FOOTNOTES:[A]There was, besides, a primary school for boys up to the age of twelve of thirteen at Diemerswyl, some miles from Hofwyl; and there had been originally a normal school, which, though popular among the teachers of Switzerland, gave umbrage to the Government, and was merged in the Vehrli institution.[B]Francis II., Metternich-led. His words were: "Je ne veux pas des savants dans mes États; je veux des bons sujets."
[A]There was, besides, a primary school for boys up to the age of twelve of thirteen at Diemerswyl, some miles from Hofwyl; and there had been originally a normal school, which, though popular among the teachers of Switzerland, gave umbrage to the Government, and was merged in the Vehrli institution.
[A]There was, besides, a primary school for boys up to the age of twelve of thirteen at Diemerswyl, some miles from Hofwyl; and there had been originally a normal school, which, though popular among the teachers of Switzerland, gave umbrage to the Government, and was merged in the Vehrli institution.
[B]Francis II., Metternich-led. His words were: "Je ne veux pas des savants dans mes États; je veux des bons sujets."
[B]Francis II., Metternich-led. His words were: "Je ne veux pas des savants dans mes États; je veux des bons sujets."
Where the Great Lake's sunny smilesDimple round its hundred isles,And the mountain's granite ledgeCleaves the water like a wedge,Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,Rest the giant's mighty bones.Close beside, in shade and gleam,Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;Melvin water, mountain-born,All fair flowers its banks adorn;All the woodland's voices meet,Mingling with its murmurs sweet.Over lowlands forest-grown,Over waters island-strown,Over silver-sanded beach,Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,Melvin stream and burial-heap,Watch and ward the mountains keep.Who that Titan cromlech fills?Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills?Knight who on the birchen treeCarved his savage heraldry?Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim,Prophet, sage, or wizard grim?Rugged type of primal man,Grim utilitarian,Loving woods for hunt and prowl,Lake and hill for fish and fowl,As the brown bear blind and dullTo the grand and beautiful:Not for him the lesson drawnFrom the mountains smit with dawn.Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May,Sunset's purple bloom of day,—Took his life no hue from thence,Poor amid such affluence?Haply unto hill and treeAll too near akin was he:Unto him who stands afarNature's marvels greatest are;Who the mountain purple seeksMust not climb the higher peaks.Yet who knows in winter tramp,Or the midnight of the camp,What revealings faint and far,Stealing down from moon and star,Kindled in that human clodThought of destiny and God?Stateliest forest patriarch,Grand in robes of skin and bark,What sepulchral mysteries,What weird funeral-rites, were his?What sharp wail, what drear lament,Back scared wolf and eagle sent?Now, whate'er he may have been,Low he lies as other men;On his mound the partridge drums,There the noisy blue-jay comes;Rank nor name nor pomp has heIn the grave's democracy.Part thy blue lips, Northern lake!Moss-grown rocks, your silence break!Tell the tale, thou ancient tree!Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee!Speak, and tell us how and whenLived and died this king of men!Wordless moans the ancient pine;Lake and mountain give no sign;Vain to trace this ring of stones;Vain the search of crumbling bones:Deepest of all mysteries,And the saddest, silence is.Nameless, noteless, clay with clayMingles slowly day by day;But somewhere, for good or ill,That dark soul is living still;Somewhere yet that atom's forceMoves the light-poised universe.Strange that on his burial-sodHarebells bloom, and golden-rod,While the soul's dark horoscopeHolds no starry sign of hope!Is the Unseen with sight at odds?Nature's pity more than God's?Thus I mused by Melvin side,While the summer eventideMade the woods and inland seaAnd the mountains mystery;And the hush of earth and airSeemed the pause before a prayer,—Prayer for him, for all who rest,Mother Earth, upon thy breast,—Lapped on Christian turf, or hidIn rock-cave or pyramid:All who sleep, as all who live,Well may need the prayer, "Forgive!"Desert-smothered caravan,Knee-deep dust that once was man,Battle-trenches ghastly piled,Ocean-floors with white bones tiled,Crowded tomb and mounded sod,Dumbly crave that prayer to God.Oh, the generations oldOver whom no church-bells tolled,Christless, lifting up blind eyesTo the silence of the skies!For the innumerable deadIs my soul disquieted.Where be now these silent hosts?Where the camping-ground of ghosts?Where the spectral conscripts ledTo the white tents of the dead?What strange shore or chartless seaHolds the awful mystery?Then the warm sky stooped to makeDouble sunset in the lake;While above I saw with it,Range on range, the mountains lit;And the calm and splendor stoleLike an answer to my soul.Hear'st thou, O of little faith,What to thee the mountain saith,What is whispered by the trees?—"Cast on God thy care for these;Trust Him, if thy sight be dim:Doubt for them is doubt of Him."Blind must be their close-shut eyesWhere like night the sunshine lies,Fiery-linked the self-forged chainBinding ever sin to pain,Strong their prison-house of will,But without He waiteth still."Not with hatred's undertowDoth the Love Eternal flow;Every chain that spirits wearCrumbles in the breath of prayer;And the penitent's desireOpens every gate of fire."Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,Yearns to reach these souls in prison!Through all depths of sin and lossDrops the plummet of Thy cross!Never yet abyss was foundDeeper than that cross could sound!"Therefore well may Nature keepEqual faith with all who sleep,Set her watch of hills aroundChristian grave and heathen mound,And to cairn and kirkyard sendSummer's flowery dividend.Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream,Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam!On the Indian's grassy tombSwing, O flowers, your bells of bloom!Deep below, as high above,Sweeps the circle of God's love.
Where the Great Lake's sunny smilesDimple round its hundred isles,And the mountain's granite ledgeCleaves the water like a wedge,Ringed about with smooth, gray stones,Rest the giant's mighty bones.
Close beside, in shade and gleam,Laughs and ripples Melvin stream;Melvin water, mountain-born,All fair flowers its banks adorn;All the woodland's voices meet,Mingling with its murmurs sweet.
Over lowlands forest-grown,Over waters island-strown,Over silver-sanded beach,Leaf-locked bay and misty reach,Melvin stream and burial-heap,Watch and ward the mountains keep.
Who that Titan cromlech fills?Forest-kaiser, lord o' the hills?Knight who on the birchen treeCarved his savage heraldry?Priest o' the pine-wood temples dim,Prophet, sage, or wizard grim?
Rugged type of primal man,Grim utilitarian,Loving woods for hunt and prowl,Lake and hill for fish and fowl,As the brown bear blind and dullTo the grand and beautiful:
Not for him the lesson drawnFrom the mountains smit with dawn.Star-rise, moon-rise, flowers of May,Sunset's purple bloom of day,—Took his life no hue from thence,Poor amid such affluence?
Haply unto hill and treeAll too near akin was he:Unto him who stands afarNature's marvels greatest are;Who the mountain purple seeksMust not climb the higher peaks.
Yet who knows in winter tramp,Or the midnight of the camp,What revealings faint and far,Stealing down from moon and star,Kindled in that human clodThought of destiny and God?
Stateliest forest patriarch,Grand in robes of skin and bark,What sepulchral mysteries,What weird funeral-rites, were his?What sharp wail, what drear lament,Back scared wolf and eagle sent?
Now, whate'er he may have been,Low he lies as other men;On his mound the partridge drums,There the noisy blue-jay comes;Rank nor name nor pomp has heIn the grave's democracy.
Part thy blue lips, Northern lake!Moss-grown rocks, your silence break!Tell the tale, thou ancient tree!Thou, too, slide-worn Ossipee!Speak, and tell us how and whenLived and died this king of men!
Wordless moans the ancient pine;Lake and mountain give no sign;Vain to trace this ring of stones;Vain the search of crumbling bones:Deepest of all mysteries,And the saddest, silence is.
Nameless, noteless, clay with clayMingles slowly day by day;But somewhere, for good or ill,That dark soul is living still;Somewhere yet that atom's forceMoves the light-poised universe.
Strange that on his burial-sodHarebells bloom, and golden-rod,While the soul's dark horoscopeHolds no starry sign of hope!Is the Unseen with sight at odds?Nature's pity more than God's?
Thus I mused by Melvin side,While the summer eventideMade the woods and inland seaAnd the mountains mystery;And the hush of earth and airSeemed the pause before a prayer,—
Prayer for him, for all who rest,Mother Earth, upon thy breast,—Lapped on Christian turf, or hidIn rock-cave or pyramid:All who sleep, as all who live,Well may need the prayer, "Forgive!"
Desert-smothered caravan,Knee-deep dust that once was man,Battle-trenches ghastly piled,Ocean-floors with white bones tiled,Crowded tomb and mounded sod,Dumbly crave that prayer to God.
Oh, the generations oldOver whom no church-bells tolled,Christless, lifting up blind eyesTo the silence of the skies!For the innumerable deadIs my soul disquieted.
Where be now these silent hosts?Where the camping-ground of ghosts?Where the spectral conscripts ledTo the white tents of the dead?What strange shore or chartless seaHolds the awful mystery?
Then the warm sky stooped to makeDouble sunset in the lake;While above I saw with it,Range on range, the mountains lit;And the calm and splendor stoleLike an answer to my soul.
Hear'st thou, O of little faith,What to thee the mountain saith,What is whispered by the trees?—"Cast on God thy care for these;Trust Him, if thy sight be dim:Doubt for them is doubt of Him.
"Blind must be their close-shut eyesWhere like night the sunshine lies,Fiery-linked the self-forged chainBinding ever sin to pain,Strong their prison-house of will,But without He waiteth still.
"Not with hatred's undertowDoth the Love Eternal flow;Every chain that spirits wearCrumbles in the breath of prayer;And the penitent's desireOpens every gate of fire.
"Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,Yearns to reach these souls in prison!Through all depths of sin and lossDrops the plummet of Thy cross!Never yet abyss was foundDeeper than that cross could sound!"
Therefore well may Nature keepEqual faith with all who sleep,Set her watch of hills aroundChristian grave and heathen mound,And to cairn and kirkyard sendSummer's flowery dividend.
Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream,Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam!On the Indian's grassy tombSwing, O flowers, your bells of bloom!Deep below, as high above,Sweeps the circle of God's love.
Labrador, geologists tell us, is the oldest portion of the American Continent. It was also, and aside from the visits of the Scandinavians, the first to be discovered by Europeans,—the Cabots having come to land here more than a year before Columbus found the tropic mainland on his third voyage. And to-day it is that part of the continent which has been least explored. No one, to my knowledge, has ever crossed it: perhaps no one could do so. I am not aware that any European has penetrated it deeply. Hinds pushed up some hundred and fifty miles from the Gulf coast, and thought this feat one which deserved two octavos of commemoration. The coast, for some four hundred miles in extent, is visited annually by hosts of fishermen; but twenty miles from tide-water it is as little known to them as to the Bedouins.
We are now, however, able to affirm that the interior is all one immense elevated plateau. Information which I obtained from an elderly missionary at Hopedale, together with numerous indications that an intelligent naturalist would know how to construe, enabled P—— to determine this fact with confidence. It is a table-land "varying from five to twenty-five hundred feet inheight." Here not a tree grows, not a blade of grass, only lichens and moss, What a vast and terrible waste it must be! Where else upon the earth are all the elements of desolation so combined? The missionary in question had penetrated to the borders of thiscolddesert and looked out over it. "No upunddown," he said. "No dree. Notting grow. All level."
Within some one hundred and fifty miles of the coast this terrible table-land breaks up into wild hills, separated by valleys that plunge down suddenly, in rocky steeps, from the heights, more gorges than valleys. These hills are all fearfully scarred. One sees in them abundant record of the Titanic old-time warfare between rock and ice. A prodigious contest it was. Sometimes the top of a hill—clean, live rock—was sliced off, as with a knife. "Like the tops of our conical cheeses, when they came to the table," said P——
The valleys are wooded with fir, spruce, larch, and, more to the south, with birch. At a distance from the sea and in favorable situations these trees grow to good forest size, even beyond the middle latitudes of Labrador. In latitude 53° a resident told me that trees were found eighteen inches in diameter. This statement was derided when I told it on board, and the witty Judge kept the table in a roar for half an hour with pleasantries about it. But at Hopedale, two and a half degrees farther north, we learned that sticks of timber fifty feet in length were often brought to the station; while one had found its way there which was fifty-six feet long and ten inches in diameter at the smaller end.
Toward the sea these forests dwindle, till on the immediate coast they wholly disappear. At Caribou Island, which, the reader will remember, issouthof the Strait of Belle Isle, I found in a ravine some sadly stunted spruces, firs, and larches, not more than three feet high,—melancholy, wind-draggled, frightened-looking shrubs, which had wondrously the air of lifelong ill-usage. The tangled tops were mostly flattened and pressed over to one side, and altogether they seemed so piteous, that one wished to say, "Nobody shall do so to you any more, poor things!" Excepting these, the immediate coast, for five or six hundred miles that we skirted it, was absolutely treeless.
Up in the bays, however, trees were found, and, curiously enough, they were larger and more plentiful in high latitudes than farther south. This puzzled me much at first. Evidently, however, it was due in part to the nature of the rock. At Sleupe Harbor, latitude 51°, this was granite;[C]farther on it was sienite; then the sienite showed a strong predominance of feldspar; then it became an impure Labradorite; then passed into gneiss; the gneiss became soft, stratified, and frequently intersected by trap;—and with every softer quality of rock there was an improvement in vegetation. This was particularly observable at L'Anse du Loup, where there is a red sandstone formation extending some miles along the sea and a mile or two inland. Here we seemed suddenly transported to a Southern climate, so soft was the scenery, so green the surface. The effect was enhanced by the aspect of the sandstone cliff, which, in alternating horizontal shades of red, fronts the sea, with a vertical height of three hundred feet for the whole extent of this formation,—so ruddy and glowing under the sunshine, as we sailed past, that one felt warmed by the sight, But a little farther back rose the same old hard-hearted hills, cold, broken, and bare as ever.
But the difference in soil does not wholly explain the difference in vegetation. In the mission-garden at Caribou Island next to nothing will grow; in the garden at Hopedale, four degrees farther north, though the rock here is very hard, I found half an acre of potatoes in blossom, the tops about six inches high, together with beets, carrots, cabbages, onions, nice currant-bushes,and rhubarb growing luxuriantly. These are all started under cover, and are not set out in the garden until toward the end of June, and a great deal of Esquimaux labor must go to their production; yet it is doubtful whether the same pains would bring about the same result at the Caribou station.
It is the sea that dooms Labrador, and the relation of the coast to this does much to determine its fertility, or rather its barrenness. Half way across the ocean, in latitude 54°, Captain Linklater found the temperature of the water 54°, Fahrenheit; near the Labrador coast, in the same latitude, the temperature was but 34°, two degrees only above the freezing point! It is in facts like this that one gets a key to the climate not only of Labrador, but of Eastern North America. Out of the eternal ice of the North the current presses down along the coast, chilling land and air wherever it touches. Where the coast retreats somewhat, and is well barricaded with islands, the rigor of the climate is mitigated; where it lies fully exposed to the Arctic current, even though much farther south, the life is utterly chilled out of it. Now Hopedale lies behind a rampart of islands twenty miles deep; while the portion of the Arctic current which splits off at the head of Newfoundland, and pushes down through the strait, presses close past Caribou Island. This explains the sterility of the latter.
The Arctic current varies much in different years, not only in the amount of ice it brings, but also in its direction. Unexpected effects depend upon this variation. It will be remembered that in 1863 several ships were wrecked on Cape Race, owing to some "unaccountable" disturbance of the currents. The Gulf Stream, it was found at length, ran thirty miles farther north than usual.Wasthis unaccountable? When Captain Handy, our whaling Mentor, was penetrating Hudson's Strait in June, 1863, he found vast headlands of floe ice resting against the land, and pushing far out to sea.
"Mr. Bailey," said he to his mate, "there will be many wrecks on Cape Race this year."
The prediction was fulfilled. Do you see why it should be?
The floe ice rose ten feet above the water; it therefore extended near one hundred feet beneath. At this depth it acted upon the current precisely as if it were land, pushing the former far to the east. The current, therefore, did not meet and repel the Gulf Stream at the usual point; and the latter was thus at liberty to press on beyond its custom to the north. Captain Handy not only saw the facts before him, but reasoned upon them. Even when these immense bodies of ice do not rest upon the land, they produce the same effect. At the depth of a hundred feet they go below the current into the still water or counter current beneath, and thus still resist the surface flow.
The coast of Labrador has no fellow for sternness and abruptness on the earth. Huge headlands, stubborn cliffs, precipitous hills rise suddenly from the sea, bold, harsh, immitigable, yet softened by their aspect of gray endurance. Hacked and scored, tossed, fissured, and torn, weather-beaten and bleached, their bluntness becomes grave, their hardness pathetic. About their caverned bases the billow thunders in perpetual assault, proclaiming the purpose of the sea to reclaim what it has lost. Above, the frost inserts its potent lever, and flings down from time to time some bellowing fragment to its ally below. The shores, as if to escape from this warfare, hurry down, and plunge to quiet depths of ocean, where the surge never heaves, nor frost, even by the deep ploughshare of its icebergs, can reach. It is, indeed, a terrible coast, and remains to represent that period in Nature when her powers were all Titanic, untamed,—playing their wild game, with hills for toss-coppers and seas for soap-bubbles, or warring with the elements themselves for weapons.
The harbors are very deep. In some twenty that we visited there was but a single exception. In fact, it is commonlyonly in little coves boxed up by high walls of rock, where one side threatens the ship's bowsprit and the other her stern, that an ordinary cable will reach bottom. You anchor in a granite tub, where one hardly dares lean over the rail for fear of bumping his head against the cliffs, and see half your chain spin out before ground is touched. Jack sometimes wonders, as the cable continues to rush through the hawse-hole, whether he has not dropped anchor into a hole through the earth, and speculates upon the probability of fishing up a South-Sea island when he shall again heave at the windlass.
A Labrador summer has commonly a brief season during which the heat seems to Englishmen "intense," and even to an American noticeable. Captain French, the old pilot, told me that he had been at Indian Harbor (far to the north) when for three weeks an awning over the deck was absolutely necessary, and when a fish left in the sun an hour would be spoiled. Last summer, however, was the coldest and rainiest known for many years. Once the thermometer rose to 73°, Fahrenheit, once again to 70°, but five days in six it did not at nine in the morning vary more than two or three degrees from 42°, and half the time the mercury would be found precisely at this mark. The lowest temperature observed was 34°. This was on the 28th and 29th of July, when we had a furious snow-storm, which lasted twenty-four hours, with twelve hours of wild rain, sleet, and hail interposed. In consequence of this rain and of the constant melting, there remained on the steep hillsides only three inches' depth of snow when the storm ceased, though in the hollows it was found a foot deep. In the deeper ravines the snow of winter lasts through the year, and was found by us in the middle of August.
We were, however, treated to a few days which left no room for a wish: for the best day of a Labrador summer is the best day of all summers whatsoever. Herodotus says that Ionia was allowed to possess the finest climate of all the world; and in Smyrna I believed him, for there were May days when each breath seemed worth one's being born to enjoy. But all days yield to those of Labrador when the better genius of its climate prevails. Then one feels the serenity of power, then all his blood is exalted and pure, and the globules sail through his veins like rich argosies before trade-winds. Then an irritable haste and a weak lassitude are alike impossible; one's nerves are made of a metal finer than steel, and he becomes truly a lord in Nature.
It was on such a day that we ran some fifty miles through a passage, resembling a river, between islands and the main. The wind blew warm and vigorous from the land,—sometimes, when it came to us without passing over considerable spaces of water, seeming positively hot, as if it came from an oven; yet in such an atmosphere one felt that he could live forever, either in an oven or in the case of an iceberg, and wish only to live there forever! A great fleet of schooners was pushing swiftly along this passage, on its way to fishing-grounds in the North; and as we flew past one and another, while the astonished crews gathered at the side to stare at our speed, our schooner seemed the very genius of Victory, and our wishes to be supreme powers. I have never elsewhere experienced socooland perfect an exhilaration,—physical exhilaration, that is.
In the early afternoon a dense haze filled the sky. The sun, seen through this, became a globe of glowing ruby, and its glade on the sea looked as if the water had been strown, almost enough to conceal it, with a crystalline ruby dust, or with fine mineralspiculæof vermilion bordering upon crimson. The peculiarity of this ruddy dust was that it seemed to possessbody, and, while it glowed, did not in the smallest degree dazzle,—as if the brilliancy of each ruby particle came from the heart of it rather than from the surface. The effect was in truth indescribable, and I try to suggest it with more sense of helplessness than I have felt hitherto in preparing these papers. It was beautifulbeyondexpression,—any expression, at least, which is at my command.
Such a spectacle, I suppose, one might chance to see anywhere, though the chance certainly never occurred to me before. It could scarcely have escaped me through want of attention, for I could well believe myself a child of the sun, so deep an appeal to my feeling is made by effects of light and color: light before all.
But the atmosphere of Labrador has its own secret of beauty, and charms the eye with aspects which one may be pardoned for believing incomparable in their way. The blue of distant hills and mountains, when observed in clear sunshine, is subtile and luminous to a degree that surpasses admiration. I have seen the Camden Heights across the waters of Penobscot Bay when their blue was equally profound; for these hills, beheld over twenty miles or more of sea, do a wonderful thing in the way of color, lifting themselves up there through all the long summer days, a very marvel of solemn and glorious beauty. The Ægean Sea has a charm of atmosphere which is wanting to Penobscot Bay, but the hue of its heights cannot compare with that of the Camden Hills. Those of Labrador, however, maintain their supremacy above even these,—above all. They look like frozen sky. Or one might fancy that a vast heart or core of amethyst was deeply overlaid with colorless crystal, and shone through with a softened, lucent ray. Such transparency, suchintensedelicacy, such refinement of hue! Sometimes, too, there is seen in the deep hollows, between the lofty billows of blue, a purple that were fit to clothe the royalty of immortal kings, while the blue itself is flecked as it were with a spray of white light, which one might guess to be a precipitate of sunshine.
This was wonderful; but more wonderful and most wonderful was to come. It was given me once and once again to look on a vision, an enchantment, a miracle of all but impossible beauty, incredible until seen, and even when seen scarcely to be credited, save by an act of faith. We had sailed up a deep bay, and cast anchor in a fine large harbor of the exactest horseshoe shape. It was bordered immediately by a gentle ridge some three hundred feet high, which was densely wooded with spruce, fir, and larch. Beyond this ridge, to the west, rose mountainous hills, while to the south, where was the head of the harbor, it was overlooked immediately by a broad, noble mountain. It had been one of those white-skied days, when the heavens are covered by a uniform filmy fleece, and the light comes as if it had been filtered through milk. But just before sunset this fleece was rent, and a river of sunshine streamed across the ridge at the head of the harbor, leaving the mountain beyond, and the harbor itself, with its wooded sides, still in shadow. And where that shine fell, the foliage changed from green to a glowing, luminous red-brown, expressed with astonishing force,—not a trace, not a hint of green remaining! Beyond it, the mountain preserved its whited gray; nearer, on either side, the woods stood out in clear green; and separated from these by the sharpest line, rose this ridge of enchanted forest. You will incline to think that one might have seen through this illusion by trying hard enough. But never were the colors in a paint-pot more definite and determined.
This was but the beginning. I had turned away, and was debating with myself whether some such color, seen on the Scotch and English hills, had not given the hint for those uniform browns which Turner in his youth copied from his earlier masters. When I looked back, the sunshine had flooded the mountain, and was bathing it all in the purest rose-red. Bathing it? No, the mountain was solidly converted, transformed to that hue! The power, the simplicity, the translucent, shining depth of the color were all that you can imagine, if you make no abatements, and task your imagination to the utmost. This roseate hue no rose in the garden of Orient or Occident ever surpassed. Small spaces were seen where the color becamea pure ruby, which could not have been more lustrous and intense, had it proceeded from a polished ruby gem ten rods in dimension. Color could go no farther. Yet if the eye lost these for a moment, it was compelled somewhat to search for them,—so powerful, so brilliant was the rose setting in which they were embosomed.
One must remember how near at hand all this was,—not more than a mile or two away. Rock, cavern, cliff, all the details of rounded swell, rising peak, and long descending slope, could be seen with entire distinctness. The mountain rose close upon us, broad, massive, real,—but all in this glorious, this truly ineffable transformation. It was not distance that lent enchantment here. It was notlent; it was real as rock, as Nature; it confronted, outfaced, overwhelmed you; for, enchantment so immediate and on such a scale of grandeur and gorgeousness,—who could stand up before it?
In sailing out of the bay, next day, we saw this and the neighbor mountain under noon sunshine. (Lat. 55° 20'.) They were the handsomest we saw, apparently composed in part of some fine mineral, perhaps pure Labradorite. In the full light of day these spaces shone like polished silver. My first impression was that they must be patches of snow, but a glance at real spots of snow corrected me. These last, though more distinctly white, had not the high, soft, silver shine of the mineral. Doubtless it was these mountain-gems which, under the magic touch of sunset light, had the evening before appeared like vast rubies, blazing amidst the rose which surrounded them.
And this evening the spectacle of the preceding one was repeated, though more distantly and on a larger scale. Ph—— thought it the finer of the two. Far away the mountain height towered, a marvel of aërial blue, while broad spurs reaching out on either side were clothed, the one in shiny rose-red, the other in ethereal roseate tints super-imposed upon azure; and farther away, to the southeast, a mountain range lay all in solid carmine along the horizon, as if the earth blushed at the touch of heaven.
"I invite and announce the mountains which possess pure brightness, which have much brightness, created by Mazda, pure, lords of purity." So sang the Zarathustrian priest, chanting the Vispereds of the Avesta,—deep-hearted child of the world, himself now shining on the far-away horizon of human history.
All the wildness and waste, all the sternest desolations of the whole earth, brought together to wed and enhance each other, and then relieved by splendor without equal, perhaps, in the world,—that is Labrador.
I have dreamed that it was created on this wise. Ahriman, having long been defeated in his evil purposes by Ormuzd, fled away secretly to a distant part of the world, and there in silence made a land which should be utterly his own. He brought together every element of dread and terror,—barrenness, brokenness, dreariness, fearful cold, blinding fog, crushing ice, sudden savage change. And when it was completed, he rejoiced in his heart and said, "This is perfect in badness, it cannot be redeemed, it is wholly and forever mine, it is mine!" Then Ormuzd, lord of light, heard the voice of that accursed joy, and, looking, beheld the evil work. And he saw that it could not be redeemed, that it was fixed forever in its evil state. Then he came to it, and, seeking to change nothing, uplifted over it a token of immortal, unutterable beauty, that even this land might bear witness to his celestial sovereignty.
But these waste lands have use as well as beauty. At Sleupe Harbor dwelt one Michael Cantè, the patriarch of the neighborhood, if neighborhood it were to be called, where were only three houses within a space of as many miles. His years were now threescore and ten, but he was hale as a pine forest and sweet as maple sap. A French Canadian, he spoke English, not only like a native, but like a well-bred native,—wasnot ignorant of thoughts and books,—and altogether seemed a man superior to most in nature, intelligence, and manners. His birthplace was Quebec, and he had formerly possessed a very considerable fortune; but losing this through fraud, and finding himself deserted by "summer friends," he had conceived a disgust at polite society, and escaped to these solitudes. Here his wounds had healed, and his nature recovered its tone. His labors prospered; a healthy and handsome family grew up to enrich his household; and no regrets drew him back to the big world he had left behind. Nature preserves to herself the right of asylum, no matter how the Louis Napoleon of civilization may demand its surrender,—preserves a place of rest and refuge for the weary hearts which are self-sent into spiritual exile.
It is also to be considered whether this terrible region does not play a most serviceable part in the physical geography of the continent. I have not science enough to speak here with entire confidence; and yet I am rationally convinced. Without the ice-fields in the North, and the frigid current which these send down to meet the tepid waters of the Gulf Stream, would not this low and level America, with its dry atmosphere, suffer fearfully for want of rain? would it not, indeed, be one great desert? Could we dispense with the collisions and sudden interchanges of cold and hot currents of air which are due to these causes? Do we not obtain thus the same effects which in South America are produced by the snowy summits of the Andes? The cold current meets the warm, chills its vapor, precipitates this in fruitful rain. Our northeast winds are the chief bringers of rain. Take these away, and what about wheat and corn? Take away Labrador and the Arctic current, and what about northeast winds? They would still blow; would they still force the warm air to yield its vapor for the benefit of our fields? The extreme changeableness of our climate is, I am fully persuaded, connected very closely and indispensably with the fertility of the continent. Thank God, therefore, for Labrador!
I have recounted above the manner in which the good divinity spoiled the Labrador triumph of the malign god. To that veracious history belongs the followingaddendum. The evil power was deeply chagrined to be so robbed of his victory. Rubbing his brow with vexation, he chanced to break the skin with his nails. The venom of the viper is poisonous to its own blood; and in like manner, the malignity of the demon afflicted his own flesh with a festering pain. The slight anguish gave him a thought. "Ha! now I have it!" he cried; "now I will be quits with him!" He caused, accordingly, a boggy moss to grow in the hollows of this dreary land, and made this to generate in countless multitudes a small, winged, venomous fiend, namedmosquito. "Ahriman is victor, after all!" he shouted, as the humming imps trooped forth upon the air.
I think he was!
Delighted with this success, the demon tried to repeat it in other lands; but it fared with him as with every genius, good or bad, who begins to repeat himself: the imitation was but a feeble copy of the original. The mosquito of Labrador would spoil Eden itself. The imitated fiend I am indifferent to, but from the original spare me!
We were spared in a degree. Ormuzd turned the weapons of his enemy against himself: rain, hail, and snow fought for us against the mosquito; but when fair weather came, this pest came with it. It is clear that Dante was not a man of genius! Otherwise he would have put the mosquito (the original, of course) in his "Inferno."
Ennuiis always to be suffered on a long voyage. We had it, enough of it,and to spare, yet always broken by days of high delight.
During the early part of the voyage, while we were still sailing, or even during considerable detentions in harbor, there was, novelty and incident enough to give the mind employment. The weather was fine; the sun shone; we lived on deck, in company with sun, sea, sky, horizon; and the mere relief from the narrowness of in-door life, the wide fellowship with the elements in which we were established, sufficed of themselves to invest our days with an unfailing charm. I was peculiarly happy, for I love the sea. All its ordinary aspects delight me in a very deep and heartfelt way. These were varied in the present instance with much that to me was far from being ordinary. Ever there was some ascending shore, some towering island or prodigious cliff, some enticing bird, some magnificence of morning or evening; and besides all these and a hundred attractions more, there were the beauty and terror of berg and floe-field, the marvel of the ice. For a time, therefore, all was enchantment. If we made a harbor, if we left one, expectation sailed with us; we fancied new scenes, new adventures,—the delight of exploration yet fierce in our souls.
But now comes a change. The novelty wears away; we get in some degree the gauge of the scenery and the variety of circumstance; the dawdling, snail-foot, insufferable creep of the ship from one fisherman's dog's-hole to another becomes inexcusable; the weather conspires against us; the sportsman wonders why he had brought gun and fishing-rod; even Science grows weary at times in its limited and hampered inspection. For more than five weeks our average progress along the coast was eight miles a day! The ice and the weather were partly responsible for this lagging; but there were other causes, at which I forbear to hint more definitely. Suffice it to say that they were of a kind that one finds it hard to be charmed with; and the Elder will here confide to the reader that he was in the end a much vexed individual.
Ennuiovertook us first in Square Island Harbor. During our long duress there, outward objects of interest began to fail, and each man was thrown back in some degree upon his own resources.
Now follows a special development of idiosyncrasy, and with it of friction. Kept below much of the time by inclement weather, we are crowded and jumbled incessantly together; you jostle against the shoulders of one, you rub elbows with another, you clamber over the knees of a third; the members of the company are thrust together more closely than husband and wife in the narrowest household, and there is no exhaustless spousal love, no nameless mutual charm of man and woman, to relieve the sharpness of contact. Every man's peculiarities come out; and as there is no space between one and another, every man's peculiarities jar upon those of his neighbor. One is rampant just when another is moodily silent; one wishes to sleep when another must shout or split.
For a while, however, these idiosyncrasies amuse. We are rather pleased with them as a resource than vexed by them as an annoyance. We are as yet full of the sense of power; we are equal to occasion, and like to feel our independence of outward support. So our young people run out into all sorts of riotous fun, and, sooth to say, the older do not always refuse a helping hand. The "Nightingale Club" becomes a "Night-Owl Club"; there are whistling choruses, laughing choruses, weeping, howling, stamping choruses, choruses of huzzas, of mock-complaint; there are burglaries, spectres, lampoons, and what not? At last these follies became tiresome, and every man was brought to the marrow-bones of his endurance.
Now, then, impatience, impatience! The abominable cooking, the dawdling progress,—how was one to endure them? Especially when we had turned homeward, and were sluggishly repeating the ground already traversed, did the delay become almost insupportable.At length, on the 24th of August, we fairly said good-bye to Labrador, and came sweeping southward with the matchless speed of which our schooner was capable when she got a chance. It wellnigh tore Bradford's heart-strings to leave his icebergs once and for all behind; for a more fascinated human being I believe there never was than this true enthusiast while on that coast. Hemustpaint the bergs with rare power, must get the very spirit and suggestion of them on canvas, or his soul will quit him, and make off north!
P——, the indefatigable, would also have gladly stayed longer, I believe. Our voyage had not extended so far as he desired to go, but had been fruitful of results, nevertheless. Besides making important observations upon the action of glacial and coast ice, counting upwards of seventy-five raised beaches, obtaining convincing indications of a great central table-land, and establishing by abundant detail a resemblance amounting almost to identity between the insect Fauna of Labrador and that of the summit of Mount Washington, he had been able to collect indubitable evidence that there exists a sub-Arctic group of marine animals inhabiting the shores of Labrador and Newfoundland. This last is a result of especial importance, as this group, owing to the want of material, had been overlooked by preceding naturalists. This gentleman, whose industry and zeal in scientific research are literally boundless, and are matched with much penetration, designs visiting the North of Europe to make comparisons between the land of the Lapps and Finns and the sub-Arctic regions of America; and I make no doubt that American science will obtain honor in his person.
The rest of us, however, breathed freer now that we were
Wide swells aloft the snowy sail,New life comes flowing on the gale.Joy! joy! our exile all is past!We're homeward bound, homeward at last!Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;The loved that wait shall wait no longer;Our wake is white with happy foam,And blithe the skies to fan us home.O bliss of friendship, bliss of heaven!O heart of love, earth's angel leaven!The speed of winds is in your feet,Soon hands will join and lips will meet.Now through our land roll far and wideWar's lurid flame and crimson tide;But glory blushes through her woe,And both to share with joy we go.Farewell, grim North! Possess thy throne,And reign amid thy bergs alone;Now turn our hearts to truer poles,To native shores and kindred souls.Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;The loved that wait shall wait no longer;Our wake is white with happy foam,And blithe the skies to fan us home.
Wide swells aloft the snowy sail,New life comes flowing on the gale.Joy! joy! our exile all is past!We're homeward bound, homeward at last!Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;The loved that wait shall wait no longer;Our wake is white with happy foam,And blithe the skies to fan us home.
O bliss of friendship, bliss of heaven!O heart of love, earth's angel leaven!The speed of winds is in your feet,Soon hands will join and lips will meet.
Now through our land roll far and wideWar's lurid flame and crimson tide;But glory blushes through her woe,And both to share with joy we go.
Farewell, grim North! Possess thy throne,And reign amid thy bergs alone;Now turn our hearts to truer poles,To native shores and kindred souls.Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;The loved that wait shall wait no longer;Our wake is white with happy foam,And blithe the skies to fan us home.
September 1.—The Gulf had waylaid us, with a fierce storm in readiness. Our reckoning was wrong; we just escaped going ashore in the pitchy darkness; and, to mend all, the ship took fire! The flames were soon quenched, but St. Lawrence Neptune kept trying to put them out for twelve hours afterward; and such a drenching! But here we are between the shores of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Isle. Fort Mulgrave, two miles away over the calm water and beneath the floods of sunshine, looks like a little paradise, (painted white,) after all my reviling it. And fields, too!—green fields and forests! Could one ever again wish more pleasure than to look on swarded fields and wooded hills? Yes,—besides this, the pleasure ofrememberingLabrador!
FOOTNOTES:[C]Possibly sienite. I omitted to make a note, and speak from recollection. If sienite, very hard, the quartz element predominating, as the feldspar does farther north.
[C]Possibly sienite. I omitted to make a note, and speak from recollection. If sienite, very hard, the quartz element predominating, as the feldspar does farther north.
[C]Possibly sienite. I omitted to make a note, and speak from recollection. If sienite, very hard, the quartz element predominating, as the feldspar does farther north.
New York,February, 1862.—One thing surprises me. It is to find New York, to say the least of it, as brilliant as when I took my departure for the Antilles in 1857. In general, the press abroad relates the events of our war with such a predetermined pessimist spirit, that at a distance it is impossible to form a correct estimate of the state of the country. For the last year I have read in the papers statements to this effect:—"The theatres are closed; the terrorism of Robespierre sinks into insignificance, compared to the excesses of the Americans; the streets of New York are deluged with blood" (I very nearly had a duel in Puerto Rico for venturing to question the authenticity of this last assertion, propounded by a Spanish officer); "in short, the North is in a starving condition."
"How can you think of giving concerts to people who are in want of bread?" was the remark of my friends, on being apprised of my resolution to return to the United States; and, in all humility, I must acknowledge that the same question suggested itself not unfrequently to my mind, when I discussed within me the expediency of my voyage. I have still in my possession a newspaper in which a correspondent states the depreciation of our currency to be such that he actually saw a baker refuse to take a dollar from a famished laborer in exchange for a loaf of bread.
The number of these trustworhy correspondents has increased in the direct ratio of our prosperity, the development of our resources, and the umbrage these blessings give to the enemies of democratic principles. There are very few governments that would not deem it a matter of duty to exult over the ruin of our republican edifice. Fear actuates the less enlightened; jealousy is the motive of the more liberal. A celebrated statesman once said to me, "A republic is theoretically a very fine thing, but it is a Utopia." Like the man in antiquity, who, on hearing motion denied, refuted the assertion simply by rising and walking, we had hitherto put the "Utopia" into practice; and thething didmarch on, and proved a reality. The argument was peremptory. A principle can be discussed; a fact is undeniable. Although refracted by the organs of the foreign press, the light of truth still flashed at times upon the people in Europe, and taught it to reflect. When our troubles broke out, I was in Martinique. In all the Antilles,—Spanish, French, Danish, English, Swedish, Dutch,—it was but one unanimous cry, "Did not we say so?" and the truthful and independent correspondents immediately embraced this opportunity to redouble their zeal, and forthwith began to multiply like mosquitoes in a tropical swamp after a summer shower.
But it is not my province to pronounce upon lofty political and moral questions. I would merely say that New York, for a deserted city, is singularly animated; that Broadway yesterday was thronged with pretty women, who, famished as they are, present, nevertheless, the delusive appearance of health, and brave with heroic indifference the bloody tumults of which our streets are daily the theatre; that Art is not so utterly dead among us but that Maretzek gives "Un Ballo in Maschera" to crowded houses, and Church sees his studio filled with amateurs desirous of admiring his magnificent and strange "Icebergs," which he has just finished.
It is difficult to account for the extreme ignorance of many foreigners with regard to the political and intellectual standing of the United States, when one considers the extent of ourcommerce, which covers the entire world like a vast net, or when one views the incessant tide of immigration which thins the population of Europe to our profit. A French admiral, Viscount Duquesne, inquired of me at Havana, in 1853, if it were possible to venture in the vicinity of St. Louis without apprehending being massacred by the Indians. The father of a talented French pianist who resides in this country wrote a few years since to his son to know if the furrier business in the city of New York was exclusively carried on by Indians. Her Imperial Highness the Grand-Duchess of Russia, on seeing Barnum's name in an American paper, requested me to tell her if he were not one of our prominent statesmen. For very many individuals in Europe, the United States have remained just what they were when Châteaubriand wrote "Les Natchez," and saw parrots(?) on the boughs of the trees which the majestic "Méchasébé" rolled down the current of its mighty waters. All this may seem improbable, but I advance nothing that I am not fully prepared to prove. There is, assuredly, an intelligent class of people who read and know the truth; but, unfortunately, it is not the most numerous, nor the most inclined to render us justice. Proudhon himself—that bold, vast mind, ever struggling for the triumph of light and progress—regards the pioneer of the West merely as an heroic outlaw, and the Americans in general as half-civilized savages. From Talleyrand, who said, "L'Amérique est un pays de cochons sales et de sales cochons," down to Zimmermann, the director of the piano-classes at the Conservatory of Paris, who, without hearing me, gave as a reason for refusing to receive me in 1841, that "America was a country that could produce nothing but steam-engines," there is scarcely an eminent man abroad who has not made a thrust at the Americans.—It may not be irrelevant to say here that the little Louisianian who was refused as a pupil in 1841 was called upon in 1851 to sit as a judge on the same bench with Zimmermann, at the "Concours" of the Conservatory.
Unquestionably there are many blanks in certain branches of our civilization. Our appreciation of the fine arts is not always as enlightened, as discriminating, as elevated, as it might be. We look upon them somewhat as interlopers, parasites, occupying a place to which they have no legitimate right. Our manners, like the machinery of our government, are too new to be smooth and polished; they occasionally grate. We are more prone to worship the golden calf, in bowing down before the favorites of Fortune, than disposed to kill the fatted calf in honor of the elect of thought and mind. Each and every one of us thinks himself as good and better than any other man: an invaluable creed, when it engenders self-respect; but, alas! when we put it in practice, it is generally with a view of pulling down to our level those whose level we could never hope to reach. Fortunately, these little weaknesses are not national traits. They are inherent in all new societies, and will completely disappear when we shall attain the full development of our civilization with the maturity of age.
Myimpresarios, Strakosch and Gran, have made the important discovery, that my first concert in New York, on my return from Europe in 1853, took place the 11th of February, and consequently have decided to defer my reappearance for a few days in order that it may fall upon the 11th of February, 1862. The public (which takes not the remotest interest in the thing) has been duly informed of this memorable coincidence by all the papers.
Query by some of my friends: "Why do you say such and such things in the advertisements? Why do you not eliminate such and such epithets from the bills?"
Answer: Alas! are you ignorant of the fact that the artist is a piece of merchandise, which theimpresariohas purchased, and which he sets off to the best advantage according to his own taste and views? You might as wellupbraid certain pseudo-gold-mines for declaring dividends which they will never pay, as to render the artist responsible for the puffs of his managers. A poor old negress becomes, in the hands of the Jupiter of the Museum, the nurse of Washington; after that, can you marvel at the magniloquent titles coupled with my name?
The artist is like the stock which is to be quoted at the board and thrown upon the market. Theimpresarioand his agents, the broker and his clique, cry out that it is "excellent, superb, unparalleled,—the shares are being carried off as by magic,—there remain but very few reserved seats." (The house will perhaps be full of dead-heads, and the broker may be meditating a timely failure.) Nevertheless, the public rushes in, and the money follows a similar course. If the stock be really good, the founders of the enterprise become millionnaires. If the artist has talent, theimpresariooccasionally makes his (theimpresario's) fortune. In case both stock and artist prove bad, they fall below par and vanish after having made (quite innocently) a certain number of victims. Now, in all sincerity, of the two humbugs, do you not prefer that of theimpresario? At all events, it is less expensive.
I heard Brignoli yesterday evening in "Martha." The favorite tenor has still his charming voice, and has retained, despite the progress of anembonpointthat gives him some uneasiness, the aristocratic elegance which, added to his fine hair and "beautiful throat," has made him so successful with the fair sex. Brignoli, notwithstanding the defects his detractors love to heap upon him, is an artist I sincerely admire. The reverse of vocalists, who, I am sorry to say, are for the most part vulgar ignoramuses, he is a thorough musician, and perfectly qualified to judge a musical work. His enemies would be surprised to learn that he knows by heart Hummel's Concerto in A minor. He learned it as a child when he contemplated becoming a pianist, and still plays it charmingly. Brignoli knows how to sing, and, were it not for the excessive fear that paralyzes all his faculties before an audience, he would rank among the best singers of the day.
I met Brignoli for the first time at Paris in 1849. He was then very young, and had just made hisdébutat the Théâtre Italien, in "L' Elisire d' Amore," under the sentimental patronage of Mme. R., wife of the celebrated barytone. In those days Brignoli was very thin, very awkward, and his timidity was rendered more apparent by the proximity of his protectress. Mme. R. was an Italian of commanding stature, impassioned and jealous. She sang badly, although possessed of a fine voice, which she was less skilful in showing to advantage than in displaying the luxuriant splendor of her raven hair. The public, initiated into the secret of the green-room, used to be intensely amused at the piteous attitudes of Nemorino Brignoli, contrasting, as they did, with the ardent pantomime of Adina R., who looked by his side like a wounded lioness. Poor woman! What has been your fate? The glossy tresses of which you were so proud in your scenes of insanity, those tresses that brought down the house when your talent might have failed to do so, are now frosted with the snow of years. Your husband has forsaken you. After a long career of success, he has buried his fame under the orange-groves of the Alhambra. There he directs, according to his own statement, (but I can scarce credit it,) the phantom of a Conservatory for singing. I am convinced he has too much taste to break in upon the poetical silence of the old Moorish palace withportamenti, trills, and scales, and I flatter myself that the plaintive song of the nightingales of the Generalife and the soft murmur of the Fountain of the Lions are the only concerts that echo gives to the breeze that gently sighs at night from the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Alas! poor woman, your locks are silvered, and Brignoli—has grown fat! "Sic transit gloria mundi!"
When a European speaks about the American Revolution, he speaks of it as the work of Washington and Franklin. These two names embody for his mind all the phases of the contest, and explain its result. The military genius of Washington, going hand in hand with the civil genius of Franklin, fills the foreground of his picture. He has heard of other names, and may remember some of them; but these are the only ones which have taken their place in his memory at the side of the great names of European history.
In part this is owing to the importance which all Europeans attach to the French alliance as one of the chief causes of our success. For then, as now, France held a place among the great powers of the world which gave importance to all her movements. With direct access to two of the principal theatres of European strife and easy access to the third, she never raised her arm without drawing immediate attention. If less powerful than England on the ocean, she was more powerful there than any other nation; and even England's superiority was often, and sometimes successfully, contested. The adoption by such a power of the cause of a people so obscure as the people of the "Thirteen Colonies" then were was, in the opinion of European statesmen, decisive of its success. The fact of our actual poverty was known to all; few, if any, knew that we possessed exhaustless sources of wealth. Our weakness was on the surface, palpable, manifest, forcing itself upon attention; our strength lay out of sight, in rich veins which none but eyes familiar with their secret windings could trace. Thus the French alliance, as the European interpreted it, was the alliance of wealth with poverty, of strength with weakness,—a magnanimous recognition of efforts which without that recognition would have been vain. What, then, must have been the persuasive powers, the commanding genius, of the man who procured that recognition!
Partly, also, this opinion is owing to the personal character and personal position of Franklin. Franklin was preëminently a wise man, wise in the speculative science and wise in the practical art of life. Something of the maturity of age seems to have tempered the liveliest sallies of his youth, and much of the vivacity of youth mingles with the sober wisdom of his age. Thoughtful and self-controlling at twenty, at seventy his ripe experience was warmed by a genial glow. He entered upon life with the feeling that he had a part to perform, and the conviction that his happiness would depend upon his performing it well. What that part was to be was his earliest study; and a social temperament, combining with a sound judgment, quickly taught him that the happiness of the individual is inseparably connected with the happiness of the species. Thus life became his study as a condition of happiness; man and Nature, as the means of obtaining it. He sought to control his passions as he sought to control the lightning, that he might strip them of their power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending directness with which he adapts them to the common understanding and makes them minister to the common wants of life. The ambition which quickened his early exertions met an early reward. He was ambitious to write well, and he became one of the best writers in our language. He was ambitious of knowledge, and he laid it up in such stores that men sought his conversation in order to learn from him. He was ambitious of pecuniary independence, and he accumulated a fortunethat made him master of his time and actions. He was ambitious of influence, and he obtained a rare control over the thoughts and the passions of men. He was ambitious of fame, and he connected his name with the boldest and grandest discovery of his age.
Living thus in harmony with himself, he enjoyed the rare privilege of living in equal harmony with the common mind and the advanced mind of his contemporaries. He entered into every-day wants and feelings as if he had never looked beyond them, and thus made himself the counsellor of the people. He appreciated the higher wants and nobler aspirations of our nature, and thus became the companion and friend of the philosopher. His interest in the present—and it was a deep and active interest—did not prevent him from looking forward with kindling sympathies to the future. Like the diligent husbandman of whom Cicero tells us, he could plant trees without expecting to see their fruit. If he detected folly with a keen eye, he did not revile it with a bitter heart. Human weakness, in his estimate of life, formed an inseparable part of human nature, the extremes of virtue often becoming the starting-points of vice,—better treated, all of them, by playful ridicule than by stern reproof. He might never have gone with Howard in search of abuses, but he would have drawn such pictures of those near home as would have made some laugh and some blush and all unite heartily in doing away with them. With nothing of the ascetic, he could impose self-denial and bear it. Like Erasmus, he may not have aspired to become a martyr,—but in those long voyages and journeys, which, in his infirm old age, he undertook in his country's service, there was much of the sublimest spirit of martyrdom. His philosophy, a philosophy of observation and induction, had taught him caution in the formation of opinions, and candor in his judgments. With distinct ideas upon most subjects, he was never so wedded to his own views as to think that all who did not see things as he did must be wilfully blind. His justly tempered faculties lost none of their serene activity or gentle philanthropy by age. Hamilton himself, at thirty, did not labor with more earnestness in the formation of the Constitution than Franklin at eighty-one; and as if in solemn record of his own interpretation of it, his last public act, with eternity full in view, was to head a memorial to Congress for the abolition of the slave-trade.
That such a man should produce a strong impression upon the excitable mind of France must be evident to every one who knows how excitable that mind is. But to understand his public as well as his personal position, not so much at the French Court as at the court of French opinion, we must go back a dozen years and see what that opinion had been since the Peace of 1763.
The Treaty of Paris, like all treaties between equals founded upon the temporary superiority of one over the other, had deeply wounded, not the vanity only, but the pride of France. Humbled in the eyes of her rival, humbled in the eyes of Europe, she was still more profoundly humbled in her own eyes. It was a barbed and venomous arrow, haughtily left to rankle in the wound. For highminded Frenchmen, it was henceforth the wisdom as well as the duty of France to prepare the means and hasten the hour of revenge. It was then that the eyes of French statesmen were first opened to the true position of the American Colonies. It was then that they first saw how much the prosperity of the parent state depended upon the sure and constant flow of wealth and strength from this exhaustless source. Then, too, they first, saw, these Colonies, in due time, must grow into independence; and in this, independence, in this severing of ties which they foresaw English pride would cling to long after English avidity had stripped them of their natural strength, there was the prospect of full and sweet revenge.
Scarce a twelvemonth had passed from the signing of the Treaty of Paris,when the first French emissary, an officer of the French navy, was already at his work in the Colonies. Passing to and fro, travelling here and there, moving from place to place as any common traveller might have done, his eyes and his ears were ever open, his note-book was ever in his hand, and, without awakening the suspicions of England, the first steps in a work to which the Duke of Choiseul looked forward as the crowning glory of his administration were wisely and surely taken. They were promptly followed up. The French Ambassador in England established relations with Colonial agents in London which enabled him to follow the progress of the growing discontent and anticipate the questions which must soon be brought forward for decision. Franklin's examination before the House of Commons became the text of an elaborate despatch, harmonizing with the report of his secret agent, and opening a prospect which even the weary eyes of Louis XV. could not look upon without some return of the spirit that had won for his youth the long forfeited title of the Well-Beloved. It was not the first time that the name of the great philosopher had been heard in the council-chamber of Versailles. But among the secret agents of France we now meet for the first time the name of De Kalb, a name consecrated in American history by the life that he laid down for us on the fatal field of Camden. Scarce a step was taken by the English Ministry that was not instantly communicated by the Ambassador in London to the French Minister at Versailles, with speculations, always ingenious, often profound, upon its probable results. Scarce a step was taken in the Colonies without attracting the instant attention of the French agent. Never were events more closely studied or their character better understood. When troops were sent to Boston, the English Ministry was not without serious apprehensions of resistance. But when the tidings of their peaceful landing came, while the English were exulting in their success, the French Ambassador rejoiced that the wisdom of the Colonial leaders had withheld them from a form of opposition for which they were not yet ready. The English Ministry was preparing to enter upon a system of coercion at the point of the bayonet. "If the Colonists submit under the pressure," said Choiseul, "it will only be in appearance and for a short time."
Meanwhile his active brain was teeming with projects; the letters of his agents were teeming with suggestions. Frances counsels caution, dreads the effects of hasty measures; for the Colonists have not yet learned to look upon France as a friend, and premature action might serve only to bind them more firmly to England. Du Châtelet proposes that France and Spain, sacrificing their old colonial system, should open their colonial ports to the products of the English Colonies,—thus inflicting a fatal blow upon England's commerce, while they supplant her in the affections of the Colonists. A clerk in the Department of Commerce goes still farther, advocating a full emancipation of the French Colonies, both to throw off a useless burden and to increase the irritation of the English Colonies by the spectacle of an independence which they were not permitted to share.
There is nothing in history more humiliating than to see on what small hinges great events sometimes turn. Of all the disgraceful intrigues of a palace filled with intrigues from the day of its foundation, there is none half so disgraceful as the overthrow of the Duke of Choiseul in 1770. And yet, vile as it was both by its motive and by its agents, it marks an important point in the progress of American independence. A bow more, a sarcasm less, might have confirmed the power of a man whose deep-rooted hatred of England was fast hastening to its natural termination, an open rupture; and a premature rupture would have brought the Colonists into the field, either as the subjects of England or as the allies of France. To secure the dependence of the Colonies, England would have been compelled to make large concessions; and timelyconcessions might have put off the day of separation for another century. To secure the alliance of the Colonies, France would have been compelled to take upon herself the burden of the war; a French general might have led our armies; French gold might have paid our troops; we might have been spared the sufferings of Valley Forge, the humiliation of bankruptcy; but where would have been the wise discipline of adversity? and if great examples be as essential to the formation of national as of individual character, what would the name of independence have been to us, without the example of our Washington?
French diplomacy had little to do with the American events of the next five years. England, unconscious how near she had been to a new war with her old enemy, held blindly on in her course of irritation and oppression; the Colonies continued to advance by sure steps from resistance by votes and resolves to resistance by the sword. When Louis XVI. ascended the throne in 1774, and Vergennes received the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, domestic interests pressed too hard upon them to allow of their resuming at once the vast plans of the fallen minister. Unlike that Minister, Vergennes, a diplomatist by profession, preferred watching and waiting events to hastening or anticipating hem. But to watch and wait events like those which were then passing in the Colonies without being drawn into the vortex was beyond the power of even his well-trained and sagacious mind. In 1775, a French emissary was again taking the measure of American perseverance, French ambassadors were again bringing forward American questions as the most important questions of their correspondence. That expression which has been put into so many mouths as a summing up of the value of a victory was applied in substance by Vergennes to the Battle of Bunker Hill,—"Two more victories of this kind, and the English will have no army left in America."
And while thus tempted by this proof of American strength, his wavering mind was irritated by the apprehension of some sudden outbreak of English arrogance; for the Ambassador wrote that Whigs and Tories might yet unite in a war against France in order to put an end to the troubles in the Colonies,—and no Frenchman had forgotten that England began the War of 1755 by an open violation of international law, by seizing three hundred French merchant ships and casting into prison ten thousand French sailors before the declaration of hostilities. Thus events prepared the way for American diplomacy, and, more powerful than the prudence of Vergennes or the pacific longings of Louis XVI., compelled them to decide and act, when they would still gladly have discussed and waited.
And, moreover, a new element had been introduced into the councils of statesmen,—or rather, an element hitherto circumscribed and resisted had begun to act with irresistible force. Public opinion, speaking through the press by eloquent pens, through coffee-houses and saloons by eloquent voices, called loudly for action in the name of humanity and in the still more exciting name of French honor. Little as most Frenchmen knew about America, they knew enough about England to believe that in her disputes with other nations she was apt to be in the wrong,—and if with other nations, why not with her own colonies? The longing for revenge, which ever since the Treaty of Paris filled some corner of every French heart, grew stronger at the near approach of so abundant a harvest; nor did it lose any of its sweetness from the reflection that their enemy himself was doing what they never could have done alone to prepare it for them.
But humanity, too, was a powerful word. Men could not read Rousseau without being led to think more earnestly, if not always more profoundly, upon the laws of social organization. They could not read Voltaire without a clearer perception of abuses and a more vigorous contempt for the systems which had put the many into the hands of thefew to be butchered or butchers at their will. They could not read Montesquieu without feeling that there was a future in store for them for which the long past had been patiently laboring, and longing, as they read, to hasten its coming. In that future, mankind were to rise higher than they had ever risen before; rulers and ruled were to act in fruitful harmony for their common good; the brightest virtues of Greece, the purest virtues of Rome, were to revive in some new form of society, not very definitely conceived by the understanding, but which floated in magnificent visions before the glowing imagination.
I hasten reluctantly over this part of my subject; for the formation of public opinion in France and its action upon Government, even while all the forms of an almost absolute monarchy were preserved, is an important chapter in the history of European civilization. But hasten I must, merely calling attention to the existence of this element, and reminding my reader, that, chronologically, of the two parts which composed this opinion, hatred for England had been at work ever since 1763, while sympathy with the Colonists was rather an individual than a public feeling till late in 1776.
It was at Versailles, and not at Paris, that action began. Vergennes's first step was to send another agent, no longer merely to observe and report, but to ascertain, though without compromising the French Government, how far the Americans were prepared for French intervention. English suspicions were already awakened. Already the English Minister had informed the French Ambassador, upon the authority of a private letter of General Lee to General Burgoyne, that the Americans were sure of French aid. It was not without great difficulty that the new agent, De Bonvouloir, could find a safe conveyance. But by December he was already in Philadelphia, and, though still pretending to be a mere traveller, soon in full communication with the Committee of Secret Correspondence.
The appointment of this committee, on the 29th of November, 1775, is the beginning of the history of our foreign relations. Then began our attempts to gain admission into the great family of nations as an independent power,—attempts not always judiciously directed, attended in some instances with disappointment and mortification, but crowned at last with as full a measure of success as those who understood monarchy and Europe could have anticipated. Two of its members, Franklin and Dickinson, were already known abroad, where, at a later day, Jay also was to make himself an enduring name. The other two, Johnson and Harrison, enjoyed and merited a high Colonial reputation.