"To tell her she is at the Devil's work, Mrs. Sheppard, eh?"

Doctor Blecker pulled at his beard, angrily.

"Suppose you and I let her alone. We don't understand her."

"I think I do. God help her!"

"We will go round when the song is over," said Grey, gently.

Lizzy, scanning their faces, scanning every face in pit or boxes, discerned a good will and wish on each. Something wholesome and sound in her heart received it, half afraid.

"I don't know," she thought.

One of the windows was open, and out beyond the gas-light and smells of the theatre she could see a glimpse of far space, with the eternal stars shining. There had been once a man who loved her: he, looking down, could see her now. If she had stayed at home, selfish and useless, there might have been a chance for her yonder.

Her song was ended; as she drew back, she glanced up again through the fresh air.

They were curious words the soul of the girl cried out to God in that dumb moment:—"Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." Yet in that moment a new feeling came to the girl,—a peace that never left her afterwards.

An actress: but she holds her work bravely and healthily and well in her grasp, with her foot always on a grave, as one might say, and God very near above. And it may be, that, when her work is nearer done, and she comes closer to the land where all things are clearly seen at last in their real laws, she will know that the faces of those who loved her wait kindly for her, and of whatever happiness has been given to them they will not deem her quite unworthy.

Perhaps they have turned Lizzy out of the church. I do not know. But her Friend, the world's Christ, they could not make dead to her by shutting him up in formula or church. He never was dead. From the girding sepulchre he passed to save the spirits long in prison; and from the visible church now he lives and works out from every soul that has learned, like Lizzy, the truths of life,—to love, to succor, to renounce.

* * * * *



BY THE RIVER.

I.

In the beautiful greenwood's charmed light, And down through the meadows wide and bright, Deep in the silence, and smooth in the gleam, For ever and ever flows the stream.

Where the mandrakes grow, and the pale, thin grass The airy scarf of the woodland weaves, By dim, enchanted paths I pass, Crushing the twigs and the last year's leaves.

Over the wave, by the crystal brink, A kingfisher sits on a low, dead limb: He is always sitting there, I think,— And another, within the crystal brink, Is always looking up at him.

I know where an old tree leans across From bank to bank, an ancient tree, Quaintly cushioned with curious moss, A bridge for the cool wood-nymphs and me: Half seen they flit, while here I sit By the magical water, watching it.

In its bosom swims the fair phantasm Of a subterraneous azure chasm, So soft and clear, you would say the stream Was dreaming of heaven a visible dream.

Where the noontide basks, and its warm rays tint The nettles and clover and scented mint, And the crinkled airs, that curl and quiver, Drop their wreaths in the mirroring river,— Under the shaggy magnificent drapery Of many a wild-woven native grapery,— By ivy-bowers, and banks of violets, And golden hillocks, and emerald islets, Along its sinuous shining bed, In sheets of splendor it lies outspread.

In the twilight stillness and solitude Of green caves roofed by the brooding wood, Where the woodbine swings, and beneath the trailing Sprays of the queenly elm-tree sailing,— By ribbed and wave-worn ledges shimmering, Gilding the rocks with a rippled glimmering, All pictured over in shade and sun, The wavering silken waters run.

Upon this mossy trunk I sit, Over the river, watching it. A shadowed face peers up at me; And another tree in the chasm I see, Clinging above the abyss it spans; The broad boughs curve their spreading fans, From side to side, in the nether air; And phantom birds in the phantom branches Mimic the birds above; and there, Oh I far below, solemn and slow, The white clouds roll the crumbling snow Of ever-pendulous avalanches, Till the brain grows giddy, gazing through Their wild, wide rifts of bottomless blue.

II.

Through the river, and through the rifts Of the sundered earth I gaze, While Thought on dreamy pinion drifts, Over cerulean bays, Into the deep ethereal sea Of her own serene eternity.

Transfigured by my tranced eye, Wood and meadow, and stream and sky, Like vistas of a vision lie: THE WORLD is the River that flickers by.

Its skies are the blue-arched centuries; And its forms are the transient images Flung on the flowing film of Time By the steadfast shores of a fadeless clime.

As yonder wave-side willows grow, Substance above, and shadow below, The golden slopes of that upper sphere Hang their imperfect landscapes here.

Fast by the Tree of Life, which shoots Duplicate forms from self-same roots, Under the fringes of Paradise, The crystal brim of the River lies.

There are banks of Peace, whose lilies pure Paint on the wave their portraiture; And many a holy influence, That climbs to God like the breath of prayer, Creeps quivering into the glass of sense, To bless the immortals mirrored there.

Through realms of Poesy, whose white cliffs Cloud its deeps with their hieroglyphs, Alpine fantasies heaped and wrought At will by the frolicsome winds of Thought,— By shores of Beauty, whose colors pass Faintly into the misty glass,— By hills of Truth, whose glories show Distorted, broken, and dimmed, as we know,— Kissed by the tremulous long green tress Of the glistening tree of Happiness, Which ever our aching grasp eludes With sweet illusive similitudes,— All pictured over in shade and gleam, For ever and ever runs the Stream.

The orb that burns in the rifts of space Is the adumbration of God's Face. My Soul leans over the murmuring flow, And I am the image it sees below.

* * * * *



THE GROWTH OF CONTINENTS.

Before entering upon a sketch of the growth of the European Continent from the earliest times until it reached its present dimensions and outlines, I will say something of the growth of continents in general, connecting these remarks with a few words of explanation respecting some geological terms, which, although in constant use, are nevertheless not clearly defined. I will explain, at the outset, the meaning I attach to them and the sense in which I use them, that there may be no misunderstanding between me and my readers on this point. The words Age, Epoch, Period, Formation, may be found on almost every page of any modern work on geology; but if we sift the matter carefully, we shall find that there is a great uncertainty as to the significance of these terms, and that scarcely any two geologists use them in the same sense. Indeed, I shall not be held blameless in this respect myself; for, on looking over preceding articles, I find that I have, from old habit, used somewhat indiscriminately names which should have a perfectly definite and invariable meaning.

As long as zooelogical nomenclature was uncontrolled by any principle, the same vagueness and indecision prevailed here also. The words Genus, Order, Class, as well as those applied to the most comprehensive division of all in the animal kingdom, the primary branches or types, were used indiscriminately, and often allowed to include under one name animals differing essentially in their structural character. It is only since it has been found that all these groups are susceptible of limitation, according to distinct categories of structure, that our nomenclature has assumed a more precise and definite significance. Even now there is still some inconsistency among zooelogists as to the use of special terms, arising from their individual differences in appreciating, structural features; but I believe it to be, nevertheless, true, that general orders, classes, etc., are not merely larger or smaller groups of the same kind, but are really based upon distinct categories of structure. As soon as such a principle is admitted in geology, and investigators recognize certain physical and organic conditions, more or less general in their action, as characteristic of all those chapters in geological history designated as Ages, Epochs, Periods, Formations, etc., all vagueness will vanish from the scientific nomenclature of this department also, and there will be no hesitation as to the use of words for which we shall then have a positive, definite meaning.

Although the fivefold division of Werner, by which he separated the rocks into Primitive, Transition, Secondary, Alluvial, and Volcanic, proved to be based on a partial misapprehension of the nature of the earth-crust, yet it led to their subsequent division into the three great groups now known as the Primary, or Palaeozoic, as they are sometimes called, because here are found the first organic remains, the Secondary, and the Tertiary. I have said in a previous article that the general unity of character prevailing throughout these three divisions, so that, taken from the broadest point of view, each one seems a unit in time, justifies the application to them of that term, Age, by which we distinguish in human history those periods marked throughout by one prevailing tendency;—as we say the age of Egyptian or Greek or Roman civilization,—the age of stone or iron or bronze. I believe that this division of geological history into these great sections or chapters is founded upon a recognition of the general features by which they are characterized.

Passing over the time when the first stratified deposits were accumulated under a universal ocean in which neither animals nor plants existed, there was an age in the physical history of the world when the lands consisted of low islands,—when neither great depths nor lofty heights diversified the surface of the earth,—when both the animal and vegetable creation, however numerous, was inferior to the later ones, and comparatively uniform in character,—when marine Cryptogams were the highest plants, and Fishes were the highest animals. And this broad statement holds good for the whole of that time, even though it was not without its minor changes, its new forms of animal and vegetable life, its variations of level, its upheavals and subsidences; for, nevertheless, through its whole duration, it was the age of low detached lands,—it was the age of Cryptogams,—it was the age of Fishes. From its beginning to its close, no higher type in the animal kingdom, no loftier group in the vegetable world, made its appearance.

There was an age in the physical history of the world when the patches of land already raised above the water became so united as to form large islands; and though the aspect of the earth retained its insular character, yet the size of the islands, their tendency to coalesce by the addition of constantly increasing deposits, and thus to spread into wider expanses of dry land, marked the advance toward the formation of continents. This extension of the dry land was brought about not only by the gradual accumulation of materials, but also by the upheaval of large tracts of stratified deposits; for, though the loftiest mountain-chains did not yet exist, ranges like those of the Alleghanies and the Jura belong to this division of the world's history. During this time, the general character of the animal and vegetable kingdoms was higher than during the previous age. Reptiles, many and various, gigantic in size, curious in form, some of them recalling the structure of fishes, others anticipating birdlike features, gave a new character to the animal world, while in the vegetable world the reign of the aquatic Cryptogams was over, and terrestrial Cryptogams, and, later, Gymnosperms and Monocotyledonous trees, clothed the earth with foliage. Such was the character of this second age from its opening to its close; and though there are indications, that, before it was wholly past, some low, inferior Mammalian types of the Marsupial kind were introduced,[2] and also a few Dicotyledonous plants, yet they were not numerous or striking enough to change the general aspect of the organic world. This age was throughout, in its physical formation, the age of large continental islands; while in its organic character it was the age of Reptiles as the highest animal type, and of Gymnosperms and Monocotyledonous plants as the highest vegetable groups.

[Footnote 2: I say nothing of the traces of Birds in the Secondary deposits, because the so-called bird-tracks seem to me of very doubtful character; and it is also my opinion that the remains of a feathered animal recently found in the Solenhofen lithographic limestone, and believed to be a bird by some naturalists, do not belong to a genuine bird, but to one of those synthetic types before alluded to, in which reptilian structure is combined with certain birdlike features.]

There was an age in the physical history of the world when great ranges of mountains bound together in everlasting chains the islands which had already grown to continental dimensions,—when wide tracts of land, hitherto insular in character, became soldered into one by the upheaval of Plutonic masses which stretched across them all and riveted them forever with bolts of granite, of porphyry, and of basalt. Thus did the Rocky Mountains and the Andes bind together North and South America; the Pyrenees united Spain to France; the Alps, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas bound Europe to Asia. The class of Mammalia were now at the head of the animal kingdom; huge quadrupeds possessed the earth, and dwelt in forests characterized by plants of a higher order than any preceding ones,—the Beeches, Birches, Maples, Oaks, and Poplars of the Tertiaries. But though the continents had assumed their permanent outlines, extensive tracts of land still remained covered with ocean. Inland seas, sheets of water like the Mediterranean, so unique in our world, were then numerous. Physically speaking, this was the age of continents broken by large inland seas; while in the organic world it was the age of Mammalia among animals, and of extensive Dicotyledonous forests among plants. In a certain sense it was the age of completion,—the one which ushered in the crowning work of creation.

There was an age in the physical history of the world (it is in its infancy still) when Man, with the animals and plants that were to accompany him, was introduced upon the globe, which had acquired all its modern characters. At last the continents were redeemed from the water, and all the earth was given to this new being for his home. Among all the types born into the animal kingdom before, there had never been one to which positive limits had not been set by a law of geographical distribution absolutely impassable to all. For Man alone those boundaries were removed. He, with the domestic animals and plants which were to be the companions of all his pilgrimages, could wander over the whole earth and choose his home. Placed at the head of creation, gifted with intellect to make both animals and plants subservient to his destinies, his introduction upon the earth marks the last great division in the history of our planet. To designate these great divisions in time, I would urge, for the reasons above stated, that the term which is indeed often, though not invariably, applied to them, be exclusively adopted,—that of the Ages of Nature.

But these Ages are themselves susceptible of subdivisions, which should also be accurately defined. What is the nature of these subdivisions? They are all connected with sudden physical changes in the earth's surface, more or less limited in their action, these changes being themselves related to important alterations in the organic world. Although I have stated that one general character prevailed during each of the Ages, yet there was nevertheless a constant progressive action running through them all, and at various intervals both the organic and the physical world received a sudden impulse in consequence of marked and violent changes in the earth-crust, bringing up new elevations, while at the same time the existing animal creation was brought to a close, and a new set of beings was introduced. These changes are not yet accurately defined in America, because the age of her mountains is not known with sufficient accuracy; but their limits have been very extensively traced in Europe, and this coincidence of the various upheavals with the introduction of a new population differing entirely from, the preceding one has been demonstrated so clearly that it may be considered as an ascertained law. What name, then, is most appropriate for the divisions thus marked by sudden and violent changes? It seems to me, from their generally accepted meaning, that the word Epoch or Era, both of which have been widely, though indiscriminately, used in geology, is especially applicable here. In their common use, they imply a condition of things determined by some decisive event. In speaking of human affairs, we say, "It was an epoch or an era in history,"—or in a more limited sense, "It was an epoch in the life of such or such a man." It at once conveys the idea of an important change connected with or brought about by some striking occurrence. Such were those divisions in the history of the earth when a violent convulsion in the surface of the globe and a change in its inhabitants ushered in a new aspect of things.

I have said that we owe to Elie de Beaumont the discovery of this connection between the successive upheavals and the different sets of animals and plants which have followed each other on the globe. We have seen in the preceding article upon the formation of mountains, that the dislocations thus produced show the interruptions between successive deposits: as, for instance, where certain strata are raised upon the sides of a mountain, while other strata rest unconformably, as it is called, above them at its base,—this term, unconformable, signifying merely that the two sets of strata are placed at an entirely different angle, and must therefore belong to two distinct sets of deposits. But there are two series of geological facts connected with this result which are often confounded, though they arise from very different causes. One is that described above, in which a certain series of beds having been raised out of their natural horizontal position, another series has been deposited upon them, thus resting unconformably above. The other is where, one set of beds having been deposited over any given region, at a later time, in consequence of a recession of the sea-shore, for instance, or of some other gradual disturbance of the surface, the next set of beds accumulated above them cover a somewhat different area, and are therefore not conformable with the first, though parallel with them. This difference, however slight, is sufficient to show that some shifting of the ground on which they were accumulated must have taken place between the two series of deposits.

This distinction must not be confounded with that made by Elie de Beaumont: we owe it to D'Orbigny, who first pointed out the importance of distinguishing the dislocations produced by gradual movements of the earth from those caused by mountain-upheavals. The former are much more numerous than the latter, and in every epoch geologists have distinguished a number of such changes in the surface of the earth, accompanied by the introduction of a new set of animals, though the changes in the organic world are not so striking as those which coincide with the mountain-upheavals. Still, to the eye of the geologist they are quite as distinct, though less evident to the ordinary observer. To these divisions it seems to me that the name of Period is rightly applied, because they seem to have been brought about by the steady action of time, and by gradual changes, rather than by any sudden or violent convulsion.

It was my good fortune to be in some degree connected with the investigations respecting the limitation of Periods, for which the geology of Switzerland afforded peculiar facilities. My early home was near the foot of the Jura, where I constantly faced its rounded domes, and the slope by which they gently descend to the plain of Switzerland. I have heard it said that there is something monotonous in the continuous undulations of this range, so different from the opposite one of the Alps. But I think it is only by contrast that it seems wanting in vigor and picturesqueness; and those who live in its neighborhood become very much attached to the more peaceful character of its scenery. Perhaps my readers will pardon the digression, if I interrupt our geological discussion for a moment, to offer them a word of advice, though it be uncalled for. I have often been asked by friends who were intending to go to Europe what is the most favorable time in the day and the best road to enter Switzerland in order to have at once the finest impression of the mountains. My answer is always,—Enter it in the afternoon over the Jura. If you are fortunate, and have one of the bright, soft afternoons that sometimes show the Alps in their full beauty, as you descend the slope of the Jura, from which you command the whole panorama of the opposite range, you may see, as the day dies, the last shadow pass with strange rapidity from peak to peak of the Alpine summits. The passage is so rapid, so sudden, as the shadow vanishes from one height and appears on the next, that it seems like the step of some living spirit of the mountains. Then, as the sun sinks, it sheds a brilliant glow across them, and upon that follows—strangest effect of all—a sudden pallor, an ashy paleness on the mountains, that has a ghastly, chilly look. But this is not their last aspect: after the sun has vanished out of sight, in place of the glory of his departure, and of the corpse-like pallor which succeeded it, there spreads over the mountains a faint blush that dies gradually into the night. These changes—the glory, the death, the soft succeeding life—really seem like something that has a spiritual existence. While, however, I counsel my friends to see the Alps for the first time in the afternoon, if possible, I do not promise them that the hour will bring with it such a scene as I have tried to describe. Perfect sunsets are rare in any land; but, nevertheless, I would advise travellers to choose the latter half of the day and a road over the Jura for their entrance into Switzerland.[3]

[Footnote 3: The two most imposing views of the Alps from the Jura are those of Latourne, on the road from Pontarlier to Neufchatel, and of St. Cergues, on the road from Lons le Saulnier to Nyon; the next best is to be had above Boujean, on the road from Basle to Bienne. Very extensive views may be obtained from any of the summits in the southern range of the Jura; among which the Weissenstein above Soleure, the Chasseral above Bienne, the Chanmont above Neufchatel, the Chasseron above Grancon, the Suchet above Orbe, the Mont Tendre or the Noirmont above Morges, and the Dole above Nyon, are the most frequented. Of all these pointe Chaumont is unquestionably to be preferred, as it commands at the same time an equally extensive view of the Bernese Alps and the Mont Blanc range.]

It was from the Jura itself that one of the great epochs in the history of the globe received its name. It was in a deep gorge of the Jura, that, more than half a century ago, Leopold von Buch first perceived the mode of formation of mountains; and it was at the foot of the Jura, in the neighborhood of Neufchatel, that the investigations were made which first led to the recognition of the changes connected with the Periods. As I shall have occasion hereafter to enter into this subject more at length, I will only allude briefly here to the circumstances. In so doing I am anticipating the true geological order, because I must treat of the Jurassic and Cretaceous deposits, which are still far in advance of us; but as it was by the study of these deposits that the circumscription of the Periods, as I have defined them above, was first ascertained, I must allude to them in this connection.

Facing the range of the Jura from the Lake of Neufchatel, there seems to be but one uninterrupted slope by which it descends to the shore of the lake. It will, however, be noticed by the most careless observer that this slope is divided by the difference in vegetation into two strongly marked bands of color: the lower and more gradual descent being of a lighter green, while the upper portion is covered by the deeper hue of the forest-trees, the Beeches, Birches, Maples, etc., above which come the Pines. When the vegetation is fully expanded, this marked division along the whole side of the range into two broad bands of green, the lighter below and the darker above, becomes very striking. The lighter band represents the cultivated portion of the slope, the vineyards, the farms, the orchards, covering the gentler, more gradual part of the descent; and the whole of this cultivated tract, stretching a hundred miles east and west, belongs to the Cretaceous epoch. The upper slope of the range, where the forest-growth comes in, is Jurassic. Facing the range, you do not, as I have said, perceive any difference in the angle of inclination; but the border-line between the two bands of green does in fact mark the point at which the Cretaceous beds abut with a gentler slope against the Jurassic strata, which continue their sharper descent, and are lost to view beneath them.

This is one of the instances in which the contact of two epochs is most directly traced. There is no question, from the relation of the deposits, that the Jura in its upheaval carried with it the strata previously accumulated. At its base there was then no lake, but an extensive stretch of ocean; for the whole plain of Switzerland was under water, and many thousand years elapsed before the Alps arose to set a new boundary to the sea and inclose that inland sheet of water, gradually to be filled up by more modern accumulations, and transformed into the fertile plain which now lies between the Jura and the Alps. If the reader will for a moment transport himself in imagination to the time when the southern side of the Jurassic range sloped directly down to the ocean, he will easily understand how this second series of deposits was collected at its base, as materials are collected now along any sea-shore. They must, of course, have been accumulated horizontally, since no loose materials could keep their place even at so moderate an angle as that of the present lower slope of the range; but we shall see hereafter that there were many subsequent perturbations of this region, and that these Cretaceous deposits, after they had become consolidated, were raised by later upheavals from their original position to that which they now occupy on the lower slope of the Jura, resting immediately, but in geological language unconformably, against it. The two adjoining wood-cuts are merely theoretical, showing by lines the past and the present relation of these deposits; but they may assist the reader to understand my meaning.



Figure 1 represents the Jura before the Alps were raised, with the Cretaceous deposits accumulating beneath the sea at its base. The line marked S indicates the ocean-level; the letter c, the Cretaceous deposits; the letter j, the Jurassic strata, lifted on the side of the mountain.



Figure 2 represents the Jura at the present time, when the later upheavals have lifted the Jurassic strata to a sharper inclination with the Cretaceous deposits, now raised and forming the lower slope of the mountain, at the base of which is the Lake of Neufchatel.

Although this change of inclination is hardly perceptible, as one looks up against the face of the Jura range, there is a transverse cut across it which seems intended to give us a diagram of its internal structure. Behind the city of Neufchatel rises the mountain of Chaumont, so called from its bald head, for neither tree nor shrub grows on its summit. Straight through this mountain, from its northern to its southern side, there is a natural road, formed by a split in the mountain from top to bottom. In this transverse cut, which forms one of the most romantic and picturesque gorges leading into the heart of the Jura range, you get a profile view of the change in the inclination of the strata, and can easily distinguish the point of juncture between the two sets of deposits. But even after this dislocation of strata had been perceived, it was not known that it indicated the commencement of a new epoch, and it is here that my own share in the work, such as it is, belongs. Accustomed as a boy to ramble about in the beautiful gorges and valleys of the Jura, and in riper years, as my interest in science increased, to study its formation with closer attention, this difference in the inclination of the slope had not escaped my observation. I was, however, still more attracted by the fossils it contained than by its geological character: and, indeed, there is no better locality for the study of extinct forms of life than the Jura. In all its breaks and ravines, wherever the inner surface of the rock is exposed, it is full of organic remains; and to take a handful of soil from the road-side is often to gather a handful of shells. It is actually built of the remains of animals, and there are no coral reefs in existing seas presenting a better opportunity for study to the naturalist than the coral reefs of the Jura. Being already tolerably familiar with the fossils of the Jura, it occurred to me to compare those of the upper and lower slope; and to my surprise I found that they were everywhere different, and that those of the lower slope were invariably Cretaceous in character, while those of the upper slope were Jurassic. In the course of this investigation I discovered three periods in the Cretaceous and four in the Jurassic epoch, all characterized by different fossils. This led to a more thorough investigation of the different sets of strata, resulting in the establishment by D'Orbigny of a still greater number of periods, marked by the successive deposits of the Jurassic and Cretaceous seas, all of which contained different organic remains. The attention of geologists being once turned in this direction, the other epochs were studied with the same view, and all were found to be susceptible of division into a greater or less number of such periods.

I have dwelt at greater length on the Jurassic and Cretaceous divisions, because I believe that we have in the relation of these two epochs, as well as in that of the Cretaceous epoch with the Tertiary immediately following it, facts which are very important in their bearing on certain questions, now loudly discussed, not only by scientific men, but by all who are interested in the mode of origin of animals. Certainly, in the inland seas of the Cretaceous and subsequent Tertiary times, where we can trace in the same sheet of water not only the different series of deposits belonging to two successive epochs in immediate juxtaposition, but those belonging to all the periods included within these epochs, with the organic remains contained in each,—there, if anywhere, we should be able to trace the transition-types by which one set of animals is said to have been developed out of the preceding. We hear a great deal of the interruption in geological deposits, of long intervals, the record of which has vanished, and which may contain those intermediate links for which we vainly seek. But here there is no such gap in the evidence. In the very same sheets of water, covering limited areas, we have the successive series of deposits containing the remains of animals which continue perfectly unchanged during long intervals, and then, with a more or less violent shifting of the surface,[4] traceable by the consequent discordance of the strata, is introduced an entirely new set of animals, differing as much from those immediately preceding them as do those of the present period from the old Creation, (our predecessors, but not our ancestors,) traced by Cuvier in the Tertiary deposits underlying those of our own geological age. I subjoin here a tabular view giving the Epochs in their relation to the Ages, and indicating, at least approximately, the number of Periods contained in each Epoch.

[Footnote 4: I use surface often in its geological significance, meaning earth-crust, and applied to sea-bottom as well as to dry land.]

Age of Man Present.

Tertiary Age: { Pliocene } Age of Mammalia { Miocene } with at least twelve Periods. { Eocene }

Secondary Age: { Cretaceous } Age of Reptiles { Jurassic } with at least twenty Periods. { { Triassic } { Permian } with eight or nine Periods. { Carboniferous }

Palaeozoic or Primary Age: { Devonian } Age of Fishes { Silurian } with ten or twelve Periods.

It will be noticed by those who have any knowledge of geological divisions, that in this diagram I consider the Carboniferous epoch as forming a part of the Secondary age. Some geologists have been inclined, from the marked and peculiar character of its vegetation, to set it apart as forming in itself a distinct geological age, while others have united it with the Palaeozoic age. For many years I myself adopted the latter of these two views, and associated the Carboniferous epoch with the Palaeozoic age. But it is the misfortune of progress that one is forced not only to unlearn a great deal, but, if one has been in the habit of communicating his ideas to others, to destroy much of his own work. I now find myself in this predicament; and after teaching my students for years that the Carboniferous epoch belongs to the Palaeozoic or Primary age, I am convinced—and this conviction grows upon me constantly as I free myself from old prepossessions and bias on the subject—that with the Carboniferous epoch we have the opening of the Secondary age in the history of the world. A more intimate acquaintance with organic remains has shown me that there is a closer relation between the character of the animal and vegetable world of the Carboniferous epoch, as compared with that of the Permian and Triassic epochs, than between that of the Carboniferous epoch and any preceding one. Neither do I see any reason for separating it from the others as a distinct age. The plants as well as the animals of the two subsequent epochs seem to me to show, on the contrary, the same pervading character, indicating that the Carboniferous epoch makes an integral part of that great division which I have characterized as the Secondary age.

Within the Periods there is a still more limited kind of geological division, founded upon the special character of local deposits. These I would call geological Formations, indicating concrete local deposits, having no cosmic character, but circumscribed within comparatively narrow areas, as distinguished from the other terms, Ages, Epochs, Periods, which have a more universal meaning, and are, as it were, cosmopolitan in their application. Let me illustrate my meaning by some formations of the present time. The accumulations along the coast of Florida are composed chiefly of coral sand, mixed of course with the remains of the animals belonging to that locality; those along the coast of the Southern States consist principally of loam, which the rivers bring down from their swamps and low, muddy grounds; those upon the shores of the Middle States are made up of clay from the disintegration of the eastern slopes of the Alleghanies; while those farther north, along our own coast, are mostly formed of sand from the New-England granites. Such deposits are the local work of one period, containing the organic remains belonging to the time and place. From the geological point of view, I would call them Formations; from the naturalist's point of view, I would call them Zooelogical Provinces.

Of course, in urging the application of these names, I do not intend to assume any dictatorship in the matter of geological nomenclature. But I do feel very strongly the confusion arising from an indiscriminate use of terms, and that, whatever names be selected as most appropriate or descriptive for these divisions, geologists should agree to use them in the same sense.

There is one other geological term, bequeathed to us by a great authority, and which cannot be changed for the better: I mean that of Geological Horizon, applied by Humboldt to the whole extent of any one geological division,—as, for instance, the Silurian horizon, including the whole extent of the Silurian epoch. It indicates one level in time, as the horizon which limits our view indicates the farthest extension of the plain on which we stand in space.

* * * * *

We left America at the close of the Carboniferous epoch, when the central part of the United States was already raised above the water. Let us now give a glance at Europe in those early days, and see how far her physical history has advanced. What European countries loom up for us out of the Azoic sea, corresponding in time and character to the low range of hills which first defined the northern boundary of the United States? what did the Silurian and Devonian epochs add to these earliest tracts of dry land in the Old World? and where do we find the coal basins which show us the sites of her Carboniferous forests? Since the relation between the epochs of comparative tranquillity and the successive upheavals has been so carefully traced in Europe, I will endeavor, while giving a sketch of that early European world, to point out, at the same time, the connection of the different systems of upheaval with the successive stratified deposits, without, however, entering into such details as must necessarily become technical and tedious.

In the European ocean of the Azoic epoch we find five islands of considerable size. The largest of these is at the North. Scandinavia had even then almost her present outlines; for Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, all of which are chiefly granitic in character, were among the first lands to be raised. Between Sweden and Norway, there is, however, still a large tract of land under water, forming an extensive lake or a large inland sea in the heart of the country. If the reader will take the trouble to look on any geological map of Europe, he will see an extensive patch of Silurian rock in the centre of Sweden and Norway. This represents that sheet of water gradually to be filled by the accumulation of Silurian deposits and afterwards raised by a later disturbance. There is another mass of land far to the southeast of this Scandinavian island, which we may designate as the Bohemian island, for it lies in the region now called Bohemia, though it includes, also, a part of Saxony and Moravia. The northwest corner of France, that promontory which we now call Bretagne, with a part of Normandy adjoining it, formed another island; while to the southeast of it lay the central plateau of France. Great Britain was not forgotten in this early world; for a part of the Scotch hills, some of the Welsh mountains, and a small elevation here and there in Ireland, already formed a little archipelago in that region. By a most careful analysis of the structure of the rocks in these ancient patches of land, tracing all the dislocations of strata, all the indications of any disturbance of the earth-crust whatsoever, Elie de Beaumont has detected and classified four systems of upheavals, previous to the Silurian epoch, to which he refers these islands in the Azoic sea. He has named them the systems of La Vendee, of Finistere, of Longmynd, and of Morbihan. These names have, for the present, only a local significance,—being derived, like so many of the geological names, from the places where the investigations of the phenomena were first undertaken,—but in course of time will, no doubt, apply to all the contemporaneous upheavals, wherever they may be traced, just as we now have Silurian, Devonian, Permian, and Jurassic deposits in America as well as in Europe.

The Silurian and Devonian epochs seem to have been instrumental rather in enlarging the tracts of land already raised than in adding new ones; yet to these two epochs is traced the upheaval of a large and important island to the northeast of France. We may call it the Belgian island, since it covered the ground of modern Belgium; but it also extended considerably beyond these limits, and included much of the Northern Rhine region. A portion only of this tract, to which belongs the central mass of the Vosges and the Black Forest, was lifted during the Silurian epoch,—which also enlarged considerably Wales and Scotland, the Bohemian island, the island of Bretagne, and Scandinavia. During this epoch the sheet of water between Norway and Sweden became dry land; a considerable tract was added to their northern extremity on the Arctic shore; while a broad band of Silurian deposits, lying now between Finland and Russia, enlarged that region. The Silurian epoch has been referred by Elie de Beaumont to the system of upheaval called by him the system of Westmoreland and Hundsrueck,—again merely in reference to the spots at which these upheavals were first studied, the centres, as it were, from which the investigations spread. But in their geological significance they indicate all the oscillations and disturbances of the soil throughout the region over which the Silurian deposits have been traced in Europe. The Devonian epoch added greatly to the outlines of the Belgian island. To it belongs the region of the Ardennes, lying between France and Belgium, the Eifelgebirge, and a new disturbance of the Vosges, by which that region was also extended. The island of Bretagne was greatly increased by the Devonian deposits, and Bohemia also gained in dimensions, while the central plateau of France remained much the same as before. The changes of the Devonian epoch are traced by Elie de Beaumont to a system of upheavals called the Ballons of the Vosges and of Normandy,—so called from the rounded, balloon-like domes characteristic of the mountains of that time. To the Carboniferous epoch belong the mountain-systems of Forey, (to the west of Lyons,) of the North of England, and of the Netherlands. These three systems of upheaval have also been traced by Elie de Beaumont; and in the depressions formed between their elevations we find the coal-basins of Central France, of England, and of Germany. During all these epochs, in Europe as in America, every such dislocation of the surface was attended by a change in the animal creation.

If we take now a general view of the aspect of Europe at the close of the Carboniferous epoch, we shall see that the large island of Scandinavia is completed, while the islands of Bohemia and Belgium have approached each other by their gradual increase till they are divided only by a comparatively narrow channel. The island of Belgium, that of Bretagne, and that of the central plateau of France, form together a triangle, of which the plateau is the lowest point, while Belgium and Bretagne form the other two corners. Between the plateau and Belgium flows a channel, which we may call the Burgundian channel, since it covers old Burgundy; between the plateau and Bretagne is another channel, which from its position we may call the Bordeaux channel. The space inclosed between these three masses of land is filled by open sea. To trace the gradual closing of these channels and the filling up of the ocean by constantly increasing accumulations, as well as by upheavals, will be the object of the next article.

* * * * *



THE MUSICIAN.

He did not move the hills and the rocks with his music, because those days are passed away,—the days when Orpheus had all Nature for his audience, when the audience would not keep its seat. In those days trees and rocks may have held less firm root in the soil: it was nearer the old Chaos-times, and they had not lost the habit of the whirling dance. The trees had not found their "continental" home, and the rocks were not yet wedded to their places: so they could each enjoy one more bachelor-dance before settling into their staid vegetable and mineral domestic happiness.

Our musician had no power, then, to move them from their place of ages: he did not stir them as much as the morning and evening breezes among the leaves, or the streams trickling down among the great rocks and wearing their way over precipices. But he moved men and women, of all natures and feelings. He could translate Bach and Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Mozart,—all the great poet-musicians that are silent now, and must be listened to through an interpreter. All the great people and all the little people came to hear him. A princess fell in love with him. She would have married him. She did everything but ask him to marry her. Indeed, some of his friends declared she did this; but that cannot be believed.

"You ought to be satisfied," said one of his friends to the musician, one day; "all the world admires you; money drops from the keys of your piano-forte; and a princess is in love with you."

"With me?" answered the musician; "with my music, perhaps. You talk nonsense, when you talk of her falling in love with me, of her marrying a poor musician. What then? To have one instrument more in her palace! Let her marry her piano-forte,—or her violin, if she objects to a quadruped!"

"You are as blind as Homer," said his friend. "Can't you see that her love is purely personal? Would she care to give a title to a pianist, if he were any other than Arnold Wulff? If you had other eyes in your head, or if there were another man inside even that same face of yours, the strains might flow out under your fingers like streams from Paradise, in vain, so far as her heart was concerned. Your voice is quite as persuasive as your music, with her."

"If so, why must she put a title in front of my name, before I am worthy of her?" asked Arnold. "She offers me some square miles of uninhabitable forest, because, as owner of them, I can wear a Von before my name. I can put it on as an actor on the stage wears a chapeau of the Quatorze time. It is one of the properties of the establishment. You may call it a livery of the palace, if you please. I may make love to her on the stage as 'My Lord.' But my own little meagre part of Arnold,—thank you, I prefer it, without my princess."

"And yet, if you have the palace, a princess is necessary. With your love of harmony, you yourself would not be pleased to see a cotton dress hanging across a damask couch, or rude manners interrupt a stately dinner. The sound of the titles clangs well as you are ushered up through the redoubled apartments. If the play is in the Quatorze time, let it be played out. A princess deserves at least a lord for a husband."

"Very well, if the question is of marriage," answered Arnold; "but in love, a woman loves a man, not a title; and if a woman marries as she loves, she marries the man, not the lordship."

"But this is a true princess," said his friend Carl.

"And a true princess," answered Arnold, "feels the peas under ever so many mattresses. She would not fall in love with a false lord, or degrade herself by marrying her scullion. But if she is a true princess, she sees what is lordly in her subject. If she loves him, already he is above her in station,—she looks up to him as her ideal. Whatever we love is above self. We pay unconscious homage to the object of our love. Already it becomes our lord or princess."

"I don't see, then," said Carl, "but that you are putting unnecessary peas in your shoes. It is this princeliness that your princess has discovered in you; and the titles she would give you are the signs of it, that she wishes you to wear before the world."

"And they never will make me lord or prince, since I am not born such," answered Arnold. "If I were born such, I would make the title grand and holy, so that men should see I was indeed prince and lord as well as man. As it is, I feel myself greater than either, and born to rule higher things. It would cramp me to put on a dignity for which I was not created. Already I am cramped by the circumstances out of which I was born. I cannot express strains of music that I hear in my highest dreams, because my powers are weak, and fail me as often the strings of my instrument fail my fingers. To put on any of the conventionalities of life, any of its honors, even the loves of life, would be to put on so many constraints the more."

"That is because you have never loved," said Carl.

"That may be," said Arnold,—"because I have never loved anything but music. Still that does not satisfy me,—it scarcely gives me joy; it gives me only longing, and oftener despair. I listen to it alone, in secret, until I am driven by a strange desire to express it to a great world. Then, for a few moments, the praise and flattery of crowds delight and exalt me,—but only to let me fall back into greater despair, into remorse that I have allowed the glorious art of music to serve me as a cup of self-exaltation."

"You, Arnold, so unmoved by applause?" said Carl.

"It is only an outside coldness," answered Arnold; "the applause heats me, excites me, till a moment when I grow to hate it. The flatteries of a princess and her imitating train turn my head, till an old choral strain, or a clutch that my good angel gives me, a welling-up of my own genius in my heart, comes to draw me back, to cool me, to taunt me as traitor, to rend me with the thought that in self I have utterly forgotten myself, my highest self."

"These are the frenzies with which one has to pay for the gift of genius," said Carl. "A cool temperament balances all that. If one enjoys coolly, one suffers as coolly. Take these fits of despair as the reverse side of your fate. She offers you by way of balance cups of joy and pleasure and success, of which we commonplace mortals scarcely taste a drop. When my peasant-maiden Rosa gives me a smile, I am at the summit of bliss; but my bliss-mountain is not so high that I fear a fall from it. If it were the princess that gladdened me so, I should expect a tumble into the ravine now and then, and would not mind the hard scramble up again, to reach the reward at the top."

"It would not be worth the pains," said Arnold; "a princess's smiles are not worth more than a peasant-girl's. I am tired of it all. I am going to find another world. I am going to England."

"You are foolish," answered Carl. "The world is no different there; there is as little heart in England as in Germany,—no more or less. You are just touching success here; do give it a good grasp."

"I am cloyed with it already," said Arnold.

"It is not that," said Carl. "You are a child crying for the moon. You would have your cake and eat it too. You want some one who shall love you, you alone,—who shall have no other thought but yours, no other dream than of you. Yet you are jealous for your music. If that is not loved as warmly, you begin to suspect your lover. It is the old proverb, 'Love me, love my dog.' But if your dog is petted too much, if we dream in last night's strains of music, forget you a moment in the world you have lifted us into,—why, then your back is turned directly; you upbraid us with following you for the sake of the music,—we have no personal love of you,—you are the violin or the fiddlestick!"

"You are right, old Carl," said Arnold. "I am all out of tune myself. I have not set my inward life into harmony with the world outside. It is true, at times I impress a great audience, make its feelings sway with mine; but, alas! it does not impress me in return. There is a little foolish joy at what you call success; but it lasts such a few minutes! I want to have the world move me; I do not care to move the world!"

"And will England move you more than Germany?" asked Carl; "will the hearts of a new place touch you more than those of home? The closer you draw to a man, the better you can read his heart, and learn that he has a heart. It is not the number of friends that gives us pleasure, but the warmth of the few."

"In music I find my real life," Arnold went on, "because in music I forget myself. Is music, then, an unreal life? In real life must self always be uppermost? It is so with me. In the world, with people, I am self-conscious. It is only in music that I am lifted above myself. When I am not living in that, I need activity, restlessness, change. This is why I must go away. Here I can easily be persuaded to become a conceited fool, a flattered hanger-on of a court."

* * * * *

We need scarcely tell of the musician's career in England. We are already familiar with London fashionable life. We have had life-histories, three volumes at a time, that have taken us into the very houses, told us of all the domestic quarrels, some already healed, some still pending. It is easy to imagine of whom the world was composed that crowded the concerts of the celebrated musician. The Pendennises were there, and the Newcomes, Jane Rochester with her blind husband, a young Lord St. Orville with one of the Great-Grand-Children of the Abbey, Mr. Thornton and Margaret Thornton, a number of semi-attached couples, Lady Lufton and her son, the De Joinvilles visiting the Osbornes, from France, Miss Dudleigh and Sarona, Alton Locke, on a visit home, Signor and Signora Mancini, sad-eyed Rachel Leslie with her young brother, a stately descendant of Sir Charles Grandison, the Royal Family, and all the nobility. When everybody went,—every one fortunate enough to get a ticket and a seat in the crowded hall,—it would be invidious to mention names. It was the fashion to go; and so everybody went who was in the fashion. Then of course the unfashionables went, that it might not be supposed they were of that class; and with these, all those who truly loved music were obliged to contend for a place. Fashion was on the side of music, till it got the audience fairly into the hall and in their seats; and then music had to struggle with fashion. It had to fix and melt the wandering eyes, to tug at the worldly and the stony heart. And here it was that Arnold's music won the victory. The ravishing bonnet of Madam This or That no longer distracted the attention of its envying admirers, or of its owner; the numerous flirtations that had been thought quite worth the price of the ticket, and of the crushed flounces, died away for a few moments; the dissatisfaction of the many who discovered themselves too late in inconspicuous seats was drowned in the deeper and sadder unrest that the music awakened. For the music spoke separately to each heart, roused up the secrets hidden there, fanned dying hopes or silent longings. It made the light-hearted lighter in heart, the light-minded heavy in soul. Where there was a glimpse of heaven, it opened the heavens wider; where there was already hell, it made the abysses gape deeper. For those few moments each soul communed with itself, and met with a shuddering there, or an exaltation, as the case might be.

After those few moments, outside life resumed its sway. Buzzing talk swept out the memory of the music. One song from an opera brought thought back to its usual level. Men and women looked at each other through their opera-glasses, and, bringing distant outside life close to them, fancied themselves in near communion with it. The intimacy of the opera-glass was warm enough to suit them,—so very near at one moment, comfortably distant at the next. It was an intimacy that could have no return, nor demanded it. One could study the smile on the lip of one of these neighbors, even the tear in her eye, with one's own face unmoved, an answer of sympathy impossible, not required. Nevertheless, the music had stirred, had excited; and the warmth it had awakened was often transferred to the man who had kindled it. The true lovers of music could not express their joy and were silent, while these others surrounded Arnold with their flatteries and adoration.

He was soon wearied of this.

"I am going to America, to a new world," he said to his friend; "there must be some variety there."

"Perhaps so," said Carl,—"something new, something that is neither man nor woman, since they cannot satisfy you. Still I fancy you will find nothing higher than men and women."

"A new land must develop men and women in a new way," answered Arnold.

"If you would only look at things in my microscopic way," said Carl, "and examine into one man or one woman, you would not need all this travelling. But I will go as far as New York with you."

* * * * *

At New York the name of the musician had already awakened the same excitement as in other places; the concert-room was crowded; there was the same rush for places; the prices paid for the tickets seemed here even more fabulous. Arnold was more of a lion than ever. His life was filled with receptions, dinners, and evening parties, or with parlor and evening concerts. His dreamy, poetic face, his distant, abstracted manner, proved as fascinating as his music.

Carl tired of the whirl, and the adoration, of which he had his share.

"I shall go back to Germany," he said. "I shall go to my Rosa, and leave you your world."

"I am tired of my world. I shall go to the Far West," said Arnold, when Carl left him.

One day he went to a matinee at one of the finest and most fashionable houses in the place. There were beautiful women elegantly dressed, very exquisite men walking up and down the magnificently furnished drawing-rooms. The air was subdued, the voices were low, the wit was quiet, the motion was full of repose, the repose breathed grace. Arnold seated himself at the Steinway, at the half-expressed request of the hostess, and partly from the suggestions of his own mood. He began with dreamy music; it was heavy with odors, at first, drugged with sense, then spiritualizing into strange, delicate fancies. Then came strength with a sonata of Beethoven's; then the strains died back again into a song singing without words.

"You would like some dance-music now," said Arnold to the beautiful Caroline, who stood by his side. "Shall I play some music that will make everybody dance?"

"Like the music in the fairy-tale," said Caroline; "oh, I should like that! I often hear such dance-music, that sets me stirring; it seems as if it ought to move old and young."

"There are no old people here," said Arnold. "I have not seen any."

"It seems to me there are no young," answered Caroline.

"There are neither young nor old," said Arnold; "that is the trouble."

But he began to play a soft, dreamy waltz. It was full of bewitching invitation. No one could resist it. It passed into a wild, stirring polka, into a maddening galop, back again to a dreamy waltz. Now it was dizzying, whirling; now it was languishing, full of repose. Now it was the burst and clangor of a full orchestra; now it was the bewitching appeal of a single voice that invited to dance. Up and down the long room, across the broad room, the dancers moved. The room, that had been so full of quiet, was swaying with motion.

Caroline seized hold of the back of a chair to stay herself.

"It whirls me on; how dizzying it is! And you, would you not like to join in the dance? I would be your partner."

"The piano is my partner," answered Arnold. "Do you not see how it whirls with me?"

"Yes, everything moves," said Caroline. "Are Cupid and Psyche coming to join us? Will my great-grand-aunt come down to the waltz in her brocade? My sober cousin, and Marie, who gave up dancing long ago,—they are all carried away. It seems to me like the strange dance of a Walpurgis night,—as though I saw ghosts, and demons too, whirling over the Brocken, across wild forests. It is no longer our gilded drawing-room, with its tapestries, its bijouterie, its sound and light both muffled: we are out in the wild tempest; there are sighing pines, dashing waterfalls. Do you know that is where your music carries me always? Whether it is grave or gay, it takes me out into whirling winds, and tosses me in tempests. They call society gay here, and dizzying,—dance and music, show, excess, following each other; but it is all sleep, Lethe, in comparison with the mad world into which your music whirls me. Oh, stop a moment, Arnold! will you not stop? It is too wild and maddening!"

The strains crashed into discord, crashed into harmony, and then there was a wonderful silence. The dancers were suddenly stilled,—looked at each other with flushed cheek,—would have greeted each other, as if they had just met in a foreign land; but they recovered themselves in time. Nothing unconventional was said or done.

"Did I dance?" Marie asked herself,—"or was I only looking on?"

One of the dancers scarcely dared to look round, lest it should prove to be the great-grand-aunt's brocade that she heard rustle behind her; while another thanked her partner for a chair, with eyes cast down, lest it might be Cupid that offered it. But the room was the same; there was an elegant calm over everything. Tea-poys, light chairs, fragile vases have been undisturbed by crinoline even.

"Are you quite sure this Chinese joss was on this table, when the music began?" asked Marie's companion of her, whisperingly.

"Oh, hush, you don't think that danced, do you?" said Marie, with a shudder.

"I hardly know. I think the musician was on this side of the room a little while ago, piano and all."

"Don't talk so," replied Marie. "They are all going now. I am glad of it. You will be at the opera to-night? I must say I like opera-music better than this wild German stuff that sets one's brain whirling!"

"Heels, too, I should say," said her companion; and they took their leave with the rest.

The next afternoon Arnold was sitting in his room with the windows open. It was an early spring day, when the outer air was breathing of summer. He was thinking of how the beautiful, cold Caroline had spoken to him the day before,—of that wild, appealing tone with which she had called him Arnold. Before, always, she had given him no more than the greeting of an acquaintance. Now, the tone in which she had spoken took a significance. As he was questioning it, recalling it, he suddenly heard his own name called most earnestly and appealingly. There was a softness, and an agony too, in its piercing tone, as if it came straight from the heart. "Arnold! come, come back!" He hurried to the window, wondering if he were under the influence of some dream. He looked down, and found himself a witness to a scene that he could not interrupt, because he could not help, and a sudden word might create danger. It passed very quickly, though it would take many words to describe it. A piazza led across the windows of the story below, to a projecting part of the building, the sloping roof of which it touched. At the other end of the sloping roof, where it met an alley-way that opened upon a street beyond, there was a little child leaning over to look at some soldiers that were passing through the street across the alley. He was supporting himself, by an iron wire that served as a lightning-rod. Already it was bending beneath his weight; and in his eagerness he was forgetting his slippery footing, and the dizzy height of thirty feet, over which he was hanging. He was a little three year-old fellow, too, and probably never knew anything about danger. His mother had always screamed as loudly when he fell from a footstool as when she had seen him leaning from a three-story window.

The voice came from a girl, who, at the moment Arnold came to the window, was crossing the iron palisade of the piazza. She was on the slippery, sloping leads as she repeated the cry, in a tone earnest and thrilling,—"Dear Arnold, come in, only come, and George shall take you to the soldiers."

The boy only gave another start of pleasure, that seemed to loosen still more his support, crying out, "The drummer! Cousin Laura, come, see the drummer!"

But Laura kept her way along the edge of the roof, reached the child, seized him, and walked back across the perilous slope with the struggling boy in her arms. Arnold the musician had noticed, even in her hurrying, dangerous passage towards the child, the rich sunny folds of her hair, golden like a German girl's. Now, as she returned, he saw the soft lines of her terror-moved face, and the deep blue of her wide-opened eyes. Her voice changed as she reached the piazza, and set the child down in safety.

"Oh, Arnold, darling, how could you, how could you frighten me so?"

The child began to cry, because it was reproved, because its pleasure was stopped, and because Cousin Laura, pale and white, held to the railing of the piazza for support. But the mamma came out, Laura was lifted in, the boy was scolded, the windows were shut, and there was the end.

Arnold sat by the window, thinking. The thrilling tones of the voice still rang in his ear, as though they were calling upon him, "Arnold, come, come back!"

"If any voice would speak to me in that tone!" he thought; "if such a voice would call upon my name with all that heart in its depths!"

And he compared it with the tone in which Caroline had appealed to him the day before. Sometimes her voice assumed the same earnestness, and he felt as if she were showing him in the words all her own heart, betraying love, warmth, ardor. Sometimes, in comparison with that cry, her tones seemed cold and metallic, a selfish appeal of danger, not a cry of love. He found himself examining her more nearly than he had ever done before.

"Was she more than outwardly beautiful? Was there any warmth beneath that cold manner? Could she warm as well as shine?"

He remembered that she had often complained to him of her longing for sympathy; she had spoken to him of the coldness of the world, of the heartlessness of society. She had envied him his genius,—the musical talent that made him independent of the world, of the love of men and women. He could never appreciate what it was to be alone in the world, to find one's higher feelings misunderstood, to be obliged to pass from one gayety to another, to be dissatisfied with the superficiality of life, and yet to find no relief;—all this she had said to him.

But why was it so with her? She had a very substantial father and mother, who seemed to devote themselves to her wishes,—some younger brothers,—he had seen them pushed from the drawing-room the day of the matinee,—a sister near her age, not yet out. Caroline had apologized for her sister's crying while listening to his music. "She was unsophisticated still, and had not forgotten her boarding-school nonsense." Then, if Caroline did not enjoy city-life, there was a house in the country to which she might have gone early in the spring. She had, too, her friend Marie. She imparted to him some of Marie's confidences, her sad history; Marie must be enough of a friend to be trusted in return. In short, Caroline's manner had always been so conventional and unimpulsive, that these complaints of life had seemed to him a part of her society-tone, aa easily taken on and off as her bonnet or her paletot. They suited the enthusiasm that was necessary with music, and would be forgotten in her talk with Mr. Gresham the banker.

But she had called him by his own name: that had moved him. And now that another voice had given the words a tone he had not before detected in them, he began to question their meaning. Could Caroline put as much heart into her voice as this golden-haired Laura had shown? Could Caroline have exposed herself to danger as that girl had done? Perhaps any woman would have done it. Perhaps the princess would have ventured so, to save a child's life. Would he have ventured to do it himself? It could not have been a pleasant thing to walk on a pointed roof, with some half-broken spikes to catch one, in case of missing one's footing, or escaping the fall of thirty feet below. And that little frightened-looking, timid Laura, if he could only see her again!

He questioned whether this were not a possible thing. He had formed a slight acquaintance with Mrs. Ashton, who was occupying the rooms below; he had met her on the stairs, had exchanged some words with her. It struck him it would be a proper thing to offer her some tickets to his next concert. At this moment he was interrupted, was summoned away, and he deferred his intention until the next day.

The next day he presented himself at the door of Mrs. Ashton's parlor. She invited him to come in, cordially, and he was presented to her niece, who sat in the window with her work. Laura scarcely looked up as he entered, and went on with her crochet.

Presently Arnold opened his business.

"Would Mrs. Ashton accept some tickets for his concert that evening?"

Mrs. Ashton looked pleased, thought him very kind.

Arnold took out the tickets for herself, for Mr. Ashton. He offered another.

"Would her niece be pleased to go? would Miss"—

Laura looked up from her work and hesitated.

"She was much obliged, she didn't know, but she had promised her cousin to go to the theatre with him."

Mrs. Ashton, thinking the musician looked displeased, attempted to explain.

"Laura was not very fond of music. She did not like concerts very well. She seldom came to New York, and the theatre was a new thing to her."

"I do not wonder," said Arnold, withdrawing his ticket. "I sympathize with Mademoiselle in her love for the theatre; and concert-music is but poor stuff. If one finds a glimpse there of a higher style, a higher art, it is driven away directly by the recurrence of something trifling and frivolous."

Mrs. Ashton did not agree with the musician. She could not understand why Laura did not like concerts. For herself, she liked the variety: the singing relieved the piano, and one thing helped another.

Arnold looked towards Laura for a contradiction; he wanted to hear her defence of her philosophy, for he was convinced she had some in not liking music. To him every one had expressed a fondness for music; and it was a rarity, an originality, to find some one who confessed she did not like it.

But Laura did not seem inclined to reply; she was counting the stitches in her crochet. In the silence, Arnold took his leave.

He had no sooner reached his own room than he reproached himself for his sudden retreat. Why had he not stayed, and tried to persuade the young lady to change her mind? An engagement for the theatre with a cousin might have been easily postponed. And he would like to have made her listen to some of his music. He would have compelled her to listen. He would have played something that would have stirred all the audience; but for her, it would have been like taking her back to her peril of the day before,—she should have lived over again all its self-exaltation, all its triumph.

Laura meanwhile had laid down her work.

"I was stupid," she said, "not to take that ticket."

"I think you were," said her aunt, "when we know so many people who would give their skins for a ticket."

"It is not that," said Laura; "but I didn't want to go, till I saw the ticket going out of my grasp. I have always had such dreary associations with concerts, since those I went to with Janet, last spring,—long, dreary pieces that I couldn't understand, interrupted by Italian songs that had more scream in them than music, and Janet flirting with her friends all the time."

"I knew you didn't like music," said her aunt; "that was the only way I could get you out of the scrape, for it did seem impolite to refuse the ticket. Of course an engagement to the theatre appeared a mere excuse, as long as Laura Keene plays every night now."

"It was not a mere excuse with me," said Laura; "I did not fancy the exchange. But now I think I should like to know what his music is. I wonder if it is at all like mine."

"The music you make on the little old piano at home?" asked Mrs. Ashton; "that is sweet enough in that room, but I fancy it is different from his music."

"Oh, I don't mean that," said Laura; "it is because the piano seems to say so little that I care so little for it. The music I mean is what I hear, when, in a summer's afternoon, I carry my book out into the barn to read as I lie on a bed of hay. I don't read, but I listen. The cooing of the doves, the clatter even of the fowls in the barn-yard, the quiet noises, with the whisperings of the great elm, and the rustling of the brook in the field beyond,—all this is the music I like to hear. It puts me into delicious dreams, and stirs me, too, into strange longing."

"Well, I doubt if our great musician can do all that. Anyhow, he wouldn't bring in the hens and chickens," laughed Mrs. Ashton.

"But I should like to hear him, if he could show me what real music is," said Laura, dreamily, as her hands fell on her work.

"Well, I am sorry," said Mrs. Ashton, "and you might take my ticket: you can, if you wish. Only one concert is like another, and I dare say you would be disappointed, after all. I told Mrs. Campbell I should certainly go to one of his concerts, and I suppose Mr. Ashton will hardly care for the expense of tickets, now we have had them presented to us. And as I know that Mrs. Campbell is going to-night, she will see that I am there, so I should much prefer going tonight. But then, Laura, if you do care so much about it"—

Oh, no,—Laura did not care; only she was sorry she had been so stupid.

She was very much surprised, when, in the evening, towards the end of the performance at the theatre, the musician came and joined her party, and talked most agreeably with them. Even her cousin George did not resent his intrusion, and on the way home imparted to Laura that he had no doubt the musician's talk was pleasanter than his music.

Laura did not agree with him. She met with the musician frequently now, and his talk only made her more and more desirous to hear his music. He came frequently to her aunt's room; he joined her and her aunt at the Academy of Fine Arts many times. Here he talked to her most charmingly of pictures, as a musician likes to talk about pictures, and as a painter discusses music,—as though he had the whole art at his fingers' ends. It was the opening of a new life to Laura. If he could tell her so much of painting and sculpture, what would she not learn, if he would only speak of music? But he never did, and he never offered to play to them. She was very glad her aunt never suggested it. The piano in the drawingroom must be quite too poor for him to touch. But he never offered her another concert-ticket. She did not wonder that he never did, she had been so ungracious at first. She was quite ashamed that he detected her once in going to the Horse-Opera, he must think her taste so low. She wanted to tell him it was her cousin George's plan; but then she did enjoy it.

Arnold found himself closely studying both Caroline and Laura now. "Carl would be pleased at my microscopic examinations," he thought.

Frequently as he visited Laura, as frequently he saw Caroline. He was constantly invited to her house,—to meet her at other places. Yet the nearer she came to him, the farther he seemed from her. Can we more easily read a form that flees from us than one that approaches us? He talked with her constantly of music. She asked him his interpretation of this or that sonata. She betrayed to him the impression he had made with this or that fantasie. It was astonishing how closely she appreciated the vague changes of tones and words of music.

But with Laura he never ventured to speak of music. Whenever he played now, he played as if for her; and yet he never ventured to ask her to listen.

"It seems to me sometimes," said Caroline to him once, "as though you were playing to some one person. Your music is growing to have a beseeching tone; there is something personal in it."

"It must always be so," replied Arnold, moodily; "can my music answer its own questions?"

The spring days were opening into summer, the vines were coming into full leaf, the magnolias were in blossom, the windows to the conservatories at the street-corners were thrown open, and let out to sight some of the gorgeous display of bright azaleas and gay geraniums.

Arnold sat with Caroline at an Opera Matinee. A seat had been left for him near her. In an interval, she began to speak to him again of her weariness of life; the next week was going on precisely as the last had gone, in the same round of engagements.

"You will envy me my life," said Arnold. "I am going out West. I am going to build my own house."

"You are joking; you would not think of it seriously," said Caroline.

"I planned it long ago," answered Arnold; "it was to be the next act after New York,—the final act, perhaps. Scene I: The Log Cabin."

"How can you think of it?" exclaimed Caroline. "Give up everything? your reputation, fortune, everything?"

"New York, in short," added Arnold.

"Very well, then,—New York, in short; that is the world," said Caroline. "And your music, who is to listen to it?"

"My music?" asked Arnold; "that is of a subjective quality. A composer, even, need not hear his own music."

"I don't understand you," said Caroline; "and I dare say you are insane."

"You do not understand me?" asked Arnold, "yet you could read to me all that fantasie I played to you last night. It was my own composition, and I had not comprehended it in the least."

"Now you are, satirical," said Caroline.

"Because you are inconsistent," pursued Arnold; "you wonder I do not stay here, because my fortune can buy me a handsome house, horses, style and all its elegancies; yet you yourself have found no happiness in them."

"But I never should find happiness out of them," answered Caroline. "It is a pretty amusement for us who have the gold to buy our pleasures with, to abuse it and speak ill of it. But those who have not it,—you do not hear them depreciate it so. I believe they would sell out their home-evenings, those simple enjoyments books speak of and describe so well,—they would sell them as gladly as the author sells his descriptions of them, for our equipages, our grand houses, our toilet."

Arnold looked at his neighbor. Her hands, in their exquisitely fitting lilac gloves, lay carelessly across each other above the folds of the dress with which they harmonized perfectly. A little sweetbrier rose fell out from the white lace about her face, against the soft brown of her hair. Arnold pictured Laura gathering just such a rose from the porch she had described by the door of her country-home.

"Would you not have enjoyed gathering yourself that delicate rose that looks coquettish out of its simplicity?" he asked.

"Thank you, no," Caroline interrupted. "I selected it from Madame's Paris bonnets, because it suited my complexion. If I had picked the rose in the sun, don't you see my complexion would no longer have suited it?"

"I see you would enjoy life merely as a looker-on," said Arnold. "I would prefer to be an actor in it. When I have built my own house, and have digged my own potatoes, I shall know the meaning of house and potatoes. My wife, meanwhile, will be picking the roses for her hair."

"She will be learning the meaning of potatoes in cooking them," replied Caroline. "I would, indeed, rather be above life than in it. I have just enjoyed hearing Lucia sing her last song, and seeing Edgardo kill himself. I should not care to commit either folly myself. I pity people that have no money; I think they would as gladly hurry out of their restraints as Brignoli hurries into his everyday suit, after killing himself nightly as love-sick tenor."

"I would rather kill myself than think so," said Arnold.

This talk, which had been interrupted by the course of the opera, was finished as they left their seats. At the door, Mr. Gresham offered to help Caroline to her carriage. Arnold walked away.

"I would kill myself, if I could fancy that Laura thought so," he said, as he hurried home.

There was a cart at the door of the house, men carrying furniture on the stairs. The doors of Mrs. Ashton's rooms were wide-open; packing-paper and straw were scattered about.

"What is the matter?" he asked of his landlady.

"A gentleman has taken Mrs. Ashton's rooms. This is his grand piano."

"Mrs. Ashton! where is she?" asked Arnold.

"She left this morning. I should have been glad of further notice, but fortunately"—

"Where have they gone?" interrupted Arnold.

"Home. I don't know where. I can't keep the run."

"It is in New England. Is there a directory of New England?"

"A directory of New England! The names of its towns would make a large book!"

Arnold went to his room. If he could only recall the name of the town near which Laura lived! But American names had no significance. In Germany each town had a history. The small places were famous because they were near larger ones. And even in the smallest some drop of blood had been shed that had given it a name, or had made its name noted.

She had gone; and why had she gone without telling him?

If he could only have heard Mrs. Ashton's talk the evening before with her husband, he need not have asked the question.

"Do you know, dear, I think we had better leave New York directly,—tomorrow?"

Mr. Ashton looked inquiries.

"I don't like this intimacy with a foreigner. He really has been very devoted to Laura."

"And, pray, what is the harm?" asked Mr. Ashton.

"How can you ask? A foreigner, and we know nothing about him," answered Mrs. Ashton.

"But that he is the richest man in New York, quiet, inexpensive in his ways."

"If we were sure of all that! But I don't think her father would like it. I had a dream last night of Red Riding-Hood and the Wolf, and I haven't thought all day of anybody but Laura. We can get off early to-morrow. I have sent Laura to pack her things now."

"I'm afraid it is too late for her, poor girl!" said Mr. Ashton.

"She would be miserable, and her father would blame me, and I don't like it," said Mrs. Ashton. "And I am tired of New York."

"There's your dentist," suggested Mr. Ashton.

"I can come again," answered his wife.

Arnold's determination was made. He would visit every town in New England; he would cross every square mile of her territory. Of course he would find Laura. Since he should not stop till he found her, of course he would find her before he stopped.

He began his quest. He gave concerts in all the larger places; he looked anxiously through the large audiences that attended them,—hopelessly,—for how could he expect to find Laura among them? Often he left the railroads, to walk through the villages. It was the summer time, and he enjoyed the zest of climbing hills and wandering through quiet valleys.

He met with pleasant greetings in farm-houses, so far from the world that a stranger was greeted as a friend, where hospitality had not been so long worn upon but that it could offer a fresh cordiality to an unknown face. He wished he were a painter, that he might paint the pretty domestic scenes he saw: the cattle coming home at evening,—the children crowding round the school-mistress, as they walked away with her from the school-door,—the groups of girls sitting at sunset on the door-steps under the elms,—the broad meadows,—the rushing mountain-streams. But again, after the fresh delight of one of these country-walks, he would reproach himself that he had left the more beaten ways and the crowded cars, where he might have met Laura.

In passing in one of these from one of the larger towns to another, he met Caroline, on her bridal tour as Mrs. Gresham.

"You are not gone to Kansas yet?" she asked. "Then you will be able to come and visit us in Newport this summer. I assure you, you will find cottage-life there far more romantic than log-cabin life."

Of course he found success at last. It was just as summer was beginning to wane, but when in September she was putting on some of her last glories and her most fervid heats. He had reached the summit of a hill, then slowly walked down its slope, as he admired the landscape that revealed itself to him. He saw, far away among the hills in the horizon, the town towards which he was bound. The sunset was gathering brilliant colors over the sky; hills and meadows were bathed in a soft light. He stopped in front of a house that was separated from the road by a soft green of clover. By the gate there was a seat, on which he sat down to rest. It was all that was left of a great elm that some Vandal of the last generation had cut away. Nature had meanwhile been doing her best to make amends for the great damage. Soft mosses nestled over the broad, mutilated stump, the rains of years had washed out the freshness of its scar, vines wound themselves around, dandelions stretched their broad yellow shields above, and falling leaves rested there to form a carpet over it.

As Arnold, tired with his day's walk, was resting himself in the repose of the hour, the old master of the house came to talk with him. They spoke of the distance to the town, of the hilly road that led to it, of the meadows in the valley, and their rich crops. At last the old man asked Arnold into his house, and offered him the old-fashioned hospitality of a mug of cider, apologizing as he did so, telling how the times had changed, and what had become of all the cider-mills in the neighborhood. He showed the large stem of the sweetbrier under which they passed as they went into the house, such as Arnold had seen hanging over many a New-England porch, large enough for many initials to be carved upon it. They sat down in the little front-room, and talked on as the mother brought the promised mug of eider.

"Are you fond of music here?" asked Arnold, as he pointed to the old many-legged piano that stood at one side of the room.

"My girls play a little," answered the old man; "they have gone up to town this afternoon to get some tickets to that famous man's concert. They play a little, but they complain that the old piano is out of tune."

"That I could help," said Arnold, as he took his tuning-key out of his pocket.

"Oh, you are one of those tuners," said the old man, relieved; "my girls have been looking out for one."

Arnold seated himself at the piano. The old people went in and out of the room, but presently came back when he began to play. They sat in silent listening. "When Arnold came to a pause, the old man said,—

"That takes me back to the old meeting-house. Do you remember, wife, when I led in Dedham?"

"I," said the mother, "was thinking of that Ordination-ball, and of 'Money Musk' and 'Hull's Victory.'"

"That is strange enough," said the old man, "that it should sound like psalm-tunes and country-dances."

"It takes us back to our youth; that is it," she answered.

And Arnold went on. Soft home-strains came from the piano, and the two old people sank into their chairs in happy musing. The twilight was growing dimmer, the strains grew more soft and subdued, dying through gentle shades into silence. There had been a little rustling sound in the doorway. Arnold turned, when he had done, and saw a white figure standing there, in listening attitude, the head half bent, the hands clasped over a straw hat whose ribbons touched the ground. Behind her was the trellis of the porch, with its sweet-brier hanging over it. It was Laura, in the very frame in which his imagination had pictured her.

"Have the girls got home?" asked the old man, rousing himself, and going towards the door.—"Come in, girls. I half think we have got your great musician here. At any rate, he can work some magic, and has pulled out of the old piano all the music ever your mother and I have listened to all our life long.—My girls could not have hired me," he continued to Arnold, "to go to one of your new-fangled concerts; but whether it is because the little piano is so old, or because you know all that old music, you have brought it all back as though the world were beginning again.—We must not let him go from here to-night," he said to his wife and children. And when he found that Laura had met the musician in New York, his urgencies upon Arnold to stay were peremptory and unanswerable.

As Laura's younger sister, Clara, closed her eyes that night, she said,—

"Mamma and papa think his music sounded of home and old times. How did it sound to you, Laura?"

Laura put her hands over her closed eyes in the dark, and said, dreamily,—"It sounded to me like love-songs, sung by such a tender voice, out in the woods, somewhere, where there were pine-trees and a brook."

"It seemed to me like butterflies," said Clara. She did not explain what she meant.

The next morning, as it had been arranged in sisterly council, Laura was to entertain the stranger while Clara made the preparations for breakfast. Laura found him in the porch, already rejoicing in the morning view. But, after the first greeting, she found talking with him difficult. They fell into a silence; and to escape from it Laura finally ran into the kitchen, blue muslin and all. She pushed Clara away from the fireplace.

"You must let me help," she said, and moved pots, pans, and kettles.

"Another stick of wood would make this water boil," she went on.

"Where shall I find it?" said a voice behind her; and Arnold directly answered his own question with his ready help.

There followed great bustling, laughter, help, and interruption to work. When Mrs. Ashton came down, she found the breakfast-table in its wonted place in the broad kitchen, instead of being laid in the back-parlor, as was the custom when there were guests in the house. It was a very happy breakfast; the door opened wide upon the green behind the house, and the September morning air brought in an appetite for the generously laden table.

After breakfast, Arnold asked the way to the knoll behind the house, covered with pines. Laura went to show him, though it was but a little walk. In the woods, by the pine-trees, near the sound of the brook, Arnold asked Laura, "What had his music said to her?" Whether she answered him in the words she had given her sister the night before I will not say; but late to dinner, out from the woods, two happy lovers walked home in the bright September noon.

* * * * *

The log-cabin was built. If in its walls there were any broad chinks through which a wind might make its way, there were other draughts to send it back again,—strains of music, that helped to kindle the household hearth,—such strains as made sacred the seed that was laid in the earth, that refined coarse labor, that softened the tone of the new colony rising up around, so that life, even the rudest, was made noble, and the work was not merely for the body, but for the spirit, and a new land was planted under these strains of the musician.

* * * * *



ENGLISH NAVAL POWER AND ENGLISH COLONIES.

What are the considerations which properly enter into any just estimate of a people's naval power?

In the first place, this certainly is a vital question: Are the people themselves in any true sense naval in their tastes, habits, and training? Do they love the sea? Is it a home to them? Have they that fertility of resources and expedients which the emergencies of sea-life make so essential, and which can come only from a long and fearless familiarity with old Ocean in all his aspects of beauty and all his aspects of terror? Or are they essentially landsmen,—landsmen just as much on the deck of a frigate as when marshalled on a battle-field? This is a test question. For if a nation has not sailors, men who smack of the salt sea, then vain are proud fleets and strong armaments.

I am satisfied that the ordinary explanation of that naval superiority which England has generally maintained over France is the true explanation. Certainly never were there stouter ships than those which France sent forth to fight her battles at the Nile and Trafalgar. Never braver men trod the deck than there laid down their lives rather than abase their country's flag. Yet they were beaten. The very nation which, on land, fighting against banded Europe, kept the balance for more than a generation at equipoise, on the water was beaten by the ships of one little isle of the sea. In the statement itself you have the explanation. The ships were from an isle of the sea. The men who manned them were born within sight of the ocean. In their childhood they sported with its waves. At twelve they were cabin-boys. At twenty, thorough seamen. Against the skill born of such an experience, of what avail was mere courage, however fiery?

A similar train of remarks may with truth be made about our Northern and Southern States. No doubt, the Rebel Government may send to England and purchase swift steamers like the Alabama, and man them with the reckless outcasts of every nationality, and send them forth to prey like pirates upon defenceless commerce. No doubt, in their hate, the Rebels may build sea-monsters like the Merrimack, or the Arkansas, or those cotton-mailed steamers at Galveston, and make all stand aghast at some temporary disaster. These things are unpleasant, but they are unavoidable. Desperation has its own peculiar resources. But these things do not alter the law. The North is thoroughly maritime, and in the end must possess a solid and permanent supremacy on the sea. The men of Cape Cod, the fishermen of Cape Ann, and the hardy sailors who swarm from the hundred islands and bays of Maine, are not to be driven from their own element by the proud planters of the South. Naval habits and naval strength go hand in hand. And in estimating the resources of any power, the first question is, Has she sailors,—not men of the land, but men of the sea?