Here is treasonable matter enough, surely; and no wonder that Mr. Chapman judged it prudent to stop his press.

Paine sent fifty copies to Washington; and wrote to him that sixteen thousand had been printed in England, and four editions in Ireland,—the second of ten thousand copies. Thirty thousand copies were distributed by the clubs, at their own expense, among the poor. Six months after the appearance of the Second Part, Paine sent the Society for Constitutional Information a thousand pounds, which he had received from the sale of the book. He then gave up the copyright to the public. The circulation of this tract was prodigious. The original edition had been printed in the same form as Burke's "Reflections," in order that the antidote might be bound up with the bane. The high price preventing many from purchasing, Paine got out a cheap edition which was retailed at sixpence all over England and Scotland. It is said that at least one hundred thousand copies were sold, besides the large number distributed gratuitously. An edition was published in the United States. It was translated into French by Dr. Lanthenas, a member of the National Convention, and into German by C. F. Krmer. Upon English readers of a certain class it retained a hold for many years. In 1820, Carlile, the bookseller, said, that in the preceding three years he had sold five thousand copies of the "Rights of Man." Perhaps Cobbett's resurrection of the bones of the prophet brought the book into fashion again at that time. It may yet be read in England; but in this country, where a citizen feels that his rights are anything he may choose to claim, it is certainly a superfluous publication, and seldom met with.

In England, in 1792, Burke and Paine revived the royalist and republican parties, which had lain dormant since 1688. A new body of men, the manufacturing, entered the political field on the republican side. The contest was embittered not only by the anger of antagonism, but by the feeling of class. A radical of Paine's school was considered by good society as a pestilent blackguard, unworthy of a gentleman's notice,—much as an Abolitionist is looked down upon nowadays by the American "Chivalry." But the strife was confined to meetings, resolutions, and pamphlets. Few riots took place; none of much importance. The gentlemen of England have never wanted the courage or the strength to take care of themselves.

The political clubs were the principal centres of agitation. There were two particularly active on the liberal side: the Revolution Society, originally founded to commemorate the Revolution of 1688, and the Society for Constitutional Information, established for the purpose of bringing about a reform in the representation. But the revolutionary changes in France had quickened their ideas, and had given them a taste for stronger and more rapid measures. They now openly "resolved" that England was "a prey to an arbitrary King, a senile Peerage, a corrupt House of Commons, and a rapacious and intolerant Clergy." A third club, the Corresponding Society, was younger and more violent, with branches and affiliations all over England on the Jacobins' plan, and in active correspondence with that famous institution. The middle and lower classes in manufacturing towns, precursors of the Chartists of 1846, belonged to this society. Their avowed objects were annual parliaments and universal suffrage; but many members were in favor of a national convention and a republic. The tone of all three societies became French; they used a jargon borrowed from the other side of the Channel. They sent deputations to the National Convention, expressing their wish to adopt the republican form in England, and their hope of success. The Corresponding Society even sent addresses of congratulation after the massacres of September. Joel Barlow, the American, a man of the Paine genus, without his talent or honesty of purpose, went as Commissioner of the Society for Constitutional Information to the Convention,— carrying with him an address which reads like a translation from the French, and a thousand pair of shoes, with the promise of a thousand pair a week for six weeks to come.

On the other side there were, of course, numerous Tory associations, counter clubs, as violent as their republican antagonists, whose loyal addresses to the throne were duly published in the Gazette.

The probability of a revolution now became a subject of general discussion. Government, at last convinced that England, in the words of Mr. Burke, "abounded in factious men, who would readily plunge the country into blood and confusion for the sake of establishing the fanciful Systems they were enamored of," determined to act with vigor. A royal proclamation was issued against seditious writings. Paine received notice that he would be prosecuted in the King's Bench. He came immediately to London, and found that Jordan, his publisher, had already been served with a summons, but, having no stomach for a contest with the authorities, had compromised the affair with the Solicitor of the Treasury by agreeing to appear and plead guilty. Such pusillanimity was beneath the mark of Paine's enthusiasm. He wrote to McDonald, the Attorney-General, that he, Paine, had no desire to avoid any prosecution which the authorship of one of the most useful books ever offered to mankind might bring upon him; and that he should do the defence full justice, as well for the sake of the nation as for that of his own reputation. He wound up a long letter by the very ungenerous insinuation, that Mr. Burke, not being able to answer the "Rights of Man," had advised legal proceedings.

The societies, checked for a moment by the blow struck at them, soon renewed their exertions. The sale of the "Rights of Man" became more extended than ever. Paine said that the proclamation served hint for an advertisement. The Manchester and Sheffield branches of the Constitutional Society voted unanimously addresses of thanks to him for his essay, "a work of the highest importance to every nation under heaven." The newspapers were full of speeches, votes, resolutions, on the same subject. Every mail was laden with congratulations to the Jacobins on the coming time,—

"When France shall reign, and laws be all repealed."

To the Radicals, the Genius of Liberty seemed to be hovering over England; and Thomas Paine was the harbinger to prepare his way.

Differences of opinion, when frequently expressed in hard words, commonly lead to hard blows; and the conservative classes of England were not men to hold their hands when they thought the proper time had come to strike. But the party which looked up to Paine as its apostle was not as numerous as it appeared to be from the noise it made. There is never a sufficiently large number of reckless zealots in England to do much mischief,—one of the greatest proofs of the inherent good sense of that people. Dr. Gall's saying, "Tout ce qui est ultr est bte," is worth his whole phrenological system. Measures and doctrines had now been pushed so far that a numerous and influential body of liberals called a halt,—the prelude of a union with the government forces.

Luckily for Paine, his French admirers stepped in at this critical moment to save him. Mons. Audibert, a municipal officer from Calais, came to announce to him that he was elected to the National Convention for that department. He immediately proceeded to Dover with his French friend. In Dover, the collector of the customs searched their pockets as well as their portmanteaus, in spite of many angry protestations. Finally their papers were returned to them, and they were allowed to embark. Paine was just in time; an order to detain him arrived about twenty minutes after his embarkation.

The trial came on before Lord Kenyon. Erskine appeared for the absent defendant. The Attorney-General used, as his brief, a foolish letter he had received from Paine at Calais, read it to the jury, made a few remarks, and rested his case. The jury found Paine guilty without leaving their seats. Sentence of outlawry was passed upon him. Safe in France, he treated the matter as a capital joke. Some years later he found that it had a disagreeable meaning in it.

The prophet had been translated to another sphere of revolutionary unrest. His influence gradually died away. He dwindled into a mere name. "But the fact remains," to use his own words, "and will hereafter be placed in the history of extraordinary things, that a pamphlet should be produced by an individual, unconnected with any sect or party, and almost a stranger in the land, that should completely frighten a whole government, and that in the midst of its triumphant security."

Paine might have published his "principles" his life long without troubling many subjects of King George, had it not been for their combination with "practice" in France,—whither let us now follow him.

When he landed at Calais, the guard turned out and presented arms; a grand salute was fired; the officer in command embraced him and presented him with the national cockade; a good-looking citoyenne asked leave to pin it on his hat, expressing the hope of her compatriots that he would continue his exertions in favor of liberty. Enthusiastic acclamations followed,—a grand chorus of Vive Thomas Paine! The crowd escorted him to Dessein's hotel,[1] in the Rue de l'galit, formerly Rue du Roi, and shouted under his windows. At the proper time he was conducted to the Town Hall. The municipality were assembled to bestow the accolade fraternelle upon their representative. M. le Maire made a speech, which Audibert, who still had Paine in charge, translated. Paine laid his hand on his heart, bowed, and assured the municipality that his life should be devoted to their service. In the evening, the club held a meeting in the Salle des Minimes. The hall was jammed. Paine was seated beside the President, under a bust of Mirabeau, surmounted by the flags of France, England, and the United States. More addresses, compliments, protestations, and frantic cries of Vive Thomas Paine! The sance was adjourned to the church, to give those who could not obtain admission into the Club Hall an opportunity to look at their famous representative. The next evening Paine went to the theatre. The state-box had been prepared for him. The house rose and vivaed as he entered.

[Footnote 1: See Sterne's Sentimental Journey.]

When Calais had shouted itself hoarse, Paine travelled towards Paris. The towns he traversed on the road thither received him with similar honors. From the capital he addressed a letter of thanks to his fellow-citizens. Although he sat for Calais in the Convention, he had been chosen by three other departments. Priestley was a candidate for Paris, but was beaten by Marat, a doctor of another description. He was, however, duly elected in the department L'Orne, but never took his seat. Paine and Baron Clootz were the only foreigners in the Convention. Another stranger, of political celebrity out of doors, styled himself American as well as Paine,—Fournier l'Amricain, a mulatto from the West Indies, whose complexion was not considered "incompatible with freedom" in France,—a violent and blood-thirsty fellow, who shot at Lafayette on the dix-sept Juillet, narrowly missing him,—led an attacking party against the Tuileries on the dix Aot, and escaped the guillotine to be transported by Bonaparte.

In Paris, Paine was already a personage well known to all the leading men,—a great republican luminary, "foreign benefactor of the species," who had commenced the revolution in America, was making one in England, and was willing to help make one in France. His English works, translated by Lanthenas, a friend of Robespierre and co-editor with Brissot of the "Patriote Franais," had earned for him the dignity of citoyen Franais,—an honor which he shared with Mackintosh, Dr. Price, the Priestleys, father and son, and David Williams. He had furnished Lafayette with a good deal of his revolutionary rhetoric, had contributed to the Monthly Review of the Girondists and the "Chronique de Paris," and had written a series of articles in defence of representative government, which Condorcet had translated for him. Paine was a man of one idea in politics; a federal republic, on the American plan, was the only system of government he believed in, and the only one he wished to see established in France. Lafayette belonged to this school. So did Condorcet, Ption, Buzot, and others of less note. Under Paine's direction they formed a republican club, which met at Condorcet's house. This federal theory cost them dear. In 1793, it was treason against the une et indivisible, and was punished accordingly.

After the flight to Varennes, Paine openly declared that the King was "a political superfluity." This was true enough. The people had lost all respect for the man and for the office. None so base as to call him King. He was only the pouvoir excutif, or more commonly still, Monsieur Veto. Achille Duchtelet, a young officer who had served in America, called upon Dumont to get him to translate a proclamation drawn up by Paine, urging the people to seize the opportunity and establish a republic. It was intended to be a "Common Sense" for France. Dumont refusing to have anything to do with it, some other translator was found. It appeared on the walls of the capital with Duchtelet's name affixed. The placard was torn down by order of the Assembly and attracted little attention. The French were not quite ready for the republic, although gradually approaching it. They seemed to take a pleasure in playing awhile with royalty before exterminating it.

The Abb Siyes was a warm monarchist. He wrote in the "Moniteur," that he could prove, "on every hypothesis," that men were more free in a monarchy than in a republic. Paine gave notice in Brissot's paper, that he would demolish the Abb utterly in fifty pages, and show the world that a constitutional monarchy was a nullity,—concluding with the usual flourish about "weeping for the miseries of humanity," "hell of despotism," etc., etc., the fashionable doxology of patriotic authors in that day. Siyes announced his readiness to meet the great Paine in conflict. This passage of pens was interrupted by the publication of Part Second of the "Rights of Man." Before Paine returned to Paris, the mob had settled the question for the time, so far as the French nation were concerned.

Paine had also taken a leading part in some of the politico-theatrical entertainments then so frequent in the streets of Paris. At the festival of the Federation, in July, 1790, when Clootz led a "deputation" of the genre humain, consisting of an English editor and some colored persons in fancy dresses, Paine and Paul Jones headed the American branch of humanity and carried the stars and stripes. Not long after, Fame appears again marshalling a deputation of English and Americans, who waited upon the Jacobin Club to fraternize. Suitable preparations had been made by the club for this solemn occasion. The three national flags, united, were placed in the hall over the busts of Dr. Franklin and Dr. Price. Robespierre himself received the generous strangers; but most of the talking seems to have been done by a fervid citoyenne, who took la parole and kept it. "Let a cry of joy rush through all Europe and fly to America," said she. "But hark! Philadelphia and all its countries repeat, like us, Vive la Libert!" To see a man of Paine's clear sense and simple tastes pleased by such flummery as this shows us how difficult it is not to be affected by the spirit of the generation we live with. How could he have supposed that the new heaven upon earth of his dreams would ever be constructed out of such pinchbeck materials?

It was now the year 1. of the Republic. The dix Aot was over, the King a prisoner in the Temple. Lafayette, in his attempt to imitate his "master," Washington, had succeeded no better than the magician's apprentice, who knew how to raise the demon, but not how to manage him when he appeared. He had gone down before the revolution, and was now le tratre Lafayette, a refugee in Austria. Dumouriez commanded on the north-eastern frontier in his place. France was still shuddering at the recollection of the prison-massacres of the Septembriseurs, and society, to use the phrase of a modern French revolutionist, was en procs de liquidation.

Paine got on very well, at first. The Convention was impressed with the necessity of looking up first principles, and Paine was emphatically the man of principles. A universal republic was the hope of the majority, with a convention sitting at the centre of the civilized world, watching untiringly over the rights of man and the peace of the human race. Meantime, they elected a committee to make a new constitution for France. Paine was, of course, selected. His colleagues were Siyes, Condorcet, Gensonn, Vergniaud, Ption, Brissot, Barre, and Danton. Of these nine, Paine and Siyes alone survived the Reign of Terror. When, in due time, this constitution was ready to be submitted to the Convention, no one could be found to listen to the reading of the report. The revolution had outstripped the committee. Their labors proved as useless as the Treatise on Education composed by Mr. Shandy for the use of his son Tristram;—when it was finished, the child had outgrown every chapter.

Thenceforward, we catch only occasional glimpses of Paine. In the days of his glory, he lived in the fashionable Rue de Richelieu, holding levees twice a week, to receive a public eager to gaze upon so great a man. His name appears at the fte civique held by English and Irish republicans at White's Hotel. There he sat beside Santerre, the famous brewer, and proposed, as a sentiment, "The approaching National Convention of Great Britain and Ireland." At this dinner, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, then an officer in the British service, gave, "May the 'a ira,' the 'Carmagnole,' and the 'Marseillaise' be the music of every army, and soldier and citizen join in the chorus,"—a toast which cost him his commission, perhaps his life. We read, too, that Paine was struck in a caf by some loyal, hot-headed English captain, who took that means of showing his dislike for the author of the "Rights of Man." The police sternly seized the foolish son of Albion. A blow inflicted upon the sacred person of a member of the Convention was clearly sacrilege, punishable, perhaps, with death. But Paine interfered, procured passports, and sent the penitent soldier safely out of the country.

Speaking no French, for he never succeeded in learning the language, Paine's part in the public sittings of the Convention must have been generally limited to eloquent silence or expressive dumbshow. But when the trial of the King came on, he took a bold and dangerous share in the proceedings, which destroyed what little popularity the ruin of his federal schemes had left him, and came near costing him his head. He was already so great a laggard behind the revolutionary march, that he did not suspect the determination of the Mountain to put the King to death. Louis was guilty, no doubt, Paine thought,—but not of any great crime. Banishment for life, or until the new government be consolidated,—say to the United States, where he will have the inestimable privilege of seeing the working of free institutions;—once thoroughly convinced of his royal errors, morally, as well as physically uncrowned, he might safely be allowed to return to France as plain Citizen Capet: that should be his sentence. But the extreme left of the Convention and the constituent rabble of the galleries wanted to break with the past, and to throw a king's head into the arena as wager of battle to the despots of Europe. The discovery of the iron safe in the palace offered, it was thought, sufficient show of evidence for the prosecution; if not, they were ready to dispense with any. The case was prejudged; the trial, a cruel and an empty form. There were two righteous men in that political Gomorrah,—Tronchet and the venerable Malesherbes. They offered their services to defend the unfortunate victim. Who can read Malesherbes's noble letter to the President of the Convention, without thinking the better of French nature forever after?

A fierce preliminary discussion arose the Convention on the constitutional question of the King's inviolability. Paine had no patience with the privileges of kingship and voted against inviolability. He requested that a speech he had prepared on the subject might be read to the House at once, as he wished to send off a copy to London for the English papers. This wretched composition was manifestly written for England. Paine had George III. in his mind, rather than Louis XVI. Here is a specimen of the style of it,—interesting, as showing the temper of the time, as well as of Member Thomas Paine:—"Louis, as an individual, is an object beneath the notice of the Republic. But he ought to be tried, because a conspiracy has been formed against the liberty of all nations by the crowned ruffians of Europe. Louis XVI. is believed to be the partner of that horde, and is the only man of them you have in your power. It is indispensable to discover who the gang is composed of, and this may be done by his trial. It may also bring to light the detestable conduct of Mr. Guelph, Elector of Hanover, and be doing justice to England to make them aware of it. It is the interest of France to be surrounded by republics, and that revolutions be universal. If Louis XVI. can serve to prove, by the flagitiousness of government in general, the necessity of revolutions, France ought not to let slip so precious an opportunity. Seeing no longer in Louis XVI. but a weakminded and narrow-spirited individual, ill-bred, like all his colleagues, given, as it is said, to frequent excesses of drunkenness, and whom the National Assembly raised again imprudently to a throne which was not made for him,—if we show him hereafter some pity, it shall not be the result of the burlesque idea of a pretended inviolability."

A secretary read this speech from the tribune,—Paine standing near him, silent, furnishing perhaps an occasional gesture to mark the emphasis. The Convention applauded warmly, and ordered it to be printed and circulated in the departments.

When the King was found guilty, and it came to the final vote, whether he should be imprisoned, banished, or beheaded, the Girondins, who had spoken warmly against the death-penalty, voted for it, overawed by the stormy abuse of the galleries. Paine, coarse and insolent, but not cowardly or cruel, did not hesitate to vote for banishment. He requested the member from the Pas de Calais to read from the tribune his appeal in favor of the King. Drunau attempted to do it, but was hooted down. Paine persisted,—presented his speech again the next day. Marat objected to its reception, because Paine was a Quaker, and opposed to capital punishment on principle; but the Convention at last consented to the reading. After alluding to the all-important assistance furnished by Louis XVI. to the insurgent American Colonies, Paine, as a citizen of both countries, proposed sending him to the United States. "To kill Louis," wrote Paine, "is not only inhuman, but a folly. It will increase the number of your enemies. France has but one ally,—the United States of America,—and the execution of the King would spread an universal affliction in that country. If I could speak your language like a Frenchman, I would descend a suppliant to your bar, and in the name of all my brothers in America present to you a petition and prayer to suspend the execution of Louis." The Mountain and the galleries roared with rage. Thuriot exclaimed,—"That is not the true language of Thomas Paine."

"I denounce the translator," shrieked venomous Marat; "these are not the opinions of Thomas Paine; it is a wicked and unfaithful translation."

Coulon affirmed, solemnly, that he had seen the original in Paine's hands, and that it was exact. The reader was finally allowed to resume. "You mean to send an ambassador to the United States. Let him announce to the Americans that the National Convention of France, from pure friendship to America, has consented to respite the sentence of Louis. Ah, Citizens, do not give the despot of England the pleasure of seeing sent to the scaffold the man who helped my beloved brethren of America to free themselves from his chains!"

Soon after the execution of the King, Paris fell into the hands of the lowest classes. Their leaders ruled with terrible energy. Chabot's dictum,—"Il n'y a pas de crimes en rvolution," and Stablekeeper Drouet's exclamation,—"Soyons brigands pour le bonheur du peuple," contain the political principles which guided them. Marat thundered away in his paper against Brissotins, Girondins, federalism, and moderantism. The minority members, thus unpleasantly noticed, went armed; many of them dared not sleep at home. Soon came the arrest of the suspects. The 31st of May, cette insurrection toute morale, as Robespierre called it, followed next. The Convention was stormed by the mob and purged of Brissotins and Girondins. The Comit de Salut Public decreed forced loans and the leve en masse. Foreigners were expelled from the Convention and imprisoned throughout France. Mayor Bailly, Mme. Roland, Manuel, and their friends, passed under the axe. The same fate befell the Girondins, a party of phrase-makers who have enjoyed a posthumous sentimental reputation, but who, when living, had not the energy and active courage to back their fine speeches. The reductio ad horribile of all the fine arguments in favor of popular infallibility and virtue had come; neither was the reductio ad absurdum wanting. The old names of the days and months and years were changed. The statues of the Virgin were torn from the little niches in street-walls, and the busts of Marat and Lepelletier set up in their stead. The would-be God, soi-disant Dieu, was banished from France. Clootz and Chaumette, who called themselves Anacharsis and Anaxagoras, celebrated the worship of the Goddess of Reason. Bonfires of feudality; Goddesses of Liberty in plaster; trees of liberty planted in every square; altars de la patrie; huge rag-dolls representing Anarchy and Discord; Cleobis and Biton dragging their revered parents through the streets; bonnets rouges, banderolles, a iras, carmagnoles, fraternisations, accolades; the properties, as well as the text of the plays, borrowed from Ancient Greece or Rome. What a bewildering retrospect! A period well summed up by Emerson:—"To-day, pasteboard and filigree; to-morrow, madness and murder." Tigre-singe, Voltaire's epigrammatic definition, describes his countrymen of the Reign of Terror in two words.

Neglected by all parties, and disgusted with all, Paine moved to a remote quarter of Paris, and took rooms in a house which had once belonged to Mme. de Pompadour. Brissot, Thomas Christie, Mary Wolstonecraft, and Joel Barlow were his principal associates. Two Englishmen, "friends of humanity," and an ex-officer of the garde-du-corps lodged in the same building. The neighborhood was not without its considerable persons. Sanson, most celebrated of headsmen, had his domicile ii the same section. He called upon Paine, complimented him in good English upon his "Rights of Man," which he had read, and offered his services in a polite manner.

When the Reign of Terror was fully established, the little party seldom left their walls, and amused themselves as best they could with conversation and games. The news of the confusion and alarm of Paris reached them in their retreat, as if they were miles away in some quiet country residence. Every evening the landlord went into the city and brought back with him the horrible story of the day. "As to myself," Paine wrote to Lady Smith, "I used to find some relief by walking in the garden and cursing with hearty good-will the authors of that terrible system that had turned the character of the revolution I had been proud to defend."

After some weeks, the two Englishmen contrived to escape to Switzerland, leaving their enthusiasm for humanity behind them. Two days later, a file of armed men came to arrest them. Before the month was out, the landlord was carried off in the night. Last of all came the turn of Paine. He was arrested in December, by order of Robespierre, "for the interest of America, as well as of France, as a dangerous enemy of liberty and equality." On his way to the Luxembourg, he stopped at Barlow's lodgings and left with him the First Part of the "Age of Reason," finished the day before. The Americans in Paris applied to the Convention for Paine's release, offering themselves as security for his good conduct during his stay in France. They rounded off their petition with a phrase of the prisoner's,—"Ah, Citizens! do not give the leagued despots of Europe the pleasure of seeing Thomas Paine in irons." This document was presented by a Major Jackson, a "volunteer character," who had come to Europe with a letter of introduction to Gouverneur Morris, then minister, from Mr. Jefferson. Instead of delivering his letter to Morris, Jackson lodged it with the Comit de Salut Public as a credential, and represented his country on the strength of it. The Convention, careless of the opinion of the "leagued despots," as well as of Major Jackson, replied, that Paine was an Englishman, and the demand for his release unauthorized by the United States. Paine wrote to Morris to request him to demand his discharge of the citizen who administered foreign affairs. Morris did so; but this official denied that Paine was an American. Morris inclosed this answer to Paine, who returned a shrewd argument in his own behalf, and begged Morris to lay the proofs of his citizenship before the minister. But Morris disliked Paine, and his own position in France was far from satisfactory. It is probable that he was not very zealous in the matter, and shortly after Paine's letter all communication with prisoners was forbidden.

The news of the outer world reached these unfortunates, penned up like sheep waiting for the butcher, only when the doors of the dungeon opened to admit a new fourne, or batch of victims, as the French pleasantly called them. They knew then that the revolution had made another stride forward, and had trodden these down as it moved on. Paine saw them all—Ronsin, Hbert, Momoro, Chaumette, Clootz, Gobel, the crazy and the vile, mingled together, the very men he had cursed in his garden at St. Denis—pass before him like the shadows of a magic-lantern, entering at one side and gliding out at the other,—to death. A few days later came Danton, Camille, Desmoulins, and the few who remained of the moderate party. Paine was standing near the wicket when they were brought in. Danton embraced him. "What you have done for the happiness and liberty of your country I have in vain tried to do for mine. I have been less fortunate, but not more culpable. I am sent to the scaffold." Turning to his friends.—"Eh, bien! mes amis, allons y gaiement." Happy Frenchmen! What a consolation it was to them to be thus always able to take an attitude and enact a character! Their fondness for dramatic display must have served them as a moral anaesthetic in those scenes of murder, and have deadened their sensibility to the horrors of their actual condition.

In July, the carnage had reached its height. No man could count upon life for twenty-four hours. The tall, the wise, the reverend heads had been taken off, and now the humbler ones were insecure upon their shoulders. Fouquier-Tinville had erected a guillotine in his court-room, to save time and transportation. Newsboys sold about the streets printed lists of those who were to suffer that day. "Voici ceux qui ont gagn la loterie de la Sainte Guillotine!" they cried, with that reckless, mocking, blood-thirsty spirit which is found only in Frenchmen, or, perhaps, in their fellow-Celts. It seemed to Paine that Robespierre and the Committee were afraid to leave a man alive. He expected daily his own summons; but he was overlooked. There was nothing to be gained by killing him, except the mere pleasure of the thing.

He ascribed his escape to a severe attack of fever, which kept him out of sight for a time, and to a clerical error on the part of the distributing jailer. He wrote this account of it, after his return to America:—"The room in which I was lodged was on the ground-floor, and one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall, so that, when it was opened, the inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut I had three fellow-prisoners with me,—Joseph Van Huile of Bruges, Michel and Robin Bastini of Louvain. When persons by scores were to be taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the night, and those who performed that office had a private mark by which they knew what rooms to go to and what number to take. We, as I have said, were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us, with that number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper word, that the mark was put on when the door was open and flat against the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and the destroying angel passed by it." Paine thought his escape providential; the Orthodox took a different view of it.

After the fall of Robespierre, in Thermidor, seventy-three members of the Convention, who had survived the Reign of Terror, resumed their seats. But Paine was not released. Monroe had superseded Morris in August, but had no instructions from his government. Indeed, as Paine had accepted citizenship in France, and had publicly acted as a French citizen, it was considered, even by his friends, that he had no claim to the protection of the United States. Paine, as was natural, thought differently. He wrote to Monroe, explaining that French citizenship was a mere compliment paid to his reputation; and in any view of the case, it had been taken away from him by a decree of the Convention. His seat in that body did not affect his American status, because a convention to make a constitution is not a government, but extrinsic and antecedent to a government. The government once established, he would never have accepted a situation under it. Monroe assured him that he considered him an American citizen, and that "to the welfare of Thomas Paine Americans are not nor can they be indifferent,"—with which fine phrase Paine was obliged to be satisfied until November. On the fourth of that month he was released. The authorities of Thermidor disliked the Federalist government, and Paine was probably kept in prison some additional months on account of Monroe's application for his discharge.

He left the Luxembourg, after eleven months of incarceration, with unshaken confidence in his own greatness and in the truth of his principles,—but in appearance and in character another man, with only the tatters of his former self hanging about him. A certain elegance of manner and of dress, which had distinguished him, was gone. He drank deep, and was noisy. His fondness for talking of himself had grown to such excess as to destroy the conversational talents which all his contemporaries who speak of him describe as remarkable. "I will venture to say that the best thing will be said by Mr. Paine": that was Horne Tooke's prophecy, talking of some proposed dinner-party.

Demoralized by poverty, with ruined health, his mind had become distorted by physical suffering and by brooding over the ingratitude and cruel neglect of the American people, who owed, as he really believed, their very existence as a nation to him. "Is this what I ought to have expected from America," he wrote to General Washington, "after the part I have acted towards her?" "I do not hesitate to say that you have not served America with more fidelity or greater zeal or more disinterestedness than myself, and perhaps not with better effect." Henceforth he was a man of two ideas: he engrafted his resentment upon his "Rights of Man," and thought himself carrying out his theory while indulging in his wrath. He poured the full measure of his indignation upon the party who directed affairs in the United States, and upon the President. In two long letters, composed after his release, under Monroe's roof, he accused Washington of conniving at his imprisonment, to keep him, Paine, "the marplot of all designs against the people," out of the way. "Mr. Washington and his new-fangled party were rushing as fast as they dared venture into all the vices and corruptions of the British government; and it was no more consistent with the policy of Mr. Washington and those who immediately surrounded him than it was with that of Robespierre or of Pitt that I should survive." As he grew more angry, he became more abusive. He ridiculed Washington's "cold, unmilitary conduct" during the War of Independence, and accused his administration, since the new constitution, of "vanity," "ingratitude," "corruption," "bare-faced treachery," and "the tricks of a sharper." He closed this wretched outbreak of peevishness and wounded self-conceit with the following passage:—

"And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor,—whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any."

The remains of the old Convention invited Paine to resume his place in their assemblage. A committee of eleven, unaided by his experience, had been working at a new constitution, the political spring-fashion in Paris for that year. It was the plan since known as the Directoire, reported complete about the time Paine reappeared in the Convention. Disapproving of some of the details of this instrument, Paine furbished up his old weapons, and published "A Dissertation on the First Principles of Government." This tract he distributed among members,—the libretto of the speech he intended to make. Accordingly, on the 5th of July, on motion of his old ally, Lanthenas, who had managed to crawl safely through the troubles, permission was granted to Thomas Paine to deliver his sentiments on the "Declaration of Rights and the Constitution." He ascended the tribune for the last time, and the secretary read the translation. He began, of course, with rights; but qualified them by adding, that, when we consider rights, we ought always to couple with them the idea of duties,—a happy union, which did not strike him before the Reign of Terror, and which is almost always overlooked. He then brought forward his universal political specific and panacea,—representative government and a written constitution. "Had a constitution been established two years ago," he said, "(as ought to have been done,) the violences that have since desolated France and injured the character of the Revolution would, in my opinion, have been prevented." There is nothing else in his speech of interest to us, except, that, in attacking a property qualification, which was wisely inserted in the new system, he made use of the reductio-ad-absurdum illustration so often attributed to Dr. Franklin:—"When a broodmare shall fortunately produce a foal or a mule that by being worth the sum in question shall convey to its owner the right of voting, or by its death take it from him, in whom does the origin of such a right exist? Is it in the man or in the mule?"

The new government went into operation in September, 1795. Bonaparte's lesson to the insurgents of Vendmiaire, in front of the Church of St. Roche, followed immediately after. On the 26th of October, the Convention was dissolved, and Paine ceased to be a legislator for France.

He was no longer an object of consideration to Frenchmen, whose faith in principles and in constitutions was nearly worn out. Poor and infirm, indebted to Monroe's hospitality for a lodging, he remained eighteen months under the roof of the Embassy, looking for an opportunity to get back to America. Monroe wished to send him as bearer of dispatches before the dissolution of the Convention. But a member of that body could not leave France without a passport from it. To apply for it would have announced his departure, and have given the English government a chance to settle the old account they had against him. After Monroe had returned to the United States, Paine engaged his passage, and went to Havre to embark: but the appearance of a British frigate off the port changed his plans. The sentence of outlawry, a good joke four years before, had now become an unpleasant reality. So he travelled back to Paris, full of hate against England, and relieved his mind by writing a pamphlet on the "Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance," a performance characteristic of the man,—sound, clear sense mixed with ignorance and arrogance. He attempted to show arithmetically that the English funding system could not continue to the end of Mr. Pitt's life, supposing him to live to the usual age of man. The calculation is ingenious, but has not proved to be as accurate as some of Newton's. On the other hand, his remarks on paper money are excellent, and his sneer at the Sinking Fund, then considered a great invention in finance, well placed:—"As to Mr. Pitt's project for paying off the national debt by applying a million a year for that purpose while he continues adding more than twenty millions a year to it, it is like setting a man with a wooden leg to run after a hare;—the longer he runs, the farther he is off." The conclusion is one of his peculiar flourishes of his own trumpet:—"I have now exposed the English system of finance to the eyes of all nations,—for this work will be published in all languages. As an individual citizen of America, and as far as an individual can go, I have revenged (if I may use the expression without any immoral meaning) the piratical depredations committed on the American commerce by the English government."

From Monroe's departure until the year 1802, little is known of Paine. He is said to have lived in humble lodgings with one Bonneville, a printer, editor of the "Bouche de Fer" in the good early days of the Revolution. He must have kept up some acquaintance with respectable society; for we find his name on the lists of the Cercle Constitutionnel, a club to which belonged Talleyrand, Benjamin Constant, and conservatives of that class who were opposed to both the bonnet-rouge and the fleur-de-lis. Occasionally he appears above the surface with a pamphlet. Politics were his passion, and to write a necessity of his nature. If public matters interested him, an essay of some kind made its way into print. When Baboeuf's agrarian conspiracy was crushed, Paine gave the world his views on "Agrarian Justice." Every man has a natural right to a share in the land; but it is impossible that every man should exercise this right. To compensate him for this loss, be should receive at the age of twenty-one fifteen pounds sterling; and if he survive his fiftieth year, ten pounds per annum during the rest of his life. The funds for these payments to be furnished by a tax on inheritances.

Camille Jourdain made a report to the Five Hundred on priests and public worship, in which he recommended, inter alia, that the use of church-bells and the erection of crosses be again permitted by law. This reactionary measure excited Paine's liberal bigotry. He published a letter to Jourdain, telling him that priests were useless and bells public nuisances. Another letter may be seen, offering his subscription of one hundred francs to a fund for the invasion of England,—a favorite project of the Directory, and the dearest wish of Paine's heart. He added to his mite an offer of any personal service he could render to the invading army. When Carnot, Barthlmy, and Pichegru were expelled from power by the coup d'tat of the 18th Fructidor,—a military demonstration against the Republic,—Paine wrote an address to the people of France and to the French armies, heartily approving of the summary method that had been adopted with these reactionists, who must have their bells and their priests. He did not then perceive the real significance of the movement.

On one remarkable occasion, Paine made a full-length appearance before the French public,—not in his character of a political philosopher, but as a moralist. Robespierre, a few days before his fall, declared atheism to be aristocratic, reinstated l'tre suprme, and gave a festival in his honor. There religious matters had rested. Deism, pure and simple, was the faith of true republicans, and the practice of morality their works. But deism is a dreary religion to the mass of mankind, and the practice of morality can never take the place of adoration. The heart must be satisfied, as well as the conscience. Larvillire, a Director, of irreproachable character, felt this deficiency of their system, and saw how strong a hold the Catholic priesthood had upon the common people. The idea occurred to him of rivalling the churches by establishing regular meetings of moral men and women, to sing hymns of praise to the Almighty, "one and indivisible," and to listen to discourses and exhortations on moral subjects. Hay, a brother of the eminent crystallogist, assembled the first society of Theophilanthropists, (lovers of God and man,) as they called themselves. They held their meetings on the day corresponding to Sunday. They had their manual of worship and their book of canticles. Their dogmas were the existence of one God and the immortality of the soul. And they wisely said nothing about matters which they did not believe. Paine, who in his "Age of Reason" had attempted to prepare a theology ad usum reipublicae, felt moved by the spirit of morality, and delivered a sermon to one of these Theophilanthropist congregations. His theme was the existence of God and the propriety of combining the study of natural science with theology. He chose, of course, the a-posteriori argument, and was brief, perhaps eloquent. Some passages of his discourse might pass unchallenged in the sermon of an Orthodox divine. He kept this one ready in his memory of brass, to confound all who accused him of irreligion:—"Do we want to contemplate His power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate His wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate His mercy? We see it in His not withholding His abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not written books, but the Scriptures called the Creation."

If it were possible to establish a new cultus, based upon mere abstract principles, Frenchmen, we should say, would be about the last people who could do it. This new worship, like any other play, drew well as long as it was new, and no longer. The moral men and women soon grew tired of it, and relapsed into the old faith and the old forms.

The end of all this child's play at government and at religion came at last. Bonaparte, checked at Acre by Sir Sydney Smith, left the East, landed in France in October, 1799, sent a file of grenadiers to turn Ancients and Five Hundred out of their halls, and seated himself in the chair of state.

After this conclusive coup d'tat, Paine sunk out of sight. The First Consul might have examined with interest the iron bridge, but could never have borne with the soiled person and the threadbare principles of the philosopher of two hemispheres. Bonaparte loved neatness and elegance, and disliked idologues and bavards, as he styled all gentlemen of Paine's turn of mind.

In 1802, after the peace with England, Paine set sail from Havre to end his days in the United States. Here we leave him. We have neither space nor inclination to sum up his virtues and his vices in these columns, and to give him a character according to the balance struck. We have sketched a few outlines of his history as we have found it scattered about in newspapers and pamphlets. Our readers may make up their own minds whether this supposed ally of the Arch Enemy was as black as he has been painted.



ELKANAH BREWSTER'S TEMPTATION.

I was always of opinion that the fruit forbidden to our grandmother Eve was an unripe apple. Eaten, it afflicted Adam with the first colic known to this planet. He, the weaker vessel, sorrowed over his transgression; but I doubt if Eve's repentance was thorough; for the plucking of unripe fruit has been, ever since, a favorite hobby of her sons and daughters,—until now our mankind has got itself into such a chronic state of colic, that even Dr. Carlyle declares himself unable to prescribe any Morrison's Pill or other remedial measure to allay the irritation.

Part of this irritation finds vent in a great cry about "legitimate ambition." Somehow, because any American may be President of the United States, almost every American feels himself bound to run for the office. A man thinks small things of himself, and his neighbors think less, if he does not find his heart filled with an insane desire, in some way, to attain to fame or notoriety, riches or bankruptcy. Nevertheless, we are not purse-proud,—nor, indeed, proud at all, more's the pity,—and receive a man just as readily whose sands of life have been doled out to suffering humanity in the shape of patent pills, as one who has entered Fifth Avenue by the legitimate way of pork and cotton speculations, if only he have been successful,—which I call a very noble trait in the American character.

Now this is all very well, and, granted that Providence has placed us here to do what is best pleasing to ourselves, it is surely very noble and grand in us to please to serve nothing less than our country or our age. But let us not forget that the English language has such a little word as duty. A man's talents, and, perhaps, once in a great while, his wishes, would make him a great man, (if wishes ever did such things, which I doubt,) while duty imperatively demands that he shall remain a little man. What then? Let us see.

Elkanah Brewster was going to New York to-morrow.

"What for, boy?" asked old Uncle Shubael, meeting whom on the fish-wharf, he had bid him a cheery good-bye.

"To make my fortune," was the bold reply.

"Make yer fortin? You're a goose, boy! Stick to yer work here,—fishin' summers an' shoemakin' winters. Why, there isn't a young feller on the hull Cape makes as much as you. What's up? Gal gin ye the mitten? Or what?"

"I don't want to make shoes, nor fish neither, Uncle Shub," said Elkanah, soberly, looking the old fellow in the face,—"goin' down to the Banks year arter year in cold an' fish-gurry, an' peggin' away all winter, like mad. I want to be rich, like Captain Crowell; I want to be a gentleman, like that painter-chap that give me drawin'-lessons, last summer, when I stayed to home."

"Phew! Want to be rich an' a gentleman, eh? Gittin' tu big for yer boots, youngster? What's yer old man du but go down t' the Banks regular every spring? You're no better 'n he, I guess: Keep yer trade, an' yer trade'll keep you. A rollin' stun gathers no moss. Dry bread tu home's better 'n roast meat an' gravy abroad."

"All feet don't tread in one shoe, Uncle Shub," said young Brewster, capping the old fellow's proverbs with another. "Don't see why I shouldn't make money as well's other fellers. It's a free country, an' if a feller wants to try suthin' else 'sides fishin' uv it, what d'yer all want to be down on him fur? I don't want to slave all my days, when other folks ken live in big houses an' ride in 'kerriges, an' all that."

"A'n't yer got bread enough to eat, an' a place to sleep? an' what more's any on 'em got? You stay here; make yer money on the old Cape, where yer father an' grand'ther made it afore you. Use yer means, an' God 'll give the blessin'. Yer can't honestly git rich anywheres all tu once. Good an' quickly don't often meet. One nail drives out another. Slow an' easy goes fur in a day. Honor an' ease a'n't often bedfellows. Don't yer be a goose, I tell ye. What's to become of Hepsy Ann?"

Having delivered himself of which last and hardest shot, Uncle Shubael shouldered his cod-craft, and, without awaiting an answer, tugged across the sand-beach for home.

Elkanah Brewster was a Cape-Cod boy, with a pedigree, if he had ever thought of it, as long as any on the Cape,—and they are the longest in the land. His forefathers had caught fish to the remotest generation known. The Cape boys take to the water like young ducks; and are born with a hook and line in their fists, so to speak, as the Newfoundland codfish and Bay Chaleur mackerel know, to their cost. "Down on old Chatham" there is little question of a boy's calling, if he only comes into the world with the proper number of fingers and toes; he swims as soon as he walks, knows how to drive a bargain as soon as he can talk, goes cook of a coaster at the mature age of eight years, and thinks himself robbed of his birthright, if he has not made a voyage to the Banks before his eleventh birthday comes round. There is good stuff in the Cape boys, as the South-Street ship-owners know, who don't sleep easier than when they have put a "Cape man" in charge of their best clipper. Quick of apprehension, fertile in resource, shrewd, enterprising, brave, prudent, and, above all, lucky,—no better seamen sail the sea. Long may they keep their prestige and their sand!

They are not rich on the Cape,—in the Wall-Street sense of the word, that is to say. I doubt if Uncle Lew Baker, who was high line out of Dennis last year, and who, by the same token, had to work himself right smartly to achieve that honor,—I doubt if this smart and thoroughly wide-awake fellow took home more than three hundred dollars to his wife and children when old Obed settled the voyage. But then the good wife saves while he earns, and, what with a cow, and a house and garden-spot of his own, and a healthy lot of boys and girls, who, if too young to help, are not suffered to hinder, this man is more forehanded and independent, gives more to the poor about him and to the heathen at the other end of the world, than many a city man who makes, and spends, his tens of thousands.

Uncle Abijah Brewster, the father of this Elkanah, was an old Banker,—which signifies here, not a Wall-Street broker-man, but a Grand-Bank fisherman. He had brought up a goodly family of boys and girls by his hook-and-line and, though now a man of some fifty winters, still made his two yearly fares to the Banks, in his own trim little pinky, and prided himself on being the smartest and jolliest man aboard. His boys had sailed with him till they got vessels of their own, had learned from his stout heart and strong arm their seamanship, their fisherman's acuteness, their honest daring, and child-like trust in God's Providence. These poor fishermen are not rich, as I have said; a dollar looks to them as big as a dinner-plate to us, and a moderately flush Wall-Street man might buy out the whole Cape and not overdraw his bank-account. Also, they have but little book-learning among them, reading chiefly their Bible, Bowditch, and Nautical Almanac, and leaving theology mostly to the parson, on shore, who is paid for it. But they have a conscience, and, knowing a thing to be right, do it bravely, and against all odds. I have seen these men on Sunday, in a fleet of busy "Sunday fishers," fish biting all around them, sitting faithfully,—ay, and contentedly,—with book in hand, sturdily refraining from what the mere human instinct of destruction would strongly impel them to, without counting the temptation of dollars,—and this only because they had been taught that Sunday was a day of rest and worship, wherein no man should catch fish, and knew no theological quibble or mercantile close-sailing by which to weather on God's command. It sounds little to us who have not been tempted, or, if tempted, have gracefully succumbed, on the plea that other people do so too; but how many stock-speculators would see their follows buying bargains and making easy fortunes on Sunday morning, and not forget the ring of Trinity chimes and go in for dollars? Or which of us denies himself his Monday morning's paper?

Elkanah had always been what his mother called a strange boy. He was, indeed, an odd sheep in her flock. Restless, ambitious, dreamy, from his earliest youth, he possessed, besides, a natural gift for drawing and sketching, imitating and constructing, that bade fair, unless properly directed, to make of him that saddest and most useless of human lumber, a jack-at-all-trades. He profited more by his limited winter's schooling than his brothers and fellows, and was always respected by the old man as "a boy that took naterally to book-larnin', and would be suthin' some day." Of course he went to the Banks, and acquitted himself there with honor,—no man fishing more zealously or having better luck. But all the time he was dreaming of his future, counting this present as nothing, and ready, as soon as Fortune should make him an opening, to cast away this life, and grasp—he had not settled what.

"I dun know what ails him," said his father; "but he don't take kindly to the Banks. Seems to me he kinder despises the work, though he does it well enough. And then he makes the best shoes on the Cape; but he a'n't content, somehow."

And that was just it. He was not contented. He had seen men—"no better than I," thought he, poor fool!—in Boston, living in big houses, wearing fine clothes, putting fair, soft hands into smooth-fitting kid-gloves; "and why not I?" he cried to himself continually. Year by year, from his seventeenth to his twenty-first, he was pursued by this demon of "ambition," which so took possession of his heart as to crowd out nearly everything else,—father, mother, work,—even pretty Hepzibah Nickerson, almost, who loved him, and whom he also loved truly. They had almost grown up together, had long loved each other, and had been now two years betrothed. When Elkanah was out of his time and able to buy a share in a vessel, and had made a voyage to the Banks as captain, they were to be married.

The summer before this spring in which our story opens, Elkanah had stayed at home for two months, because of a rheumatism contracted by unusual exposure on the Banks in early spring; and at this time he made the acquaintance of Mr. James Graves, N. A., from New York, spending part of his summer on the Cape in search of the picturesque,—which I hope he found. Elkanah had, as I have said, a natural talent for drawing, and some of his sketches had that in them which elicited the approval of Graves, who saw in the young fellow an untutored genius, or, at least, very considerable promise of future excellence. To him there could be but one choice between shoemaking and "Art"; and finding that young Brewster made rapid advances under his desultory tuition, he told him his thoughts, that he should not waste himself making sea-boots for fishermen, but enter a studio in Boston or New York, and make his career as a painter. It scarcely needed this, however; for Elkanah took such delight in his new proficiency, and got from Graves's stories of artist life such exalted ideas of the unalloyed felicity of the gentleman of the brush, that, even had the painter said no word, he would have worked out that way himself.

"Only wait till next year, when I'm out of my time," said he to Graves; and to himself,—"This is the opening for which I have been waiting."

That winter—"my last at shoemaking"—he worked more diligently than ever before, and more good-naturedly. Uncle Abijah was delighted at the change in his boy, and promised him great things in the way of a lift next year, to help him to a speedy wedding. Elkanah kept his own counsel, read much in certain books—which Graves had left him, and looked impatiently ahead to the day when, twenty-one years of age, he should be a free man,—able to go whither he listed and do what he would, with no man authoritatively to say him nay.

And now the day had come; and with I don't know how few dollars in his pocket, his scant earnings, he had declared to his astounded parents his determination to fish and shoemake no longer, but to learn to be a painter.

"A great painter,"—that was what he said.

"I don't see the use o' paintin' picters, for my part," said the old man, despairingly; "can't you learn that, an' fish tu?"

"Famous and rich too," said Elkanah half to himself, looking through the vista of years at the result he hoped for, and congratulating himself in advance upon it. And a proud, hard loot settled in his eye, which froze the opposition of father and mother, and was hardly dimmed by encountering the grieved glance of poor Hepsy Ann Nickerson.

Poor Hepsy Ann! They had talked it all over, time and again. At first she was in despair; but when he laid before her all his dazling hopes, and painted for her in such glowing colors the final reward which should come to him and her in return for his struggles,—when she saw him, her love and pride, before her already transfigured, as it were, by this rare triumph, clothed in honors, his name in all mouths,—dear, loving soul, her heart consented, "ay, if it should break meantime," thought she, as she looked proudly on him through her tears, and said,—"Go, in God's name, and God be with you!"

Perhaps we might properly here consider a little whether this young man did well thus to leave father, mother, home, his promised bride, sufficient bread-and-butter, healthy occupation, all, to attempt life in a new direction. Of course, your man who lives by bread alone will "pooh! pooh!" all such folly, and tell the young man to let well enough alone. But consider candidly, and decide: Should Elkanah have gone to New York?

On the whole, I think, yes. For,—He had a certain talent, and gave good promise of excellence in his chosen profession.

He liked it, felt strongly impelled towards it. Let us not yet scrutinize too closely the main impelling forces. Few human actions originate solely in what we try to think the most exalted motives.

He would have been discontented for life, had he not had his way. And this should count for something,—for much, indeed. Give our boys liberty to try that to which their nature or fancy strongly drives them,—to burn their fingers, if that seem best.

Let him go, then; and God be with him! as surely He will be, if the simple, faithful prayers of fair, sad Hepsy Ann are heard. Thus will he, thus only can any, solve that sphinx-riddle of life which is propounded to each passer to-day, as of old in fable-lands,—failing to read which, he dies the death of rusting discontent,—solving whose mysteries, he has revealed to him the deep secret of his life, and sees and knows what best he may do here for himself and the world.

But what, where, who, is Elkanah Brewster's world?

While we stand reasoning, he has gone. In New York, his friend Graves assisted him to a place in the studio of an artist, whose own works have proved, no less than those of many who have gathered their most precious lessons from him, that he is truly a master of his art. But what are masters, teachers, to a scholar? It's very fine boarding at the Spread-Eagle Hotel; but even after you have feed the waiter, you have to chew your own dinner, and are benefited, not by the amount you pay for it, but only by so much of all that with which the bounteous mahogany is covered as you can thoroughly masticate, easily contain, and healthily digest. Elkanah began with the soup, so to speak. He brought all his Cape-Cod acuteness of observation to bear on his profession; lived closely, as well he might; studied attentively and intelligently; lost no hints, no precious morsels dropping from the master's board; improved slowly, but surely. Day by day he gained in that facility of hand, quickness of observation, accuracy of memory, correctness of judgment, patience of detail, felicity of touch, which, united and perfected and honestly directed, we call genius. He was above no drudgery, shirked no difficulties, and labored at the insignificant sketch in hand to-day as though it were indeed his masterpiece, to be hung up beside Raphael's and Titian's; meantime, keeping up poor Hepsy Ann's heart by letters full of a hope bred of his own brave spirit, rather than of any favoring circumstances in his life, and gaining his scant bread-and-butter by various honest drudgeries which I will not here recount.

So passed away three years; for the growth of a poor young artist in public favor, and that thing called fame, is fearfully slow. Oftenest he has achieved his best when the first critic speaks kindly or savagely of him. What, indeed, at best, do those blind leaders, but zealously echo a sentiment already in the public heart,—which they vainly endeavor to create (out of nothing) by any awe-inspiring formula of big words?

Men grow so slowly! But then so do oaks. And little matter, so the growth be straight.

Meantime Elkanah was getting, slowly and by hardest labor, to have some true conception of his art and his aims. He became less and less satisfied with his own performances; and, having with much pains and anxious prayers finished his first picture for the Academy, carefully hid it under the bed, and for that year played the part of independent critic at the Exhibition. Wherefrom resulted some increase of knowledge,—though chiefly negative.

For what positive lesson is taught to any by that yearly show of what we flatter ourselves by calling Art? Eight hundred and fifteen new paintings this year, shown by no less than two hundred and eighty-one painters. When you have gone patiently through and looked at every picture, see if you don't wish the critics had eyes, and a little common sense, too. How many of these two hundred and eighty-one, if they live to be a hundred, will ever solve their great riddle? and once solved, how many would honestly go back to shoemaking?

Why should they not paint? Because, unless some of them are poorer men than I think, that is not the thing they are like to do best; and a man is put into this world, not to do what he may think or hope will most speedily or effectually place him in the list of this world's illustrious benefactors, but honestly and against all devilish temptations to stick to that thing by which he can best serve and bless—

Whom? A city? A state? A republic? A king?

No,—but that person who Is nearest to, and most dependent upon him. Look at Charles Lamb, and then at Byron and Shelley.

The growth of a poor young artist into public favor is slow enough. But even poor young artists have their temptations. When Elkanah hung his first picture in the Academy rooms, he thought the world must feel the acquisition. Now the world is a notoriously stupid world, and never does its duty; but kind woman not seldom supplies its omissions. So it happened, that, though the world ignored the picture, Elkanah became at once the centre of admiration to a coterie of young ladies, who thought they were appreciating Art when they flattered an artist, and who, when they read in the papers the gratifying Intelligence (invented by some sanguine critic, over a small bottle of Champagne cider) that the American people are rapidly growing in true love for the fine arts, blushingly owned to themselves that their virtuous labors in this direction were not going unrewarded.

Have you never seen them in the Academy,—these dear young ladies, who are so constantly foreseeing new Raphaels, Claudes, and Rembrandts? Positively, in this year's Exhibition they are better worth study than the paintings. There they run, up and down, critical or enthusiastical, as the humor strikes: Laura, with big blue eyes and a loud voice, pitying Isidora because she "has never met" that dear Mr. Herkimer, who paints such delicious, dreamy landscapes; and Emily dragging everybody off to see Mr. Smith's great work, "The Boy and the Windmill," which—so surprising is his facility—he actually painted in less than twelve days, and which "promises so much for his success and the future of American Art," says this sage young critic, out of whose gray eyes look the garnered experiences of almost eighteen summers.

Whoever desiderates cheap praise, let him cultivate a beard and a sleepy look, and hang a picture in the Academy rooms. Elkanah received it, you may be sure. It was thought so romantic, that he, a fisherman,—the young ladies sunk the shoemaker, I believe,—should be so devoted to Art. How splendidly it spoke for our civilization, when even sailors left their vessels, and, abjuring codfish, took to canvas and brushes! What admirable courage in him, to come here and endeavor to work his way up from the very bottom! What praiseworthy self-denial,—"No!! is it really so?" cried Miss Jennie,—when he had left behind him a fair young bride!

It was as though it had been written, "Blessed is he who forsaketh father, mother, and wife to paint pictures." But it is not so written.

It was as if the true aim and glory of every man in a civilized community should be to paint pictures. Which has this grain of truth in it, that, in the highest form of human development, I believe every man will be at heart an artist. But then we shall be past picture-painting and exhibitions. Don't you see, that, if the fruit be thoroughly ripe, it needs no violent plucking? or that, if a man is really a painter, he will paint,—ay, though he were ten times a shoe-maker, and could never, never hope to hang;—his pictures on the Academy walls, to win cheap wonder from boarding-school misses, or just regard from judicious critics?

Elkanah Brewster came to New York to make his career,—to win nothing less than fame and fortune. When he had struggled through five years of Art-study, and was now just beginning to earn a little money, he began also to think that he had somehow counted his chickens before they were hatched,—perhaps, indeed, before the eggs were laid. "Good and quickly come seldom together," said old Uncle Shubael. But then a man who has courage commonly has also endurance; and Elkanah, ardently pursuing from love now what he had first been prompted to by ambition, did not murmur nor despair. For, indeed, I must own that this young fellow had worked himself up to the highest and truest conception of his art, and felt, that, though the laborer is worthy of his hire, unhappy is the man who lowers his art to the level of a trade. In olden times, the priests did, indeed, eat of the sacrificial meats; but we live under a new and higher dispensation.

II.

Meantime, what of Hepsy Ann Nickerson? She had bravely sent her hero out, with her blessing on his aspirations. Did she regret her love and trust? I am ashamed to say that these five long, weary years had passed happily to this young woman. She had her hands full of work at home, where she reigned over a family of brothers and sisters, vice her mother, promoted. Hands busied with useful toils, head and heart filled with love and trust of Elkanah, there was no room for unhappiness. To serve and to be loved: this seems, indeed, to be the bliss of the happiest women I have known,—and of the happiest men, too, for that matter. It does not sound logical, and I know of no theory of woman's rights which will satisfactorily account for the phenomenon. But then—there are the facts.

A Cape household is a simpler affair than you will meet with in the city. If any young marrying man waits for a wife who shall be an adept in the mysteries of the kitchen and the sewing-basket, let him go down to the Cape. Captain Elijah Nickerson, Hepsy Ann's father, was master and owner of the good schooner "Miranda," in which excellent, but rather strongly scented vessel, he generally made yearly two trips to the Newfoundland Banks, to draw thence his regular income; and it is to be remarked, that his drafts, presented in person, were never dishonored in that foggy region. Uncle Elijah, (they are all uncles, on the Cape, when they marry and have children,—and boys until then,) Uncle Elijah, I say, was not uncomfortably off, as things go in those parts. The year before Elkanah went to New York, the old fellow had built himself a brand-new house, and Hepsy Ann was looked up to by her acquaintance as the daughter of a man who was not only brave and honest, but also lucky. "Elijah Nickerson's new house"—as it is still called, and will be, I suppose, until it ceases to be a house—was fitted up inside in a way which put you much in mind of a ship's cabin, and would have delighted the simple heart of good Captain Cuttle. There was no spare space anywhere thrown away, nor anything suffered to lie loose. Beckets and cleats, fixed into the walls of the sitting-room, held and secured against any possible damage the pipes, fish-lines, dolphin-grains, and sou'westers of the worthy Captain; and here he and his sat, when he was at home, through the long winter evenings, in simple and not often idle content. The kitchen, flanked by the compendious outhouses which make our New England kitchens almost luxurious in the comfort and handiness of every arrangement, was the centre of Hepsy Ann's kingdom, where she reigned supreme, and waged sternest warfare against dirt and disorder. Hence her despotic sway extended over the pantry, an awful and fragrant sanctuary, whither she fled when household troubles, or a letter from Elkanah, demanded her entire seclusion from the outer world, and of whose interior the children got faint glimpses and sniffs only on special and long-remembered occasions; the west room, where her father slept when he was at home, and where the curious searcher might find store of old compasses, worn-out cod-hooks, condemned gurry-knives, and last year's fishing-mittens, all "stowed away against time-o'-need"; the spare room, sacred to the rites of hospitality; the "up-stairs," occupied by the children and Hepsy Ann's self; and finally, but most important of all, the parlor, a mysterious and hermetically sealed apartment, which almost seemed to me an unconsecrated spot in this little temple of the homely virtues and affections,—a room furnished in a style somewhat ostentatious and decidedly uncomfortable, swept and dusted on Saturday afternoons by Hepsy Ann's own careful hands, sat in by the Captain and her for an hour or two on Sundays in awkward state, then darkened and locked for the rest of the week.

As for the queen and mistress of so much neatness and comfort, I must say, that, like most queens whose likeness I have seen, she was rather plain than strictly beautiful,—though, no doubt, her loyal subjects, as in such cases commonly occurs, pictured her to themselves as a very Helen of Troy. If her cheeks had something of the rosy hue of health, cheeks, and arms, too, were well tanned by frequent exposure to the sun. Neither tall nor short, but with a lithe figure, a natural grace and sweet dignity of carriage, the result of sufficient healthy exercise and a pure, untroubled spirit; hands and feet, mouth and nose, not such as a gentleman would particularly notice; and straight brown hair, which shaded the only really beautiful part of Hepsy Ann's face,—her clear, honest, brave blue eyes: eyes from which spoke a soul at peace with itself and with the outward world,—a soul yet full of love and trust, fearing nothing, doubting nothing, believing much good, and inclined to patient endurance of the human weaknesses it met with in daily life, as not perhaps altogether strange to itself. The Cape men are a brave, hardy race; and the Cape women, grave and somewhat silent, not demonstrative in joy or grief, reticent mostly of anxieties and sorrows, born to endure, in separation from fathers, brothers, lovers, husbands, in dangers not oftener fancied than real, griefs which more fortunate women find it difficult to imagine,—these Cape women are worthy mothers of brave men. Of such our Hepsy Ann was a fair example,—weaving her rather prosaic life into golden dreams in the quiet light of her pantry refuge, happy chiefly because she thought much and carefully for others and had little time for self-brooding; like most genuine heroines, (except those of France,) living an heroic life without in the least suspecting it.

And did she believe in Elkanah?

Utterly.

And did Elkanah believe in himself?

Yes,—but with certain grave doubts. Here is the difference: the woman's faith is intuition; the man must have a reason for the faith that is in him.

Yet Elkanah was growing. I think a man grows like the walls of a house, by distinct stages: so far the scaffolding reaches, and then a general stoppage while the outer shell is raised, the ladders lengthened, and the work squared off. Now I don't know, unhappily, the common process of growth of the artistic mind, and how far the light of today helps the neophyte to look into the indefinite twilight of to-morrow; but step by step was the slow rule of Elkanah's mind, and he had been now five years an artist, and was held in no despicable repute by those few who could rightly judge of a man's future by his past, when first it became very clear to him that he had yet to find his speciality in Art,—that truth which he might better represent than any other man. Don't think five years long to determine so trivial a point. The right man in the right place is still a rare phenomenon in the world; and some men spend a lifetime in the consideration of this very point, doubtless looking to take their chance of real work in the next world. I mean to say it took Elkanah just five years to discover, that, though he painted many things well, he did yet put his very soul into none, and that, unless he could now presently find this, his right place, he had, perhaps, better stop altogether.

Elkanah considered; but he also worked unceasingly, feeling that the best way to break through a difficulty is to pepper away at its outer walls.

Now while he was firing away wearily at this fortress, which held, he thought, the deepest secret of his life, Hepsy Ann sat in her pantry, her serene soul troubled by unwonted fears. Captain Elijah Nickerson had sailed out in his stanch schooner in earliest spring, for the Banks. The old man had been all winter meditating a surprise; and his crew were in unusual excitement, peering out at the weather, consulting almanacs, prophesying (to outsiders) a late season, and winking to each other a cheerful disbelief of their own auguries. The fact is, they were intending to slip off before the rest, and perhaps have half their fare of fish caught before the fleet got along. No plan could have succeeded better—up to a certain point. Captain Elijah got off to sea full twelve days earlier than anybody else, and was bowling merrily down towards the eternal fog-banks when his neighbors were yet scarce thinking of gathering up their mittens and sea-boots. By the time the last comers arrived on the fishing-ground, one who had spoken the "Miranda" some days before, anchored and fishing away, reported that they had, indeed, nearly wet her salt,—by which is meant that she was nearly filled with good, sound codfish. The men were singing as they dressed their fish, and Captain Elijah, sitting high up on the schooner's quarter, took his pipe out of his mouth, and asked, as the vessel rose on the sea, if they had any news to send home, for three days more like that would fill him up.

That was the last word of Captain Elijah Nickerson's ever heard by men now living. Whether the "Miranda" was sunk by an iceberg; whether run down in the dark and silent watches of the night by some monster packet or swift hurling steamer, little recking the pale fisher's light feebly glimmering up from the surface of the deep; or whether they went down at their anchors, in the great gale which set in on the third night, as many brave men have done before, looking their fate steadfastly in the face for long hours, and taking time to bid each other farewell ere the great sea swallowed them;—the particulars of their hapless fate no man may know, till the dread day when the sea shall give up its dead.

Vainly poor Hepsy Ann waited for the well-known signal in the offing,—daily walking to the shore, where kind old Uncle Shubael, now long superannuated, and idly busying himself about the fish-house, strove to cheer her fainting soul by store of well-chosen proverbs, and yarns of how, aforetimes, schooners not larger and not so stout as the "Miranda," starting early for the Banks, had been blown southward to the West Indies, and, when the second-fare men came in with their fish, had made their appearance laden with rich cargoes of tropical molasses and bananas. Poor Hepsy Ann! what need to describe the long-drawn agony which grew with the summer flowers, but did not wane with the summer sun? Hour after hour, day after day, she sat by her pantry-window, looking with wistful eyes out upon the sand, to that spot where the ill-fated "Miranda" had last been seen, but never should appear again,—another

"poor lone Hannah, Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"—

cheeks paling, eyes dimming, with that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick. Pray God you never may be so tried, fair reader! If, in these days, she had not had the children to keep and comfort, she has since told me, she could scarce have borne it. To calm their fears, to soothe their little sorrows, to look anxiously—more anxiously than ever before—after each one of her precious little brood, became now her chief solace.

Thus the long, weary days rolled away, each setting sun crushing another hope, until at last the autumn storms approached, the last Banker was safe home; and by this time it was plain, even to poor Hepsy Ann's faithful heart, that her dead would not come back to her.

"If only Elkanah were here!" she had sometimes sighed to herself;—but in all these days she wrote him no word. And he—guessing nothing of her long, silent agony, himself sufficiently bemired in his slough of despond, working away with sad, unsatisfied heart in his little studio, hoping yet for light to come to his night—was, in truth, so full of himself, that Hepsy Ann had little of his thoughts. Shall I go farther, and admit that sometimes this poor fellow dimly regretted his pledged heart, and faintly murmured, "If only I were free, then I might do something"? If only the ship were rid of her helmsman, then indeed would she go—somewhere.

At last,—it was already near Thanksgiving,—the news reached Elkanah. "I thought you'd ha' been down afore this to see Hepsy Ann Nickerson in her trouble," said an old coasting-skipper to him, with mild reproach, handing him a letter from his mother,—of all persons in the world! Whereupon, seeing ignorance in Elkanah's inquiring glance, he told the story.

Elkanah was as one in a maze. Going to his little room, he opened his mother's letter, half-dreading to find here a detailed repetition of what his heart had just taken in. But the letter was short.

"MY SON ELKANAH,—

"Do you not know that Captain Elijah Nickerson will never come home from the Banks, and that Hepsy Ann is left alone in the world?

"'For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.'"

That was all.

Elkanah sat on his stool, before his easel, looking vacantly at the unfinished picture, as one stunned and breathless. For the purport of this message was not to be mistaken. Nor did his conscience leave him in doubt as to his duty, O God! was this, indeed, the end? Had he toiled, and hoped, and prayed, and lived the life of an anchorite these five years only for this? Was such faith, such devotion, so rewarded?

But had any one the right to demand this sacrifice of him? Was it not a devilish temptation to take him from his calling, from that work in which God had evidently intended him to work for the world? Had he a right to spoil his life, to belittle his soul, for any consideration? If Hepsy Ann Nickerson had claims, had not he also, and his Art? If he were willing, in this dire extremity, to sacrifice his love, his prospects of married bliss, might he not justly require the same of her? Was not Art his mistress?—Thus whispered the insidious devil of Selfishness to this poor, tempted, anguished soul.

"Yea," whispered another still, small voice; "but is not Hepsy Ann your promised wife?" And those fatal words sounded in his heart: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife."

"Lord, inspire me to do what is right!" prayed poor mazed Elkanah, sinking on his knees at his cot-side.

But presently, through his blinding tears, "Lord, give me strength to do the right!"

And then, when he awoke next morning, the world seemed another world to him. The foundations of his life seemed broken loose. Tears were no longer, nor prayers. But he went about slowly, and with loving hands, packing up his brushes, pallets, paints, easel,—all the few familiar objects of a life which was his no longer, and on which he seemed to himself already looking as across some vast gulf of years. At last all was done. A last look about the dismantled garret, so long his workshop, his home, where he had grown out of one life into another, and a better, as he thought,—out of a narrow circle into a broader. And then, away for the Cape. No farewells, no explanations to friends, nothing that should hold out to his sad soul any faintest hope of a return to this garret, this toil, which now seemed to him more heaven than ever before. Thus this Adam, left his paradise, clinging to his Eve.

It was the day before Thanksgiving when Elkanah arrived at home. Will any one blame him, if he felt little thankful? if the thought of the Thanksgiving turkey was like to choke him, and the very idea of giving thanks seemed to him a bitter satire? Poor fellow! he forgot that there were other hearts to whom Thanksgiving turkey seemed little tempting.

The Cape folk are not demonstrative. They have warm hearts, but the old Puritan ice has never quite melted away from the outer shell.

"Well, Elkanah, glad to see you, boy!" said his father, looking up from his corner by the stove; "how's things in New York?" Father and son had not met for three years. But, going out into the kitchen, he received a warm grasp of the hand, and his mother said, in her low, sweet voice, "I knew you'd come." That was all. But it was enough.

How to take his sad face over to Elijah Nickerson's new house? But that must be done, too. Looking through the little sitting-room window, as he passed, he saw pale-faced Hepsy Ann sitting quietly by the table, sewing. The children had gone to bed. He did not knock;—why should he?—but, walking in, stood silent on the floor. A glad, surprised smile lit up the sad, wan face, as she recognized him, and, stepping to his side, said, "Oh, Elkanah! I knew you'd come. How good of you!" Then, abashed to have so committed herself and him, she shrank to her chair again.

Let us not intrude further on these two. Surely—Elkanah Brewster had been less than man, had he not found his hard heart to soften, and his cold love to warm, as he drew from her the story of her long agony, and saw this weary heart ready to rest upon him, longing to be comforted in his strong arms.