"Honorable! I should think it might be!" said Elsie. "I warrant me, if everything had been left to Saint Mary's doings, our Blessed Lord and the Twelve Apostles might have gone supperless. But it's Martha gets all the work, and Mary all the praise."

"Quite right, quite right," said the monk, abstractedly, while he stood out in the moonlight busily sketching the fountain. By just such a fountain, he thought, our Lady might have washed the clothes of the Blessed Babe. Doubtless there was some such in the court of her dwelling, all mossy and with sweet waters forever singing a song of praise therein.

Elsie was heard within the house meanwhile making energetic commotion, rattling pots and pans, and producing decided movements among the simple furniture of the dwelling, probably with a view to preparing for the night's repose of the guest.

Meanwhile Agnes, kneeling before the shrine, was going through with great feeling and tenderness the various manuals and movements of nightly devotion which her own religious fervor and the zeal of her spiritual advisers had enjoined upon her. Christianity, when it entered Italy, came among a people every act of whose life was colored and consecrated by symbolic and ritual acts of heathenism. The only possible way to uproot this was in supplanting it by Christian ritual and symbolism equally minute and pervading. Besides, in those ages when the Christian preacher was utterly destitute of all the help which the press now gives in keeping under the eye of converts the great inspiring truths of religion, it was one of the first offices of every saint whose preaching stirred the heart of the people, to devise symbolic forms, signs, and observances, by which the mobile and fluid heart of the multitude might crystallize into habits of devout remembrance. The rosary, the crucifix, the shrine, the banner, the procession, were catechisms and tracts invented for those who could not read, wherein the substance of pages was condensed and gave itself to the eye and the touch. Let us not, from the height of our day, with the better appliances which a universal press gives us, sneer at the homely rounds of the ladder by which the first multitudes of the Lord's followers climbed heavenward.

If there seemed somewhat mechanical in the number of times which Agnes repeated the "Hail, Mary!"—in the prescribed number of times she rose or bowed or crossed herself or laid her forehead in low humility on the flags of the pavement, it was redeemed by the earnest fervor which inspired each action. However foreign to the habits of a Northern mind or education such a mode of prayer may be, these forms to her were all helpful and significant, her soul was borne by them Godward,—and often, as she prayed, it seemed to her that she could feel the dissolving of all earthly things, and the pressing nearer and nearer of the great cloud of witnesses who ever surround the humblest member of Christ's mystical body.

"Sweet loving hearts around her beat, Sweet helping hands are stirred, And palpitates the veil between With breathings almost heard."

Certain English writers, looking entirely from a worldly and philosophical standpoint, are utterly at a loss to account for the power which certain Italian women of obscure birth came to exercise in the councils of nations merely by the force of a mystical piety; but the Northern mind of Europe is entirely unfitted to read and appreciate the psychological religious phenomena of Southern races. The temperament which in our modern days has been called the mediistic, and which with us is only exceptional, is more or less a race-peculiarity of Southern climates, and gives that objectiveness to the conception of spiritual things from which grew up a whole ritual and a whole world of religious Art. The Southern saints and religious artists were seers,—men and women of that peculiar fineness and delicacy of temperament which made them especially apt to receive and project outward the truths of the spiritual life; they were in that state of "divine madness" which is favorable to the most intense conception of the poet and artist, and something of this influence descended through all the channels of the people.

When Agnes rose from prayer, she had a serene, exalted expression, like one who walks with some unseen excellence and meditates on some untold joy. As she was crossing the court to come towards her uncle, her eye was attracted by the sparkle of something on the ground, and, stooping, she picked up a heart-shaped locket, curiously made of a large amethyst, and fastened with a golden arrow. As she pressed upon this, the locket opened and disclosed to her view a folded paper. Her mood at this moment was so calm and elevated that she received the incident with no start or shiver of the nerves. To her it seemed a Providential token, which would probably bring to her some further knowledge of this mysterious being who had been so especially confided to her intercessions.

Agnes had learned of the Superior of the Convent the art of reading writing, which would never have been the birthright of the peasant-girl in her times, and the moon had that dazzling clearness which revealed every letter. She stood by the parapet, one hand lying in the white blossoming alyssum which filled its marble crevices, while she read and seriously pondered the contents of the paper.

TO AGNES.

Sweet saint, sweet lady, may a sinful soul Approach thee with an offering of love, And lay at thy dear feet a weary heart That loves thee, as it loveth God above! If blessed Mary may without a stain Receive the love of sinners most defiled, If the fair saints that walk with her in white Refuse not love from earth's most guilty child, Shouldst thou, sweet lady, then that love deny Which all-unworthy at thy feet is laid? Ah, gentlest angel, be not more severe Than the dear heavens unto a loving prayer! Howe'er unworthily that prayer be said, Let thine acceptance be like that on high!

There might have been times in Agnes's life when the reception of this note would have astonished and perplexed her; but the whole strain of thought and conversation this evening had been in exalted and poetical regions, and the soft stillness of the hour, the wonderful calmness and clearness of the moonlight, all seemed in unison with the strange incident that had occurred, and with the still stranger tenor of the paper. The soft melancholy, half-religious tone of it was in accordance with the whole undercurrent of her life, and prevented that start of alarm which any homage of a more worldly form might have excited. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she read it many times with pauses and intervals of deep thought, and then with a movement of natural and girlish curiosity examined the rich jewel which had inclosed it. At last, seeming to collect her thoughts, she folded the paper and replaced it in its sparkling casket, and, unlocking the door of the shrine, laid the gem with its inclosure beneath the lily-spray, as another offering to the Madonna. "Dear Mother," she said, "if indeed it be so, may he rise from loving me to loving thee and thy dear Son, who is Lord of all! Amen!" Thus praying, she locked the door and turned thoughtfully to her repose, leaving the monk pacing up and down in the moonlit garden.

Meanwhile the Cavalier was standing on the velvet mossy bridge which spanned the stream at the bottom of the gorge, watching the play of moonbeams on layer after layer of tremulous silver foliage in the clefts of the black, rocky walls on either side. The moon rode so high in the deep violet-colored sky, that her beams came down almost vertically, making green and translucent the leaves through which they passed, and throwing strongly marked shadows here and there on the flower-embroidered moss of the old bridge. There was that solemn, plaintive stillness in the air which makes the least sound—the hum of an insect's wing, the cracking of a twig, the patter of falling water—so distinct and impressive.

It needs not to be explained how the Cavalier, following the steps of Agnes and her grandmother at a distance, had threaded the path by which they ascended to their little sheltered nook,—how he had lingered within hearing of Agnes's voice, and, moving among the surrounding rocks and trees, and drawing nearer and nearer as evening shadows drew on, had listened to the conversation, hoping that some unexpected chance might gain him a moment's speech with his enchantress.

The reader will have gathered from the preceding chapter that the conception which Agnes had formed as to the real position of her admirer from the reports of Giulietta was false, and that in reality he was not Lord Adrian, the brother of the King, but an outcast and landless representative of one branch of an ancient and noble Roman family, whose estates had been confiscated and whose relations had been murdered, to satisfy the boundless rapacity of Caesar Borgia, the infamous favorite of the notorious Alexander VI.

The natural temperament of Agostino Sarelli had been rather that of the poet and artist than of the warrior. In the beautiful gardens of his ancestral home it had been his delight to muse over the pages of Dante and Ariosto, to sing to the lute and to write in the facile flowing rhyme of his native Italian the fancies of the dream-land of his youth.

He was the younger brother of the family,—the favorite son and companion of his mother, who, being of a tender and religious nature, had brought him up in habits of the most implicit reverence and devotion for the institutions of his fathers.

The storm which swept over his house, and blasted all his worldly prospects, blasted, too, and withered all those religious hopes and beliefs by which alone sensitive and affectionate natures can be healed of the wounds of adversity without leaving distortion or scar. For his house had been overthrown, his elder brother cruelly and treacherously murdered, himself and his retainers robbed and cast out, by a man who had the entire sanction and support of the Head of the Christian Church, the Vicar of Christ on Earth. So said the current belief of his times,—the faith in which his sainted mother died; and the difficulty with which a man breaks away from such ties is in exact proportion to the refinement and elevation of his nature.

In the mind of our young nobleman there was a double current. He was a Roman, and the traditions of his house went back to the time of Mutius Scaevola; and his old nurse had often told him that grand story of how the young hero stood with his right hand in the fire rather than betray his honor. If the legends of Rome's ancient heroes cause the pulses of colder climes and alien races to throb with sympathetic heroism, what must their power be to one who says, "These were my fathers"? Agostino read Plutarch, and thought, "I, too, am a Roman!"—and then he looked on the power that held sway over the Tarpeian Rock and the halls of the old "Sanctus Senatus," and asked himself, "By what right does it hold these?" He knew full well that in the popular belief all those hardy and virtuous old Romans whose deeds of heroism so transported him were burning in hell for the crime of having been born before Christ; and he asked himself, as he looked on the horrible and unnatural luxury and vice which defiled the Papal chair and ran riot through every ecclesiastical order, whether such men, without faith, without conscience, and without even decency, were indeed the only authorized successors of Christ and his Apostles?

To us, of course, from our modern stand-point, the question has an easy solution,—but not so in those days, when the Christianity of the known world was in the Romish Church, and when the choice seemed to be between that and infidelity. Not yet had Luther flared aloft the bold, cheery torch which showed the faithful how to disentangle Christianity from Ecclesiasticism. Luther in those days was a star lying low in the gray horizon of a yet unawakened dawn.

All through Italy at this time there was the restless throbbing and pulsating, the aimless outreach of the popular heart, which marks the decline of one cycle of religious faith and calls for some great awakening and renewal. Savonarola, the priest and prophet of this dumb desire, was beginning to heave a great heart of conflict towards that mighty struggle with the vices and immoralities of his time in which he was yet to sink a martyr; and even now his course was beginning to be obstructed by the full energy of the whole aroused serpent brood which hissed and knotted in the holy places of Rome.

Here, then, was our Agostino, with a nature intensely fervent and poetic, every fibre of whose soul and nervous system had been from childhood skilfully woven and intertwined with the ritual and faith of his fathers, yearning towards the grave of his mother, yearning towards the legends of saints and angels with which she had lulled his cradle slumbers and sanctified his childhood's pillow, and yet burning with the indignation of a whole line of old Roman ancestors against an injustice and oppression wrought under the full approbation of the head of that religion. Half his nature was all the while battling the other half. Would he be Roman, or would he be Christian? All the Roman in him said "No!" when he thought of submission to the patent and open injustice and fiendish tyranny which had disinherited him, slain his kindred, and held its impure reign by torture and by blood. He looked on the splendid snow-crowned mountains whose old silver senate engirdles Rome with an eternal and silent majesty of presence, and he thought how often in ancient times they had been a shelter to free blood that would not endure oppression; and so gathering to his banner the crushed and scattered retainers of his father's house, and offering refuge and protection to multitudes of others whom the crimes and rapacities of the Borgias had stripped of possessions and means of support, he fled to a fastness in the mountains between Rome and Naples, and became an independent chieftain, living by his sword.

The rapacity, cruelty, and misgovernment of the various regular authorities of Italy at this time made brigandage a respectable and honored institution in the eyes of the people, though it was ostensibly banned both by Pope and Prince. Besides, in the multitude of contending factions which were every day wrangling for supremacy, it soon became apparent, even to the ruling authorities, that a band of fighting-men under a gallant leader, advantageously posted in the mountains and understanding all their passes, was a power of no small importance to be employed on one side or the other; and therefore it happened, that, though nominally outlawed or excommunicated, they were secretly protected on both sides, with a view to securing, their assistance in critical turns of affairs.

Among the common people of the towns and villages their relations were of the most comfortable kind, their depredations being chiefly confined to the rich and prosperous, who, as they wrung their wealth out of the people, were not considered particular objects of compassion when the same kind of high-handed treatment was extended toward themselves.

The most spirited and brave of the young peasantry, if they wished to secure the smiles of the girls of their neighborhood, and win hearts past redemption, found no surer avenue to favor than in joining the brigands. The leaders of these bands sometimes piqued themselves on elegant tastes and accomplishments; and one of them is said to have sent to the poet Tasso, in his misfortunes and exile, an offer of honorable asylum and protection in his mountain-fortress.

Agostino Sarelli saw himself, in fact, a powerful chief; and there were times when the splendid scenery of his mountain-fastness, its inspiring air, its wild eagle-like grandeur, independence, and security, gave him a proud contentment, and he looked at his sword and loved it as a bride. But then again there were moods in which he felt all that yearning and disquiet of soul which the man of wide and tender moral organization must feel who has had his faith shaken in the religion of his fathers. To such a man the quarrel with his childhood's faith is a never-ending anguish; especially is it so with a religion so objective, so pictorial, and so interwoven with the whole physical and nervous nature of man, as that which grew up and flowered in modern Italy.

Agostino was like a man who lives in an eternal struggle of self-justification,—his reason forever going over and over with its plea before his regretful and never-satisfied heart, which was drawn every hour of the day by some chain of memory towards the faith whose visible administrators he detested with the whole force of his moral being. When the vesper-bell, with its plaintive call, rose amid the purple shadows of the olive-silvered mountains,—when the distant voices of chanting priest and choir reached him solemnly from afar,—when he looked into a church with its cloudy pictures of angels, and its window-panes flaming with venerable forms of saints and martyrs,—it roused a yearning anguish, a pain and conflict, which all the efforts of his reason could not subdue. How to be a Christian and yet defy the authorized Head of the Christian Church, or how to be a Christian and recognize foul men of obscene and rapacious deeds as Christ's representatives, was the inextricable Gordian knot, which his sword could not divide. He dared not approach the Sacrament, he dared not pray, and sometimes he felt wild impulses to tread down in riotous despair every fragment of a religious belief which seemed to live in his heart only to torture him. He had heard priests scoff over the wafer they consecrated,—he had known them to mingle poison for rivals in the sacramental wine,—and yet God had kept silence and not struck them dead; and like the Psalmist of old he said, "Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. Is there a God that judgeth in the earth?"

The first time he saw Agnes bending like a flower in the slanting evening sunbeams by the old gate of Sorrento, while he stood looking down the kneeling street and striving to hold his own soul in the sarcastic calm of utter indifference, he felt himself struck to the heart by an influence he could not define. The sight of that young face, with its clear, beautiful lines, and its tender fervor, recalled a thousand influences of the happiest and purest hours of his life, and drew him with an attraction he vainly strove to hide under an air of mocking gallantry.

When she looked him in the face with such grave, surprised eyes of innocent confidence, and promised to pray for him, he felt a remorseful tenderness as if he had profaned a shrine. All that was passionate, poetic, and romantic in his nature was awakened to blend itself in a strange mingling of despairing sadness and of tender veneration about this sweet image of perfect purity and faith. Never does love strike so deep and immediate a root as in a sorrowful and desolated nature; there it has nothing to dispute the soil, and soon fills it with its interlacing fibres.

In this case it was not merely Agnes that he sighed for, but she stood to him as the fair symbol of that life-peace, that rest of soul which he had lost, it seemed to him, forever.

"Behold this pure, believing child," he said to himself,—"a true member of that blessed Church to which thou art a rebel! How peacefully this lamb walketh the old ways trodden by saints and martyrs, while thou art an infidel and unbeliever!" And then a stern voice within him answered,—"What then? Is the Holy Ghost indeed alone dispensed through the medium of Alexander and his scarlet crew of cardinals? Hath the power to bind and loose in Christ's Church been indeed given to whoever can buy it with the wages of robbery and oppression? Why does every prayer and pious word of the faithful reproach me? Why is God silent? Or is there any God? Oh, Agnes, Agnes! dear lily! fair lamb! lead a sinner into the green pastures where thou restest!"

So wrestled the strong nature, tempest-tossed in its strength,—so slept the trustful, blessed in its trust,—then in Italy, as now in all lands.



MAIL-CLAD STEAMERS.

Exposed as we are to treason at home and jealousy abroad, it becomes the policy as well as the duty of our country to prepare with promptitude for every contingency by availing itself of all improvements in the art of war. Superior weapons double the courage and efficiency of our troops, carry dismay to the foe, and diminish the cost and delays of warfare. The match-lock and the field-piece in their rudest form triumphed over the shield, the spear, and the javelin, while the long-bow, once so formidable, is now rarely drawn, except by those who cater for sensation-journals. The king's-arm and artillery of the last war cannot stand before the Minie rifle and Whitworth cannon any more than the sickle can keep pace with the McCormick reaper, or the slow coach with the railway-car or the telegraph. Mail-clad steamers, impervious to shells and red-hot balls, and almost, if not quite, invulnerable by solid shot and balls from rifled cannon at the distance of a hundred yards, have been launched upon the deep, and already form an important part of the navies of France and England. They have been adopted by Russia, Austria, and Spain; and yet, although our country furnishes iron which has no superior,—although it has taken the lead in the steamship, the telegraph, and the railway,—although at this moment it requires the mail-clad steamer more than any other nation, to relieve its fortresses, to recover the cotton ports, and to defend its great cities from foreign aggression, not a single one has yet been launched, or even been authorized by Congress. For years we have had no more efficient Secretary of the Navy, or more able and energetic chiefs of the bureaus, if we may judge from what has already been accomplished; but it depends on Congress to give the proper authority to construct a mail-clad navy, and to provide the necessary funds.

The importance of defensive armor has ever been felt. The warriors of ancient times went to the field in coats-of-mail, and both Homer and Virgil dilate upon the exquisite carving of the shield. The hauberk and corselet were used by the Crusaders, and the chain-armor of Milan was nearly or quite impervious to the sword and spear. Mexico and Peru were won in great part by coats-of-mail. They were used until gunpowder changed the whole course of war,—and the Chevalier Bayard, that knight "sans peur et sans reproche," who had borne himself bravely and almost without a scar in a hundred battles, in his last Italian campaign, as he was borne from the field, after being struck down by a cannon-ball, mourned that the days of Chivalry were ended. And Shakspeare tells us that this villanous saltpetre had prevented at least one sensitive gentleman from being a soldier.

Defensive armor is still used by tribes who are destitute of powder; and Barth and Barkie, in their African expeditions, found Moorish horsemen pressing down from the North into the interior of the Soudan, arrayed in coats-of-mail of the same description with that which figured in the Crusades.

In the naval contests of the last century armed ships were inferior in size to those of modern times, and their tough oak sides were not easily pierced by the six- and nine-pound balls then in general use, and twelve-pounders were considered of unusual dimension. During the war between France and America, a merchantman, armed with nine-pounders, actually beat off a sloop-of-war and several Spanish privateers; but now frigates, and even sloops-of-war, are armed with Dahlgren guns of eight- to eleven-inch bore, which throw balls of sixty to one hundred pounds,—also with superior rifled cannon. Whitworth and Armstrong guns are in use that throw shot or shell distances of three to five miles, which "the wooden walls" of neither England nor America are able to resist.

We have recently seen the Freeborn, the Pawnee, and the Harriet Lane, when assailing the rebel batteries on the James and the Potomac, compelled to take positions at the distance of two miles, and to keep constantly moving, and compelled consequently to throw away most of their costly ammunition in uncertain shots, at the same time that they were constantly exposed to shots which might destroy their engines and explode their boilers. There was no lack of courage on the part of their gallant officers; but, from the insufficiency of the vessels, they were obliged to use a wise discretion, and to take all reasonable precautions for the safety of their ships, so important and yet so inadequate to the service of the country. And when Fort Sumter was about to fall, and when a single shot-proof gun-boat could have defied the rebel batteries, and without the loss of a man have conveyed to the fortress stores for six months and a whole battalion of troops, that single gun-boat,—a mere gun-boat, which need not have passed within one thousand yards of any batteries on her way,—could not be commanded by the Government, and the gallant Anderson was compelled to lower to treason that flag whose fall has aroused the nation to arms.

The earliest experiments upon the power of iron plate to resist the force of cannon-balls appear to have been made in France by M. de Montgery, an officer in the French navy, as far back as 1810. He proposed to cover the sides of ships with several plates of iron, of the aggregate thickness of four inches, which he alleged would resist the force of any projectile. But Napoleon had not confidence in his navy; he had lost the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar; ever successful on the land, his ships had been swept by Nelson from the deep; and he had neither time nor disposition to investigate new plans for the restoration of the navy, or even to take up Fulton's new discovery. It was reserved for the third Napoleon to develop the original idea of a Frenchman, and thus to place France on the sea nearly or quite upon a footing with England.

Some twelve years later, General Paixhans, who gave his name to the large guns of modern times, (although their prior invention was claimed by the late Colonel Bomford,) again commended plate-armor for ships to his Government; but his advice was not then adopted.

With the improvement of cannon the importance of plate-armor became more and more apparent; and at length Mr. Stevens, under the sanction of our Government, instituted a series of experiments upon iron plates, and soon after commenced building an immense floating battery for the defence of New York, at Hoboken, which is still unfinished, but which, it is rumored, will, if Congress appropriates the means, be completed the present season.

Stevens was the first to carry out the idea of a mail-clad steamer; and it is alone due to the apathy of the late Administration, which has neglected our navy while indulging in its Southern proclivities, that our nation has not the honor of launching the first steamer in a coat-of-mail. The frame, however, of such a vessel has been long in place, the hull is nearly complete, the engines are far advanced, and the finishing stroke may soon be given.

Stevens, in the course of his experiments, made the important discovery, that a single plate of boiler-iron, five-eighths of an inch in thickness, and weighing less than twenty-five pounds to the superficial foot[A], when nailed to the side of a ship, was impenetrable by shell and red-hot shot, the two missiles most dangerous to wooden walls. When a solid shot strikes the side of a wooden ship, it passes in and usually stops before it reaches the opposite side. The fibres of the wood yield and close up behind it, and it often happens, from the reunion of the fibres, that it is difficult to find the place perforated by the ball, and if found, it is often easy to remedy the injury by a simple plug. But if a red-hot shot enter the ship, it may imbed itself in the wood or coils of cordage or sails, or reach the magazine, and thus destroy the whole structure, while the shell may explode within the ship and carry destruction to both men and vessel. If, then, the iron-plate had answered no other purpose, the discovery by Stevens of its capacity to resist the two most formidable weapons of his day would alone have been of great value to the country; but he went farther, and demonstrated by actual construction the idea of Montgery, that successive plates of iron would resist the cold spherical shot thrown by the best artillery, and his floating battery or frigate is protected by plate within plate of iron armor.

[Footnote A: Sheet-iron plates of one inch in thickness weigh forty pounds per superficial foot.]

While our Government slept upon its unfinished frigate, and forgot the honor and interest of the country in the lap of the siren of the South,—of that South which sixty years since broke down the navy of John Adams, and left us to encounter the embargo and war with England without a navy, or, at most, with a few frigates which sufficed to show what the navy of Adams might have effected,—the honor of launching the first iron-clad steamer, the Gloire, was resigned to the French. The first Napoleon made the army of France the best in Europe, if not in the world; the third, while he maintains the standing of the army, aspires to give the same position to her navy.

In 1854, Napoleon, who had long studied the art of war, and during his stay in New York had doubtless seen or heard of the floating battery, determined to construct two such batteries, and accordingly built the Lave and Tonnerre. With one of these, the Lave, during the Russian War, he assailed and destroyed in the brief space of one hour the strong fortress of Kinburn, near Sebastopol; and in striking contrast to this success, a large British steamship, heavily armed, but constructed of wood, was actually captured near Odessa by a small party of Russians with two or three thirty-two-pounders worked through a gap in an embankment.

The invulnerable battery of France anchored close under the fortress. Before its cannon, granite walls are shivered into fragments most dangerous to the gunners, while the shells, burying themselves two or three feet deep in the brickwork, by their explosion shake the walls to pieces. Iron, protected by iron, triumphed over both bricks and granite, which had defied the fleet of England.

The Emperor was not slow to realize the result of the problem he had solved. He at once proceeded to test the strength of the best kinds of plate made in his dominions, and found, by actual trial, that plates of the best iron, but four and three-fourths inches in thickness, were able to resist repeated shocks of solid balls fired at the distance of twenty metres (less than four rods) from his sixty-eight-pounders, and from rifled guns throwing shot of nearly the same calibre,—and this, too, when the balls were impelled by more than one-fourth their weight of powder. But ships rarely engage at such close quarters either with vessels or fortresses, and the effect of the ball is greatly diminished by distance, a single inch plate sufficing to stop a spherical shot at a long distance.

As the result of these experiments, the Emperor proceeded to construct the Gloire, an iron-clad frigate, which has been completed, has made several voyages, been tried in a severe gale, for nearly a year has been the pride of the French navy, and has recently run from Toulon to Algiers in the brief space of sixty-six hours.

The Gloire is a steam-frigate cased in five-inch plates; she is two hundred and fifty feet in length by twenty-one in width, mounts thirty-eight rifled fifty-pounders, is moved by engines of nine hundred horse-power, is manned by six hundred men, has a speed of twelve and a half knots, and a capacity for five days' coal,—a capacity which might be easily increased by a little more breadth of beam, but which is sufficient for a passage to Algiers, or along the coast of Spain, England, or Italy. This vessel is considered invulnerable by balls discharged from rifled cannon at the distance of four hundred yards.

Encouraged by his continued success, the Emperor at once ordered the construction of nine such frigates, several of which are already finished. He has since ordered ten more iron-cased frigates and gun-boats, which are now in course of construction. Before the present season closes, his iron navy will be composed of twenty steamships and four floating batteries.

During the contest with Russia, England would not venture to expose her wooden ships of the line to the close fire of the batteries either at Cronstadt or Sebastopol, and found it safer to shell them at a respectful distance and with indifferent success. She was deeply impressed, however, with the performance of the Lave and Tonnerre at Kinburn, and seriously disturbed by the completion of the great naval station at Cherbourg, armed with more than three hundred cannon, and directly opposite her coast.

England at first sought to meet the new invention by improved artillery, and produced the Whitworth and Armstrong cannon, which have a range of four to five miles. With these she practised at short distances upon targets of strong oaken plank faced with iron plates of four to five inches in diameter, but found the plates impervious to balls, and vulnerable only by steel bolts of small diameter, fired at short distances from Whitworth and Armstrong cannon,—bolts so small that the wounds they made in the frames faced with iron usually closed or did little mischief. A few plates of inferior iron occasionally gave way after repeated assaults, for English iron is coarsely made and poorly welded,—a striking illustration of which may be found in a part of the hull of the ill-fated steamer Connaught, which is preserved at the ship-yard near Dorchester Point, South Boston.

England was at length convinced; she determined that she could not safely permit the Emperor of the French to rule the sea with his iron navy. She had not forgotten St. Helena. She realized that she had no fleet that could safely encounter one of his mail-clad warriors, and found herself obliged to copy the new invention. She commenced last year ten iron-clad ships of the line, and has nearly or quite finished the Warrior, Black Prince, Defiance, and Resistance, while others are progressing. But she could not tamely copy France. Instead of confining herself to the length of the Gloire, she is constructing vessels of immense size. The Warrior, recently launched, is four hundred and twenty-six feet in length, nearly fifty-two feet in depth, has a width of fifty-eight feet, measures six thousand one hundred and seventy-seven tons, and is moved by engines of twelve hundred horse-power. She is to mount thirty-six cannon of the largest class, and her armor weighs nine hundred tons.

This vessel will be a formidable antagonist upon the open sea; but her great depth, with the weight of her armor, causes her to draw thirty feet, which would prohibit her entrance into most of the seaports upon our coast. She is vulnerable, too, at each extremity. Her iron plates, four and a half inches thick, extend but half her length, leaving more than a hundred feet at each end covered by a plate of only five-eighths of an inch in thickness; and in case these portions should be injured, she must rely upon her water-tight compartments. An adroit foe, in a light craft of greater speed, avoiding her batteries, which are planted behind her armor, might possibly assail her unprotected ends, and, although he could not sink her, still, by shot between wind and water, he might render her more unwieldy and less manageable,—a weight of water being thus admitted which would bring down the ship so as to endanger her lower ports and prevent the use of them in action. He might thus also prevent her approach to shoal water. The Warrior and her companions are, however, formidable ships, and in deep water, with ample sea-room, must be most powerful antagonists.

The importance attached by England to mail-clad steamers may be inferred from the debates in the House of Lords on the 11th and 14th of June, 1861, in which it was officially stated that the Government had not authorized the construction of a single wooden three-decker since 1855, nor one wooden two-decker since 1859, although it had launched a few upon the stocks for the purpose of clearing the yards,—and that it now contemplated culling down a number of the largest wooden steamships of the line for the purpose of plating them with iron, while it was constructing nothing but iron ships, except a few light despatch frigates, corvettes, and gun-boats.

In the same debate it was stated that bolts of steel had been forced by improved Armstrong cannon through an eight-inch mail composed of iron bars dovetailed together; but the quality of the iron and the mode of fastening were both questioned. These experiments did not deter the Government from constructing mail-clad steamships. Indeed, it must be obvious that the great cost of Armstrong cannon, fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars each, together with the cost of steel bolts, combined with the fact that this description of cannon is easily shattered, if struck by a ball from the adversary, must long prevent its introduction into use; and should it eventually succeed, it must prove far more destructive to wooden walls than to iron-clad vessels.

It has, however, been urged in England against iron ships of all descriptions, but more as a theory than as an ascertained fact, that a solid shot would make a large and irregular aperture, if it entered the side of a vessel, and a much larger orifice as it passed out on the opposite side. To this theory, however, there are two answers: first, that a solid ball can neither enter nor pass out of the sides of a mail-clad steamer; second, that, when it enters a common iron ship, there is evidence that it does less damage than would be suffered by a wooden vessel. Captain Charlewood, of the Royal Navy, who recently commanded the iron frigate Guadaloupe in the service of Mexico, testified before a Committee of the British Parliament, that "his ship was under fire almost daily for four or five months," that "the damage by shot was considerably less than that usually suffered by a wooden vessel, and that there was nothing like the number of splinters which are generally forced out by a shot sent through a wooden vessel's side"; that "the vessel was hulled once in the midship part at about one thousand yards," and the effect was "that the shot passed through the iron, making a round hole in the iron"; "that at two feet below water another shot passed through the vessel's side and one or two casks of provisions, and that the hole was simply plugged by the engineer at the time." He testified also that none of the shot disturbed any rivets. His evidence is the more valuable as it relates to an inferior vessel, whose plates were probably not more than half an inch thick.

The testimony of Captain W.H. Hall, R.N., in command of the iron frigate Nemesis, in the Chinese war, was still more conclusive in favor of iron. He stated, "that in one action the Nemesis was hit fourteen times," and that one shot "went in at one side and came out at the other, and there were no splinters; in case of that shot, it went through just as if you put your finger through a piece of paper: nothing could have been more easily stopped than I could have stopped that shot in the Nemesis"; that, "several wooden steamers were employed in that service, and they were invariably obliged to lie up for repairs, whilst I could repair the Nemesis in twenty-four hours and have her always ready for service." The Nemesis was a common iron steamer, and not a mail-clad steamship.

As respects the strength and durability of these steamers, although accidents have occurred from defective materials, it is in proof that the Tyne and Great Britain ran ashore and remained for months exposed to the open sea without going to pieces, and were finally rescued,—that the Persia struck on an iceberg, filled one of her compartments with water, and came safe to port,—that the North America and Edinburgh went at full speed upon the rocks near Cape Race and yet escaped,—and that the Sarah Sands, while transporting troops to India, took fire, that in consequence the interior and contents of one of her compartments were entirely consumed, that her magazine exploded, and that she then encountered a ten days' gale, and after this exposure to such a series of calamities she reached her port without losing one of her crew or passengers.

The ambition of England to maintain her ascendancy upon the deep has led her to disregard the advice of her Defence Commissioners, who recommended a different class of mail-clad steamers, to measure but two thousand tons and to draw but sixteen feet of water,—a class admirably adapted to the sea-ports and requirements of the United States. And singular as it may appear, by some coincidence at a moment when our country requires this class of steamers, the enterprise of Boston is completing two iron steamers whose dimensions and draught of water conform to the recommendation of the British Commissioners,—steamers which are nearly ready for launching, but which, if they can receive, before they leave the stocks, additional plates of iron, would doubtless prove the most useful and efficient mail-clad vessels which have yet been constructed.

The stranger who would inspect these beautiful vessels may seat himself at almost any hour of the day in the cars at the foot of Summer Street, and in twenty minutes find himself at a point a little north of the Perkins Asylum for the Blind. A walk of five minutes more will bring him to a secluded yard sloping gently towards the water, where he will find extensive offices, and two large buildings which cover the vessels upon the stocks.

As he approaches these structures, he will notice many plates of superior iron from the rolling-mills of Baltimore, combining the toughness and strength and other excellences of the best Pennsylvania iron; he will notice, too, immense ribs and beams of iron, and hear the incessant din of hammers riveting the sides and boilers.

Under each of these sheds he will find an iron steamship, two hundred and seventy-five feet in length by twenty-three in depth, exquisitely proportioned; he will be struck by the fine entrance and run. The extreme sharpness of the stem and stern, combined with great capacity, seems to answer every requirement; and he will be surprised to learn that the draught of these steamers is but sixteen feet when deeply laden, and that their engines of thirteen hundred horse-power are expected to give them a speed of fifteen knots per hour. When they reach their destined element and have received their lading, the height from the water-line to the deck will be but seven feet; hence it is apparent that a belt of iron plates carried around them of eight feet four inches in height would protect them from the deck to a point sixteen inches below the water-line, or from the bottom of the deck-beams to a point two feet below the water-line.

The iron plates which form the sides of these ships range in thickness from one inch below the water-line to three-fourths of an inch above it. And if we allow for the superior strength and toughness of American iron, an additional plate of three inches in thickness would suffice to give them more strength than that of either the French or English mail-clad steamers.

By careful computation we have ascertained that each vessel might be encircled by such plates, weighing but one hundred and twenty pounds per superficial foot, and have her bulwarks plated also, without adding more than three hundred tons to her weight,—actually less than one-third of the cargo she was designed to carry. With an extra planking within, and an armament of twenty-four rifled fifty-pounders or Whitworth cannon, and select crews, such vessels need fear no antagonists upon the deep. Low in the hull, they would offer but little surface to the fire of the enemy, and their sides would be impervious to shot and shell. Beneath the decks they could carry in safety a whole regiment of troops. Selecting their position by superior speed, they could destroy a fleet of wooden steamers or ships-of-the-line. Entering any of our large seaports, they could pass the fortress at the entrance uninjured, and lay cities under contribution, or destroy their ports, without being, like Achilles, or the English "Warrior," vulnerable in the heel.

When such steamers come into general use, we shall hear no more of the wooden walls of Greece or England, or of those modern platforms which had not a stick of sound oak timber in them,—nothing, indeed, but pitch-pine and cypress. Oak, pine, and cypress would fall into the same category, when contrasted with the imperishable iron. Some new agency of steel must be invented to cope with the adamantine iron. And it becomes our Government, both for the armament of our ships and for defence against iron steamers, to adopt at the earliest moment every improvement in rifled cannon.

The Navy Department has recently put under contract seven steamships and several steam gun-boats. They have intrusted the latter to some of the ablest ship-builders of the country, and it is well understood that most of these vessels are to be completed the present season. This measure, as far as it goes, is eminently wise; but our navy must still be below the requirements of the nation, and entirely disproportioned to the extent both of our commerce and of our sea-coast. At a low estimate, our country requires an additional supply of at least six mail-clad steam frigates, twelve steam sloops-of-war, and twelve steam gun-boats, with similar armor. It will require also for long voyages and distant stations a dozen steam frigates of wood, and as many steam sloops-of-war, like the best now in our service; and, with the materials and armament now on hand, an outlay of twenty-five or thirty millions well applied may suffice for the construction of the whole. With such a provision we need feel no solicitude as to the intervention of England or France in our domestic affairs.

The lighter steamships of wood will answer for long voyages to the Mediterranean, the coast of Africa, India, and the Pacific, and will protect our grain, flour, and corn, on their way from the West to Europe. Our iron steamers will defend our commercial cities from attack or blockade; they will level all rebel batteries on the waters of the Chesapeake; they can batter down the fortresses of the Southern coast, and restore to commerce the ports of Charleston, Savannah, Pensacola, Mobile, Apalachicola, New Orleans, and Galveston.

Most fortunately for our country, at a moment when we cannot immediately command the live oak of Georgia and Florida, the oak plank of Virginia, or the yellow pine of the Carolinas, we have the most abundant supplies of iron easily accessible, and now, relieved from the demands of railways and factories, ready for the construction of our iron navy. The iron plates of Pennsylvania and Maryland in strength and toughness know no superior. The iron mountain near St. Louis and the mines on Lake Champlain furnish also an article of great purity and excellence. But, choice as are these deposits of iron, they are all surpassed by the more recent discoveries on Lake Superior, now opened by the ship-canal at the Straits of St. Mary. There Nature has stored an inexhaustible amount of the richest iron ore, free from sulphur, phosphorus, arsenic, and other deleterious substances, protruding above the surface of hillocks and underlying the country for miles in extent. This ore is of the specular and magnetic kind, yields sixty-five per cent. of iron of remarkable purity, is easily mined and transported to the Lake, and is shipped in vast quantities to the ports of Lake Erie, where it meets the coal of Ohio. At least ten companies are now engaged in its shipment, which has progressed thus far with great rapidity, doubling every year. The shipments from Lake Superior, in 1858, were thirty thousand five hundred and twenty-seven tons; in 1859, eighty thousand tons; in 1860, one hundred and fifty thousand tons. So great are the magnetic powers of this iron, that, buried as it was in the depths of the forest and beneath the surface of the earth, it disturbed the compasses of the United States surveyors while engaged in the survey of Northern Michigan. For a time their needle would not work, and they were obliged temporarily to suspend their operations. Their embarrassment led to the discovery of these vast deposits of ore. It is now mingled with the inferior ore of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and extensively wrought.

Our nation has strong motives to induce it to construct an iron navy.

First. The adoption of such a navy by the great powers of Europe,—England and France,—followed by Russia, Austria, and Spain. Our commerce will be in danger, if they once acquire the power of assailing us with impunity.

Second. Our urgent want of this class of vessels to recover our fortresses, repel blockades, and reopen our Southern ports, without wearisome sieges, costly both in blood and treasure.

Third. Our inability to command our customary supplies of durable timber.

Fourth. The abundance of iron, unrivalled in any part of the world.

Fifth. The durability of the ships constructed from iron. If well manned and piloted, they will seldom need repairs; and instead of failing, as many ships do in the sixth year, and requiring vast expenditures to discharge and dismantle them for the renewal of the decaying timber, plank, copper, and other materials, often amounting in the aggregate to more than their original cost, the mail-clad steamers built of American iron will outlive successive races of wooden steamships. The iron such a navy would require will put many idle hands in motion, which would otherwise be unproductive during war,—the miners of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, the colliers of Ohio and Pennsylvania, the mariners of the Lakes, the navigators of canals, and the operatives of railways, down to the brawny smiths who fashion the metal into shapes,—until their combined efforts launch it upon the deep, and send it forth to

"dare the very elements to strife."

How much better would it be to create such an iron navy than to expend million after million on wooden walls that must soon perish by decay or the shells of the enemy, or to lavish three or four millions upon the conversion of our superannuated ships-of-the-line into steamships! These, when converted, will still retain their age and constant tendency to decay, their models long since abandoned, their original design, height of decks, and other proportions adapted to the eighteen- and twenty-four-pounders formerly in use, which are now giving place to Dahlgren and rifled cannon carrying balls of sixty-four to one hundred pounds weight. Such an expenditure would be like an essay to convert a Yankee shingle-palace, such as Irving described half a century ago, into a modern villa, and reminds one of a proposition made to an assembly some twenty centuries since, which still has its significance.

An orator had proposed to convert an old politician into a general; but a citizen moved an amendment to convert donkeys into horses, and when the possibility of doing so was questioned, argued that the horses were necessary for the war, and that his measure was as feasible as the other.

To prepare our nation for war, let us select the Enfield rifle, the Colt revolver, the rifled and cast-steel cannon, the mail-clad steamer, and not resort to flint arrow-heads and tomahawks, or to any other fossil remains of antiquity. The policy of creating an iron navy has been repeatedly urged of late in the foreign journals. It has also been advocated with signal ability by Donald McKay of Boston, one of our most eminent naval constructors, who, after building the Great Republic, the Flying Cloud, and a fleet of other celebrated clippers, has visited the dockyards of France and England, examined their mail-clad ships upon the stocks and those already finished. Although himself accustomed to work on wood, and a candidate for employment as builder of some of our wooden gun-boats, with great frankness as well as boldness he urges the construction of mail-clad steamers. We trust Congress will no longer neglect so important a means of protecting our national prosperity.



PARTING HYMN.

"Dundee."

Father of Mercies, Heavenly Friend, We seek Thy gracious throne; To Thee our faltering prayers ascend, Our fainting hearts are known!

From blasts that chill, from suns that smite, From every plague that harms; In camp and march, in siege and fight, Protect our men-at-arms!

Though from our darkened lives they take What makes our life most dear, We yield them for their country's sake With no relenting tear.

Our blood their flowing veins will shed, Their wounds our breasts will share; Oh, save us from the woes we dread, Or grant us strength to bear!

Let each unhallowed cause that brings The stern destroyer cease, Thy flaming angel fold his wings, And seraphs whisper Peace!

Thine are the sceptre and the sword, Stretch forth Thy mighty hand,— Reign Thou our kingless nation's Lord, Rule Thou our throneless land!



WHERE WILL THE REBELLION LEAVE US?

"The United States are bounded, North, by the British Possessions; South, by the Gulf of Mexico; East, by the Atlantic Ocean; and West, by the Pacific." So the school-books told us which we studied in our childhood; and so, in every school throughout the land, the children are taught to-day. The armed hosts whose tread resounds through thy Continent are marching Southward to teach this simple lesson in geography. They all know it by heart. "This they are ready to verify," as the lawyers say. Wherever, in any benighted region, this elementary proposition shall be henceforth denied or doubted, schools for adults are to be established, and the needful instruction given. By regiments, battalions, and brigades, with all necessary apparatus, the teachers go forth to their work. The proposition is a very simple one, easily expressed and easily understood; but it tells the whole story. It is the substance of all men's thoughts, and of all men's speech. Mr. Lincoln states it in his inaugural. Mr. Douglas impresses it upon the Illinois legislature. Mr. Seward announces it, briefly and with emphasis, to the governments of Europe. Sentimental talk about "our country, however bounded," is obsolete; and how the country is bounded is now the point to be settled, once and forever. "This territory, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, belongs to the people of the United States, and they mean to hold and keep it. We shall neither alter our school-books nor revise our maps." So say the American people, rising in their wrath.

The practical question with which Mr. Lincoln's administration had to deal in the first place was, Whether a popular government is strong enough to suppress a military rebellion? And that may be regarded as already settled. But the grounds upon which that rebellion is justified involve the vital facts of national unity, and even of national existence. As a people, we have always been extremely tolerant of theories, however absurd. There is hardly a doctrine of constitutional law so clear and well settled, that it is not, from time to time, discussed and disputed among us. But when it comes to reducing mischievous speculations to practice, the case is altered, and the practical genius of the people begins to manifest itself. Thus, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of '98 and '99 declared the Federal Constitution to be merely a compact between sovereign States, created for a special and limited purpose; and that each party to the compact was the exclusive and final judge for itself of the construction of the contract, with a right to determine for itself when it was violated, and the measure and mode of redress. As a theory, this doctrine has been very extensively accepted. Great parties have adopted it as their platform, and elections have been carried upon it. Its value as a support to the dignity and self-importance of local politicians was readily apprehended by them; and it was in perfect harmony with the tone of bluster which pervaded our politics. The thorough refutation which it always encountered, whenever it was seriously considered, never seemed to do its popularity any harm. In truth, mere vaporing hurt nobody, and caused no great alarm. But when the Hartford Convention was suspected of covering a little actual heat under the smoke of the customary resolutions and protests, a bucket of cold water was thrown over it. When, in 1832, South Carolina developed a spark of real fire, the nation put its foot on it. And now, when the torch of rebellion has been circulating among very inflammable materials, until a serious conflagration is threatened, the instinct of self-preservation has roused the energies of the whole people for its immediate, complete, and final extinction.

The present insurrection has been so long meditated, the approaches to its final consummation have been so steadily made, and the schemes of the principal traitors have been so well planned and carefully matured, that they have almost succeeded in making the vocabulary of treason a part of the vernacular of the country. We all talk of the States which have seceded or are going to secede,—of a fratricidal war,—of the measures which this or the other State is determined or likely to adopt; and a great deal has been said about State sovereignty, and coercion of a State, and the invasion of the soil of one State and another. There has been large discussion in times past of the danger of a dissolution of the Union. Indeed, this danger has been so often held up as a threat by one section, and so persistently used as a scarecrow by timid or profligate men in the other, that it has become one of the commonplaces of political contests. Our ears have hardly ceased to be tormented with projects of reconstruction, and with suggestions of guaranties, and pacifications, and mediation, and neutrality, armed or otherwise. Border-State Conventions are projected, and well-meaning governors have been arranging interviews or conducting correspondence with governors who talked of Southern rights, and undertook to say what their States would or would not permit the United States Government to do. Even a Cabinet officer, of whom better things might have been expected, and by whom better things are now nobly said and done, allowed himself to fall into the error of explaining to the vacillating Governor of Maryland that the intentions of the National Administration were purely defensive. While such language is current at home, it is not strange that foreigners should find themselves in a state of hopeless confusion about us. Few European writers, except De Tocqueville, have ever shown a clear comprehension of our political system; and the speeches of British statesmen on American affairs are perhaps rather to be accounted for and excused from want of information, than resented as hostile or insulting. But it is time that this whole pernicious dialect should be exploded, and the ideas which it represents be eradicated from the minds of intelligent men everywhere.

The right of revolution it is needless to discuss. Resistance, in any practicable method, to intolerable oppression, is the natural right of every human being, and of course of every community. But such a right is never included in the framework of organized civil society. From its nature, it can form no part of a plan of government. The only formula which embraces it is the famous one of "Monarchy tempered by Regicide"; and where that prevails, it seems to be adopted as a practical expedient, rather than recognized as an established constitutional maxim. But as a question of revolution the issue is not presented. If it were, it would be easy to deal with. The only embarrassment in our present condition, so far as reasoning goes, arises from confused notions of constitutional law, and the inaccuracy of language which necessarily attends them. In order, therefore, to know what is before us, let us first see where we stand.

The London "Times" informs the people of England, that "the resolution of the North to crush Secession by force involves a denial of the right of each one of the seceding States to determine the conditions of its own national existence." Precisely so. It involves all that; but the whole fact comprehends a great deal more. Not one of the States of the American Union has any national existence, or ever had any, in the sense in which the "Times" uses the phrase. Not one of them has any of the functions or qualities of a nation. In the case of the greater part of the States in which the rebellion exists, the United States bought and paid for the territory which they occupy, made States of them under its own Constitution and laws, upon certain conditions made irrevocable by the act which created them, and reserved the forts, arsenals, and custom-houses which their treasonable citizens have since undertaken to steal. The fundamental idea of the American system is local self-government for local purposes, and national unity for national purposes. Our national union is synonymous with our national existence. When we speak of sovereign and independent States, the phrase has no other just meaning than that each State is independent of every other in all matters exclusively appertaining to its own powers and duties, and sovereign upon all subjects which have not been committed exclusively to the jurisdiction of the Federal Government. Any encroachment by the Government of the United States upon the lawful jurisdiction of the several States would be resisted as a usurpation; but the "reserved rights" of the States, ex vi termini, cannot include any of the attributes of power which the people of the whole country have conferred upon the Union. But further,—and this is a point of great practical importance,—the Federal Government has no relation to the several States as States, and they have no relations to it, or to each other, except so far as these relations are expressly defined and specified in the National Constitution. Beyond these, the authority and jurisdiction of the nation address themselves and are applied to the individual citizens of all the States alike. "The king can do no wrong," is the maxim of English law. A State of the American Union cannot secede, or commit treason, or make war upon the United States. So the United States cannot, and do not, make war upon any State. Virginia, for all national purposes, belongs to the United States,—exactly as it belongs to the State, for the purposes of local administration. In theory, and in practice, the State of Virginia is at this moment a peaceful and faithful member of the American Union. Her Senators and Representatives, except so far as individuals among them may have disqualified themselves by resignation, or, what may be held to be equivalent, by deserting their posts to array themselves in active hostility to their country, are still entitled to their seats in Congress. The State may be overrun by armed insurgents, resisting the Federal authority; but so it might be by a foreign army. The peaceful citizens, who remain faithful to their constitutional obligations, are entitled to the aid of the national power to suppress domestic insurrection, whatever proportions that insurrection may assume. The soldiers of the United States, lawfully mustered to resist invasion or put down rebellion, have nothing to do with State lines, and act in perfect harmony with all legitimate State action. They can no more invade a State than if they were in it to resist a foreign enemy, or than a United States marshal invades it when he goes to arrest a counterfeiter. The "Times" would have little difficulty in understanding a denial of the right of the Isle of Man, or of Lancashire, or of Ireland, "to determine the conditions of its own national existence."

There is another fallacy in speaking of the resolution of the North to crush Secession by force. It is the resolution of the nation,—of all that is faithful and loyal in it, wherever found. The people of the Southern States have not had any fair opportunity to express their opinions. The military usurpers have allowed nothing to be submitted to the test of a popular vote, except where they were able to take such measures of precaution, in the way of hanging, confiscation, banishment, disarming opponents, and the presence of an armed force which should overawe dissenters, as might secure the unanimity they desired. There is undoubtedly much more loyalty in the Northern than in the Southern States of the Union, as there is less of passion, and more of intelligence and principle,—although treason has, till very lately, found more than enough apologists or abettors even in the Free States. But the spirit which now actuates our people has little that is sectional in it, and the principles at issue have the same application to Maine that they have to Florida.

When we ask, then, where this rebellion will leave us, and what will be the condition of the United States when the authority of the Government has been vindicated and reestablished, the answer must be sought in the considerations already suggested. The rebellion cannot be ended, until we have settled as a principle of constitutional law for our own citizens, and as a fact of which all other nations must take notice, that this whole country belongs to the people of the United States. No foreign power shall possess a foot of it. If the majority of the people of a State can throw off their allegiance to the Union, they can transfer their allegiance to England or Spain at their pleasure, as well as to a new confederacy of their own devising. The battles of the Revolution which secured our independence were fought by the whole country, and for the whole country, without reference to local majorities. The accessions to our territory were made by the nation as a unit, and belong to it as such. We did not acquire Texas, and pay the millions of its debt, with the reservation that it might sell itself again the next day to the highest bidder. That no foreign dominion shall interpose between the Northwest and the Atlantic, or between the Valley of the Mississippi and the Gulf, is a geographical necessity. But that, the American Union is indissoluble is essential to our national existence. If that be not so, we have neither a flag nor a country,—we can neither contract a debt nor make a treaty,—we have neither honor abroad nor strength at home,—our experiment of free government is a blunder and a failure, and for us, "Chaos has come again."

But the further question remains, In what way is it possible that harmony shall be restored between the parts of the country through which the rebellion has spread and those which have remained faithful to the Constitution and the Union? When we have dispersed the armies of the rebels, and demolished their batteries, and retaken our forts and arsenals, our navy-yards and armories, our mints and custom-houses,—when we have visited their leaders with retributive justice, and made Richmond and Charleston and New Orleans as submissive to lawful authority as Baltimore or Washington or Boston,—what then? Will a people we have subjugated ever live with us again on terms of equality and friendship? Can the wounded pride of the Ancient Dominion be so far soothed that she can allow us again to bask in the sunshine of her favor? Will she ever consent to resume her old superiority, and furnish our audacious army and navy with officers, our committees with chairmen, and our departments with clerks? Or must we, for a generation, hold the States we have subdued by military occupation? Must we make Territories of them, and blot out those malignant stars from our glorious and triumphant banner?

In all seriousness, there seems but one solution to the problem; and it must be found, if at all, in the proposition already stated, that treason is an individual act. A State cannot rebel, as it cannot secede. A governor of a State may rebel, and a majority of a legislature may join an insurrection, as a governor or legislators may commit larceny or join a piratical expedition. But whoever arrays himself in armed opposition to the Government of the United States, or gives aid and comfort to its enemies, becomes thereby merely a private rebel and traitor. Whatever office he may fill, with whatever functions of local government he may be intrusted, by whatever name he may be called, governor or judge, senator or representative, it is the treason of the citizen, and not of the officer. And as a State has no legal existence except as a member of the Union, and has no constitutional powers or functions or capacities but those which it exercises in harmony with and subordination to the rightful authority of the Federal Government, so the loyal and faithful inhabitants of a State, and they only, constitute the State. Mr. Mason tells the people of Virginia, that those of them who, in their consciences, cannot vote to separate Virginia from the United States, if they retain such opinions, must leave the State. We thank him for teaching us that word. When the tables are turned, it will form a valuable theme for his private meditation. The unconditional Union men, who are of and for their country against all comers, who neither commit treason openly nor disguise their cowardly treachery under the shallow cover of neutrality, are to wield the power of their respective States, and to be the only recognized inhabitants. All others must submit or fly. If the Governor and Legislature of Virginia have renounced their allegiance to the United States, and undertaken to establish a foreign jurisdiction in a portion of our territory, their relation to that State becomes substantially the same as if they had gone on board a British fleet in the Chesapeake, or enlisted under the standard of an invading army. They have abdicated their offices, which thereby become vacant. It was for "having endeavored to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between king and people, violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom," that James II. was declared by the House of Commons to have abdicated the government. Would it have been less an abdication, if he had remained within the realm, and attempted to hold it as the viceroy of France? When, in June, 1775, Governor Dunmore and his Council took refuge on board a British man-of-war, the Virginians of that day proceeded to meet in convention, and provide new officers to manage the affairs of their State. Let this historical precedent be followed now. Wherever, in either of the States which the rebels have sought to appropriate, the loyal citizens can find a spot in which they can meet in safety, let them meet by their delegates in convention, and adopt the necessary measures to elect new officers under their present constitutions. The only irregularity will be what results from the fact that treason in such high places and on so large a scale was not contemplated, nor was a remedy furnished for it, in their frame of government. It is merely a case not provided for, and the omission must be supplied in the most practicable way. The new organization should and undoubtedly would be recognized by the National Government, and by the other States, as, de facto and de jure, the State. It was settled in the Rhode Island case, under Tyler's administration, that, where different portions of the people claim to hold and exercise the powers of a State government, it presents a political question which the National Executive and Congress must decide; and that judicial recognition must follow and conform to the political decision.

When, by such a course, the proper relations and functions of each State should be resumed, there would no longer be any matter of State pride to interfere with the absolute assertion of national authority. The new State governments would be protected against armed assailants at home and invasion from abroad; they would apply for and obtain assistance to suppress domestic insurrection; every misguided insurgent would have opportunity to return to his duty under the protection of his own local authorities; appropriations for the army and navy could be passed with the aid of Tennessee and Alabama votes in Congress; and Davis, and Tyler, and Mason be hung upon the verdict of a jury of the vicinage.

In Virginia, a movement based upon this principle has been already inaugurated. From Western Virginia, the progress toward Eastern Tennessee and Northern Alabama is natural and certain. The worst case to deal with, unquestionably, is South Carolina. Hers is a peculiar people, and zealous, though scarcely of good works. That fiery little Commonwealth is remarkably constituted. The State is inhabited principally by negroes; and the remaining minority may be divided into two classes,—whites who are dependent upon negroes for a subsistence, and whites whose chief distinction in life and great consolation is that they are not negroes. The former and much the smaller class possess all the wealth, all the cultivation, and all the political power, which they are enabled to retain by an ingenious and systematic use of the prejudices and passions of the latter. They are reputed to have much earnestness of conviction, and claim an unusual amount of gallantry and courage for their soldiers; though it is noticeable that their principal exploits in our time have been the seizure of friendless colored sailors, and selling them into slavery,—the achievement of that knight of the bludgeon, the representative whose noble deed his constituents could hardly admire enough, but the better part of whose valor was the discretion that preferred to encounter his antagonist sitting and incapable of resistance,—and lastly, that heroic and bloodless victory at Fort Sumter, where imperishable glory was won by the ten thousand who conquered the seventy. They seem now to be united, and substantially unanimous. What elements a little adversity would develop in them, time must determine. Whether there is any reserve of patriotism and fidelity, overawed and silenced now, but which will come forth to serve as the nucleus of reconstruction when it can find protection and security, or whether we must wait for a new generation to grow up, remains to be tried. Their leaders are subtle reasoners, and it has been shrewdly observed of them that "they never shrink from following their logic to its consequences because the conclusion is immoral." Perhaps they will find no more difficulty in accepting the arguments we shall address to them because the conclusion is a little humiliating. In their case, we shall have little need to concern ourselves about the wishes of a local majority. The fact that a majority are blacks, to begin with, must deprive that consideration of all its force, even to their own apprehension. It will not be the first time that they have received a benefit which did not agree with the wishes of the greater part of those upon whom it was bestowed. The men of Rhode Island and Massachusetts who achieved the independence of South Carolina did not stop to consider whether a majority of her white inhabitants were Tories.

When we hear that the colonel of a regiment of Secessionists sends a flag of truce to Fort Monroe to ask for the return of his fugitive slaves under the Constitution and laws of the United States, a painful doubt must be suggested whether such gentlemen really believe themselves to be so wholly and utterly out of the Union as the theory of Secession would indicate. And when the novel, but very sensible doctrine with which that singular demand was met, that slaves are to be regarded as articles contraband of war, chattels capable of a military use, a kind of locomotive gun-carriages and intrenching-tools, and as such to be taken and confiscated when found belonging to armed rebels, shall have been practically applied for a time, with its natural and obvious result, it may be that even the Palmetto State will exhibit some general symptoms of returning reason.



THEODORE WINTHROP.

Theodore Winthrop's life, like a fire long smouldering, suddenly blazed up into a clear, bright flame, and vanished. Those of us who were his friends and neighbors, by whose firesides he sat familiarly, and of whose life upon the pleasant Staten Island, where he lived, he was so important a part, were so impressed by his intense vitality, that his death strikes us with peculiar strangeness, like sudden winter-silence falling upon these humming fields of June.

As I look along the wooded brook-side by which he used to come, I should not be surprised, if I saw that knit, wiry, light figure moving with quick, firm, leopard tread over the grass,—the keen gray eye, the clustering fair hair, the kind, serious smile, the mien of undaunted patience. If you did not know him, you would have found his greeting a little constrained,—not from shyness, but from genuine modesty and the habit of society. You would have remarked that he was silent and observant rather than talkative; and whatever he said, however gay or grave, would have had the reserve of sadness upon which his whole character was drawn. If it were a woman who saw him for the first time, she would inevitably see him through a slight cloud of misapprehension; for the man and his manner were a little at variance. The chance is that at the end of five minutes she would have thought him conceited. At the end of five months she would have known him as one of the simplest and most truly modest of men.

And he had the heroic sincerity which belongs to such modesty. Of a noble ambition, and sensitive to applause,—as every delicate nature veined with genius always is,—he would not provoke the applause by doing anything which, although it lay easily within his power, was yet not wholly approved by him as worthy. Many men are ambitious and full of talent, and when the prize does not fairly come they snatch at it unfairly. This was precisely what he could not do. He would strive and deserve; but if the crown were not laid upon his head in the clear light of day and by confession of absolute merit, he could ride to his place again and wait, looking with no envy, but in patient wonder and with critical curiosity upon the victors. It is this which he expresses in the paper in the July number of this magazine, "Washington as a Camp," when he says,—"I have heretofore been proud of my individuality, and resisted, so far as one may, all the world's attempts to merge me in the mass."

It was this which made many who knew him much, but not truly, feel that he was purposeless and restless. They knew his talent, his opportunities. Why does he not concentrate? Why does he not bring himself to bear? He did not plead his ill-health; nor would they have allowed the plea. The difficulty was deeper. He felt that he had shown his credentials, and they were not accepted. "I can wait, I can wait," was the answer his life made to the impatience of his friends.

We are all fond of saying that a man of real gifts will fit himself to the work of any time; and so he will. But it is not necessarily to the first thing that offers. There is always latent in civilized society a certain amount of what may be called Sir Philip Sidney genius, which will seem elegant and listless and aimless enough until the congenial chance appears. A plant may grow in a cellar; but it will flower only under the due sun and warmth. Sir Philip Sidney was but a lovely possibility, until he went to be Governor of Flushing. What else was our friend, until he went to the war?

The age of Elizabeth did not monopolize the heroes, and they are always essentially the same. When, for instance, I read in a letter of Hubert Languet's to Sidney, "You are not over-cheerful by nature," or when, in another, he speaks of the portrait that Paul Veronese painted of Sidney, and says, "The painter has represented you sad and thoughtful," I can believe that he is speaking of my neighbor. Or when I remember what Sidney wrote to his younger brother,—"Being a gentleman born, you purpose to furnish yourself with the knowledge of such things as may be serviceable to your country and calling," or what he wrote to Languet,—"Our Princes are enjoying too deep a slumber: I cannot think there is any man possessed of common understanding who does not see to what these rough storms are driving by which all Christendom has been agitated now these many years,"—I seem to hear my friend, as he used to talk on the Sunday evenings when he sat in this huge cane-chair at my side, in which I saw him last, and in which I shall henceforth always see him.

Nor is it unfair to remember just here that he bore one of the few really historic names in this country. He never spoke of it; but we should all have been sorry not to feel that he was glad to have sprung straight from that second John Winthrop who was the first Governor of Connecticut, the younger sister colony of Massachusetts Bay,—the John Winthrop who obtained the charter of privileges for his colony. How clearly the quality of the man has been transmitted! How brightly the old name shines out again!

He was born in New Haven on the 22d of September, 1828, and was a grave, delicate, rather precocious child. He was at school only in New Haven, and entered Yale College just as he was sixteen. The pure, manly morality which was the substance of his character, and his brilliant exploits of scholarship, made him the idol of his college, friends, who saw in him the promise of the splendid career which the fond faith of students allots to the favorite classmate. He studied for the Clark scholarship, and gained it; and his name, in the order of time, is first upon the roll of that foundation. He won the Townshend prize for the best composition on History. For the Berkeleian scholarship he and another were judged equal, and, drawing lots, the other gained the scholarship; but they divided the honor.