A true philosophy and a true religion make the way possible to us. The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will; and He never yet willed that a nation strong in means and battling for the right should be given over to a nation weak and battling for the wrong. Nations have their future—reward and penalty—in this world; and it is as certain as God lives that Providence and the heaviest battalions will prevail. We have had reverses, but no misfortune hath happened unto us but such as is common unto nations. Country has been sacrificed to partisanship. Early love has fallen away, and lukewarmness has taken its place. Unlimited enthusiasm has given place to limited stolidity. Disloyalty, overawed at first into quietude, has lifted its head among us, and waxes wroth and ravening. There are dissensions at home worse than the guns of our foes. Some that did run well have faltered; some signal-lights have gone shamefully out, and some are lurid with a baleful glare. But unto this end were we born, and for this cause came we into the world. When shall greatness of soul stand forth, if not in evil times? When the skies are fair and the seas smooth, all ships sail festively. But the clouds lower, the winds shriek, the waves boil, and immediately each craft shows its quality. The deep is strown with broken masts, parted keels, floating wrecks; but here and there a ship rides the raging sea, and flings defiance to the wind. She overlives the sea because she is sea-worthy. Not our eighty years of peace alone, but our two years of war are the touchstone of our character. We have rolled our Democracy as a sweet morsel under our tongue; we have gloried in the prosperity which it brought to the individual; but if the comforts of men minister to the degradation of man, if Democracy levels down and does not level up, if our era of peace and plenty leaves us so feeble and frivolous, so childish, so impatient, so deaf to all that calls to us from the past and entreats us in the future, that we faint and fail under the stress of our one short effort, then indeed is our Democracy our shame and curse. Let us show now what manner of people we are. Let us be clear-sighted and far-sighted to see how great is the issue that hangs upon the occasion. It is not a mere military reputation that is at stake, not the decay of a generation's commerce, not the determination of this or that party to power. It is the question of the world that we have been set to answer. In the great conflict of ages, the long strife between right and wrong, between progress and sluggardy, through the Providence of God we are placed in the van-guard. Three hundred years ago a world was unfolded for the battle-ground. Choice spirits came hither to level and intrench. Swords clashed and blood flowed, and the great reconnoissance was successfully made. Since then both sides have been gathering strength, marshalling forces, planting batteries, and to-day we stand in the thick of the fray. Shall we fail? Men and women of America, will you fail? Shall the cause go by default? When a great Idea, that has been uplifted on the shoulders of generations, comes now to its Thermopylae, its glory-gate, and needs only stout hearts for its strong hands,—when the eyes of a great multitude are turned upon you, and the fates of dumb millions in the silent future rest with you,—when the suffering and sorrowful, the lowly, whose immortal hunger for justice gnaws at their hearts, who blindly see, but keenly feel, by their God-given instincts, that somehow you are working out their salvation, and the high-born, monarchs in the domain of mind, who, standing far off, see with prophetic eye the two courses that lie before you, one to the Uplands of vindicated Right, one to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, alike fasten upon you their hopes, their prayers, their tears,—will you, for a moment's bodily comfort and rest and repose, grind all these expectations and hopes between the upper and nether millstone? Will you fail the world in this fateful hour by your faint-heartedness? Will you fail yourself, and put the knife to your own throat? For the peace which you so dearly buy shall bring to you neither ease nor rest. You will but have spread a bed of thorns. Failure will write disgrace upon the brow of this generation, and shame will outlast the age. It is not with us as with the South. She can surrender without dishonor. She is the weaker power, and her success will be against the nature of things. Her dishonor lay in her attempt, not in its relinquishment. But we shall fail, not because of mechanics and mathematics, but because our manhood and womanhood weighed in the balance are found wanting. There are few who will not share in the sin. There are none who will not share in the shame. Wives, would you hold back your husbands? Mothers, would you keep your sons? From what? for what? From the doing of the grandest duty that ever ennobled man, to the grief of the greatest infamy that ever crushed him down. You would hold him back from prizes before which Olympian laurels fade, for a fate before which a Helot slave might cower. His country in the agony of her death-struggle calls to him for succor. All the blood in all the ages, poured out for liberty, poured out for him, cries unto him from the ground. All that life has of noble, of heroic, beckons him forward. Death itself wears for him a golden crown. Ever since the world swung free from God's hand, men have died,—obeying the blind fiat of Nature; but only once in a generation comes the sacrificial year, the year of jubilee, when men march lovingly to meet their fate and die for a nation's life. Holding back, we transmit to those that shall come after us a blackened waste. The little one that lies in his cradle will be accursed for our sakes. Every child will be base-born, springing from ignoble blood. We inherited a fair fame, and bays from a glorious battle; but for him is no background, no stand-point. His country will be a burden on his shoulders, a blush upon his cheek, a chain about his feet. There is no career for the future, but a weary effort, a long, a painful, a heavy-hearted struggle to lift the land out of its slough of degradation and set it once more upon a dry place.

Therefore let us have done at once and forever with paltry considerations, with talk of despondency and darkness. Let compromise, submission, and every form of dishonorable peace be not so much as named among us. Tolerate no coward's voice or pen or eye. Wherever the serpent's head is raised, strike it down. Measure every man by the standard of manhood. Measure country's price by country's worth, and country's worth by country's integrity. Let a cold, clear breeze sweep down from the mountains of life, and drive out these miasmas that befog and beguile the unwary. Around every hearthstone let sunshine gleam. In every home let fatherland have its altar and its fortress. From every household let words of cheer and resolve and high-heartiness ring out, till the whole land is shining and resonant in the bloom of its awakening spring.



THE TRUE CHURCH.

I asked a holy man one day, "Where is the one true church, I pray?"

"Go round the world," said he, "and search: No man hath found the one true church."

I pointed to a spire, cross-crowned. "The church is false!" he cried, and frowned.

But, murmuring he had told me wrong, I pointed to the entering throng.

He answered, "If a church be true, It hath not many, but a few."

Around the font the people pressed, And crossed themselves from brow to breast.

"A cross!" he cried, "writ on the brow In water!—is it Christ's?—look thou!

"Each forehead, frowning, sheds it off: Christ's cross abides through scowl and scoff."

Then, looking through the open door, We saw men kneeling on the floor;

Faint candles, by the daylight dimmed,— Like wicks the foolish virgins trimmed;

Fair statues of the saints, as white As now their robes are, in God's light;

Sun-ladders, dropped aslant, all gold,— Like stairs the angels trod of old.

Around, above, from nave to roof, He gazed, and said, in sad reproof,—

"Alas! who is it understands God's temple is not made with hands?"

—We walked along a shaded way, Beneath the apple-blooms of May,

And came upon a church whose dome Bore still the cross, but not for Rome.

We brushed a cobweb from a pane, And gazed within the sacred fane

"Do prayers," he asked, "the more avail, If murmured nigh an altar-rail?

"Does water sprinkled from a bowl Wash any sin from any soul?

"Do tongues that taste the bread and wine Speak truer after, by that sign?

"The very priest, in gown and bands, Hath lying lips and guilty hands!"

"He speaks no error," answered I; "He says the living all shall die,

"The dead all rise; and both are true; Both wholesome doctrines,—old, not new."

My friend returned, "He aims a blow To strike the sins of long ago,—

"Yet shields, the while, with studied phrase, The evil present in these days.

"Doth God in heaven impute no crime To prophets who belie their time?"

—We turned away among the tombs: The bees were in the clover-blooms;

The crickets leaped to let us pass; And God's sweet breath was on the grass.

We spelled the legends on the stones: The graves were full of martyrs' bones,—

Of bodies which the rack once brake In witness for the dear Lord's sake,—

Of ashes gathered from the pyres Of saints whose souls fled up through fires.

I heard him murmur, as we passed, "Thus won they all the crown at last;

"Which now men lose, through looking back To find it at the stake and rack:

"The rack and stake have gathered grime: God's touchstone is the passing time."

—Just then, amid some olive-sprays, Two orioles perched, and piped their lays,

Until the gold beneath their throats Shook molten in their mellow notes.

Then, pealing from the church, a psalm Rolled forth upon the outer calm.

"Both choirs," said I, "are in accord; For both give worship to the Lord."

Said he, "The tree-top song, I fear, Fled first and straightest to God's ear.

"If men bind other men in chains, Then chant, doth God accept the strains?

"Do loud-lipped hymns His ear allure?— God hates the church that harms the poor!"

—Then rose a meeting-house in view, Of bleached and weather-beaten hue,

Where, plain of garb and pure of heart, Men kept the church and world apart,

And sat in waiting for the light That dawns upon the inner sight;

Nor did they vex the silent air With any sound of hymn or prayer;

But on their lips God's hand was pressed, And each man kissed it and was blessed.

I asked, "Is this the true church, then?" "Nay," answered he, "a sect of men:

"And sects that lock their doors in pride Shut God and half His saints outside.

"The gates of heaven, the Scriptures say, Stand open wide by night and day:

"Whoso shall enter hath no need To walk by either church or creed:

"The false church leadeth men astray; The true church showeth men the way."

—Whereat I still more eager grew To shun the false and find the true;

And, naming all the creeds, I sought What truth, or lie, or both, they taught:

Thus,—"Augustine—had he a fault?" My friend looked up to yon blue vault,

And cried, "Behold! can one man's eyes Bound all the vision of the skies?"

I said, "The circle is too wide." "God's truth is wider," he replied;

"And Augustine, on bended knee, Saw just the little he could see;

"So Luther sought with eyes and heart, Yet caught the glory but in part;

"So Calvin opened wide his soul, Yet could not comprehend the whole:

"Not Luther, Calvin, Augustine, Saw half the vision I have seen!"

—Then grew within me a desire That kindled like a flame of fire.

I looked upon his reverent brow, Entreating, "Tell me, who art thou?"

When, by the light that filled the place, I knew it was the Lord's own face!

Through all my blood a rapture stole That filled my body and my soul.

I was a sinner and afraid: I bowed me in the dust and prayed:—

"O Christ the Lord I end Thou my search, And lead me to the one true church!"

Then spake He, not as man may speak: "The one true church thou shalt not seek;

"Behold, it is enough," He said, "To find the one true Christ, its Head!"

Then straight He vanished from my sight, And left me standing in the light.



UNDER THE PEAR-TREE.

PART II.

CHAPTER IV.

Two years passed; and Swan Day was to all appearance no nearer his return to the land of his birth than when he first trod the deck that bore him away from it. He was still on the first round of the high ladder to fortune. Thus far he had wrought diligently and successfully. He had been sent hither and thither: from Canton to Hong-Kong; from Macao to Ningpo and Shanghai. He was clerk, supercargo, anything that the interest of the Company demanded. He worked with a will. His thoughts were full of tea, silks, and lacquered ware,—of exquisite carved ivory and wonderful porcelains,—of bamboos, umbrellas, and garden-chairs,—of Hong-Hi, Ching-Ho, and Fi-Fo-Fum.

There were moments, between the despatch of one vessel and the lading of another, when his mind would follow the sun, as it blazed along down out of sight of China, and fast on its way towards the Fox farm,—when an intense longing seized him to look once again on the shady nest of all his hopes and labors. He hated the life he led. He hated the noisy Tartar women that surrounded him,—aquatic and disgusting as crawfish,—brown, stupid, and leering. He hated the feline yawling of their music. He hated the yellow water, swarming with boats, and settled with junks. He hated their pagodas, and their hideous effigies of their ancestors, looking like dumb idols. Their bejewelled Buddhas, their incense-lamps, their night and day, were alike odious to him.

Stretched on a bamboo chair, in an interval of labor, and when the intense heat brought comparative stillness, before his closed eyes came often up his home among the New-Hampshire hills. He thought of his dead mother in the burying-ground, and the slate stones standing in the desolate grass. Then his thoughts ran eagerly back to the Fox farm, and the sweet, lonely figure that stood watching his return under the pear-tree,—the warm kiss of happy meeting, life opening fair, and a long vista through which the sunlight peeped all the more brightly for the shadowing trees.

Then over the farm, broad and bountiful, scanning every detail of the large red house, the great barns and sheds, the flocks of turkeys, and the geese, kept for feathers, and not dreamed of for eating. (Our Puritan fathers held neither to Christmas nor Christmas goose.) Through the path up by the well-sweep, where the moss-covered bucket hangs dripping with the purest of water. Beyond the corn-barn to the butternut-trees,—by this time, they have dropped their rich, oily fruit; and the chestnut-burrs, split open, and lying on the sunny ground. Then round to the house again, where the slant October sun shines in at the hospitable open door, where the little wheel burrs contentedly, and the loom goes flap-flap, as the strong arm of Cely Temple presses the cloth together, and throws the shuttle past, like lightning: stout cloth for choppers and ploughmen comes out of that loom!

In all his peepings at the interior of the house, one figure has accompanied him, beautified and glorified the place; so that, whether he looks into the buttery, where fair, round cheeses fill the shelves, or wanders up the broad stairs with wide landings to the "peacock chamber," he seems to himself always to be going over a temple of sweet and sacred recollections. Into the peacock chamber, therefore, his soul may wander, where the walls are sparsely decked with black-and-white sketches, ill displaying the glorious plumage of the bird, and, like all old pictures, very brown,—even to the four-posted bed, whitely dressed, and heaped to a height that would defy "the true princess" to feel a pea through it, and the white toilet-table, neatly ornamented with a holder and a pair of scissors, both sacred from common usage. Asparagus in the chimney, with scarlet berries. General Washington, very dingy and respectable, over the fireplace; and two small circular frames, inclosing the Colonel and his wife in profile. The likenesses are nearly exact, and the two noses face each other as if in an argument. Dutch tiles are set round the fireplace, of odd Scripture scenes, common in design and coarse in execution. Into the "square room" below, where the originals of the black profiles sit and smoke their pipes, Swan does not care to venture. But some day, he will show the Colonel!

Many days, these thoughts came to Swan. Months, alas, years, they came,—but few and far between. The five thousand dollars that was to have been the summit was soon only the footstool of his ambition. He became partner, and then head of a house having commercial relations with half the world. His habits assimilated themselves to the country about him, and the cool, green pictures of his mountain-home ceased to float before his sleeping eyes or soothe his waking fancies.

His busy life left him little opportunity for reading. But he took in much knowledge at first-hand by observation, which was perhaps better; and as he hit against all sorts of minds, he became in time somewhat reflective and philosophical. Through daily view of the yellow water, and perhaps the glare of the bright sun on it, or the sight of so much nankeen cloth, or the yellow faces about him, perhaps,—or whatever the cause or causes,—Swan certainly altered in his personal appearance, as the years went by. The handsome, erect youth, lithe and active, with keen features and brilliant eyes, ruddy lips and clear oval face, was gradually fading and transforming into something quite different. The brilliant eyes became sleepy, and, from a habit of narrowing the lids over them, possibly to shut out the bright sun, receded more and more beyond the full and flaccid cheeks, and even contracted a Mongolian curve at the outer corners.

One May morning Swan sat alone in his Chinese-furnished room, luxuriously appointed, as became him, on his silk, shaded ottoman, and dreamily fanned himself. His dreams were of nothing more than what occupied him waking. If he glanced upward, he would see the delicate silk curtains at the windows, and the mirrors of polished steel between the carved ivory lattices. Great porcelain vases, such as are never seen here, were disposed about the room, and jars of flowers of strange hues stood on mats of yellow wool. Furniture inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl, and coral, decked the apartment, and a small, rich table held an exquisite tea-set. Swan had just been drinking from it, and the room was full of the fragrance. He toyed with the tea-cup, and half dozed. Then, rousing himself, he put fresh tea from the canister into the cup, and poured boiling water over it from the mouth of the fantastic dragon. Covering the cup, he dallied languidly with the delicious beverage, and with the half-thoughts, half-musings, that came with the dreamy indolence of the weather. Was it, indeed, ten years,—ten,—nay, fifteen years, that he had lived this China-life?

The door swung softly open, and a servant brought a note, and stood waiting for him to read it.

Swan glanced disdainfully at the object, which he could never quite consider human,—at his white and blue petticoats, and his effeminate face, so sleepy and so mindless, as if he expected him to turn into a plate or sugar-bowl, or begin flying in the air across some porcelain river, and alighting on the pinnacle of a pagoda.

"Hong man, he outside," said the servant.

"Show him in, you stupid fool!" said the master, "and get out of the room with yourself!"

CHAPTER V.

The Hong merchant's intelligence proved at once to Swan Day the absolute necessity of his return to America to protect the interests of the Company in Boston. With the promptitude which had thus far been one of the chief elements of his success, he lost not a moment in (so to speak) changing his skin, for the new purpose of his existence.

It seemed as if with the resumption of the dress of his native country, (albeit of torrid texture still, since a chocolate silk coat, embroidered waistcoat, and trousers of dark satin speak to a modern ear of fashions as remote as China,) Swan resumed many of the habits and feelings therewith connected. With the flowing flowered robe he cast off forever the world to which it belonged, and his pulse beat rapidly and joyfully as the sails filled with the breeze that bore him away. He gazed with a disdainful pleasure at the receding shore, and closed his eyes,—to turn his back fairly and forever on the Chew-Sins and the Wu-Wangs,—to let the Hang dynasty go hang,—to shut out from all but future fireside-tales the thought of varnish-trees, soap-trees, tallow-trees, wax-trees, and litchi,—never more to look on the land of the rhinoceros, the camel, the elephant, and the ape,—on the girls with thick, protuberant lips, copper skins, and lanky, black hair,—on the corpulent gentry with their long talons, and madams tottering on their hoofs, reminding him constantly of the animal kingdom, as figured to imagination in childhood, of the rat that wanted his long tail again, or of the horse that will never win a race,—on the land of lanterns and lying, of silver pheasants and—of scamps.

The faster the good ship sailed, the stronger the east-wind blew, the swifter ran the life-current in the veins of the returning exile,—friend, countryman, lover.

As the vessel neared the coast of Massachusetts, and the land-breeze brought to his eager nostrils the odors of his native orchards, or the aromatic fragrance of the pine, and the indescribable impression, on all his senses, of home, the fresh love of country rushed purely through his veins, bubbled warmly about the place where his heart used to beat, and rose to his brain in soft, sweet imaginations. Vivid pictures of past and future; identical in all their essential features, swam before his closed eyes, languid now from excess of pleasure. Again and again he drew in the breath of home, and felt it sweeter than the gales from the Spice Islands or odors from Araby the Blest. Hovering before his fancy, came sweet eyes, full of bewildering light, half-reproachful, half-sad, and all-bewitching; a form of such exquisite grace that he wondered not it swam and undulated before him; over all, the rose-hue of youth, and the smooth, sweet charm of lip and hand that memory brought him, in that last timid caress under the pear-tree after sunset.

As soon as he could possibly so arrange his affairs in Boston as to admit of his taking a journey to Walton, Swan determined to do so. But affairs will not always consent to an arrangement; and although he exerted himself to gain a week's leisure, it was not till the Indian summer was past that he took his place in the stage-coach which plied between Boston and Walton.

How very short seemed the time since he was last on this road! Yet how much had things changed! Fifteen years! Was it possible he had been gone so long? How rapidly they had gone over himself! He felt scarcely a day older. The stage-coach was aptly termed "Accommodation," and Swan had great amusement, as he sat with the driver on the box, in noting the differences in the aspect of houses and people, since his own last ride over the same road. New villages had sprung up here and there, while already more than one manufacturing establishment showed the Northern tendencies; and the elements of progress peeped from every settlement, in the shape of meeting- and school-houses.

When the driver whipped up his modest team to an animated trot before the Eagle Hotel in Walton, Swan felt as if he must have been in a dream only, and had just now awakened. Walton was one of those New-Hampshire towns, of which there came afterwards to be many, which were said "to be good to go from"; accordingly, everybody had gone everywhere, except the old inhabitants and the children. All the youths had gone towards "the pleasant Ohio, to settle on its banks"; and such maidens as had courage to face a pioneer settlement followed their chosen lords, while the less enterprising were fain to stay at home and bewail their singlehood. All business was necessarily stagnant, and all the improvements, architectural or otherwise, which had marked the route on which Swan had come, now seemed suddenly to have ceased. He might have thought Walton the Enchanted Palace, and himself the Fairy-Prince that was to waken to life and love the Sleeping Beauty.

How unchanged was everything! The store where he used to sell crockery and pins,—the great elm-tree in front of it,—the old red tavern on the hill, where they had the Thanksgiving ball,—the houses, from one end of the street to the other, all just as when he left: he might have found his way in the dark to every one of them.

At the Eagle Tavern, the same men sat on the stoop, with chairs tilted back, smoking. A man in the bar-room was mixing flip or gin-sling for two others, who were playing checkers. Taft himself stood at the door, somewhat changed indeed, though he was always fat, but with the same ready smile as ever; and Swan could see through the windows, by the bright candle-light, the women flitting to and fro, in brisk preparations for supper.

Swan's first touch of surprise was that Taft did not recognize him,—him whom he used to see every day of his life! That was strange. It looked as if time told on Taft's faculties a little. He had himself recognized Taft in a moment. So he had recognized everything, as they drove along, and now how familiar everything looked in the evening light!

Wrapping his travelling-cloak about him, Swan asked to be shown directly to his room, and, in his anxiety to avoid being recognized, ordered a light supper to be sent up to him. First of all, he wanted to see Dorcas, to settle affairs with Colonel Fox, and to feel established. Until then, he cared not to see or talk with his old acquaintances. It would be time enough afterwards to take them by the hand,—to employ them, perhaps. And as it takes almost no time to think, before he was half-way up the stairs, Swan Day had got as far as the erection of a superb country-seat on the hill where the old Cobb house stood, and of employing a dozen smart young carpenters and masons of his acquaintance in the village. The garden should have a pagoda in it; and one room in the house should be called the "China room," and should be furnished exclusively with Chinese tables and chairs; and he would have a brilliant lantern-fete, and——Here he reached the top-stair, and the little maid pointed to his room, curtsied, and ran away.

Swan dropped his cloak, snuffed the candle, and, sitting down before the pleasant wood-fire that had been hastily lighted, proceeded to make his own tea, by a new Invention for Travellers.

As people are not changed so quickly as they expect and intend to be by circumstances, it came to pass that Swan Day's plans for elegant expenditure in his native town soon relapsed, perhaps under the influence of the Chinese herb, into old channels and plans for acquisition. The habit of years was a little too strong for him to turn short round and pour out what he had been for so many years garnering in. Rather, perhaps, keep in the tread-mill of business awhile longer, and then be the nabob in earnest. At present, who knew what these mutterings in the political atmosphere portended? A war with England seemed inevitable, and that at no distant period. It might be better to retire on a limited certainty; but then there was also the manful struggle for a splendid possibility.

A neat-handed maid brought in a tray, with the light Supper he had ordered.

The sight of four kinds of pies, with cold turkey and apple-sauce, brought the Fox farm and its inhabitants more vividly to his mind than anything else he had seen. Pumpkin of the yellowest, custard of the richest, apple of the spiciest, and mince that was one mass of appetizing dainty, filled the room with the flavor of by-gone memories. Every sense responded to them. The fifteen years that had hung like a curtain of mist before him suddenly lifted, and he saw the view beyond, broad, bountiful, and cheery, under the sunshine of love, hope, and plenty. He closed his eyes, and the flavor filled his soul, as sweet music makes the lover faint with happiness.

He took out his writing-materials, and wrote,—

"My DEAREST, SWEETEST DORCAS,—Never for one instant has the thought of you left my heart, since"——

"That's a lie, to begin with!" said he, coolly, and throwing the paper into the fire,—"try again!"

"DEAREST DORCAS,—I feel and I know what you may possibly think of me by this time,—that you may possibly imagine me false to the vows which "——

It will be perceived that Swan had improved in rhetoric, since the day he parted from his lady-love. Still he could not satisfy himself in a letter. In short, he felt that expression outran the reality, however modestly and moderately chosen. Some vividness, some fervency, he must have, of course. But how in the world to get up the requisite definition even to the words he could conscientiously use? The second attempt followed the first.

Swan Day is not the first man who has found himself mistaken in matters of importance. In his return to his native country, and the scenes of his early life, he had taken for granted the evergreen condition of his sentiments. Like the reviving patient in epilepsy, who declares he has never for an instant lost his consciousness, while the bystanders have witnessed the dead fall, and taken note of the long interval,—so this sojourner of fifteen years in strange lands felt the returning pulse of youth, without thought of the lapsing time that bridges over all gulfs of emotion, however deep.

In fact, that part of his nature which had been in most violent action fifteen years before had been lying as torpid under Indian suns as if it had been dead indeed; and his sense of returning vitality was mixed with curious speculations about his own sensations.

He dropped the pen, and placed his feet on the top of the high stuffed easy-chair which adorned the room. This inverted personal condition relieved his mystification somewhat, or perhaps brought his whole nature more into harmony.

"Dorcas!—hm! hm!—fifteen years! so it is!—ah! she must be sadly changed indeed! At thirty, a woman is no longer a wood-nymph. Even more than thirty she must be."

He removed his feet from their elevation, and carefully arranged a different scaffolding out of the materials before him, by placing a cricket on the table, and his feet on the cricket. To do this effectually and properly required the removal of the four pies, and the displacement of the cold turkey.

But Swan was mentally removing far greater and more serious difficulties. By the time he had asked himself one or two questions, and had answered them, such as, "Whether, all the conditions being changed, I am to be held to my promise?" and the like, he had placed one foot carefully up. Then, before conscience had time to trip him up, the other foot followed, and he found himself firmly posted.

"I will write a note to-morrow,—put it into the post-office——No, that won't do; in these places, nobody goes to the post-office once a week;—I'll send a note to the house."

Here he warmed up.

"A note, asking her to meet me under the great pear-tree, as we met——It is, by Jove! just fifteen years to-morrow night since I left Walton! That's good! it will help on some"——

The little maid here interrupted his meditations by coming for the relics of the supper; and Swan, weary with unwonted thought, dropped the paper curtains, and plunged, body and soul, into fifty pounds of live-geese feathers.

CHAPTER VI.

The great clock in the dining-room whirred out twelve strokes before Swan opened his eyes. As soon as the eyes took in the principal features of the apartment, which process his mental preoccupation had hindered the night before, he was as much at home as if he had never left Walton.

The great beam across the low room,—the little window-panes,—the rag-carpet, made of odds and ends patriotically arranged to represent the American eagle holding stars and stripes in his firm and bounteous claws, with an open beak that seemed saying,—"Here they be!—'cordin' as you behave yourselves!—stars or stripes!"—all within was more familiar to his eye than household words, for it was the old room he had occupied the year before he left America. He stepped quickly across the chamber to a certain beam, where he had, fifteen years before, written four initial letters, and intertwined them so curiously that the Gordian knot was easy weaving in comparison. The Gordian one was cut;—and this had been painted and effaced forever.

Swan returned to his trunk with a half-sigh. He selected a suit of clothes which he had purchased in Boston, put aside his travelling-dress, and looked out of the window occasionally as he dressed. It was a warm, sunny day. The Indian summer had relented and come back to take one more peep, before winter should shut the door on all the glowing beauty of the year. A dozen persons were crossing the street. He knew every one of them at sight. Of course there was no forgetting old Dan Sears, with whom he had forty times gone a-fishing; nor Phil Sanborn, who had stood behind the counter with him two years at the old store. Though Phil had grown stout, there was the same look. There was the old store, too, looking exactly as it did when he went away, the sign a little more worn in the gilding. He seemed to smell the mingled odors of rum, salt-fish, and liquorice, with which every beam and rafter was permeated. And there was old Walsh going home drunk this minute! with a salt mackerel, as usual, for his family-dinner.

He wrote a short note as he dressed and shaved leisurely. The note was to Dorcas, and only said,—"Meet me under the old pear-tree before sunset tonight,"—and was signed with his initials. This note he at first placed on the little mantel-shelf in plain sight, so that he should not forget to take it down-stairs when he went to breakfast. Afterwards he put it into his pocket-book.

His dress——But the dress of 1811 has not arrived at the picturesque, and could never be classical under any circumstances. He finished his toilet, and went into the dining-room just as everybody else had dined, and asked the landlord what he could have for breakfast. Even then, the landlord hardly looked curious. Taft was certainly failing. In five minutes he found himself at a well-known little table, with the tavern-staple for odd meals, ham and eggs, flanked with sweetmeats and cake, just as he remembered of old. He nibbled at the sharp barberries lying black in the boiled molasses, and listened eagerly to the talk about British aggressions which was going on in the bar-room. Suddenly a face looked in at the low window.

Swan sprang forward, kicked over his chair, and knocked the earthen pepper-box off the table. Before he reached the window, however, the shadow had passed round the corner of the house, out of sight.

It was only a youthful figure, surmounted by a broad-brimmed straw hat, that half hid two sweet, sparkling eyes. Ah! but they were Dorcas's eyes!

He picked up the pepper-box, and mechanically sifted its contents into the barberry-dish.

Dorcas's eyes,—lips,—cheeks,—and waving grace! A rocking movement, a sort of beating, bounding, choking emotion, made the room suddenly dark, and he fell heavily into a chair.

The landlord opened the door, and said,—

"The hoss and shay ready, any time."

Swan roused himself, and drove away, without speaking to any of the smoking loungers on the stoop, to whom he was as if he had never been born. But this, from his preoccupied state, did not strike him as singular. One little voice, a bird's voice, as he drove along through the pine woods, sang over and over the same tune,—"Dorcas! Dorcas!"

The silence of the road, when all animated Nature slept in the warm noon of the late autumn day, when even the wheels scarcely sounded on the dead pine-spears, made this solitary voice, like Swan's newly awakened memory, all but angelic.

The sadness, which, through all the beauty of a New-England November, whispers in the fallen leaves, and through the rustle of the firs, overspread Swan's soul, not yet strengthened as well as freshened by his native air. He was melancholy and half stunned. He had been frightened, as he sat in the chair, by the capacity for enjoyment and suffering that was left in him. And he peered curiously into his own soul, as if the sensibilities locked up there belonged to somebody else. Impulsively he turned his horse towards the graveyard,—forgetting that he had all along intended to go there,—and fastening him at the broken gate, went on till he reached his mother's grave. Before his departure he had set up a slate stone to her memory and that of Robert Day, a soldier in the English army.

"She shall have a marble monument now, poor mother!" thought the son, picking his way through the long, tangled grass of the dreary place. Not a tree, not a shrub in sight. Not even the sward kept carefully. The slate had fallen flat, or, more likely, had been thrown down, and no hand had cared to raise again a stone to the memory of a despised enemy, who had never been even seen in Walton.

When Swan tried to move the stone, a thousand ugly things swarmed from beneath it. He dropped it, shuddering, and passed on. A white marble tablet of some pretension stood near, and recorded the names of

ZEPHANIAH FOX,

AND

AZUBAH, HIS WIFE.

They died the, same day and their bones rest here, till the final resurrection.

He glanced at the date,—

JUNE 14th, 1805.

And he had never heard of it!—never guessed it! But then, he had not heard at all from Dorcas. Poor Dorcas! how had she borne this sudden and terrible bereavement? All that he might have been to her in her sorrow, for one moment all that he had not been, floated by him. The yellow melted away that had so long incrusted his soul, and he felt on his bared breast, as it were, the fresh air of truth and constancy,—of all that makes life worth the having.

He drove away,—away over the broad fields and the well-remembered meadows, out upon the Dummerston road, and over the Ridge Hill. Well, life was not all behind him!

He took out his watch. It was time to keep his appointment. He left the horse at the tavern-door, and walked up the road towards the trysting-place, the old pear-tree. He looked wistfully at it, and sprang over the wall, with considerable effort, as he could not but admit to himself. That old pear-tree! They had called it old fifteen years ago,—and here it stood, as proud and strong as then! The two great branches that stretched towards the south, and which he had often thought had something benignant in their aspect, as if they would bless the wayfarer or the sojourner under their shade, still reached forth and spread abroad their strong arms. But to-night, whether from his own excited imagination, or because the early frosts had stripped it of its leaves and so bereaved it of all that gave grace to its aspect, or perhaps from the deepening twilight,—however it was, the old tree had a different expression, and stretched forth two skeleton arms with a sort of half-warning, half-mocking gesture, that sent a shudder over his frame, already disturbed by the successive presence, in the last two or three hours, of more emotions than he could comfortably sustain.

Swan was not an imaginative person. Yet the tree looked to him like a living, sentient thing, dooming him and warning him. As in the compression of the brain in drowning, it is said forgotten memories are hustled uppermost, and the events of early life vividly written on the consciousness,—so in this unwonted stir of past and present associations, Swan found himself remembering, with a thrill of pleasure that was chased by a spasm of pain, the last evening on which he had parted from Dorcas. He remembered, as if it were but now, how he had turned towards the pear-tree, when Dorcas had gone out of sight and he dared not follow her, and that the pear-tree had seemed to hear, to see, to sympathize with him,—that it had spread out great blessing arms on the southern air, and had seemed to encourage and strengthen his hopes of a happy return.

Was the fearful expression it now wore a shadow, a forerunner of what he might expect? He shook off, with an effort that was less painful than the sufferance of the thought, both fears and prognostics. He turned his back and walked rapidly and uneasily up and down the path between the tree and the old well.

He had left Dorcas blooming, lovely, and twenty-two. As blooming, as lovely, as lithe, and as sparkling, she was now. His own eyes had seen the vision.

But would she remember and love him still? For the first time it occurred to him that he must himself be somewhat changed,—changed certainly, since old Taft did not recognize him, after all the hogsheads of rum he had sold him! For the first time he felt a little thrill of fear, lest Dorcas should have been inconstant,—or lest, seeing him now, she might not love him as she once did. A faint blush passed over his face.

He raised his eyes, and Dorcas stood before him at the distance of a few feet: the bloom on her delicate cheek the same,—the dimpled chin, the serene forehead, the arch and laughing eyes!

Somehow, she seemed like a ghost, too; for, when he stepped towards her, she retreated, keeping the same distance between them.

"Dorcas!" said Swan, imploringly.

"What do you want of me?" answered a sweet voice, trembling and low.

"Are you really Dorcas? really, really my Dorcas?" said Swan, in an agony of uncertain emotion.

"To be sure I am Dorcas!" answered the girl, in a half-terrified, half-petulant tone.

In a moment she darted up the path out of sight, just as Dorcas had done on the last night he had seen her!

Had he kept the kiss on his lips with which he had parted from her,—that kiss which, to him at least, had been one of betrothal?

The short day was nearly dead. In the gloom of the darkening twilight, Swan stood leaning against the old tree and looking up the path where the figure had disappeared, doubting whether a vision had deluded his senses or not.

Was Dorcas indeed separated from him? Was there no bringing back the sweet, olden time of love to her? She had seemed to shrink from him and fade out of sight. Could she never indeed love him again?

It was getting dark. But for the great, broad moon, that just then shone out from behind the Ridge Hill, he would not have seen another figure coming down the path from the house. Swan felt as if he had lived a long time in the last half-hour.

A woman walked cautiously towards him, apparently proceeding to the well. She stooped a little, and a wooden hoop round her person supported a pail on each side, which she had evidently come to fill. It was no angel that came to trouble the fountain to-night. She pulled down the chained bucket with a strong, heavy sweep, and the beam rose high in the air, with the stone securely fastened to the end. While she drew up and poured the water into the pails, she looked several times covertly at the stranger. The stranger, on his part, scanned her as closely. She belonged to the house, he thought. Probably she had come to live on the Fox farm at the death of the old people,—to take care of Dorcas, possibly. Again he scanned her curiously.

The face was an ordinary one. A farmer's wife, even of the well-to-do, fore-handed sort, had many cares, and often heavy labors. Fifty years ago, inventive science had given no assistance to domestic labor, and all household work was done in the hardest manner. This woman might have had her day of being good-looking, possibly. But the face, even by moonlight, was now swarthy with exposure; the once round arm was dark and sinewy; and the plainly parted hair was confined and concealed by a blue-and-white handkerchief knotted under her chin. The forehead was freely lined; and the lips opened, when they did open, on dark, unfrequent teeth. These observations Swan made as he moved forward to speak to her; for there was no special expressiveness or animation to relieve the literal stamp of her features.

"Can you tell me, Madam,—hem!—who lives now on this place? It used to belong to Colonel Fox, I think."

He called her "Madam" at a venture, though she might, for all he could see, be a "help" on the farm. But it wasn't Cely, nor yet Dinah.

At the sound of his voice the woman's whole expression changed. Her quick eyes fell back into a look of dreamy inquiry and softness. She dropped her pails to the ground, and stood, fenced in by the hoop, like a statue of bewilderment,—if such a statue could be carved.

Was his face transfigured in the moonlight, as she slowly gathered up old memories, and compared the form before her with the painted shadows of the past? She answered not a word, but clasped her hands tightly together, and bent her head to listen again to the voice.

"I say! good woman!"—this time with a raised tone, for he thought she might be deaf,—"is not this the old Fox farm? Please tell me who lives here now. The family are dead, I think."

The woman opened her clenched hands and spread the palms outward and upward. Then, in a low tone of astonishment, she said,—

"Good Lord o' mercy! if it a'n't him!"

He moved nearer, and put his hand on her shoulder to reassure her.

"To be sure it is, my good soul. Don't be frightened. I give you my word, I am myself, and nobody else. And pray, now, who may you be? Do you live here?" he added, with a short laugh.

He addressed her jocosely; for he saw the poor frightened thing would never give him the information he wanted, unless he could contrive to compose her. It was odd, too, that he should frighten everybody so. Dorcas had hurried off like a lapwing.

"Swan Day!" said the woman, softly.

"That is my name, Goody! But I am ashamed to say, I don't remember you. Pray, did you live here when I went away?"

"Yes," said she, softly again, and this time looking into his eyes.

"Tell me, then, if you can tell me, whose hands this farm fell into? Who owns the place? Has it gone out of the family? Where is Dorcas Fox?"

He spoke hastily, and held her by the arm, as if he feared she would slide away in the moonlight.

"Dorcas Fox is here, Swan. I am Dorcas."

"You? you Dorcas Fox?" said he, roughly. "Was it a ghost I saw?" he murmured,—"or is this a ghost?"

He had seen a bud, fresh, dewy, and blooming; and now he brushed away from his thought the wilted and brown substitute. Not a line of the face, not a tone of the voice, did he remember.

"Don't you see anything about me, Swan,—anything that reminds you of Dorcas Fox?" said the woman, eagerly, and clasping her hands again.

His eyes glared at her in the moonlight, as he exclaimed,—

"No, my God! not a feature!"

CHAPTER VII.

"Well, I expect I be changed, Swan," said Dorcas, sadly.

She said nothing about his change; and, besides, she had recognized him.

"They say my Dorcas favors me, and looks as I used to. Come, come up to the house; Mr. Mowers'll be glad to see you. You don't know how many times we've talked you over, and wondered if ever you'd come back! But, dear sakes! you can't think what a kind of a shock you give me, Swan! Why, I expected nothin' but what you was dead, years ago!"

Here was a pretty expression of sentiment! Swan only answered, faintly,—

"Did you?" and rubbed his eyes to wake himself up.

They walked slowly towards the house. The great red walls stood staring and peaceful, as of old, and the milkers were coming in from the farmyard with their pails foaming and smoking, as they used to do fifteen years before. In the door-way, with his pipe in his mouth, stood Henry Mowers, the monarch of all he surveyed. He had come, by marriage, to own the Fox farm of twelve hundred acres. He had woodland and pasture-land, cattle and horses, like Job,—and in his house, health, peace, and children: dark-eyed Dorcas and Jemima, white-headed Obed and Zephaniah, and the twins that now clambered over his shoulder and stood on his broad, strong palms,—two others, Philip and Henry, had died in the cradle.

Dorcas the younger stood in the doorway, and leaned gracefully towards her father. She whispered to him, as the stranger approached,—

"There's the man coming now with mother! I thought't was a crazy man!"

The mother came eagerly forward, anxious to prevent the unrecognizing glance, which she knew must be painful.

"What do you think, Henry? Swan Day has come back, just in time to spend Thanksgiving with us!"

"Swan Day? I want to know!" answered Henry, mechanically holding out his hand, and then shaking it longer and longer in the vain attempt to recall the youthful features.

"Well! if ever!" he continued, turning to his wife, with increased astonishment at the perspicacity she had shown, while Swan's eyes were fixed on the slender figure of the young Dorcas, seeming to see the river of life flowing by and far beyond him.

Keeping up a despairing shaking, Henry walked the stranger into the old square room, where the once sanded floor was now covered with a carpet, and a piano strutted in the corner where the bed used to stand. But still in the other corner stood the old "buffet," and the desk where Colonel Fox kept his yellow papers. How stern, strong, and mighty Henry looked, with his six feet height, his sinewy limbs and broad chest, and his clear, steady eyes, full of manliness! How cheery the old parlor looked, too, as the evening advanced, and Dorcas lighted the pine-knots that sparkled up the chimney and set all the eyes and cheeks in the room ablaze! That was a pleasant evening, when the three elders chatted freely of all that had come and gone in Swan's absence,—of those who had died, and those who were living, and of settlers even far beyond Western New York!

"It will be like old times to have you here to-morrow at Thanksgiving, won't it?" said Henry.

"Won't it?" echoed Dorcas.

Swan said it would, and good-night.

When he was gone, little Dorcas exclaimed,—

"What a queer little old man, mother! isn't he?"

"How, queer, Dorcas?" said her mother, curious to compare the effects on the minds of the different members of the family of their visitor's appearance.

"Oh, so odd-looking! such queer little eyes! and no hair on the top of his head! and such funny whiskers!" said Dorcas, smoothing her own abundant locks, and looking at her father and brothers, whose curls were brushed back and straight up into the air, a distance of three inches, after the fashion then called "Boston." The smallest child gave an instinctive push over his forehead at the remark, and Zephaniah added,—

"He's as round and yellow as a punkin!"

"He looked stiddy to Dorcas all the time," said 'Mima, roguishly.

"Now you shet up, you silly child!" said Dorcas, with the dignity of a twelve-month's seniority.

"Wal, he dropped this 'ere in my hand, anyhow, as he went out," said Obed, opening his hand cautiously, and showing a Spanish doubloon.

"Oh! then you must give it right back to him to-morrow, Obe!" said the honest sisters; "it's gold! and he couldn't 'a' meant you should hev it!"

"I do' know 'bout that! I'll keep it t'll he asks me for 't, I guess!" said Obed, sturdily.

"What did you think about him, Henry?" said the wife; "you wouldn't 'a' known him?"

"Never! there a'n't an inch o' Swan Day in him! They say people change once in seven years. I should be loath to feel I'd lost all my looks as he has!"

"We grow old, though," answered she, with a touch of pathos in her voice, as she remembered the words of Swan.

"Old? of course, wife!" was the hearty answer; "but then we've got somethin' to show for 't!"

He glanced at her and the children proudly, and then bidding the young ones, "Scatter, quick time!" he stretched his comfortable six-feet-two before the fire, and smiled out of an easy, happy heart.

"What's looks?" said he, philosophically. "You look jest the same to me, wife, as ever you did!"

"Do I?" said the pleased wife. "Well, I'm glad I do. I couldn't bear to seem different to you, Henry!"

Henry took his pipe from his mouth, and then looked at his wife with a steady and somewhat critical gaze.

"I don't think anything about it, wife; but if I want to think on 't,—why, I can, by jes' shettin' my eyes,—and there you are! as handsome as a picter! Little Dorcas is the very image of you, at her age; and you look exactly like her,—only older, of course.—Everything ready for Thanksgiving? We'll give Day a good dinner, anyhow!"

"Yes, all's ready," answered Dorcas, with her eyes fixed on the fire.

"I knew it! There's no fail to you, wife!—never has been!—never will be!"

Dorcas rose and went behind her husband, took his head in her two faithful hands, kissed his forehead, and went upstairs.

"Little Dorcas" was fastening her hair in countless papillotes. She smiled bashfully, as her mother entered the room, and showed her white, even teeth, between her rosy lips.

"I wonder if I ever did look so pretty as that child does!" said the mother to herself.

But she said to Dorcas only this:—

"Here's your great-aunt's pin and ring. They used to be mine, when I was young and foolish. Take care of 'em, and don't you be foolish, child!"

"I wonder what mother meant!" soliloquized the daughter, when her mother had kissed her and said good-night; "she certainly had tears in her eyes!"

In the gray dawn of the next morning, Swan Day rode out of Walton in the same stage-coach and with the same "spike-team" of gray horses which had brought him thither thirty-six hours before. When the coach reached Troy, and the bright sun broke over the picturesque scenery of the erratic Ashuelot, he drew his breath deeply, as if relieved of a burden. Presently the coach stopped, the door opened, and the coachman held out his hand in silence.

"Fare, is it?"

"Fare."

Opening his pocket-book, he saw the note which he had written to Dorcas, appointing an interview, and which he had forgotten to send to her.

As he rode on, he tore the letter into a thousand minute fragments, scattering them for a mile in the coach's path, and watching the wheels grind them down in the dust.

"'T isn't the only thing I haven't done that I meant to!" said he, with a sad smile over his sallow face.

He buttoned his coat closely to his chin, raised the collar to his ears, and shut his eyes.

The coachman peeped back at his only passenger, touched the nigh leader with the most delicate hint of a whipcord, and said confidentially to the off wheel,—

"What a sleepy old porpus that is in there!"

* * * * *

THE LAST CRUISE OF THE MONITOR.

An actor in the scenes of that wild night when the Monitor went down craves permission to relate the story of her last cruise.

Her work is now over. She lies a hundred fathoms deep under the stormy waters off Cape Hatteras. But "the little cheese-box on a raft" has made herself a name which will not soon be forgotten by the American people.

Every child knows her early story,—it is one of the thousand romances of the war,—how, as our ships lay at anchor in Hampton Roads, and the army of the Potomac covered the Peninsula, one shining March day,—

"Far away to the South uprose A little feather of snow-white smoke; And we knew that the iron ship of our foes Was steadily steering its course To try the force Of our ribs of oak."

Iron conquered oak; the balls from the Congress and Cumberland rattled from the sides of the Rebel ship like hail; she passed on resistless, and

"Down went the Cumberland, all a wrack."

The Congress struck her flag, and the band of men on the Peninsula waited their turn,—for the iron monster belched out fire and shell to both sea and land. Evening cut short her work, and she returned to Norfolk, leaving terror and confusion behind her.

The morning saw her return; but now between her expected prey, the Minnesota, and herself, lay a low, black raft, to the lookers-on from the Merrimack no more formidable than the masts of the sunken Cumberland, or the useless guns of the Congress, near whose shattered hulks the Monitor kept guard, the avenger of their loss.

As the haughty monster approached the scene of her triumph, the shock of an unexampled cannonade checked her career. That little black turret poured out a fire so tremendous, so continuous, that the jubilant crew of the Merrimack faltered, surprised, terrified. The revolving tower was a marvel to them. One on board of her at the time has since told me, that, though at first entirely confident of victory, consternation finally took hold of all.

"D—n it!" said one, "the thing is full of guns."

An hour the contest raged, and then the iron scales of the invincible began to crumble under repeated blows thundered from that strange revolving terror. A slaughtering, destroying shot smashing through the port, a great seam battered in the side, crippled and defeated, the Merrimack turned prow and steamed away.

This was the end of her career, as really as when, a few weeks later, early morning saw her wrapped in sudden flame and smoke, and the people of Norfolk heard in their beds the report which was her death-knell.

So fear ended for a time, and the Monitor saw little service, until at Fort Darling she dismounted every gun, save one, when all her comrades failed to reach the mark. Then, a little worn by hard fighting, she went to Washington for some slight repairs, but specially to have better arrangements made for ventilation, as those on board suffered from the confined air during action.

The first of September a fresh alarm came, when she went down to Hampton Roads to meet the new Merrimack, said to be coming out, and stationed herself at the mouth of the James River, between the buried Congress and Cumberland, whose masts still rose above water, a monument of Rebel outrage and Union heroism. Here she remained expectant for more than two months, all on board desiring action, but thinking the new year must come in before anything could be done.

The last week in December found her lying under the guns of Fortress Monroe, and busily fitting for sea. Her own guns had been put in perfect working order, and shone like silver, one bearing the name of Worden, the other that of Ericsson. Her engineer, Mr. Campbell, was in the act of giving some final touches to the machinery, when his leg was caught between the piston-rod and frame of one of the oscillating engines, with such force as to bend the rod, which was an inch and a quarter in diameter and about eight inches long, and break its cast-iron frame, five-eighths of an inch in thickness. The most remarkable fact in this case is, that the limb, though jammed and bruised, remained unbroken,—our men in this iron craft seeming themselves to be iron.

The surgeon who examined the limb, astonished at the narrow escape, thought at first that it might, by energetic treatment, be cured in a few days; and as the engineer, who had been with the vessel from her launching, was extremely anxious to remain on board, he was disposed at first to yield to his wishes, but afterwards, reflecting that confined air and sea-sickness would have a bad effect, concluded to transfer him to the hospital, the engineer remarking, as he was carried off,—"Well, this may be Providential."

It was Providential indeed!

His place was filled, and the preparations went on briskly. The turret and sight-holes were calked, and every possible, entrance for water made secure, only the smallest openings being left in the turret-top, and the blower-stacks, through which the ship was ventilated. On the afternoon of December 29, 1862, she put on steam, and, in tow of the Rhode Island, passed the fort, and out to sea under sealed orders.

General joy was expressed at this relief from long inaction. The sick came upon deck, and in the clear sky, fresh air, and sense of motion, seemed to gain new life.

The Rhode Island, like all side-wheel steamers, left in her wake a rolling, foaming track of waves, which the Monitor, as she passed over it, seemed to smooth out like an immense flat-iron. In the course of the afternoon, we saw the Passaic in tow of the State of Georgia, like a white speck, far in advance of us.

As we gradually passed out to sea, the wind freshened somewhat; but the sun went down in glorious clouds of purple and crimson, and the night was fair and calm above us, though in the interior of our little vessel the air had already begun to lose its freshness. We suffered more or less from its closeness through the night, and woke in the morning to find it heavy with impurity from the breaths of some sixty persons, composing the officers and crew. Sunrise found us on deck, enjoying pure air, and watching the East.

"Where yonder dancing billows dip, Far off to Ocean's misty verge, Ploughs Morning, like a full-sailed ship, The Orient's cloudy surge. With spray of scarlet fire, before The ruffled gold that round her dies, She sails above the sleeping shore, Across the waking skies."

During the night we had passed Cape Henry, and now, at dawn, found ourselves on the ocean,—the land only a blue line in the distance. A few more hours, and that had vanished. No sails were visible, and the Passaic, which we had noticed the evening before, was now out of sight. The morning and afternoon passed quietly; we spent most of our time on deck, on account of the confined air below, and, being on a level with the sea, with the spray dashing over us occasionally, amused ourselves with noting its shifting hues and forms, from the deep green of the first long roll to the foam-crest and prismatic tints of the falling wave.

As the afternoon advanced, the freshening wind, the thickening clouds, and the increasing roll of the sea gave those most accustomed to ordinary ship-life some new experiences. The little vessel plunged through the rising waves, instead of riding them, and, as they increased in violence, lay, as it were, under their crests, which washed over her continually, so that, even when we considered ourselves safe, the appearance was that of a vessel sinking.

"I'd rather go to sea in a diving-bell!" said one, as the waves dashed over the pilot-house, and the little craft seemed buried in water.

"Give me an oyster-scow!" cried another,—"anything!—only let it be wood, and something that will float over, instead of under the water!"

Still she plunged on, and about six thirty P.M. we made Cape Hatteras; in half an hour we had rounded the point, and many on board expressed regret that the Monitor should not have been before the Passaic in doing so. Our spy-glasses were in constant use; we saw several vessels in the distance, and about seven P.M. discovered the Passaic four or five miles astern to the north of us, in tow of the steamer State of Georgia.

A general hurrah went up,—"Hurrah for the first iron-clad that ever rounded Cape Hatteras! Hurrah for the little boat that is first in everything!" The distance between ourselves and the Passaic widened, and we gradually lost sight of her.

At half-past seven a heavy shower fell, lasting about twenty minutes. At this time the gale increased; black, heavy clouds covered the sky, through which the moon glimmered fitfully, allowing us to see in the distance a long line of white, plunging foam, rushing towards us,—sure indication, to a sailor's eye, of a stormy time.

A gloom overhung everything; the banks of cloud seemed to settle around us; the moan of the ocean grew louder and more fearful. Still our little boat pushed doggedly on: victorious through all, we thought that here, too, she would conquer, though the beating waves sent shudders through her whole frame. Bearing still the marks of one of the fiercest battles of the war, we had grown to think her invulnerable to any assault of man or element, and as she breasted these huge waves, plunging through one only to meet another more mighty, we thought,—"She is stanch! she will weather it!"

An hour passed; the air below, which had all day been increasing in closeness, was now almost stifling, but our men lost no courage. Some sang as they worked, and the cadence of the voices, mingling with the roar of waters, sounded like a defiance to Ocean.

Some stationed themselves on top of the turret, and a general enthusiasm filled all breasts, as huge waves, twenty feet high, rose up on all sides, hung suspended for a moment like jaws open to devour, and then, breaking, gnashed over in foam from side to side. Those of us new to the sea, and not appreciating our peril, hurrahed for the largest wave; but the captain and one or two others, old sailors, knowing its power, grew momentarily more and more anxious, feeling, with a dread instinctive to the sailor, that, in case of extremity, no wreck yet known to ocean could be so hopeless as this. Solid iron from keelson to turret-top, clinging to anything for safety, if the Monitor should go down, would only insure a share in her fate. No mast, no spar, no floating thing, to meet the outstretched hand in the last moment.

The sea, like the old-world giant, gathered force from each attack. Thick and fast came the blows on the iron mail of the Monitor, and still the brave little vessel held her own, until, at half-past eight, the engineer, Waters, faithful to the end, reported a leak. The pumps were instantly set in motion, and we watched their progress with an intense interest. She had seemed to us like an old-time knight in armor, battling against fearful odds, but still holding his ground. We who watched, when the blow came which made the strong man reel and the life-blood spout, felt our hearts faint within us; then again ground was gained, and the fight went on, the water lowering somewhat under the laboring pumps.

From nine to ten it kept pace with them. From ten to eleven the sea increased in violence, the waves now dashing entirely over the turret, blinding the eyes and causing quick catchings of the breath, as they swept against us. At ten the engineer had reported the leak as gaining on us; at half-past ten, with several pumps in constant motion, one of which threw out three thousand gallons a minute, the water was rising rapidly, and nearing the fires. When these were reached, the vessel's doom was sealed; for with their extinction the pumps must cease, and all hope of keeping the Monitor above water more than an hour or two expire. Our knight had received his death-blow, and lay struggling and helpless under the power of a stronger than he.

A consultation was held, and, not without a conflict of feeling, it was decided that signals of distress should be made. Ocean claimed our little vessel, and her trembling frame and failing fire proved she would soon answer his call; yet a pang went through us, as we thought of the first iron-clad lying alone at the bottom of this stormy sea, her guns silenced, herself a useless mass of metal. Each quiver of her strong frame seemed to plead with us not to abandon her. The work she had done, the work she was to do, rose before us; might there not be a possibility of saving her yet?—her time could not have come so soon. We seemed to hear a voice from her saying,—"Save me, for once I have saved you! My frame is stanch still; my guns may again silence the roar of Rebel batteries. The night will pass, and calm come to us once more. Save me!" The roar of Ocean drowned her voice, and we who descended for a moment to the cabin knew, by the rising water through which we waded, that the end was near.

Small time was there for regrets. Rockets were thrown up, and answered by the Rhode Island, whose brave men prepared at once to lower boats, though, in that wild sea, it was almost madness.

The Monitor had been attached to the Rhode Island by two hawsers, one of which had parted at about seven P.M. The other remained firm, but now it was necessary it should be cut. How was that possible, when every wave washed clean over her deck? what man could reach it alive? "Who'll cut the hawser?" shouted Captain Bankhead. Acting-Master Stodder volunteered, and was followed by another. Holding by one hand to the ropes at her side, they cut through, by many blows of the hatchet, the immense rope which united the vessels. Stodder returned in safety, but his brave companion was washed over and went down.

The men were quiet and controlled, but all felt anxiety. Master's-Mate Peter Williams suggested bailing, in the faint hope that in this way the vessel might be kept longer above water. A bailing party was organized by John Stocking, boatswain, who, brave man, at last went down. Paymaster Keeler led the way, in company with Stocking, Williams, and one or two others; and though the water was now waist-deep, and they knew the vessel was liable to go down at almost any moment, they worked on nobly, throwing out a constant stream of water from the turret.

Meanwhile the boat launched from the Rhode Island had started, manned by a crew of picked men.

A mere heroic impulse could not have accomplished this most noble deed. For hours they had watched the raging sea. Their captain and they knew the danger; every man who entered that boat did it at peril of his life; and yet all were ready. Are not such acts as these convincing proof of the divinity in human nature?

We watched her with straining eyes, for few thought she could live to reach us. She neared; we were sure of her, thank God!

In this interval the cut hawser had become entangled in the paddle-wheel of the Rhode Island, and she drifted down upon us: we, not knowing this fact, supposed her coming to our assistance; but a moment undeceived us. The launch sent for our relief was now between us and her,—too near for safety. The steamer bore swiftly down, stern first, upon our starboard quarter. "Keep off! keep off!" we cried, and then first saw she was helpless. Even as we looked, the devoted boat was caught between the steamer and the iron-clad,—a sharp sound of crushing wood was heard,—thwarts, oars, and splinters flew in air,—the boat's crew leaped to the Monitor's deck. Death stared us in the face; our iron prow must go through the Rhode Island's side, and then an end to all. One awful moment we held our breath,—then the hawser was cleared,—the steamer moved off, as it were, step by step, first one, then another, till a ship's-length lay between us, and then we breathed freely. But the boat!—had she gone to the bottom, carrying brave souls with her? No, there she lay, beating against our iron sides, but still, though bruised and broken, a life-boat to us.

There was no hasty scramble for life when it was found she floated; all held back. The men kept steadily on at their work of bailing,—only those leaving, and in the order named, whom the captain bade save themselves. They descended from the turret to the deck with mingled fear and hope, for the waves tore from side to side, and the coolest head and bravest heart could not guaranty safety. Some were washed over as they left the turret, and, with a vain clutch at the iron deck, a wild throwing-up of the arms, went down, their death-cry ringing in the ears of their companions.

The boat sometimes held her place by the Monitor's side, then was dashed hopelessly out of reach, rising and falling on the waves. A sailor would spring from the deck to reach her, be seen for a moment in mid-air, and then, as she rose, fall into her. So she gradually filled up; but some poor souls who sought to reach her failed even as they touched her receding sides, and went down.

We had on board a little messenger-boy, the special charge of one of the sailors, and the pet of all; he must inevitably have been lost, but for the care of his adopted father, who, holding him firmly in his arms, escaped as by miracle, being washed overboard, and succeeded in placing him safely in the boat.

The last but one to make the desperate venture was the surgeon; he leaped from the deck, and at the very instant saw the boat being swept away by the merciless sea. Making one final effort, he threw his body forward as he fell, striking across the boat's side so violently, it was thought some of his ribs must be broken. "Haul the Doctor in!" shouted Lieutenant Greene, perhaps remembering how, a little time back, he himself, almost gone down in the unknown sea, had been "hauled in" by a quinine rope flung him by the Doctor. Stout sailor-arms pulled him in, one more sprang to a place in her, and the boat, now full, pushed off,—in a sinking condition, it is true, but still bearing hope with her, for she was wood.

Over the waves we toiled slowly, pulling for life. The men stuffed their pea-jackets into the holes in her side, and bailed incessantly. We neared the Rhode Island; but now a new peril appeared. Right down upon our centre, borne by the might of rushing water, came the whale-boat sent to rescue others from the iron-clad. We barely floated; if she struck us with her bows full on us, we must go to the bottom. One sprang, and, as she neared, with outstretched arms, met and turned her course. She passed against us, and his hand, caught between the two, was crushed, and the arm, wrenched from its socket, fell a helpless weight at his side; but life remained. We were saved, and an arm was a small price to pay for life.

We reached the Rhode Island; ropes were flung over her side, and caught with a death-grip. Some lost their hold, were washed away, and again dragged in by the boat's crew. What chance had one whose right arm hung a dead weight, when strong men with their two hands went down before him? He caught at a rope, found it impossible to save himself alone, and then for the first time said,—"I am injured; can any one aid me?" Ensign Taylor, at the risk of his own life, brought the rope around his shoulder in such a way it could not slip, and he was drawn up in safety.

In the mean time the whale-boat, nearly our destruction, had reached the side of the Monitor, and now the captain said,—"It is madness to remain here longer; let each man save himself." For a moment he descended to the cabin for a coat, and his faithful servant followed to secure a jewel-box, containing the accumulated treasure of years. A sad, sorry sight it was. In the heavy air the lamps burned dimly, and the water, waist-deep, splashed sullenly against the wardroom's sides. One lingering look, and he left the Monitor's cabin forever.

Time was precious; he hastened to the deck, where, in the midst of a terrible sea, Lieutenant Greene nobly held his post. He seized the rope from the whale-boat, wound it about an iron stanchion, and then around his wrists, for days afterward swollen and useless from the strain. His black body-servant stood near him.

"Can you swim, William?" he asked.

"No," replied the man.

"Then keep by me, and I'll save you."

One by one, watching their time between the waves, the men filled in, the captain helping the poor black to a place, and at last, after all effort for others and none for themselves, Captain Bankhead and Lieutenant Greene took their places in the boat. Two or three still remained, clinging to the turret; the captain had begged them to come down, but, paralyzed with fear, they sat immovable, and the gallant Brown, promising to return for them, pushed off, and soon had his boat-load safe upon the Rhode Island's deck.

Here the heartiest and most tender reception met us. Our drenched clothing was replaced by warm and dry garments, and all on board vied with each other in acts of kindness. The only one who had received any injury, Surgeon Weeks, was carefully attended to, the dislocated arm set, and the crushed fingers amputated by the gentlest and most considerate of surgeons, Dr. Webber of the Rhode Island.

For an hour or more we watched from the deck of the Rhode Island the lonely light upon the Monitor's turret; a hundred times we thought it gone forever,—a hundred times it reappeared, till at last, about two o'clock, Wednesday morning, it sank, and we saw it no more.

We had looked, too, most anxiously, for the whale-boat which had last gone out, under the command of Master's-Mate Brown, but saw no signs of it. We knew it had reached the Monitor, but whether swamped by the waved, or drawn in as the Monitor went down, we could not tell. Captain Trenchard would not leave the spot, but sailed about, looking in vain for the missing boat, till late Wednesday afternoon, when it would have been given up as hopelessly lost, except for the captain's dependence on the coolness and skill of its tried officer. He thought it useless to search longer, but, hoping it might have been picked up by some coasting vessel, turned towards Fortress Monroe.

Two days' sail brought us to the fort, whence we had started on Monday with so many glowing hopes, and, alas! with some who were never to return. The same kindness met us here as on the Rhode Island; loans of money, clothing, and other necessaries, were offered us. It was almost well to have suffered, so much beautiful feeling did it bring out.

A day or two at the fort, waiting for official permission to return to our homes, and we were on our way,—the week seeming, as we looked back upon it, like some wild dream. One thing only appeared real: our little vessel was lost, and we, who, in months gone by, had learned to love her, felt a strange pang go through us as we remembered that never more might we tread her deck, or gather in her little cabin at evening.

We had left her behind us, one more treasure added to the priceless store which Ocean so jealously hides. The Cumberland and Congress went first; the little boat that avenged their loss has followed; in both noble souls have gone down. Their names are for history; and so long as we remain a people, so long will the work of the Monitor be remembered, and her story told to our children's children.

* * * * *

LYRICS OF THE STREET.

V.

THE DARKENED HOUSE.

One year ago, this dreary night, This house, that, in my way, Checks the swift pulses of delight, Was cordial glad, and gay.

The household angels tended there Their ivy-cinctured bower, And by the hardier plant grew fair A lovely lily-flower.

The skies rained sunshine on its head, It throve in summer air: "How straight and sound!" the father said; The mother said, "How fair!"

One little year is gathering up Its glories to depart; The skies have left one marble drop Within the lily's heart.

For growth and bloom no more avails The Seasons' changing breath; With sudden constancy it feels The sculpture-touch of Death

But from its breast let golden rays, Immortal, break and rise, Linking the sorrow-clouded days With dawning Paradise.

* * * * *

AMERICA THE OLD WORLD.

First-born among the Continents, though so much later in culture and civilization than some of more recent birth, America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the New World. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the far West.

In the present state of our knowledge, our conclusions respecting the beginning of the earth's history, the way in which it took form and shape as a distinct, separate planet, must, of course, be very vague and hypothetical. Yet the progress of science is so rapidly reconstructing the past that we may hope to solve even this problem; and to one who looks upon man's appearance upon the earth as the crowning work in a succession of creative acts, all of which have had relation to his coming in the end, it will not seem strange that he should at last be allowed to understand a history which was but the introduction to his own existence. It is my belief that not only the future, but the past also, is the inheritance of man, and that we shall yet conquer our lost birthright.

Even now our knowledge carries us far enough to warrant the assertion that there was a time when our earth was in a state of igneous fusion, when no ocean bathed it and no atmosphere surrounded it, when no wind blew over it and no rain fell upon it, but an intense heat held all its materials in solution. In those days the rocks which are now the very bones and sinews of our mother earth—her granites, her porphyries, her basalts, her syenites—were melted into a liquid mass. As I am writing for the unscientific reader, who may not be familiar with the facts through which these inferences have been reached, I will answer here a question which, were we talking together, he might naturally ask in a somewhat skeptical tone. How do you know that this state of things ever existed, and, supposing that the solid materials of which our earth consists were ever in a liquid condition, what right have you to infer that this condition was caused by the action of heat upon them? I answer, Because it is acting upon them still; because the earth we tread is but a thin crust floating on a liquid sea of fire; because the agencies that were at work then are at work now, and the present is the logical sequence of the past. From artesian wells, from mines, from geysers, from hot springs, a mass of facts has been collected proving incontestably the heated condition of all materials at a certain depth below the earth's surface; and if we need more positive evidence, we have it in the fiery eruptions that even now bear fearful testimony to the molten ocean seething within the globe and forcing its way out from time to time. The modern progress of Geology has led us by successive and perfectly connected steps back to a time when what is now only an occasional and rare phenomenon was the normal condition of our earth; when those internal fires were inclosed in an envelope so thin that it opposed but little resistance to their frequent outbreak, and they constantly forced themselves through this crust, pouring out melted materials that subsequently cooled and consolidated on its surface. So constant were these eruptions, and so slight was the resistance they encountered, that some portions of the earlier rock-deposits are perforated with numerous chimneys, narrow tunnels as it were, bored by the liquid masses that poured out through them and greatly modified their first condition.

The question at once suggests itself, How was even this thin crust formed? what should cause any solid envelope, however slight and filmy when compared to the whole bulk of the globe, to form upon the surface of such a molten mass? At this point of the investigation the geologist must appeal to the astronomer; for in this vague and nebulous border-land, where the very rocks lose their outlines and flow into each other, where matter exists only in its essential elements, not yet specialized into definite forms and substances,—there the two sciences meet. Astronomy shows us our planet thrown off from the central mass of which it once formed a part, to move henceforth in an independent orbit of its own. That orbit, it tells us, passed through celestial spaces cold enough to chill this heated globe, and of course to consolidate it externally. We know, from the action of similar causes on a smaller scale and on comparatively insignificant objects immediately about us, what must have been the effect of this cooling process upon the heated mass of the globe. All substances when heated occupy more space than they do when cold. Water, which expands when freezing, is the only exception to this rule. The first effect of cooling the surface of our planet must have been to solidify it, and thus to form a film or crust over it. That crust would shrink as the cooling process went on; in consequence of the shrinking, wrinkles and folds would arise upon it, and here and there, where the tension was too great, cracks and fissures would be produced. In proportion as the surface cooled, the masses within would be affected by the change of temperature outside of them, and would consolidate internally also, the crust gradually thickening by this process.

But there was another element without the globe, equally powerful in building it up. Fire and water wrought together in this work, if not always harmoniously, at least with equal force and persistency. I have said that there was a time when no atmosphere surrounded the earth; but one of the first results of the cooling of its crust must have been the formation of an atmosphere, with all the phenomena connected with it,—the rising of vapors, their condensation into clouds, the falling of rains, the gathering of waters upon its surface. Water is a very active agent of destruction, but it works over again the materials it pulls down or wears away, and builds them up anew in other forms. As soon as an ocean washed over the consolidated crust of the globe, it would begin to abrade the surfaces upon which it moved, gradually loosening and detaching materials, to deposit them again as sand or mud or pebbles at its bottom in successive layers, one above another. Thus, in analyzing the crust of the globe, we find at once two kinds of rocks, the respective work of fire and water: the first poured out from the furnaces within, and cooling, as one may see any mass of metal cool that is poured out from a smelting-furnace today, in solid crystalline masses, without any division into separate layers or leaves; and the latter in successive beds, one over another, the heavier materials below, the lighter above, or sometimes in alternate layers, as special causes may have determined successive deposits of lighter or heavier materials at some given spot.

There were many well-fought battles between geologists before it was understood that these two elements had been equally active in building up the crust of the earth. The ground was hotly contested by the disciples of the two geological schools, one of which held that the solid envelope of the earth was exclusively due to the influence of fire, while the other insisted that it had been accumulated wholly under the agency of water. This difference of opinion grew up very naturally; for the great leaders of the two schools lived in different localities, and pursued their investigations over regions where the geological phenomena were of an entirely opposite character,—the one exhibiting the effect of volcanic eruptions, the other that of stratified deposits. It was the old story of the two knights on opposite sides of the shield, one swearing that it was made of gold, the other that it was made of silver, and almost killing each other before they discovered that it was made of both. So prone are men to hug their theories and shut their eyes to any antagonistic facts, that it is related of Werner, the great leader of the Aqueons school, that he was actually on his way to see a geological locality of especial interest, but, being told that it confirmed the views of his opponents, he turned round and went home again, refusing to see what might force him to change his opinions. If the rocks did not confirm his theory, so much the worse for the rocks,—he would none of them. At last it was found that the two great chemists, fire and water, had worked together in the vast laboratory of the globe, and since then scientific men have decided to work together also; and if they still have a passage at arms occasionally over some doubtful point, yet the results of their investigations are ever drawing them nearer to each other,—since men who study truth, when they reach their goal, must always meet at last on common ground.

The rocks formed under the influence of heat are called, in geological language, the Igneous, or, as some naturalists have named them, the Plutonic rocks, alluding to their fiery origin, while the others have been called Aqueous or Neptunic rocks, in reference to their origin under the agency of water. A simpler term, however, quite as distinctive, and more descriptive of their structure, is that of the stratified and unstratified or massive rocks. We shall see hereafter how the relative position of these two kinds of rocks and their action upon each other enables us to determine the chronology of the earth, to compare the age of her mountains, and if we have no standard by which to estimate the positive duration of her continents, to say at least which was the first-born among them, and how their characteristic features have been successively worked out. I am aware that many of these inferences, drawn from what is called "the geological record," must seem to be the work of the imagination. In a certain sense this is true,—for imagination, chastened by correct observation, is our best guide in the study of Nature. We are too apt to associate the exercise of this faculty with works of fiction, while it is in fact the keenest detective of truth.

Beside the stratified and unstratified rocks, there is still a third set, produced by the contact of these two, and called, in consequence of the changes thus brought about, the Metamorphic rocks. The effect of heat upon clay is to bake it into slate; limestone under the influence of heat becomes quick-lime, or if subjected afterwards to the action of water, it is changed to mortar; sand under the same agency is changed to a coarse kind of glass. Suppose, then, that a volcanic eruption takes place in a region of the earth's surface where successive layers of limestone, of clay, and of sandstone have been previously deposited by the action of water. If such an eruption has force enough to break through these beds, the hot, melted masses will pour out through the rent, flow over its edges, and fill all the lesser cracks and fissures produced by such a disturbance. What will be the effect upon the stratified rocks? Wherever these liquid masses, melted by a heat more intense than can be produced by any artificial means, have flowed over them or cooled in immediate contact with them, the clays will be changed to slate, the limestone will have assumed a character more like marble, while the sandstones will be vitrified. This is exactly what has been found to be the case, wherever the stratified rocks have been penetrated by the melted masses from beneath. They have been themselves partially melted by the contact, and when they have cooled again, their stratification, though still perceptible, has been partly obliterated, and their substance changed. Such effects may often be traced in dikes, which are only the cracks in rocks filled by materials poured into them at some period of eruption when the melted masses within the earth were thrown out and flowed like water into any inequality or depression of the surface around. The walls that inclose such a dike are often found to be completely altered by contact with its burning contents, and to have assumed a character quite different from the rocks of which they make a part; while the mass itself which fills the fissure shows by the character of its crystallization that it has cooled more quickly on the outside, where it meets the walls, than at the centre.

The first two great classes of rocks, the unstratified and stratified rocks, represent different epochs in the world's physical history: the former mark its revolutions, while the latter chronicle its periods of rest. All mountains and mountain-chains have been upheaved by great convulsions of the globe, which rent asunder the surface of the earth, destroyed the animals and plants living upon it at the time, and were then succeeded by long intervals of repose, when all things returned to their accustomed order, ocean and river deposited fresh beds in uninterrupted succession, the accumulation of materials went on as before, a new set of animals and plants were introduced, and a time of building up and renewing followed the time of destruction. These periods of revolution are naturally more difficult to decipher than the periods of rest; for they have so torn and shattered the beds they uplifted, disturbing them from their natural relations to each other, that it is not easy to reconstruct the parts and give them coherence and completeness again. But within the last half-century this work has been accomplished in many parts of the world with an amazing degree of accuracy, considering the disconnected character of the phenomena to be studied; and I think I shall be able to convince my readers that the modern results of geological investigation are perfectly sound logical inferences from well-established facts. In this, as in so many other things, we are but "children of a larger growth." The world is the geologist's great puzzle-box; he stands before it like the child to whom the separate pieces of his puzzle remain a mystery till he detects their relation and sees where they fit, and then his fragments grow at once into a connected picture beneath his hand.

It is a curious fact in the history of progress, that, by a kind of intuitive insight, the earlier observers seem to have had a wider, more comprehensive recognition of natural phenomena as a whole than their successors, who far excel them in their knowledge of special points, but often lose their grasp of broader relations in the more minute investigation of details. When geologists first turned their attention to the physical history of the earth, they saw at once certain great features which they took to be the skeleton and basis of the whole structure. They saw the great masses of granite forming the mountains and mountain-chains, with the stratified rocks resting against their slopes; and they assumed that granite was the first primary agent, and that all stratified rocks must be of a later formation. Although this involved a partial error, as we shall see hereafter, when we trace the upheavals of granite even into comparatively modern periods, yet it held a great geological truth also; for, though granite formations are by no means limited to those early periods, they are nevertheless very characteristic of them, and are indeed the great foundation-stones on which the physical history of the globe is built.