FOOTNOTES:

"to his breathing flute and sounding lyreCould swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire."

He wrote a war chant; he wrote psalms; and there is a song in the "Litchfield Collection" in which he attempts to kindle soft desire. Here is an extract:—

No longer, then, fair maid, delayThe promised scenes of bliss,Nor idly give another dayThe joys assigned to this."Quit, then, oh, quit, thou lovely maid!Thy bashful virgin pride,"—

and so on sings the Doctor. Who would have thought that

"profound Solomon would tune a jig,Or Nestor play at pushpin with the boys,"

as Shakspeare has it? who would have expected erotic tints and Epicurean morality from the author of "The Conquest of Canaan," and of four volumes of orthodox and weighty theology?

The "Ode to Columbia,"

"Columbia! Columbia! to glory arise,The queen of the world and the child of the skies!"

written when Dwight was a chaplain in the Revolutionary Army, is probably more known to the moderns than any of his poetical efforts. It is a vision of the future greatness of the new-born nation,—short, spirited, and finished with more care than he was in the habit of giving to his verses.

In like manner the brave and burly Colonel

"Humphreys charmed the listening throng;Sweetly he sang amid the clang of arms."

At Washington's head-quarters in Peekskill he composed "An Address to the Armies of the United States." It was recited publicly in London, and translated by Chastellux into French prose. Three years later he published a poem on the "Happiness of America," which ran through ten editions. In it the gallant man-at-rhymes tells the story of his own campaigns:—

"From whom I learnt the martial art;With what high chiefs I played my early part:With Parsons first, whose eye with piercing kenReads through their hearts the characters of men.Then how I aided in the following sceneDeath-daring Putnam, then immortal Greene.Then how great Washington my youth approved,In rank preferred and as a parent loved;(For each fine feeling in his bosom blends,—The first of heroes, sages, patriots, friends!)With him what hours on warlike plans I spentBeneath the shadow of th' imperial tent;With him how oft I went the nightly roundThrough moving hosts, or slept on tented ground;From him how oft (nor far below the firstIn high behests and confidential trust,)—From him how oft I bore the dread commandsWhich destined for the fight the eager bands;With him how oft I passed th' eventful day,Rode by his side as down the long arrayHis awful voice the columns taught to form,To point the thunders and to pour the storm."

This extract will give a fair idea of the Colonel's manner. A poem on "The Future Glory of the United States of America," another on "The Industry of the United States of America," and "The Death of General Washington," make up his credentials to a seat on the American Parnassus.

Joel Barlow, "Virgilian Barlow," is the most remarkable of the cluster. He started in the race of life with ten competitors of his own blood, and came in a successful adventurer in both hemispheres. After serving in the army with musket and prayer-book, he practised law, edited a newspaper, kept a book-shop,—and having exhausted the variety of callings offered by Connecticut, went to France as agent for the Scioto Land Company, and opened an office in Paris with a grand flourish of advertisements. "Farms for sale on the banks of the Ohio,la belle rivière; the finest district of the United States! Healthful and delightful climate; scarcely any frost in winter; fertile soil; a boundless inland navigation; magnificent forests of a tree from which sugar flows; excellent fishing and fowling; venison in abundance; no wolves, lions, or tigers; no taxes; no military duty. All these unexampled advantages offered to colonists at five shillings the acre!" The speculation took well. Nothing was talked of but the free and rural life to be led on the banks of the Scioto. Brissot's foolish book on America confirmed the promises of Barlow, and stimulated the ardor of purchasers.

The Scioto Company turned out to be a swindling land-company, the precursor of many that have resembled it. The lands they offered had been bought of the Ohio Company, but were never paid for. When the poor French barbers, fiddlers, and bakers, as they are called in a contemporary narrative, reached the banks ofla belle rivière, they found that their title-deeds were good for nothing, and that the woods produced savages instead of sugar. Some died of privation, some were scalped, and some found their way to New Orleans. The few who remainedeventually obtained a grant of a few acres from the Ohio Company, by paying for them over again.

In the mean time the French Revolution had broken out, and Barlow saw the visions and dreamed the dreams of the enthusiasts of that day. He dropped the land business, and he dropped his New England prejudices, religious as well as political, and his New England common sense. Connecticut men who wander into other lands and other opinions seem peculiarly subject to such violent transformations. Some of the most ignivorous of our Southern countrymen are the offspring of Connecticut; and, strange as it may appear, the sober land of the pumpkin and onion exports more arbiters of elegance and punctilio, more judges without appeal of horses, wine, and beauty, more gentlemen of the most sensitive and demonstrative honor, than any other Northern State.

Inspired by the instincts of his race, Barlow fancied he saw the approach of a new era of perfection. To hasten its advent in England, he translated Volney's "Ruins," and went to London to publish his translation. There he wrote his "Advice to the Privileged Classes," a political pamphlet, and became an active member of the Constitution Society. The Society commissioned him as delegate to the French Convention, with an address of congratulation and a gift of a thousand pairs of shoes. The Convention rewarded him with the dignity ofCitoyen Francais. Barlow adopted the character, and carried it out. He sang at a supper a parody of "God save the King," composed by himself.

"Fame, let thy trumpet sound!Tell all the world aroundHow Capet fell!And when great George's pollShall in the basket roll,Let mercy then controlThe Guillotine!"God save the Guillotine,Till England's King and QueenHer power shall prove;When all the sceptred crewHave paid their homage toThe Guillotine!"

"Fame, let thy trumpet sound!Tell all the world aroundHow Capet fell!And when great George's pollShall in the basket roll,Let mercy then controlThe Guillotine!

"God save the Guillotine,Till England's King and QueenHer power shall prove;When all the sceptred crewHave paid their homage toThe Guillotine!"

A few years before, Barlow had dedicated the "Vision of Columbus" to poor Capet, whose destruction he celebrates so pleasantly,—with many assurances of the gratitude of America, and of his own veneration. "Cœlum, non animum," would never have been written, if Horace had properly understood Connecticut character.

Barlow's zeal was pleasing to the rulers of France. They sent him and the Abbé Grégoire to revolutionize Savoy, and to divide it into departments. After his return, he became rich by speculation, and lived handsomely in the Hotel de Clermont-Tonnerre. His reputation extended to his own country. The United States employed him to negotiate with the Barbary pirates,—that is to say, to buy off the wretched cutthroats who infested the Mediterranean. He went to Africa, and made arrangements which were considered advantageous then, and would be hooted at as disgraceful now. In the treaty with Algiers occurred a passage that gave great offence to his friends at home, and to Federalists in general. It was to this effect, if not in these words: "That the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

In 1805, after seventeen years of absence, Barlow returned to America, built himself a house near Washington, and called it Kalorama. Jefferson and the Democrats received him with open arms; he embraced them with equal warmth, and was a very great man for some time. A new edition of the "Columbiad" completed his fame,—an edition gotten up at his own expense, with engravings by his friend Robert Fulton; the paper, type, illustrations, and binding, far superior to anything as yet produced by American publishers. At the request of the President, Barlow went back to France as Minister, in the place of General Armstrong. It was the winter of the Russian campaign. A personal interview with the Emperor on the subject of the Berlin and Milan Decrees seemed necessary, and Barlow hurried to Wilna tomeet him. The weather was unusually severe, the roads rough, and the accommodations wretched. Cold and exposure brought on a violent illness; and Barlow expired in a miserable hut near Cracow. The "Columbiad" is an enlargement, or rather a dilution, of the "Vision of Columbus," by the addition of some two thousand verses. The epic opens with Columbus in prison; to him enters Hesper, an angel. The angel leads Columbus to the Mount of Vision, whence he beholds the panorama of the Western Continent he had discovered. Hesper acts as showman, and explains the tableaux as they roll on. He points out the geographical features of America, not forgetting Connecticut River; relates the history of Mexico and of Peru, and explains the origin of races, cautioning Columbus against the theory of several Adams. Turning north, he describes the settlement of the English colonies, and narrates the old French War of General Wolfe and the American Revolution, with the customary episodes,—Saratoga, Yorktown, Major André, Miss McCrea, and the prison-ships. Finally, the angel predicts the glory of the world's future,—perpetual peace, unrestricted commerce, public works, health and longevity, one universal language. The globe, "one confederate, independent sway," shall

"Spread with the sun, and bound the walks of day;One central system, one all-ruling soul,Live through the parts, and regulate the whole."

There is evidently no room for the serpent Secession in Barlow's paradise. This grand federation of the terrestrial ball is governed by a general council of elderly married men, "long rows of reverend sires sublime," presided over by a "sire elect shining in peerless grandeur." The delegates hold their sessions in Mesopotamia, within a "sacred mansion" of high architectural pretensions.

"On rocks of adamant the walls ascend,Tall columns heave, and sky-like arches bend;Bright o'er the golden roof the glittering spiresFar in the concave meet the solar fires;Four blazing fronts, with gates unfolding high,Look with immortal splendor round the sky."

In the spacious court of the capitol of the world stands the statue of the Genius of Earth, holding Truth's mighty mirror in his hand. On the pedestal are carved the noblest arts of man. Beneath the footstool of the Genius,

"all destructive things,The mask of priesthood and the mace of kings,Lie trampled in the dust; for here, at last,Fraud, folly, error, all their emblems cast.Each envoy here unloads his weary handOf some old idol from his native land.One flings a pagod on the mingled heap;One lays a crescent, one a cross to sleep;Swords, sceptres, mitres, crowns and globes and stars,Codes of false fame and stimulants to wars,Sink in the settling mass. Since guile began,These are the agents of the woes of man."

It will be observed that Barlow improved slightly upon the old loyalist cry, "Une loi, un roi, une foi." One government, one reverend sire elect, and no religion, was his theory of the future of mankind.

Few men in these degenerate days have the endurance to read the "Columbiad" through; but "Hasty Pudding," which Barlow celebrated in verse as good sound republican diet, may be read with some pleasure. It belongs to the same class of poems as Philips's "Cider," Dyer's "Fleece," and Grainger's "Sugar-Cane," and is quite as good as most of them.

There is little to be said about Alsop. He was a scholarly gentleman, who published a few mild versions from the Italian and the Scandinavian, and a poem on the "Memory of Washington," and was considerate enough not to publish a poem on the "Charms of Fancy," which still exists, we believe, in manuscript. In some verses extracted from it by the editors of the "Cyclopædia of American Literature" we recognize with interest that traveller of the future who is to moralize over the ruins of the present,—known to all readers as Macaulay's New-Zealander, although Goldsmith, Kirke White, and others had already introduced him to the public. Alsop brings this Wandering Jew of literature from Nootka Sound to gaze on "many a shattered pile and broken stone," where "fair Bostonia," "York's proud emporium,"or Philadelphia, "caught the admiring gaze."

The wild-eyed, excitable Dr. Hopkins had more vigor and originality than his brother stars. There is much rough humor in his burlesque of the essay of Brackenridge of Pittsburg on the Indian War:—

"As if our GodOne single thought on Indians e'er bestowed;To them his care extends, or even knew,Before Columbus told him, where they grew";

and in his epitaph on the "Victim of a Cancer Quack":—

"The case was this:—a pimple roseSoutheast a little of his nose,Which daily reddened and grew bigger,As too much drinking gave it vigor";

and in the "Hypocrite's Hope":—

"Blest is the man who from the wombTo saintship him betakes;And when too soon his child shall come,A long confession makes";

and in the squib on Ethan Allen's infidel book:—

"Lo! Allen 'scaped from British jails,His tushes broke by biting nails,Appears in hyperborean skies,To tell the world the Bible lies."

Dr. Hopkins published very little; he might be excused, if he had written more.

Addison said, he never yet knew an author who had not his admirers. The Connecticut authors were no exception to this rule. To begin with, they admired themselves, and they admired one another; each played squire to his gifted friend, and sounded the trumpet of his fame. It was, "See! Trumbull leads the train," or "the ardent throng"; "Trumbull! earliest boast of Fame"; "Lo! Trumbull wakes the lyre."

"Superior poet, in whose classic strainIn bright accordance wit and fancy reign;Whose powers of genius in their ample rangeComprise each subject and each tuneful change,Each charm of melody to Phoebus dear,The grave, the gay, the tender, the severe."

Barlow is "a Child of Genius"; Columbus owes much of his glory to him.

"In Virgilian Barlow's tuneful linesWith added splendor great Columbus shines."

Then we have "Majestic Dwight, sublime in epic strain"; "Blest Dwight"; Dwight of "Homeric fire." Colonel Humphreys is fully up to the regulation standard:—

"In lore of nations skilled and brave in arms,See Humphreys glorious from the field retire,Sheathe the glad sword and string the sounding lyre."

Dwight thought "McFingal" much superior to "Hudibras"; and Hopkinson, the author of "Hail Columbia," mentions, as a melancholy instance of æsthetic hallucination, that Secretary Wolcott, whose taste in literature was otherwise good, had an excessive admiration for "The Conquest of Canaan." A general chorus of neighbors and friends rose in the columns of the "Connecticut Magazine and New Haven Gazette":—"It is with a noble and patriotic pride that America boasts of her Barlow, Dwight, Trumbull, and Humphreys, the poetical luminaries of Connecticut"; and all true New-Englanders preferred their home-made verses to the best imported article. The fame of the Seven extended into the neighboring States; Boston, not yet the Athens of America, confessed "that Pegasus was not backed by better horsemen from any part of the Union." But the glory grew fainter as the distance increased from the centre of illumination. In New York, praise was qualified. The Rev. Samuel Miller of that city, who published in 1800 "A Brief Retrospect of the Literature of the Eighteenth Century," calls Mr. Trumbull a respectable poet, thinks that Dr. Dwight's "Greenfield Hill" is entitled to considerable praise, and finds much poetic merit in Mr. Barlow's "Vision"; but he closes the chapter sadly, with a touch of Johnson's vigor:—"The annals of American literature are short and simple. The history of poverty is usually neither very various nor very interesting." Farther South the voice of the scoffer was heard. Mr. Robert Morris ventured to say in the Assembly of Pennsylvania, that America had not as yet produced a good poet. Great surprise and indignation, when this speech reached the eyes of the Connecticut men! Morris might understand banking, but in taste he was absurdly deficient. No poets! What did he callJohn Trumbull of Hartford, and Joel Barlow, author of "The Vision of Columbus"? "We appeal to the bar of taste, whether the writings of the poets now living in Connecticut are not equal to anything which the present age can produce in the English language."

Cowper showed excellent sense when he wrote,—"Wherever else I am accounted dull, let me at least pass for a genius at Olney." The Hartford Wits passed for geniuses in Connecticut, which is better, as far as the genius is concerned, than any extent or duration of posthumous fame. Let their shades, then, be satisfied with the good things in the way of praise they received in their lives; for between us and them there is fixed a great gulf of oblivion, into which Time, the merciless critic from whose judgment there is no appeal, has tumbled their works.

In 1793, a volume of "American Poems, Selected and Original," was published in Litchfield by subscription. A second volume was promised, if the first met with "that success which the value of the poems it contained seemed to warrant"; but no second volume appeared. When Hopkins died, in 1801, the constellation was sinking fast to the horizon; a few years later it had set, and only elderly inhabitants remembered when the Down-Eastern sky was made bright by it. Barlow's magnificent edition revived the recollection for a time, and the old defiant cry was raised again, that the "Columbiad" was comparable, not to say superior, to any poem that had appeared in Europe since the independence of the United States. But English reviewers refused to chime in. Their critical remarks were not flattering, although merciful as compared with the jeers of the "Edinburgh" at Byron's "Hours of Idleness," or the angry abuse with which the earlier productions of the Lake School were received. Nevertheless, Paulding, Ingersoll, and Walsh, indignant, sprang to their quills, and attacked the prejudiced British with theargumentum ad hominem, England's "sores and blotches," etc.; theargumentum Tu quoque, "We're as good a poet as you are, and a better, too"; and, lastly, pleaded minority in bar of adverse criticism, "We are a young nation," and so on. This was to yield the point. If a young nation necessarily writes verses similar in quality to those of very young persons, it would always be proper to take Uncle Toby's advice, "and say no more about it." Deaf to Walsh's "Appeal," and to Inchiquin's "Letters," Sydney Smith, as late as January, 1820, asked, in the "Edinburgh," that well-known and stinging question, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" Even at home, "Hesper" and "The Mount of Vision" soon faded out of sight. At that time, 1808-1810, readers of verse had, not to mention Cowper, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" and "Marmion," "Gertrude of Wyoming," "Thalaba," Moore's "Anacreon," and two volumes by William Wordsworth,—poems with which the American producer was unable to compete. In 1820 Samuel G. Goodrich of Hartford published a complete edition of Trumbull's works in two volumes, the type large and the paper excellent,—with a portrait of the author, and good engravings of McFingal in the Cellar, and of Abijah Mann bearing the Town Resolves of Marshfield to Boston. The sale did not repay the outlay. When Trumbull died, in 1831, he was as completely forgotten as any Revolutionary colonel or captain.

Humphreys once feeling, that, in spite of all his struggles, he was not doing much, exclaimed,—

"Why, niggard language, dost thou balk my soul?"

He did not see the reason why: his soul had not much to say. This was the trouble with them all. There was not a spark of genuine poetic fire in the Seven. They sang without an ear for music; they strewed their pages with faded artificial flowers which they mistook for Nature, and endeavored to overcome sterility of imagination and want of passion by veneering with magniloquent epithets. They padded their ill-favored Muse, belaced and beruffledher, and covered her with garments stiffened with tawdry embroidery to hide her leanness; they overpowdered and overrouged to give her the beauty Providence had refused. I say their Muse, but they had no Muse of their own; they imported an inferior one from England, and tried her in every style,—Pope's and Dryden's, Goldsmith's and Gray's, and never rose above a poor imitation; producing something which looked like a model, but lacked its flavor: wooden poetry, in short,—a genuine product of the soil.

Judging from their allusions to themselves, no one of the Seven mistrusted his own poetical powers or the gifts of his colleagues. They seem to have died in their error, unrepentant, in the comfortable hope of an hereafter of fame. Their works have faded out of sight like an unfinished photograph. It was a sad waste of human endeavor, a profitless employment of labor, unusual in Connecticut.[C]

But, although thus "wrecked upon the rock of rhyme," these bards of Connecticut were not mere waste-paper of mankind, as Franklin sneeringly called our poets, but sensible, well-educated gentlemen of good English stock, of the best social position, and industrious in their business; for Alsop was the only one who "left no calling for the idle trade." Hopkins stood at the head of his profession. Dwight was beloved and respected as minister, legislator, theologian, and President of Yale College. Trumbull was a member of the State Legislature, State's Attorney, and Judge of the Supreme Court. Humphreys served on Washington's staff, received a sword from Congress for his gallantry at Yorktown, was Secretary of Legation at Paris, Minister to Portugal and Spain, and introduced merino sheep into New England. Barlow, as we have already seen, was Ambassador to France at the time of his death. All of these, except Trumbull, had borne arms, and did not throw away their shields like Archilochus and Horace. They were sincere patriots, who honestly predicted a future of boundless progress in wealth, science, religion, and virtue for the United States,—the exemplar of liberty and justice to the world, "surpassing all nations that have ever existed, in magnitude, felicity, and duration." And on the other hand, every one of them believed in the decline and impending fall of their old enemy, Great Britain. Barlow's "Hesper" even hints that a Columbus from New England may one day rediscover the Old World.

After the peace, when the closer union of the States under one general government was proposed, the Hartford Wits worked hard to argue down and to laugh down the bitter and absurd opposition which sprang up. That great question was settled definitively by the adoption of the new Constitution, and another took its place: How is this document to be interpreted? The Hartford men, excepting, of course, Joel Barlow, the Lost Pleiad of the group, whose head had been turned by the bewildering theories of his French fellow-citizens, were warmly in favor of administering the new government on Federal principles. Were not the Federalists right? More than thirty years ago, De Tocqueville pronounced in their favor; De Witt, in his recent essay on Jefferson, comes to the same decision: both observers who have no party-feelings nor class-prejudices to mislead them. And have not the last few years given us all light enough to see that abstractly, as statesmen, the Federal leaders were right? As politicians, in the degraded American sense of the word, they were unskilful; they accelerated the downfall of their party by injudicious measures and by petty rivalries. But although their ruin might have been adjourned, it could not have been avoided; we now know that their fate was inevitable.The democracy must have run over them and trodden them out by the sheer brute force of numbers; no superiority in wisdom or in virtue could have saved them long.

In those hot and angry days amania politicaraged among the inhabitants of the United States. One could no longer recognize the sensible people who had fought the British stoutly for seven years, without the slightest idea that they were struggling for anything more than independence of foreign rule. Thomas Paine and Joel Barlow, graduates of the great French Revolution University, had come to teach them the new jargon: the virtue and wisdom of the people; the natural rights of man; the natural propensity of rulers and priests to ignore them; and other similar high-sounding words, the shibboleth and the mainstay of the Democratic party to this day. The Anti-Federalists were as much pleased to learn that they had been contending for these beautiful phrases as was Monsieur Jourdain when told he had been speakingde la proseall his life. They assumed the title of Citizen, invented that of Citess to please strong-minded sisters, and became as crazy as Monsieur Jourdain when invested with the dignity of Mamamouchi. They proclaimed that the government of the United States, like all other governments, was naturally hostile to the rights of the people; France was their only hope; if the leagued despotisms succeeded against her, they would soon send their engines of destruction among them. They planted trees of liberty, and danced about them, and sang the Carmagnole with variations from Yankee Doodle; they offered their lives for liberty, which was in no danger, not even from their follies; and swore destruction to tyrants, as if that unpopular class of persons existed in the United States. They were the people,—the wise, the pure,—who could do no wrong. The Federalists were aristocrats, monocrats,—lovers of court ceremonies and levees, chariots and servants and plate. The distinguished chief of the French party, whose "heart was a perpetual bleeding fountain of philanthropy," was not above pretending to believe that his opponents were striving to "establish the hell of monarchy" in this republican paradise, and were "ready to surrender the commerce of the country, and almost every privilege as a free, sovereign, and independent nation, to the British." Even such a man as Samuel Adams, at a dinner on board of a French frigate, could put thebonnet rougeon his venerable head, and pray that "France alone might rule the seas."

The New-Englanders laughed at the charge of monarchical predilections, so absurdly inconsistent with their history, their laws, habits, and feelings. Before the war, leading men in other Colonies had affected to dread their levelling propensities; and General Charles Lee had said of them, with some truth, that they were the only Americans who had a single republican qualification or idea. Freedom was an old fireside acquaintance; they knew that the dishevelled, hysterical creature the Gallo-Democrats worshipped was a delusion, and feared she might prove a snare. Their common sense taught them to pay little attention toa prioridisquisitions on natural rights, social compacts, etc.,—metaphysics of politics, nugatory for all practical American purposes,—and to reject as ridiculous the promised millennium of supreme reason and perfected man. From a long experience in the management of public affairs, they learned that our new government was in danger from its weakness rather than from its strength; hence they rejected the fatal doctrine of State rights, the root of the greatest political evil, Secession. In the theories and in the measures of the Democrats, in the very absurdity of the accusations made against themselves, they thought they perceived a reckless purpose to relax authority for the sake of popularity, which would lead to mob-rule, more distasteful to the orderly Yankee than any other form of tyranny. Moreover, in the Eastern States most of the Anti-Federalistsbelonged to the lowest class of society; and, not content with urging their pernicious public policy, the more turbulent of the party showed a strong inclination to adopt French principles in religion and morals, as well as in government. Robespierre had announced pompously, "L'Atheisme est aristocratique." New England Federalists thought it democratic on this side of the ocean. If they must choose between the Tri-Color and the Cross of St. George, they preferred the Cross. There was no guillotine in Great Britain,—no capering about plaster statues of the Goddess of Reason; people read their Bibles, went to church, and respected the holy sacrament of matrimony. But they wished for neither a France nor an England; they desired to make an America after their own hearts,—religious, just, orderly, and industrious; they believed that on the Federalist plan such a nation could be built up, and on no other; they opposed Jeffersonian politics then as they oppose Jeffersonian-Davis politics now, and they were as heartily abused then as they have been since, and as foolishly.

It must be confessed that the Hartford Wits did ample injustice to their antagonists. Mr. Jefferson was certainly not an Avatar of the enemy of mankind, nor were his followers atheists, anarchists, and rogues. But in 1799 there were no shabbier Democrats than those of Connecticut. If we may judge of the old race by a few surviving specimens, we may pardon our poets, if they added contempt to theoretical disapprobation, and, in their eagerness to

"Confound their politics"

and

"Expose their knavish tricks,"

allowed their feelings to exaggerate the unpleasant traits of the master and of his disciples.

The Hartford men were on the losing side. Federalism expired with the election of Monroe. Its degenerate successor, Whiggism, had no principles of value, and only lagged in the rear of the Democratic advance. Statesmanship and good sense went hopelessly down before the discipline of party and the hunger for office; and with each year it became easier to catch a well-meaning, but short-sighted public in any trap baited with the usualad captandumcommonplaces. We are very frequently told that "History is philosophy teaching by example,"—one of those copy-book apophthegms which people love to repeat as if they contained important truth. But the teachings of history or of philosophy never reach the ears of the multitude; they are drowned by the din of selfish rogues or of blind enthusiasts. Poor stupid humanity goes round and round like a mill-horse in a dreary ring of political follies. The cast-off sophisms and rhetorical rubbish of a past generation are patched up, scoured, and offered to the credulous present as something novel and excellent. People do not know how often the rotten stuff has been used and thrown away, and accept it readily. After a while, they discover to their cost, as their ancestors did before them, that it is good for nothing. But even if it were possible to have a grand international patent-office for political devices, where the venerable machines, so often reinvented to break down again, could be labelled worthless, and exhibited to all the world, I fear that the newest pet demagogue would persuade the voters of his district, in spite of their eyes, that he had contrived an improvement to make some one of the rickety old things work. No wonder that Dr. Franklin lost patience, when he saw how sadly reason was perverted by ignorance, selfishness, and wickedness, and wished "that mankind had never been endowed with a reasoning faculty, since they know so little how to make use of it, and so often mislead themselves by it, and that they had been furnished with a good sensible instinct instead of it."

Connecticut should be proud of her poets: not as literary luminaries of the first magnitude, but as manly citizens, who sincerely loved justice, order, self-control;—in two words, genuine freedom;as cultivated gentlemen, who belonged to a class no longer numerous.

"This small, this blest secluded StateStill meets unmoved the blasts of Fate."

Unmoved, indeed, as in Federal times, but suffering sadly from depletion. The great West and the city of New York have sucked her best blood. There still remain inventive machinists, acute money-changers, acutest peddlers; but the seed of the Muses has run out. No more Pleiades at Hartford; no three "mighties," like Hosmer, Ellsworth, and Johnson; no lawyers of infinite wit, like Tracy and Daggett; no Wolcotts or Shermans: but the small State can boast that she has still within her borders many sons full of the spirit shown by Comfort Sage and by Return Jonathan Meigs, when they marched for Boston at the head of their companies as soon as the news of Lexington reached Connecticut.

FOOTNOTES:[B]It may interest temperance men to learn that somewhat later than the period alluded to above, Connecticut paid excise on 400,000 gallons of rum yearly,—about two gallons to each inhabitant, young and old, male and female.[C]Philip Freneau, whose Jacobin newspaper was despised by all good Federalists, wrote better verses than the All Connecticut Seven. His "Indian Burying-Ground" is worthy of a place in an anthology. This stanza has often been ascribed to Campbell; it is as good as any one in Schiller's "Nadowessie Death-Lament,"—"By midnight moons, o'er glistening dews,In vestments for the chase arrayed,The hunter still the deer pursues;The hunter and the deer a shade."

[B]It may interest temperance men to learn that somewhat later than the period alluded to above, Connecticut paid excise on 400,000 gallons of rum yearly,—about two gallons to each inhabitant, young and old, male and female.

[C]Philip Freneau, whose Jacobin newspaper was despised by all good Federalists, wrote better verses than the All Connecticut Seven. His "Indian Burying-Ground" is worthy of a place in an anthology. This stanza has often been ascribed to Campbell; it is as good as any one in Schiller's "Nadowessie Death-Lament,"—"By midnight moons, o'er glistening dews,In vestments for the chase arrayed,The hunter still the deer pursues;The hunter and the deer a shade."

"By midnight moons, o'er glistening dews,In vestments for the chase arrayed,The hunter still the deer pursues;The hunter and the deer a shade."

Our schooner sailed once up and down the coast of Labrador, skirting it for a distance of five hundred miles; but in these papers I sail back and forth as many times as I please. Having, therefore, followed up the ice, I am again at Sleupe Harbor, our first port, and invite thee to go with us in a day's pursuit of Eider-Duck; for among these innumerable islands the eider breeds, and not elsewhere in considerable numbers, so far as we could learn, short of—somewhere in the remote North. Bradford, this morning, June 15th, has hired the two Canadians to take him to the bird-haunts in their own boat, and to shoot for him,—kindly offering a place to the Judge and myself.

The wordEiderhad long been to me a name to conjure with. At some far-away period in childhood it got imbedded in my fancy, and in process of time had acquired that subtilest, indefinable fascination which belongs only to imaginative reminiscence. In the future, I suppose, all this existence will have become such a childhood, its earth changed to sky, its dulness sharpened to a tender, delicious poignancy of allurement and suggestion. And were it not bliss enough for an immortality, this boundless deepening and refining of experience through memory and imagination? Only to feel thrilling in one's being chords of connection with times immeasurably bygone! only to be fed with ethereal remembrance out of a youth scarcely less ancient than the stars! Pity Tithonus no more; or pity him only because in him age had become the enemy of itself, and spilled the wine from its own cup.

The wind was ahead, and blew freshly down through the wilderness of islands, sweeping between granite shores along many and many a winding channel; the boat careened almost to her gunwale, yielding easily at first, but holding hard when well down, as good boats will; the waves beat saucily against her, now and then also catching up a handful of spray, and flinging it full in our faces, not forbearing once or twice to dash it between the open lips of a talker, salting his speech somewhat too much for his comfort, though not too much for the entertainment of his interlocutors; while overhead the rifted gray was traversed by whited seams, making another wilderness of islands in the clouds. We had gone a mile, and were now sailing smoothly in the lee of an island, when Bradford exclaimed, "See there! What's that? Why, that's a 'sea-goose.' Can you get him for me?" (tothe elder Canadian). I had snuggled down in the bottom of the boat, and sprang up, expecting, from the word "goose," to see a large and not handsome bird, when instead appeared the tiniest tid-bit of swimming elegance that eye ever beheld. Reddish about neck and breast, graceful as a swan in form and motion, while not larger than a swallow, light as the lightest feather on the water, turning its curving neck and dainty head to look,—it seemed more like an embodied fancy than a creature inured to the chill of Arctic seas and the savagery of Arctic storms. What goose first gave it the name "sea-goose" passes conjecture. "Sea-fairy" were more appropriate.

This was the Hyperborean Phalarope,—a big name for so tiny a creature. Nuttall says that in 1833 great numbers of them appeared about Chelsea Beach. Ruddy, airy, fairy, feathered Graces, they must seem in our practical Yankee land like a mythology on wings, a flock of exquisite old Grecian fancies, flitting, light, and sweetly strange, and almost impossible, through the atmosphere of modern industries.

Soon a new attraction. It was a bird in the water quite near, about the size of a pigeon, though slenderer, glossy black, save a patch of pure white on the wing, and with an eye that glittered like a black jewel.

"Sea-pigeon," said the artist, and desired his skilful Canadian to secure the prize. The other arose and took deliberate aim. The bird, now not more than ten yards distant, did not offer to fly, and made no attempt to swim away, but kept its paddles well under it, with its head turned from us, while it swung lightly from side to side, glancing backward with its keen, audacious eye, now over this shoulder, now over that. The gun flashed; the shot spattered over the spot where a bird had been; butquickerthan a flash that creature was under water and well out of harm's way! The shot could have been scarcely out of the muzzle before he had disappeared. To see such inconceivable celerity reminded one that the wings of gnats, which vibrate fifteen thousand times in a second, and light, that makes (videTyndale) twenty and odd millions of undulations in going an inch, are not without their fellow-wonders in Nature. Meanwhile the whole performance was so cool and neat that I could not afterwards help thinking of this creature as a humorist, and picturing it as quietly chuckling to itself under water. With reason, too; for above water was such a prolonged and ludicrous stare of amazement from at least three pairs of eyes as might satisfy the most immoderate appetite for the laughable.

This artful dodger was the Black Guillemot. It cannot be shot, if its eye is on the fowler. Eager for "specimens," I tried my long, powerful ducking-gun upon it an hour or two later, sufficiently to prove this. The birds would wait and watch, all the while glancing from side to side, and dip, dip, dipping their bills in the water with infinite wary quickness of movement, and yet with an air of audacious unconcern; but the pull at the trigger seemed to touch some nerve in them, and by the same act you fired your shot at them and fired them under water.

The curious dipping of the bill just alluded to is mentioned as characteristic of the Phalaropes, though I did not observe it, and is thought to be a snapping-up of minute Crustacea. But in the case of the Black Guillemot, I question if this be its true explanation. The bird makes this movement only when on the alert. Several of them are frolicking together; you show yourself, and instantly their bills begin to dip,—each movement being quick as lightning, but with a second of space between. I thought it partly an escape-valve for their nervous excitement, and partly a keeping in practice of their readiness to dive. To suppose them taking food under such circumstances,—one would fain think himself more formidable in their eyes than that coolness would imply.

In the afternoon, however, of this day—to anticipate a little—my specimen was obtained. While the boatwaited at the shore of a low island, the Judge and I sauntered up the smooth, bare granite slope to the ridge, and, looking over a breast-high wall of solid rock, saw a flock of these birds in a cove on the opposite side.

"Shall I fire?" I said.

"You couldn't hit them; they are more than two gun-shots off. However," added the Judge, presently, "your Long Tom willreachone gunshot, and fire one and a half more; it will do no harm to try."

I fired at the farthest; they went under, but when they returned to the surface one had come to grief. I walked leisurely towards them, and stood on the shore, reloading; but they gave me no heed; they were intent on their stricken comrade. Gathering around him, they began pulling at him with their bills, trying to replace him in an upright position. The poor fellow strove to comply, for he was not yet quite dead; but quickly fell over again on the side. They renewed their efforts, assiduously playing Good Samaritan to this brother who had fallen among human thieves. At last they got impatient, and pecked at him sharply, evidently looking on him as wanting in pluck. They had seemed very human before; but when they began to be vexed at him because he would not gratify their benevolence with the sense of success, I really could see no reason why they should be masquerading there in feathers, being as human as anybody!

It was an elegant bird, with its fine shape, its plumage of glossy jet and snow, and its legs of bright scarlet, bright as name. Use it has, too, for its flame-legs in the frigid seas it frequents; for it is found in the uttermost North, and dares all the severities of Polar cold.

But we have got into the afternoon too quickly, and now return to our morning pursuit of eider-duck. It was not long after the above spectacle of magic disappearance that the elder Canadian rose, went forward, and fired his piece. Two large birds, one black and white, the other brown, sprang up from the water and flew briskly away,—flew, as I thought, out of sight; the man meanwhile returning to his seat and the helm, with the same composed silence, and the same attractive, inscrutable face as before. But three hundred yards farther on we came to the male bird, quite dead. I was near firing upon it, being led by its motion on the waves to think it alive, and not in the least connecting it with the bird. I had but just now seen flying off in all apparent health,—when the Canadian, touching Bradford, and pointing, said quietly, "Dead," and the latter shouted to me accordingly. Presently, as the boat swept past, I stooped and drew it in,—a beautiful creature, with velvety violet black accompanied by dark olive-green about the head, while the neck, breast, and back were white as snow, and all the rest a glistening black.

"An eider! King eider!" cried the Artist, joyfully. Then, "Isn't it a king eider?" he said to the Canadian, holding it up.

The other nodded.

"Really a king eider!" murmured the Artist, as he now bent over it with bright eyes.

It was not, but the male of the other species, though I knew no better at the time. The king duck is one of the most Arctic of all Arctic birds, and condescends to Lower Labrador only in winter, nor then frequently. A temperature at the freezing-point is to him a mere oven, which one should be a salamander to live in; with the thermometer thirty or forty degrees lower, he is still sweltered; while his custom of growing his own coat, though it saves him from shoddy, expense, and Paris fashions, has the disadvantage that he cannot strip it off at pleasure, not even when away from the ladies and the dinner-table. He is fain, therefore, to keep well away toward the Polar North, where the climate is more temperate and pleasing, leaving Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to roast themselves, if theywilldo so.

While the boat sailed on, still seeking the eider-island,—which at first, sothe Artist said, was "half a mile off," then "a piece farther," then "right up here," then "just ahead," and now threatened to keep ahead,—I nested myself again in the bottom, and renewed an old boy-custom by studying the elder Canadian's physiognomy. It was strangely attractive, and yet strangely impenetrable, a rare out-door face, clean and firm as naked granite after a rain, healthful as balsam-firs, and so honestly weather-beaten that one could not help regarding it as a feature of natural scenery. All out-of-doors was implied in it, and it belonged as much to the horizon as to the nearest objects. The eye, with its unceasing, imperturbable search, never an instant relaxing its intentness, and never seeming to make an effort any more than the sky in looking blue, asserted this relationship, for by the same glance it seemed to take in equally the farthest and the nearest; only over us in the boat it passed always as over vacant space. Yet any question was answered at once with quiet, willing brevity, not as if he had been interrupted in his thoughts, or was recalled to a recognition of our existence, but just as he would turn the tiller in steering his boat,—while the eye still continued its conversation with that impersonal, elemental company which he seemed to keep. I found it out of my power to relate myself to him as an individual. In most faces you study special character; but in him it was somewhat older and more primitive,—somewhat which seemed to be rather existence itself than any special form of it. One felt in him that same world-old secret which haunts ancient woods, and would have asked him to utter it, were not its presence the only utterance it can have. Alas, he that speaks must use English, French, or some language which is partly conventional; and that pre-Adamite or Saturnian vernacular in which we are alltryingto speak has no verbal sign. Poets, indeed, contrive to catch it, one knows not how, in the meshes of ordinary language, and only therefore are poets; but to frame in it any question or answer suited to the wants of the understanding is a feat beyond man's power. It is true that Mr. Herbert Spencer, having, by diligent, heroic self-desiccation, got his mind into the purely adult, dried-beef condition, well freed from all boy-juices of imagination, has discovered that all Fact in this universe, which cannot be verbally formulated and made a scientific dogma, is without significance to man's spirit, however it may be negatively implied as a vacant somewhat by his logic. For which discovery the incomparable man will please accept my profoundest ingratitude.

After "positive philosophy," the croak of ravens, the hoot of owls, anything that has the touch, the charm, and infinite suggestion of Nature and life, will be more than welcome; and in good time we have reached the desired island.

Not to find eiders, though, but only Saddle-Back Gulls, a crowd of which arose on our approach, and hovered about at safe, yet tantalizing distance, keeping up their monotonous, piping scream. The saddle-back, a large, powerful white bird, with a patch of black crossing it like a saddle, is the great enemy of the eider, pillaging its nest and devouring its young at every opportunity, and had probably driven the ducks from this place. It is a pirate of pirates, a Semmes in the air, cowardly toward equals, relentless toward the weak and unweaponed; and the chief care of the mother duck is to protect her little brood from these greedy confederates. One of the coolest, yet wariest rascals in the world, it can scarcely be surprised, but lingers about, just beyond gun-shot range, screaming, as if it said, "Why don't you fire? Fire!—who cares?" I came at length to cherish toward them no little animosity, and would willingly have played Kearsarge upon them, could any challenge have drawn them from port. But during the whole cruise not one of them consoled us with so much as a feather.

The flight of this bird meanwhile is magnificent,—so full of powerful grace, of achieving leisure and ease. Nothing can be more striking than its contrastwith the labored propulsion of the duck. A few slow waves of the wing, and there it is high in the air; then a droop, a decline, but so light and soft, so exquisitely graduated, that the downward drift of a feather seems lumpish and leaden in the comparison; then again up it goes with such an ease as if it rose by specific levity, like smoke from a chimney in a day of calm; and aloft it wheels, circles, floats, and at length sails on its broad vans away, passing in a few minutes over wide spaces, and yet, with its leisurely stroke, seeming engaged only in airing its pinions. One might fancy it the very spirit of motion imaged in a picturesque symbol.

In that delightful book, "Out-Door Papers," the author celebrates charmingly the charm of birds; but I, who am more humanist than naturalist, would say rather, What exhaustless fascination in their flight!—for this appears to touch by some subtile suggestion upon the hope or dream of man. I am, indeed, now—though always, please God, a boy—not so young a boy as once, when I could be unhappy for the want of wings, and deem, for a moment, that life is little worth without them; yet never does a bird fly in my view, especially if its flight be lofty and sustained, but it seems to carry some deep, immemorial secret of my existence, as if my immortal life flew with it. Sweet fugitive, when will it fly with me? Whenever it does,—and something assures me that one day it will,—then the new heavens and new earth! Meanwhile the intimation of it puts to the lip some unseen cup, out of which, in a soft ecstasy of pain that is better than pleasure, I quaff peace, peace. It is not always nor often that one is open to this supreme charm; but it comes at times, and then to hope all and believe all is easy as to breathe.

This mood also carries me farther than almost anything else into childhood; for, in the height of it, I can go back by link after link of remembrance, and see myself ... there ... and there ... and there again ... and at last deep into the rosy suffusion of dawn,—still looking up, and intent on that airy motion. To this day I know birds better by their flight than by their forms, unless it be the form of the wing.

I tried to see what it is which gives to the flight of some birds that look of majestic ease. Partly it is due to the slow stroke, but more, I thought, to the flexibility of the wing, and to the fact that this is less directly up-and-down in its action than that of the duck, for example. The chief effort of the duck is to sustain its weight. Consequently the wing must lie flat (comparatively) upon the air, and be kept straight out, economizing its vertical pressure; and hence the noticeable stiffness and toilsomeness of its progression. The gull, less concerned to sustain itself, uses the wing more flexibly, bending it slightly at the elbow, and pressing back the outer portion with each stroke. So a heavy swimmer must keep his hands flat, pressing down upon the water to hold up his head; while one who swims very lightly handles them more freely and flexibly, using them at pleasure to assist his progress. Yet the matter refuses to be wholly explained, and remains partly a mystery. Darwin, when in Patagonia, observed condors circling in the air, and saw them sail half an hour by the watch without any smallest vibration of the wings and without the smallest perceptible descent. I used in boyhood to see bald eagles do the same for a considerable period, though I never timed them exactly, and wonder at it now as I did then.

Away now to another island, still seeking ducks. Arrived, the Canadians land, in order, in Bradford's behalf, to have the first chance; while the Judge and I, who pretend to no skill with the gun, remain awhile behind. The island had the shape described in our first paper: a gentle slope and rock-beach on one side,—a steep, broken, half-precipitous descent on the other. Landing presently, I went slowly along the slope,—slowly, for one's feet sank deep at every step in the elastic moss, so that it was like walking on a feather-bed.Some patches of shrubbery, two and a half or three feet high,—the first approach to woody growth I had seen,—drew my attention; and it is curious now to think what importance they had in my eyes, as if here were the promise of a new world. I hastened towards them, forgetting the coveted ducks; and the Canadian's gun, which sounded in the distance, did not reawaken my ambition. Forgetting or remembering were probably much the same; for I had scarcely fired a gun in twenty and odd years, never had taken a bird on the wing, and, besides, must now fire from the left shoulder,—the right eye being like Goldsmith's tea-cups, "wisely kept for show." But as I touched the shrubbery there was a stir, a rustle, a whirr, and away went a large brown bird, scurrying off toward the sea. Upon the impulse of the moment, I up gun, and blazed after. To my amazement, the bird fell. I stumped off for my prize, actually achieving a sort of run, the first for years,—pretty sure, however, that the creature was making game of me rather than I of it, and would rise and flirt its tail in my face when I should be near enough to make the mockery poignant. No, the poor thing's game was up. It was a large bird, of an orange-brown hue, mottled with faint white and shadings of black. A powerful relenting came over me, and I could have sat down and cried like a baby, had that been suitable for a "boy" of my years.

"Do you know that was pretty well done?" cried a voice.

It was Bradford, who was hurrying up. I had no heart to answer; I was not jolly.

"Why, it's a female eider," he said, when near; "you've shot an eider on the wing!"

O tempora! O mores!then the Elder was glad!—all his compunction drowned in the pleasure of connecting himself, even through the gates of death, with a youthful fascination.

It now occurred to me—and the conjecture proved correct—that these plats of shrubbery must serve as hiding-places for the duck. The Canadians, whose behavior was all along mysterious, had forborne to give us any hint. I was vexed at them then, but had no reason perhaps. This was their larder, which they could not wish to impoverish. Besides, fishermen and visitors on this coast are so sweeping and ruthless in their destructions, that one might reasonably desire to protect the birds against them. It is not so much by shooting the birds as by destroying their eggs that the mischief is done. A party will take possession of an island at night, carry off every egg that can be found, and throw it into the sea,—then, returning next forenoon, take the fresh eggs laid in the mean time for food. On the whole, I feel less like blaming our guides than like returning to make apologies. Yet to us also the ducks are necessary, for we have no fresh meat but such as our guns obtain; and to one seeking health, this was a matter of some serious moment.

The elder Canadian has also shot a duck, and, besides, a red-breasted diver, a noble bird; and with these prizes we set sail for another island, frequented by "Tinkers." The day meanwhile had cleared, the sun shone richly, and we began to see somewhat of the glory, as well as grimness, of Labrador. Away to the southwest, eminent over the lesser islands, rose Mecatina, all tossed into wild billows of blue, with purple in the hollows; while to the north the hills of the mainland lifted themselves up to hold fellowship with it in height and hue.

"Tinker," we found, meant Murre and Razor-Billed Auk. These are finely shaped birds, black above and white below, twice the size of a pigeon, and closely resembling each other, save in the bill. That of the murre is not noticeable; but the other's is singularly shaped, and marked with delicate, finely cut grooves, the central one being nicely touched with a line of white, while a similar thread of white runs from the bill to the eye.

I notice it thus, because it suggested to me a reflection. Looking at this bill,I asked myself how Darwin's theory comported with it. "The struggle for life,"—are all the forms of organic existence due to that? But how did the struggle for life cut these grooves, paint these ornamental lines? "Beauty is its own excuse for being"; and that Nature respects beauty is, to my mind, nothing less than fatal to the Darwinian hypothesis. That his law exists as amodifyinginfluence I freely admit, and accredit him with an important addition to our thought upon such matters; that it is the sole formative influence I shall be better prepared to believe when I see that beauty is not regarded in Nature, but is a mere casual attendant upon use. The artist Greenough did, indeed, strenuously maintain this last. But the sloth and the bird-of-paradise are equally useful to themselves; if beauty were but an aspect of use, these should be equally comely in our eyes. No; "the struggle for life" has not grooved the bill of the auk, and painted the tail of the peacock, any more, so far as I can see, than it has given to evening and morning their scarlet and gold. And so my auk said to me, "Any attempt to string existence upon a single thread has failed and will fail, unless it be that thread which man can never formulate, never stretch out into a straight line,—the Eternal Unity, God."

These birds have a catlike instinct of fidelity to old haunts, and, having once chosen a habitat, adhere to it, despite many a year of persecution. They prefer inaccessible cliffs, on every projecting shelf and jut of which the eggs are laid, but also inhabit islands where are many clefts, fissures, and holes made by tumbled masses of rock. This at which we had arrived was not much more than a hundred feet high; and the cliffs in which it terminated on one side were scarcely to be named inaccessible. The number of birds upon it seemed to our novice-eyes immense, but at a later period would have seemed trivial. They are always flying about the shores, and have also a laudable curiosity, which leads them to investigate when any strange form appears or any strange noise is made in the neighborhood of their homes.

On landing, the Judge made off to the left, and was soon heard from,—as it afterwards appeared, with immediate success. The Canadian and myself took our station upon a broad platform some forty feet above the sea, with steep rocks behind, and were soon busily engaged in—missing! It was nothing butbang! pish! bang! pshaw!for half an hour. It could not be said that the birds were indifferent to the prospect of being immortalized as specimens. On the contrary, they showed an appreciation of the honor, and an open zeal to obtain it, which were worthy of the highest commendation. But they very properly declined to bebungledeven into a taxidermist paradise. Nothing could be more admirably orthodox than their resolution to be immortalizedsecundum artem; and considering how many are ready to sneak, without the smallest regard to desert or self-respect, into any attainablepost mortemfelicity, this honorable cut direct to all mereaukward and heterodox inductions into happiness begot in me toward these creatures sentiments of the highest consideration. All the while they kept flying past, often near, but always going through the air like a dart, as if they would say, "Take, but earn!"

At first the effect of this superior behavior on their part was to produce humiliation, and, along with this, a weak, nervous excitement, and an attempt to reach my ends by mere determination. I accordingly got to pulling upon them with a vehemence which probably disturbed my aim, as if I had been drawing at a halibut rather than at a trigger. But the gates which are appointed to fly open before a high behavior are but as the barred gates of Destiny toward mere low strength. The gods and birds were immitigable. I must do better, not merely do more.

Meditating on these matters, and moved by the lofty demeanor of my challengers, I at length proceeded seriously to self-amendment. Exchangingmy large duck-shot for some of smaller size, I no longer blurted at my auk when he was just abreast; but, deferentially allowing him to pass, and then, aiming after him, as if I accepted his lead, I gently suggested to him my desires; whereupon, in the most becoming manner, he descended and plumped into the sea, without so much as flapping a wing, or being guilty of the faintest impropriety. It was beautiful. Continuing this behavior, I found my attentions uniformly reciprocated. Once, indeed, when I fell into a shade ofbrusquerie, the individual whom I had complimented stood upon his self-respect, and, as I thought, flew away; but Bradford, who had courteously come up just as I began to succeed, was so kind as to see him fall punctiliously into the water, when he had gone far enough to suggest a reprimand of my slight unseemliness. And now, when the Artist was Christian enough to exclaim, "Why, Blank, I did not know you were such a shot!" I thought it high time to rest on my (back and) laurels. Reposing, therefore, upon the round leathern pillow which was my inseparable and invaluable companion, I enjoyed my spine-achecum dignitatetill the others were ready to return.

On the way to the ship an eider sprang up from a steep ridge we were passing, and fell in a second, Bradford exclaiming, "That's the best shot to-day!" The yawl soon followed us. Ph—— had taken two eiders on the wing; we had six in all. Others brought auks and murres; but the Judge still led the van. Next morning the Colonel and Judge brought in four eiders,—the last for the entire voyage. Others were afterward seen, but only seen. The Parson, some weeks later, closed our intrusive intimacy with them by an attempt to capture some of their young in the water. It couldn't be done. They were only a few days old, but, rich in pre-natal instruction, they always waited until the hand was just upon them,—not to waste any part of their stay beneath water,—and then—under in a moment. One saw that pirate saddle-back must needs bestir himself in order to catch them, and one could appreciate the sagacity of the mother duck in hurrying her brood, almost as soon as they are born, into the water.

And so farewell, eiders! If all goes to my wish, you shall yet have a place on other-world islands and seas, where saddle-backs shall not pillage your nests, nor coat-backs point at you any Long Tom!

We give account only of what was characteristic, and therefore will now jump five weeks of time and a hundred leagues of space. But since this is a long leap, a few stepping-stones will be convenient. The Parson, then, has brought in on the way a nice batch of velvet duck, noticeable for their extremely large, oval, elevated, scarlet nostrils; we have shot at seals, andalmosthit them in the most admirable manner; we have hunted for an indubitable polar bear,—and found a dog and a midnight mystification; we have played at chess, euchre, backgammon, whist, debating-club, story-telling, nightmare,—one of our number developing an incomparable genius for the last; we have played at getting tolerable cooking out of two slovens, one of whom knows nothing, and the other everything but his business,—and have lost the game; we have played at catching trout, and found this the best joke of all. There are beautiful brook-trout on the coast of Labrador. They say so; it is so. Beautiful trout,—mostly visible to the naked eye! Not many of them, but enough to gratify an elegant curiosity.

But here we are, July 21, lat. 54° 30'. Bradford has hooked an iceberg, and will "play him" for the afternoon. Half a mile off is an island of the character common to most of the innumerable islands strown all along from Cape Charles to Cape Chudleigh,—an alp submerged to within three hundred feet of the summit. Such islands, and such a coast! But this is a notable "bird-island." So three of us are set ashore there with ourguns, the indefatigable Professor coming along also with his perpetual net.

The island—which is rather two islands than one, for straight through it, toward the eastern extremity, goes the narrowest possible chasm—proved precipitous and inaccessible, save in a bit of inlet at the hither opening of this chasm and on three rods of sloping rock to the right. Like almost all its fellows, however, it raises one side higher than the other; and conjecturing that the farther and higher face would be the favorite haunt of these cliff-loving birds,—murres and auks again,—I left my companions busily shooting near the landing, and made my way up and across. It was no easy task, for the wild rock was tossed and tilted, broken and heaped and saw-toothed, as if it represented some savage spasm or fit of madness in Nature. But clambering, sliding, creeping, zigzagging, turning back to find new openings, and in every manner persisting, I slowly got on; while deep down in the chasm on my left,—a hundred feet deep, and in the middle not more than a foot wide, though champered away a little at the top,—the water surged in and out with a thunderous, muffled sough and moan, like a Titan under the earth, pinned down eternally in pain. It was awfully impressive,—so impressive that I reflected neither upon it nor on myself. With this immitigable, adamantine wildness about me, and that abysmal, booming stifle of plaint, to which all the air trembled, sounding from below, I became another being, and the very universe was no longer itself; past and future were not, and I was a dumb atomy creeping over the bare peaks of existence, while out of the blind heart of the world issued an everlasting prayer,—a prayer without hope! And this, too, if not boy's play, was a true piece of boy-experience. I can recall—and better now by the aid of this half-hour—moments in childhood when existence became thus awful, when it overpowered, overwhelmed me, and when time, instead of melting in golden ripeness into the fruitful eternity that lies before, seemed to fall back, doomed forever, into the naked eternity behind. Goethe's "Erl-King," almost alone in modern literature, touches truly, and on its shadowed side, the immeasurable secret which haunts and dominates the heart of a child; while Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood" is our noblest suggestion of its illuminated obverse side.

At length I issued upon the opposite face of the island, and found myself on a shelf of rock about three feet wide, with one hundred and fifty feet, more or less, of vertical cliff beneath, and about the same height of half-cliff behind and above. It was a pretty perch, and gave one a feeling of consequence; for what pigmy perched on Alps ever failed to consider his elevation one of stature strictly, and not at all of position? The outer edge of the shelf rose, inclosing me as in a box, so that I was safe as the owner of an annuity based upon United States securities. Away to my right the perpendicular cliff rose higher still, and, being there covered with clefts, cavelets, and narrow shelves, was the peculiar home of the birds, who had taken possession of this island on a long lease.

Their numbers were inconceivable. Two hundred yards off in the water was anislandof them, an acre of feathery black. To the right I could see them now and then ascending in literal clouds; and the sober Ph——, who rowed along here beyond my view, saw the cliffs, as he looked up, white for a half-mile with their snowy breasts, and could find no words to express his sense of their multitude.

But so far as I was concerned,—for my comrades did better,—it was the birds themselves that did the sporting that afternoon. They came streaming by, never crowding together so that more than one could be included in the chances of shot, but incessantly trailing along, and scurrying past with the speed of an arrow. I peppered away, with little result but that of spicing their afternoon's enjoyment for them; for the wicked creatures took it all in the jolliest way, flingingthemselves past with a flirt and a wink, just as if I had been no lord of creation at all. I had disdained to shoot them when at rest; for there seemed to be some ancient compact between us, by which they were to have their chance and I mine. But when one came and planted himself on a little jut thirty yards to my right, and mocked me with a look of patronage, seeming to regard me as the weaker party and to incline to my side, I broke the pact, and, masking my hurt conceit under some virtuous indignation against him as a deserter and traitor, turned and smote him under the fifth rib.

And now it came upon me that Imustsecure that bird. To shoot without obtaining were mere wantonness. Yes, I would have him, and justify myself to myself. To do it was difficult, even in Labradorian boy-eyes. Between me and the auk the upper half of the cliff made a deep recess, terminating in a right angle, with a platform of granite some seventy-five feet below. Along both faces of this recess, nearly on a level with myself, ran a shelf not more than six inches wide, with vertical wall above and beneath; and on this I must go. I began, therefore, working along this, proceeding with care, observing my footing, and clutching with my hands whatever knob or crevice I could find. But when near the angle, I found that the shelf terminated some two feet short of its apex, and began again at about the same distance beyond. Seeking about cautiously for finger-hold, I reached out my left foot, and planted it on the opposite side, but could not stretch far enough to make a place for the right foot when I should withdraw it. I began debating with myself, whether, in case I should swing across and rest on the left foot alone, I could work this along and make room for the right. I knew that the process would have to be repeated on my return; so I must estimate two chances at once.

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