Then, think of the career that lies ahead of this regenerated nation. This war, fearful and costly as it is, was needed, to rouse men and women to the conviction that there is something more in a people's life than can be counted in dollars and cents; and that their strength consists not alone in commercial superiority or material development, but, principally, in virtue, justice, righteousness. It was needed, to give the lie to that impious and infidel assumption of the South thatCotton is king, and to prove that the God of this heaven-protected land is a true and jealous God, who will not give his glory to Baal. It was needed, to arrest the nation in the fearful mechanical tendency it was assuming, whereby it was near denying the most holy and vital principles of its being; and it was needed, to warm and quicken the almost dead patriotism of the masses, and to educate them anew in the high and pure sentiments they had suffered to be forgotten, and, in forgetting which, many another ration has gone to irretrievable decay and ruin.
I trust in God that this people have not suffered many things in vain, and that the time is dawning when we shall be anationindeed, a Christian nation, built upon those eternal ideas of truth, justice, right, charity, holiness, which would make us the ideal nation of the earth, dwelling securely under the very smile and benediction of Jehovah.
In this time of which I speak, the people will see that to be anationwe must not be merely servile imitators of Old World ideas, but must develop our ownAmerican ideasin every department of government and society; thus, eventually, building up a national structure which shall, which need, yield to none, but may take precedence of all.
We are too young, as yet, to have become such a nation, with its distinctive and separate features, each clearly marked and self-illustrating; butnottoo young to understand the necessity of working out our own special plan of civilization. As the American nation did not follow the course of all others, by mounting from almost impalpable beginnings up through successive stages to an assured position of national influence and greatness; so need we not imitate them in waiting for gray hairs to see ourselves possessed of a distinct national character. As we did not have to go through the slow, age-long process of originating, of developing ideas, principles, but took them ready made, a legacy from the experience of all the foregoing ages; and as our business is to apply these ideas to the problem we are set to solve, not for ourselves alone, but for the world's peoples, for aggregate humanity, so should we be neither laggard nor lukewarm in fulfilling this high trust, this 'manifest destiny.' In the developing of our special American ideas we have a great work before us—a work but begun, as yet. There is an American art—an American literature—an American society, as well as an American Government, to be shaped out of the abundant material we possess, and compacted into the enduring edifice of national renown. For what is national character, but ideas crystallized in institutions? Until we have done this—given permanency to our special ideas in our institutions—we are a nation in embryo; our manhood exists only in prophecy.
To assist in this mighty work is the duty and privilege of American women. What higher ambition could actuate their endeavors—what nobler meed of glory win their aspirations?
O ye women, dear American sisters, whoever you are, who have offered up your husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, on the red altar of your country, that so that country may be rescued from the foes that seek her honor and life; who have labored and toiled and spent your efforts in supplying the needs of her brave defenders; whose hearts and prayers are all for the success of our holy cause; who are glad with an infinite joy at her successes, and who are sorry with profoundest grief at her defeats; complete, I implore you, the sacrifice already begun, and give to your regenerated country, in the very dawn of the new day which is to see her start afresh upon the shining track of national glory, yourselves, your best energies, and affections. Love liberty—love justice—love simplicity—love truth and consistency. See to it that the cause of republican freedom suffer not its greatest drawback from your failure to lead society up to the point to which you have the power to educate it. By your office as the natural leaders and educators of society; by your mission as the friends and helpers of all who suffer; by your high privilege as the ordained helpmate of man in the work, under God and His truth, of evangelizing the world, and lifting it out of its sin and sorrow; by your obligations to the glorious principles of Christian republicanism; and by your hopes of complete ultimate enfranchisement, I adjure you. The world has need of you, the erring, sin-struck world. Your country, even now struggling in the throes of its later birth, has desperate need of you. Man has need of you; already are being woven between the long-estranged sexes new and indissoluble bonds of union,—sympathies, beautiful, infinite, deathless; and, with a pleased and tender smile of recognition across the continent, he hails youhelper! Your era dawns in sad and sombre seeming, indeed, in a land deluged with fraternal blood; but yours are all who need, all who sin, all who suffer. Shall the progress of humanity wait upon your supineness, or neglect, or refusal? Or shall the era now beginning, through you speedily culminate into the bright, perfect day of your country's redemption, and thus lead progress and salvation throughout the nations of the earth? Never were women so near the attainment of woman's possibilities as we American women; never so near the realization of that beautiful ideal which has ever shaped the dreams and colored the visions of mankind, making Woman the brightest star of man's love and worship.
Will she realize the dream—will she justify the worship? That is the question that concerns her now.
It is not often in these dark days that I can sleep as I used to do before the flood came and swept away all that my soul held dear; but last night, I was so weary in body with a long journey, that I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, and slept on until the early morning sun came in through the open window, and woke me with its gentle touch. The air was sweet with spring fragrance, and the first sound that came to my awakened ears was the song of a little wren, a little wren who sang even as to-day in the days of my youth and joy, whose nest is built over the window that was so often a frame for that dearest-loved face. The song brought with it the recollection of all the little songster had outlived—the love, hope, and fear that had sprung up and grown and died, since I had first heard his warbling. And I broke into those quiet tears that are now my only expression of a grief too familiar to be passionate.
To-day is the first of June—a year to-day since all was over!
Three years ago, this very day, was to have been my wedding day. June and its roses were made for lovers, as surely as May, with its May flowers and little lilies, is the month of Mary the Blessèd. I had always wished to be married in June, and circumstances combined to render that time more convenient than any other. My love affair had been a long one, and had met with no obstacles. Our families had always been intimate, and I rememberhima boy of fourteen, when he first came to live in the house opposite. At sixteen he went to West Point, and when he came home in his furlough year, I was fifteen. We were both in Washington until August; it was a long session; his father was in Congress, and so was mine. Edward Mayne had nothing to do that summer, and I never had much to occupy me; we saw each other every day, and so we fell in love. The heads of both families saw all, smiled a little, and teased a good deal; but no one interfered. My mother said it gave me occupation and amusement, and helped me to pass the long summer evenings, which I thought charming, and every one else thought a bore. It was called a childish flirtation, and when he went back to the Academy, and I to school, the thing dropped out of notice, and was soon forgotten.
But not by us. We remembered each other, and, each in our different lives, we were constant to our early love. And so it came to pass that, when he came back again, after graduating, we were very glad to see each other; the old intercourse was renewed, and the old feeling showed itself stronger for the lapse of years. No one interfered with us; the intimacy between our families had continued, and when we went to the seaside for the hot months, the Maynes went to the same place; and in August Edward had a leave, and came down to join them. I think he would have come if they had not been there, but that makes no difference now. One moonlit night, at the end of August, with the waves at our feet sounding their infinite secret, I promised to marry him; and as we parted that night at the door of our cottage, I looked at the silver-streaked waters, and said to him that neither the broad sea of death nor the stormy sea of life should ever part my soul from his. I have kept my word.
So we were engaged to be married, and were as happy as two young lovers ought to be. Both families were delighted, my father only stipulating that the marriage should not take place immediately. But that we felt no hardship, as Edward was stationed in Washington; and everything in the future looked as bright as everything in the past had ever been. We were sure of a happy winter, and hoped for a gay one, and we had both, though the cloud that had first appeared when the little wren began his summer song, had grown larger and darker day by day, until the signs of storm were no longer to be overlooked, and the fearful prophesied that the day of peace was over. Still I never dreamed of the difference it would make to me.
New Tear's Eve it was decided that we should be married on the first of June. As the clock struck twelve, and the last footfall of the old year died away, Edward put out his hand to take mine, and said:
'A happy New Tear it will surely be to us, my Laura, for we shall spend more than half of it together;' and I echoed his 'happy New Year' without a dread. I knew the storm was coming; I feared its fury; but I thought myself too secure, too near a haven to be lost; how could I know that the brave ship was destined to go down in sight of land?
And yet I might have known it. For I came from the North, which was, and is my home; and he was a Southern man. His family owned property and slaves in Georgia; and, though Mr. Mayne's political career had prevented their living there much, they considered it their home. One of the sons, who was married, lived on the plantation, and managed it well; the slaves were comparatively happy, and there were strong ties between them, their master and his family. My sister, who was delicate, had spent a winter in Florida, and I had accompanied her there. On our way home we paid a visit to the Mayne plantation; my sister enjoyed herself very much there, and was pro-slavery from that time; I was then sixteen, and had always hated it, and what with my fears of snakes, and my dislike of the black servants, whom I thought either inefficient or impertinent, and my unconquerable liking for freedom, I was not so fascinated. Edward Mayne himself did not like a planter's life, and he thought slavery an evil, but an evil inherited and past curing. He argued that the disease was not mortal and endurable, and that it would kill the country to use the knife. His youngest sister and I were the only two who ever discussed the subject; she talked a great deal of nonsense, and probably I did, too; and as she always lost her temper, I thought it wiser to let the subject drop, especially as I did not think about it a great deal, and it annoyed Edward to have any coolness between Georgy and me, and he himself never discussed the topic. We were both very young and very happy, too young and thoughtless to care much for any great question, so we sang our little song of happiness, and its music filled our ears until it was no longer possible not to hear the tumult of the world without.
The first day of January was our last day of perfect peace. Those who had not thought of the question before had now to answer what part they meant to take. People discussed less what States would secede, and more what they would themselves do, and many who are now most firm on one side or the other were then agitated by doubt and indecision. Events did not tarry for individual minds. We all know the story now; I need not repeat it. Still my future seemed unchanged, and I went to New York the third of January to order my wedding clothes, but I stayed only three or four days; I was restless for the continued excitement of Washington. The day I came back Mississippi seceded, and with it went Mr. Davis. I heard him make that farewell speech which so few listened to unmoved, and at which I cried bitterly. I went to say good by to him, though I could not say God speed, for already I was beginning to know that I had principles, and which side theywere on. As we parted, he said, in that courteous way that has made so many bow at his shrine:
'We shall have you in the South very soon, Miss Laura,' and I did not say no; but the mist lifted suddenly before my eyes, and I saw the rock on which my life was to split, and that no striving against the stream would avail me aught. Still I said nothing, and the days flew swiftly by on restless wings; days so full of excitement that they seemed to take years with them in their flight.
It was a lovely morning in February; the air had already a May softness in it, and the crocuses were bright in the grounds of the Capitol, when Edward and I went to take our favorite walk, and there, in sight of the broad river which is now a world-known name of division, he told me he had made up his mind to leave the army; that there might be fighting, and he could not fight against his own people, whom he believed to be in the right; that he thought it more honorable to resign at that moment than to wait until the hour of need. I could not oppose him, for I knew he thought he was doing his duty. I remembered how different his opinions were from mine, and that his whole system of education had trained him in dissimilar ideas of right from those held in the North. Georgia was his country, for which he lived, and for which he thought he ought to die, if need were. The shackles of inherited prejudices trammelled his spirit, as they might have trammelled the spirit of a wiser man, who could have shaken them off in the end; but my lover was not wide-minded, and had not the clear sight that sees over and beyond these petty lives of ours that are as nothing in the way of a great principle and a God-bidden struggle; his eyes saw only what they had been taught to see—his home, in its greenness and beauty, not the dank soul-malaria, to which, alas! so many of us are acclimated.
He resigned, and his resignation was accepted without delay or difficulty, as were all resignations in those days. The spring began to break in all its glory, and the grass grew green in Virginia, on fields that were trampled and bloody before that battle summer was over. The little wren sang again its song. This year a song of promise—of promise never to be fulfilled!
For the news of Sumter came, and the North rose with a cry, and my heart leaped up within me with a thrill stronger and deeper and more masterful than any mere personal feeling can ever give; a feeling that rules my soul to-day even as it ruled in that first excited hour.
Edward went South, and I let him go alone. I could not, I would not go with him. I had no sympathy, no tenderness, scarcely forgiveness for the men who had brought the evil upon us. We parted lovers, hoping for days of peace, and sure of reunion when those days should come; and every night and every morning I prayed for him; but first I prayed for the safety of my country, and the victory of our cause.
Time crept on. The battle of Bull Run was fought; he was engaged in it, and for many, many days I never knew whether he was living or dead. In the autumn I heard he had been ordered West, and that winter was a time of anxious days and restless nights. I never heardfromhim, and I did not think it fair to write; occasionally I heardofhim through an aunt of his, who lived in Maryland, but she was gall and bitterness itself on the political question, and never let me know anything she could possibly keep from me. So my life passed in fruitless wondering and bitter suspense; I never saw a soldier without thinking of Edward, and my dreams showed him to me wounded, ill, or dying. No; the dead may make their voices heard across the gulf that parts us from them, but not the absent, or his soul wouldhave heard my 'exceeding loud and bitter cry,' and hearing, must have come.
I must not dwell on this. The days rolled on, and spring brightened the air, the grass was green again, the dying hope in my heart revived, and I listened again to the wren's song, and thought it yet promised a summer for my life. But that was the year of the Peninsular campaign, and the dying leaves fell on the graves of our bravest and brightest, and the autumn wind sighed a lamentation in our ears, and our hearts were mourning bitterly for the defeats of the summer, and no less bitterly for the dear-bought glory of Antietam. And winter came again: hope fled with the swallows, and my youth began to leave me.
In the late autumn I went to New York, to pay a visit to a friend. One night I went with my brother to the theatre. The play was stupid, and theentr'acteswere long. In the middle of the second act, while some horrible nonsense was being talked upon the stage, I looked around the theatre, and saw no face I had ever seen before, when a lady near me moved her fan, and, a little distance beyond her, I saw—with a start I saw—the face that was never long absent from my thoughts. Changed and older, and brown and bearded; but I knew him; and he knew me, and smiled; and there was no doubt in my mind. I was not even surprised. But to the sickness of sudden joy soon succeeded the sickness of apprehension. What brought him there? And what would be done to him if he were discovered? How could I see him and speak to him? Oh! could it be possible that we might not meet more nearly! I wonder I did not die during that quarter of an hour. I turned and looked at my brother; his eyes were fixed upon the stage, and he was as curiously unmoved as if the world were still steady and firm beneath my feet.
I did not look at Edward again; I feared to betray him; and the green curtain fell, and my brother said, if I did not mind being left alone for a few minutes, he would go. He left me, and Edward came to me, and once more I saw him, and once more I heard his voice. He stayed only one moment, only long enough to make an appointment with me for the next morning, and then he left the theatre. The people around us thought probably that he was a casual acquaintance, if indeed they thought about it at all; and when my brother came back, he found me looking listless and bored, and apologized for having been detained.
I had—and still have, thank God!—a friend in whom I trusted; to her I had recourse, and it was by her help that I was enabled to keep my appointment. Only those who have known the pain of such a parting can ever hope to know the joy of such a meeting. I would like to make the rest of this as short as possible. Edward had run the blockade to see me; he had been to Washington, had stayed there three days, had heard of my absence, obtained my address, and followed me to New York; he had waited until twilight, when he had come to look at the house where I was staying; as he was walking slowly on the opposite side of the street, he had seen me come out with my brother, and had followed us to the theatre. He had trusted to his long beard and the cropping of his curly head as the most effectual disguise, and so far no one had recognized him. The only people who had known of his being in Washington were the friends with whom he stayed, the tailor who had sold him his clothes, who had a son with Stuart's cavalry, and the girl, my old school friend, who had given him my address, whom he went to see in the dusk hours of the afternoon, and who had hospitably received him in the coal cellar—which struck me, at the moment, as an infallible method of arousing suspicion. Hewanted me to return with him, or to marry him and follow him by flag of truce; he was sure Providence had made his way smooth on purpose to effect our union. His arguments were perhaps not very logical, but they almost convinced me of what I wished to believe. I was willing to bear the anger of my family, but could not think of again undergoing the wear and tear of separation. I promised to let him know my decision early the next morning; I think I should have gone with him, but that evening we were telegraphed to return to Washington—my father had been stricken down by apoplexy; and my brother and I went home in the night train. Edward knew the reason, for he read my father's death in the morning's newspaper.
Three weeks afterward I had a letter from Edward Mayne by flag of truce; that was the week before Fredericksburg; and then the agony again began. It did not last very long. In the early spring came Chancellorsville, and there Edward was slightly wounded and taken prisoner; he was removed to the hospital at Point Lookout; his aunt went to nurse him, but I did not go; he was doing very well, and I thought it was wiser not. And one day in May—ah! that day!—I was looking out of my window, and I see now the blue sky, the little white clouds, the roses, and the ivied wall that I saw when my mother came in and said Mrs. Daingerfield had come to take me to Edward, who was very ill and anxious to see me. I remember how the blood seemed to sink away from my heart, and for a moment I thought I was going to die; but in another moment I knew that I should live. I was eager and excited, and not unhappy, from that time until the end was at hand.
I had never been in a hospital before, and there was a long ward full of men, who all looked to me as if they were dying, through which I passed to reach the room in which Edward Mayne lay alone. He heard me coming, and, as I opened the door, he raised himself in bed and put out his hand to me....
That night the dreadful pain left him, and his aunt said he seemed brighter and more hopeful; but when the surgeon saw him in the morning, he shook his head. When the sun set, Edward knew that he should never again see its evening glories. Into that dark, still room came a greater than Solomon, and as the dread shadow of his wings fell on my life, I hushed my prayers and tears. We sat and watched and waited; and there came back a feeble strength into the worn frame, and he told us what he wished. He said that perhaps he had been wrong, but he had thought himself right; at least, he had given his life for his faith, and soon, soon he would know all. Then he asked them to leave him alone with me for a little while, and when they came back into the room, nothing remained of him but the cast-off mortality. The sun was rising in the east, but his soul was far beyond it; and the sunlight came in and kissed the quiet pale face, that looked so peaceful and so happy there could be no lamentation over it.
That day came his parole; the parole which we had so exerted ourselves to obtain that he might go home to get well; and now it had found him far beyond the captivity of bar or flesh—a freed spirit, 'gone up on high.'
The kindness of the Government induced us to ask one more favor, which was granted us. They let us take him home to Washington and bury him in the place he had always wished to be buried in; and some Confederate prisoners were given permission to attend his funeral. So he was buried as a soldier should be buried, borne to the grave by his comrades, and mourned by the woman dearest to him. He lies now on the sunniest slope in that green graveyard, where the waters rush near his resting place, and the trees make ashade for the daisies that brighten above him.
He died as the sun rose on the first of June; we buried him early on the morning of the fifth. That night I left Washington, glad that it was to be no longer my place of residence, glad that my family would soon follow me to make another home where I could be stung by no associations. The old house passed into the hands of my elder sister, who is married to a Congressman from the West. But during this winter I have been so often homesick, and this early spring has been so chill and bleak compared with the May days of Washington, that I was fain to come back for a brief hour; and I have chosen to come in these last May days, that the first of June might find me here, true to the memory of the past.
There is nothing left of the old days; the place is changed from what it once was; the streets swarm with soldiers and strange faces; the houses are used by Government, or are dwelt in by strangers; there is scarcely a trace in this Sodom of the Sodom before the flood. No, there is nothing left for me now, of the things I used to know, except the little wren, whose song broke my heart this morning; and there is nothing here for me to care for, except that young grave in Georgetown, whose white cross bears but the initials and the date. I must now try to make myself a new life elsewhere, and to-morrow I go forth, shaking off the dust that soils my garments; hoping for the promise of the rainbow in this storm—and sure of the strength that will not fail me. O world! be better than thy wont to thy poor, weary child! O earth! be kindly to a bruised reed! O hope! thou wilt not leave me till the end—the end for which I wait.
If the reader is so favored as to possess a copy of the 'Comparative Physiognomy' of Dr. James W. Redfield (a work long out of market, and which never had much of a sale), he may find in a chapter concerning the likeness between certain men and parrots some wise remarks on ridiculous eccentricities in literature. 'In inferior minds,' says the Doctor,'the love of originality shows itself in oddity.' 'There is many a sober innovator,' he continues, farther on,' whose delight it is to ponder
'O'er many a volume of forgotten lore,'
'O'er many a volume of forgotten lore,'
that he may not be supposed to make use of the humdrum literature of the day; who introduces obsolete words and coins new ones, and makes a patchwork of all languages; makes use of execrable phrases, and invents a style that may be called his own.' The Doctor compares these writers to parrots.
Now it is a well-known peculiarity of parrots that they have a passion for perching themselves in places where they will be on a level with the heads of the superior race whose utterances they imitate. The perch a parrot affects is almost always an altitude of about six feet, or the height of the tallest men. They feel their inferiority keenly if you leave them to hop about on the floor. It occurs to us that nothing could please a parrot more, if it could be, than a pair of stilts on which it could hop comfortably.
The literary parrot, more fortunate than his feathered fellow, finds stilts in words—obsolete words, such as men do not use in common intercourse with their fellows. Modern rhymesters moreand more affect this thing. Every day sees someoutreold word resurrected from its burial of rubbish, and set in the trochaics and spondees of love songs and sonnets. Dabblers in literature, who would walk unseen, pigmies among a race of giants, get on their word-stilts, and straightway the ear-tickled critics and the unconsciously nose-led public join in pæans of applause. Sage men, who do not exactly see through the thing, nod their heads approvingly, and remark: 'Something in that fellow!' And the delighted ladies, prone as the dear creatures often are to be pleased with jingle that they don't understand, exclaim: 'A'n't he delightful!'
The lamented Professor Alexander once produced a very excellent poem, which contained only words of a single syllable, forcibly illustrating the power of simple language. We should be glad to reproduce it here, by way of contrapose to our own accompanying poem, but cannot now recall it to memory in its completeness. Any child, who could talk as we all talk in our families, could read and understand fully the poem to which I refer. But ask any child to read the lines we have hammered out below, and tell you what they mean! Nay, ask any man to do it, and see if hecando it. Probably not one in a hundred usual readers, could 'read and translate' the word-stilts with which we have trammelled our poetic feet, except with the aid of patient and repeated communion with his English dictionary. There are, however, no words employed here which may not be found in the standard dictionaries of our tongue.
To it:
Come, ethel muse, with fluxion tip my pen,For rutilant dignotion would I earn;As rhetor wise depeint me unto men:A thing or two I ghess they'll have to learnEre they percipience can claim of what I'm upTo, in macrology so very sharp as this;Off food oxygian hid them come and sup,Until, from very weariness, they all dehisce.
Come, ethel muse, with fluxion tip my pen,For rutilant dignotion would I earn;As rhetor wise depeint me unto men:A thing or two I ghess they'll have to learnEre they percipience can claim of what I'm upTo, in macrology so very sharp as this;Off food oxygian hid them come and sup,Until, from very weariness, they all dehisce.
Delitigate me not, O reader mine,If here you find not all like flies succinous;My hand is porrect—kindly take't in thine,While modestly my caput is declinous;Nor think that I sugescent motives have,In asking thee to read my chevisance.I weet it is depectible—but do not rave,Nor despumate on me with look askance.Existimation greatly I desire;'Tis so expetible I have sad fearsThat, excandescent, you will not esquireMy meaning; see, I madefy my cheek with tears,On my bent knees implore forbearance kind;Be not retose in haught; I know 'tis sad,But get your Webster down, and you will findThat he's to blame, not I—so don't get mad!
Delitigate me not, O reader mine,If here you find not all like flies succinous;My hand is porrect—kindly take't in thine,While modestly my caput is declinous;Nor think that I sugescent motives have,In asking thee to read my chevisance.I weet it is depectible—but do not rave,Nor despumate on me with look askance.
Existimation greatly I desire;'Tis so expetible I have sad fearsThat, excandescent, you will not esquireMy meaning; see, I madefy my cheek with tears,On my bent knees implore forbearance kind;Be not retose in haught; I know 'tis sad,But get your Webster down, and you will findThat he's to blame, not I—so don't get mad!
The morning dawned. The rorid earth upon,Old Sol looked down, to do his work siccate,My sneek I raised to greet the ethe sun,And sauntering forth passed out my garden gate.A blithe specht sat on yon declinous treeBent on delection to its bark extern;A merle anear observed (it seemed to me)The work, in hopes to make owse how to learn.A drove of kee passed by; I made a stond,For fast as kee how could my old legs travel?But—immorigerous brutes!—with feet immundThey seemed to try my broadcloth garb to javel.The semblance of a mumper then I wore,Though a faldisdory before I might have graced;Eftsoons I found, when standing flames before,The mud to siccate, it was soon erased.
The morning dawned. The rorid earth upon,Old Sol looked down, to do his work siccate,My sneek I raised to greet the ethe sun,And sauntering forth passed out my garden gate.A blithe specht sat on yon declinous treeBent on delection to its bark extern;A merle anear observed (it seemed to me)The work, in hopes to make owse how to learn.
A drove of kee passed by; I made a stond,For fast as kee how could my old legs travel?But—immorigerous brutes!—with feet immundThey seemed to try my broadcloth garb to javel.The semblance of a mumper then I wore,Though a faldisdory before I might have graced;Eftsoons I found, when standing flames before,The mud to siccate, it was soon erased.
If we should turn our attention studiously to this line of literary effort, we feel encouraged to believe that our success in a field of late so popular would be marked, and that we should obtain a degree of fame herein, beside which that of the moat shining light in the stilted firmament would pale its ray. But so long as God gives us the glorious privilege of emulating the stars, we shall not seek to win a place among the 'tallow dips' of parrot-poetry.
My dear Continental:
When the meteorological question was despatched, ladies have long had a habit of calling upon their servants to furnish them with small talk; high wages, huge appetites, daintiness, laziness, breakage, impertinence, are fruitful topics which they daily treat exhaustively; always arriving at the hopeless conclusion: 'Did you ever hear of anything like it?' and 'I wonder what we are coming to!'
Is it not possible that we may be coming to—no servants at all? To me the signs seem to point that way. Cobbett said that in America public servant means master: he might add, if he were writing now, and so does private servant. Each house is divided against itself into two camps; hostile, though perhaps not in open war with each other: and Camp Kitchen has the advantage of position. Above stairs uneasy sits the employer, timid, conciliating, temporizing; seeing as little as he can, and overlooking half he sees; ready to change his habits and to subdue his tastes to suit the whims of theenemigos pagados, as the Spaniards call them, he has under his roof. Below stairs lounge the lordly employés (a charming newspaper neologism for hotel waiters, street sweepers, and railway porters), defiant, aggressive, and perfectly aware that they are masters of the situation. Daily they become more like the two Ganymedes of Griffith's boarding house: he called them Tide and Tide—because they waited on no man. They have long ceased to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, and yet they accomplish less than before the era of modern improvements. It appears to be a law of domestic economy that work is inversely as the increase of wages. Nowadays, if a housekeeper visits a prison, he envies the whiteness of the floors and the brightness of the coppers he sees there, and thinks, with a sigh, how well it might be for hissubscalaneans, if they could be made to take a course of neatness for a few months in some such an institution.
Vain wish! The future is theirs, and they know it. Their services will become gradually more worthless, until we shall find them only in grand establishments: mere appendages kept for fashion and for show; as useless as the rudimental legs of a snake, which he has apparently only to indicate the distinguished class in animated nature he may claim to belong to. We shall live to say, as Perrault sang:
'J'aperçus l'ombre d'un cocherTenant l'ombre d'une brosseNettoyant l'ombre d'un carrosse.'
'J'aperçus l'ombre d'un cocherTenant l'ombre d'une brosseNettoyant l'ombre d'un carrosse.'
Alas! I fear that even these shadows of servants will one day vanish and disappear from us altogether.
Time was when classes in society were as well defined as races still are. The currents ran side by side, and never intermingled. Some were born to furnish the blessings of life, and others to enjoy them. Some to wait, and others to be waited upon. The producing class accepted their destiny cheerfully, believed in their 'betters,' and were proud to serve them. The last eighty years have pretty much broken down these comfortable boundary lines between men. The feudal retainer, who was ready to give his life for his lord, the clever valet, who took kicks and caning as a matter of course when his master was in liquor or had lost at cards, even the old family servants, are species as extinct as the Siberian elephant, or the cave bear, or the dodo. And now the advance of the Union armies southward has destroyed thelast lingering type of the servant post: the faithful black.
In this country there never was much distinction of classes. The unwillingness of New Englandhelpto admit of any superiority on the part of their masters has furnished many amusing stories. Later, when the Irish element penetrated into every kitchen, farmyard, and stable, floating off the native born into higher stations, service became limited to immigrants and to negroes. But the immigrant soon learned the popular motto, 'I'm as good as you are,' and only remained a serving man until he could save enough money to set up for himself: not a difficult matter in the United States; and never so easy as at this moment. The demands of the Government for soldiers and for supplies threaten us with alabor faminein spite of the large immigration. In Europe labor is scarce and in demand. Commerce, manufactures, colonization have outrun the supply. Wages have doubled in England and in France within the last twenty years, and are rising. With increase of wages comes always decrease of subordination. The knowledge of reading, now becoming general, and exercised almost exclusively in cheap and worthless newspapers, and the progress of the democratic movement, which for good or for evil is destined to extend itself over the whole earth, make the working classes restless and discontented. They chafe under restraints as unavoidable as illness or death. What floods of nonsense have we not seen poured out about the conflict between labor and capital? It is the old fable over again: the strife of the members against the belly.
Gradually has sprung up the feeling that it is degrading to be a servant; a terrible lion in the path of the quiet housekeeper in search ofassistants. There may arise some day a purer and a wiser state of society, wherein the relation of master and man will be satisfactory to both. A merchant exercises a much sharper control over his clerk than over any servant in his house, and it is cheerfully submitted to. The soldier, who is worse paid and worse fed than a servant, is a mere puppet in the hands of his officers, obliged to obey the nod of twenty masters, and to do any work he may be ordered to, without the noble privilege of 'giving notice;' and yet there is never any difficulty in obtaining a reasonable supply of soldiers—because clerks and soldiers do not think themselves degraded by their positions, and servantsdo. It may be a prejudice, but it is one which drives hundreds of women, who might be fat and comfortable, to starve themselves over needlework in hovels; and often to prefer downright vice, if they can hope to conceal it, to virtue and a home in a respectable family. Any logic, you perceive, is quite powerless against a prejudice of this size and strength.
But is it altogether a prejudice? Is it not a sound view of that condition of life?
I confess that it has long been a matter of surprise to me that men should be found willing to hire themselves out for domestic service in a country where bread and meat may so easily be obtained in other ways, and where even independent manual labor is so often considered derogatory to the dignity of the native born. To do our dirty work that it disgusts us to do for ourselves, to stand behind our chairs at table, to obey our whims and caprices, to have never a moment they can call their own, to keep down their temper when we lose ours, to be compelled to ask for permission to go out for a walk, seems to me a sad existence even with good food and wages.
The fact is, my dearContinental, that the relation between master and servant has to be readjusted to suit the times. Indeed it is readjusting itself. We see the signs, although we may not perceive their significance. Our life is a dream. I use this venerablesaying in another sense than the one generally intended by it: I mean that we live half our lives, if not more, in the imagination; and that the imagination of every-day people is a dream made up of feelings brought together from the habits, theories, and prejudices of the past of all lands and all nations of men. The reality that was once in them has long since been out of them; yet these vague and shadowy fancies are all-powerful and govern our actions. So that morally we go about like maskers in the carnival, dressed in the old clothes of our ancestors. With this difference, that most of us do not see how shabby and threadbare they are, and how unsuited to our present wants. And the few who do see this have an inbred fondness for the old romantic rags, and wear some of them in spite of their better judgment. Our moneyed class cling in particular to the dream of an aristocracy, and love to look down upon somebody. The man who made his fortune yesterday calls to-day's lucky fellow anouveau richeand aparvenu. The counter jumper who has snatched his thousands from a sudden rise in stocks, is sure to invest some of his winnings in the tatters of feudalism, sports a coat of arms on his carriage, has liveries, talks of his honor as a gentleman, and expects from his servants the same respect that a baron of the Middle Ages received from his hinds. It is a dream of most baseless fabric. John and Thomas, with their dislike of the word servant, their surliness and their impudence, swing too far, perhaps, in the other direction, but they are more in unison with the spirit of the age than their masters. I have seen an ardent democrat, who had roared equal rights from many a stump, furious with the impertinence of a waiter, whose answer, if it had come from an equal, he would scarcely have noticed. And was not the waiter a man and a fellow voter? What distinction of class have we in this country? It is true that the property qualification we have discarded in our political system we have retained as our test of social position. Indeed, no abstract rights of man can make up the difference between rich and poor. But Fortune is nowhere so blind nor so busy in twirling her wheel; and our two classes are so apt to change places, that frequently the only difference between the master and the footman who stands behind him, is the difference of capital. And Europe is treading the same democratic path as ourselves, limping along after us as fast as her old legs will carry her. The time will come when the class from which we have so long enlisted recruits for ourbatteries de cuisinewill find some other career better suited to their expanded views.
What then? Do you suggest that we may lay a hand upon the colored element, after the example of our honored President? But
'While flares the epaulette like flambeauOn Corporal Cuff and Ensign Sambo,'
'While flares the epaulette like flambeauOn Corporal Cuff and Ensign Sambo,'
can you expect either of these distinguished officers to leave the service of the United States for ours? What with intelligent contrabandism, emancipation, the right of suffrage, and the right to ride in omnibuses, we fear that their domestic usefulness will be sadly impaired.
Oh for machinery! automaton flunkies, requiring only to be wound up and kept oiled! What a housekeeping Utopia! Thomson foreshadowed a home paradise of this kind when he wrote the 'Castle of Indolence:'
'You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed,Fair ranged the dishes rose and thick the glasses played.'
'You need but wish, and, instantly obeyed,Fair ranged the dishes rose and thick the glasses played.'
But as yet invention has furnished no reapers and mowers for within doors. We have only dumb waiters; poor, creaking things, that break and split, like their flesh-and-blood namesakes, and distribute the smell of the kitchen throughout the house. Heine once proposed a society to ameliorate the condition of the rich. He must have meant a model intelligence office. I wish it had been established, for we may all need its aid.
What are we to do when we come to the last of the servants? Darwin says that theFormica rufescenswould perish without its slaves; we are almost as dependent as these confederate ants. Our social civilization is based upon servants. Certainly, the refinements of life, as we understand it, could not exist Without them, and it is difficult to see how any business of magnitude could be carried on. Briareus himself could not take care of a large country place, with its stables, barns, horses, cattle, and crops, even if Mrs. B. had the same physical advantages, and was willing to help him. Must we tempt them back by still larger salaries, or increase their social consideration, telling them, as a certain clergyman once said of his order, that 'they are supported, and not hired'?—changing the word help, as we have servant, into household officer or assistant manager, or adopt a Chinese euphemism, such as steward of the table or governor of the kitchen? Fourier does something of this kind; in his system the class names of young scullions are cherubs and seraphs! Or shall we adopt the coöperative plan of Mill and others, and offer John an interest in the family—say, possibly, the position of resident son-in-law after ten years of honesty, sobriety, and industry—with a seat at table in the mean while? Or must all the work be done by women, and a proprietor have to seal his Biddiesmore sanctorumin Utah? Or might not poor relations, now confessedly nuisances, be made useful in this way? Some marquis asked Sophie Arnould why she did not discharge her stupid porter? 'I have often thought of it,' she answered, 'mais que voulez vous, c'est mon père.'
These resources failing, we must drop to the simplest form of existence: hut, hovel, or shanty; where my lord digs and is dirty, and her ladyship, guiltless of Italian, French, and the grand piano, cooks, scrubs, darns, and keeps the peace between the pigs and the children. Or else we must come to socialism, in the shape of Brook Farm communities, orphalanstères à la Fourier, or, worse than either, to mammoth hotels. American tastes incline that way. There we may live in huge gilded pens, as characterless as sheep in the flock, attended upon by waiters, chambermaids, and cooks, who will have a share in the profits, and consequently will be happy to do anything to increase the income of their house.
I see no other remedy, and I offer this great social problem to the serious thoughts of your readers.
Yours ever, G. V.
It was a frequent exclamation of Herder the Great: 'Oh, my life, that has failed of its ends!' and many of us, no doubt, find ourselves disposed to indulge in the same lament. But it deserves careful attention; no man's life fails of its true end unless through some grievous moral fault of his own.
The true end of life is that we may 'glorify God, and enjoy Him forever.' How this may be attained, as far as outward circumstances or activities are concerned, we can hardly judge for ourselves: but there is one sure test; and that is in the duties of our station. If we honestly perform them, and especially as under the teachings of the gospel of Christ, there can be no real and permanent failure. We shall have done what we were set to do upon the earth; and with this we may well be content.
The republican government of the United States, when first originated by the fathers of the commonwealth, was regarded by the old fossil despotisms with secret dread and a strange foreboding; and neither the ridicule which they heaped upon it, nor the professed contempt wherewith its name was bandied from throne to throne, could wholly mask their trepidation. They looked upon it, in the privacy of their chambers, as the challenge of a mighty rebellion of the people against all kingly rule and administration; they saw in it the embodiment of those popular ideas of freedom, equality, and self-government, which for so many centuries had been struggling for adequate utterance in England and France, and they knew that the success of this sublime experiment must eventually break asunder the colossal bones of the European monarchies, and establish the new-born democracy upon their ruins.
That they saw truly and judged wisely in these respects, the history of modern Europe, and the current revolutions of our time, bear ample testimony. There is no luck nor chance in human events, but all things follow each other in the legitimate sequences of law. The American republic is no bastard, but a true son and heir of the ages; and sprang forth in all its bravery and promise from the mammoth loins of the very despotism which disowns and denounces it.
We have a full and perfect faith in the mission of this republic, which breaks open a new seal in the apocalypse of government, and unfolds a new phase in the destiny of mankind. Feudalism has had a sufficient trial, and, on the whole, has done its work well. After the dismemberment of the Roman Empire, we do not see how it was possible for society to have assumed any other form than that of kings and princes for rulers, and the people for passive and more or less obedient subjects. It was a great problem to be resolved how society should exist at all, and history gives us the solution of it. Despotism in politics and authority in religion was the grand, primal, leading, and executive idea of it. What learning and culture existed was confined to the guild of the ecclesiastics, and they, for the most part, ruled the rulers as well as the people, byvirtue of their intelligence. It required many centuries to usher in the dawn of unfettered thought, and generate the idea of liberty. And when at last the epoch of Protestantism arrived, and Luther, who was the exponent and historical embodiment of it, gathered to its armories the spiritual forces then extant in Europe, and overthrew therewith the immemorial supremacy of kings and priests over the bodies and souls of men, he made all subsequent history possible, and was the planter of nations, and the founder of yet undeveloped civilizations.[B]
It would, however, be by no means difficult, were it in accordance with our present design and purpose, to show that the first germ of republican liberty sprang into life amid the sedges and savage marshes of uncultivated ages, far remote even from the discovery of America, and trace it through successive rebellions, both of a political and religious character, from and before the times of Wycliffe, down to Oliver Cromwell and George Washington; for all through English history it has left a broad red mark behind it, like the auroral pathway of a conqueror. The first man who prayed without book, and denied the authority of the church over the human soul, as the brave Loilards did, was the pioneer of Protestantism and the father of all the births which ushered this mighty epoch upon the stage of the world; Protestantism, which means so much and includes so many vast emprises—establishing for freedom so grand a battle ground, and for philosophy and learning so wide and magnificent a dominion.
The same spirit which made nonconformists of the first seekers and worshippers of God apart from the churches and cathedrals of Rome, in the sublimer cathedrals of nature, when the Roman hierarchy was master of Europe—made republicans also of the first rebels who resisted the tyranny of kings. Political and religious liberty are the two sides of the democrat idea, and have always marched hand in handtogether. They culminated in England during the Commonwealth, and became thenceforth the base and dome of popular government.
The republic of America was born of this idea, and is the last great birth of Protestantism, big already with the destinies of mankind. Here, upon this mighty platform, these destinies, as we believe, have to be wrought out by their final issues, and close the drama of human development. All things are possible for America under the beneficent institutions and laws of the republic, now that the hideous skeleton of black slavery is to pollute the soil no more nor make brother war against brother any more on account of it; and at no distant period the awful conflict which at present shakes the earth with the thunder of its clashing and embattled hosts, shall give lasting place to the interchanges of commerce and the peaceful enterprises of civil life.
It was impossible that American society could hold together with this accursed African vulture eating at its heart. Nor could the aristocratic idea of the South, which slavery had interwoven through every fibre of the people, through all the forms of its social condition, and into all its State laws and institutions, exist side by side with the democratic idea of the North, without an inevitable conflict sooner or later. The present war is but a renewal of the old battles which make up the sum of history, between liberty and despotism, civilization and barbarism. No one can doubt in whose hands will be the victory; and happy will the result be for future generations.
Hitherto we have exhibited to the world the amazing spectacle of a republic which, proclaiming the freedom and equality of every one of its subjects, holds four millions of men in a terrible and appalling bondage. So frightful a mockery of freedom, perpetrated in her great name, and sanctioned by tradition and the authority of law, could not, ought not, be suffered to grin its ghastly laughter in the face of the world. And when the hour was ripe, and the doomsday of the monstrous iniquity was proclaimed aloud by the dreadful Nemesis of God, the people of the free North clothed themselves in the majesty of the nation, and rose as one man to sweep it from the soil in whirlwinds of fire and wrath.
Slavery has been an unmitigated curse to America in every one of its aspects and especially to the South, out of which it has eaten, with its revengeful and retributive teeth, all the vitalities and grandeurs of character which belong to the uncorrupted Anglo-Saxon race. It has destroyed all the incentives to industry, all self-reliance, and enterprise, and the sterner virtues and moralities of life. It has put a ban upon trade and manufactures, and a premium upon indolence. The white population—the poor white trash, as the very negroes call them—are ignorant, brutal, and live in the squalor of savages. It has driven literature and poetry, art and science, from its soil, and robbed religion of all its humanity and beauty. Worse than this, if worse be possible, it has darkened with the shadow of its apparition the minds of the Southerners themselves, and defaced their highest attributes—confounding within them the great cardinal distinctions between right and wrong, until, abandoned by Heaven, they were given over to their own lusts, and to a belief in the lie which they had created under the very ribs of the republic.
We do not speak this as partisans, nor in any spirit of enmity against the South as a political faction. It is the fact which concerns us, and which we deal with as history, and not here and now in any other sense. Nor do we blame the Southern aristocracy for riding so long on the black horse, which has at last thrown and killed them. For proud and insolent as they have ever shown themselves in their bearing toward the North, they werein reality mere pawns on the chessboard of Fate, necessary tools in working out the game of civilization on this continent. Who can calculate the sum of the divine forces which the institution of slavery, and its blasphemous reversion of the commands of the Decalogue, and all its cruel outrages and inhuman crimes, have awakened in the souls of the freemen of the North? The loathsomeness of its example and the infernal malice of its designs against liberty and truth, righteousness and justice, and whatsoever holy principles in life and government the saints, martyrs, and apostles of the ages have won for us, by their agony and bloody sweat upon scaffolds and funeral pyres—regarding them as a cheap purchase, though paid for by such high and costly sacrifices—these appalling instances, we say, have at last produced so powerful a reaction in the national mind that millions of men have marshalled themselves into avenging armies to rid the earth of their presence.
That, too, was fated and necessary, and a part of the predestined programme. The nation could not progress with this corrupting monster in its pathway; and the battle between them has not come an hour too soon. The monster must be exterminated, and that, too, without mercy and without compassion, as the sworn and implacable enemy both of God and man. Otherwise this glorious country, which has so long worn the garland and surging robe of liberty, will become a dungeon of desolation from the Atlantic to the Pacific, resounding only with the shrieks of mandrakes and the clank of chains.
This obstruction removed, there is, as we said above, no height of greatness which the American people may not reach. Then, and then only, shall we begin to consolidate ourselves into a nation, with a distinct organon of principles, feelings, and loyalties, to which the mighty heart and brain of the people shall throb and vibrate in pulsations of sublime unity. At present we are only a people in the making, and very few there are calling themselves Americans who have any idea of what America is and means in relation to history. By and by we shall all apprehend the riddle more wisely, and be more worthy of the great name we bear.
In the meanwhile it is no marvel that we are not a homogeneous people. Our time has not come for that, and may yet lie afar off in the shadowy centuries. Consider how and through what alien sources we have multiplied the original population of the associated colonies as they existed when our fathers raised them to a nationality. There is not a nation in all Europe, to say nothing of Asia and the islands, which is not represented in our blood and does not form a part of our lineage. It is true that the old type predominates, and that we have the virtues and the vices of the Anglo-Saxons in us; but we are far too individual at present, Celt and Dane and Spaniard and Teuton, and all the rest of our motley humanities, will have to be fused into one great Anglo-American race, before we can call ourselves a distinct nation. It took England many centuries to accomplish this work, and fashion herself into the plastic form and comeliness of her present unity and proportion. We, who work at high pressure and make haste in our begettings and growth, can scarcely hope to make a national sculpture at all commensurate with the genius of the people and the continent, in one or two or even half a dozen generations; for we cannot coerce the laws of nature, although it is quite certain, from what we have done, that we can perform anything within the range of possible achievement.
We have all the elements within and around us necessary to constitute a great people. We started on our career with a long background of experience to guide and to warn us. We saw what Europe had done for civilization with her long roll of kings and priests, her despotic governments, and her unequal laws—the people in most cases ciphers, and in all cases ignorant and enslaved—with no room for expansion, and little or no hope of political or social betterment; every inch of liberty, in every direction, which they had gained, wrung from their oppressors piecemeal, in bloody throes of agony.
Our fathers had not the best materials out of which to build up a republic; neither, in all cases, were they themselves sufficiently ripe for the experiment. They had the old leaven of European prejudice largely intermingled in their minds and character. They could not help, it is true, their original make, nor the fashioning which their age, time, and circumstances had put upon them. All this has to be taken into the estimate of any philosophical judgment respecting their performances. But they had learned from the past to trust the present, and to span the future with rainbows of hope. They stood face to face with the people, and each looked into the others' eyes and read there the grounds and sureties of an immortal triumph. Instead, therefore, of resting the supreme power of government in the hands of a person, or a class, making the former a monarch, and creating the other an aristocracy, those grand magistrates and senators of human liberty who framed the Constitution of the new American Nation, made the nation its own sovereign, and clothed it with the authority and majesty of self-government.
A venture so daring, and of an audacity so Titanic and sublime, seemed at that time and long afterward to require the wisdom and omnipotence of gods to guide it over the breakers, and steer it into the calm waters of intelligent government. All the world, except the handful of thinkers and enthusiasts scattered here and there over Europe, was against it, mocked at its bravery and aspirations, and sincerely hoped and believed that some great and sudden calamity would dissolve it like a baleful enchantment. But the hope of the republic was in the people, and they justified the fathers and the institution.
Here, therefore, was opened in all the directions of human inquiry and action a new world of hope and promise. The people were no longer bound by old traditions, nor clogged by any formulas of state religions, nor hampered by the dicta of philosophical authority. Their minds were free to choose or to reject whatever propositions were presented to them from the wide region of speculation and belief. The Constitution was the only instrument which prescribed laws and principles for their unconditional acceptance and guidance; and this was a thing of their own choice, the charter and seal of their liberties, to which they rendered a cheerful and grateful obedience.
With this mighty security for a platform, they pursued their daily avocations in peace, trusting their own souls, and working out the problem of republican society, with a most healthy unconsciousness. Sincere and earnest, they troubled themselves with no social theories, no visions of Utopia, nor dreams of Paradise and El Dorados, leaving the spirit which animated them to build up the architecture of its owncultus, with an unexpressed but perfect faith in the final justice and satisfaction of results.
Religion, therefore, and politics—literature, learning, and art—trade, commerce, manufactures, agriculture—and the amenities of society and manners, were allowed to develop themselves in their own way, without reference to rule and preconcerted dogmas. Hence the peculiarities which mark the institutions of America—their utter freedom from cant and the shows and pageantry of state. Bank, titles, and caste were abolished; and the enormous gulfs which separate the European man from the European lordling were bridged over by Equality with the solid virtues of humanity.
What a stride was here taken over time and space, and the historic records of man, in the fossil formations of the Old World during the ante-American periods! It had come at last, this long-prophesied reign of Apollo and the Muses, of freedom and the rights of man. Afar off, on the summits of imaginative mountains, were beheld, through twilight vistas of night and chaos, the proud ruins of dead monarchies, and the cruel forms of extinct tyrannies and oppressions, crowned and mitred no more; whose mandates had once made the nations tremble, and before whose judgment seats Mercy pleaded in vain, and Justice muffled up her face and sat dumb and weeping in the dust. Over the wolds of their desolation hyenas prowled, snuffing the noisome air as for a living prey; ghouls and vampyres shrieked in hellish chorus, as they tore up forgotten graves; and all manner of hateful and obscure things crawled familiarly in and out of palaces and holy places, as if they were the ghosts of the former inhabitants; and, high above them all, in the bloody light of the setting sun, wheeled kites and choughs and solitary vultures; owls and dismal bats flitting, ever and anon, athwart the shadows of their grim processions.
No matter that this vision was in reality but the symbolism of imagination and poetry, that Europe was not dead, but alive with the struggling vitalities of good and evil, and all those contending forces out of which American freedom was born—the vision itself was not the less true, either as feeling or insight; for Europe was now literally cut adrift from America, and the hopes and aspirations of the young republic were entirely different from hers, and removed altogether from the plane of her orbit and action.
The liberalists and thinkers of the age expected great things from a people thus fortunately conditioned and circumstanced. For the first time in modern history a genuine democratic government was inaugurated and fairly put upon its trial. The horizon of thought was now to be pushed back far beyond the old frontiers into the very regions of the infinite; and a universal liberty was to prevail throughout the length and breadth of the land. No more dead formalities, nor slavish submissions, but new and fuller life, self-reliance, self-development, and the freest individuality. Gladly the people accepted the propositions and principles of their national existence. Not a doubt anywhere of the result; no faltering, no looking back; but brave hearts, everywhere, and bold fronts, and conquering souls. Before them, through the mists of the starry twilight, loomed the mountain peaks and shadowy seas of the unventured and unknown future; and thitherward they pressed with undaunted steps, and with a haughty and sublime defiance of obstructions and dangers; fearing God, doing their best, and leaving the issue in His hands.
We know now, after nearly a hundred years of trial, what that issue in the main is, and whitherward it still tends. During that little breathing time, which, compared with the life of other nations, is but a gasp in the record, what unspeakable triumphs have been accomplished! Nearly a whole continent has been reclaimed from the savage and the wild beasts, and the all-conquering American has paved the wilderness, east, west, north, and south, with high roads—dug canals into its hidden recesses, connected the great Gulf with the far-off West by a vast network of railways and telegraphs—planted cities and villages everywhere, and fashioned the routes of civilization; bound Cape Race to the Crescent City and the Atlantic to the Pacific, sending human thoughts, winged with lightning, across thousands of miles of plains and mountains and rivers, and making neighborly the most distant peoples and the most widely sundered States of the mighty Union. Let anyman try to estimate the value of this immense contribution to human history and happiness; let him try to measure the vast extent of empire which it covers, and sum up the mighty expenditure of physical and intellectual labor which has conquered those savage wilds, and converted them into blooming cornfields and orchards; which has built these miraculous cities by the sea, and made their harbors populous with native ships and the marine of every nation under heaven; those busy inland cities, the hives of manufacturing industry and the marts of a commerce which extends over all the regions of civilization, from the rising to the setting sun; those innumerable towns of the great corn-growing districts; those pleasant hamlets and pastoral homes which fringe the forest, and girdle the mountains as with the arms of human affection and the passion of love; those mills on the far-off rivers, whose creaking machinery and revolving wheels are the prelude of a yet unborn, but rapidly approaching civility, and whose music, heard by the right ears, is of the divinest depth and diapason, and in full concord with the immeasurable orchestra of triumph and rejoicing which the nation celebrates in the perpetual marches of her starry progress.
No man can compass this vast dominion, and no intellect can plumb its soundings or prophesy of its upshot. Who could have foretold what has already happened on this continent, had he stood with the Pilgrim Fathers on Plymouth Rock, that memorable day of the landing? Looking back to that great epoch in American history, we have no dim regions of antiquity to traverse, no mythic periods as of Memnon and the Nile, but a mere modern landscape, so to speak, shut in by less than two centuries. And yet what unspeakable things are included in that brief period! If we have made such vast strides and so rapid a development in those few years of our national life, with the heterogeneous and unmalleable materials with which we had to deal, converting the filth of Europe into grass and flowers for the decoration of the republic, what may we not achieve hereafter, when this dreadful war is over, and the negro question is adjusted, and the sundered States are reunited, and the Western wilderness is clothed with the glory of a perfect cultivation, and the genius of the people, no longer trammelled by Southern despotism, shall have free room to wing its flight over the immeasurable future?
There will be no likeness, in any mirror of the past, to the American civilization that is to be. New manners, customs, thinkings, literature, art, and life, will mark our progress and attest the mission of the nation. We are fast outgrowing the ideas and influences of that brave company of Puritans out of whose loins our beginning proceeded; and already each man goes alone, insular, self-reliant, and self-sustained. We owe the Puritans a large debt, but it is altogether a pretty fiction to call them the founders of American civilization. They helped to lay in the foundation stones of that early society, and kept them together by cementing them with their love of religious truth and liberty, so far as they understood these primal elements of a state; and we are likewise their debtors for the integrity which they put into their laws and government. But it is too high a demand to claim for them that they were the founders of the republic, and the originators of those great ideas which are embodied in our institutions and literature.
They came to this country with no very enlarged notions, either of religion or freedom, although they were perfectly sincere in their professions of regard for both; and it was this very sincerity which gave solidity and permanence to their colonies. We suppose we may repeat what history has made notorious respecting them, that they were, both in belief and civil practice, very narrowand limited in their outlooks—by no means given to intellectual speculations—and with but little faith in the intellect itself—which, indeed, was proscribed as a sort of outlaw when it stood upon its own authority, outside the pale oftheirchurch. The religion which they established had its origin in the reign of Elizabeth, and was a sort of revived Lollardism, which last dated as far back as Wycliffe, long before the Reformation. They thought they could worship God in conventicles, and in the great open-air cathedrals of nature, with quite as much purity of motive and heavenly acceptance as in regularly consecrated churches, and that the right of praying and preaching was inalienable, and secured to all godly men by the charter and seal of Calvary.
They had no idea, however, of non-conformity which was not based upon an orthodox creed, upontheircreed, as they subscribed it on Plymouth Rock. They fled from persecution themselves, and sought freedom for themselves in the barren regions of our dear and now hospitable New England; and they, in their simplicity and good faith before God, sought to organize a system of civil and religious polity which should incrust all future generations, and harden them into a fossil state of perpetual orthodoxy.
They were a stern, implacable race, these early fathers, in all that related to belief, and the discipline of moral conduct; and we owe many of the granite securities which lie at the bottom of our social life and government to this harsh and unyielding sternness. It held the framework of the colonies together until they were consolidated into the United States, and until the modern culture of the people relaxed it into a universal liberty of thought and worship.
The Puritans, however, had no notion of such a result to their teachings and labors; and would have looked with pious horror upon them if they could have beheld them in some Agrippa's mirror of the future.
The truth—unpalatable as it may be—is simply this about the Puritans: they were narrow-minded, bigoted, and furious at times with the spirit of persecution; sincerely so, it is true, and believing they did God service; but that does not alter the fact. They had no conception of the meaning of liberty—and especially of religious liberty as a development of Protestantism. Their idea of it was liberty for themselves—persecution to all who differed from them; and this, too, for Christ's sake, in order that the lost sheep might be brought back, if possible, to their bleak and comfortless folds. They could not help it; they meant no wrong by it, and the evil which they thus did was good in the making, and sprang from the bleeding heart of an infinite love.