But it did not so eventuate. He was the same man still, though under other skies. There was a doom upon him. His family grew on his hands and opened in his heart new chambers of affection, but they could give no ballast to his brain. He could not anchor anywhere. The weird ship that sails up and down antarctic seas in an eternal voyage is no more harborless than was he. He fought the forests, axe in hand, and smote down many pillars of the olden fane. He toiled on board the river-craft that drift to and fro upon the broad St. Lawrence. He was a stevedore in Quebec, a laborer in Montreal. So he worked on from one town to another, fretting away his own existence, wearing out the health and strength of his devoted wife, until he reached the "States," and, by some mysterious fatality, came into the very village where Bernard Davanagh and his mother lived. Here he found work congenial to his tastes. The dark gloom of the long tunnels underground, the ghastly lamps, and, more than all, the exciting danger of the labor, kept his mind on the stretch and drowned his memory more effectually than it had ever been before. He did not know the nearness of Mary Carrol's mother. He would as soon have dreamed of meeting his dead children in the street as her, and his work late and early kept him out of sight, so that they did not hear of him.
But it happened on one Sunday morning, as he went to Mass in the great town, two miles away, that he heard the name of "Bernard" called by some one in the throng. He looked anxiously around him, and had no difficulty in recognizing, in the features of the man addressed, the son of the detested Bernard Davanagh of his youth. Had he not known the contrary, he might have thought it that very father stepped out of his grave. The recognition was not mutual, but the unquiet heart of Michael Herican reeked little of the sacrifice that day, for thinking where this new phase of his life would end. He feared no bodily injury. He had not lost his animal courage by his sufferings. But he felt like Orestes at the banquet, when he dispels with wine the knowledge of the ever-present furies, and then suddenly beholds the gorgon face pressed closely up to his. He saw in this an omen that, go where he would, the wrongs of Mary Carrol must live on outside him, as they did within.
How Bridget Davanagh and her son became aware that Michael Herican and his family were near them, it is of little consequence to know. When they did find it out, however, it was an evil greater in its results to them than to their enemy. Bernard had warmly espoused his mother's hatred, and added to it the natural fierceness of his own disposition. The discovery of her child's betrayer, and an occasional glimpse of him as he went by, revived all the old woman's vengefulness, and aggravated it beyond control. If Kathleen Herican had known all this, sick of her wandering life as she might be, she would not have stayed near them for a single hour. But she did not know it. Bernard and Bridget she had never seen in Easky, and Michael never told her they were here. Thus she, at least, lived on unconsciously, while vengeance sharpened its relentless sword for retribution, and hung it by an ever-weakening hair over the head of him she loved most of all.
Up to the morning of the fatal day no word or sign had passed between Michael Herican and either of the Davanaghs. But, as he went by to his work that morning, they both stood in their cabin door. The old woman could not resist the impulse to curse him as he passed her, and Bernard was as ready with his malison as she.Michael turned up the path that led toward them, and tried to speak in friendliness, but they would not hear him. At last, exasperated by their violence and abuse, he told the mother she was mad—mad as her daughter had been before her. It was a cruel word for him to speak, cruel for them to hear; but he did not mean it. It smote upon him as he hurried off to his work, and the image of the dead Mary came back and upbraided him many times that day. He left his work early, and went home. There was a strange look in his eye which made the timid heart of Kathleen beat faster when she saw it, and he was more than usually kind and tender to her and his child. His half-eaten supper over, he took his woodman's basket, and went out to gather fagots for the morning's fire. On his way home with others who had been on the like errand, as he came opposite the Davanagh cottage, the mother and the son came out and rushed upon him. One struck him with a stone, and felled him to the earth. The other smote him with an axe, and cleft his skull. It was all over in an instant. Not a word was said. The horror-stricken neighbors stood aghast a moment. When they came to their senses, Bernard Davanagh was climbing up the mountain on the further side of the ravine, and Bridget Davanagh, with bolted doors, kept ward in her devoted house alone.
They would have lifted Michael Herican from the roadside where he lay, but he was dead. The red blood oozed out of the gaping wound. It trickled on in narrow streamlets down the path. It clotted on the feet of men and women who came to gaze upon the mangled corpse. It stained the hands, and face, and garments of his wife and baby as they lay sobbing and shrieking on his pulseless breast. It dried up in the purple sunlight of the dying day, and soaked away into the dust and ashes of the trampled street.
I have little else to tell. The circumstances of the story, as I heard them, piece by piece, left on my mind an impression which would not let me stand by and do nothing. I was satisfied that, if not absolutely crazed, the murderess had acted in a moment of exceeding passion, no doubt resulting from the rankling words her victim spoke to her on the morning of that day; and, in her unsettled state of mind, the ordinary presumptions of the law, that passion cannot last, were not reliable. It seemed unjust, to me, that she should suffer the highest penalty known to our law, when probably her guilt was actually less than that of hundreds whom a few years in the state prison give their due. I therefore drew up a petition which the presiding judge and nearly all of the convicting jury signed, praying a commutation of her sentence to imprisonment for life. The prayer was granted, and Bridget Davanagh lives and will die an inmate of the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania.
It is strange that while so many of the most enlightened minds of the country are engaged in the investigation of the mysteries of social and physical sciences, so few, if any, appear to give the least attention to the phenomenon of American immigration; a study which is equal in importance to any that can come within the purview of the economist, and of much more practical value to us, nationally, than most of the developments of nature, considered in her material aspect.
The researches of geologists and astronomers often supply us with curious and pleasing discoveries, and the laws which regulate commerce and labor, manufactures and capital, are doubtless well worth the attention of intelligent public men; but not more so than the habits, qualifications, and destiny of the millions of foreigners who of late years have made their homes among us, and who are still annually coming in myriads to our shores.
It may safely be said that neither ancient nor modern history presents a parallel to this American immigration. The emigration from the plains of Shinar was a dispersion of one people over the surface of the globe, a disintegration of a nation into several fragments, each particle the nucleus of a separate and independent race, speaking a peculiar tongue, and destined to establish distinct laws and forms of religion. Ours is the convergence of many peoples to one common centre, silently arraying themselves under a uniform system of public polity, yielding up their own political predilections, and to a certain extent their creeds and language, and destined eventually to profess one faith and speak one language. Subsequent migrations in the old world offer points as strikingly dissimilar as the first great exodus. Those were nothing else than succeeding waves of population borne from one portion of the earth to the other, generally preceded and heralded by fire and sword, and ending in the subjugation and spoliation of the inhabitants of that country over which they swept with irresistible violence. Our immigrants, on the contrary, come to us in detail, peaceably to enjoy the benefits of our laws and to respect our institutions, with no thought of conquest but such as may be suggested by our yet untilled fields of the west and our comparatively undeveloped mineral treasures.
Viewed in this light, our knowledge of the past gives no rules of guidance in our relations with this new and very important element of our population, and it becomes the duty of every patriot jealous of the welfare and reputation of his land to draw lessons of wisdom from every-day, experience, in order to help direct this perennial flood of life into the most proper and useful channels. A country's true wealth lies primarily in its population; the product of its soil is its surest and most permanent concomitant. To give a helping hand and a word of cheer and advice to those future citizens and parents of citizens is the common duty of humanity and patriotism; to protect them until sufficiently domiciled to be able to protect themselves, is the absolute duty of our legislators.
The city of New York, being the centre of the commerce of the country, is necessarily the objective point of European emigration, though many of our neighboring seaports receive their proportionate share of the precious human freight. It will be scarcely credited that in the space of twenty-one years, ending with 1867, there arrived at this city alone no less thanthree million eight hundred and thirty-two thousand four hundred and fourimmigrants, or a number almost equal in amount to the entire white population of the country at the time of the Revolution. [Footnote 117] Those arrivals included natives of every country in Europe, China, Turkey, Arabia, East and West Indies, South America, Mexico, and the lower British Provinces. Emigrants from Ireland and Germany were of course largely in excess of all others. Until 1861, these two countries were nearly equally represented, the numbers from them for fourteen years previously being respectively 1,107,034 and 979,575, or nearly four fifths of the whole arrivals. Since that year the German element has largely preponderated, and is now equal to one half the entire immigration. England, Scotland, France, and Switzerland follow next in rotation, the northern countries of Europe supplying a respectable number in proportion to their sparse population, and the southern countries, like Spain and Portugal, comparatively few.
[Footnote 117: We are indebted to Bernard Casserly, Esq., the efficient General Superintendent under the Commissioners of Emigration, for the following official report of arrivals at Castle Garden:1847129,0621848189,1761849220,7911850212,6031851289,6011852300,9921853284,9451854319,2231855136,2331856142,3421857183,773185878,589185979,3221860105,162186165,539186276,3061863167,8441864182,3961865196,3521866233,4181867242,730Total3,832,404]
[Footnote 117: We are indebted to Bernard Casserly, Esq., the efficient General Superintendent under the Commissioners of Emigration, for the following official report of arrivals at Castle Garden:1847129,0621848189,1761849220,7911850212,6031851289,6011852300,9921853284,9451854319,2231855136,2331856142,3421857183,773185878,589185979,3221860105,162186165,539186276,3061863167,8441864182,3961865196,3521866233,4181867242,730Total3,832,404]
It were beyond the scope of this article to enter into an extended inquiry as to the cause of this unequal abandonment of nationality on the part of our new denizens. The misgovernment of Ireland, which culminated in the terrible famine of 1846-7-8, and the natural affinity of the people of that country for the advantages afforded by free governments, will easily account for the immensity of their numbers who have sought political and social independence in this republic; while the low rewards of labor and the heavy burdens of taxation experienced by the German in his own home, form powerful incentives in his economical mind to change his condition and abandon the fatherland of which he is so justly proud. The same reasons, to a lesser extent perhaps, operate on Englishmen and Scotchmen, with the additional one of the rapid growth of our infant manufactures requiring the experience of the workmen of Leeds, Birmingham, and Glasgow. Spain and Portugal, the pioneers of immigration in former ages, though now not essentially an emigrant people, as a general rule prefer Central and South America, where their languages are spoken and their religion universally established; while France, of all European countries the least disposed to colonization, has, on account of political troubles, sent us many of her best mechanics, and Italy some of her finest artists.
With the influx of such vast unorganized masses of strangers, representing all conditions, ages, and degrees, into one port, and considering the unusual trials and dangers of a long sea-voyage, it is not to be wondered at that a great amount of sickness and distress should be developed; but we are glad to know that all that private benevolence and judicious legislation could do has been done for the unfortunate.Refuges for the destitute and hospitals for the sick have been established in this neighborhood. Employment for the idle, food for the hungry, and transportation for the penniless have been provided by the Commissioners of Emigration with a free and even profuse liberality. Nearly thirtyper centumof the total arrivals, each year, have been thus benefited without any cost whatever to the state, the money required being derived from a fund created mainly by a small commutation-tax on each emigrant passenger. Though this fund, as we have said, is especially intended for the protection and support of immigrants, a portion of it has necessarily been expended in the erection or purchase of valuable buildings, requisite for the purposes of the commission, all of which will revert to the state when no longer required for their original objects.[Footnote 118]
[Footnote 118: This property, besides some on Staten Island, consists of one hundred and eight acres of land with water rights, etc., on Ward's Island, in the East River, upon which the commissioners have built very spacious and substantial structures, such as five hospitals capable of accommodating eight hundred patients; four houses of refuge for destitute males and females; a nursery, lunatic asylum, and two chapels, besides a number of residences for the officers of these institutions, out-offices, etc.—See Commissioners' Report, 1868.]
But this is not the only direct pecuniary advantage which we derive from immigration. In 1856 it was ascertained that the average cash means of every person landing at Castle Garden was about sixty-eight dollars, a sum which, considering the improved condition of those who have since arrived, must amount to much moreper capita, still, taking the standard of that year, we find that in twenty-one years over three hundred and twenty millions of dollars have been brought to the country and put into direct circulation. Its effect on our shipping interest will be appreciated when we learn that during 1867 there were engaged in the passenger business alone, at this port, two hundred and forty-five sailing vessels and four hundred and four steamships, requiring large investments of capital and employing thousands of men.
It would be impossible to estimate the indirect stimulus given to the general interests of the Union by the acquisition of so much skilled labor and brawny muscle. We can see its developments, however, in the rapid rise of our towns and cities, the superior condition of arts and manufactures, and the extraordinary increase of our agricultural productions. Coming from so many lands, each heretofore celebrated for some peculiar excellence, the European artisan, while he does not necessarily excel his American fellow-workmen in the aggregate, contributes his special knowledge to the general stock of industrial information. The Swede brings his knowledge of metallurgy, the Englishman of woolens, the Italian of silk; the German, of grape culture, and the Frenchman, of those finer fabrics and arts of design for which his country has been so long famous. When the ancient Grecian sculptor designed to make a representation of the human form in all its perfection, he selected, it is said, six beautiful living models, copying from each some member more perfect than the rest, and thus, by the combination of several excellences, modelled a perfect and harmonious whole, in which were combined grace, beauty, and harmony. So the republic, availing itself of the genius and skill which every country sends us so superabundantly, may attain that general superiority in the arts of peace which was formerly divided among many nations.
The destination of this flood of knowledge and strength forms not the least interesting phase of this subject. From the data before us, we find that the State of New York retains about forty-four per cent; the Western States receive over twenty five; the Middle States, eleven; the New England States, eight; the Pacific slope, two, and the Southern States a little less than two per cent, the residue being scattered among various portions of the continent outside of our jurisdiction. The comparatively small number who have sought homes in the South may be accounted for partly by the occurrence of our late civil war, but principally by the peculiar organization of labor in that section before the abolition of slavery. In [the] future we may expect a much greater percentage of people, particularly from Southern Europe, to assist in developing the almost inexhaustible wealth of such states as Georgia and Tennessee. It is to be regretted that no record has been kept of the nationalities and occupations of those who so instinctively choose their favorite sections of our country; but our own everyday experience, and the laws of labor and climate, enable us to form a sufficiently accurate general opinion. Irishmen, though not adverse to agricultural pursuits, generally prefer large cities and towns, like those of New England, where skilled labor is least required in the production of fabrics. The Germans, on the contrary, though quite numerous in New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis, avoid New England, and prefer farming in the Western States, in some of which they already form a majority of the rural population. Englishmen are to be met with either in the Eastern factories or in the Atlantic cities, keeping up a business connection with their countrymen at home. Frenchmen find a market for their superior mechanical skill amid the luxury of large cities, and are seldom tillers of the soil, while a Welsh miner (if he do[es] not find his way to Salt Lake) goes as naturally to Pennsylvania, and the slate quarries of New York and Vermont, as the Swede and Norwegian do to the northern parts of Michigan and Wisconsin. The mode of emigration may have something to do with these selections. The continental nations, particularly the Germans, understand migration better than their insular neighbors, always leaving home in families and groups, and settling down in small colonies where, as in all new countries, union is strength; but the inhabitants of Ireland and the other islands of the United Kingdom too frequently emigrate, one member of a family at a time, without system or organization, to the great disruption of those ties of relationship which are always a bond of unity and a source of comfort, amid the hardships attendant on great changes of habitation.
Considering the various manners, habits, and opinions of so many nationalities, some of them, if not repugnant, at least strange to the native-born of America, the power of absorption possessed by the people of the United States is astonishing. Columbia, taking to her ample bosom the fiery Celt and the phlegmatic Teuton, the self-asserting Briton and thedébonnaireGaul, smiles complacently at their peculiarities, or, remembering the good qualities which underlie such eccentricities, waits patiently for time and example to cure them; and we venture to assert that the German feels himself as free to indulge in his national games and festivals in New York or Buffalo as if he were in Vienna or Berlin, and the Irishman can dance as lively and attend a wake or a wedding with as light a heart, and as free from hindrance as if he had never left his own green isle.In justice, also, to the immigrant, it must be said that, once settled in America, he gives to its government his hearty and unqualified allegiance, notwithstanding the occasional spasmodic attempts of a despicable few to subject him to ridicule and social ostracism. How many instances do we find of worthy men who, having gained a competency here, acting upon that natural and beautiful love of native land, return to the homes of their childhood to end their days, but who almost invariably return to us and the scenes of their manhood's toils and triumphs!
There are two other sources of accession to our population, independent of that of acquisition of territory, which are worthy of notice. The first, of present importance, is the passage of our borders by natives of Lower Canada, and which, though now more than usually remarkable, has been going on quietly but steadily for at least a hundred years. [Footnote 119]
[Footnote 119: Five hundred French Canadians took passage at Montreal, C. E., for the United States, in one week, during March, 1869.]
The French Canadians are a decidedlyuniquepeople. Originally from Normandy, early deprived of the protection of France, and practically cut off from their fellow-countrymen by the cessation of emigration, they have still retained all the primitive simplicity, keenness, and hardiness of their ancestors. Increasing in numbers with extraordinary rapidity, they have tenaciously adhered to their faith, language, and manners of life, in face of the opposition of a dominant and intolerant master. They have not only, so far, held their own against English laws and customs; but, despite the increase of British colonists among them, they have nearly, if not altogether, kept pace in numbers with the English-speaking inhabitants of the two Canadas. They have likewise constantly shot forth numerous hardy offshoots which have taken root and flourished in the far west. Detroit, La Salle, Dubuque, St. Louis, St. Paul, Sault Ste. Marie, and many other western centres of wealth and population, were first selected and settled by those enterprising followers of Jacques Cartier and the missionary fathers, and their names are still honored in those places. Many of the later immigrants from Canada find employment in our seaboard cities, but the majority either still seek the northwest, as being more congenial in climate, and offering more opportunities for that spirit of adventure which distinguishes the race, or go directly to California, where so many of the French people have already settled.
The Chinese immigration to the Pacific coast is one of the most unaccountable events in the history of that section of our country, and one which may well attract serious public attention. Those people, remarkable for centuries for their ingenuity and industry, as well as for their exclusiveness and dislike to foreigners, have at last crossed the Rubicon that confined them within the limits of the Celestial empire, and when we reflect that that empire contains within itself nearly half the population of the world, we can readily suppose that a few millions, more or less, transplanted to the new world would not very perceptibly diminish its influence or strength. The Chinamen are represented as quiet and docile, economical in their way of living, and working for small wages, and as being eminently adapted for the building of railroads, and the development of the mineral wealth with which nature has so lavishly enriched the territory on both slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and, being as yet only a moiety of the population, are easily controlled. But, should the tide of Asiatic emigration commence to flow freely eastward, the gravest fears are entertained by many that it would lead either to the systematic oppression or even partial enslavement of the Chinese themselves, or to the deterioration of the Caucasians of that beautiful region, soon destined to become the garden of America.
Taking into account, however, the great adaptability of all classes of immigrants in this country to the condition of affairs by which they find themselves surrounded, the fears of even a Chinese invasion appear groundless. Every day and year bring with them large accessions of energetic and healthy minds to the ranks of the native-born Americans—some the children of the sons of the soil; others, of adopted citizens; but all American in spirit and purpose, no matter what their parentage. Even this uniformity extends to theirphysique, and it has been remarked by visitors to our shores that the native-born boy or girl, however dissimilar the peculiar physical traits of their progenitors, presents strong points of resemblance in figure and face to each other. Something of this may be accounted for by food and climate, training and association, but much more by the fact of the admixture of races constantly going forward. The heavy features of the northern European are more or less elongated and brightened into thoughtful cheerfulness in his American child, while the angularity and pugnacity supposed to be characteristic of the Celtic countenance are reduced to finer lines of grace and repose in their cis-Atlantic descendants.
Taking American character as it stood at the beginning of this century, we cannot deny our admiration of its essential features, though many of its details were susceptible of improvement. Our stateliness had a tendency to what is now generally called Puritanism, and our simplicity was apt to degenerate into parsimoniousness. Our ancestors wanted a little more breadth of view, a little leaven of the poetry of life to mix with its stern realities, and a great deal more love for innocent amusements, and taste for the fine arts, which make man feel more kindly to his fellow, and raise him so high above irrational animals. Immigration has done much for us in this way, and we have done something for ourselves. If we have extended to the strangers within our gates hospitality, protection, and the rewards of labor, they have paid us with the sculpture of Italy, the music of Germany, the melodies of Ireland, and the fashions of France. It has not only done this, but it has reproduced and naturalized the love for them, and made them "racy of the soil." But what is of more importance than all, it has efficiently helped the spread of true religious faith over this portion of the continent. True, there were Catholics and very good ones here, even in colonial times; but they were few in number, and so scattered over the country that they were in constant danger either of losing their faith for want of spiritual ministration or were powerless to assert their proper position before the opposing sects. We have now not only numbers, but the influence that flows from numbers, and generously and judiciously has our immigrant population used the power inherent in it. During the late civil strife which so afflicted our country, and endangered the Union, citizens by adoption vied with citizens by birth in defence of our institutions, and in their contributions to works of piety, charity, and education they have been so profuse that to others the results of their charities seem little short of miraculous.Even those who have come among us of a different creed, or no creed at all, have here a better opportunity of learning the truth than they have had in their own countries. Unfettered by statecraft or sectional laws, the Catholic priesthood have a field of labor in America such as the whole of Europe cannot present, and an audience composed of as many races as the sons of Adam represent. Realizing the great things done by our immigrants, and what may yet be expected from them, we hope to see their protection and welfare occupy a portion, at least, of the attention of our national and state authorities. But it is not enough that the law has so completely thrown its protecting shield over them. Individual charity can do much to supply the deficiencies which every general law presents. In the city of New York, especially, where a great deal has already been done by the commissioners to whose especial care the immigrants are entrusted by law, much remains still to be performed, in view of the hundreds of thousands of strangers who may annually be expected among us, for the next decade, at least.
I.Mournful night is dark around me,Hushed the world's conflicting din;All is still and all is tranquil—But this restless heart within!II.Wakeful still I press my pillow,Watch the stars that float above,Think ofOnefor me who suffered;Think, and weep for grief and love!III.Flow, ye tears, though in your streamingOft yon stars of his grow dim!Sweet the tender griefhewakens,Blest the tears that flow for him!'Richard Storrs Willis.
I.Mournful night is dark around me,Hushed the world's conflicting din;All is still and all is tranquil—But this restless heart within!II.Wakeful still I press my pillow,Watch the stars that float above,Think ofOnefor me who suffered;Think, and weep for grief and love!III.Flow, ye tears, though in your streamingOft yon stars of his grow dim!Sweet the tender griefhewakens,Blest the tears that flow for him!'Richard Storrs Willis.
Wherever man has found a dwelling-place, bounteous nature has conferred on him not only the necessaries of life, but a share also of its pleasures. From "sultry India to the pole," the useful and the beautiful are met with side by side. The bright poppy and the blue cornflower rise with the wheat-ear in the same broad field; the sweet-smelling amaryllis and the delicate iris unfold their variegated petals among the thick stalks of the African maize, while the marsh-rose and the water-lily float on the surface of the waters that inundate the rice-grounds of Egypt and India.
It is evident that nature regards these fair blossoms as indispensable to man's happiness as those other more substantial gifts are to his comfort and existence; and so, with lavish hand, she scatters them on the mountain and in the valley, amidst plains of burning sand, or half-buried in snow and ice.
"Floral apostles! that in dewy splendorWeep without woe, and blush without a crime,Oh! may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender,Your law sublime."Not useless are ye, flowers! though made for pleasure.Blooming o'er field and wave, by day and night,From every source your sanction bids me treasureHarmless delight."Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoaryFor such a world of thought could furnish scope?Each fading calyx amemento mori,Yet fount of hope."
"Floral apostles! that in dewy splendorWeep without woe, and blush without a crime,Oh! may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender,Your law sublime."Not useless are ye, flowers! though made for pleasure.Blooming o'er field and wave, by day and night,From every source your sanction bids me treasureHarmless delight."Ephemeral sages! what instructors hoaryFor such a world of thought could furnish scope?Each fading calyx amemento mori,Yet fount of hope."
The rose, fairest of the floral train, has been said by some botanists to take its birth in Asia. "The east, the cradle of the first man," writes a French author, "is also the native place of the rose; the flowery hillsides near the chain of the frowning Caucasus were the first spots on earth adorned with this charming shrub." We do not incline to this opinion, for the researches of science have proved that the lovely flower is found in every clime, from the arctic circle to the torrid zone, and that under every sun it seems to be endowed with some different grace. The same species is sometimes met with over a whole continent; another is unknown beyond the limits of a certain province; while another again never leaves the mountain or dale where it first shed its sweetness on the air. Thus Pollin's rose (rosa Pollinaria) is never found but at the foot of Monte Baldo in Italy, nor the Lyon rose (rosa Lyonii) out of the State of Tennessee; while the field-rose (rosa arvensis) trails its long branches and clusters of white flowers all over Europe, and the dog-rose (rosa canina) displays its pale pink petals and scarlet hips, not only throughout Europe, but also in northern Asia and a part of America.
So numerous, indeed, are the varieties of this favorite of nature, that we will not attempt to describe all that are peculiar to each country; we will confine our attention to those only most remarkable for their beauty, and most easy of culture.
First on the list of American roses, and far away among the eternal ice that covers the almost desert regions which lie between the seventieth and seventy-fifth degrees of north latitude, bloomsrosa blanda, the charmingsoft-coloredrose, which as soon as the sun has melted the snow in the valleys opens its large corolla, always solitary on its graceful stem, to the warm breathings from the south.We can picture to ourselves the delight of the stunted, amphibious Greenlander, when, the long months of the fierce winter past, he suddenly meets the expanding blossom. He smiles as he remembers how his young wife mourned last year over the death of the flowers, and he plucks the first rose of Greenland's short summer to carry back to her as a proof that she must ever hope and trust.
"Why must the flowers die?Prisoned they lieIn the cold tomb, heedless of tears and rain.O doubting heart!They only sleep belowThe soft white ermine snow:While winter winds shall blow,To breathe and smile on you again!"
"Why must the flowers die?Prisoned they lieIn the cold tomb, heedless of tears and rain.O doubting heart!They only sleep belowThe soft white ermine snow:While winter winds shall blow,To breathe and smile on you again!"
Rosa blanda'snearest neighbor is the prettyrosa rapof Hudson's Bay, whose slender, graceful branches are laden in the early summer with corymbs of pale pink double flowers. Nature herself has doubledrosa rapa'ssweet corolla, as if she had foreseen that the wandering tribes of Esquimaux who inhabit those inclement shores would have too much to do in their never-ending struggle to pick up a precarious existence ever to busy themselves with the culture of the cold, unyielding soil.
Rosa blandaandrosa rapaare still at home in Labrador and Newfoundland, but with them two remarkable varieties—the ash-leaved rose, (rosa fraxinifolia,) with small red heart-shaped petals, and the lustrous rose, (rosa nitida,) which shelters its brilliant red cup-like flower and fruit beneath the scraggy trees that grow sparsely along the coast. The lustrous rose is a great favorite with the young Esquimaux maidens, who dress their black hair with its shining cups, and wear bunches of it, "embowered in its own green leaves," in the bosom of their seal-skin robes.
The United States possess a great number of different roses. At the foot of almost every rocky acclivity we meet the rose with diffuse branches, (rosa diffusa,) whose pink flowers, growing in couples on their stem, appear at the beginning of the summer. On the slopes of the Pennsylvanian hills blooms the small-flowered rose, (rosa parviflora,) an elegant little species bearing double flowers of the most delicate pink; it may fairly vie in beauty with all other American roses. In most of the Middle States, on the verge of the "mossy forests, by the bee-bird haunted," we find the straight-stemmed rose, (rosa stricta,) with light red petals, and the brier-leaved rose, (rosa rubifolia,) with small, pale red flowers, growing generally in clusters of three.
The silken rose (rosa setigera) opens its great red petals, shaped like an inverted heart, beneath the "cloistered boughs" of South Carolina's woods, and in Georgia the magnificent smooth-leaved rose, (rosa loevigata,) known in its native wilds as the Cherokee rose, climbs to the very summit of the great forest trees, then swings itself off in festoons of large white flowers glancing like stars amidst their glossy, dark green leaves.
When we leave the hills and woodlands, we find the marshes of the Carolinas gay with therosa evratina, therosa Carolina, and therosa lucida, the resplendent rose, whose corymbs of brilliant red flowers overtop the reeds among which they love to blossom; while, nearer to the setting sun, we see the pink petals of Wood's rose (rosa Woodsii) reflected in the waters of the great Missouri.
The last American rose we shall note in this slight sketch is the rose of Montezuma, (rosa Montezumae,) a solitary, sweet-scented, pale red flower with defenceless branches. It was discovered by Humboldt and Bonpland on the elevated peaks of the Cerro Ventoso, in Mexico, and is perhaps the very rose of which the unhappy Guatimozin thought when writhing on his bed of burning charcoal.
These are some of the species yet known to belong peculiarly to the western hemisphere; but it is highly probable that many others remain still to be discovered. When we remember the prodigality with which nature lavishes her gifts, we cannot believe that while France alone possesses twenty-four varieties of roses, all described by De Candolle in hisFlore Française, the great American continent owns but fifteen.
We will commence our European rose search in that most unpromising of all spots, Iceland; there, where volcanic fire and polar ice seem to dispute possession of the unhappy soil. So scarce is every kind of vegetation in this rude clime, that the miserable inhabitants are frequently compelled to feed their cows, sheep, and horses on dried fish. And yet even here, growing from the fissures of the barren rocks, a solitary cup-shaped rose opens its pale petals to the transient sunbeams of summer. This hardy little plant is, as its name,rosa spinosissima, indicates, covered all over with prickles. Its cream-colored flowers, numerous and solitary, are sometimes tinged with pink on the outside, and its fruit, at first red, becomes perfectly black when ripe.
In Lapland, too, a country almost as disinherited by nature as Iceland, the pretty little May rose (rosa maïalis) expands its bright red corolla even before the tardy sun has melted away all the snow that has covered it during nine long months. A little later on, in the full blush of the short summer, "when the pine has a fringe of softer green," the Lapp maidens gather the blood-red flowers of therosa rubellaamong the stunted trees whose parasitical mosses and lichens afford a scanty nourishment to the flocks of reindeer, sole riches of the land.
The May rose is also found in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, together with the cinnamon rose (rosa cinnamomea,) and several other species.
England claims ten indigenous roses, many of them, however, exceedingly difficult to distinguish from each other. The most common is the dog-rose or Eglantine, found in every hedge and thicket, and very precious to rose-cultivators, its elegant, straight, vigorous stems being admirable for receiving grafts. The light pink corolla is slightly perfumed. In olden times the scarlet fruit was made into conserve, and highly esteemed in tarts, but it seems now to be abandoned to the birds. Therosa arvensis, a small shrub with long trailing branches and white flowers, and the burnet-leaved rose, which resembles therosa spinosissimaof Iceland, are also very frequently met. But the pride of the southern counties is therosa rubiginosa, the true sweet-briar, with deep pink petals and leaves of the most delicious fragrance; a flower that seems to belong as peculiarly to the soft English spring as the primrose and violet, and like them to be emblematic of the English girl, delicate in her beauty, modest and retiring in her garb and manners, and diffusing around her an atmosphere of gentle sweetness. Such, at least, was the English girl five-and-twenty years ago; it is said that hoops and boots and croquet have produced strange changes. Alas! that simplicity and modesty and sweetness should ever go out of fashion.
In the Scotch fir-woods is found the rose with rolled petals, (rosa involuta.) The large flowers are red and white, and the remarkably sombre leaves when rubbed between the fingers give forth a strong smell of turpentine, an odor the plant has probably acquired from the resinous trees that shelter it. All the rugged mountains of Scotland possess their roses; therosa sabini, with clustering flowers, and the villous or hairy rose, (rosa villosa,) with white or deep red, are the most worthy of notice.
It is only in the environs of Belfast that we encounter the Irish rose, (rosa hibernica,) a species somewhat resembling both thespinosissimaand thecanina. The other roses of beautiful Ireland are identical with those of England.
The fields and forests of France have been richly endowed with nature's favorite flower. Our now well-known friendcaninaflourishes there also in every hedge and by every wood-side, together with a pretty white rose, (rosa alba,) which has been very successfully cultivated in gardens. The smiling hill-sides around Dijon are gay with the lovely little crimson double flowers of the rose of Champagne, (rosa parviflora;) and, in the south, the yellow rose (rosa eglantaria) and its varieties surpass all others in the richness of their coloring; their petals sometimes gleaming with the brightest gold, sometimes deepening into a brilliant orange red, sometimes reproducing both hues in vivid flecks and streaks. The woods of Auvergne are bedecked with the small red solitary corollas of the cinnamon rose, (rosa cinnamomea,) so called from the color of its stalks; and in the department of the eastern Pyrenees the musk-rose blooms spontaneously in magnificent corymbs. This exquisitely scented species is also extensively cultivated for its aromatic essential oil; one of its kindred is the nutmeg rose, a pretty flower that smells of the spice.
The Province rose, so often remarkable for its variegated petals of white, crimson, and pink, is a variety of the rose of France, (rosa gallica,) a species that has given horticulturists a great number of beautiful offshoots.
Crossing the Pyrenean mountains, we again meet with the musk-rose, but this time in close companionship with the rose of Spain, (rosa hispanica,) whose bright red petals expand in the month of May.
In the Balearic Islands the climbing branches of the evergreen rose (rosa semper-virens,) are seen constantly arrayed in lustrous green leaves mingled with innumerable white perfumed flowers. This beautiful rose is also found in other parts of the south of Europe, and in Barbary.
We have already mentioned Polin's rose, a sweet Italian blossom which never strays from the foot of Monte Baldo, in the neighborhood of Verona. Its large crimson corollas open in handsome clusters.
Sicily and Greece possess the gluey rose, (rosa glutinosa,) a small, red, solitary flower, with glandular, viscous leaflets.
Germany is poorer in native roses than any other part of Europe; nevertheless nowhere do the blossoms of the field-rose display such beauty, unless, indeed, among the mountains of Switzerland. Nowhere else are they so large, so deeply tinted, anddouble. Germany also gives birth to the curious turbinated rose, (rosa turbinata,) whose double corolla rests on a top-shaped ovary.
The whole chain of the Alps abounds with roses. The field-rose, and the ruby-red Alpine rose, (rosa alpina,) an elegant shrub which has contributed many esteemed varieties to our gardens, bloom in admirable luxuriance in every forest glade and mountain dingle; while the red-leaved rose, (rosa rubrifolia,) with red stalks and dark red petals, stands out in the summer landscape, a charming contrast to the green foliage of the surrounding trees.
The leaves of another species growing among the pines and firs of these elevated regions, the rose with prickly leaflets, (rosa spinulifolia,) emit when rubbed the same odor of turpentine that we have already noticed in therosa involutaof Scotland. It is singular to observe that the only two roses we know with this smell are both natives of pine-covered mountains.
The east has for ages been esteemed the home of flowers; almost as soon as we can lisp, we are taught that