His look became serious.
"Because I cannot. I do not think it best,—and—and I will not"
Another pause.
"Ivy, do you not like your teacher?"
"No, Sir.I hate you!"
The words seemed to flash from her lips. She sprang up and stood erect before him, her eyes on fire, and every nerve quivering with intense excitement He was shocked and startled. It was a new phase of her character,—a new revelation. He, too, arose, and walked to the window. If Ivy could have seen the workings of his face, there would have been a revelation to her also. But she was too highly excited to notice anything. He came back to her and spoke in a low voice,—
"Ivy, this is too much. This I did not expect."
He laid his hand upon her head as he had often done before. She shook it off passionately.
"Yes, I hate you. I hate you, because"—
"Because I wanted you to love me?"
"No, Sir; because I do love you, and you bring me only wretchedness. I have never been happy since the miserable day I first saw you."
"Then, Ivy, I have utterly failed in what it has been my constant endeavor to do."
"No, Sir, you have succeeded in what you endeavored to do. You have taught me. You have given me knowledge and thought, and showed me the source of knowledge. But I had better have been the ignorant girl you found me. You have taken from me what I can never find again. I have made a bitter exchange. I was ignorant and stupid, I know,—but I was happy and contented; and now I am wretched and miserable and wicked. You have come between me and my home and my father and mother;—between me and all the bliss of my past and all my hope for the future."
"And thus, Ivy, have you come between me and my past and my future;—yet not thus. You shut out from my heart all the sorrow and vexation and strife that have clouded my life, and fill it with your own dear presence. You come between me and my future, because, in looking forward, I see only you. I should have known better. There is a gulf between us; but if I could make you happy"—
"I don't want you to make me happy. I know there is a gulf between us. I saw it while you were gone. I measured it and fathomed it. I shall not leap across. Stay you on your side quietly; I shall stay as quietly on mine."
"It is too late for that, Ivy,—too late now. But you are not to blame, my child. Little sunbeam that you are, I will not cloud you. Go shine upon other lives as you have shone upon mine! light up other hearths as you have mine! and I will bless you forever, though mine be left desolate."
He turned away with an expression on his face that Ivy could not read. Her passion was gone. She hesitated a moment, then went to his side and laid her hand softly on his arm. There was a strange moistened gleam in his eyes as he turned them upon her.
"Mr. Clerron, I do not understand you."
"My dear, you never can understand me."
"I know it," said Ivy, with her old humility; "but, at least, I might understand whether I have vexed you."
"You have not vexed me."
"I spoke proudly and rudely to you. I was angry, and so unhappy. I shall always be so; I shall never be happy again; but I want you to be, and you do not look as if you were."
If Ivy had not been a little fool, she would not have spoken so; but she was, so she did.
"I beg your pardon, little tendril. I was so occupied with my own preconceived ideas that I forgot to sympathize with you. Tell me why or how I have made you unhappy. But I know; you need not. I assure you, however, that you are entirely wrong. It was a prudish and whimsical notion of my good old housekeeper's. You are never to think of it again.Inever attributed such a thought or feeling to you."
"Did you suppose that was all that made me unhappy?"
"Can there be anything else?"
"I am glad you think so. Perhaps I should not have been unhappy but for that, at least not so soon; but that alone could never have made me so."
Little fool again! She was like a chicken thrusting its head into a corner and thinking itself out of danger because it cannot see the danger. She had no notion that she was giving him the least clue to the truth, but considered herself speaking with more than Delphic prudence. She rather liked to coast along the shores of her trouble and see how near she could approach without running aground; but she struck before she knew it.
Mr. Clerron's face suddenly changed. He sat down, took both her hands, and drew her towards him.
"Ivy, perhaps I have been misunderstanding you. I will at least find out the truth. Ivy, do you know that I love you, that I have loved you almost from the first, that I would gladly here and now take you to my heart and keep you here forever?"
"I do not know it," faltered Ivy, half beside herself.
"Know it now, then! I am older than you, and I seem to myself so far removed from you that I have feared to ask you to trust your happiness to my keeping, lest I should lose you entirely; but sometimes you say or do something which gives me hope. My experience has been very different from yours. I am not worthy to clasp your purity and loveliness. Still I would do it, if—Tell me, Ivy, does it give you pain or pleasure?"
Ivy extricated her hands from his, deliberately drew a footstool, and knelt on it before him,—then took his hands, as he had before held hers, gazed steadily into his eyes, and said,—
"Mr. Clerron, are you in earnest? Do you love me?"
"I am, Ivy. I do love you."
"How do you love me?"
"I love you with all the strength and power that God has given me."
"You do not simply pity me? You have not, because you heard from Mrs. Simm, or suspected, yourself, that I was weak enough to mistake your kindness and nobleness,—you have not in pity resolved to sacrifice your happiness to mine?"
"No, Ivy,—nothing of the kind. I pity only myself. I reverence you, I think. I have hoped that you loved me as a teacher and friend. I dared not believe you could ever do more; now something within tells me that you can. Can you, Ivy? If the love and tenderness and devotion of my whole life can make you happy, happiness shall not fail to be yours."
Ivy's gaze never for a moment drooped under his, earnest and piercing though it was.
"Now I am happy," she said, slowly and distinctly. "Now I am blessed. I can never ask anything more."
"But I ask something more," he replied, bending forward eagerly. "I ask much more. I want your love. Shall I have it? And I want you."
"My love?" She blushed slightly, but spoke without hesitation. "Have I not given it,—long, long before you asked it, before you even cared for my friendship? Not love only, but life, my very whole being, centred in you, does now, and will always. Is it right to say this?—maidenly? But I am not ashamed. I shall always be proud to have loved you, though only to lose you,—and to be loved by you is glory enough for all my future."
For a short time the relative position of these two people was changed. I allude to the change in this distant manner, as all who have ever been lovers will be able to judge what it was; and I do not wish to forestall the sweet surprise of those who have not.
Ivy rested there (query, where?) a moment; but as he whispered, "Thus you answer the second question? You give me yourself too?" she hastily freed herself. (Query, from what?)
"Never!"
"Ivy!"
"Never!" more firmly than before.
"What does this mean?" he said, sternly. "Are you trifling?"
There was such a frown on his brow as Ivy had never seen. She quailed before it.
"Do not be angry! Alas! I am not trifling. Life itself is not worth so much as your love. But the impassable gulf is between us just the same."
"What is it? Who put it there?"
"God put it there. Mrs. Simm showed it to me."
"Mrs. Simm be—! A prating gossip! Ivy, I told you, you were never to mention that again,—never to think of it; and you must obey me."
"I will try to obey you in that."
"And very soon you shall promise to obey me in all things. But I will not be hard with you. The yoke shall rest very lightly,—so lightly you shall not feel it. You will not do as much, I dare say. You will make me acknowledge your power every day, dear little vixen! Ivy, why do you draw back? Why do you not come to me?"
"I cannot come to you, Mr. Clerron, any more. I must go home now, and stay at home."
"When your home is here, Ivy, stay at home. For the present, don't go.Wait a little."
"You do not understand me. You will not understand me," said Ivy, bursting into tears. "Imustleave you. Don't make the way so difficult."
"I will make it so difficult that you cannot walk in it."
His tones were low, but determined.
"Why do you wish to leave me? Have you not said that you loved me?"
"It is because I love you that I go. I am not fit for you. I was not made for you. I can never make you happy. I am not accomplished. I cannot go among your friends, your sisters. I am awkward. You would be ashamed of me, and then you would not love me; you could not; and I should lose the thing I most value. No, Mr. Clerron,—I would rather keep your love in my own heart and my own home."
"Ivy, can you be happy without me?"
"I shall not be without you. My heart is full of lifelong joyful memories. You need not regret me. Yes, I shall be happy. I shall work with mind and hands. I shall not pine away in a mean and feeble life. I shall be strong, and cheerful, and active, and helpful; and I think I shall not cease to love you in heaven."
"But there is, maybe, a long road for us to travel before we reach heaven, and I want you to help me along. Ivy, I am not so spiritual as you. I cannot live on memory. I want you before me all the time. I want to see you and talk with you every day. Why do you speak of such things? Is it the soul or its surroundings that you value? Doyourespect or care for wealth and station? Doyouconsider a woman your superior because she wears a finer dress than you?"
"I? No, Sir! No, indeed! you very well know. But the world does, and you move in the world; and I do not want the world to pity you because you have an uncouth, ignorant wife.Idon't want to be despised by those who are above me only in station."
"Little aristocrat, you are prouder than I. Will you sacrifice your happiness and mine to your pride?"
"Proud perhaps I am, but it is not all pride. I think you are noble, but I think also you could not help losing patience when you found that I could not accommodate myself to the station to which you had raised me. Then you would not respect me. I am, indeed, too proud to wish to lose that; and losing your respect, as I said before, I should not long keep your love."
"But you will accommodate yourself to any station. My dear, you are young, and know so little about this world, which is such a bugbear to you. Why, there is very little that will be greatly unlike this. At first you might be a little bewildered, but I shall be by you all the time, and you shall feel and fear nothing, and gradually you will learn what little you need to know; and most of all, you will know yourself the best and the loveliest of women. Dear Ivy, I would not part with your sweet, unconscious simplicity for all the accomplishments and acquired elegancies of the finest lady in the world." (That's what men always say.) "You are not ignorant of anything you ought to know, and your ignorance of the world is an additional charm to one who knows so much of its wickedness as I. But we will not talk of it. There is no need. This shall be our home, and here the world will not trouble us."
"And I cannot give up my dear father and mother. They are not like you and your friends"—
"They are my friends, and valued and dear to me, and dearer still they shall be as the parents of my dear little wife"—
"I was going to say"—
"But you shall not say it. I utterly forbid you ever to mention it again. You are mine, all my own. Your friends are my friends, your honor my honor, your happiness my happiness henceforth; and what God joins together let not man or woman put asunder."
"Ah!" whispered Ivy, faintly; for she was yielding, and just beginning to receive the sense of great and unexpected bliss, "but if you should be wrong,—if you should ever repent of this, it is not your happiness alone, but mine, too, that will be destroyed."
Again their relative positions changed, andremained sofor a long while.
"Ivy, am I a mere schoolboy to swear eternal fidelity for a week? Have I not been tossing hither and thither on the world's tide ever since you lay in your cradle, and do I not know my position and my power and my habits and love? And knowing all this, do I not know that this dear head"——etc., etc., etc., etc.
But I said I was not going to marry my man and woman, did I not? Nor have I. To be sure, you may have detected premonitory symptoms, but I said nothing about that. I only promised not to marry them, and I have not married them.
It is to be hoped they were married, however. For, on a fine June evening, the setting sun cast a mellow light through the silken curtains of a pleasant chamber, where Ivy lay on a white couch, pale and and still,—very pale and still and statuelike; and by her side, bending over her, with looks of unutterable love, clasping her in his arms, as if to give out of his own heart the life that had so nearly ebbed from hers, pressing upon the closed eyes, the white cheeks, the silent lips kisses of such warmth and tenderness as never thrilled maidenly lips in their rosiest flush of beauty,—knelt Felix Clerron; and when the tremulous life fluttered back again, when the blue eyes slowly opened and smiled up into his with an answering love, his happiness was complete.
In a huge arm-chair, bolt upright, where they had placed him, sat Farmer Geer, holding in his sadly awkward hands the unconscious cause of all this agitation, namely, a poor, little, horrid, gasping, crying, writhing, old-faced, distressed-looking, red, wrinkled, ridiculous baby! between whose "screeches" Farmer Geer could be heard muttering, in a dazed, bewildered way,—"Ivy's baby! Oh, Lud! who'd 'a' thunk it? No more'n yesterday she was a baby herself. Lud! Lud!"
In a lumbering attic room,Where, for want of light and air,Years had died within the gloom,Leaving dead dust everywhere,Everywhere,Hung the portrait of a lady,With a face so fair!
Time had long since dulled the paint,Time, which all our arts disguise,And the features now were faint,All except the wondrous eyes,Wondrous eyes,Ever looking, looking, looking,With such sad surprise!
As man loveth, man had lovedHer whose features faded there;As man mourneth, man had mourned,Weeping, in his dark despair,Bitter tears,When she left him broken-heartedTo his death of years.
Then for months the picture bentAll its eyes upon his face,Following his where'er they went,—Till another filled the placeIn its stead,—Till the features of the livingDid outface the dead.
Then for years it hung aboveIn that attic dim and ghast,Fading with the fading love,Sad reminder of the past,—Save the eyes,Ever looking, ever looking,With such sad surprise!
Oft the distant laughter's soundEntered through the cobwebbed door,And the cry of children foundDusty echoes from the floorTo those eyes,Ever looking, ever looking,With their sad surprise.
Once there moved upon the stairOlden love-steps mounting slow,But the face that met him thereDrove him to the depths below;For those eyesThrough his soul seemed looking, looking,All their sad surprise.
From that day the door was nailedOf that memory-haunted room,And the portrait hung and paledIn the dead dust and the gloom,—Save the eyes,Ever looking, ever looking,With such sad surprise!
One hundred and sixteen years ago, to wit, on the 20th day of October, A.D. 1743, the quiet precincts of certain streets in the town of Boston were the theatre of unusual proceedings. An unwonted activity pervaded the well-known printing-office of the "Messrs. Rogers and Fowle, in Prison Lane," now Court Street; a small printed sheet was being worked off,—not with the frantic rush and roar of one of Hoe's six-cylinder giants, but with the calm circumspection befitting the lever-press and ink-balls of that day,—to be conveyed, so soon as it should have assumed a presentable shape, to the counters of "Samuel Eliot, in Cornhill" and "Joshua Blanchard, in Dock Square," (and, we will hope, to the addresses indicated on a long subscription-list,) for the entertainment and instruction of ladies in high-heeled shoes and hoops, forerunners of greater things thereafter, and gentlemen in big wigs, cocked hats, and small-clothes, no more to be encountered in our daily walks, and known to their degenerate descendants only by the aid of the art of limner or sculptor.
For some fifteen years, both in England and America, there had been indications of an approaching modification in the existing forms of periodical literature, enlarging its scope to something better and higher than the brief and barren résumé of current events to which the Gazette or News-Letter of the day was in the main confined, and affording an opportunity for the free discussion of literary and artistic questions. Thus was gradually developed a class of publications which professed, while giving a proper share of attention to the important department of news, to occupy the field of literature rather than of journalism, and to serve as aMuseum, Depository, orMagazine, of the polite arts and sciences. The very marked success of the "Gentleman's Magazine," the pioneer English publication of this class, which appeared in 1731 under the management of Cave, and reached the then almost[1] unparalleled sale often thousand copies, produced a host of imitators and rivals, of which the "London Magazine," commenced in April, 1732, was perhaps the most considerable. In January, 1741, Benjamin Franklin began the publication of "The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America," but only six numbers were issued. In the same year, Andrew Bradford published "The American Magazine, or Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies," which was soon discontinued. Both these unsuccessful ventures were made at Philadelphia. There were similar attempts in Boston a little later. "The Boston Weekly Magazine" made its appearance March 2,1743, and lived just four weeks. "The Christian History," edited by Thomas Prince, Jr., son of the author of the "New England Chronology," appeared three days after, (March 5, 1743,) and reached the respectable age of two years. It professed to exhibit, among other things, "Remarkable Passages, Historical and Doctrinal, out of the most Famous old Writers both of the Church of England and Scotland from the Reformation; as also the first Settlers of New England and their Children; that we may see how far their pious Principles and Spirit are at this day revived, and may guard against all Extremes."
[Footnote 1: It is said that as many as twenty thousand copies of particular numbers of the "Spectator" were sold.]
It would appear, however, that none of the four magazines last named were so general in their scope, or so well conducted, certainly they were not so long-lived, as "The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle," the first number of which, bearing date "September, 1743," appeared, as we have said, on the 20th of the following October, under the editorial charge, as is generally supposed, of Jeremy Gridley, Esq., Attorney-General of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and the head of the Masonic Fraternity in America, though less known to us, perhaps, in either capacity, than he is as the legal instructor of the patriot Otis, a pupil whom it became his subsequent duty as the officer of the crown to encounter in that brilliant and memorable argument against the "Writs of Assistance," which the pen of the historian, and, more recently, the chisel of the sculptor, have contributed to render immortal. This publication, if we regard it, as we doubtless may, as the original and prototype of the "American Magazine," would seem to have been rightly named. It was printed on what old Dr. Isaiah Thomas calls "a fine medium paper in 8vo," and he further assures us that "in its execution it was deemed equal to any work of the kind then published in London." In external appearance, it was a close copy of the "London Magazine," from whose pages (probably to complete the resemblance) it made constant and copious extracts, not always rendering honor to whom honor was due, and in point of mechanical excellence, as well as of literary merit, certainly eclipsed the contemporary newspaper-press of the town, the "Boston Evening Post," "Boston News Letter" and the "New England Courant." The first number contained forty-four pages, measuring about six inches by eight. The scope and object of the Magazine, as defined in the Preface, do not vary essentially from the line adopted by its predecessors and contemporaries, and seem, in the main, identical with what we have recounted above as characteristic of this new movement in letters. The novelty and extent of the field, and the consequent fewness and inexperience of the laborers, are curiously shown by the miscellaneous,omnium-gatherumcharacter of the publication, which served at once as a Magazine, Review, Journal, Almanac, and General Repository and Bulletin;—the table of contents of the first number exhibits a list of subjects which would now be distributed among these various classes of periodical literature, and perhaps again parcelled out according to the subdivisions of each. Avowedly neutral in politics and religion, as became an enterprise which relied upon the patronage of persons of all creeds and parties, it recorded (usually without comment) the current incidents of political and religious interest. A summary of news appeared at the end of each number, under the head of "Historical Chronicle"; but in the body of the Magazine are inserted, side by side with what would now be termed "local items," contemporary narratives of events, many of which have, in the lapse of more than a century, developed into historical proportions, but which here meet us, as it were, at first hand, clothed in such homely and impromptu dress as circumstances might require, with all their little roughnesses, excrescences, and absurdities upon them,—crude lumps of mingled fact and fiction, not yet moulded and polished into the rounded periods of the historian.
The Magazine was established at the period of a general commotion among the dry bones of New England Orthodoxy, caused by what is popularly known as "the New-Light Movement," to do battle with which heresy arose "The Christian History," above alluded to. The public mind was widely and deeply interested, and the first number of our Magazine opens with "A Dissertation on the State of Religion in North America," which is followed by a fiery manifesto of the "Anniversary Week" of 1743, entitled "The Testimony of the Pastors of the Churches in the Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New-England at their Annual Convention in Boston, May 25, 1743, Against several Errors in Doctrine and Disorders in Practice, which have of late obtained in various Parts of the Land; as drawn up by a Committee chosen by the said Pastors, read and accepted Paragraph by Paragraph, and voted to be sign'd by the Moderator in their Name, and Printed." These "Disorders" and "Errors" are specified under six heads, being generalized at the outset as "Antinomian and Familistical Errors." The number of strayed sheep must have been considerable, since we find a Rejoinder put forth on the seventh of the following July, which bears the signatures of "Sixty-eight Pastors of Churches," (including fifteen who signed with a reservation as to one Article,) styled "The Testimony and Advice of an Assembly of Pastors of Churches in New England, at a Meeting in Boston, July 7, 1743. Occasion'd by the late happy Revival of Religion in many Parts of the Land." Some dozen new books, noticed in this number, are likewise all upon theological subjects. The youthful University of Yale took part in the conflict, testifying its zeal for the established religion by punishing with expulsion (if we are to believe a writer in "The New York Post-Boy" of March 17, 1745) two students, "for going during Vacation, and while at Home with their Parents, to hear a neighboring Minister preach who is distinguished in this Colony by the Name of New Light, being by their said Parents perswaded, desired, or ordered to go." The statement, however, is contradicted in a subsequent number by the President of the College, the Rev. Thomas Clapp, D.D., who states "that they were expelled for being Followers of the Paines, two Lay Exhorters, whose corrupt Principles and pernicious Practices are set forth in the Declaration of the Ministers of the County of Windham." In all probability the outcasts had "corrupt Principles and pernicious Practices" charged to their private account in the Faculty books, to which, quite as much as to any departure from Orthodox standards, they may have been indebted for leave to take up their connections.
The powerful Indian Confederacy, known as the Six Nations, had just concluded at Philadelphia their famous treaty with the whites, and in the numbers for October and November, 1743, we are furnished with some curious notes of the proceedings at the eight or nine different councils held on the occasion, which may or may not be historically accurate. That the news was not hastily gathered or digested may be safely inferred from the fact that the proceedings of the councils, which met in July, 1742, are here given to the public at intervals of fifteen and sixteen months afterwards. The assemblies were convened first "at Mr. Logan's House," next "at the Meeting House," and finally "at the Great Meeting House," where the seventh meeting took place July 10, in the presence of "a great Number of the Inhabitants of Philadelphia." As usual, the Indians complain of their treatment at the hands of the traders and their agents, and beg for more fire-water. "We have been stinted in the Article of Rum in Town," they pathetically observe,—"we desire you will open the Rum Bottle, and give it to us in greater Abundance on the Road"; and again, "We hope, as you have given us Plenty of good Provision whilst In Town, that you will continue your Goodness so far as to supply us with a little more to serve us on the Road." The first, at least, of these requests seems to have been complied with; the Council voted them twenty gallons of rum,—in addition to the twenty-five gallons previously bestowed,— "to comfort them on the Road"; and the red men departed in an amicable mood, though, from the valedictory address made them by the Governor, we might perhaps infer that they had found reason to contrast the hospitality of civilization with that shown in the savage state, to the disadvantage of the former. "We wish," he says, "there had been more Room and better Houses provided for your Entertainment, but not expecting so many of you we did the best we could. 'Tis true there are a great many Houses in Town, but as they are the Property of other People who have their own Families to take care of, it is difficult to procure Lodgings for a large Number of People, especially if they come unexpectedly."
But the great item of domestic intelligence, which confronts us under various forms in the pages of this Magazine, is the siege and capture of Louisburg, and the reduction of Cape Breton to the obedience of the British crown,—an acquisition for which his Majesty was so largely indebted to the military skill of Sir William Pepperell, and the courage of the New England troops, that we should naturally expect to find the exploit narrated at length in a contemporary Boston magazine. The first of the long series is an extract from the "Boston Evening Post" of May 13, 1745, entitled, "A short Account of Cape Breton"; which is followed by "A further Account of the Island of Cape Breton, of the Advantages derived to France from the Possession of that Country, and of the Fishery upon its Coasts; and the Benefit that must necessarily result to Great Britain from the Recovery of that important Place,"—from the "London Courant" of July 25. In contrast to this cool and calculating production, we have next the achievement, as seen from a military point of view, in a "Letter from an Officer of Note in the Train," dated Louisburg, June 20, 1745, who breaks forth thus:—"Glory to God, and Joy and Happiness to my Country in the Reduction of this Place, which we are now possessed of. It's a City vastly beyond all Expectation for Strength and beautiful Fortifications; but we have made terrible Havock with our Guns and Bombs. … Such a fine City will be an everlasting Honour to my Countrymen." Farther on, we have another example of military eloquence in a "Letter from a Superior Officer at Louisburgh, to his Friend and Brother at Boston," dated October 22, 1745. To this succeeds "A particular Account of the Siege and Surrender of Louisburgh, on the 17th of June, 1745." The resources of the pictorial art are called in to assist the popular conception of the great event, and we are treated on page 271 to a rude wood-cut, representing the "Town and Harbour of Louisburgh," accompanied by "Certain Particulars of the Blockade and Distress of the Enemy." Still farther on appears "The Declaration of His Excellency, William Shirley, Esq., Captain General and Governour in Chief of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, to the Garrison at Louisburgh." July 18, 1745, was observed as "a Day of publick Thanksgiving, agreeably to His Excellency's Proclamation of the 8th inst., on Account of the wonderful Series of Successes attending our Forces in the Reduction of the City and Fortress of Louisburgh with the Dependencies thereof at Cape Breton to the Obedience of His Majesty." There are also accounts of rejoicings at Newport, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, and other places. Nor was the Muse silent on such an auspicious occasion: four adventurous flights in successive numbers of the Magazine attest the loyalty, if not the poetic genius of Colonial bards; and a sort of running fire of description, narrative, and anecdote concerning the important event is kept up in the numbers for many succeeding months.
But, whatever may have been the magnitude and interest of domestic affairs, the enterprising vigilance of our journalists was far from overlooking prominent occurrences on the other side of the water, and the news by all the recent arrivals, dating from three to six months later from Europe, was carefully, if at times somewhat briefly, recapitulated. In this manner our ancestors heard of the brilliant campaigns of Prince George, the Duke of Cumberland, and Marshal de Noailles, during the War of the Austrian Succession,—of the battle of Dettingen in June, 1743,—of the declaration of war between the kings of France and England in March, 1744; and, above all, of the great Scotch Rebellion of 1745. Here was stirring news, indeed, for the citizens of Boston, and for all British subjects, wherever they might be. The suspense in which loyal New England was plunged, as to whether "great George our King and the Protestant succession" were to succumb before the Pretender and his Jesuitical followers, was happily terminated by intelligence of the decisive battle of Culloden, the tidings of which victory, gained on the 16th of April, 1746, appear in the number for July. Public joy and curiosity demanded full particulars of the glorious news, and a copy of the official narrative of the battle, dated "Inverness, April 18th," is served out to the hungry quidnuncs of Boston, in the columns of our Magazine, as had been done three months before to consumers equally rapacious in the London coffeehouses. With commendable humanity, the loss of the insurgent army is put at "two thousand,"—although "the Rebels by their own Accounts make the Loss greater by 2000 than we have stated it." In the fatal list appears the name of "Cameron of Lochiel," destined, through the favor of the Muse, to an immortality which is denied to equally intrepid and unfortunate compatriots. The terms of the surrender upon parole of certain French and Scotch officers at Inverness,—the return of the ordnance and stores captured,—names of the killed and wounded officers of the rebel army,—various congratulatory addresses,—an extract from a letter from Edinburgh, concerning the battle,—an account of the subsequent movement of the forces,—various anecdotes of the Duke of Cumberland, during the engagement,—etc., are given with much parade and circumstance. The loyalty of the citizens is evidenced by the following "local item," under date of "Boston, Thursday, 3d":—"Upon the Confirmation of the joyful News of the Defeat of the Rebels in Scotland, and of the Life and Health of His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, on Wednesday, the 2d inst., at Noon, the Guns at Castle William and the Batteries of the Town were fired, as were those on Board the Massachusetts Frigate, etc., and in the Evening we had Illuminations and other Tokens of Joy and Satisfaction." There are also curious biographical sketches and anecdotes of the Earl of Kilmarnock, Lord Balmerino, and others, among those engaged in this ill-judged attempt, who expiated their treason on the scaffold, from which interesting extracts might be made. The following seems a very original device for the recovery of freedom,—one, we think, which, to most readers of the present day even, will truly appear a "new" and "extraordinary Invention":—
"Carlisle, Sept. 27, 1746.
"The Method taken by the Rebels here under Sentence of Death to make their Escape is quite new, and reckoned a most extraordinary Invention, as by no other Instrument than a Case-Knife, a Drinking-Glass and a Silk Handkerchief, seven of them in one Night had sawn off their Irons, thus:—They laid the Silk Handkerchief single, over the Mouth of the Glass, but stretched it as much as it would bear, and tied it hard at the Bottom of the Glass; then they struck the Edge of the Knife on the Mouth of the Glass, (thus covered with the Handkerchief to prevent Noise,) till it became a Saw, with which they cut their Irons till it was Blunt, and then had Recourse to the Mouth of the Glass again to renew the Teeth of the Saw; and so completed their Design by Degrees. This being done in the Dead of Night, and many of them at Work together, the little Noise they made was overheard by the Centinels; who informed their Officers of it, they quietly doubled their Guard, and gave the Rebels no Disturbance till Morning, when it was discovered that several of them were loose, and that others had been trying the same Trick. 'Tis remarkable that a Knife will not cut a Handkerchief when struck upon it in this Manner."
About one-eighth part of the first volume of the Magazine is occupied with reports of Parliamentary debates, entitled, "Journal of the Proceedings and Debates of a Political Club of young Noblemen and Gentlemen established some time ago in London." They seem to be copied, with little, if any alteration, from the columns of the "London Magazine," and are introduced to an American public with this mildly ironical preface:—"We shall give our Readers in our next a List of the British Parliament. And as it is now render'd unsafe to entertain the Publick with any Accounts of their Proceedings or Debates, we shall give them in their Stead, in some of our subsequent Magazines, Extracts from the Journals of a Learned and Political Club of young Noblemen and Gentlemen established some time ago in London. Which will in every Respect answer the same Intentions."
The scientific world was all astir just then with new-found marvels of Electricity,—an interest which was of course much augmented in this country by the ingenious experiments and speculations of the printer-philosopher. In the volume for the year 1745 is "An Historical Account of the wonderful Discoveries made in Germany, etc., concerning Electricity," in the course of which the writer says, (speaking of the experiments of a Mr. Gray,) "He also discovered another surprising Property of electric Virtue, which is that the approach of a Tube of electrified Glass communicates to a hempen or silken Cord an electric Force which is conveyed along the Cord to the Length of 886 feet, at which amazing Distance it will impregnate a Ball of Ivory with the same Virtue as the Tube from which it was derived." So true is it, that things are great and small solely by comparison: the lapse of something over a century has gradually stretched this "amazing distance" to many hundreds of miles, and now the circumference of the globe is the only limit which we feel willing to set to its extension.
At page 691 of the previous volume we have an "Extract from a Pamphlet lately published at Philadelphia intitled 'An Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian Fire Places.'" This was probably from the pen of Franklin, who expatiates as follows on the advantages derivable from these fireplaces, which are still occasionally to be met with, and known as "Franklin Stoves":—"By the Help of this saving Invention our Wood may grow as fast as we consume it, and our Posterity may warm themselves at a moderate Rate, without being oblig'd to fetch their Fuel over the Atlantick; as, if Pit-Coal should not be here discovered, (which is an Uncertainty,) they must necessarily do."
That a taste for the beauties of Nature was extant at the epoch of which we treat may be inferred from the statement of a writer who commences "An Essay in Praise of the Morning" as follows:—"I have the good Fortune to be so pleasantly lodg'd as to have a Prospect of a neighboring Grove, where the Eye receives the most delicious Refreshment from the lively Verdure of the Greens, and the wild Regularity by which the Scene shifts off and disparts itself into a beautiful Chequer."
The ever interesting and disputed topics of dress and diet come in for an occasional discussion. The following is a characteristic specimen of the satirical vein of the British essayist school, though we have been unable to ascertain, by reference to the "Spectator," "Tatler," "Rambler," "Guardian," etc., the immediate source whence it was taken. It reads as follows:—"History of Female Dress. The sprightly Gauls set their little Wits to work again," (on resuming the war under Queen Anne,) "and invented a wonderful Machine call'd a Hoop Petticoat. In this fine Scheme they had more Views than one; they had compar'd their own Climate and Constitution with that of the British, and finding both warmer, they naturally enough concluded that would only be pleasantly cool to them, which would perhaps give the British Ladies the Rheumatism, and that if they once got them off their Legs they should have them at Advantage; Besides, they had been inform'd, though falsely, that the British Ladies had not good Legs, and then at all Events this Scheme would expose them. With these pernicious Views they set themselves to work, and form'd a Rotund of near 7 Yards about, and sent the Pattern over by the Sussex Smugglers with an Intent that it should be seiz'd and expos'd to Publick View; which happen'd accordingly, and made its first Appearance at a Great Man's House on that Coast, whose Lady claim'd it as her peculiar Property. In it she first struck at Court what the learned in Dress call a bold Stroke; and was thereupon constituted General of the British Ladies during the War. Upon the Whole this Invention did not answer. The Ladies suffer'd a little the first Winter, but after that were so thoroughly harden'd that they improv'd upon the Contrivers by adding near 2 Yards to its Extension, and the Duke of Marlboro' having about the same Time beat the French, the Gallic Ladies dropt their Pretensions, and left the British Misstresses of the Field; the Tokens whereof are worn in Triumph to this Day, having outlasted the Colors in Westminster Hall, and almost that great General's Glory."
To a similar source must probably be referred an article in the same volume, entitled, "Of Diet in General, and of the bad Effects of Tea-Drinking." The genuine conservative flavor of the extract is deliciously apparent, while its wholesale denunciations are drawn but little, if at all, stronger than those which may even yet be occasionally met with. "If we compare the Nature of Tea with the Nature of English Diet, no one can think it a proper Vegetable for us. It has no Parts fit to be assimilated to our Bodies; its essential Salt does not hold Moisture enough to be joined to the Body of an Animal; its Oyl is but very little, and that of the opiate kind, and therefore it is so far from being nutritive, that it irritates and frets the Nerves and Fibres, exciting the expulsive Faculty, so that the Body may be lessened and weakened, but it cannot increase and be strengthened by it. We see this by common Experience; the first Time persons drink it, if they are full grown, it generally gives them a Pain at the Stomach, Dejection of Spirits, Cold Sweats, Palpitation at the Heart, Trembling, Fearfulness; taking away the Sense of Fulness though presently after Meals, and causing a hypochondriac, gnawing Appetite. These symptoms are very little inferiour to what the most poisonous Vegetables we have in England would occasion when dried and used in the same manner.
"These ill Effects of Tea are not all the Mischiefs it occasions. Did it cause none of them, but were it entirely wholesome, as Balm or Mint, it were yet Mischief enough to have our whole Populace used to sip warm Water in a mincing, effeminate Manner, once or twice every Day; which hot Water must be supped out of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes the Stomach, satiates it with trifling light Nick-Nacks which have little in them to support hard Labour. In this manner the Bold and Brave become dastardly, the Strong become weak, the Women become barren, or if they breed their Blood is made so poor that they have not Strength to suckle, and if they do the Child dies of the Gripes; In short, it gives an effeminate, weakly Turn to the People in general."
Another humorous philosopher, who is benevolently anxious that his fellow-creatures may not be taken in by the rustic meteorologists, satirically furnishes a number of infallible tests to determine the approach of a severe season. He entitles his contribution to meteorological science,—"Jonathan Weatherwise's Prognostications.As it is not likely that I have a long Time to act on the Stage of this Life, for what with Head-Aches, hard Labour, Storms and broken Spectacles I feel my Blood chilling, and Time, that greedy Tyrant, devouring my whole Constitution," etc.,—an exordium which is certainly well adapted to excite our sympathy for Jonathan, even if it fail to inspire confidence in his "Prognostications," and leave us a little in the dark as to the necessary connection between "broken spectacles" and the "chilling of the blood." The criteria he gives us are truly Ingenious and surprising; but though the greater part would prove novel, we believe, to the present generation, we can here quote but one. He tells us, that, when a boy, he "swore revenge on the Grey Squirrel," in consequence of a petted animal of this species having "bitten off the tip of his grandmother's finger,"—a resolution which proved, as we shall see, unfortunate for the squirrels, but of immense advantage to science. To gratify this dire animosity, and in fulfilment of his vow, he persevered for nearly half a century in the perilous and exciting sport of squirrel-hunting, departing "every Year, for forty-nine successive Years, on the 22d of October, excepting when that Day fell on a Sunday," in which case he started on the Monday following, to take vengeance for the outrage committed on his aged relative. Calm philosophy, however, enabled him, "in the very storm, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of his passion," to observe and record the following remarkable fact in Zoology: "When shot from a high Limb they would put their Tails in their Mouths as they were tumbling, and die in that Manner; I did not know what to make of it, 'till, in Process of Time, I found that when they did so a hard Winter always succeeded, and this may be depended on as infallible."
The author of "An Essay on Puffing" (a topic which we should hardly have thought to have found under discussion at a period so much nearer the golden age than the present) remarks,—"Dubious and uncertain is the Source or Spring of Puffing in this Infant Country, it not being agreed upon whether Puffs were imported by the primitive Settlers of the Wilderness, (for the Puff is not enumerated in the aboriginal Catalogue,) or whether their Growth was spontaneous or accidental. However uncertain we are about the Introduction or first Cultivation of Puffs, it is easy to discover the Effects or Consequences of their Improvement in all Professions, Perswasions and Occupations."
Under the head which has assumed, in modern journalism, an extent and importance second only to the Puff, to wit, the "Horrible Accident Department," we find but a single item, but that one of a nature so unique and startling that it seems to deserve transcribing. "February 7 [1744]. We hear from Statten Island that a Man who had been married about 5 months, having a Design to get rid of his Wife, got some poisoned Herbs with which he advised her to stuff a Leg of Veal, and when it was done found an Excuse to be absent himself; but his Wife having eat of it found herself ill, and he coming Home soon after desired her to fry him some Sausages which she did, and having eat of them also found himself ill; upon which he asked his Wife what she fried them in, who answered, in the Sauce of the Veal; then, said he, I am a dead man: So they continued sick for some Days and then died, but he died the first." We hardly know which most to admire, the graphic and terrible simplicity of this narrative of villany, or the ignorance which it discovers of the modern art of penny-a-lining, an expert practitioner of which would have spread the shocking occurrence over as many columns as this bungling report comprises sentences.
The poetical contents of our Magazine consist mainly, as we have said, of excerpts from the popular productions of English authors, as they were found in the magazines of the mother country or in their published works, the diluted stanzas of their imitators, satirical verses, epigrams, and translations from the Latin poets. There are, however, occasional strains from the native Muse, and here and there a waif from sources now, perhaps, lost or forgotten. Before "he threw his Virgil by to wander with his dearer bow," Mr. Freneau's Indian seems to have determined to leave on record a proof of his classical attainments, for he is doubtless the author of "A Latin Ode written by an American Indian, a Junior Sophister at Cambridge, anno 1678, on the death of the Reverend and Learned Mr. Thacher,"—a translation of which is given at page 166, prefaced thus:—"As the Original of the following Piece is very curious, the publishing this may perhaps help you to some better Translation. Attempted from the Latin of an American Indian." The probability that any reader of the present paper would be disposed to help us to this "better Translation" seems too remote to warrant us in giving the Odein extenso; nor do we think any would thank us for transcribing a cloudy effusion, a little farther on, entitled, "On the Notion of an abstract antecedent Fitness of Things." The following estrays are perhaps worth the capture; they profess to date back to the reign of Queen Mary, and are styled, "Some Forms of Prayer used by the vulgar Papists."
Little Creed can I need,Kneel before our Lady's Knee,Candle light, Candle burn,Our Lady pray'd to her dear SonThat we might all to Heaven come;Little Creed, Amen!
White Pater Noster, St. Peter's Brother,What hast thou in one hand? White-Book Leaves.What hast i'th' to'ther? Heaven Gate Keys.Open Heaven Gates, and steike (shut) Hell Gates,And let every crysom Child creep to its own mother:White Pater Noster, Amen!
We do not think that the poets of the anti-shaving movement have as yet succeeded in producing anything worthy to be set off against a series of spirited stanzas under the heading of "The Razor, a Poem," which we commend to the immediate and careful attention of the "Razor-strop Man." The following are the concluding verses:—
"But, above all, thou grand Catholicon,Or by what useful Name so'er thou'rt call'd,Thou Sweet Composer of the tortur'd Mind!When all the Wheels of Life are heavy clogg'dWith Cares or Pain, and nought but Horror direBefore us stalks with dreadful Majesty,Embittering all the Pleasures we enjoy;To thee, distressed, we call; thy gentle TouchConsigns to balmy Sleep our troubled Breasts."
Evidently the production of a philosopher and an economist of time: for who else would have thought of shaving before going to bed, instead of at the matutinal toilet?
In less than five years from the date of its first number, (1743,) "The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle" had ceased to exist, and in the year 1757 appeared "The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies." This was published by Mr. William Bradford in Philadelphia, under the auspices of "a Society of Gentlemen," who declare themselves to be "veritatis cultores, fraudis inimici," but who probably found themselves unequal to the difficulties of such a position, the Magazine having expired just one year after its birth. It was followed by "The New England Magazine," (1758,) "The American Magazine," (1769,) "The Royal American Magazine," (1774,) "The Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Monthly Museum," (1775,) "The Columbian Magazine," (1786,) "The Worcester Magazine," (the same year,) "The American Museum," (1787,) "The Massachusetts Magazine," (1789,) "The New-York Magazine," (1790,) "The Rural Magazine & Vermont Repository," (1796,) "The Missionary Magazine," (same year,)—and others. The premature mortality characteristic of some of our own magazine-literature was, even at this early period, painfully apparent: none of the publications we have named survived their twelfth year, most of them lived less than half that period. A great diversity in the style and quality of their contents, as well as in external appearance, is, of course, observable, and it somewhat requires the eye of faith to see within their rusty and faded covers the germ of that gigantic literary plant which, in this year of Grace, 1860, counts in the city of Boston alone nearly one hundred and fifty periodical publications, (about one-third being legitimate magazines,) perhaps as many more in the other New England cities and towns, and a progeny of unknown, but very considerable extent, throughout the Union.
Apart even from their value to the historiographer and the antiquary, few relics of the past are more suggestive or interesting than the old magazine or newspaper. The houses, furniture, plate, clothing, and decorations of the generations which have preceded us possess their intrinsic value, and serve also to link by a thousand associations the mysterious past with the actual and living present; but the old periodical brings back to us, beside all this, the bodily presence, the words, the actions, and even the very thoughts of the people of a former age. It is, in mercantile phrase, a book of original entry, showing us the transactions of the time in the light in which they were regarded by the parties engaged in them, and reflecting the state of public sentiment on innumerable topics,—moral, religious, political, philosophic, military, and scientific. Its mistakes of fact or induction are honest and palpable ones, easily corrected by contemporaneous data or subsequent discoveries, and not often posted into the ledger of history without detection. The learned and patient labors of the savant or the scholar are not expected of the pamphleteer or the periodical writer of the last century, or of the present; he does but blaze the pathway of the pains-taking engineer who is to follow him, happy enough, if he succeed in satisfying immediate and daily demands, and in capturing the kind of game spoken of by Mr. Pope in that part of his manual where he instructs us to
"shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise."
Among us, however, the magazine-writer, as he existed in the last century, has left few, if any, representatives. He is fading silently away into a forgotten antiquity; his works are not on the publishers' counters,—they linger only among the dust and cobwebs of old libraries, listlessly thumbed by the exploring reader or occasionally consulted by the curious antiquary. His place is occupied by those who, in the multiplication of books, the diffusion of information, and the general alteration of public taste, manners, and habits, though revolving in a similar orbit, move in quite another plane,—who have found in the pages of the periodical a theatre of special activity, a way to the entertainment and instruction of the many; and though much of what is thus produced may bear, as we have hinted, a character more or less ephemeral, we are sometimes presented also with the earlier blossoms and the fresher odors of a rich and perennial growth of genius, everywhere known and acknowledged in the realms of belles-lettres, philosophy, and science, crowded here as in a nursery, to be soon transplanted to other and more permanent abodes.
The first question asked of a "new boy" at school is, "What's your name?" In this year of Grace the eighth decennial census is to be taken, asking that same question of all new comers into the great public school where towns and cities are educated. It will hardly be effected with that marvellous perfection of organization by which Great Britain was made to stand still for a moment and be statistically photographed. For with consummate skill was planned that all-embracing machinery, so that at one and the same moment all over the United Kingdom the recording pen was catching every man's status and setting it down. The tramp on the dusty highway, the clerk in the counting-house, the sportsman upon the moor, the preacher in his pulpit, game-bird and barn-door fowl alike, all were simultaneously bagged. Unless, like the Irishman's swallow, you could be in two places at once, down you went on the recording-tablets. Christopher Sly, from the ale-house door, if caught while the Merry Duke had possession of him, must be chronicled for a peer of the realm; Bully Bottom, if the period of his translations fell in with the census-taking, must be numbered among the cadgers' "mokes"; nay, if Dogberry himself had encountered the officials at the moment of his pathetic lamentation, he were irrevocably written down "an ass."
We can hardly hope for such celerity and sure handling upon this side of the water. Nor is this the subject we have just now in view. The approaching advent of the census-taker has led us to look back at the labor of his predecessor, and the careless turning over of its pages has set us to musing upon NAMES.
William Shakspeare asks, "What's in a name?" England's other great poetical William has devoted a series of his versifyings to the naming of places. Which has the right of it, let us not undertake to pronounce without consideration. England herself has long ago determined the question. As Mr. Emerson says of English names,—"They are an atmosphere of legendary melody spread over the land; older than all epics and histories which clothe a nation, this undershirt sits close to the body." Dean Trench, who handles words as a numismatist his coins, has said substantially the same thing. And it is true not of England only; for the various lands of Europe are written over like palimpsests with the story of successive conquests and dominations chronicled in their local names. You stop and ask why a place is so called,—sure to be rewarded by a legend lurking beneath the title. Like the old crests of heraldry, with their "canting" mottoes beneath, they are history in little, a war or a revolution distilled into the powerful attar of a single phrase. The Rhineland towers of Falkenstein and Stolzenfels are the local counterparts of the Scotch borderers' "Thou shalt want ere I want," for ominous meaning.
The volume we have just laid down painfully reminds us that the poet and the historian have no such heritage in this land. We have done our best to crowd out all the beautiful significant names we found here, and to replace them by meaningless appellations. For the name of a thing is that which really has in it something of that to which it belongs, which describes and classifies it, and is its spoken representative; while the appellation is only a title conferred by act of Parliament or her Majesty's good pleasure: it cannot make a parvenu into a peer.
But we are not writing for the mere interest of the poet and the novelist. Fit names are not given, but grow; and we believe there is not a spot in the land, possessing any attractiveness, but has its name ready fitted to it, waiting unsyllabled in the air above it for the right sponsor to speak it into life. We plead for public convenience simply. We are thinking not of the ears of taste, but of the brain of business. We do not wonder at the monstrous accumulations of the Dead-Letter Office, when we see the actual poverty which our system of naming places has brought about. Pardon us a few statistics, and, as you read them, remember, dear reader, that this is the story of ten years ago, and that the enormous growths of the last decade have probably increased the evil prodigiously.
The volume in question gives a list of a trifle under ten thousand places,—to be accurate, of nine thousand eight hundred and twenty odd. For these nine thousand cities, towns, and villages have been provided butthreethousand eight hundred and twenty names. All the rest have been baptized according to the results of a promiscuous scramble. Some, indeed, make a faint show of variety, by additions of such adjectives as New, North, South, East, West, or Middle. If we reduce the list of original names by striking out these and all the compounds of "ville," "town," and the like, we get about three thousand really distinctive names for American towns. Three hundred and thirty odd we found here when we came,—being Indian orNativeAmerican. Three hundred and thirty more we imported from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. A dozen were added to them from the pure well of Welsh undefiled, and mark the districts settled by Cambro-Britons. Out of our Bibles we got thirty-three Hebrew appellations, nearly all ludicrously inappropriate; and these we have been very fond of repeating. In California, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, and the Louisiana purchase, we bought our names along with the land. Fine old French and Spanish ones they are; some thirty of them names of Saints, all well-sounding and pleasant to the ear. And there is a value in these names not at first perceptible. Most of them serve to mark the day of the year upon which the town was founded. They are commemorative dates, which one need only look at the calendar to verify. As an instance of this, there is the forgotten title of Lake George, Lake St. Sacrament, which, in spite of Dr. Cleveland Coxe's very graceful ballad, we must hold to have been conferred because the lake was discovered on Corpus-Christi Day. In the Mississippi Valley, the great chain of French military occupation can still be faintly traced, like the half-obliterated lines of a redoubt which the plough and the country road have passed over.
There remain about two thousand names, which may fairly be called of American manufacture. We exclude, of course, those which were transferred from England, since they were probably brought directly. They have a certain fitness, as affectionate memorials of the Old Country lingering in the hearts of the exiles. Thus, though St. Botolph was of the fenny shire of Lincoln, and the new comers to the Massachusetts Bay named their little peninsula Suffolk, the county of the "South-folk," we do not quarrel with them for calling their future city "Bo's or Botolph's town," out of hearts which did not wholly forget their birthplace with its grand old church, whose noble tower still looks for miles away over the broad levels toward the German Ocean. Nor do we think Plymouth to be utterly meaningless, though it is not at the mouth of the Ply, or any other river such as wanders through the Devon Moorlands to the British Channel.
"Et parvam Trojam, simulataque magnisPergama, et arentem Xanthi cognomine rivumAgnosco: Seaeaeque amplector limina portae."
Throughout New England, and in all the original colonies, we find this to be the case. But, as Americans, we must reject both what our fathers brought and what they found. Two thousand specimens of the American talent for nomenclature, then, we can exhibit. Walk up, gentlemen! Here you have the top-crest of the great wave of civilization. Hero is a people, emancipated from Old-World trammels, setting the world a lesson. What is the result? With the grand divisions of our land we have not had much to do. Of the States, seventeen were baptized by their Indian appellations; four were named by French and Spanish discoverers; six were called after European sovereigns; three, which bear the prefix of New, have the names of English counties;—there remains Delaware, the title of an English nobleman, leaving us Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Rhode Island, three precious bits of modern classicality. Let us now come to the counties. Ten years ago there were some fifteen hundred and fifty-five of these. One hundred and seventy-three bear Indian names, and there are one or two uncertain. For these fifteen hundred and fifty-five counties there are eight hundred and eighty-eight names, about one to every two. Seven hundred are, then, of Anglo-Saxon bestowing? No. Another hundred are of Spanish and French origin. Six hundred county-names remain; fifty of which, neat as imported, are the names of English places, and fifty more are names bestowed in compliment to English peers. Five hundred are the American residuum.
We beg pardon for these dry statistical details, over which we have spent some little time and care; but they furnish a base of operations. Yet something more remains to be added. We have, it is true, about two thousand names of places and five hundred of counties purely American, or at least due to American taste. In most instances the county-names are repeated in some of the towns within their borders. Therefore we fall back upon our original statement, that two thousand names are the net product of Yankee ingenuity. It is hardly necessary to assure the most careless reader that the vast majority of these are names of persons. And it needs no wizard to conjecture that these are bestowed in very unequal proportions. Here the true trouble of the Postmaster-General and his staff begins.
The most frequent names are, of course, those of the Presidents. The "Father of his Country" has the honor of being god-father to no small portion of it. For there are called after himoneterritory,twenty-sixcounties, andone hundred and thirty-eighttowns and villages. Adams, the next, has butsixcounties andtwenty-sixtowns; but his son is specially honored by a village named J.Q. Adams. Jefferson hasseventeencounties andseventy-fourtowns. Madison hasfifteencounties andforty-seventowns. Monroe hassixteencounties andfifty-seventowns, showing that the "era of good feeling" was extending in his day. The second Adams has one town to himself; but the son of his father could expect no more. Jackson hasfifteencounties andone hundred and twenty-threetowns, besidesix"boroughs" and "villes,"—showing what it was to have won the Battle of New Orleans. Van Euren getsfourcounties andtwenty-eighttowns. Harrisonsevencounties andfifty-seventowns, as becomes a log-cabin and hard-cider President. Tyler has butthreecounties, and not a single town, village, or hamlet even. Polk hasfivecounties andthirteen towns. Taylor,threecounties andtwelvetowns. The remaining Presidents being yet in life and eligible to a second term, it would be invidious to make further disclosures till after the conventions. Among unsuccessful candidates there is a vast difference in popularity. Clay hasthirty-twotowns, and Webster onlyfour. Cass hasfourteen, and Calhoun onlyone. Of Revolutionary heroes, Wayne and Warren are the favorites, having respectivelythirteenandfourteencounties andfifty-threeandtwenty-eighttowns. But "Principles, not Men," has been at times the American watchword; therefore there aretencounties andone hundred and threetowns named "Union."
We have given the reader a dose, we fear, of statistics; but imagine yourself, dear, patient friend, what you may yet be, Postmaster-General of these United States, with the responsibility of providing for all these bewildering post-offices. And we pray you to heed the absolute poverty of invention which compelled forty-nine towns to call themselves "Centre." Forty-nine Centres! There are towns named after the points of compass simply,—not only the cardinal points, but the others,—so that the census-taker may, if he likes, "box the compass," in addition to his other duties.
But worse than the too common names (anything but proper ones) are the eccentric. The colors are well represented; for, beside Oil and Paint for materials, there are Brown, Black, Blue, Green, White, Cherry, Gray, Hazel, Plum, Rose, and Vermilion. The animals come in for their share; for we find Alligator, Bald-Eagle, Beaver, Buck, Buffalo, Eagle, Eel, Elk, Fawn, East-Deer and West-Deer, Bird, Fox, (in Elk County,) Pigeon, Plover, Raccoon, Seal, Swan, Turbot, Wild-Cat, and Wolf. Then again, the christening seems to have been preceded by the shaking in a hat of a handful of vowels and consonants, the horrible results of whichsortesappear as Alna, Cessna, Chazy, Clamo, Novi, (we suspect the last two to be Latin verbs, out of place, and doing duty as substantives,) Cumru, Freco, Fristo, Josco, Hamtramck, Medybemps, Haw, Kan, Paw-Paw, Pee-Pee, Kinzua, Bono, Busti, Lagro, Letart, Lodomillo, Moluncus, Mullica, Lomira, Neave, Oley, Orland, and the felicitous ringing of changes which occurs in Luray, Leroy, and Leray, to say nothing of Ballum, Bango, Helts, and Hellam. And in other unhappy places, the spirit of whim seems to have seized upon the inhabitants. Who would wish to write themselves citizens of Murder-Kill-Hundred, or Cain, or of the town of Lack, which places must be on the high road to Fugit and Constable? There are several anti-Maine-law places, such as Tom and Jerry, Whiskeyrun, Brandywine, Jolly, Lemon, Pipe, and Pitcher, in which Father Matthew himself could hardly reside unimpeached in repute. They read like the names in the old-fashioned "Temperance Tales," all allegory and alcohol, which flourished in our boyhood.
Then, by way of counterpart to these, there are sixty-four places known as Liberty, and thirteen as Freedom, but only one as Moral,—passing by which, we suppose we shall come to Climax, and, thence descending, arrive, as the whirligig of time appointeth, at Smackover, unless we pause in Economy, or Equality, or Candor, or Fairplay.
If we were land-hunters, we might ponder long over the town of Gratis, unless we thought Bonus promised more. There is Extra, and, if tautologically fond of grandeur,Metropolis City,—a mighty Babel of (in 1850)four hundred and twenty-seveninhabitants,—and Bigger, which hasseven hundred. A brisk man would hardly choose Nodaway for his home, nor a haymaker the town of Rain. And of all practical impertinences, what could in this land of novelty equal the calling of one's abiding-place "New"? We fully expect that 1860 will reveal a comparative and superlative, and perhaps even a super-superlative, ("Newest-of-all,") upon its columns.
But what is the sense of such titles as Buckskin, Bullskin, (is it Byrsa, by way of proving Solomon's adage,—"There is nothing new under the sun"?) Chest, and Posey? There is one unfortunate place (do they take the New York "Herald" and "Ledger" there?) which has "gone and got itself christened" Mary Ann, and another (where "Childe Harold" is doubtless in favor) is called Ada. There is a Crockery, a Carryall, and a Turkey-Foot,—which last, like the broomstick in Goethe's ballad, is chopped in two, only to reappear as a double nuisance, as Upper and Lower Turkey-Foot.
Then what paucity of ideas is revealed in the fact that a number of names are simply common nouns, or, worse yet, spinster adjectives, "singly blest"! Such are Hill, Mountain, Lake, Glade, Rock, Glen, Bay, Shade, Valley, Village, District, Falls, which might profitably be joined in holy matrimony with the following,—Grand, Noble, Plain, Pleasant, Rich, Muddy, Barren, Fine, and Flat.
As for one or two other unfortunates, like Bloom and Lumber, they can only be sent to State's Prison for life, with Bean-Blossom and Scrub-Grass. We need hardly mention that to the religious public, including special attention to "clergymen and their families," Calvin, Wesley, Whitefield, Tate, Brady, and Watts offer peculiar attractions.
But there is a class of names which does gladden us, partly from their oddity, and partly from a feeling at first sight that they are names really suggestive of something which has happened,—and this is apt to turn out the fact. Thus, Painted-Post, in New York, and Baton-Rouge, in Louisiana, are honest, though quaint appellatives; Standing-Stone is another; High-Spire, a fourth. Others of the same class provoke our curiosity. Thus, Grand-View-and-Embarras seems to have a history. So do Warrior's-Mark and Broken-Straw. There is one queer name, Pen-Yan, which is said to denote the component parts of its population, _Pen_nsylvanians and _Yan_kees; and we have hopes that Proviso is not meaningless. Also we would give our best pen to know the true origin of Loyal-Sock, and of Marine-Town in the inland State of Illinois. This last is like a "shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia." There is, too, a memorial of the Greek Revolution which tells its own story, —Scio-and-Webster! We could hardly wish the awkward partnership dissolved. But who will unravel the mysteries of New-Design and New-Faul? and can any one tell us whether the fine Norman name of Sanilac is really the euphonious substitute for Bloody-Pond? If there be in America that excellent institution, "Notes and Queries," here is matter for their meddling.
But it is time to shut the book. For we are weary of picking holes in our ownponcho, and inclined to muse a little upon the science of naming places. After what we have said about names growing,—Nomen nascitur, non fil,—we cannot expect that the evil can be remedied by Congress or Convention. Yet the Postal Department has fair cause of complaint. Thus much might be required, that all the supernumerary spots answering to the same hail should be compelled to change their titles. Government exercises a tender supervision of the nomenclature of our navy. Our ships of war are not permitted to disgrace the flag by uncouth titles. Enterprising merchants have offered prizes for good mouth-filling designations for their crack clippers, knowing that freight and fortune often wait upon taking titles. Was the Flying Cloud ever beaten? And in a land where all things change so lightly, why not shake off the loosely sticking names and put on better? For at present, the main end, that of conferring anomenor a name, something by which the spot shall be known, has almost passed out of sight. If John Smith, of the town of Smith, in Smith County, die, or commit forgery, or be run for Congress, or write a book, his address might as well be "Outis, Esq., Town of Anywhere, County of Everywhere." It concerns the "Atlantic Monthly" not a little. For we desire, among its rapidly multiplying subscribers, that our particular friend and kind critic, commorant in Washington, should duly receive and enjoy this present paper, undefrauded by any resident of the other one hundred and thirty of the name. If we wish to mail a copy of "The Impending Crisis" to Franklin, Vermont, we surely do not expect that it will perish byauto da féin Franklin, Louisiana.