——What was there in it?—said the schoolmistress,—and, upon my word, her tones were so very musical, that I almost wished I had said three voices instead of two, and not made the unpatriotic remark above reported.—Oh, I said, it had so muchwomanin it,—muliebrity, as well asfemineity;—no self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces into every word and movement; large, vigorous nature, running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly culture of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a lean soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds, are not the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us,—I have known families famous for them,—but ask the first person you meet a question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metallic, matter- of-business clink in the accents of the answer, that produces the effect of one of those bells which small trades-people connect with their shop- doors, and which spring upon your ear with such vivacity, as you enter, that your first impulse is to retire at once from the precincts.
——Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I saw and heard in a French hospital. Between two and three years old. Fell out of her chair and snapped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. Rough students round her, some in white aprons, looking fearfully business-like; but the child placid, perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years afterwards.—C'est tout comme un serin, said the French student at my side.
These are the voices which struck the key-note of my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to hear in heaven will be, if we shall enter through one of the twelve gates of pearl. There must be other things besides aërolites that wander from their own spheres to ours; and when we speak of celestial sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth than we dream. If mankind generally are the shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift in these little open boats of humanity to make one more trial to reach the shore,—as some grave theologians have maintained,—if, in plain English, men are the ghosts of dead devils who have "died into life," (to borrow an expression from Keats,) and walk the earth in a suit of living rags that lasts three or four score summers,— why, there must have been a few good spirits sent to keep them company, and these sweet voices I speak of must belong to them.
——I wish you could once hear my sister's voice,—said the schoolmistress.
If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one,—said I.
I never thought mine was anything,—said the schoolmistress.
How should you know?—said I.—People never hear their own voices,—any more than they see their own faces. There is not even a looking-glass for the voice. Of course, there is something audible to us when we speak; but that something is not our own voice as it is known to all our acquaintances. I think, if an image spoke to us in our own tones, we should not know them in the least.—How pleasant it would be, if in another state of being we could have shapes like our former selves for playthings,—we standing outside or inside of them, as we liked, and they being to us just what we used to be to others!
——I wonder if there will be nothing like what we call "play," after our earthly toys are broken,—said the schoolmistress.
Hush,—said I,—what will the divinity-student say?
[I thought she was hit, that time;—but the shot must have gone over her, or on one side of her; she did not flinch.]
Oh,—said the schoolmistress,—he must look out for my sister's heresies;I am afraid he will be too busy with them to take care of mine.
Do you mean to say,—said I,—that it isyour sisterwhom that student——
[The young fellow commonly known as John, who had been sitting on the barrel, smoking, jumped off just then, kicked over the barrel, gave it a push with his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his saucy-looking face in at the window so as to cut my question off in the middle; and the schoolmistress leaving the room a few minutes afterwards, I did not have a chance to finish it.
The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair, putting his heels on the top of another.
Pooty girl,—said he.
A fine young lady,—I replied.
Keeps a fust-rate school, according to accounts,—said he,—teaches all sorts of things,—Latin and Italian and music. Folks rich once,—smashed up. She went right ahead as smart as if she'd been born to work. That's the kind o' girl I go for. I'd marry her, only two or three other girls would drown themselves, if I did.
I think the above is the longest speech of this young fellow's which I have put on record. I do not like to change his peculiar expressions, for this is one of those cases in which the style is the man, as M. de Buffon says. The fact is, the young fellow is a good-hearted creature enough, only too fond of his jokes,—and if it were not for those heat-lightning winks on one side of his face, I should not mind his fun much.]
[Some days after this, when the company were together again, I talked a little.]
——I don't think I have a genuine hatred for anybody. I am well aware that I differ herein from the sturdy English moralist and the stout American tragedian. I don't deny that I hatethe sightof certain people; but the qualities which make me tend to hate the man himself are such as I am so much disposed to pity, that, except under immediate aggravation, I feel kindly enough to the worst of them. It is such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much worse than to inherit a hump- back or a couple of club-feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to love the crippled souls, if I may use this expression, with a certain tenderness which we need not waste on noble natures. One who is born with such congenital incapacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is entitled, not to our wrath, but to our profoundest sympathy. But as we cannot help hating the sight of these people, just as we do that of physical deformities, we gradually eliminate them from our society,—we love them, but open the window and let them go. By the time decent people reach middle age they have weeded their circle pretty well of these unfortunates, unless they have a taste for such animals; in which case, no matter what their position may be, there is something, you may be sure, in their natures akin to that of their wretched parasites.
——The divinity-student wished to know what I thought of affinities, as well as of antipathies; did I believe in love at first sight?
Sir,—said I,—all men love all women. That is theprimâ-facieaspect of the case. The Court of Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do so; and the individual man is bound to show cause why he does not love any particular woman. A man, says one of my old black-letter law-books, may show divers good reasons, as thus; He hath not seen the person named in the indictment; she is of tender age, or the reverse of that; she hath certain personal disqualifications,—as, for instance, she is a blackamoor, or hath an ill-favored countenance; or, his capacity of loving being limited, his affections are engrossed by a previous comer; and so of other conditions. Not the less is it true that he is bound by duty and inclined by nature to love each and every woman. Therefore it is that each woman virtually summons every man to show cause why he doth not love her. This is not by written document, or direct speech, for the most part, but by certain signs of silk, gold, and other materials, which say to all men,—Look on me and love, as in duty bound. Then the man pleadeth his special incapacity, whatsoever that may be,—as, for instance, impecuniosity, or that he hath one or many wives in his household, or that he is of mean figure, or small capacity; of which reasons it may be noted, that the first is, according to late decisions, of chiefest authority.—So far the old law-book. But there is a note from an older authority, saying that every woman doth also love each and every man, except there be some good reason to the contrary; and a very observing friend of mine, a young unmarried clergyman, tells me, that, so far as his experience goes, he has reason to think the ancient author had fact to justify his statement.
I'll tell you how it is with the pictures of women we fall in love with at first sight.
——We a'n't talking about pictures,—said the landlady's daughter,— we're talking about women.
I understood that we were speaking of love at sight,—I remarked, mildly. —Now, as all a man knows about a woman whom he looks at is just what a picture as big as a copper, or a "nickel," rather, at the bottom of his eye can teach him, I think I am right in saying we are talking about the pictures of women.—Well, now, the reason why a man is not desperately in love with ten thousand women at once is just that which prevents all our portraits being distinctly seen upon that wall. They allarepainted there by reflection from our faces, but becauseallof them are painted on each spot, and each on the same surface, and many other objects at the same time, no one is seen as a picture. But darken a chamber and let a single pencil of rays in through a key-hole, then you have a picture on the wall. We never fall in love with a woman in distinction from women, until we can get an image of her through a pin-hole; and then we can see nothing else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in our mental camera-obscura.
——My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave town whenever the anniversaries come round.
What's the difficulty?—Why, they all want him to get up and make speeches, or songs, or toasts; which is just the very thing he doesn't want to do. He is an old story, he says, and hates to show on these occasions. But they tease him, and coax him, and can't do without him, and feel all over his poor weak head until they get their fingers on thefontanelle, (the Professor will tell you what this means,—he says the one at the top of the head always remains open in poets,) until, by gentle pressure on that soft pulsating spot, they stupefy him to the point of acquiescence.
There are times, though, he says, when it is a pleasure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to rush out into one's garden and clutch up a handful of what grows there,—weeds and violets together,—not cutting them off, but pulling them up by the roots with the brown earth they grow in sticking to them. That's his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look here, now. These verses I am going to read you, he tells me, were pulled up by the roots just in that way, the other day.—Beautiful entertainment, —names there on the plates that flow from all English-speaking tongues as familiarly asandorthe; entertainers known wherever good poetry and fair title-pages are held in esteem; guest a kind-hearted, modest, genial, hopeful poet, who sings to the hearts of his countrymen, the British people, the songs of good cheer which the better days to come, as all honest souls trust and believe, will turn into the prose of common life. My friend, the Poet, says you must not read such a string of verses too literally. If he trimmed it nicely below, you wouldn't see the roots, he says, and he likes to keep them, and a little of the soil clinging to them.
This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read to his and our friend, thePoet:—
Brave singer of the coming time,Sweet minstrel of the joyous present,Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme,The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant,Good-bye! Good-bye!—Our hearts and hands,Our lips in honest Saxon phrases,Cry, God be with him, till he standsHis feet among the English daisies!
'Tis here we part;—for other eyesThe busy deck, the fluttering streamer,The dripping arms that plunge and rise,The waves in foam, the ship in tremor,The kerchiefs waving from the pier,The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him,The deep blue desert, lone and drear,With heaven above and home before him!
His home!—the Western giant smiles,And twirls the spotty globe to find it;—This little speck the British Isles?'Tis but a freckle,—never mind it!—He laughs, and all his prairies roll,Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles,And ridges stretched from pole to poleHeave till they crack their iron knuckles!
But Memory blushes at the sneer,And Honor turns with frown defiant,And Freedom, leaning on her spear,Laughs louder than the laughing giant:—"An islet is a world," she said,"When glory with its dust has blended,And Britain keeps her noble deadTill earth and seas and skies are rended!"
Beneath each swinging forest-boughSome arm as stout in death reposes,—From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed browHer valor's life-blood runs in roses;Nay, let our brothers of the WestWrite smiling in their florid pages,One-half her soil has walked the restIn poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!
Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather,The British oak with rooted graspHer slender handful holds together;—With cliffs of white and bowers of green,And Ocean narrowing to caress her,And hills and threaded streams between,—Our little mother isle, God bless her!
In earth's broad temple where we stand,Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us,We hold the missal in our hand,Bright with the lines our Mother taught us;Where'er its blazoned page betraysThe glistening links of gilded fetters,Behold, the half-turned leaf displaysHer rubric stained in crimson letters!
Enough! To speed a parting friend'Tis vain alike to speak and listen;—Yet stay,—these feeble accents blendWith rays of light from eyes that glisten.Good-bye! once more,—and kindly tellIn words of peace the young world's story,—And say, besides,—we love too wellOur mother's soil, our fathers' glory!
When my friend, the Professor, found that my friend, the Poet, had been coming out in this full-blown style, he got a little excited, as you may have seen a canary, sometimes, when another strikes up. The Professor says he knows he can lecture, and thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he has often tried, and now he was determined to try again. So when some professional friends of his called him up, one day, after a feast of reason and a regular "freshet" of soul which had lasted two or three hours, he read them these verses. He introduced them with a few remarks, he told me, of which the only one he remembered was this: that he had rather write a single line which one among them should think worth remembering than set them all laughing with a string of epigrams. It was all right, I don't doubt; at any rate, that was his fancy then, and perhaps another time he may be obstinately hilarious; however, it may be that he is growing graver, for time is a fact so long as clocks and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite said the other day.
You must listen to this seriously, for I think the Professor was very much in earnest when he wrote it.
As Life's unending column pours,Two marshalled hosts are seen,—Two armies on the trampled shoresThat Death flows black between.
One marches to the drum-beat's roll,The wide-mouthed clarion's bray,And bears upon a crimson scroll,"Our glory is to slay."
One moves in silence by the stream,With sad, yet watchful eyes,Calm as the patient planet's gleamThat walks the clouded skies.
Along its front no sabres shine,No blood-red pennons wave;Its banner bears the single line,"Our duty is to save."
For those no death-bed's lingering shade;At Honor's trumpet-call,With knitted brow and lifted bladeIn Glory's arms they fall.
For these no clashing falchions bright,No stirring battle-cry;The bloodless stabber calls by night,—Each answers, "Here am I!"
For those the sculptor's laurelled bust,The builder's marble piles,The anthems pealing o'er their dustThrough long cathedral aisles.
For these the blossom-sprinkled turfThat floods the lonely graves,When Spring rolls in her sea-green surfIn flowery-foaming waves.
Two paths lead upward from below,And angels wait above,Who count each burning life-drop's flow,Each falling tear of Love.
Though from the Hero's bleeding breastHer pulses Freedom drew,Though the white lilies in her crestSprang from that scarlet dew,—
While Valor's haughty champions waitTill all their scars are shown,Love walks unchallenged through the gateTo sit beside the Throne!
There was no apologue more popular in the Middle Ages than that of the hermit, who, musing on the wickedness and tyranny of those whom the inscrutable wisdom of Providence had intrusted with the government of the world, fell asleep and awoke to find himself the very monarch whose abject life and capricious violence had furnished the subject of his moralizing. Endowed with irresponsible power, tempted by passions whose existence in himself he had never suspected, and betrayed by the political necessities of his position, he became gradually guilty of all the crimes and the luxury which had seemed so hideous to him in his hermitage over a dish of water-cresses.
The American Tract Society from small beginnings has risen to be the dispenser of a yearly revenue of nearly half a million. It has become a great establishment, with a traditional policy, with the distrust of change and the dislike of disturbing questions (especially of such as would lessen its revenues) natural to great establishments. It had been poor and weak; it has become rich and powerful. The hermit has become king.
If the pious men who founded the American Tract Society had been told that within forty years they would be watchful of their publications, lest, by inadvertence, anything disrespectful might be spoken of the African Slave- trade,—that they would consider it an ample equivalent for compulsory dumbness on the vices of Slavery, that their colporteurs could awaken the minds of Southern brethren to the horrors of St. Bartholomew,—that they would hold their peace about the body of Cuffee dancing to the music of the cart-whip, provided only they could save the soul of Sambo alive by presenting him a pamphlet, which he could not read, on the depravity of the double-shuffle,—that they would consent to be fellow-members in the Tract Society with him who sold their fellow-members in Christ on the auction-block, if he agreed with them in condemning Transubstantiation, (and it would not be difficult for a gentleman who ignored the real presence of God in his brother man to deny it in the sacramental wafer,)— if those excellent men had been told this, they would have shrunk in horror, and exclaimed, "Are thy servants dogs, that they should do these things?"
Yet this is precisely the present position of the Society.
There are two ways of evading the responsibility of such inconsistency. The first is by an appeal to the Society's Constitution, and by claiming to interpret it strictly in accordance with the rules of law as applied to contracts, whether between individuals or States. The second is by denying that Slavery is opposed to the genius of Christianity, and that any moral wrongs are the necessary results of it. We will not be so unjust to the Society as to suppose that any of its members would rely on this latter plea, and shall therefore confine ourselves to a brief consideration of the other.
In order that the same rules of interpretation should be considered applicable to the Constitution of the Society and to that of the United States, we must attribute to the former a solemnity and importance which involve a palpable absurdity. To claim for it the verbal accuracy and the legal wariness of a mere contract is equally at war with common sense and the facts of the case; and even were it not so, the party to a bond who should attempt to escape its ethical obligation by a legal quibble of construction would be put in Coventry by all honest men. In point of fact, the Constitution was simply the minutes of an agreement among certain gentlemen, to define the limits within which they would accept trust- funds, and the objects for which they should expend them.
But if we accept the alternative offered by the advocates of strict construction, we shall not find that their case is strengthened. Claiming that where the meaning of an instrument is doubtful, it should be interpreted according to the contemporary understanding of its framers, they argue that it would be absurd to suppose that gentlemen from the Southern States would have united to form a society that included in its objects any discussion of the moral duties arising from the institution of Slavery. Admitting the first part of their proposition, we deny the conclusion they seek to draw from it. They are guilty of a glaring anachronism in assuming the same opinions and prejudices to have existed in 1825 which are undoubtedly influential in 1858. The Antislavery agitation did not begin until 1831, and the debates in the Virginia Convention prove conclusively that six years after the foundation of the Tract Society, the leading men in that State, men whose minds had been trained and whose characters had been tempered in that school of action and experience which was open to all during the heroic period of our history, had not yet suffered such distortion of the intellect through passion, and such deadening of the conscience through interest, as would have prevented their discussing either the moral or the political aspects of Slavery, and precluded them from uniting in any effort to make the relation between master and slave less demoralizing to the one and less imbruting to the other.
Again, it is claimed that the words of the Constitution are conclusive, and that the declaration that the publications of the Society shall be such as are "satisfactory to all Evangelical Christians" forbids by implication the issuing of any tract which could possibly offend the brethren in Slave States. The Society, it is argued, can publish only on topics about which all Evangelical Christians are agreed, and must, therefore, avoid everything in which the question of politics is involved. But what are the facts about matters other than Slavery? Tracts have been issued and circulated in which Dancing is condemned as sinful; are all Evangelical Christians agreed about this? On the Temperance question; against Catholicism;—have these topics never entered into our politics? The simple truth is, that Slavery is the only subject about which the Publishing Committee have felt Constitutional scruples. Till this question arose, they were like me in perfect health, never suspecting that they had any constitution at all; but now, like hypochondriacs, they feel it in every pore, at the least breath from the eastward.
If a strict construction of the words "all Evangelical Christians" be insisted on, we are at a loss to see where the Committee could draw the dividing line between what might be offensive and what allowable. The Society publish tracts in which the study of the Scriptures is enforced and their denial to the laity by Romanists assailed. But throughout the South it is criminal to teach a slave to read; throughout the South, no book could be distributed among the servile population more incendiary than the Bible, if they could only read it. Will not our Southern brethren take alarm? The Society is reduced to the dilemma of either denying that the African has a soul to be saved, or of consenting to the terrible mockery of assuring him that the way of life is to be found only by searching a book which he is forbidden to open.
If we carry out this doctrine of strict construction to its legitimate results, we shall find that it involves a logical absurdity. What is the number of men whose outraged sensibilities may claim the suppression of a tract? Is thetabooof a thousand valid? Of a hundred? Of ten? Or are tracts to be distributed only to those who will find their doctrine agreeable, and are the Society's colporteurs to be instructed that a Temperance essay is the proper thing for a total-abstinent infidel, and a sermon on the Atonement for a distilling deacon? If the aim of the Society be only to convert men from sins they have no mind to, and to convince them of errors to which they have no temptation, they might as well be spending their money to persuade schoolmasters that two and two make four, or mathematicians that there cannot be two obtuse angles in a triangle. If this be their notion of the way in which the gospel is to be preached, we do not wonder that they have found it necessary to print a tract upon the impropriety of sleeping in church.
But the Society are concluded by their own action; for in 1857 they unanimously adopted the following resolution: "That those moral duties which grow out of the existence of Slavery, as well as those moral evils and vices which it is known to promote, and which are condemned in Scripture, and so much deplored by Evangelical Christians, undoubtedly do fall within the province of this Society, and can and ought to be discussed in a fraternal and Christian spirit." The Society saw clearly that it was impossible to draw a Mason and Dixon's line in the world of ethics, to divide Duty by a parallel of latitude. The only line which Christ drew is that which parts the sheep from the goats, that great horizon-line of the moral nature of man which is the boundary between light and darkness. The Society, by yielding (as they have done in 1858) to what are pleasantly called the "objections" of the South, (objections of so forcible a nature that we are told the colporteurs were "forced to flee,") virtually exclude the black man, if born to the southward of a certain arbitrary line, from the operation of God's providence, and thereby do as great a wrong to the Creator as the Episcopal Church did to the artist when they published Ary Scheffer'sChristus Consolatorwith the figure of the slave left out.
The Society is not asked to disseminate antislavery doctrines, but simply to be even-handed between master and slave, and, since they have recommended Sambo and Toney to be obedient to Mr. Legree, to remind him in turn that he also has duties toward the bodies and souls of his bondmen. But we are told that the time has not yet arrived, that at present the ears of our Southern brethren are closed against all appeals, that God in his good time will turn their hearts, and that then, and not till then, will be the fitting occasion to do something in the premises. But if the Society is to await this golden opportunity with such exemplary patience in one case, why not in all? If it is to decline any attempt at converting the sinner till after God has converted him, will there be any special necessity for a tract society at all? Will it not be a little presumptuous, as well as superfluous, to undertake the doing over again of what He has already done? We fear that the studies of Blackstone, upon which the gentlemen who argue thus have entered in order to fit themselves for the legal and constitutional argument of the question, have confused their minds, and that they are misled by some fancied analogy between a tract and an action of trover, and conceive that the one, like the other, cannot be employed till after an actual conversion has taken place.
The resolutions reported by the Special Committee at the annual meeting of 1857, drawn up with great caution and with a sincere desire to make whole the breach in the Society, have had the usual fate of all attempts to reconcile incompatibilities by compromise. They express confidence in the Publishing Committee, and at the same time impliedly condemn them by recommending them to do precisely what they had all along scrupulously avoided doing. The result was just what might have been expected. Both parties among the Northern members of the Society, those who approved the former action of the Publishing Committee, and those who approved the new policy recommended in the resolutions, those who favored silence and those who favored speech on the subject of Slavery, claimed the victory, while the Southern brethren, as usual, refused to be satisfied with anything short of unconditional submission. The word Compromise, as far as Slavery is concerned, has always been of fatal augury. The concessions of the South have been like the "With all my worldly goods I thee endow" of a bankrupt bridegroom, who thereby generously bestows all his debts upon his wife, and as a small return for his magnanimity consents to accept all her personal and a life estate in all her real property. The South is willing that the Tract Society should expend its money to convince the slave that he has a soul to be saved so far as he is obedient to his master, but not to persuade the master that he has a soul to undergo a very different process so far as he is unmerciful to his slave.
We Americans are very fond of this glue of compromise. Like so many quack cements, it is advertised to make the mended parts of the vessel stronger than those which have never been broken, but, like them, it will not stand hot water,—and as the question of Slavery is sure to plunge all who approach it, even with the best intentions, into that fatal element, the patched-up brotherhood, which but yesterday was warranted to be better than new, falls once more into a heap of incoherent fragments. The last trial of the virtues of the Patent Redintegrator by the Special Committee of the Tract Society has ended like all the rest, and as all attempts to buy peace at too dear a rate must end. Peace is an excellent thing, but principle and pluck are better; and the man who sacrifices them to gain it finds at last that he has crouched under the Caudine yoke to purchase only a contemptuous toleration that leaves him at war with his own self-respect and the invincible forces of his higher nature.
But the peace which Christ promised to his followers was not of this world; the good gift he brought them was not peace, but a sword. It was no sword of territorial conquest, but that flaming blade of conscience and self-conviction which lightened between our first parents and their lost Eden,—that sword of the Spirit that searcheth all things,—which severs one by one the ties of passion, of interest, of self-pride, that bind the soul to earth,—whose implacable edge may divide a man from family, from friends, from whatever is nearest and dearest,—and which hovers before him like the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, beckoning him, not to crime, but to the legitimate royalties of self-denial and self-sacrifice, to the freedom which is won only by surrender of the will. Christianity has never been concession, never peace; it is continual aggression; one province of wrong conquered, its pioneers are already in the heart of another. The mile-stones of its onward march down the ages have not been monuments of material power, but the blackened stakes of martyrs, trophies of individual fidelity to conviction. For it is the only religion which is superior to all endowment, to all authority,—which has a bishopric and a cathedral wherever a single human soul has surrendered itself to God. That very spirit of doubt, inquiry, and fanaticism for private judgment, with which Romanists reproach Protestantism, is its stamp and token of authenticity,—the seal of Christ, and not of the Fisherman.
We do not wonder at the division which has taken place in the Tract Society, nor do we regret it. The ideal life of a Christian is possible to very few, but we naturally look for a nearer approach to it in those who associate together to disseminate the doctrines which they believe to be its formative essentials, and there is nothing which the enemies of religion seize on so gladly as any inconsistency between the conduct and the professions of such persons. Though utterly indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, the scoffer would not fail to remark upon the hollowness of a Christianity which was horror-stricken at a dance or a Sunday-drive, while it was blandly silent about the separation of families, the putting asunder whom God had joined, the selling Christian girls for Christian harems, and the thousand horrors of a system which can lessen the agonies it inflicts only by debasing the minds and souls of the race on whom it inflicts them. Is your Christianity, then, he would say, a respecter of persons, and does it condone the sin because the sinner can contribute to your coffers? Was there ever a Simony like this,—that does not sell, but withholds, the gift of God for a price?
The world naturally holds the Society to a stricter accountability than it would insist upon in ordinary cases. Were they only a club of gentlemen associated for their own amusement, it would be very natural and proper that they should exclude all questions which would introduce controversy, and that, however individually interested in certain reforms, they should not force them upon others who would consider them a bore. But a society of professing Christians, united for the express purpose of carrying both the theory and the practice of the New Testament into every household in the land, has voluntarily subjected itself to a graver responsibility, and renounced all title to fall back upon any reserved right of personal comfort or convenience.
We say, then, that we are glad to see this division in the Tract Society, —not glad because of the division, but because it has sprung from an earnest effort to relieve the Society of a reproach which was not only impairing its usefulness, but doing an injury to the cause of truth and sincerity everywhere. We have no desire to impugn the motives of those who consider themselves conservative members of the Society; we believe them to be honest in their convictions, or their want of them; but we think they have mistaken notions as to what conservatism is, and that they are wrong in supposing it to consist in refusing to wipe away the film on their spectacle-glasses which prevents their seeing the handwriting on the wall, or in conserving reverently the barnacles on their ship's bottom and the dry-rot in its knees. We yield to none of them in reverence for the Past; it is there only that the imagination can find repose and seclusion; there dwells that silent majority whose experience guides our action and whose wisdom shapes our thought in spite of ourselves;—but it is not length of days that can make evil reverend, nor persistence in inconsistency that can give it the power or the claim of orderly precedent. Wrong, though its title-deeds go back to the days of Sodom, is by nature a thing of yesterday,—while the right, of which we became conscious but an hour ago, is more ancient than the stars, and of the essence of Heaven. If it were proposed to establish Slavery to-morrow, should we have more patience with its patriarchal argument than with the parallel claim of Mormonism? That Slavery is old is but its greater condemnation; that we have tolerated it so long, the strongest plea for our doing so no longer. There is one institution to which we owe our first allegiance, one that is more sacred and venerable than any other,—the soul and conscience of Man.
What claim has Slavery to immunity from discussion? We are told that discussion is dangerous. Dangerous to what? Truth invites it, courts the point of the Ithuriel-spear, whose touch can but reveal more clearly the grace and grandeur of her angelic proportions. The advocates of Slavery have taken refuge in the last covert of desperate sophism, and affirm that their institution is of Divine ordination, that its bases are laid in the nature of man. Is anything, then, of God's contriving endangered by inquiry? Was it the system of the universe, or the monks, that trembled at the telescope of Galileo? Did the circulation of the firmament stop in terror because Newton laid his daring finger on its pulse? But it is idle to discuss a proposition so monstrous. There is no right of sanctuary for a crime against humanity, and they who drag an unclean thing to the horns of the altar bring it to vengeance and not to safety.
Even granting that Slavery were all that its apologists assume it to be, and that the relation of master and slave were of God's appointing, would not its abuses be just the thing which it was the duty of Christian men to protest against, and, as far as might be, to root out? Would our courts feel themselves debarred from interfering to rescue a daughter from a parent who wished to make merchandise of her purity, or a wife from a husband who was brutal to her, by the plea that parental authority and marriage were of Divine ordinance? Would a police-justice discharge a drunkard who pleaded the patriarchal precedent of Noah? or would he not rather give him another month in the House of Correction for his impudence?
The Antislavery question is not one which the Tract Society can exclude by triumphant majorities, nor put to shame by a comparison of respectabilities. Mixed though it has been with politics, it is in no sense political, and springing naturally from the principles of that religion which traces its human pedigree to a manger, and whose first apostles were twelve poor men against the whole world, it can dispense with numbers and earthly respect. The clergyman may ignore it in the pulpit, but it confronts him in his study; the church-member, who has suppressed it in parish-meeting, opens it with the pages of his Testament; the merchant, who has shut it out of his house and his heart, finds it lying in wait for him, a gaunt fugitive, in the hold of his ship; the lawyer, who has declared that it is no concern of his, finds it thrust upon him in the brief of the slave-hunter; the historian, who had cautiously evaded it, stumbles over it at Bunker Hill. And why? Because it is not political, but moral,—because it is not local, but national, —because it is not a test of party, but of individual honesty and honor. The wrong which we allow our nation to perpetrate we cannot localize, if we would; we cannot hem it within the limits of Washington or Kansas; sooner or later, it will force itself into the conscience and sit by the hearthstone of every citizen.
It is not partisanship, it is not fanaticism, that has forced this matter of Anti-slavery upon the American people; it is the spirit of Christianity, which appeals from prejudices and predilections to the moral consciousness of the individual man; that spirit elastic as air, penetrative as heat, invulnerable as sunshine, against which creed after creed and institution after institution have measured their strength and been confounded; that restless spirit which refuses to crystallize in any sect or form, but persists, a Divinely-commissioned radical and reconstructor, in trying every generation with a new dilemma between case and interest on the one hand, and duty on the other. Shall it be said that its kingdom is not of this world? In one sense, and that the highest, it certainly is not; but just as certainly Christ never intended those words to be used as a subterfuge by which to escape our responsibilities in the life of business and politics. Let the cross, the sword, and the arena answer, whether the world, that then was, so understood its first preachers and apostles. Caesar and Flamen both instinctively dreaded it, not because it aimed at riches or power, but because it strove to conquer that other world in the moral nature of mankind, where it could establish a throne against which wealth and force would be weak and contemptible. No human device has ever prevailed against it, no array of majorities or respectabilities; but neither Caesar nor Flamen ever conceived a scheme so cunningly adapted to neutralize its power as that graceful compromise which accepts it with the lip and denies it in the life, which marries it at the altar and divorces it at the church-door.
In our first article on the Roman Catacombs we expressed the belief that "a year was now hardly likely to pass without the discovery" of new burial-places of the early Christians,—the fresh interest in Christian archaeology leading to fresh explorations in the hollow soil of the Campagna. A letter to us from Rome, of the 2lst of April, confirms the justness of this expectation. We quote from it the following interesting passage:—
"The excavations on the Via Appia Nuova, which I mentioned in a former letter, prove very interesting, and have already resulted in most important discoveries. The spot is at the second milestone outside of the gate of St. John Lateran. The field is on the left of the road going towards Albano, and in it are several brick tombs of beautiful fine work, now or formerly used as dwellings or barns. You and I crossed the very field on a certain New Year's Day, and lingered to admire the almost unrivalled view of the Campagna, the mountains, and Rome, which it affords.
"The first discovery was an ancient basilica, satisfactorily ascertained to be the one dedicated to St. Stephen, built by Santa Demetria,—the first nun,—at the instigation of the pope, St. Leo the Great. [A.D. 440- 461.] Sig. Fortunati, who made the discovery and directs the excavations, told me at great length how he was led to the investigation; but as he has published this and much more in a pamphlet, which I shall send to you, I will not repeat it here.
"Twenty-two columns have been found, many of rare and beautiful marble, one ofverde antico, most superb, others ofbrecciaand ofcipollino marino, said to be rare, and certainly very beautiful. Forty bases and over thirty capitals of various styles have also been found, as well as architectural ornaments without number, many of them carved with Greek or Roman crosses. The rare and superb fragments of marble show that there must have been costly and beautiful linings and finish. There are also numerous inscriptions of great interest, which connect this church with illustrious families and famous martyrs.
"Subsequently, portions of villas were found, with ruined baths, and mosaics and frescoes, with various pieces of sculpture, some perfect and of most excellent style. There is also a sarcophagus with bas-relief of a Bacchic procession, remarkably fine. The government has bought all for the Museum, and intends spending a large sum in building a basilica over the remains of the old one, in honor of St. Stephen.
"But the most remarkable discovery is an old Roman tomb, by far the finest I have seen in its preservation and perfection. It is about eighteen feet square, has been lined and paved with white marble, some of which still remains. The lofty ceiling is covered with bas-reliefs in stucco, of charming grace and spirit, representing various mythological subjects, in square compartments united by light and elegant arabesques. They are really of wonderful merit, and so perfectly preserved, so fresh, that they seem as if done last year. A massive marble doorway, beautifully corniced, gives entrance to this superb chamber, in which were found three huge sarcophagi, containing the bones of nine bodies;—which bones are left to lie exposed, because the bones of pagans! These sarcophagi are of splendid workmanship, but, unhappily, broken by former barbarians. Present barbarians (said to be Inglesi and Americani) have stolen two skulls, and pick up everything not closely watched. Opposite to this chamber is another, smaller and more modest in adornment, and by the side of this descend two flights of steps in perfect repair. Many vases of colored glass and two very handsome rings were found at the foot of these steps. This tomb is supposed to be of about 160 of our era.
"These stairways descend from the ancient Via Latina, which has been excavated for some distance, and is found with wide sidewalks of stone (lava) similar to the sidewalks in Pompeii. The narrow carriage-way is deeply rutted, which makes one think that the old Romans had hard bumps to contend with.
"Another tomb with perfect stairway has been discovered, but it is much more plain. Foundations of villas, and baths with leaden pipes in great quantity, have been exposed. I hear to-day that the government has ordered the excavation of a mile and a half of the old Via Latina in this neighborhood, and much interesting discovery is anticipated."
We will only add to our correspondent's account the fact that the Basilica of St. Stephen had been sought for in vain previously to this discovery by Signor Fortunati. The great explorer, Bosio, failed to find it, and Aringhi, writing just two hundred years ago, says, "Formerly upon the Via Latina stood the church erected with great pains in honor of the most blessed Stephen, the first martyr, by Demetria, a woman of pristine piety; of which the Bibliothecarius, in his account of Pope Leo the First, thus makes mention: 'In these days, Demetria, the handmaid of God, made the Basilica of St. Stephen on the Latin Way, at the third mile-stone, on her estate:… which afterward, being decayed and near to ruin through the long course of years, was restored by Pope Leo the Third.' Of this most noble church, which was one of the chief monuments of the Christian religion, as well as an ornament of the city of Rome, no vestige at this day remains."
It is remarkable that a church restored so late as the time of Leo III. [A.D. 795-816] should have been so lost without being utterly destroyed, and so buried under the slowly-accumulating soil of the Campagna, that the very tradition of the existence of its remains should have disappeared, and its discovery have been the result of scientific archæeological investigation.
The disappearance and the forgetting of the Church of St. Alexander were less remarkable, because of its far greater distance from the city, and its comparative inconspicuousness and poverty. Scarcely a more striking proof exists of the misery and lowness of Rome during many generations in the Dark Ages than that she should thus have forgotten the very sites of the churches which had stood around her walls, the outpost citadels of her faith.
The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea. By P.H. GOSSE. Second Edition, revised and enlarged. With Illustrations. London: 1866.
The Common Objects of the Seashore; including Hints for an Aquarium. By the REV. J.G. WOOD. With Illustrations. London: Routledge & Co. 1857.
We trust that many of our readers, stimulated by the account of an Aquarium which was given in our number for February, are proposing to set one up for themselves.
Let no one who has been to Barnum's Museum, to look at what the naming advertisement elegantly and grammatically terms "an aquaria," fancy that he has seen the beauty of the real aquarium. The sea will not show its treasures in a quarter of an hour, or be made a sight of for a quarter of a dollar. An aquarium is not to be exhausted in a day, but, if favorably placed where it may have sufficient direct sunshine, and well stocked with various creatures, day after day developes within it new beauties and unexpected sights. It becomes like a secret cave in the ocean, where the processes of Nature go on in wonderful and silent progression, and the coy sea displays its rarer beauties of life, of color, and of form before the watching eyes. Look at it on some clear day, when the sun is bright, and see the broad leaves of ulva, their vivid green sparkling with the brilliant bubbles of oxygen which float up to the surface like the bubbles of Champagne; see the glades of the pink coralline, or the purple Iceland- moss covered with its plum-like down, in the midst of which the transparent bodies of the shrimps or the yellow or banded shells of the sea-snails are lying half hid. See on the brown rock, whose surface is covered with the softest growth, the white anemone stretching its crown of delicate tentacles to the light; or the long winding case of the serpula, from the end of which appear the purple, brown, or yellow feathers that decorate the head of its timid occupant. Or watch the scallop with his turquoise eyes; or the comic crabs, or the minnows playing through the water, in and out of the recesses of the rocks or the thickets of the seaweed. There is no end of the pleasant sights. And day after day the creatures will grow more tame, the serpula will not dart back into his case when you approach, nor the pecten close his beautiful shell as your shadow passes over it. Moreover, the habits of the creatures grow more entertaining as you become familiar with them, and even the dull oyster begins at last to show some signs of individual character.
And it is easy to have all this away from the seashore. The best tanks, so far as we know, that are made in this country, are those of Mr. C.E. Hammett, of Newport, Rhode Island. But the tank is of little importance, if one cannot get the water, the seaweed, and the stock; and therefore Mr. Hammett undertakes to supply these also. He will send, not the water itself, but the salts obtained by evaporation from the quantity of water necessary for each aquarium. These are to be dissolved in clear spring- water, (previously boiled, to insure its containing no injurious living matter,) and then the aquarium, having first had a bed of cleanly-washed sand put upon its bottom for about an inch or an inch and a half in depth, and this in turn covered with a thin layer of small pebbles,—though these last are not essential,—is to be filled with it. Then the seaweed, which is sent so packed as to preserve its freshness, is to be put in. It will be attached to small bits of rock, and these should be supported by or laid upon other pieces of stone, so raised as to secure a free passage for the water about them, and so afford places of retreat for the animals. The stock will be sent, if it is to go to any distance, in jars, and anemones, crabs, shell-fish of various kinds, and many other creatures, will be found among it. The seaweed should be a day or two in the tank before the creatures are put into it.
And now, having got the aquarium in order, comes the point how to keep it in order,—how to keep the creatures alive, and how to prevent the water from growing cloudy and thick. The main rule is to secure sunlight,—hot enough to raise the water to a temperature above that of the outer air,— to remove all dirt and floating scum, and to furnish the tank on every cloudy day with a supply of air and with motion by means of a syringe. The creatures should never be fed in warm weather with any animal substance, its decay being certain to corrupt the water. A little meal or a few crumbs of bread may now and then be given; but even this is not necessary; for Nature furnishes all the food that is needed, in the spores thrown off by the seaweed, in the seaweed itself, whose growth is generally sufficiently rapid to make up for the ravages committed upon it, and in the host of infusoria constantly produced in the water. If any of the creatures die, their bodies should be immediately removed,—though sometimes the omnivorous crabs will do this work rapidly enough. As the water evaporates, it should be filled up to its original level with fresh spring-water,—the salts in it undergoing no diminution by evaporation. If, suddenly, the water should grow thick, it should be taken from the tank, a portion at a time, and filtered back into it slowly through pounded charcoal, the process being repeated till the purity seems to be returning, and at the same time the rocks and seaweed should be removed and carefully washed in fresh water. If, however, the water should by any ill chance grow tainted and emit a bad odor, nothing can be done to restore it, and, unless it is at once changed, the creatures will die. To meet such an emergency, which is of rare occurrence, it is well to have a double quantity of the salts sent with the tank to secure a new supply of water. But we have known aquariums that have kept in order for more than a year with no change of the water, a supply of spring-water being put in from time to time as we have directed; and at this moment, as we write, there is an aquarium at our side which has been in active operation for six months, and the water is as clear as it was the day it was put in. If, spite of everything, the seawater fail, then try a fresh-water aquarium. Use your tank for the pond instead of the ocean; and in the spotted newt, the tortoise, the tadpole, the caddis-worm, and the thousand other inhabitants of our inland ponds and brooks, with the weeds among which they live, you will find as much entertainment as in watching the wonders of the great sea.
A camel's-hair brush, a bent spoon on a long handle, a sponge tied to a stick, and one or two other instruments which use will suggest, are all that are needed for keeping the sides of the tank free from growth or removing obnoxious substances from its bottom.
If, on receiving the animals, any of them should appear exhausted by the journey, they may sometimes be revived by aerating the water in which they are by means of a syringe. It should always be remembered, that, though living in the water, they need a constant supply of air. And it would be well, in getting an aquarium, to have the tank and the seaweeds sent a few days in advance of the stock, so that on the arrival of the creatures they may be at once transferred to their new abode.
There are no American books upon the subject, and, in the present want of them, the two whose names are given above are the best that can be obtained. Mr. Gosse's is expensive, costing between four and five dollars. "The Common Objects of the Seashore," to be got for a quarter of a dollar, contains much accurate, unpretending, and pleasant information.
The American Drawing-Book: a Manual for the Amateur, and a Basis of Study for the Professional Artist. Especially adapted to the Use of Public and Private Schools, as well as Home Instruction. By J.G. CHAPMAN, N.A. New York: J.S. Redfield. 4to. pp. 304.
Drawing-books, in general, deserve to be put into the same category with the numerous languages "without a master" which have deluded so many impatient aspirants to knowledge by royal (and cheap) roads. A drawing- book, at its very best, is only a partial and lame substitute for a teacher, giving instruction empirically; so that, be it ever so correct in principle, it must lack adaptation to the momentary and most pressing wants of the pupil and to his particular frame of mind; it is too Procrustean to be of any ultimate use to anybody, except in comparatively unimportant matters. It is well enough for those who need only amusement in their drawing, and whose highest idea of Art is copying prints and pictures; but for those who want assistance from Art in order to the better understanding of Nature, no man, be he ever so wise, can, by the drawing-book plan, do much to smooth the way of study.
All that another mind could do for us by way of teaching Art would be to save us time,—first, by its experience, in anticipating our failures; second, by its trained accuracy, to correct our errors of expression more promptly than our afterthought would do it,—and to systematize our perceptions for us by showing us the relative and comparative importance of truths in Nature. In the first two respects, which are merely practical, the drawing-book, if judiciously prepared, might do somewhat to assist us; but in the last and most important, only the experienced and thoughtful artist, standing with us before Nature, can give us further insight into her system of expression. A good picture may do a little, but it is Nature's own face we need to study, and that neither book nor picture can very deeply interpret for our proper and peculiar perception.
In the practical part, again, the drawing-book can give us no real assistance in regard to color. And thus the efficacy of it is reduced to the communication of methods of drawing in white and black. This Chapman's book does to the best purpose possible under the circumstances, in what is technically termed the right-line system of drawing,—that is, the reduction of all forms to their approximate geometrical figures in order to facilitate the measurements of the eye. Thus, it is easier by far to determine the proportion which exists between the sides of a triangle formed by the lines connecting the three principal points in any figure than any curvilinear connections whatever. The application of the rectilinear system consists in the use, as a basis of the drawing, of such a series of triangles as shall at once show the exact relation of the points of definition or expression to each other; but the successful application of this depends much on the assistance of the trained eye and hand of a master watching every step we make.
When we leave this section of the "American Drawing-Book," we leave all that is of practical value to the young artist. The prescription of any particular mode of execution is always injurious, (if in any degree effective,) for the reason that the student must not think of execution at all, but simply what the form is which he wants to draw, and how he can draw it most plainly and promptly. Decision of execution should always be the result of complete knowledge of the thing to be drawn; if from any other source, it will assuredly be only heedless scrawling, bad in proportion as it is energetic and decided.
The chapter on Perspective is full and well illustrated, and useful to architectural or mechanical draughtsmen, may-be, but little so to artists. There are, indeed, no laws of perspective which the careful draughtsman from Nature need ever apply, for his eye will show him the tendency of lines and the relative magnitude of bodies quicker than he can find them by the application of the rules of perspective,—and with much better result, since all application of sciencedirectlyto artistic work endangers its poetic character, and almost invariably gives rise to a hardness and formalism the reverse of artistic, leading the artist to depend on what he knows ought to be rather than on what he really sees, a tendency more to be deprecated than any want of correctness in drawing.
The book contains chapters on artistic processes and technical matters generally, making it a useful hand-book to amateurs; but all that is really valuable to a young student of Art might be compressed into a very few pages of this ponderous book. To follow its prescriptionsseriatimwould be to him a serious loss of time and heart.
The New American Cyclopaedia. A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, Edited by GEORGE RIPLEY and CHAS. A. DANA. Vol. II. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 8vo.
We have spoken so fully of the purpose and general character of this work, in noticing the first volume, that it is hardly necessary for us to speak at length of the second. In a rapid glance at its contents, it appears fully to bear out the promise of the first. We have noticed a few omissions, and some mistakes of judgment. It is, perhaps, impossible to preserve the gradation of reputations in such a work; but a zoologist must be puzzled when he sees Von Baer, the great embryologist, who made a classification of animals, founded on their development, which substantially agrees with that of Cuvier, founded on their structure, occupy about one tenth of the space devoted to Peter T. Barnum; however, we suppose, that, as Barnum created new animals, he is a more wonderful personage than Von Baer, who simply classified old ones. These occasional omissions and disturbances of the scale of reputations are, however, more than offset by the new information the editors have been able to incorporate into most of their biographies of the living, and not a few of those of the dead. Many persons who were mere names to the majority of the public are here, for the first time, recognized as men engaged in living lives as well as in writing books. Some of these biographies must have been obtained at the expense of much time and correspondence. Samuel Bayley, the author of "Essays on the Formation of Opinions," is one of these well-known names but unknown men; but in the present volume he has been compelled to come out of his mysterious seclusion, and present to the public those credentials of dates and incidents which prove him to be a positive existence on the planet.
The papers on Arboriculture, Architecture, Arctic Discovery, Armor, Army, Asia, Atlantic Ocean, Australia, Balance of Power, Bank, and Barometer, are excellent examples of compact and connected statement of facts and principles. The biographies of Aristotle, Aristophanes, Augustine, Ariosto, and Arnold, and the long article on Athens, are among the most striking and admirable papers in the volume. As the purpose of the work is to supply a Cyclopaedia for popular use, it is inevitable that students of special sciences or subjects should be occasionally disappointed at the comparatively meagre treatment of their respective departments of knowledge. In regard to the articles in the present volume, it may be said that such subjects as Astronomy and the Association of Ideas should have occupied more space, even if the wants of the ordinary reader were alone consulted. But still, when we consider the vast range and variety of topics included in this volume, and the fact that it comprehends a dozen subjects which a dozen octavos devoted to each would not exhaust, we are compelled to award praise to the editors for contriving to compress into so small a space an amount of information so great.