But if there be a consistency in the errors, in like manner is there a consistency in the truths which are opposite to them. The man who believes in the peculiar doctrines will readily bow to the peculiar demands of Christianity. When he is told to love God supremely, this may startle him to whom God has been revealed in grace, and in pardon, and in all the freeness of an offered reconciliation. When told he should shut out the world from the heart, this may be impossible with him who has nothing to replace it—but not impossible with him who has found in God a sure and a satisfying portion. When told to withdraw his affections from the things that are beneath, this was laying an order of self-extinction upon the man who knows not another quarter in the whole sphere of his contemplation, to which he could transfer them—but it were not grievous to him whose view has been opened up to the loveliness and glory of the things that are above, and can there find, for every feeling of his soul, a most ample and delighted occupation. When told to look not at the things that are seen and temporal, this were blotting out the light of all that is visible from the prospect of him in whose eye there is a wall of partition between guilty nature and the joys of eternity—but he who believes that Christ has broken down this wall, finds a gathering radiance upon his soul, as he looks onward in faith to the things that are unseen and eternal. Tell a man to be holy—and how can he compass such a performance, when his alone fellowship with holiness is a fellowship of despair? It is the atonement of the cross, reconciling the holiness of the lawgiver with the safety of the offender, that hath opened the way for a sanctifying influence into the sinner’s heart, and he can take a kindred impression from the character of God now brought nigh, and now at peace with him.
Separate the demand from the doctrine, and you have either a system of righteousness that is impracticable, or a barren orthodoxy. Bring the demand and the doctrine together, and the true disciple of Christ is able to do the one through the other strengthening him. The motive is adequate to the movement, and the bidden obedience of the gospel is not beyond the measure of his strength, just because the doctrine of the gospel is not beyond the measure of his acceptance. The shield of faith, and the hope of salvation, and the Word of God, and the girdle of truth—these are the armor that he has put on; and with these the battle is won, and the eminence is reached, and the man stands on the vantage ground of a new field and a new prospect. The effect is great, but the cause is equal to it—and stupendous as this moral resurrection to the precepts of Christianity undoubtedly is, there is an element of strength enough to give it being and continuance in the principles of Christianity.
The object of the gospel is both to pacify the sinner’s conscience, and to purify his heart; and it is of importance to observe that what mars one of these objects, mars the other also. The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one; and by the love of what is good, to expel the love of what is evil. Thus it is, that the freer the gospel, the more sanctifying the gospel; and the more it is received as a doctrine of grace, the more will it be felt as a doctrine according to godliness. This is one of the secrets of the Christian life, that the more a man holds of God as a pensioner, the greater is the payment of service that he renders back again. On the tenure of “Do this and live,” a spirit of fearfulness is sure to enter; and the jealousies of a legal bargain chase away all confidence from the intercourse between God and man; and the creature striving to be square and even with his Creator, is, in fact, pursuing all the while his own selfishness instead of God’s glory, and with all the conformities which he labors to accomplish, the soul of obedience is not there, the mind is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed under such an economy ever can be. It is only when, as in the gospel, acceptance is bestowed as a present, without money and without price, that the security which man feels in God is placed beyond the reach of disturbance, or that he can repose in him, as one friend reposes in another, or that any liberal and generous understanding can be established betwixt them—one party rejoicing over the other to do him good—the other finding that the truest gladness of his heart lies in the impulse of agratitude, by which it is awakened to the charms of a new moral existence. Salvation by grace—salvation on such a footing is not more indispensable to the deliverance of our persons from the hand of justice, than it is to the deliverance of our hearts from the chill and the weight of ungodliness.
Retain a single shred or fragment of legality with the gospel, and you raise a topic of distrust between man and God. You take away from the power of the gospel to melt and to conciliate. For this purpose, the freer it is, the better it is. That very peculiarity which so many dread as the germ of Antinomianism, is in fact the germ of a new spirit, and a new inclination against it. Along with the light of a free gospel, does there enter the love of the gospel, which in proportion as you impair the freeness, you are sure to chase away. And never does the sinner find within himself so mighty a moral transformation, as when under the belief that he is saved by grace, he feels constrained thereby to offer his heart a devoted thing, and to deny ungodliness.
To do any work in the best manner, you would make use of the fittest tools for it. And we trust that what has been said may serve in some degree for the practical guidance of those who would like to reach the great moral achievement of our text—but feel that the tendencies and desires of nature are too strong for them. We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our heart, than to keep in our heart the love of God—and no other way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God, than building ourselves up on our most holy faith. That denial of the world which is not possible to him that dissents from the gospel testimony, is possible, even as all things are possible to him that believeth. To try this without faith, is to work without the right tool or the right instrument. But faith worketh by love; and the way of expelling from the heart the love that transgresseth the law, is to admit into its receptacles the love which fulfilleth the law.
Conceive a man to be standing on the margin of this green world; and that, when he looked toward it, he saw abundance smiling upon every field, and all the blessings which earth can afford scattered in profusion throughout every family, and the light of the sun sweetly resting upon all the pleasant habitations, and the joys of human companionship brightening many a happy circle of society—conceive of this as being the general character of the scene upon one side of his contemplation; and that on the other, beyond the verge of the goodly planet on which he was situated, he could descry nothing but a dark and fathomless unknown. Think you that he would bid a voluntary adieu to all the brightness and all the beauty that were before him on earth, and commit himself to the frightful solitude away from it? Would he leave its peopled dwelling places, and become a solitary wanderer through the fields of nonentity? If space offered him nothing but a wilderness, would he abandon the homebred scenes of life and of cheerfulness that lay so near, and exerted such a power of urgency to detain him? Would not he cling to the regions of sense, and of life, and of society?—and shrinking away from the desolation that was beyond it, would not he be glad to keep his firm footing on the territory of this world, and to take shelter under the silver canopy that was stretched over it?
But if, during the time of his contemplation, some happy island of the blest had floated by; and there had burst upon his senses the light of its surpassing glories, and its sounds of sweeter melody; and he clearly saw that there a purer beauty rested upon every field, and a more heartfelt joy spread itself among all the families; and he could discern there a peace, and a piety, and a benevolence, which put a moral gladness into every bosom, and united the whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each other, and with the beneficent Father of them all. Could he further see that pain and mortality were there unknown, and above all, that signals of welcome were hung out, and an avenue of communication was made for him, perceive you not, that what was before the wilderness, would become the land of invitation; and that now the world would be the wilderness? What unpeopled space could not do, can be done by space teeming with beatific scenes and beatific society. And let the existing tendencies of the heart be what they may to the scene that is near and visible around us, still, if another stood revealed to the prospect of man, either through the channel of faith, or through the channel of his senses—then, without violence done to the constitution of his moral nature, may he die unto the present world, and live to the lovelier world that stands in the distance, away from it.
Quiet and fair in tone; condensed to the last point, and still perfectly clear; written in such pure English that the youngest reader can understand, yet free from an affectation of baby talk, which is often considered indispensable in children’s books—the “Young Folks’ History of the United States” makes a refreshing contrast to the kind of school book with which Abbott and Loomis, and men of their stamp have inundated the country. Not that these latter, in spite of bombast and dryness, may not have served a purpose in their day and generation, no better men having come forward heretofore, but that a more thoughtful and scientific age demands better work.—Scribner’s Monthly.
Quiet and fair in tone; condensed to the last point, and still perfectly clear; written in such pure English that the youngest reader can understand, yet free from an affectation of baby talk, which is often considered indispensable in children’s books—the “Young Folks’ History of the United States” makes a refreshing contrast to the kind of school book with which Abbott and Loomis, and men of their stamp have inundated the country. Not that these latter, in spite of bombast and dryness, may not have served a purpose in their day and generation, no better men having come forward heretofore, but that a more thoughtful and scientific age demands better work.—Scribner’s Monthly.
In “Back-Log Studies” there are, no doubt, some essentially inartistic things—some long episodes; for example, such as the “New Vision of Sin” and the “Uncle in India,” which are clearly inferior in texture to the rest, and not quite worth the space they occupy; but, as a whole, the book is certainly a most agreeable contribution to the literature of the Meditative school. And it is saying a great deal to say this. To make such an attempt successful there must be a lightness of touch sustained through everything; there must be a predominant sweetness of flavor, and that air of joyous ease which is often the final triumph of labor. There must also be a power of analysis, always subtle, never prolonged; there must be description, minute enough to be graphic, yet never carried to the borders of fatigue; there must also be glimpses of restrained passion, and of earnestness kept in reserve. All these are essential, and all these the “Back-Log Studies” show. If other resources were added—as depth of thought, or powerful imagination, or wide learning, or constructive power—they would only carry the book beyond the proper ranks of the Meditative school, and place it in that higher grade of literature to which Holmes’ “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” belongs. Yet it may be better not to insist on this distinction, for it is Mr. Warner himself who wisely reminds us that “the most unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism is that of comparison.”
It is as true in literature as in painting that “it is in the perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to immortality is made.” The first and simplest test of good writing is in the fresh and incisive phrases it yields; and in this respect “Back-Log Studies” is strong. The author has not only the courage of his opinions, but he has the courage of his phrases, which is quite as essential. What an admirable touch, for instance, is that where Mr. Warner says that a great wood-fire in a wide kitchen chimney, with all the pots and kettles boiling and bubbling, and a roasting spit turning in front of it, “makes a person as hungry as one of Scott’s novels!” Fancy the bewilderment of some slow and well-meaning man upon encountering that stroke of fancy; his going over it slowly from beginning to end, and then again backward from end to beginning, studying it with microscopic eye, to find where the resemblance comes in, until at last it occurs to him that possibly there may be a typographical error somewhere, and that, with a little revision, the sentence might become intelligible! He does not know that in literature, as in life, nothing venture,nothing have; and that it often requires precisely such an audacious stroke as this to capture the most telling analogies.
There occurs just after this, in “Back-Log Studies,” a sentence which has long since found its way to the universal heart, and which is worth citing, as an example of the delicate rhetorical art of under-statement. To construct a climax is within the reach of every one; there is not a Fourth-of-July orator who can not erect for himself a heaven-scaling ladder of that description, climb its successive steps, and then tumble from the top. But to let your climax swell beneath you like a wave of the sea, and then let it subside under you so gently that your hearer shall find himself more stirred by your moderation than by your impulse; this is a triumph of style. Thus our author paints a day of winter storm; for instance, the wild snow-drifts beating against the cottage window, and the boy in the chimney-corner reading about General Burgoyne and the Indian wars. “I should like to know what heroism a boy in an old New England farm-house, rough-nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions of the old wars, did not aspire to—‘John,’ says the mother, ‘you’ll burn your head to a crisp in that heat.’ But John does not hear; he is storming the Plains of Abraham just now. ‘Johnny, dear, bring in a stick of wood.’ How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in that defile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behind every tree? There is something about a boy that I like, after all.”
I defy any one who has a heart for children to resist that last sentence. Considered critically, it is the very triumph of under-statement—of delicious, provoking, perfectly unexpected, moderation. It is a refreshing dash of cool water just as we were beginning to grow heated. Like that, it calls our latent heat to the surface by a kindly reaction; the writer surprises us by claiming so little that we concede everything; we at once compensate by our own enthusiasm for this inexplicable lowering of the demand. Like him! of course we like him—that curly-pated, rosy-cheeked boy, with his story books and his Indians! But if we had been called upon to adore him, it is very doubtful whether we should have liked him at all. And this preference for effects secured by quiet methods—for producing emphasis without the use of italics, and arresting attention without resorting to exclamation points—is the crowning merit of the later style of Mr. Warner.
Mr. Henry James, Jr., inherits from his father a diction so rich and pure, so fluent and copious, so finely shaded, yet capable of such varied service, that it is, in itself, a form of genius. Few men have ever been so brilliantly equipped for literary performance. Carefully trained taste, large acquirements of knowledge, experience of lands and races, and association with the best minds have combined to supply him with all the purely intellectual requisites which an author could desire.—Bayard Taylor.As a story-teller, we know of no one who is entitled to rank higher, since Poe and Hawthorne are gone, than Mr. James. His style is pure and finished, and marked by the nicety of expression which is so noticeable among the best French writers of fiction.—Louisville Courier-Journal.The “Portrait of a Lady” is a very clever book, and a book of very great interest. We do not know a living English novelist who could have written it.—Pall Mall Gazette.
Mr. Henry James, Jr., inherits from his father a diction so rich and pure, so fluent and copious, so finely shaded, yet capable of such varied service, that it is, in itself, a form of genius. Few men have ever been so brilliantly equipped for literary performance. Carefully trained taste, large acquirements of knowledge, experience of lands and races, and association with the best minds have combined to supply him with all the purely intellectual requisites which an author could desire.—Bayard Taylor.
As a story-teller, we know of no one who is entitled to rank higher, since Poe and Hawthorne are gone, than Mr. James. His style is pure and finished, and marked by the nicety of expression which is so noticeable among the best French writers of fiction.—Louisville Courier-Journal.
The “Portrait of a Lady” is a very clever book, and a book of very great interest. We do not know a living English novelist who could have written it.—Pall Mall Gazette.
Carlyle takes his place among the first of English, among the very first of all letter-writers. All his great merits come out in this form of expression; and his defects are not felt as defects, but only as striking characteristics and as tones in the picture. Originality, nature, humor, imagination, freedom, the disposition to talk, the play of mood, the touch of confidence—these qualities, of which the letters are full, will with the aid of an inimitable use of language—a style which glances at nothing that it does not render grotesque—preserve their life for readers even further removed from the occasion than ourselves, and for whom possibly the vogue of Carlyle’s published writings in his day will be to a certain degree a subject of wonder.
Carlyle is here in intercourse with a friend for whom, almost alone among the persons with whom he had dealings, he appears to have entertained a sentiment of respect—a constancy of affection untinged by that humorous contempt in which (in most cases) he indulges when he wishes to be kind, and which was the best refuge open to him from his other alternative of absolutely savage mockery.
It is singular, indeed, that throughout his intercourse with Emerson he never appears to have known the satiric fury which he directed at so many other objects, accepting his frienden bloc, once for all, with reservations and protests so light that, as addressed to Emerson’s own character, they are only a finer form of consideration.… Other persons have enjoyed life as little as Carlyle; other men have been pessimists and cynics; but few men have rioted so in their disenchantments, or thumped so perpetually upon the hollowness of things with the idea of making it resound. Pessimism, cynicism, usually imply a certain amount of indifference and resignation; but in Carlyle these forces were nothing if not querulous and vocal. It must be remembered that he had an imagination which made acquiescence difficult—an imagination haunted with theological and apocalyptic visions. We have no occasion here to attempt to estimate his position in literature, but we may be permitted to say that it is mainly to this splendid imagination that he owes it. Both the moral and the physical world were full of pictures for him, and it would seem to be by his great pictorial energy that he will live.
His great, his inestimable merit was a complete appreciation of reality. This gift is not rare in the annals of English fiction; it would naturally be found in a walk of literature in which the feminine mind has labored so fruitfully. Women are delicate and patient observers; they hold their noses close, as it were, to the texture of life. They feel and perceive the real (as well as the desirable), and their observations are recorded in a thousand delightful volumes. Trollope therefore, with his eyes comfortably fixed on the familiar, the actual, was far from having invented agenre, as the French say; his great distinction is that, in resting there, his vision took in so much of the field. And then hefeltall common, human things as well as saw them; felt them in a simple, direct, salubrious way, with their sadness, their gladness, their charm, their comicality, all their obvious and measurable meanings.
He is predominantly a painter of social, as distinguished from popular life, and when the other day he collected some of his drawings into a volume, he found it natural to give them the title of “English Society at Home.” He looks at the “accomplished” classes more than at the people, though he by no means ignores the humors of humble life. His consideration of the peculiarities of costermongers and “cadgers” is comparatively perfunctory, as he is too fond of civilization and of the higher refinements of the grotesque. His colleague, the frank and as the metaphysicians say, objective, Keene, has a more natural familiarity with the British populace. There is a whole side of English life, at which du Maurier scarcely glances—the great sporting element, which supplies half of their gayety and all their conversation to millions of her Majesty’s subjects. He is shy of the turf and of the cricket field; he only touches here and there upon the river. But he has made “society” completely his own—he has sounded its depths, explored its mysteries, discovered and divulged its secrets. His observation of these things is extraordinarily acute, and his illustrations, taken together, form a complete comedy ofmanners, in which the same personages constantly re-appear, so that we have the sense, indispensable to keenness of interest, of tracing their adventures to a climax. So many of the conditions of English life are picturesque (and, to American eyes, even romantic), that du Maurier has never been at a loss for subjects. We mean that he is never at a loss for pictures. English society makes pictures all round him, and he has only to look to see the most charming things, which at the same time have the merit that you can always take the satirical view of them.
He is equal as an artist to the best French writers. His books are not only artistically fine, but morally wholesome.—Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes.The great body of the cultivated public has an instinctive delight in original genius, whether it be refined or sensational. Mr. Howells’s is eminently refined. His humor, however vivid in form, is subtle and elusive in its essence. He depends, perhaps, somewhat too much on the feelings of humor in his readers to appreciate his own. He has the true Addisonian touch; hits his mark in the white, and instead of provoking uproarious laughter, strives to evoke that satisfied smile which testifies to the quiet enjoyment of the reader. His humor is the humor of a poet.—E. P. Whipple.Mr. Howells has been compared to Washington Irving for the exquisite purity of his style, and to Hawthorne for a certain subtle recognition of a hidden meaning in familiar things. A more thoroughly genial writer, certainly, we have not, nor one more conscientious in the practice of his art.—Scribner’s Monthly.
He is equal as an artist to the best French writers. His books are not only artistically fine, but morally wholesome.—Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes.
The great body of the cultivated public has an instinctive delight in original genius, whether it be refined or sensational. Mr. Howells’s is eminently refined. His humor, however vivid in form, is subtle and elusive in its essence. He depends, perhaps, somewhat too much on the feelings of humor in his readers to appreciate his own. He has the true Addisonian touch; hits his mark in the white, and instead of provoking uproarious laughter, strives to evoke that satisfied smile which testifies to the quiet enjoyment of the reader. His humor is the humor of a poet.—E. P. Whipple.
Mr. Howells has been compared to Washington Irving for the exquisite purity of his style, and to Hawthorne for a certain subtle recognition of a hidden meaning in familiar things. A more thoroughly genial writer, certainly, we have not, nor one more conscientious in the practice of his art.—Scribner’s Monthly.
“Hullo!” he cried, with a suddenness that startled the boy, who had finished his meditation upon Bartley’s trowsers, and was now deeply dwelling on his boots. “Do you like ’em? See what sort of a shine you can give ’em for Sunday-go-to-meeting-to-morrow-morning.” He put out his hand and laid hold of the boy’s head, passing his fingers through the thick red hair. “Sorrel-top!” he said with a grin of agreeable reminiscence. “They emptied all the freckles they had left into your face—didn’t they, Andy?”
This free, joking way of Bartley’s was one of the things that made him popular; he passed the time of day, and would give and take right along, as his admirers expressed it from the first, in a community where his smartness had that honor which gives us more smart men to the square mile than any other country in the world. The fact of his smartness had been affirmed and established in the strongest manner by the authorities of the college at which he was graduated, in answer to the reference he made to them when negotiating with the committee in charge for the place he now held as editor of the EquityFree Press.… They perhaps had their misgivings when the young man, in his well-blacked boots, his grey trowsers neatly fitting over them, and his diagonal coat buttoned high with one button, stood before them with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, and looked down over his mustache at the floor, with sentiments concerning their wisdom which they could not explore; they must have resented the fashionable keeping of everything about him, for Bartley wore his one suit as if it were but one of many; but when they understood that he had come by everything through his own unaided smartness, they could no longer hesitate. One, indeed, still felt it a duty to call attention to the fact that the college authorities said nothing of the young man’s moral characteristics in a letter dwelling so largely upon his intellectual qualifications. The others referred this point by a silent look to ’Squire Gaylord. “I don’t know,” said the ’Squire, “as I ever heard that a great deal of morality was required by a newspaper editor.” The rest laughed at the joke, and the ’Squire continued: “But I guess if he worked his own way through college, as they say, that he hain’t had time to be up to a great deal of mischief. You know it’s for idle hands that the devil provides, doctor.”
“That’s true, as far as it goes,” said the doctor. “But it isn’t the whole truth. The devil provides for some busy hands, too.”
“There’s a good deal of sense in that,” the ’Squire admitted. “The worst scamps I ever knew were active fellows. Still, industry is in a man’s favor. If the faculty knew anything against this young man they would have given us a hint of it. I guess we had better take him; we shan’t do better. Is it a vote?”
Humor he has, and of the very highest order. It is as delicate as Washington Irving’s, and quite as spontaneous. But humor is hardly his predominant quality. He has all the wit of Holmes, and all the tenderness of Ik Marvel. He is often charmingly thoughtful, earnest and suggestive.—San Francisco Bulletin.There is only one other pair of microscopic eyes like his owned by an American, and they belong to W. D. Howells. These two men will ferret out fun from arid sands and naked rocks, and in one trip of a league, less or more, over a barren waste, see and hear more that is amusing and entertaining than the rest of the world will discover in crossing a continent. Such men should do our traveling for us.—Chicago Tribune.
Humor he has, and of the very highest order. It is as delicate as Washington Irving’s, and quite as spontaneous. But humor is hardly his predominant quality. He has all the wit of Holmes, and all the tenderness of Ik Marvel. He is often charmingly thoughtful, earnest and suggestive.—San Francisco Bulletin.
There is only one other pair of microscopic eyes like his owned by an American, and they belong to W. D. Howells. These two men will ferret out fun from arid sands and naked rocks, and in one trip of a league, less or more, over a barren waste, see and hear more that is amusing and entertaining than the rest of the world will discover in crossing a continent. Such men should do our traveling for us.—Chicago Tribune.
The fire on the hearth has almost gone out in New England; the hearth has gone out; the family has lost its center; age ceases to be respected; sex is only distinguished by the difference between millinery bills and tailors’ bills; there is no more toast-and-cider; the young are not allowed to eat mince pies at ten o’clock at night; half a cheese is no longer set to toast before the fire; you scarcely ever see in front of the coals a row of roasting apples, which a bright little girl, with many a dive and start, shielding her sunny face from the fire with one hand, turns from time to time; scarce are the grey-haired sires who strop their razors on the family Bible, and doze in the chimney corner. A good many things have gone out with the fire on the hearth.
I do not mean to say that public and private morality have vanished with the hearth. A good degree of purity and considerable happiness are possible with grates and blowers; it is a day of trial, when we are all passing through a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall be purified as we are dried up and wasted away. Of course the family is gone as an institution, though there still are attempts to bring up a family round a “register.” But you might just as well try to bring it up by hand as without the rallying-point of a hearth-stone. Are there any homesteads now-a-days? Do people hesitate to change houses any more than they do to change their clothes? People hire houses as they would a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to appear for a year in a little fictitious stone-front splendor above their means. Thus it happens that so many people live in houses that do not fit them. I should almost as soon think of wearing another person’s clothes as his house; unless I could let it out and take it in until it fitted, and somehow expressed my own character and taste.
It is a wonder that every New England boy does not turn out a poet, or a missionary or a peddler. Most of them used to. There is something in the heart of the New England hills to feed the imagination of the boy and excite his longing for strange countries. I scarcely know what the subtle influence is that forms him and attracts him in the most fascinating and aromatic of all lands, and yet urges him away from all the sweet delights of his home to become roamer in literature and in the world a poet and a wanderer. There is something in the soil and in the pure air, I suspect, that promises more romance than is forthcoming, and that excites the imagination without satisfying it, and begets the desire of adventure.
What John said was, that he didn’t care much for pumpkin pie; but that was after he had eaten a whole one. It seemed to him then that mince would be better. The feeling of a boy toward pumpkin pie has never been properly considered.… His elders say that the boy is always hungry; but that is a very coarse way of putting it. He has only recently come into a world that is full of good things to eat, and there is on the whole a very short time in which to eat them; at least he is told, among the first information he receives, that life is brief. Life being brief, and pie and the like fleeting, he very soon decides on an active campaign. It may be an old story to people who have been eating for forty or fifty years; but it is different with a beginner. He takes the thick and thin as it comes—as to pie, for instance. Some people do make them very thin.
The most favorably situated, and, for its extent, the most valuable region of the country was first settled by the Dutch, Hollanders and Swedes.
For some ten years there had been a trading post and small village on Manhattan Island; and, in 1623 the “Dutch West India Co.,” with a charter covering the whole coast from the Strait of Magellan to Hudson’s Bay, landed a colony of thirty families at New Amsterdam.
The first colonists were mostly Protestant refugees from Belgium, who came to America to escape the persecutions endured in their own country. A part of the colonists took up their abode at New Amsterdam; others went down the New Jersey coast, and landed on the eastern shore of the Bay of Delaware. The same year a colony of 18 families ascended the Hudson, and located at or near Albany. This was the most northern post, and was called Fort Orange.
A civil government was established for New Netherlands, in 1624, Cornelius May being the first governor.
In 1626 Peter Minuit was appointed governor, and during his administration he purchased of the native inhabitants the whole of Manhattan Island, containing more than 20,000 acres, for forty dollars.
Some settlements were also made on Long Island. The Dutch of New Amsterdam and the Pilgrims of New England were early friends, and helped each other. Both enjoyed a good degree of prosperity, and the population steadily increased.
For more than ten years the Indians, with few exceptions, received the strangers who came among them kindly and in good faith. When injured and wronged their resentment was kindled, and terribly did they avenge themselves on their enemies. The first notable instance was at Lewistown, on Delaware Bay, where Hosset, a governor of violent temper and little sagacity, seized and put to death a chief, who in some way offended him. The tribe was aroused, and assailed the place with such violence that not a man was left alive. When the next ship-load of colonists arrived, instead of a thrifty town, and friends eagerly waiting to receive them, they found but the bones of the slain, and the ashes of the homes that had sheltered them. Afterward there was not, for many years, the same sense of security; and in 1640 New Netherlands became involved in a general war with the Indians of Long Island and New Jersey, a war that, on both sides, was far from honorable, and marked with treachery, cruelty, and murders most revolting. If the whites were surprised and massacred by the Indians, there were as terrible massacres of Indians by the whites, who were, too often, the aggressors. An impartial historian says: “Nearly all the bloodshed and sorrow of those five years of war may be charged to Governor Kief. He was a revengeful, cruel man, whose idea of government was to destroy whatever opposed him.” For his headstrong course and cruelty he lost his position, and, to the great relief of the colonists, who had suffered much on his account, sailed for England. But the ship was wrecked on the coast of Wales, and the guilty governor found a grave in the sea. He was succeeded by Peter Stuyvesant, a resolute man, of more ability than most who preceded him. He, for seventeen years, managed the affairs of the colonists successfully. He conciliated the savages, settled the boundaries of his territory, and enforced the surrender of New Sweden, which became a part of his dominion. There was afterward some difficulty with the Indians, but more from a quarter whence no danger was expected. Lord Baltimore, of Maryland, claimed, under his charter, all the territory between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bay. Berkley claimed New Sweden, while Connecticut and Massachusetts were equally aggressive on the territories adjacent to their lines.
In 1664 the unscrupulous king of England, Charles II., issued patents to his brother, the Duke of York, covering the territory called New Netherlands, and more beside. It was in utter disregard of the rights of Holland, and of the West India Co., who had settled the country. No time was given for protest against the outrage. An English squadron soon appeared before New Amsterdam, and demanded the immediate surrender of the country, and the acknowledgment of the sovereignty of England. No effectual resistance could be made, and the indignant old governor, his council ordering it, had to sign the capitulation; and, on the 8th of September, 1664, the English flag was hoisted over the fort and town. The Swedish and Dutch settlements likewise capitulated, and the conquest was complete. From Maine to Georgia, in every settlement near the coast, the British flag was unfurled. This high-handed injustice, which robbed a sister state of her well earned colonial possessions, was but slightly mitigated by the fact that the armament was insufficient to enforce submission without the shedding of blood. The capitulation was on favorable terms, and with fair promises, that were never fulfilled. The government was despotic, and the people were sorely oppressed. The policy of the tyrannical governor was to tax the people till they could do nothing but think how possibly to pay the amount assessed.
In 1673, England and Holland being at war, the latter sent a small squadron to recover the possessions wrested from her in America. When the little fleet appeared before New York, the governor was absent, and his deputy, either from cowardice, or, knowing the people preferred to have it so, at once surrendered the city, and the whole province yielded without a struggle.
But the re-conquest of New York by the Dutch, gave them no permanent possession, as the war was soon closed by a treaty of peace, in which all the rights of Holland in America were surrendered.
The Dutch and Swedes again became subject to English authority. Popular government was overthrown, and the officers appointed by the crown, directly or otherwise, with few exceptions, were unjust and tyrannical. Their oppressive measures were met with resistance, and, so intense was the hatred excited, that obstructions were thrown in the way of everything that was attempted. The people, when not repelling the attacks of the French and the Indians, or carrying the war into the territory of the invaders—campaigns in which much was sacrificed and nothing gained—were in a constant struggle with the royal governors, intent on collecting the revenues and enriching themselves, but careless of the best interests of the people.
In 1681 William Penn, a man of convictions, who, with other Quakers, had suffered persecution on account of his religious convictions, obtained a charter with proprietary rights, for a large tract of American territory. Geographically its position was nearly central as regards the original colonies, but at first somewhat indefinitely bounded. In the final adjustment ofcolonial limits it was made a regular parallelogram, a small addition being made to give access to Lake Erie, and a good harbor. The average length is 310 miles; the width, 160 miles. In naming his territory the proprietor modestly omitted any allusion to himself. He suggested Sylvania, because of the extensive and almost unbroken forest. The clerk prefixed “Penn.” From this he appealed to the king, who decided the prefix should be retained; but, as a relief to the wounded modesty of the Quaker, said it would be in honor of the Admiral, his friend, and the deceased father of William. For whomever the compliment was intended, the citizens of the commonwealth have always liked the name.
The liberal plan for the government of West New Jersey, previously drawn up by Penn, was adopted, and the colonists encouraged to govern themselves. The powers conferred on him personally were never used in selfishness, or to advance his personal interests, but only to further the complete establishment of freedom, justice, and the best interests of the people.
To the Swedes and others who had settled within his territory before he took possession, he introduced himself in a way so conciliatory and assuring that their friendship was at once won. His first message as governor was an admirable document—plain, honest, sensible in its every utterance. Its brevity allows it to be printed in full. “My friends, I wish you all happiness here and hereafter. These words are to let you know that it hath pleased God, in his providence, to cast you in my lot and care. It is a business that though I never undertook before, yet God hath given me an understanding of my duty, and an honest heart to do it uprightly. I hope you will not be troubled at your change and the king’s choice; for you are now fixed at the mercy of no governor that comes to make his fortune great. You shall be governed by laws of your own making, and live a free, and if you will, a sober, industrious people.…”
Before the proprietor’s arrival, with three shiploads of Quaker colonists, his deputy, as instructed, had respected the rights of all the settlers, of whatever nationality or religious faith, and had been specially careful to cultivate friendly relations, and form treaties with the Indian tribes located in or near the territory. The offers of friendship, honestly made, were received in the same kindly spirit that prompted them, and neither fraud nor violence was feared. Not long after Penn came, a general council was called of the chiefs and sachems, anxious to see him of whom they had heard, and whose promises, reported to them, they had believed. He met them, with a few friends, unarmed as they all were, and spoke kind words by an interpreter.
It was not his object to purchase lands, or to lay down rules to govern them in trading, but honestly to assure the untutored children of the forest of his friendly purposes and brotherly affection.
The covenant then made, not written with ink, nor confirmed by any oath, was sacredly kept. No deed of violence or injustice ever marred the peace or interrupted the friendly relations of the parties. For more than seventy years, during which time the province remained under the control of the Friends, the peace was unbroken. Not a war-whoop was heard, nor any hostile demonstration witnessed in Pennsylvania.
In December, 1682, a convention was held of three days’ continuance, and all needful provision made for territorial legislation.
The generous concessions of the proprietor harmonized the views of the assembly, and the results of the convention were eminently satisfactory.
After a month’s absence, during which there was a visit to the Chesapeake, and an amicable conference with Lord Baltimore, about the boundaries of their respective provinces, Penn returned, and busied himself in locating and making a plot of his proposed capital. The beautiful neck between the Schuylkill and Delaware was wisely chosen; the land purchased of the Swedes, who had begun a settlement there, and map of the city provided. Three or four cabins were the only dwellings on the site, and the lines of the streets were indicated by marks on the trees. Thus in the woods was founded Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.
From the inception of his American enterprise, Penn showed himself a true philanthropist, not seeking his own aggrandizement, but the good of others. The oppressed and persecuted trusted him and were not disappointed. He promised them freedom, the love of which was a master passion with him, and the charter of their liberties dated at Philadelphia, and adopted by the first General Assembly, was even more generous than they expected. He conceded all the rights of legislation to the representatives of the people, reserving for himself only the right to veto any hasty and objectionable enactments of the council. His administration as executive met with much favor, and the tide of prosperity was for years unabated. Such was the condition of affairs in Pennsylvania when King James II. abdicated his throne. Penn, being a friend of the Stuarts, and having received his liberal charter from Charles II., sympathized with the fallen monarch, and, though loyal, had less confidence in William and Mary. For his sympathy and supposed adherence to the cause of the exiled king, he was persecuted, several times arrested and cast into prison. But investigations showed the suspicions of disloyalty unfounded; and his rights, so unjustly and to the great grief of his colonists, wrested from him, were fully restored. The new sovereign was a Catholic, and his fellow-communicants, like other dissenters from the Establishment, had suffered much. His anxiety to restore to them all the immunities of citizenship disposed him to listen to the logic and eloquence of the accomplished Quaker, who boldly contended for the toleration of all creeds, and the unlimited freedom of conscience. His influence during these years, in keeping up the tide of immigration to America, and especially to Pennsylvania, was something wonderful.
In 1699 he again visited his American colony, now grown into a state—the increase in population and all the resources of a prosperous community far exceeding his expectations.
In 1701, having carefully and satisfactorily arranged all his affairs in America, Penn bade a final adieu to his many friends, and returned to England. He left them, largely through the influence of his teaching and example and spirit, at peace among themselves and with all their neighbors.
About this time a measure was proposed in England that, if passed, would seriously affect the colonists in all parts of the country. The ministers formed the design of abolishing all the proprietary estates, with the view of establishing royal governments in their stead. The presence of Penn was greatly needed in England to prevent the success of this scheme, and not without much effort was the purpose defeated. It required a man of power and influence in the king’s court to do it. From this time the government, though still in Penn’s right, was administered by his deputies, some of whom disappointed him. John Evans, an ambitious man, and not true to the peace principles of the Friends, greatly troubled the province by purchasing military equipments, and attempting to organize a regiment of militia. The council and citizens protested so strongly against his proceedings as irreconcilable with the policy of Penn, that Evans was removed from the office, and another appointed. His charge to the deputies appointed had been, “You are come to a quiet land; rule for him under whom the princes of this world will one day esteem it an honor to govern in their places.” Those who heeded the charge had peace and prosperity in their borders. As proprietor of his vast possessions in America, Penn was not faultless; but his mistakes bore an amiable character. Conscious of his own integrity and freedom from cupidity, he placed too muchconfidence in the untried virtue of others, and exposed inferior men in the way of temptation to dishonesty that they were not able to resist. The rascality of his agent, Ford, whose false accounts involved the honest proprietor in debt to a large amount, well nigh accomplished his financial ruin. He was imprisoned, and after weary months of confinement was released by influential friends, who compounded with the creditors in whose power the crafty agent had placed him.
The simplicity of his Quaker habits and enthusiasm for religion seemed inconsistent with his great influence in the corrupt court of the king, and he was suspected of acting a double part—was thrice arrested, charged with treasonable intentions, and as often acquitted. But the strain was too great. His natural force abated, and the infirmities of age came on him rapidly. His acquittal, and the complete vindication of his character cast a bright light on the clouds, and its radiance gave a kind relief for the six years of feebleness and suffering that remained after life’s mission seemed mostly accomplished. The attacks of enemies and contemporary rivals are more readily condoned. But the abortive attempt of Lord Macaulay to asperse the character of the deceased governor, whose enterprise in the New World eclipsed all others, reflects little honor on the name of the great historian. Certainly the great Quaker’s record on this side of the Atlantic can never be tarnished, and his principles of liberty and equality are better understood and appreciated by American freemen.
The colonial possessions of Penn were bequeathed to his three sons, by whom, and their deputies, the government was administered until the American Revolution. Afterward, in 1779, the entire claim of the Penn family to the soil and jurisdiction of the state, was purchased by the legislature for a hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling. The early history of the Keystone state is one of special interest and pleasure. The reader lingers over it because it recounts bloodless victories, and the triumph of kindness and right over violence and wrong.
When nations grow mercenary and grasping, the strong justifying their aggressions and conquests by the false plea that success, and the probable hereafter of the conquered races justify their assaults, the early annals of Penn’s state will stand a perpetual protest against fraud and violence, however successful for a time. Might does not make right, even when the highest civilization confronts the lowest barbarism. Even savages had rights that the most cultured Englishmen were bound to respect.
The brotherhood of man includes those of lowest estate. So thought the founder of the great state that bears his name. With his charter in hand he fearlessly plunged into the vast wilderness, saying, “I will here found a free colony for all mankind.” The words had the true ring, and the asylum was opened for men of every nation who loved liberty and hated the oppressor’s wrongs. And it was a most fitting thing that the “bells of his capital should ring out the first glad notes of American independence.”
Every philanthropist must take satisfaction in the founding of the colony in Georgia; for, perhaps beyond any other, it had its origin in the spirit of pure benevolence. The unfortunate debtor in England was by the laws liable to imprisonment; and thousands were, for this cause alone, languishing in prisons. The miserable condition of debtors and their desolate families, was at length thrust on the attention of Parliament. In 1728 a commission was appointed to inquire into the state of the poor, and report measures of relief. The work was accomplished, the jails thrown open, and the prisoners returned to their families. But, though liberated, they and their friends were in no condition to maintain themselves respectably in the land of their birth. There was a land beyond the sea where debt was not a crime, and poverty not necessarily a disgrace. To provide somewhere a refuge for the poor of England, and the distressed Protestants of other countries, the commission appealed to George II. for the privilege of planting a colony of such persons in America. A charter was issued giving the desired territory to a corporation, for twenty-one years,to be held in trust for the poor. In honor of the king the new province was named Georgia. The high-souled philanthropist who initiated and went steadily forward in this enterprise was James Oglethorpe. Born a loyalist, educated at Oxford, a high churchman, a soldier, a member of Parliament, benevolent, generous, full of sympathy, and far-sighted in comprehending the results of his enterprise, he sacrificed much, giving the best position of a life so full of energy and promise to the noble charity of providing homes for the poor, under such conditions that the largest benefit could be received by them without any sense of degradation. Ridpath says: “The magnanimity of the enterprise was heightened by the fact that he did not believe in the equality of men, but only in the duty of the strong to protect the weak, and sympathize with the lowly. Oglethorpe was the principal member of the corporation, and to him the personal leadership of the first colony planted on the banks of the Savannah was naturally intrusted. His associations were with cultured people, and his refined tastes would be subjected to some crucial tests by the rude scenes in the wilderness, and his association with unlettered men. But he was not a man to shirk responsibility, and promptly determined to share the privations, hardships, and dangers of his colony.
“With one hundred and twenty emigrants, in January, 1735, he safely reached the coast, proceeded up the river, and selected, for the site of his first settlement, the high bluff on which Savannah was built. There, amidst the pines, was soon seen a village of tents and rude dwellings, the nucleus of the fine city, intended for the capital of a new commonwealth, in which there would be freedom of conscience and no imprisonment for debt.”
[End of Required Reading for April.]