, 125-1/2 " 123-1/2 " (The transplanted trees in '88had outgrown the others by2 ins.)1890, 133-7/8 " 128 " (The transplanted trees in '90had outgrown the others by5-7/8 ins.)1892, 141 " 131-1/4 " (The transplanted trees in '92had outgrown the others by9-3/4 ins.)
Thus proving that merely transplanting is beneficial to oaks; the benefit, however, being greater when the soil is changed and more air given.*
[Footnote] * The Earl of Ducie, who has had very large experience as an arboriculturist, doesnothold the view that oaks are benefited by transplanting, if the acorns are sownin good soil.In the case of trees that show little or no satisfactory progress after four years, but are only just able to keep alive, he cuts them down to the root. In the next season 80 per cent. of them send up shoots from two to three feet high, and at once start off on their life's mission. [End of Footnote]
From Lydney a drive of a few miles through pleasant ups and downs of woodland and field, brings us to Whitemead Park, the official residence of the Verderer, Philip Baylis. The title "Verderer" is Norman, indicating the administration of all that relates to the "Vert" or "Greenery" of the Forest; that is, of the timber, the enclosures, the roads, and the surface generally. The Verderer's Court is held at the "Speech House," to which we shall presently come: but the Forest of Dean is also a mineral district, and the Miners have a separate Court of their own. That some of their customs go back to a very remote antiquity we may well believe when we find the scale of which the Romans worked iron in the Forest; a scale so great that with their imperfect method of smelting with Catalan furnaces, etc., so much metal was left in the Roman cinder that it has been sought after all the way down to within the present generation as a source of profit; and in the time of Edward I., one-fourth of the king's revenue from this Forest was derived from the remelted Roman refuse.