In fine, to recount the hundredth part of their deeds,—to make out a list of their soldiers, sub-officers, or officers who have been since promoted to high honors,—to trace minutely each step by which they mounted to their present position, would be to write, not an article, but a book. In 1842 the natives disappeared finally from their ranks; the best and bravest soldiers of the African army eagerly sought their places, attracted by the uniform, the manner of life, the constant danger and no less constant excitement, the liberty allowed, the glory ever open to all. As their numbers were decimated by the continual warfare, the ranks were immediately filled by the descendants of those brave Gauls who once said, "If the heavens fall, what care we? We will support them on the points of our lances!" In 1848, the Zouaves received a large accession from Paris; thegaminsof the Revolution were sent to them in great numbers; out of this unpromising, rebellious material, some of the finest of these admirable troops have been made. And now, when the entry into this regiment was longed for by so many, as a species of promotion, on the 13th of February, 1852, Louis Napoleon, then President of the Republic, decreed that three regiments of Zouaves be formed, each on one of the three battalions as a nucleus, taking the number of the battalion as its own. Thus the first regiment was formed at Blidah, in Algiers; the second at Oran, in Oran; the third at Constantine, in the province of Constantine. Officers of the corps of infantry were eligible to the new regiments, holding the same grade; the men were to be drawn from any infantry corps in the army, on their own application, if the Minister of War saw proper. None were accepted but men physically and morally in excellent condition; the officers had, for the most part, already served with credit; the under-officers and soldiers had been many years in the service; and even many corporals, and not a few ensigns and lieutenants, voluntarily relinquished their positions to serve in the rank-and-file of the new corps. So, occupied in pacificating and securing the three provinces, the regiments lost nothing of their former renown; obedient to orders, and fearless of danger, it was no idle compliment paid them by Louis Napoleon, when, in the winter of 1853-4, be said, "If the war break out, we must show our Zouaves to the Russians." They were a body trained in the school of a terrible experience of twenty-four years; they had learned, like the lion-hunter, Gerard, to take death by the mane, and look into his fiery eyes without blenching; they were fit for this service, which demanded the best nerve of the two most powerful nations of the world. What they did there is known to all; at the battle of the Alma, Marshal St. Arnaud was unable to repress his admiration, calling them "the bravest soldiers in the world." All Europe, at first wondering at these strange troops, with their wild dress, their half-savage manners, and strange method of warfare, found speedy cause to admire their courage and success; France was proud of their renown, and they became immensely popular in Paris, sure proof of their remarkable qualities. Their oddities, their courage, their imperfect knowledge of the distinctions ofmeumandtuum, their wondering, childlike simplicity, furnished themes for endless songs and caricatures; the comedy of "Les Zouaves" met with great success; and the cant name for them, "Zouzou," is to be heard at any time in the streets. In 1855, the Fourth Zouaves was created, consisting of but two battalions, and enrolled in the Imperial Guard; they are distinguished from the others by wearing a white turban, while that of the other regiments is green; since the formation of this regiment, no new corps have been added. The peace with Russia, in 1856, was not peace for the Zouaves, who returned, desiring nothing better, to Africa, where, in the continued war, they found congenial employment till the final submission of the last tribes, July 15, 1857, dissolved the army of Kabylia, and made them, perforce, peaceful, till the 26th of April of this year brought them to win fresh laurels on a new field.
Vague reports, assertions without proof, have been not infrequently made, to the effect that the Zouaves are in character cruel, dissolute, and excessively given to hard drinking. That they are absolutely free from the first charge I shall not attempt to deny; that they are more so than other men, in like circumstances, there is no proof; there is even good reason to state the contrary, if we may judge by instances, of which, for want of space, one shall suffice here. The Zouaves were in the van of the army, on their march toward the Tell; in their charge was a large body of prisoners, wounded, and helpless women, old men, and children, whom they were conducting to the Tell, to restore them to their homes. The weather was intensely hot, even for Africa; the nearest well was eleven leagues distant; and the sufferings of the poor people must have been dreadful indeed. Mothers flung down their infants on the burning sand, and pressed madly on to save themselves from the most horrible of deaths; old men and boys sunk exhausted, panting, declaring they could go no farther. "Then it was," says an eyewitness, "that the Zouaves behaved like very Sisters of Charity, rather than rough bearded soldiers; they divided their last morsel with these unfortunates, gave them drink from their own scanty stores, and, putting their canteens to the mouths of the dying, revived them with the precious draught. They raised the screaming infants, overturned and held ewes, that they might suckle the poor creatures, abandoned in despair by their mothers, and, in many instances, carried them the whole distance in their arms. At night they ate nothing, giving their food to the helpless prisoners, whose lives they thus saved at the risk of their own." If in war they "imitate the action of the tiger," we have every reason to believe that in peace they are, to say the least, not less humane than others.
The author of "Recollections of an Officer" [Footnote:Souvenirs d'un Officier du 2me de Zouaves. Paris, 1859.] sums up the character of the Zouaves in a few words which clear them from the other two charges, those of dissoluteness and drunkenness. He says,—"Beside the condition of success resulting from the first organization, it must be said, that, somewhat later, the happy idea came to be adopted, of giving to the Zouaves destined to fight in the light-armed troops the costume ofChasseurs-à-pied. The recruitment added also not a little to the reputation which the Zouaves so rapidly acquired; the soldiers are all drawn, not from conscripts, but from applicants for the service. Many are Parisians, or, at all events, inhabitants of the other great French cities; most have already served,—are therefore inured to the work,—accustomed to privations, which they undergo gayly,—to fatigues, at which they joke,—to dangers in battle, which they treat as mere play. They are proud of their uniform, which does not resemble that of any other corps,—proud of that name,Zouave, of mysterious origin,—proud of the splendid actions with which each succeeding day enriches the history of their troops,—happy in the liberty they experience, both in garrison and on expeditions. It is said that the Zouaves love wine; it is true; but they are rarely seen intoxicated; they seek the pleasures of conviviality, not the imbrutement of drunkenness. These regiments count in their ranks officers, who,ennuiedby a lazy life, have taken up the musket and thechechia,—under-officers, who, having already served, brave, even rash, seek to win their epaulettes anew in this hard service, and gain either a glorious position or a glorious death,—old officers of thegarde mobile,—broad-shouldered marines, who have served their time on shipboard, accustomed to cannon and the thunderings of the tempest,—young men of family, desirous to replace with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, bought and colored with their blood, the dishonor of a life gaped wearily away on the pavements of Paris.
"Composed of such elements, one can scarcely imagine the body of Zouaves other than brilliant in the field of battle. The officers are generally chosen from the regiments of the line, men remarkable for strength, courage, and prudence; full of energy, pushing the love of their colors to its last limit, always ready to confront death and to run up to meet danger, they seek glory rather than promotion. To train up their soldiers, to give them an example, in their own persons, of all the military virtues,—such are their only cares. Our ancestors said, 'Noblesse, oblige'; these choose the same motto.Theirnobility is not that of old family-titles, but the uniform in which they are clothed, the title of officer of Zouaves.Esprit de corps, that religion of the soldier, is carried by the Zouaves to its highest pitch; the common soldiers would not consent to change their turban for the epaulettes of an ensign in the other service; and many an ensign, and not a few captains, have preferred to await their advancement in the Zouaves rather than immediately obtain it by entering other regiments. There exists, moreover, between the soldiers and officers, a military fraternity, which, far from destroying discipline, tends rather to draw more closely its bonds. The officer sees in his men rather companions in danger and in glory than inferiors; he willingly attends to their complaints, and strives to spare them all unnecessary privations. Where they are exposed to difficulties, he does not hesitate to employ all the means in his power to aid them. In return, the soldier professes for his officer an affection, a devotion, a sort of filial respect. Discipline, he knows, must be severe, and he does not grumble at its penalties. In battle, he does not abandon his chief; he watches over him, will die for his safety, will not let him fall into the hands of the enemy if wounded. At the bivouac he makes the officer's fire, though his own should die for want of fuel; cares for his horse, arranges his furniture; if any delicacy in the way of food can be procured, he brings it to the chief. Convinced of the desire of their master that the soldiers shall be well fed, the Zouaves often insist that a part of their pay be expended for procuring the provisions of the tribe. [Footnote: In accordance with Arab customs, the Zouaves, who (to use the ordinary expression) "live in common," compose a circle to which they give the name oftribe. In the tribe, each one has his allotted task: one attends to making the fires and procuring wood; another draws water and does the cooking; another makes the coffee and arranges the camp, etc.] The colonel is the man most venerated by these soldiers, who look upon him as the father of the family. They are proud of the colonel's success, and happy to have contributed to his honor or advancement. When an order comes directly from him, be sure it will be religiously obeyed. 'Whenpapasays anything,' they repeat, one to another, 'it must be done. Papa knows it isalreadydone; be wants us to be the best children possible.' In critical moments, the colonel can use the severest Draconian code, without having anything to fear from the disapprobation of his men."
I mourn no more my vanished years:Beneath a tender rain,An April rain of smiles and tears,My heart is young again.
The west winds blow, and, singing low,I hear the glad streams run;The windows of my soul I throwWide open to the sun.
No longer forward nor behindI look in hope or fear;But, grateful, take the good I find,The best of now and here.
I plough no more a desert land,To harvest weed and tare;The manna dropping from God's handRebukes my painful care.
I break my pilgrim staff, I layAside the toiling oar;The angel sought so far awayI welcome at my door.
The airs of Spring may never playAmong the ripening corn,Nor freshness of the flowers of MayBlow through the Autumn morn;—
Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian lookThrough fringed lids to heaven,And the pale aster in the brookShall see its image given;—
The woods shall wear their robes of praise,The south wind softly sigh,And sweet, calm days in golden hazeMelt down the amber sky.
Not less shall manly deed and wordRebuke an age of wrong;The graven flowers that wreathe the swordMake not the blade less strong.
But smiting hands shall learn to heal,To build as to destroy;Nor less my heart for others feelThat I the more enjoy.
All as God wills, who wisely heedsTo give or to withhold,And knoweth more of all my needsThan all my prayers have told!
Enough that blessings undeservedHave marked my erring track,—That, wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,His chastening turned me back,—
That more and more a ProvidenceOf love is understood,Making the springs of time and senseSweet with eternal good,—
That death seems but a covered wayWhich opens into light,Wherein no blinded child can strayBeyond the Father's sight,—
That care and trial seem at last,Through Memory's sunset air,Like mountain-ranges overpast,In purple distance fair,—
That all the jarring notes of lifeSeem blending in a psalm,And all the angles of its strifeSlow rounding into calm.
And so the shadows fall apart,And so the west winds play;And all the windows of my heartI open to the day!
There has been a sort of stillness in the atmosphere of our boarding-house since my last record, as if something or other were going on. There is no particular change that I can think of in the aspect of things; yet I have a feeling as if some game of life were quietly playing and strange forces were at work, underneath this smooth surface of every-day boarding-house life, which would show themselves some fine morning or other in events, if not in catastrophes. I have been watchful, as I said I should be, but have little to tell as yet. You may laugh at me, and very likely think me foolishly fanciful to trouble myself about what is going on in a middling-class household like ours. Do as you like. But here is that terrible fact to begin with,—a beautiful young girl, with the blood and the nerve-fibre that belong to Nature's women, turned loose among live men.
—Terriblefact?
Very terrible. Nothing more so. Do you forget the angels who lost heaven for the daughters of men? Do you forget Helen, and the fair women who made mischief and set nations by the ears before Helen was born? If jealousies that gnaw men's hearts out of their bodies,—if pangs that waste men to shadows and drive them into raving madness or moping melancholy,—if assassination and suicide are dreadful possibilities, then there is always something frightful about a lovely young woman.—I love to look at this "Rainbow," as her father used sometimes to call her, of ours. Handsome creature that she is in forms and colors,—the very picture, as it seems to me, of that "golden blonde" my friend whose book you read last year fell in love with when he was a boy, (as you remember, no doubt,)—handsome as she is, fit for a sea-king's bride, it is not her beauty alone that holds my eyes upon her. Let me tell you one of my fancies, and then you will understand the strange sort of fascination she has for me.
It is in the hearts of many men and women—let me add children—that there is aGreat Secretwaiting for them,—a secret of which they get hints now and then, perhaps oftener in early than in later years. These hints come sometimes in dreams, sometimes in sudden startling flashes,—second wakings, as it were,—a waking out of the waking state, which last is very apt to be a half-sleep. I have many times stopped short and held my breath, and felt the blood leaving my cheeks, in one of these sudden clairvoyant flashes. Of course I cannot tell what kind of a secret this is; but I think of it as a disclosure of certain relations of our personal being to time and space, to other intelligences, to the procession of events, and to their First Great Cause. This secret seems to be broken up, as it were, into fragments, so that we find here a word and there a syllable, and then again only a letter of it; but it never is written out for most of us as a complete sentence, in this life. I do not think it could be; for I am disposed to consider our beliefs about such a possible disclosure rather as a kind of premonition of an enlargement of our faculties in some future state than as an expectation to be fulfilled for most of us in this life. Persons, however, have fallen into trances,—as did the Reverend William Tennent, among many others,—and learned some things which they could not tell in our human words.
Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this infinite secret for—which our souls are waiting, the faces of women are those that carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the great mystery. There are women's faces, some real, some ideal, which contain something in them that becomes a positive element in our creed, so direct and palpable a revelation is it of the infinite purity and love. I remember two faces of women with wings, such as they call angels, of Fra Angelico,—and I just now came across a print of Raphael's Santa Apollina, with something of the same quality,—which I was sure had their prototypes in the world above ours. No wonder the Catholics pay their vows to the Queen of Heaven! The unpoetical side of Protestantism is, that it has no women to be worshipped.
But mind you, it is not every beautiful face that hints the Great Secret to us, nor is it only in beautiful faces that we find traces of it. Sometimes it looks out from a sweet sad eye, the only beauty of a plain countenance; sometimes there is so much meaning in the lips of a woman, not otherwise fascinating, that we know they have a message for us, and wait almost with awe to hear their accents. But this young girl has at once the beauty of feature and the unspoken mystery of expression. Can she tell me anything? Is her life a complement of mine, with the missing element in it which I have been groping after through so many friendships that I have tired of, and through—Hush! Is the door fast? Talking loud is a bad trick in these curious boarding-houses.
You must have sometimes noted this fact that I am going to remind you of and to use for a special illustration. Riding along over a rocky road, suddenly the slow monotonous grinding of the crushing gravel changes to a deep heavy rumble. There is a great hollow under your feet,—a huge unsunned cavern. Deep, deep beneath you, in the core of the living rock, it arches its awful vault, and far away it stretches its winding galleries, their roofs dripping into streams where fishes have been swimming and spawning in the dark until their scales are white as milk and their eyes have withered out, obsolete and useless.
So it is in life. We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, grinding over the same thoughts,—the gravel of the soul's highway,—now and then jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, but must ride over or round as we best may, sometimes bringing short up against a disappointment, but still working along with the creaking and rattling and grating and jerking that belong to the journey of life, even in the smoothest-rolling vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep underground reverberation that reveals the unsuspected depth of some abyss of thought or passion beneath us.——
I wish the girl would go. I don't like to look at her so much, and yet I cannot help it. Always that same expression of something that I ought to know,—something that she was made to tell and I to hear,—lying there ready to fall off from her lips, ready to leap out of her eyes and make a saint of me, or a devil or a lunatic, or perhaps a prophet to tell the truth and be hated of men, or a poet whose words shall flash upon the dry stubble-field of worn-out thoughts and burn over an age of lies in an hour of passion.
It suddenly occurs to me that I may have put you on the wrong track. The Great Secret that I refer to has nothing to do with the Three Words. Set your mind at ease about that,—there are reasons I could give you which settle all that matter. I don't wonder, however, that you confounded the Great Secret with the Three Words.
I LOVE YOU is all the secret that many, nay, most women have to tell. When that is said, they are like China-crackers on the morning of the fifth of July. And just as that little patriotic implement is made with a slender train which leads to the magazine in its interior, so a sharp eye can almost always see the train leading from a young girl's eye or lip to the "I love you" in her heart. But the Three Words are not the Great Secret I mean. No, women's faces are only one of the tablets on which that is written in its partial, fragmentary symbols. It lies deeper than Love, though very probably Love is a part of it. Some, I think,—Wordsworth might be one of them,—spell out a portion of it from certain beautiful natural objects, landscapes, flowers, and others. I can mention several poems of his that have shadowy hints which seem to me to come near the region where I think it lies. I have known two persons who pursued it with the passion of the old alchemists,—all wrong evidently, but infatuated, and never giving up the daily search for it until they got tremulous and feeble, and their dreams changed to visions of things that ran and crawled about their floor and ceilings, and so they died. The vulgar called them drunkards.
I told you that I would let you know the mystery of the effect this young girl's face produces on me. It is akin to those influences a friend of mine has described, you may remember, as coming from certain voices. I cannot translate it into words,—only into feelings; and these I have attempted to shadow by showing that her face hinted that revelation of something we are close to knowing, which all imaginative persons are looking for either in this world or on the very threshold of the next.
You shake your head at the vagueness and fanciful incomprehensibleness of my description of the expression in a young girl's face. You forget what a miserable surface-matter this language is in which we try to reproduce our interior state of being. Articulation is a shallow trick. From the light Poh! which we toss off from our lips as we fling a nameless scribbler's impertinences into our waste-baskets, to the gravest utterance which comes from our throats in our moments of deepest need, is only a space of some three or four inches. Words, which are a set of clickings, hissings, lispings, and so on, mean very little, compared to tones and expression of the features. I give it up; I thought I could shadow forth in some feeble way, by their aid, the effect this young girl's face produces on my imagination; but it is of no use. No doubt your head aches, trying to make something of my description. If there is here and there one that can make anything intelligible out of my talk about the Great Secret, and who has spelt out a syllable or two of it on some woman's face, dead or living, that is all I can expect. One should see the person with whom he converses about such matters. There are dreamy-eyed people to whom I should say all these things with a certainty of being understood;—
That moment that his face I see,I know the man that must hear me:To him my tale I teach.
——I am afraid some of them have not got a spare quarter for thisAugust number, so that they will never see it.
——Let us start again, just as if we had not made this ambitious attempt, which may go for nothing, and you can have your money refunded, if you will make the change.
This young girl, about whom I have talked so unintelligibly, is the unconscious centre of attraction to the whole solar system of our breakfast-table. The little gentleman, leans towards her, and she again seems to be swayed as by some invisible gentle force towards him. That slight inclination of two persons with a strong affinity towards each other, throwing them a little out of plumb when they sit side by side, is a physical fact I have often noticed. Then there is a tendency in all the men's eyes to converge on her; and I do firmly believe, that, if all their chairs were examined, they would be found a little obliquely placed, so as to favor the direction in which their occupants love to look.
That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a sprig to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another by the hand of Bridget to this old gentleman.
——Sarvant, Ma'am! Much obleeged,—he said, and put it gallantly in his button-hole.—After breakfast he must see some of her drawings. Very fine performances,—very fine!—truly elegant productions,—truly elegant!—Had seen Miss Linley's needle-work in London, in the year (eighteen hundred and little or nothing, I think he said,)—patronized by the nobility and gentry, and Her Majesty,—elegant, truly elegant productions, very fine performances; these drawings reminded him of them;—wonderful resemblance to Nature; an extraordinary art, painting; Mr. Copley made some very fine pictures that he remembered seeing when he was a boy. Used to remember some lines about a portrait written by Mr. Cowper, beginning,—
"Oh that those lips had language! Life has pastWith me but roughly since I saw thee last."
And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking about a dead mother of his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if cataleptic, his eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the glimmering light through which he saw them.—What is there quite so profoundly human as an old man's memory of a mother who died in his earlier years? Mother she remains till manhood, and by-and-by she grows, as it were, to be as a sister; and at last, when, wrinkled and bowed and broken, he looks back upon her in her fair youth, he sees in the sweet image he caresses, not his parent, but, as it were, his child.
If I had not seen all this in the old gentleman's face, the words with which he broke his silence would have betrayed his train of thought.
——If they had only taken pictures then as they do now!—he said.—All gone! all gone! nothing but her face as she leaned on the arms of her great chair; and I would give a hundred pound for the poorest little picture of her, such as you can buy for a shilling of anybody that you don't want to see.—The old gentleman put his hand to his forehead so as to shade his eyes. I saw he was looking at the dim photograph of memory, and turned from him to Iris.
How many drawing-books have you filled,—I said,—since you began to take lessons?—This was the first,—she answered,—since she was here; and it was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size she had covered with drawings.
I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies, principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so forth. Limbs from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What a superb drawing of an arm! I don't remember it among the figures from Michel Angelo, which seem to have been her patterns mainly. From Nature, I think, or after a cast from Nature.—Oh!——
——Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose,—I said, taking up the drawing-book with a lock on it.——Yes,—she said.—I should like to see her style of working on a small scale.—There was nothing in it worth showing,—she said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which proved to be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I haven't the least doubt. I think, though, I could tell by her way of dealing with us what her fancies were about us boarders. Some of them act as if they were bewitched with her, but she does not seem to notice it much. Her thoughts seem to be on her little neighbor more than on anybody else. The young fellow John appears to stand second in her good graces. I think he has once or twice sent her what the landlady's daughter calls bó-kays of flowers,—somebody has, at any rate.—I saw a book she had, which must have come from the divinity-student. It had a dreary title-page, which she had enlivened with a fancy portrait of the author,—a face from memory, apparently,—one of those faces that small children loathe without knowing why, and which give them that inward disgust for heaven so many of the little wretches betray, when they hear that these are "good men," and that heaven is full of such.—The gentleman with the "diamond"—the Koh-i-noor, so called by us—was not encouraged, I think, by the reception of his packet of perfumed soap. He pulls his purple moustache and looks appreciatingly at Iris, who never sees him, as it should seem. The young Marylander, who I thought would have been in love with her before this time, sometimes looks from his corner across the long diagonal of the table, as much as to say, I wish you were up here by me, or I were down there by you,—which would, perhaps, be a more natural arrangement than the present one. But nothing comes of all this,—and nothing has come of my sagacious idea of finding out the girl's fancies by looking into her locked drawing-book.
Not to give up all the questions I was determined to solve, I made an attempt also to work into the little gentleman's chamber. For this purpose, I kept him in conversation, one morning, until he was just ready to go up-stairs, and then, as if to continue the talk, followed him as he toiled back to his room. He rested on the landing and faced round toward me. There was something in his eye which said, Stop there! So we finished our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered assurance enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready.—No answer.—Knock again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and locked, and presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled, misshapen boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner door were unfastened,—with unnecessary noise, I thought,—and he came into the passage. He pulled the inner door after him and opened the outer one at which I stood. He had on a flowered silk dressing-gown, such as "Mr. Copley" used to paint his old-fashioned merchant-princes in; and a quaint-looking key in his hand. Our conversation was short, but long enough to convince me that the little gentleman did not want my company in his chamber, and did not mean to have it.
I have been making a great fuss about what is no mystery at all,—a schoolgirl's secrets and a whimsical man's habits. I mean to give up such nonsense and mind my own business.—Hark! What the deuse is that odd noise in his chamber?
——I think I am a little superstitious. There were two things, when I was a boy, that diabolized my imagination,—I mean, that gave me a distinct apprehension of a formidable bodily shape which prowled round the neighborhood where I was born and bred. The first was a series of marks called the "Devil's footsteps." These were patches of sand in the pastures, where no grass grew, where even the low-bush blackberry, the "dewberry," as our Southern neighbors call it, in prettier and more Shakspearian language, did not spread its clinging creepers,—where even the pale, dry, sadly-sweet "everlasting" could not grow, but all was bare and blasted. The second was a mark in one of the public buildings near my home,—the college dormitory named after a Colonial Governor. I do not think many persons are aware of the existence of this mark,—little having been said about the story in print, as it was considered very desirable, for the sake of the institution, to hush it up. In the northwest corner, and on the level of the third or fourth story, there are signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty well, but not to be mistaken. A considerable portion of that corner must have been carried away, from within outward. It was an unpleasant story; and I do not care to repeat the particulars; but some young men had been using sacred things in a profane and unlawful way, when the occurrence, which was variously explained, took place. The story of the Appearance in the chamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the building there could be no question; and the zig-zag line, where the mortar is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible. The queer burnt spots, called the "Devil's footsteps," had never attracted attention before this time, though there is no evidence that they had not existed previously, except that of the late Miss M., a "Goody," so called, or sweeper, who was positive on the subject, but had a strange horror of referring to an affair of which she was thought to know something.—I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy of impressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, with untenanted, locked upper-chambers, and a most ghostly garret,—with the "Devil's footsteps" in the fields behind the house, and in front of it the patched dormitory where the unexplained occurrence had taken place which startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that one of them was an idiot from that day forward, and another, after a dreadful season of mental conflict, took holy orders and became renowned for his ascetic sanctity.
There were other circumstances that kept up the impression produced by these two singular facts I have just mentioned. There was a dark storeroom, on looking through the keyhole of which, I could dimly see a heap of chairs and tables, and other four-footed things, which seemed to me to have rushed in there, frightened, and in their fright to have huddled together and climbed up on each other's backs,—as the people did in that awful crush where so many were killed, at the execution of Holloway and Haggerty. Then the Lady's portrait, up-stairs, with the sword-thrusts through it,—marks of the British officers' rapiers,—and the tall mirror in which they used to look at their red coats,—confound them for smashing its mate!—and the deep, cunningly wrought arm-chair in which Lord Percy used to sit while his hair was dressing;—he was a gentleman, and always had it covered with a largepeignoir, to save the silk covering my grandmother embroidered. Then the little room down-stairs, from which went the orders to throw up a bank of earth on the hill yonder, where you may now observe a granite obelisk,—"the study," in my father's time, but in those days the council-chamber of armed men,—sometimes filled with soldiers;—come with me, and I will show you the "dents" left by the butts of their muskets all over the floor.—With all these suggestive objects round me, aided by the wild stories those awful country-boys that came to live in our service brought with them,—of contracts written in blood and left out over night, not to be found the next morning,—removed by the Evil One, who takes his nightly round among our dwellings, and filed away for future use,—of dreams coming true,—of death-signs,—of apparitions,—no wonder that my imagination got excited, and I was liable to superstitious fancies.
Jeremy Bentham's logic, by which he proved that he couldn't possibly see a ghost, is all very well—in the day-time. All the reason in the world will never get those impressions of childhood, created by just such circumstances as I have been telling, out of a man's head. That is the only excuse I have to give for the nervous kind of curiosity with which I watch my little neighbor, and the obstinacy with which I lie awake whenever I hear anything going on in his chamber after midnight.
But whatever further observations I may have made must be deferred for the present. You will see in what way it happened that my thoughts were turned from spiritual matters to bodily ones, and how I got my fancy full of material images,—faces, heads, figures, muscles, and so forth,—in such a way that I should have no chance in this number to gratify any curiosity you may feel, if I had the means of so doing.
Indeed, I have come pretty near omitting my periodical record this time. It was all the work of a friend of mine, who would have it that I should sit to him for my portrait. When a soul draws a body in the great lottery of life, where every one is sure of a prize, such as it is, the said soul inspects the said body with the same curious interest with which one who has ventured into a "gift enterprise" examines the "massive silver pencil-case" with the coppery smell and impressible tube, or the "splendid gold ring" with the questionable specific gravity, which it has been his fortune to obtain in addition to his purchase.
The soul, having studied the article of which it finds itself proprietor, thinks, after a time, it knows it pretty well. But there is this difference between its view and that of a person looking at us:—we look from within, and see nothing but the mould formed by the elements in which we are incased; other observers look from without, and see us as living statues. To be sure, by the aid of mirrors, we get a few glimpses of our outside aspect; but this occasional impression is always modified by that look of the soul from within outward which none but ourselves can take. A portrait is apt, therefore, to be a surprise to us. The artist looks only from without. He sees us, too, with a hundred aspects on our faces we are never likely to see. No genuine expression can be studied by the subject of it in the looking-glass.
More than this; he sees us in a way in which many of our friends or acquaintances never see us. Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend. For, in the first place, each puts a special reflection of himself upon us, on the principle of assimilation referred to in my last record, if you happen to have read that document. And secondly, each of our friends is capable of seeing just so far, and no farther, into our face, and each sees in it the particular thing that he looks for. Now the artist, if he is truly an artist, does not take any one of these special views. Suppose he should copy you as you appear to the man who wants your name to a subscription-list, you could hardly expect a friend who entertains you to recognize the likeness to the smiling face which sheds its radiance at his board. Even within your own family, I am afraid there is a face which the rich uncle knows, that is not so familiar to the poor relation. The artist must take one or the other, or something compounded of the two, or something different from either. What the daguerreotype and photograph do is to give the features and one particular look, the very look which kills all expression, that of self-consciousness. The artist throws you off your guard, watches you in movement and in repose, puts your face through its exercises, observes its transitions, and so gets the whole range of its expression. Out of all this he forms an ideal portrait, which is not a copy of your exact look at any one time or to any particular person. Such a portrait cannot be to everybody what the ungloved call "as nat'ral as life." Every good picture, therefore, must be considered wanting in resemblance by many persons.
There is one strange revelation which comes out, as the artist shapes your features from his outline. It is that you resemble so many relatives to whom you yourself never had noticed any particular likeness in your countenance.
He is at work at me now, when I catch some of these resemblances, thus:—
There! that is just the look my father used to have sometimes; I never thought I had a sign of it. The mother's eyebrow and grayish-blue eye, those I knew I had. But there is a something which recalls a smile that faded away from my sister's lips—how many years ago! I thought it so pleasant in her, that I love myself better for having a trace of it.
Are we not young? Are we not fresh and blooming? Wait a bit. The artist takes a mean little brush and draws three fine lines, diverging outwards from the eye over the temple. Five years.—The artist draws one tolerably distinct and two faint lines, perpendicularly between the eyebrows. Ten years.—The artist breaks up the contours round the mouth, so that they look a little as a hat does that has been sat upon and recovered itself, ready, as one would say, to crumple up again in the same creases, on smiling or other change of feature.—Hold on! Stop that! Give a young fellow a chance! Are we not whole years short of that interesting period of life when Mr. Balzac says that a man, etc., etc., etc.?
There now! That is ourself, as we look after finishing an article, getting a three-mile pull with the ten-foot sculls, redressing the wrongs of the toilet, and standing with the light of hope in our eye and the reflection of a red curtain on our cheek. Is he not a POET that painted us?
"Blest be the art that can immortalize!"
——Young folks look on a face as a unit; children who go to school with any given little John Smith see in his name a distinctive appellation, and in his features as special and definite an expression of his sole individuality as if he were the first created of his race. As soon as we are old enough to get the range of three or four generations well in hand, and to take in large family histories, we never see an individual in a face of any stock we know, but a mosaic copy of a pattern, with fragmentary tints from this and that ancestor. The analysis of a face into its ancestral elements requires that it should be examined in the very earliest infancy, before it has lost that ancient and solemn look it brings with it out of the past eternity; and again in that brief space when Life, the mighty sculptor, has done his work, and Death, his silent servant, lifts the veil and lets us look at the marble lines he has wrought so faithfully; and lastly, while a painter who can seize all the traits of a countenance is building it up, feature after feature, from the slight outline to the finished portrait.
——I am satisfied, that, as we grow older, we learn to look upon our bodies more and more as a temporary possession, and less and less as identified with ourselves. In early years, while the child "feels its life in every limb," it lives in the body and for the body to a very great extent. It ought to be so. There have been many very interesting children who have shown a wonderful indifference to the things of earth and an extraordinary development of the spiritual nature. There is a perfect literature of their biographies, all alike in their essentials; the same "disinclination to the usual amusements of childhood"; the same remarkable sensibility; the same docility; the same conscientiousness; in short, an almost uniform character, marked by beautiful traits, which we look at with a painful admiration. It will be found that most of these children are the subjects of some constitutional unfitness for living, the most frequent of which I need not mention. They are like the beautiful, blushing, half-grown fruit that falls before its time because its core is gnawed out. They have their meaning,—they do not live in vain,—but they are windfalls. I am convinced that many healthy children are injured morally by being forced to read too much about these little meek sufferers and their spiritual exercises. Here is a boy that loves to run, swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, "cut behind" anything on wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, "holler" Fire! on slight evidence, run after soldiers, patronize an engine-company, or, in his own words, "blow for tub No. 11," or whatever it may be;—isn't that a pretty nice sort of a boy, though he has not got anything the matter with him that takes the taste of this world out? Now, when you put into such a hot-blooded, hard-fisted, round-cheeked little rogue's hand a sad-looking volume or pamphlet, with the portrait of a thin, white-faced child, whose life is really as much a training for death as the last month of a condemned criminal's existence, what does he find in common between his own overflowing and exulting sense of vitality and the experiences of the doomed offspring of invalid parents? The time comes when we have learned to understand the music of sorrow, the beauty of resigned suffering, the holy light that plays over the pillow of those who die before their time, in humble hope and trust. But it is not until he has worked his way through the period of honest, hearty animal existence, which every robust, child should make the most of,—not until he has learned the use of his various faculties, which is his first duty,—that a boy of courage and animal vigor is in a proper state to read these tearful records of premature decay. I have no doubt that disgust is implanted in the minds of many healthy children by early surfeits of pathological piety. I do verily believe that He who took children in His arms and blessed them loved the healthiest and most playful of them just as well as those who were richest in the tuberculous virtues. I know what I am talking about, and there are more parents in this country who will be willing to listen to what I say than there are fools to pick a quarrel with me. In the sensibility and the sanctity which often accompany premature decay I see one of the most beautiful instances of the principle of compensation which marks the Divine benevolence. But to get the spiritual hygiene of robust natures out of the exceptional regimen of invalids is just simply what we Professors call "bad practice"; and I know by experience that there are worthy people who not only try it on their own children, but actually force it on those of their neighbors.
——Having been photographed, and stereographed, and chromatographed, or done in colors, it only remained to be phrenologized. A polite note from Messrs. Bumpus and Crane, requesting our attendance at their Physiological Emporium, was too tempting to be resisted. We repaired to that scientific Golgotha.
Messrs. Bumpus and Crane are arranged on the plan of the man and the woman in the toy called a "weather-house," both on the same wooden arm suspended on a pivot,—so that when one comes to the door, the other retires backwards, andvice versâ. The more particular speciality of one is to lubricate your entrance and exit,—that of the other to polish you off phrenologically in the recesses of the establishment. Suppose yourself in a room full of casts and pictures, before a counter-full of books with taking titles. I wonder if the picture of the brain is there, "approved" by a noted Phrenologist, which was copied frommy, the Professor's, folio plate in the work of Gall and Spurzheim. An extra convolution, No. 9,Destructiveness, according to the list beneath, which was not to be seen in the plate, itself a copy of Nature, was very liberally supplied by the artist, to meet the wants of the catalogue of "organs." Professor Bumpus is seated in front of a row of women,—horn-combers and gold-beaders, or somewhere about that range of life,—looking so credulous, that, if any Second-Advent Miller or Joe Smith should come along, he could string the whole lot of them on his cheapest lie, as a boy strings a dozen "shiners" on a stripped twig of willow.
The Professor (meaning ourselves) is in a hurry, as usual; let the horn-combers wait,—he shall be bumped without inspecting the antechamber.
Tape round the head,—22 inches. (Come on, old 23 inches, if you think you are the better man!)
Feels of thorax and arm, and nuzzles round among muscles as those horrid old women poke their fingers into the salt-meat on the provision-stalls at the Quincy Market. Vitality, No. 5 or 6, or something or other.Victuality, (organ at epigastrium,) some other number equally significant.
Mild champooing of head now commences. Extraordinary revelations! Cupidipbilous, 6! Hymeniphilous, 6+! Paediphilous, 5! Deipniphilous, 6! Gelasmiphilous, 6! Muslkiphilous, 5! Uraniphilous, 5! Glossiphilous, 8!! and so on. Meant for a linguist.—Invaluable information. Will invest in grammars and dictionaries immediately.—I have nothing against the grand total of my phrenological endowments.
I never set great store by my head, and did not think Messrs. Bumpus and Crane would give me so good a lot of organs as they did, especially considering that I was adead-head on that occasion. Much obliged to them for their politeness. They have been useful in their way by calling attention to important physiological facts. (This concession is due to our immense bump of Candor.)
A short Lecture on Phrenology, read to the Boarders at our Breakfast-Table.
I shall begin, my friends, with the definition of aPseudo-science. A Pseudo-science consists ofa nomenclature, with a self-adjusting arrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors its doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tells against it, is excluded. It is invariably connected with some lucrative practical application. Its professors and practitioners are usually shrewd people; they are very serious with the public, but wink and laugh a good deal among themselves. The believing multitude consists of women of both sexes, feeble-minded inquirers, poetical optimists, people who always get cheated in buying horses, philanthropists who insist on hurrying up the millennium, and others of this class, with here and there a clergyman, less frequently a lawyer, very rarely a physician, and almost never a horse-jockey or a member of the detective police.—I did not say that Phrenology was one of the Pseudo-sciences.
A Pseudo-science does not necessarily consist wholly of lies. It may contain many truths, and even valuable ones. The rottenest bank starts with a little specie. It puts out a thousand promises to pay on the strength of a single dollar, but the dollar is very commonly a good one. The practitioners of the Pseudo-sciences know that common minds, after they have been baited with a real fact or two, will jump at the merest rag of a lie, or even at the bare hook. When we have one fact found us, we are very apt to supply the next out of our own imagination. (How many persons can read Judges xv. 16 correctly the first time?) The Pseudo-sciences take advantage of this.—I did not say that it was so with Phrenology.
I have rarely met a sensible man who would not allow that there wassomethingin Phrenology. A broad, high forehead, it is commonly agreed, promises intellect; one that is "villanous low" and has a huge hind-head back of it, is wont to mark an animal nature. I have as rarely met an unbiassed and sensible man who really believed in the bumps. It is observed, however, that persons with what the Phrenologists call "good heads" are more prone than others toward plenary belief in the doctrine.
It is so hard to prove a negative, that, if a man should assert that the moon was in truth a green cheese, formed by the coagulable substance of the Milky Way, and challenge me to prove the contrary, I might be puzzled. But if he offer to sell me a ton of this lunar cheese, I call on him to prove the truth of the caseous nature of our satellite, before I purchase.
It is not necessary to prove the falsity of the phrenological statement. It is only necessary to show that its truth is not proved, and cannot be, by the common course of argument. The walls of the head are double, with a great air-chamber between them, over the smallest and most closely crowded "organs." Can you tell how much money there is in a safe, which also has thick double walls, by kneading its knobs with your fingers? So when a man fumbles about my forehead, and talks about the organs ofIndividuality,Size, etc., I trust him as much as I should if he felt of the outside of my strong-box and told me that there was a five-dollar- or a ten-dollar-bill under this or that particular rivet. Perhaps there is;only he doesn't know anything about it. But this is a point that I, the Professor, understand, my friends, or ought to, certainly, better than you do. The next argument you will all appreciate.
I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting mechanism of Phrenology, which isvery similarto that of the Pseudo-sciences. An example will show it most conveniently.
A. is a notorious thief. Messrs. Bumpus and Crane examine him and find a good-sized organ of Acquisitiveness. Positive fact for Phrenology. Casts and drawings of A. are multiplied, and the bumpdoes not losein the act of copying.—I did not Hay it gained.—What do you look so for? (to the boarders.)
Presently B. turns up, a bigger thief than A. But B. has no bump at all over Acquisitiveness. Negative fact; goes against Phrenology.—Not a bit of it. Don't you see how small Conscientiousness is?That'sthe reason B. stole.
And then comes C., ten times as much a thief as either A. or B.,—used to steal before he was weaned, and would pick one of his own pockets and put its contents in another, if he could find no other way of committing petty larceny. Unfortunately, C. has ahollow, instead of a bump, over Acquisitiveness. Ah, but just look and see what a bump of Alimentiveness! Did not C. buy nuts and ginger-bread, when a boy, with the money he stole? Of course you see why he is a thief, and how his example confirms our noble science.
At last comes along a case which is apparently asettler, for there is a little brain with vast and varied powers,—a case like that of Byron, for instance. Then comes out the grand reserve-reason which covers everything and renders it simply impossible ever to corner a Phrenologist. "It is not the size alone, but thequalityof an organ, which determines its degree of power."
Oh! oh! I see.—The argument may be briefly stated thus by thePhrenologist: "Heads I win, tails you lose." Well, that's convenient.
It must be confessed that Phrenology has a certain resemblance to thePseudo-sciences. I did not say it was a Pseudo-science.
I have often met persons who have been altogether struck up and amazed at the accuracy with which some wandering Professor of Phrenology had read their characters written upon their skulls. Of course the Professor acquires his information solely through his cranial inspections and manipulations.—What are you laughing at? (to the boarders).—But let us justsuppose, for a moment, that a tolerably cunning fellow, who did not know or care anything about Phrenology, should open a shop and undertake to read off people's characters at fifty cents or a dollar apiece. Let us see how well he could get along without the "organs."
I will suppose myself to set up such a shop. I would invest one hundred dollars, more or less, in casts of brains, skulls, charts, and other matters that would make the most show for the money. That would do to begin with. I would then advertise myself as the celebrated Professor Brainey, or whatever name I might choose, and wait for my first customer. My first customer is a middle-aged man. I look at him,—ask him a question or two, so as to hear him talk. When I have got the hang of him, I ask him to sit down, and proceed to fumble his skull, dictating as follows:—
LIST OF FACULTIES FOR CUSTOMER. PRIVATE NOTES FOR MY PUPIL:Each to be accompanied with a wink.
Amativeness, 7. Most men love the conflicting sex, and allmen love to be told they do.
Alimentiveness, 8. Don't you see that he has burst off hislowest waistcoat-button with feeding,—hay?
Acquisitiveness, 8. Of course. A middle-aged Yankee.
Approbativeness, 7+. Hat well brushed. Hair ditto. Mark the effect of thatplussign.
Self-esteem, 6. His face shows that.
Benevolence, 9. That'll please him
Conscientiousness, 8-1/2. That fraction looks first-rate.
Mirthfulness, 7. Has laughed twice since he came in.
Ideality, 9. That sounds well.
Form, Size, Weight, Color, } Locality, Eventuality, etc.,} 4 to 6. Average everything that etc.,} can't be guessed.
And so of the other faculties.
Of course, you know, that isn't the way the Phrenologists do. They go only by the bumps.—What do you keep laughing so for? (to the boarders.) I only said that is the wayIshould practise "Phrenology" for a living.
End of my Lecture.
——The Reformers have good heads generally. Their faces are commonly serene enough, and they are lambs in private intercourse, even though their voices may be like
The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore,
when heard from platform. Their greatest spiritual danger is from the perpetualflattery of abuseto which they are exposed. These lines are meant to caution them.
No fear lest praise should make us proud!We know how cheaply that is won;The idle homage of the crowdIs proof of tasks as idly done.
A surface-smile may pay the toilThat follows still the conquering Right,With soft, white hands to dress the spoilThat sunbrowned arms have clutched in fight.
Sing the sweet song of other days,Serenely placid, safely true,And o'er the present's parching waysThy verse distils like evening dew.
But speak in words of living power,—They fall like drops of scalding rainThat plashed before the burning showerswept o'er the cities of the plain!
Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale,—Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring,And, smitten through their leprous mail,Strike right and left in hope to sting.
If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath,They feet on earth, they heart above,Canst walk in peace they kingly path,Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love,—
Too kind for bitter words to grieve,Too firm for clamor to dismay,When Faith forbids thee to believe,And Meekness calls to disobey,—
Ah, then beware of mortal pride!The smiling pride that calmly scornsThose foolish fingers, crimson dyedIn laboring on thy crown of thorns!
War has been pronounced the condition of humanity; and it is certain that conflict of some kind rages everywhere and at all times. The most combative people on earth are the advocates of universal and perpetual peace. There is something essentially defiant in the action of men who avowedly seek the abolition of a custom that has existed since the days of Cain, and which was well known to those magnificent beasts that ranged over the earth's face long before man began to dream or was dreamed of. To fight seems a necessity of the animal nature, whether the animal be called tiger, bull, or man. Those who have fought assure us that there is a positive pleasure in battle. That clever young woman, Miss Flora Mac-Ivor, who passed most of her life in the very highest fighting society, assures us, that men, when confronted with each other, have a certain instinct for strife, as we see in other male animals, such as dogs, bulls, and so forth. It is even so; and, further, the fondness that men have for accounts and details of battles is another evidence of the popularity of war, and an absolute stumbling-block in the way of the Peace Society, which has the hardest of combats to fight.
The journals of the world are at this time full of the details of a war such as that world has not witnessed since 1815, and in comparison with which even the Russian War was but a second-rate contest. The old quarrel between Austria and France, which has repeatedly caused the peace of Europe to be broken since the days of Frederick III. and Louis XI., has been renewed in our time with a fierceness and a vehemence and on a scale that would have astonished Francis I., Charles V., Richelieu, Turenne, Condé, Louis XIV., Eugène, and even Napoleon himself, the most mighty of whose contests with Austria alone cannot be compared with that which his nephew is now waging with the House of Lorraine. For, in 1805 and in 1809, Napoleon was not merely the ruler of France, but had at his control the resources of many other countries. Belgium and Holland were then at the command of France, and now they are independent monarchies, holding strictly the position of neutrals. In 1809, Napoleon had those very German States for his active allies that now threaten Napoleon III.; and some of the hardest fighting on the French side, in the first days of the campaign, was the work of Bavarians and other German soldiers. That part of Poland which then constituted the Grand Duchy of Warsaw was among his dependent principalities; and Russia sent an army to his aid. In 1805, Napoleon I. had far more of Italian assistance than Napoleon III. has had at the time we write; and in 1809, the entire Peninsula obeyed his decrees as implicitly as they were obeyed by France. Napoleon III. entered upon the war with the hereditary rival of his country with no other ally than Sardinia, though it is now evident that there was an "understanding" between him and the Czar, not pointing to an attack on England, but to prevent the intervention of the Germans in behalf of Austria, by holding out the implied threat of an attack on Germany by Russia, should its rulers or people move against the allies.
Whatever may be thought of the motives of the French Emperor, and however little most men may be disposed to believe in his generosity, it is impossible to refrain from admiring the promptness and skill with which he has acted, or to deny to him the merit of courage in daring to pronounce so decidedly against the Austrians at a time when he could not have reasonably reckoned upon a single ally beyond the limits of Italy, when England, under Tory rule, was more disposed to act against him than with him, and when the hostility of Germany, and its readiness to support the Slavonic empire of Austria, were unequivocally expressed. So great indeed, were the odds against him, that we find in that fact the chief reason for the indisposition of the world to believe in the possibility of war, and its extraordinary surprise when war actually broke out.
To those who had closely scanned the affairs of Europe, and who observed them by the light of the history of nearly four centuries, the coming of war was no surprise. They foresaw it, and predicted its occurrence some time before that famous lecture which the Emperor of the French administered to the Emperor of Austria in the person of Baron Hübner. With them, the question was not, Shall there be a war?—but it was, When will the war break out? They reasoned from thecauseof the quarrel between the two empires; while those who so long clung to the belief that peace would be preserved, and who so plausibly argued in support of their theory as to impose upon wellnigh the whole world, concerned themselves only with itsoccasion. The former referred to things that lay beyond the range of temporary politics, and, while admitting that the shock of actual conflict might be postponed even for a few years, were certain that such conflict must come, even if in the interval there should happen an entire change of government in France. France might be imperial, or royal, or republican, she might be Bonapartean, or Henriquist, or Orléansist, or democratic,—tri-color, white, blue or red,—but the quarrel would come, and cause new campaigns. The latter thinking that the dispute was on the Italian question only, and knowing that that was susceptible of diplomatic settlement, and believing that there would be a union of European powers to accomplish such settlement, rather than allow peace to be disturbed, never could suppose that the balance of probabilities would be found on the side of war. It is due to them to say, that a variety of causes conduced not merely to make them firm in their faith, but to win for their views the general approbation on mankind. Prominent among these was the striking fact, that there had been no European was, strictly so called, with the single exception of the Russian contest,—and that was highly exceptional in its character,—for four-and-forty years. The generation that is passing away, and the generation that is most active in discharging the business of the world, never had seen a grand conflict between Christian states, in which mighty armies had operated on vast and various fields. Old men recollected the wars of Napoleon, but the number of such men is not large, and their influence on opinion is small. Of quarrels and threats of war all had seen enough; but this only tended to make them slow to believe that war was really at hand. If so many quarrels had taken place, and had been settled without resort to arms, assuredly the new quarrel might be settled, and Europe get on peaceably for a few years more without warfare. Neither the invasion of Spain in 1823, nor the revolution of 1830, nor the Eastern question of 1840, nor the universal outbreaks of 1848-9, nor the threats of Russia against Turkey when she sought to compel the Sultan to give up those who had eaten his salt to the gallows of Arad, nor the repeated discussions of the practicability of a French conquest of England had led to a general war. If so many and so black clouds had been dispersed without storms, it was not reasonable to believe that the cloud which rose in the beginning of 1859 might also break, and leave again a serene sky. It may be added that we have all of us come to the conclusion that this is the best age the world has ever known, as in most respects it is; and it seemed scarcely compatible with our estimate of the age's excellence to believe that itcouldsend a couple of million of men into the field for the purpose of cutting one another's throats, except clearly as an act of self-defence. Man is the same war-making animal now that he was in the days of Marathon, but he readily admits the evils of war, and is peremptory in demanding that they shall not be incurred save for good and valid reasons. He is as ready to fight as ever he was, but he must fight for some definite cause,—for a cause that will bear examination: and it did not seem possible that a mere dispute concerning the manner in which Austria governed her Italian dominions was of sufficient moment to light up the flames of war anew on a scale as gigantic as ever they were made to blaze during the days of Napoleon. Then, so far as the Russian War threw any light upon the policy of France, the fair inference was that she at least was not disposed to fight. France made the peace by which that war was brought to a sudden end. She dictated that peace, much to the disgust of the English, who had just become thoroughly roused, and who, little anticipating the Indian mutiny, were for carrying on the contest until Russia should be thoroughly humiliated. Considering all these things, it was not unreasonable to believe that peace could be maintained, and that Austria, far from taking the initiative in the war, would be found ready to make such concessions as should lead to the indefinite postponement of hostilities.
Those who reasoned from the mere occasion of the war were perfectly right, from their point of view. Unfortunately for their reputation for sagacity, their premises were entirely wrong, and hence the viciousness of their conclusion. If we would know the cause of the war, we must banish from our minds all that is said about the desire of Napoleon III for vengeance on the conquerors of his uncle, all that we are told of his sentimental wish for the elevation of the Italian people to a national position, and all that is predicated of his ambitious longings for the reconstruction of the First Empire. We must regard Napoleon III in the light of what he really is, namely, one of the greatest statesmen that ever lived, or we shall never be able to understand what are his purposes. We have nothing to do with his morals, but have to regard him only as the chief of France, pursuing the policy he believes best calculated to advance that country's interests, and doing so in strict accordance with her historical traditions, and in the same manner in which it was pursued by the ablest of the Valois kings, by Henry IV. and Sully, by Richelieu and Mazarin, by Louis XIV., by the chiefs of the First Republic, and by Napoleon I. He may be a good man or a bad man, but his character is entirely aside from the question, the nature and merits of which have no necessary connection with the nature and merits of the men engaged in effecting its solution. Let us examine the subject, and see if we cannot find an intelligent, reasonable cause for Napoleon's course of action, that shall harmonize with the duties, we might almost say the instincts, of a great French statesman. The examination will embrace nothing recondite, but we are confident it will show that the French Emperor is no Quixote, and that he has been forced into the war by the necessities of his situation, and by the very natural desire he feels to prevent France from being compelled to descend to a secondary place in the scale of European nations.
Modern Europe, in the sense in which we understand the term, dates from the last quarter of the Fifteenth Century. Then England ceased to attempt permanent conquests on the continent. Then Spain assumed European rank and definite position. But two powers then began especially to show themselves, and to play parts which both have maintained down to the present time. The one was France, which then ceased to dread English invasions, from the effects of which she was rapidly recovering, whereby she was left to employ her energies on foreign fields. The other was theHouse of Austria, which, by a series of fortunate marriages, became, in the short period of forty years, the most powerful family the modern world has ever known. On the day when Maximilian, son of Frederick III., Emperor of Germany, wedded Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold, the rivalry between France and the Austrian family began. Philip, son of that marriage, married Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella; and their son, Charles I. of the Spains, became Charles V. of Germany. Thus there centred in his person a degree of power such as no other sovereign could boast, and which alone would have sufficed to make him the rival of the King of France, Francis I., had no personal feeling entered into the relations between them. But such feeling existed, and grew out of their competition for the imperial crown. The previous ill-will between the Valois and the Hapsburg was greatly increased, and assumed such force as permanently to color the course of European history from that day to this. The rivalry of Charles and Francis was the cause of many contests, and the French monarch, though he was "The Most Christian King," in the opinion of some, more than once aided, or offered to aid, the German Protestants against the Emperor. To Philip II. and Henry II. the rivalry of their fathers descended as an inheritance. It was in their warfare that the Battle of St. Quentin was fought. The progress of the Reformation led monarchs in those days to take a view of affairs not much unlike that which monarchs of this century took in the days of the Holy Alliance, and after the revolution of 1830. The hatred of Protestantism led the two kings to draw together, though Henry II. had had no mean part in that work which had enabled the Protestant Maurice of Saxony to render abortive all the plans of Charles V. for the full restoration of Catholicism in Germany. During the thirty years that followed the death of Henry II., the dissensions of France had rendered her unable to contend with the House of Austria, then principally represented by the Spanish branch of that family; and Philip II. at one time thought of obtaining the crown of that country for a member of his own house. But no sooner had Henry IV. ascended the French throne, and established himself firmly thereon, than the rivalry of France and Austria became as clearly pronounced as it had been in the reign of Francis I.; and at the time of his death that most popular of the Bourbon kings was engaged on a plan having for its object the subversion of the Austrian power. His assassination changed the course of events for a few years; but Richelieu became the ally of the Swedes and Protestant Germans in the Thirty Years' War, though he was a Cardinal, had destroyed the political power of the Huguenots, and might have aspired to the Papacy. Mazarin, another Cardinal, followed Richelieu's policy. Louis XIV. was repeatedly at war with the House of Austria, though he was the son of an Austrian princess, and was married to another. His last war with that house was for the throne of Spain, when the elder branch of the Hapsburgs died out, in 1700. Louis XV. had two contests with Austria; but in 1756, under the lead of Count Kaunitz, France and Austria were united, and acted together in the Seven Years' War, the incidents and effects of which were by no means calculated to reconcile the French to the departure of their government from its ancient policy. One of the causes of the French Revolution was the Austrian alliance, and one of its effects was the complete rupture of that alliance. Austria was the most determined foe that the French Republic and Empire ever encountered. Including the war of 1815, there were six contests between Austria and republican and imperial France. In all these wars Austria was the aggressor, and showed herself to be the enemy ofFranceas well as of thoseFrench principleswhich so frightened the conservatives of the world in those days. In the first war, she took possession of French places for herself, and not for the House of Bourbon; and in the last she purposed a partition of France, long after Louis XVIII. had been finally restored, and when Napoleon was at or near St. Helena. She demanded that Alsace and Lorraine should be made over to her, in the autumn of 1815. She sought to induce Prussia to unite with her by offering to support any demand that she might make for French territory; and, failing to move that power, endeavored to get the smaller German States to act with her,—the same States, indeed, that are now so hostile to France, and which talk of a march upon Paris, and of a reduction of French territorial strength. Nothing prevented the Austrian idea from being reduced to practice but the opposition of Russia and England, neither of which had any interest in the spoliation of France, while both had no desire to see Austria rendered stronger than she was. It was to England that Austria owed her Italian possessions, which, in 1814, she at first had the sense not to wish to be cumbered with; and to make her still more powerful north of the Alps was not to be thought of even by the Liverpools and Castlereaghs. The Czar, too, had in his thoughts a closer connection with France than it suited him then to avow, and for purposes of his own; and therefore he could not desire the sensible diminution of the power of a country the resources of which he expected to employ. Nicholas inherited his brother's ideas and designs, and we are to attribute much of the ill-feeling that he exhibited towards the Orléans dynasty to his disappointment; for the revolution that elevated that dynasty to the French throne destroyed the hope that he had entertained of having French aid to effect the conquest of Turkey. There never would have been a siege of Sebastopol, if the elder branch of the Bourbons had continued to rule in France. It required even a series of revolutions to bring France to that condition in which the Western Alliance was possible. But there would have been something more than "an understanding" between France and Russia concerning Austria, had the government of the Restoration endured a few years beyond 1830. It suited the Austrian government to show considerable coldness towards the Orléans dynasty; but assuredly so wise a man as Prince Metternich, and who had such excellent means of information, never could have believed otherwise than that the establishment of that dynasty saved Austria from being assailed by both Russia and France.