So Hoonamunta took his tail in his hand, and pulled and pulled; and the tail grew, and grew,—a fathom, a furlong, a whole coss.

And Hoonamunta coiled it on the floor, a lofty coil, on the right hand of the throne, higher and higher, till it overlooked the golden cushion of the king; and Hoonamunta laughed.

Then Rawunna turned him to his counsellors, and said, "What shall we do with this audacious fellow?"

And with one voice all the counsellors cried, "Burn his tremendous tail!"

And the king commanded:—

"Let all the dwarfs of Lunka Bring rags from near and far; Call all the dwarfs of Lunka To soak them all in tar!"

So they went, and brought as many rags as ten strong giants could lift, and a thousand maunds of tar.

And they soaked the rags in the tar, even as Kawunna had commanded, and bound them all at once on the tremendous tail of Hoonamunta.

And when they had done this, the king said, "Lead him forth, and light him!"

And they led him forth into the great Midaun, hard by the triple pagoda; and they lighted his tail with a torch. And immediately the flames leaped to the skies, and the smoke filled all the city.

Then Hoonamunta broke away from his captors, and with a loud laugh started on his fiery race,—over house-tops and hay-ricks, through close bazaars and dry rice-fields, through the porticoes of palaces and the porches of pagodas,—kindling a roaring conflagration as he went.

And all the people pursued him, screaming with fear, imploring mercy, imploring pardon, crying, "Spare us, and we will make you our high-priest! Spare us, and you shall be our king!"

But Hoonamunta staid not, till, having laid half the city in flames, he ascended to the top of a lofty tower to survey his work with satisfaction.

Thither the great men of Lunka followed him,—the princes, and the Brahmins, and the victorious chieftains, the strong giants, and the cunning dwarfs.

And when they were all gathered underneath the tower, and in the porch of it, he shook it, till it fell and crushed a thousand of the first citizens.

Then Hoonamunta sped away northward to Ayodhya, extinguishing his tail in the sea as he went.

And when he came to where his army lay, he found them all waiting in silence. When he entered the hut of Rama, the bereaved one still lay on his face. But Hoonamunta spake softly in his ear: "My Lord, arise! for Seeta calls you, and her heart sickens within her that you come not!"

Immediately Rama uprose, and stood erect, and all the god blazed in his eyes; and he grew in the sight of Hoonamunta until his stature was as the stature of Rawunna, the giant, and his countenance was as the countenance of Indra, King of Heaven.

And he went forth, and stood at the head of Hoonamunta's monkey host, and called for a sword; and when they gave him one, it became alive in his hand, and was a sword of flame; and when they gave him a spear, lo! it became his slave, flying whithersoever he bade it, and striking where he listed.

So Rama and Hoonamunta, with all their monkey host, took up their march for Lunka.

When they came to the sea (which is the Gulf of Manaar) there was no bridge; but Rama mounted the back of Hoonamunta, and called to the host to follow him; and all the monkeys leaped across.

Then immediately they fell upon Lunka; and Rama slew Rawunna, the Monster, and rescued the delighted Seeta.

And now those three sit together on a throne in heaven,—Seeta, the faithful wife, on the left hand of Rama,—and Hoonamunta on his right hand, the shrewd and courageous friend.

Who would not be a monkey in Hindostan?

* * * * *

THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.

Oh, that last day in Lucknow fort! We knew that it was the last, That the enemy's lines crept surely on, And the end was coming fast.

To yield to that foe was worse than death, And the men and we all worked on; It was one day more of smoke and roar, And then it would all be done.

There was one of us, a corporal's wife, A fair, young, gentle thing, Wasted with fever in the siege, And her mind was wandering.

She lay on the ground, in her Scottish plaid, And I took her head on my knee: "When my father comes hame frae the pleugh," she said, "Oh! then please wauken me."

She slept like a child on her father's floor In the flecking of woodbine-shade, When the house-dog sprawls by the open door, And the mother's wheel is staid.

It was smoke and roar and powder-stench, And hopeless waiting for death; And the soldier's wife, like a full-tired child, Seemed scarce to draw her breath.

I sank to sleep; and I had my dream Of an English village-lane, And wall and garden;—but one wild scream Brought me back to the roar again.

There Jessie Brown stood listening Till a sudden gladness broke All over her face, and she caught my hand And drew me near, as she spoke:—

"The Hielanders! Oh! dinna ye hear The slogan far awa? The McGregor's? Oh! I ken it weel; It's the grandest o' them a'!

"God bless thae bonny Hielanders! We're saved! we're saved!" she cried; And fell on her knees; and thanks to God Flowed forth like a full flood-tide.

Along the battery-line her cry Had fallen among the men, And they started back;—they were there to die; But was life so near them, then?

They listened for life; the rattling fire Far off, and the far-off roar, Were all; and the colonel shook his head, And they turned to their guns once more.

But Jessie said, "The slogan's done; But winna ye hear it noo, The Campbells are comin'? It's no a dream; Our succors hae broken through!"

We heard the roar and the rattle afar, But the pipes we could not hear; So the men plied their work of hopeless war, And knew that the end was near.

It was not long ere it made its way,— A shrilling, ceaseless sound: It was no noise from the strife afar, Or the sappers under ground.

It was the pipes of the Highlanders! And now they played Auld Lang Syne; It came to our men like the voice of God, And they shouted along the line.

And they wept and shook one another's hands, And the women sobbed in a crowd; And every one knelt down where he stood, And we all thanked God aloud.

That happy time, when we welcomed them, Our men put Jessie first; And the general gave her his hand, and cheers Like a storm from the soldiers burst.

And the pipers' ribbons and tartans streamed, Marching round and round our line; And our joyful cheers were broken with tears As the pipes played Auld Lang Syne.



NEW ENGLAND MINISTERS.

Dr. Sprague, of Albany, has added to the literature of our country two large octavo volumes, containing biographical accounts of the Congregational clergy of New England, from its earliest settlement until the year 1841. The book has been for the most part compiled from letters furnished by different individuals, who, either through personal knowledge or through tradition, had the most intimate acquaintance with the subjects of which they wrote.

The characters here sketched, though perfectly individual, are in so great a degree the result of peculiar political influences, that it would be difficult to suppose their existence elsewhere than in New England. We have therefore chosen this book as a kind of standpoint from which to take a glance at the New England clergy and pulpit.

The earliest constitution of government in New England was a theocracy; it was the realization of Arnold's idea of the identity of Church and State. Under it the clergy had peculiar powers and privileges, which, it is but fair to say, they turned to the advantage of the Commonwealth more than has generally been the case with any privileged order.

A time, however, came when the democratic element, which these men themselves had fostered, worked out its logical results, by depriving them of all special immunities, and leaving them, like any other citizens, to make their way by pure force of character, and to be rated, like other men, simply for what they were and what they could do.

It is creditable to the intelligence and shrewdness of this body of men that the more far-sighted among them received this change with satisfaction; that they were such uncommonly fair logicians as to be willing to accept the direct inference from principles which they had been foremost to inculcate, and, like men of strong mind and clear conscience, were not afraid to rest their claim to influence and deference on the manfulness with which they should strive to deserve them.

Dr. Sprague's book contains pictures of life under both the old regime and the new. The following extract from the venerable Josiah Quincy's recollections of the Rev. Mr. French, of Andover, is interesting, as an illustration of the olden times.

"Mrs. Dowse, my maternal aunt, has often related to me her pride and delight at visiting at the Rev. Mr. Phillips', her paternal grandfather's house, when a child; which was interesting as a statement of the manners of those early times in Massachusetts, before the sceptre of worldly power, which the first settlers of the Colony had placed in the hands of the clergy, had been broken. The period was about between 1760 and the Revolution. The parsonage at Andover was situated about two or three hundred rods from the meeting-house, which was three stories high, of immense dimensions, far greater, I should think, than those of any meeting-houses in these anti-church-going, degenerate times. It was on a hill, slightly elevated above the parsonage, so that all the flock could see the pastor as he issued from it.

"Before the time of service, the congregation gradually assembled in early season, coming on foot or on horseback, the ladies behind their lords or brothers or one another, on pillions, so that before the time of service the whole space before the meeting-house was filled with a waiting, respectful, and expecting multitude. At the moment of service the pastor issued from his mansion with Bible and manuscript sermon under his arm, with his wife leaning on one arm, flanked by his negro man on his side, as his wife was by her negro woman, the little negroes being distributed according to their sex by the side of their respective parents. Then followed every other member of the family according to age and rank, making often, with family visitants, somewhat of a formidable procession. As soon as it appeared, the congregation, as if moved by one spirit, began to move towards the door of the church; and before the procession reached it, all were in their places.

"As soon as the pastor entered the church, the whole congregation rose and stood until the pastor was in the pulpit and his family seated,—until which was done the whole assembly continued standing. At the close of the service the congregation stood until he and his family had left the church, before any one moved towards the door.

"Forenoon and afternoon the same course of proceeding was had, expressive of the reverential relation in which the people acknowledged that they stood towards their clergyman.

"Such was the account given me by Mrs. Dowse in relation to times previous to my birth, and which I relate as her narrative, and not as part of my recollections. The procession from the parsonage, the disappearance of the people on the appearance of the procession, and that their pastor was received with every mark of decorum and respect, I well remember, but of their rising at his entrance and standing after the service until he had departed, I have no recollection; my time was almost twenty years after that narrated by Mrs. Dowse. During that period the Revolution had commenced."

Some might think it an advantage, if more of the decorum and reverence of such a state of society had been preserved to our day; for this respect paid to the minister was but part of a general and all-pervading system. Children were more reverential to their parents, scholars to their teachers, the people to their magistrates. A want of reverence threatens now to become the besetting sin of America, whether young or old.

The clergy of New England have, as a body, been distinguished for a rare union of the speculative and the practical. In both points they have been so remarkable, that in observing the great development of either of these qualities by itself one would naturally suppose that there was no room for the other.

Generally speaking, they were rural pastors,—living on salaries so small as to afford hardly a nominal support; and in order to bring up their families and give their sons a college education, it was necessary to understand fully the practical savoir faire. Accordingly, they farmed and gardened, and often took young people into their families to educate, and in these ways eked out a subsistence. It is related of the venerable Moses Hallock, that he educated in his own family, during his ministerial lifetime, three hundred young people, of whom thirty were females. One hundred and thirty-two of these he fitted for college; fifty became ministers, and six foreign missionaries.

Some of the clergy gained such an acquaintance with the practice of medicine as to be able sometimes to unite the offices of physician of the body and of the soul; and not unfrequently a general knowledge of law enabled the pastor to be the worldly as well as the spiritual counsellor of his people. A striking case in point is that of the venerable Parson Eaton, who resided in a lonely seafaring district on the coast of Maine, and preached to a congregation who lived the amphibious life of farmers and fishermen. The town of Harpswell, where he ministered,—

"is a narrow projection of ten miles southward into Casco Bay, on both sides of which it comprises within its incorporated limits several islands, some of them of considerable size and well inhabited. In his pastoral visits and labors, the clergyman was often obliged to ride several miles, and then cross the inlets of the sea, to preach a lecture or to minister comfort or aid to some sick or suffering parishioner. In addition to his clerical duties, Mr. Eaton, having experience and discernment in the more common forms of disease, was generally applied to in sickness; and he usually carried with him a lancet and the more common and simple medicines. If a case was likely to baffle his skill, he advised his patient to send for a regular physician. His admirable sense, moreover, and his education fitted him to render aid and counsel in matters of controversy; so that he often acted as an umpire, and very often to the settling of disputes. Seldom did his people consult a lawyer; and it is even said, that, at the time of his death, most of the wills in the town were in his handwriting."

It is a singular thing, that the preaching and the bent of mind of a set of men so intensely practical should have been at the same time intensely speculative. Nowhere in the world, unless perhaps in Scotland, have merely speculative questions excited the strong and engrossing interest among the common people that they have in New England. Every man, woman, and child was more or less a theologian. The minister, while he ground his scythe or sharpened his axe or laid stone-fence, was inwardly grinding and hammering on those problems of existence which are as old as man, and which Christian and heathen have alike pondered. The Germans call the whole New England theology rationalistic, in distinction from traditional.

There are minds which are capable of receiving certain series of theological propositions without even an effort at comparison,—without a perception of contradiction or inconsequency,—without an effort at harmonizing. Such, however, were not the New England ministers. With them predestination must be made to harmonize with freewill; the Divine entire efficiency with human freedom; the existence of sin with the Divine benevolence;—and at it they went with stout hearts, as men work who are not in the habit of being balked in their undertakings. Hence the Edwardses, the Hopkinses, the Emmonses, with all their various schools and followers, who, leviathan-like, have made the theological deep of New England to boil like a pot, and the agitation of whose course remains to this day.

It is a mark of a shallow mind to scorn these theological wrestlings and surgings; they have had in them something even sublime. They were always bounded and steadied by the most profound reverence for God and his word; and they have constituted in New England the strong mental discipline needed by a people who were an absolute democracy. The Sabbath teaching of New England has been a regular intellectual drill as well as a devotional exercise; and if one does not see the advantage of this, let him live awhile in France or Italy, and see the reason why, with all their aspirations after liberty, there is no capability of self-government in the masses; put the tiller of the Campagna, or the vine-dresser of France, beside the theologically trained, keen, thoughtful New England farmer, and see which is best fitted to administer a government.

Another leading characteristic of the New England clergy was their great freedom of original development. The volumes before us are full of indications of the most racy individuality. There was no such thing as a clerical mould or pattern; but each minister, particularly in the rural districts, grew and flourished as freely and unconventionally as the apple-trees in his own orchard, and was considered none the worse for that, so long as he bore good fruit of the right sort. Thus we find among them all stamps and kinds of men,—men of decorum and ceremony, like Dr. Emmons and President Edwards, and men who, aiming after the real, despised the form, kept no order, and revered no ceremony; yet all flourished in peace, and were allowed to do their work in their own way.

We find here and there records of pleasant little encounters of humor among them on these points. Parson Deane, of Portland, was a precise man, and always appeared in the clerical regalia of the times, with powdered wig, cocked hat, gown, bands. Parson Hemmenway went about with just such clothes as he happened to find convenient, without the least regard to the conventional order.

Being together on a council. Dr. Deane playfully remarked,—

"The ferryman, Brother Hemmenway, as we came over, hadn't the least idea you were a clergyman. Now I am particular always to appear with my wig on."

"Precisely," said Dr. Hemmenway; "I know it is well to bestow more abundant honor on the part that lacketh."

It is a curious illustration of the times and people to see how quietly the personal eccentricities of a good minister were received.

One Mr. Moody, who flourished in the State of Maine, was one of those born oddities whose growth of mind rejects every outward rule. Brilliant, original, restless, he found it impossible to bring his thoughts to march in the regular platoon and file of a properly written sermon. It is told of him, that, moved by the admiration of his people for the calm and orderly performances of one of his neighboring brethren of the name of Emerson, he resolved to write a sermon in the same style. After the usual introductory services, he began to read his performance, but soon grew weary, stumbled disconsolately, and at last stopped, exclaiming,—"Emerson must be Emerson, and Moody must be Moody! I feel as if I had my head in a bag! You call Moody a rambling preacher;—it is true enough; but his preaching will do to catch rambling sinners, and you are all runaways from the Lord."

His clerical brethren at a meeting of the Association once undertook to call him to account for his odd expressions and back-handed strokes. He stepped into his study and produced a record of some twenty or thirty cases of conversions which had resulted from some of his exceptional sayings. As he read them over with the dates, they looked at each other with surprise, and one of them very sensibly remarked, "If the Lord owns Father Moody's oddities, we must let him take his own way."

His son, Joseph Moody, furnished the original incident which Hawthorne has so exquisitely worked up in his story of "The Minister's Black Veil." Being of a singularly nervous and melancholic temperament, he actually for many years shrouded his face with a black handkerchief. When reading a sermon he would lift this, but stood with his back to the audience so that his face was concealed,—all which appears to have been accepted by his people with sacred simplicity. He was known in the neighborhood by the name of Handkerchief Moody.

It is recorded also of the venerable and eccentric Father Mills, of Torringford, that, on the death of his much beloved wife, he was greatly exercised as to how a minister who always dressed in black could sufficiently express his devotion and respect for the departed by any outward change of dress. At last he settled the question to his own satisfaction, by substituting for his white wig a black silk pocket-handkerchief, with which head-dress he officiated in all simplicity during the usual term of mourning.

We think it one result of their great freedom from any strait-laced conventional ideas, that no point of character is more frequently noticed in the subjects of these sketches than wit and humor. New England ministers never held it a sin to laugh; if they did, some of them had a great deal to answer for; for they could scarce open their mouths without dropping some provocation to a smile. An ecclesiastical meeting was always a merry season; for there never were wanting quaint images, humorous anecdotes, and sharp flashes of wit, and even the driest and most metaphysical points of doctrine were often lit up and illuminated by these corruscations.

A panel taken out of the house of the Rev. John Lowell, of Newbury, is still preserved, representing the common style of an ecclesiastical meeting in those days. The divines, each in full wig and gown, are seated around a table, smoking their pipes, and above is the well-known inscription: In necessariis, Unitas: in non necessariis, Libertas: in utrisque Charitas.

In that delightfully naive and simple journal of the Rev. Thomas Smith, the first minister settled in Portland, Maine, in the year 1725, we find the following entries.

"July 4, 1763. Mr. Brooks was ordained. A multitude of people from my parish. A decent solemnity."

"January 16, 1765. Mr. Foxcroft was ordained at New Gloucester. We had a pleasant journey home. Mr. L. was alert and kept us all merry. A jolly ordination. We lost sight of decorum."

This Mr. L., by the by, who was so alert on this occasion, it appears by a note, was Stephen Longfellow, the great-grandfather of the poet. Those who enjoy the poet's acquaintance will probably testify that the property of social alertness has not evaporated from the family in the lapse of so many years.

It is recorded of Dr. Griffin, that, when President of the Andover Theological Seminary, he convened the students at his room one evening, and told them he had observed that they were all growing thin and dyspeptical from a neglect of the exercise of Christian laughter, and he insisted upon it that they should go through a company-drill in it then and there. The Doctor was an immense man,—over six feet in height, with great amplitude of chest and most magisterial manners. "Here," said he to the first, "you must practise; now hear me!" and bursting out into a sonorous laugh, he fairly obliged his pupils, one by one, to join, till the whole were almost convulsed. "That will do for once," said the Doctor, "and now mind you keep in practice!"

New England used to be full of traditions of the odd sayings of Dr. Bellamy, one of the most powerful theologians and preachers of his time. His humor, however, seems to have been wholly a social quality, requiring to be struck out by the collision of conversation; for nothing of the peculiar quaintness and wit ascribed to him appears in his writings, which are in singularly simple, clear English. One or two of his sayings circulated about us in our childhood. For example, when one had built a fire of green wood, he exclaimed, "Warm me here! I'd as soon try to warm me by star-light on the north side of a tombstone!" Speaking of the chapel-bell of Yale College, he said, "It was about as good a bell as a fur cap with a sheep's tail in it."

A young minister, who had made himself conspicuous for a severe and denunciatory style of preaching, came to him one day to inquire why he did not have more success. "Why, man," said the Doctor, "can't you take a lesson of the fisherman? How do you go to work, if you want to catch a trout? You get a little hook and a fine line, you bait it carefully and throw it in as gently as possible, and then you sit and wait and humor your fish till you can get him ashore. Now you get a great cod-hook and rope-line, and thrash it into the water, and bawl out, 'Bite or be damned!'"

The Doctor himself gained such a reputation as an expert spiritual fisherman, that some of his parishioners, like experienced old trout, played shy of his hook, though never so skilfully baited.

"Why, Mr. A.," he said to an old farmer in his neighborhood, "they tell me you are an Atheist. Don't you believe in the being of a God?"

"No!" said the man.

"But, Mr. A., let's look into this. You believe that the world around us exists from some cause?"

"No, I don't!"

"Well, then, at any rate, you believe in your own existence?"

"No, I don't!"

"What! not believe that you exist yourself?"

"I tell you what, Doctor," said the man, "I a'n't going to be twitched up by any of your syllogisms, and so I tell you I don't believe anything,—and I'm not going to believe anything!"

A collection of the table-talk of the clergy whose lives are sketched in Dr. Sprague's volumes would be a rare fund of humor, shrewdness, genius, and originality. We must say, however, that as nothing is so difficult as to collect these sparkling emanations of conversation, the written record which this work presents falls far below that traditional one which floated about us in our earlier years. So much in wit and humor depends on the electric flash, the relation of the idea to the attendant circumstances, that people often remember only how they have laughed, and can no more reproduce the expression than they can daguerreotype the heat-lightning of a July night.

The doctrine that a minister is to maintain some ethereal, unearthly station, where, wrapt in divine contemplation, he is to regard with indifference the actual struggles and realities of life, is a sickly species of sentimentalism, the growth of modern refinement, and altogether too moonshiny to have been comprehended by our stout-hearted and very practical fathers. With all their excellences, they had nothing sentimental about them; they were bent on reducing all things to practical, manageable realities. They would not hear of churches, but called them meeting-houses; they would not be called clergymen, but ministers or servants,—thereby signifying their calling to real, tangible work among real men and things.

As we have already said, in the beginnings of New England, the Church and State were identical, and the clergy ex officio the main counsellors and directors of the Commonwealth; and when this especial prerogative was relinquished, they naturally retained something of the bent it had given them.

An interesting portion of these sketches comprises the lives of ministers during our Revolutionary struggle, showing how ardently and manfully at that time the clergy headed the people. Many of them went into the army as chaplains; one or two, more zealous still, even took up temporal arms; while the greater number showered the enemy with sermons, tracts, and pamphlets.

Some of the more zealous politicians among them did not scruple to bring their sentiments even into the prayers of the church. We recollect an anecdote of a stout Whig minister of New Haven, who, during the occupation of the town by the British, was ordered to offer public prayers for the King, which he did as follows: "O Lord, bless thy servant, King George, and grant unto him wisdom; for thou knowest, O Lord, he needs it."

So afterwards, in the time of the Embargo, Parson Eaton, of Harpswell, a Federalist, is recorded to have introduced his prayer for the President in a formula which might be recommended at the present day for the use of the people of Kansas. "Forasmuch as thou hast commanded us to pray for our enemies, we pray for the President of these United States, that his heart may be turned to just counsels," etc.

This same Parson Eaton distinguished himself also for his patriotic enthusiasm in Revolutionary times. When the British had burned Falmouth, (Portland,) a messenger came to Harpswell to beat up for recruits to the Continental forces. Not succeeding to his mind, he went to Parson Eaton, one Sunday morning, and begged him to say something for him in the course of the day's services. "It is my sacramental Sabbath," said the valiant Doctor, "and I cannot. But at the going down of the sun I will speak to my people." And accordingly, that very evening, Bible in hand, on the green before the meeting-house, Dr. Eaton addressed the people, denouncing the curse of Meroz on those who came not up to the help of the country, and recruits flowed in abundantly.

The pastors of New England were always in their sphere moral reformers. Profitable and popular sins, though countenanced by long-established custom, were fearlessly attacked. No sight could be more impressive than that of Dr. Hopkins—who with all his power of mind was never a popular preacher, and who knew he was not popular—rising up in Newport pulpits to testify against the slave-trade, then as reputable and profitable a sin as slave-holding is now. He knew that Newport was the stronghold of the practice, and that the probable consequence of his faithfulness would be the loss of his pulpit and of his temporal support; but none the less plainly and faithfully did he testify. Fond as he was of doctrinal subtilties, keen as was his analysis of disinterested benevolence, he did not, like some in our day, confine himself to analyzing virtue in the abstract, but took upon himself the duty of practicing it in the concrete without fear of consequences,—well knowing that there is no logic like that of consistent action.

We should do injustice to our subject, if we did not add a testimony to the peculiarly religious character and influence of the men of whom we speak. Shrewd, practical, capable, as they were, in the affairs of this life, perfectly natural and human as were their characters, still they were in the best sense unworldly men. Religion was the deep underlying stratum on which their whole life was built. Like the granite framework of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life. No Acta Sanctorum contain more pathetic pictures of simple and all-absorbing godliness than were displayed by the subjects of these sketches. However they may have differed among themselves as to the metaphysical adjustment of the Calvinistic system, all agreed in so presenting it as to make God all in all.

Doctor Arnold says it is necessary for the highest development of the soul that it should have somewhere an object of entire reverence enthroned above all possibility of doubt or criticism. Now a radically democratic system, like that of New England, at once sweeps all factitious reliances of this kind from the soul. No crown, no court, no nobility, no ritual, no hierarchy,—the beautiful principles of reverence and loyalty might have died out of the American heart, had not these men by their religious teachings upborne it as on eagles' wings to the footstool of the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible. Hence we see why what was commonly called among them the "Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty" acquired so prominent a place in their preaching and their hearts. They were men of deep reverence and profound loyalty of nature, from whom every lower object for the repose of these qualities had been torn away,—who concentrated on God alone those sentiments of faith and fealty which in other lands are divided with Church and King. Hence, more than that of any other clergy, their preaching contemplated God as King and Ruler. Submission to him without condition, without limit, they both preached and practised. Unconditional submission was as constantly on their lips God-ward as it was sparingly uttered man-ward.

No picture of the "good parson" that was ever drawn could exceed in beauty that of the Rev. Jeremiah Hallock, whose life and manners had that indescribable beauty, completeness, and sacredness, which religion sometimes gives when shining out through a peculiarly congenial natural temperament,—yet we must confess we are as much interested and impressed with its effects in those wilder and more erratic temperaments, such as Bellamy, Backus, and Moody, where genius and passion were so combined as to lead to many inconsistencies. This book is a record of how manfully many such men battled with themselves, repairing the faults of their hasty and passionate hours by the true and honest humility of their better ones, so that, as one has said of our Pilgrim Fathers, we feel that they may have been endeared to God even by their faults.

The pastoral labors of these ministers were abounding. Two and sometimes three services on the Sabbath, and a weekly lecture, were only the beginning of their labors. Multitudes of them held circuit meetings, to the number of two or three a week, in the outskirts of their parishes; besides which they labored conversationally from house to house with individuals.

Gradual, indefinite, insensible amelioration of character was not by any means the only or the highest aim of their preaching. They sought to make religion as definite and as real to men as their daily affairs, and to bring them, as respects their spiritual history, to crises as marked and decided as those to which men are brought in temporal matters. They must become Christians now, today; the change must be immediate, all-pervading, thorough.

Such a style of preaching, from men of such power, could not be without corresponding results, especially as it was based always upon strong logical appeals to the understanding. From it resulted, from time to time, periods which are marked in these narratives as revivals of religion,—seasons in which the cumulative force of the instructions and power of the pastor, recognized by that gracious assistance on which he always depended, reached a point of outward development that affected the whole social atmosphere, and brought him into intimate and confidential knowledge of the spiritual struggles of his flock. The preaching of the pastor was then attuned and modified to these disclosures, and his metaphysical system shaped and adapted to what he perceived to be the real wants and weaknesses of the soul. Hence arose modifications of theology,—often interfering with received theory, just as a judicious physician's clinical practice varies from the book. Many of the theological disputes which have agitated New England have arisen in the honest effort to reconcile accepted forms of faith with the observed phenomena and real needs of the soul in its struggles heavenward.

* * * * *

A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE KANSAS USURPATION.

If it had been the avowed intention of the dominant party in this country to disgust the people by a long and systematic course of wrong-doing,—if it had wished to prove that it was indissolubly wedded to injustice, inconsistency, and error, it could not have chosen a better method of doing so than it has actually pursued, in the entire management of the Kansas question. From the beginning to the end, that has been both a blunder and a crime. Nothing more atrocious,—nothing more perverse,—nothing more foolish, as a matter of policy,—and we might add, but for the seriousness of the subject, nothing more ludicrous,—has occurred in our history, than the attempt, which has now been persisted in for several years, to force the evils of Slavery upon a people who cannot and will not endure them.

We say, to force the evils of slavery upon an unwilling people,—because such has been and is the only end of this protracted endeavor. The authors of the scheme have scarcely shown the ordinary cunning of rogues, which conceals its ulterior purposes. Disdaining the advice of Mrs. Peachum to her daughter Polly, to be "somewhat nice" in her deviations from virtue, they have advanced bravely and flagrantly to their nefarious object. They have been reckless, defiant, aggressive; but, unfortunately for them, they have not been sagacious. The thin disguise of principle under which they masked their designs at the outset—as it were a bit of oiled paper—was soon torn away; the plot betrayed its inherent wickedness from step to step; the instruments selected to execute it have one after another abandoned the task, as quite impracticable for any honest mortal; and now these whilom advocates of "Popular Sovereignty" stand exposed to the scorn and derision of the country, as nothing less than what their opponents all along declared them to be,—the sworn champions of Slavery-Extension. All the movements and changes of their external policy find their explication in the single phrase, the actual and the political advancement of the interests of Slavery.

It is humiliating to an American citizen to cast his eyes back, even for a moment, to the history of this Kansas plot,—humiliating in many ways; but in none more so than in the revelation it makes of the depth and extent of party-servility in the Northern mind. Throughout the proceedings of the "Democracy" towards the unhappy settlers of Kansas, it is difficult to place the finger on a single act of large, just, or generous policy; every step in it appears to have developed some new outrage or some new fraud; and yet, every step in it has also elicited new shouts of approval from the echoing lieges and bondmen of "the Party." We should willingly, therefore, turn away from the theme, but that we believe the end is not yet come; a review of its past may instruct us as to its future. For it is not always true, as Coleridge says, that experience, like the stern-lights of a ship, illuminates only the track it has left; the lights may be hung upon the bows, and the spectator be enabled to discern, by means of them, no less, the way in which it is going.

A "Territory," viewed in connection with the political system of the United States, must be confessed to be a somewhat erratic and embarrassing member. Few or no specific provisions are made for it in the Organic Law, which applies primarily, and quite exclusively, to "States." The word is mentioned there but once,—in the clause empowering Congress to "make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States,"—and here it occurs in a somewhat doubtful sense. Judging by the mere letter or obvious import of the Constitution, the right of acquiring and governing territory would seem to be a casus omissus, or a power overlooked. Accordingly, Mr. Webster went so far as to assert that the framers of it never contemplated its extension beyond the original limits of the country;[A] but this we can scarcely believe of men so far-seeing and sagacious. It were a better opinion, which Mr. Benton has recently urged, that the acquisition and control of territories are necessary incidents of the sovereign and proprietary character of the government created by the Constitution.[B] But be this as it may, whatever the theoretic origin of the right to acquire territory,—whatever the origin of the right to govern it,—whether the former be derived from the war-making power, which implies conquest, or from the treaty-making power, which implies purchase,—and whether the latter be derived from an express grant or is involved as necessary to the execution of other grants, both questions were definitively settled by long and universally accepted practice. Under the actual legislation of Congress, running over a period of sixty years,—a legislation sanctioned by all administrations, by all departments of the government, by all the authorities of the individual States, by all statesmen of all parties, and by frequent popular recognitions,—prescription has taken the force of law, and that which might once be theoretically doubtful became forever practically valid and legitimate.

[Footnote A: Works, Vol. V. p. 306.]

[Footnote B: See his late pamphlet on the Dred Scott decision, which we may say, without adopting its conclusions, every statesman ought to read.]

It was not till within the last few years that the right of Congress over the Territories was questioned. Certain classes of politicians then discovered that the whole of our past statesmanship had been a mistake, and that the time had come to propound a new doctrine. No! they said, it is not Congress, not the Federal Government, which is entitled to govern the Territories, but the Territories themselves,—which means the handful of their original occupants. The real sovereignty resides in the squatters, and Squatter Sovereignty is the charm which dispels all difficulties. Alas! it was rather like the ingredients mingled by Macbeth's hags, only "a charm of powerful trouble." Overlooking the fact that the Territories were Territories precisely because they were not States, this absurd theory proposed to confer the highest character of an organized political existence upon a society wholly inchoate. As land, the Territories were the property of the United States, to be disposed of and regulated by the will of Congress; as collections of men, they were yet immature communities, having in reality no social being, and in that light also wisely and benevolently subjected to the will of Congress; but Squatter Sovereignty elevated them, willy nilly, to an independent self-subsistence. They were declared full-formed and fledged before they were out of the shell. A mere conglomeration of emigrants, Indian traders, and half-breeds was invested with all the functions of a mature and ripened civilization. Long ere there were people enough in any Territory to furnish the officers of a regular government,—before they possessed any of the apparatus of court-houses, jails, legislative chambers, etc., essential to a regular government,—before they lived near enough to each other, in fact, to constitute a respectable town-meeting,—before they could pay the expenses or gather the means of their own defence from the Indians, these wonderful entities were held to be endowed with the right of entering into the most complicated relations and of forming the most important institutions for themselves,—and not only for themselves, but for their posterity.

This puerile dogma was asserted ostensibly in the interest of Slavery, in order to get rid of the power of Congress over that subject; but the real source of it was the cowardice of those invertebrate and timorous politicians who desired to evade the responsibility of expressing opinions concerning this power. General Cass was the putative father of it, and it might well have come from one of his pliancy and calibre; but as Slavery itself, embodied in the person of Calhoun, scouted the feeble bantling, there was soon no one so mean as to confess the paternity. Abandoned of its begetters, Squatter Sovereignty wandered the streets like a squalid and orphaned outcast, begging anybody and everybody to take it in, and finding no creditable welcome anywhere.

Calhoun and his friends, no less anxious than Cass and his friends to rescue Slavery from the discretion of Congress, though for other reasons, contrived to find a more respectable excuse for such a policy. As California and New Mexico—both free soil—had lately been acquired, they contended that the moment new territories attached to the United States, the same moment the Constitution attached to them; and inasmuch as the Constitution guarantied the existence of Slavery, presto, Slavery must be regarded as existing under it in the Territories! This, we say, was more respectable ground than Squatter Sovereignty, because it met the question more fairly in the face; yet, considered either as dialectics or history, it was not one whit less absurd. We do not wonder that Webster, and all the other sound lawyers of the nation, heard such an announcement of Constitutional hermeneutics with utter surprise and astonishment. It was enough to astound even the veriest tyro in the law. The Constitution—and especially by all the premises of the State-Rights school—is a mere compact between the States; it confers no powers but delegated and enumerated powers, and such as are indispensable to the execution of these; and nowhere is there a clause or letter in it extending its operation beyond the States. Even in respect to acknowledged powers, these are inoperative until carried into effect by a special act of Congress; they have no vitality in themselves,—they are only dead provisions or forms till Congress has breathed into them the breath of life; and thence to argue that of their own energy they may leap into or embrace the Territories is to argue that a corpse may on its own motion rise and walk.

But granting this caoutchouc property, this migratory power, in the Constitution, the inference that it would take Slavery with it is a still more monstrous error than the original premises. Slavery as such is not recognized or guarantied by the Federal Constitution. Whatever the five slave-holding judges of the Supreme Court may seek to maintain, they cannot upset the universal logic of the law, nor extinguish the fundamental principles of our political system. Slavery exists only by the local or municipal usage of the States in which it exists; it is there universally defined as a right of property in man; whereas the Constitution of the United States, in all its prohibitions and provisions, designates and acts upon human beings only as persons. Whatever their characters or relations under the laws of the States, they are, under the Federal Constitution, MEN. Nowhere in that immortal paper is there an iota or tittle which gives countenance to the idea that human beings may be held as property. It speaks of "persons held to service or labor," as apprentices, for instance,—and of persons other than free, i.e. not politically citizens, as Indians and some negroes; but it does not speak of Slaves or of Slavery; on the contrary, in every part, it legislates for men solely as men. The laws of each State, and the relations of the various inhabitants of each State, it of course recognizes as valid within each State; but it recognizes them as resting exclusively on the municipal authority of the State, and not on its own authority. Against nothing did the framers of the Constitution more strenuously contend than against the admission of any phrase sanctioning the tenure of man as property. They refused even to allow of the use of the word servitude, so much did they hate the thing; and Madison expressed their almost unanimous sentiment when he exclaimed, "We intend this Constitution to be THE GREAT CHARTER OF HUMAN LIBERTY to the unborn millions who shall yet enjoy its protection, and who should not see that such an institution as Slavery was ever known in our midst." In that spirit was the instrument framed, and in that spirit was it administered, while its framers lived.

Nevertheless, under the twofold pretence we have cited,—the one reconciling the conscience with the cowardice of the North, and the other conceding the arrogant pretensions of the South,—the negation of the power of the central government over Slavery was carried into effect. By a legislative hocus-pocus, known as the Compromise Measures of 1850, Congress, contrary to the uniform tendency of bodies entrusted with a discretion, vacated instead of enlarging its powers. Its sovereign function of territorial legislation was abdicated, in favor of that wretched and ragged pretender, Squatter Sovereignty; and silly or misguided people everywhere, who professed to regard as dangerous that political excitement and agitation which are the life of republics, hailed the accession of King Log as a glorious triumph of legitimacy. In the remanding of a delicate question from the central to a local jurisdiction, in the conversion of a general into a topical inflammation, they affected to see an end of the difficulty, a cure to the disease. But no expectation could have been less wise. It was a transfer, and a possible postponement, but not a settlement of the trouble. Had they looked deeper, they would have discerned that the dispute in regard to Slavery is involved in the very structure of our government, which links two incompatible civilizations under the same head, which compels a struggle for political power between the diverse elements by the terms and conditions of their union, and which, if the contest is suppressed at one time or place, forces it to break out at another, and will force it to break out incessantly, until either Freedom or Slavery has achieved a decisive triumph.

The principle of the non-interference of Congress with the Territories once secured, there yet stood in the way of its universal application the time-honored agreement called the Missouri Compromise. Down to the year 1820, Congress had legislated to keep Slavery out of the Territories; but at that disastrous era, a weak dread of civil convulsion led to the surrender of a single State (Missouri) to this evil,—under a solemn stipulation and warrant, however, that it should never again be introduced north of a certain line. Originating with the Slave-holders, and sustained by the Slave-holders, this compact was sacredly respected by them for thirty-three years; it was respected until they had got out of it all the advantages they could, and until Freedom was about to reap her advantages,—when they began to denounce it as unconstitutional and void. A Northern Senator—whose conduct then we shall not characterize, as he seems now to be growing weary of the hard service into which he entered—was made the instrument of its overthrow. That hallowed landmark, which had lifted its awful front against the spread of Slavery for more than an entire generation, was obliterated by a quibble, and the morning sun of the 22d of May, 1854, rose for the last time "on the guarantied and certain liberties of all the unsettled and unorganized region of the American Continent." Everything there was of honor, of justice, of the love of truth and liberty, in the heart of the nation, was smitten by this painful blow; the common sense of security felt the wound; the consoling consciousness that the faith of men might be relied upon was removed by it; and to the general imagination, in fact, it seemed as if some mighty charm, which had stayed the issue of untold calamities, were suddenly and wantonly broken.

Thus, after the Constitution had been perverted in its fundamental character,—after Congress had been despoiled of one of its most important functions,—after a compact, made sacred by the faith, the feelings, and the hopes of the third of a century, was torn in pieces,—the road was clear for the organization of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories. It was given out, amid jubilations which could not have been louder, if they had been the spontaneous greetings of some real triumph of principle, that henceforth and forever the inhabitants of the Territories would be called to determine their "domestic institutions" for themselves. Under this theory, and amid these shouts, Kansas was opened for settlement; and it was scarcely opened, before it became, as might have been expected, the battleground for the opposing civilizations of the Union, to renew and fight out their long quarrel upon. From every quarter of the land settlers rushed thither, to take part in the wager of battle. They rushed thither, as individuals and as associations, as Yankees and as Corn-crackers, as Blue Lodges and as Emigrant Aid Societies; and most of them went, not only as it was their right, but as it was their duty to do. Congress had invited them in; it had abandoned legitimate legislation in order to substitute for it a scramble between the first comers; and it had said to every man who knew that Slavery was more than a simple local interest, that it was in fact an element of the general political power, "Come and decide the issue here!"

Whatever the consequences, therefore, the cowardly action of Congress was the original cause. But what were the consequences? First, a protracted anarchy and civil war among the several classes of emigrants;—second, a murderous invasion of the Territory by the borderers of a neighboring State, for the purpose of carrying the elections against the bona-fide settlers;—third, the establishment of a system of terrorism, in which outrages having scarcely a parallel on this continent were committed, with a view to suppress all protest against the illegality of those elections, and to drive out settlers of a particular class;—fourth, the commission of a spurious legislative assembly, in the enforced absence of protests against the illegal returns of votes;—fifth, the enactment of a series of laws for the government of the Territory, the most tyrannical and bloody ever devised for freemen,—laws which aimed a fatal blow at the four corner-stones of a free commonwealth,—freedom of speech, of the press, of the jury, and of suffrage;—sixth, the recognition of Slavery as an existing fact, and the denunciation of penalties, as for felony, against every attempt to question it in word or deed;—and, finally, the dismissal of the Territorial Governor, (Reeder,) who had exhibited some signs of self-respect and conscience in resisting these wicked schemes, and who was compelled to fly the Territory in disguise, under a double menace of public prosecution and private assassination.

These were the scenes of the first act, in a drama then commenced; and those of the next were not unlike. A second Governor (Shannon) having been procured,—a Governor chosen with a double fitness to the use,—on the ground of his sympathy with whatever was vulgar in border-ruffian habits and with whatever was obsequious in Presidential policy,—the deliberate game of forcing the settlers to submit to the infamous usurpation of the Missourians was opened. But, thank Heaven! those brave and hardy pioneers would not submit! There was enough of the blood of the Puritans and of the Revolutionary Sires coursing in their veins, to make them feel that submission, under such circumstances, would have been a base betrayal of liberty, a surrender of honor, and a sacrifice of every honest sentiment of justice and self-respect. "Come," they said to the marauders,—"come, hack this flesh from our limbs, and scatter these bones to bleach with those of so many of our friends and brothers, already strewn upon the unshorn and desolate fields,—but do not ask us to submit to wrongs so daring or to frauds so foul!" The marauders took them at their word, and hewed and hacked them with shameless cruelty; yet, with a singular forbearance, the friends of freedom did not hastily resent the outrages with which they had been visited. They loved freedom, but they loved law too; and they proceeded in a legal and peaceful spirit to procure the redress of their grievances,—in the first place by an appeal to Congress, and in the second, by the organization of a State government of their own. Both of these methods they had an indisputable right to adopt; for the first is guarantied to every citizen, even the meanest,—and the second, though informal, was not illegal, and had, time and again, been sanctioned by the highest political tribunals of the land.

Congress had dismissed the subject of Territorial Government; and here it was again, in a more troublesome guise than it had ever before assumed. The ghost of the murdered Banquo would not down at its bidding. Nearly the entire session of 1856 was consumed in heated and virulent debates on Kansas. The House, fresh from the affections of the people, was disposed to do justice to the sufferers; it confirmed, by the investigations of its committees, the verity of every complaint, and it was not willing to allow a trivial technicality to stand in the way of the great cause of truth and right. But the Senate was dogmatic and hard,—full of whims, and scruples, and hair-splitting difficulties,—ever straining at gnats and swallowing camels; of the few there inclined to bear a manly part, one was overpowered by the club of a bully, and the others by the despotism of numbers and of party drill. As for the Executive, it was bound hand and foot to the Slave Power, and had no option but to let loose its minions, its judges, its sheriffs, its vagabonds, and its dragoons upon the poor Free-State men, whose only crime was a refusal to submit to the most outrageous abuses. Their towns were burned, their presses destroyed, their assemblies dispersed, and their wives and children brutally insulted. The debauched and imbecile Governor, who represented the Federal Power, hounded on the miscreants of the border to the work of destruction, so long as he was able; but he happily became in the end too weak even for this perfunctory labor; and he gradually sank into deliquium, till his final withdrawal into the obscurities whence he had emerged gave a momentary peace to the distracted and baffled settlers.

We pass over the administration of Geary, the third of the Kansas Governors,—a period in which the ravages of the marauders were continued, but under meliorated circumstances. The great uprising of the Northern masses, in the Presidential election, had impressed upon the most desperate of the Pro-Slavery faction the necessity of a restrained and moderated zeal. Geary went to the Territory with some desire to deal justly with all parties. He fancied, from the promises made to him, that he would be sustained in this honorable course by the President. It was no part of his conception of his task, that he should be called upon to screen assassins, to justify perjury. But he had reckoned without knowledge of what he had undertaken. He was soon involved with the self-styled judiciary of Kansas, whose especial favorites were the promoters of outrage; his correspondence was intercepted, his plans thwarted, his motives aspersed, his life menaced; and he resigned his thankless charge, in a feeling of profound contempt and bitter disappointment,—of contempt for the restless knot of villains who circumvented all conciliatory action, and of disappointment towards superiors at Washington who betrayed their promises of countenance and support.

With the advent of Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency a new era was expected, because a new era had been plainly prescribed by the entire course and spirit of the Presidential campaign. All through that heated and violent contest, it was loudly promised on one side, as it was loudly demanded on the other, that the affairs of Kansas should be honestly and equitably administered. As the time had then come, in the progress of population, when the Territory might be considered competent to determine its political institutions,—the period of its immaturity and pupilage being past,—the election turned upon the single issue of Justice to Kansas. Mr. Buchanan and his party,—their conventions, their orators, and their newspapers,—in order to quell the storm of indignation swelling the Northern heart, were voluble in their pledges of a fair field for a fair settlement of all its difficulties. In the name of Popular Sovereignty,—or of the indisputable right of every people, that is a people, to determine its political constitution for itself,—they achieved a hard-won success. On no other ground could they have met the gallant charge of their opponents, and on no other ground did they retain their hold of the popular support. In his inaugural address, Mr. Buchanan foreshadowed a complete and final adjustment of every element of discord. He selected, for the accomplishment of his policy, a statesman of national reputation, experienced in politics, skilful in administration, and of well-known principles and proclivities in the practical affairs of government. Mr. Walker accepted the place of Territorial Governor, under the most urgent entreaties, and on repeated and distinct pledges on the part of the President that the organization of Kansas as a State should be unfettered and free. His personal sympathies were strongly on the side of the party which had so long ruled with truculent hand in the affairs of the Territory; but he was none the less resolved that the fairly ascertained majority should have its way.

Under assurances to that effect, the Free-State men, for the first time since the great original fraud which had disfranchised them, consented to enter into an electoral contest with their foes and oppressors. The result was the return of a Free-State delegate to Congress, and a Free-State legislature, by a majority which, after the rejection of a series of patent and wretched frauds, was more than ten to one; and yet the desperate game of conquest and usurpation was not closed. For, in the mean time, a convention of delegates to frame a State Constitution had been summoned to assemble at Lecompton. It was called by the old spurious legislature, which represented Missouri, and not Kansas; it was called by a legislature, which, even if not spurious, had no authority for making such a call; it was called under provisions for a census and registry of voters which in more than half the Territory were not complied with; and it was elected by a small proportion of a small minority, the Free-State men and others refusing to enter into a contest under proceedings unauthorized at best, and as they believed illegal. Let it be added, also, that a large number of its members were pledged to submit the result of their doings to a vote of the people,—according to what Mr. Buchanan, in his instructions to Governor Walker, and Governor Walker himself, on the strength of those instructions, had proclaimed as the policy of "the party."

This Convention, in the prosecution of its gratuitous task, devised the scheme of a Constitution wholly in the interest of its members and of the meagre minority they represented,—and so objectionable in many respects, that not one in twenty of the voters of the Territory, as Governor Walker informed the writer of this, could or would approve it. Recognizing Slavery as an existing fact, and perpetuating it in every event, it yet purported to submit the question of Slavery to a determining vote of the people. This was, however, a mere pretence; for the method proposed for getting at the sense of the people was nothing but a pitiful juggle, according to which no one could vote on the Slavery question who did not at the same time vote for the Constitution. No alternative or discretion was allowed to the citizens whose Constitution it purported to be; if they voted at all on the vast variety of subjects usually embraced in an organic law, they must vote in favor of the measures concocted by the Convention. The entire conduct of the election and the final adjudication of the returns, moreover, were taken out of the hands of the officers, and from under the operation of the laws, already established by the Territorial authorities, to be vested exclusively in one of the Convention's own creatures,—a reckless and unprincipled politician, whose whole previous career had been an offence and a nuisance to the majority of the inhabitants. Had the Convention been legitimately called and legitimately chosen, this audacious abrogation of the Territorial laws and of the functions of the Territorial officers would in itself have been sufficient to vitiate its authority; but being neither legitimately called, nor legitimately chosen, and outraging the sentiments of nineteen twentieths of the community, the illegal election provided for can be regarded only as the crowning atrocity of the long series of atrocities to which Kansas has been subjected.

The most surprising thing, however, could anything surprise us in these Kansas proceedings, is, that the President, eating all his former promises, adopts the Lecompton Convention as a legitimate body, and commends its swindling mode of submission as a "fair" test of the popular will! Yet, it is sad to say, this is only following up the line of precedents established from the beginning. The plot against the freedom of Kansas was conceived in a Congressional breach of faith; it was inaugurated by invasion, bloodshed, and civil war; it was prosecuted for two years through a series of unexampled violences; and it would be strange, if it had not been consummated at Lecompton and Washington by a series of corresponding frauds. It seems to have been impossible to touch the business without perpetrating some iniquity, great or small; and Mr. Buchanan, cautious, circumspect, timorous, as he is, tumbles into the fatal circle headlong.

And how do we know all this? Upon what kind and degree of evidence do we rest these heavy accusations? Upon the hasty opinions of those who are unfriendly to the principles and purposes of the dominant party? Not at all; but upon the voluntary confessions of the distinguished and chosen agents of that party, these agents being themselves eyewitnesses of the facts to which they testify. For proof of the original invasion and usurpation, with all its frauds and outrages, we appeal to the testimony of Governor Reeder; for proof of the continued ravages and persistent malignity of the border ruffians, we appeal to the testimony of Governor Geary; and for proof of the illegal and swindling character of the late Constitutional movement, we appeal to Governor Walker;—all these witnesses being original friends of the Kansas-Nebraska bill and policy; all the original coadjutors of the Slave Power; all its carefully selected instruments; all strongly prejudiced at the outset against the cause and the men of the Free-State Party; and yet, each one of them, as soon as he has fairly entered the field of his operations, offering such loud rebuke of the plans and projects of his own party as to provoke his speedy removal!—no strength of party attachment, no pliability of conscience, no hope of future favor, no dread of instant punishment, being sufficient to prevent him from turning against his own masters and colleagues! Even the Senators of the party catch the spirit of revolt; and the very godfather of the Kansas scheme,—its most efficient advocate,—the leading and organizing mind of it,—has become the strongest opponent and bitterest denouncer of the policy which directs its execution.

In this view of the case, may we not ask whether this base and cruel attempt at subduing Kansas has not gone far enough? Have not the circumstances shown that it is as impracticable as it is base and cruel? Or are we to see the despotism of the New World as insanely obstinate as the despotisms of the Old? Is there no warning, no instruction, to be derived from the examples of those older nations? An eloquent historian has recently depicted for us, in scenes which the memory can never lose, the mad attempts of the House of Stuart to Romanize England, to the loss of the most magnificent dominion the world ever saw; and another historian, scarcely less eloquent, has drawn a series of fearfully interesting pictures of the stern efforts of the Spaniards to impose a detested State and a more detested Church upon the burghers of the Netherlands. The spirit of James II., and the spirit of Philip II., was the same spirit which is now striving to force Slavery and Slave Law upon Kansas; and though the field of battle is narrower, and the scene less conspicuous, the consequences of the struggle are hardly of less moment. Kansas is the future seat of empire; she will yet give tone and law to the entire West; and they who are fighting there, in behalf of humanity and justice, do not fight for themselves alone, but for a large posterity.

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SONNET.

The brave old Poets sing of nobler themes Than the weak griefs which haunt men's coward souls. The torrent of their lusty music rolls Not through dark valleys of distempered dreams, But murmurous pastures lit by sunny streams; Or, rushing from some mountain height of Thought, Swells to strange music, that our minds have sought Vainly to gather from the doubtful gleams Of our more gross perceptions. Oh, their strains Nerve and ennoble Manhood!—no shrill cry, Set to a treble, tells of querulous woe; Yet numbers deep-voiced as the mighty Main's Merge in the ringdove's plaining, or the sigh Of lovers whispering where sweet streamlets flow.



ART.

THE BRITISH GALLERY IN NEW YORK.

To speak of English Art was, ten years ago, to speak of something formless, chaotic, indeed, so far as any order or organization of principles was concerned,—a mass of individual results, felt out, often, under the most glorious artistic inspiration, but much oftener the expression of merely ignorant whim, or still more empty academic knowledge,—a waste of uncultivated, unpruned brushwood, with here and there a solitary tree towering into unapproachable and inexplicable symmetry and beauty. Hogarth, Gainsborough, and Turner are great names in Art-history; but to deduce their development from the English culture of Art, one must use the same processes as in proving Cromwell to have been called up by the loyalty of Englishmen. They towered the higher from contempt for the abasement around them. If there was greatness in measure in English Art, it was greatness subjected to tradition and conventionalism. The three artists we have just named were the only great freemen, in the realm of Art England had known down to the close of the first half of the nineteenth century; and of these, Turner alone has left his impress on the Art succeeding his.

With the commencement of the present half-century there began a systematic movement in revolt from the degradation of Art in England, which, unfortunately, so far as significance was concerned, assumed the name of Pre-Raphaelitism. It extended itself rapidly, absorbing most of the young painters of any force or earnestness, and attracting some who already held high places in public esteem. Being something new, it was sure of its full measure of derision while it was considered unimportant, and of bitter and violent antagonism when it became evident that it was strong enough to make its way. This hostility, beaten down for the moment by the rhetoric of Ruskin and the inherent earnestness of the new Art, is, however, as sure to prevail again as the English character is at once conservative of old forms, reverential of authorities, and subject to enthusiasms for new things, whose very extravagance tends to reaction. If Pre-Raphaelitism now holds its own in England, it is simply because it is neither thoroughly understood nor completely defined. It is an absolutely revolutionary movement, and must, therefore, be rejected by the English mind when seen as such,—and this all the more certainly and speedily because Ruskin with his imaginative enthusiasm has raised it to a higher position than it really deserves at present. That cause is unfortunate which retains as its advocate one whose rhetoric persuades all, while his logic convinces none; and the too readily believing converts of his enthusiasm and splendid diction, their sympathetic fire abated, revert with an implacable bitterness to their former traditions. With all our respect for Ruskin, we think that he has asserted many things, but proved next to nothing. He has utterly misunderstood and misstated Pre-Raphaelitism, which will thus be one day the weaker for his support.

But, pending this inevitable decline in favor at home, Pre-Raphaelitism colonizes. During the past year, some lovers of Art in England organized an association, having as its purpose the introduction of English Art to the American public,—partly, it was to be expected, with the view of opening this El Dorado to the English painter, but still more with the desire to extend the knowledge of what was to them a new and important revelation of Art. In its inception the plan was almost exclusively Pre-Raphaelite, but extended itself, on after-consideration, so far as to admit the worthiest artists of the conventional stamp. We have the first fruits of the undertaking in an exhibition which has achieved a success in New York, and which will probably visit the principal cities of the Union before its return home in the spring to make way for a second which will open in the autumn.

It is not as a collection of pictures merely that we purpose to notice this exhibition. Out of nearly four hundred pictures, the great proportion are mere conventionalisms,—many of them choice, but most of them in no wise to be compared with the pictures of the same class by French and German painters, since neither just drawing nor impressive color redeems their inanity of conception. There are some curious water-color drawings by Lance, remarkable mainly as forcibly painted, some exquisite color-pieces by William Hunt, and a number of fine examples of the matter-of-fact common-place which forms the great mass of pictures in the London exhibitions. Two drawings deserve especial, though brief, notice; one a coast bit by Copley Fielding,—a sultry, hazy afternoon on the seashore, where sea and sky, distance and foreground, are fused into one golden, slumberous silence, in which neither wave laps nor breeze fans, and only the blinding sun moves, sinking slowly down to where heaven and ocean mingle again in a happy dream of their old unity before the waters under the firmament were divided from the waters above the firmament, and the stranded ships lie with sails drooping and listless on a beach from which the last tide seems to have ebbed, leaving the ooze glistening and gleaming in the sunlight,—a picture of rare sentiment and artistic refinement;—the other is a waterfall by Nesfield,—a dreamy, careless, wayward plunge of waters over ledge after ledge of massive rock, the merry cascade enveloping itself in a robe of spray and mist, on the skirt of which flashes the faintest vision of a rainbow, which wavers and flits, almost, as you look at it, while the jets of foam plash up from the pool at the foot of the fall, a tranquil pause of the waters in a depth of uncertain blue, in which a suggestion of emerald flashes, and from which they dance on in less frantic mood over the brown and water-worn boulders to follow their further whims; everything that is most charming and spirituelle in the water-fall is given, and with a delicacy of color and subtilty of execution fitting the subject. These are not the only good drawings, but there is in them a simplicity and singleness of purpose, a total subordination of all minor matters to the great impression, which makes them points of poetic value in the collection. There are some drawings by Finch, scarcely less noticeable for their rendering of solemn twilight, tender and touching as the memory of a loved one long dead. The water-color representation is, indeed, complete and interesting; but we have only present use with five of these drawings, by Turner, and from different stages of his progress.

Ruskin, in his pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism, has drawn such a comparison between Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites as to make them only different manifestations of the same spirit in Art. Nothing, it seems to us, could be more mistaken than this; for, in all that concerns either the end of Art or its paths of approach, its purposes or its methods, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites are diametrically opposed. Turner was intensely subjective,—the Pre-Raphaelites are as intensely objective. There is no evidence whatever in Turner's works that he ever made the slightest attempt to reproduce Nature in such guise as the Pre-Raphaelites paint her in; on the contrary, the early drawings of Turner are as inattentive to absolute truth of detail as they could well be. His course of study was one of memory. He commenced by expressing in his drawing such palpable facts and truths as were most strongly retained, and in which he conveyed the great impression of the scene, with the most complete indifference to all facts not essential to the telling of his story. From this, as his memory grew stronger and his perception more minute and comprehensive, he widened his circle of ideas and facts, always working from feeling rather than from what Nature set before him. His mind thus sifting his perceptions, retaining always only those which constituted the essential features of the impression, and with a distinctness proportioned to their relative importance, there necessarily resulted a subjective unity like that of an absolute creation. The Pre-Raphaelites, on the other hand, endeavor to paint everything that they see just as they see it; and doing this without permitting the slightest liberty of choice to their feeling, where they have feeling, their Art is, of course, in all its early stages, destitute of that singleness of purpose which marked Turner's works from the beginning. Turner felt an emotion before Nature, and used the objects from which he had received the emotion as symbols to convey it again;—the Pre-Raphaelites look at Nature as full of beautiful facts, and, like children amid the flowers, they gather their hands full, "indifferent of worst or best," and when their hands are full, crowd their laps and bosoms, and even drop some already picked, to make room for others which beckon from their stems,—insatiable with beauty. This is delightful,—but childlike, nevertheless. Turner was, above all, an artist; with him Art stood first, facts secondary;—with the Pre-Raphaelites it is the reverse; it is far less important to them that their facts should be broadly stated and in keeping in their pictures, than that they should be there and comprehensible. To him a fact that was out of keeping was a nuisance, and he treated it as such; while any falsehood that was in keeping was as unhesitatingly admitted, if he needed it to strengthen the impression of his picture. Turner would put a rainbow by the side of the sun, if he wanted one there;—a Pre-Raphaelite would paint with a stop-watch, to get the rainbow in the right place. In brief, Turner's was the purely subjective method of study, a method fatal to any artist of the opposite quality of mind;—that of the Pre-Raphaelites is the purely objective, absolutely enslaving to a subjective artist, and no critic capable of following out the first principles of Art to logical deductions could confound the two. The one leads to a sentimental, the other to a philosophic Art; and the only advice to be given to an artist as to his choice of method is, that, until he knows that he can trust himself in the liberty of the subjective, he had better remain in the discipline of the objective. The fascination of the former, once felt, forbids all return to the latter. If he be happy in the Pre-Raphaelite fidelity, let him thank the Muse and tempt her no farther.

There can be no more valuable lesson in Art given than that series of Turner drawings in the British collection, both as concerns its progression in the individual and those subtile analogies between painting (color) and music,—analogies often hinted at, but never, that we are aware, fully followed out. Color bears the same relation to form that sound does to language. If a painter sit down before Nature and accurately match all her tints, we have an absolute but prosaic rendering of her; and the analogy to this in music would be found in a passage of ordinary conversational language written down, with its inflections and pauses recorded in musical signs. Both are transcripts of Nature, but neither is in any way poetic, or, strictly speaking, artistic; we cannot, by any addition or refinement, make them so. Now mark that in the two early drawings of Turner we have white and black with only the slightest possible suggestion of blue in the distance;—the corresponding form in language is verse, with its measure of time for measure of space, and just so much inflection of voice as these drawings have of tint,—enough not to be absolutely monotonous. We have in both cases left the idea of mere imitation of Nature, and have entered on Art. Verse grows naturally into music by simple increase of the range of inflection, as Turner's color will grow more melodic and finally harmonic. And in thus beginning Turner has placed his works above the level of prosaic painting of Nature, just as verse is placed above prose by the unanimous consent of mankind. From these simple presages of Art we may diverge and follow his development as a poet by his engravings, without ever making reference to him as a colorist. But beside being a poet, he was a great color-composer. If, leaving poetry as recited, we take the ballad, or poetry made fully melodic, we have the single voice, passing through measured inflections and with measured pauses. Correspondingly, the next in the series of Turner drawings, the "Aysgarth Force," shows no attempt to give the real color of Nature, but a single color governing the whole drawing, a golden brown passing in shadow into its exact negative. There is an absolute tint, full, and inflected through every shade of its tones to the bottom of the scale. The strict analogy is broken in this case by a dash of delicate gray-blue in the sky and gray-red in the figures, the slightest possible accompaniment to his golden-brown melody; but these were not needed, and we find earlier drawings which adhere to the strict monochrome. In the drawing next in date, the "Hastings from the Sea," we have the further step from monochrome to polychrome; we have the distinct trio, the golden yellow in the sky, the blue in the sea, and the red in the figures in the boats,—as in a vocal trio we have the only three possible musical sounds of the human voice, the soprano, the basso, and the falsetto of the child's voice. All these colors are distinctly asserted and perfectly harmonized in a most exquisite play of tints, but it is still no more like Nature than the trio in "I Puritani" is like conversation. Turner never dreamed of painting like Nature, and no sane man ever saw or can see, in this world, Nature in the colors in which he has painted her, any more than he will find men conducting business in operatic notes.

One step farther, and we leave the analogy. In the "Swiss Valley," one of his last works, we are from the first conscious that his harmonies have run away with his theme. In Ole Bull's "Niagara" we have almost as much of matter-of-fact Nature as in Turner's "Swiss Valley." The eye untrained by study of Turner's works finds nothing but a blaze of color with no intelligible object, just as we have, in opera, music of which the words are inaudible;—both are there for practised ear and eye, but in neither case as of primary importance. Turner has even gone farther, and given us pictures of pure color, as in the illustration of Goethe's theory of colors,—a fantasie of the palette. And why shall Turner not orchestrate color as well as Verdi sound? why not give us his synchromies as well as Beethoven his symphonies? You prefer common sense,—Harding and Fripp, Stanfield and Creswick? Well, suppose you like better to hear some familiar voice talking of past times than to hear "Robert le Diable" ever so well sung, or Hawthorne's prose better than Browning's verse,—it proves nothing, save that you do not care for music and poetry so well as some others do.

But after all, Turner was one of the old school of artists. Claude was the first landscape painter of the line, Turner the last; subjective poets both,—the one a child, the other a mighty man. But the poets no longer govern the world as in times past; they give place to the philosophers. The race is no longer content with its inspirations and emotions, but must see and understand. The old school of Art was one of sentiment, the new is one of fact; and out of that English mind from whose seeming common-place level of untrained, unschooled intellect have burst so many of the loftiest souls the world has known,—from that mind more inspired in its want of academic greatness, more self-educated in its wild liberty, than the best-trained nations of Europe, this new school has fittingly had its origin.

We speak of it as a School, though yet in its rudiments, because it has a distinctive character, a real purpose,—and because it is the embodiment of the new-age spirit of truth-seeking, of the spirit of science, rather than that of song. Among the pictures contributed to the English exhibition by the Pre-Raphaelites, there are very few which do not convey the distinct impression of a determined effort to realize certain truths. There are few which succeed entirely; but this is so far from astonishing, that we have only to think that the oldest of these artists has hardly passed his first decade of recognized artistic existence, and that their aims are new in Art, to wonder that so much of fresh and subtile truth is given. There are two respects in which nearly all the works of the school agree, and which have come to be regarded by superficial students of Art as its characteristics, namely, that they are very deficient in drawing and devoid of grace. Both deficiencies are such as might have been expected from the circumstances. Young men filled with earnestness and enthusiasm, and with an artistic purpose full in view, will spend little time in acquiring academic excellences, or trouble themselves much with methods or styles of drawing. They dash at once to their purpose, and let technical excellence follow, as it ought, in the train of the idea of their work. Of course they do not compare, as draughtsmen and technists, with men who have spent years in getting a knowledge of the proportions of the human figure, and the best methods of applying color; but, on the other hand, they are safe from that most alluring and fatal course of study which makes the subject only a lay figure to display artistic capacity on. Of all the pictures of the school, in the collection of which we speak, there is but one of academic excellence in drawing,—the "King Lear" of Ford Madox Brown. All the others have errors, and some of them to a ludicrous degree; but wherever refined drawing is needed to convey the idea of the picture, no school can furnish drawing more subtile and expressive. The head of the "Light of the World" is worthy in this respect to be placed beside Raphael and Da Vinci; and the "Ophelia" of Hughes, though inexcusably incorrect in the figure, has a refinement of drawing in the face, and especially in the lines of the open, chanting mouth, which no draughtsman of the French school can equal. It is where the idea guides the hand that the Pre-Raphaelites are triumphant; everywhere else they fail. But this is a fault which will correct itself as they learn the significance and value of things they do not now understand. They paint well that which they love, and devotion grows and widens its sphere the longer it endures, taking in, little by little, all things which bear relation to the thought or thing it clings to; and the man who draws because he has something to tell, and draws that well, is certain of finally drawing all things well. This very deficiency of Pre-Raphaelitism, then, points to its true excellence, and indicates that singleness of purpose which is an element in all true Art. The want of grace, which is made almost a synonyme with Pre-Raphaelitism, has its origin in the same resolute clinging to truth as the artist comprehends it, and uncompromising determination to express it as perfectly as he has the power,—a feeling which never permits him to think whether his work be graceful, but whether it be just; so that his tremulous and almost fearful conscientiousness—tremulous with desire to see all, and fearful lest some line should wander by a hair's breadth from its fullest expressiveness—makes him lose sight entirely of grace and repose. No form that has the appearance of being painfully drawn can ever be a graceful one; and so the Pre-Raphaelite, until he has something of a master's facility and decision, can never be graceful. The artist who prefers grace to truth will never be remarkable either for grace or truth, while the one who clings to truth at all sacrifices will finally reach the expression of the highest degree of beauty which his soul is capable of conceiving; for the lines of highest beauty and supremest truth are coincident. The Ideal meets the Actual finally in the Real.

If there be one point of feeling in which the Pre-Raphaelites can be said to be more than in all others antagonistic to the schools of painting which preceded them, it would be that indicated by this distinction,—that the new school is one which in all cases places truth before beauty, while the old esteems beauty above truth. The tendency of the one is towards a severe and truth-seeking Art, one in all its characteristics essentially religious in the highest sense of the term, holding truth dearer than all success in popular estimation, or than all attractions of external beauty, reverent, self-forgetting, and humble before Nature; that of the other is towards an Art Epicurean and atheistic, holding the truth as something to be used or neglected at its pleasure, and of no more value than falsehood which is equally beautiful,—making Nature, indeed, something for weak men to lean on and for superstitious men to be enslaved by. This distinction is radical; it cuts the world of Art, as the equator does the earth, with an unswerving line, on one side or the other of which every work of Art falls, and which permits no neutral ground, no chance of compromise;—he who is not for the truth is against it. We will not be so illiberal as to say that Art lies only on one side of this line; to do so were to shut out works which have given us exceeding delight;—so neither could we exclude Epicurus and his philosophy from the company of doers of good;—but the distinction is as inexorable as the line Christ drew between his and those not his; it lies not in the product, which may be mixed good and evil, but in the motive, which is indivisible.