'O, civic music, to such a name, To such a name for ages long, To such a name, Preserve the broad approach of fame, And ever ringing avenues of song.'

* * * * *

CHILD'S CALL AT EVENTIDE.

Bright and fair,— Golden hair, Still white hands and face; Not a plea Moveth thee; Nor the wind's wild chase, As yesterday, calling thee, Even as I, in vain. Come—wake up, Gerda! Come out and play in the lane!

See! the wind, From behind, Sporteth with thy locks, From the land's Desert sands And the sea-beat rocks Cometh and claspeth thy hands, Even as I, in vain. Come—wake up, Gerda! Come out and play in the lane!

Closed thine eyes, Gently wise, Dost thou dream the while? Falls my kiss All amiss, Waketh not a smile! Sweet mouth, is't feigning this? Then do not longer feign. Come—wake up, Gerda! Come out and play in the lane!

Forehead Bold, White and cold; Sealed thy lips and all; I am made Half afraid In this lonely hall. Night cometh quick through the glade! I fear it is all in vain,— All too late, Gerda,— Too late to play in the lane!

* * * * *

THE GOOD WIFE: A NORWEGIAN STORY.

PART I.

NOTHING LOST BY GOOD HUMOR.

For more than a month I had been ransacking my memory in search of some story or narrative to offer our readers, but with rather poor success. I thought of all the good things I had ever heard, and tumbled and tossed my books in vain—nothing could I find that was suitable for either children or parents. So I was, very reluctantly, about to abandon the enterprise, when it chanced that, being unable to compose myself to sleep, a few nights since, I took up, according to my custom on such occasions, an old copy of Montaigne, the usual companion of my vigils, the fellow-occupant of my pillow, and the only moralist whose musings one can read with pleasure on the wrong side of forty.

I opened the Essays carelessly, for each and every page of them is precious and replete with themes for meditation. In so doing, I alighted upon the chapter entitled, 'Of three Good Women,'—which commences thus: 'They are not to be found by the dozen, as every one knows, and especially not in the duties of married life, for that is a market full of such thorny circumstances that it is no easy matter for a woman's will to keep whole and sound in it for any length of time.'

'Montaigne is an impertinent fellow!' I exclaimed, slamming to the book. 'What? this close reader of antiquity, this fine analyst of the human heart, has been able to find only three good women, only three devoted wives, in all the Greek and Roman annals! This is playing the joker out of season. Goodness is the special attribute of woman. Every married woman is good, or supposed to be such. I bethink me, too, that our old jurists always make the law presume this goodness to exist, at the outset,'

Thus meditating, I wandered into my library, and there took up a fine old volume, bound in red morocco, and entitled 'The Dream of Vergier;' a book full of wisdom and logic, and written by some venerable clerk, during the reign of Charles V., king of France. I looked for the page that had struck my fancy, but—alas! how oddly one's memory changes with the lapse of years—instead of finding, in that grave old book, the just panegyric of woman's goodness, I discovered, to my great surprise, only a violent satire all spiced with texts borrowed from St. Augustine, the Roman laws and the ancient canons, with this sage conclusion, full worthy of the exordium:—

'I do not say, however, that there is no good woman at all, but the species is rare; and hence an old law says that no law concerning good women should be made, for that laws are to be made concerning things of usual occurrence, as it is written in Auth. sinc prohib., etc., quia vero and L. Nam ad ca, Dig. De Leffibus.'

These juridical epigrams, these cool pleasantries, in a serious book, shocked me more than even the hard hits of the Gascon philosopher. 'Good women,' I thought to myself, 'are found everywhere. In history? No; history is written by men who love and admire heroes only, that is to say, those who rob, subjugate, or slay them. In theology? No; it has not yet forgiven the daughters of Eve the fault which ruined us,—a sin of which they have retained at least a little share. In the records of the law, then? No, again; for men make the laws. Woman is, in their eyes, nothing but a minor, legally incapable of governing herself. God only knows what is, here, as in all things, the difference between the fact and the law. Are these good women to be found in plays, romances, or novels? No, still; for they are but the perpetual recital of feminine artfulness. Where, then, shall we look for good women?—In the realm of fable and fiction, in the kingdom of fancy—the dominion of the ideal.

These are the only regions in which merit holds the place it is entitled to or justice is done to the claims of virtue. What is the tenderness of Baucis, or the long fidelity of Penelope? Fiction only. And the resignation of the gentle Griseldis—what is it? An old tale of other days. In order to find the good woman we are looking for, this is the ivory portal at which we must knock.

Acting upon this conviction, I reperused all the old traditions, I called to my aid that peculiar lore of nations which is embodied in their legends, and which is so vividly, so amiably, and so ingenuously expressed. I interrogated the story-tellers of every country, Indian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, French, German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, Lithuanian, and even the hoary old wayside narrators of the far Thibet. I plunged into this ocean of fancy with the recklessness of an accomplished diver, but,—must I acknowledge it?—less fortunate than even Montaigne with his history, I have succeeded in bringing back only one woman that I can call really good, and her I have had to disinter from under the ice and snows of the North, in a wild country, too, and among a people who are not so delicate and refined as though Paris were in Norway. From Cadiz to Stockholm, from London to Cairo and Delhi, from Paris to Teheran and Samarcand, if the stories are to be believed, there are artful girls and scheming mothers, in any quantity; but the good woman!—where does she lie hid, and why do they never tell us anything about her? Here is a hiatus to which I specially call the attention of the learned. In observing it myself, I feel the more emboldened to relate the story of the only good woman and wife I have unearthed. It is a simple narrative, and not thoroughly in accordance with every-day experience, and, indeed, there may be some squeamish people who will say that it is ridiculous. No matter—it has one good quality which no one can dispute—it is not in the ordinary style of either adventure or narration. Novelty is all the rage at the present day, and what imparts value to things is not their intrinsic merit, but their strangeness.

Here, then, is my story presented to you, kind reader, just as Messrs. Asbjoernsen and Moe give it, in their curious collection of Norwegian tales and legends.

PART II.

GUDBRAND AND HIS WIFE.

There was once a man called Gudbrand, who lived in a lonely little farm-house on a remote hillside. From this circumstance he got the name among his neighbors of Gudbrand of the Hill.

Now, you must know that Gudbrand had an excellent wife, as sometimes happens to a man. But the rarest thing about it was, that Gudbrand knew the value of such a treasure; and so the two lived in perfect harmony, enjoying their own happiness, and giving themselves no concern about either wealth or the lapse of years. No matter what Gudbrand might do, his wife had foreseen and desired that very thing; so that her good man could not touch or change or move anything about the house without her coming forward to thank him for having divined and forestalled her wishes.

Besides, it was easy for them to get along, since the farm belonged to them, and they had a hundred solid crowns in a drawer of their closet and two excellent cows in their stable. They lacked nothing, and could quietly pass their old age without fear of poverty or toil, and without having to look to the friendship or the commiseration of any of their fellow-creatures.

One evening, while they were talking over their various little tasks and projects, says the wife of Gudbrand to her husband,—

'Husband, I've got a new notion in my head: you must take one of our cows to town and sell her. We'll keep the other, and she'll be quite enough to furnish us with all the milk and butter we can use. Why should we toil for other people? We've money lying in the drawer, and have no children to look after. So, wouldn't it be better to spare these arms of ours, now that they are growing old? You will always find something to occupy your time about the house;—there'll be no lack of furniture and things to mend, and I'll be more than ever beside you with my distaff and my knitting-needles.'

Gudbrand bethought him that his wife was right, as usual, and so, as the next morning was a beautiful one, he set off for the town, at an early hour, with the cow he wanted to sell. But it was not market day, and he found no purchaser to take the animal off his hands.

'Well! well!' said Gudbrand, 'at all events, I can take Sukey back to the place I brought her from; I've got hay and litter in plenty, there, for the poor brute, and it's no farther returning than it was coming hither.' Whereupon, he very quietly started again on the road to his home.

After walking on for a few hours, and just as he was beginning to feel a little tired, he met a man leading a horse by the bridle toward the town. The horse was in fine condition, and was all saddled and ready for a rider. 'The way is long and night rapidly coming on,' thought Gudbrand. 'I can hardly drag my cow along, and to-morrow I'll have to take this same walk over again. Now, here's an animal that would suit me a great deal better, and I'd go back home with him, as proud as a lord. Who would be delighted to see her husband returning in triumph, like a Roman general? Why, the wife of Gudbrand!'

Upon this happy thought, Gudbrand stopped the trader and exchanged his cow for the horse.

Once mounted on the charger's back, our hero felt some qualms of regret, for he was old and heavy, while the horse was young, frisky, and headstrong, so that, in less than half an hour, behold, our would-be cavalier was on foot again, vainly striving to drag along by the bridle a creature that cocked up his head at every puff of wind, and capered and pranced at every stone that lay in his path.

'This is a poor bargain I've made,' thought Gudbrand, when, just at that moment, he descried a peasant driving along a hog so fine and fat that its stomach touched the ground.

'A nail that is useful is better than a diamond that glitters and can be turned to nothing, as my wife often says,' reflected Gudbrand; and, with that, he traded off his horse for the hog.

It was a bright idea to be sure, but our good man had counted without his host. Don Porker was tired, and wouldn't budge an inch. Gudbrand talked to him, coaxed him, swore at him, but all in vain; he dragged him by the snout, he pushed him from behind, he whacked him on both his fat sides with a cudgel, but it was only labor lost, and Mr. Hog remained there in the middle of the dusty road like a stranded whale. The poor farmer was yielding to despair, when, at the very nick of time, there came along a country lad leading a she-goat, that, with an udder all swollen with milk, skipped, ran, and played about, in a manner charming to behold.

'There! that's the very thing I want!' exclaimed Gudbrand. 'I'd far rather have that gay, sprightly creature than this huge, stupid brute.' Whereupon, without an instant's hesitation, he exchanged the hog for the she-goat.

All went well for another half-hour. The young madam with her long horns greatly amused Gudbrand, who laughed at her pranks till his sides ached. In fact, too, the goat pulled him along; but, when one is on the wrong side of forty, one soon gets tired of scrambling over the rocks; and so the farmer, happening to meet a shepherd feeding his flock, traded his she-goat for a ewe. 'I'll have just as much milk,' mused he, 'from that animal as from the other, and, at least, she will keep quiet, and not worry either my wife or me.'

Gudbrand was right, in one respect, for there is nothing more gentle than a ewe. This one had no tricks; she neither capered nor butted with her head, but she stood perfectly still and bleated all the time. Finding herself separated from her companions, she wanted to rejoin them, and the more Gudbrand tugged at her tether, the more piteously she baaed.

'Deuce take the silly brute!' shouted Gudbrand; 'she's as obstinate and whimpering as my neighbor's wife. Who'll rid me of this bawling, bellowing little beast? I must get clear of her, at any price.'

'It's a bargain, if you choose, neighbor,' said a country fellow who was just passing, with a fat goose under his arm. 'Here, take this fine bird, instead; she's worth two of that ugly sheep that's going to split its throat in less than an hour, anyhow.'

'Done!' said Gudbrand; 'a live goose is as good as a dead ewe, any day;' and so he took the goose in exchange.

But it was no easy matter to manage his new bargain. The goose turned out to be a very disagreeable companion; for, finding itself no longer on the ground, it fought with its bill, its feet, and its wings, so that Gudbrand was soon tired of struggling to hold it.

'Pah!' growled he; 'the goose is an ugly, ill-grained creature, and my wife never would have one about the house.' With this reflection, he changed the goose, at the first farm-house he came to, for a fine rooster of rich plumage and furnished with a grand pair of spurs.

This time, he was thoroughly satisfied. The rooster, it is true, squawked from time to time, in a voice rather too hoarse to gratify most delicate ears; but as his claws had been tied together with twine and he was carried head downwards, he finally gave up and resigned himself to his fate. The only unpleasant circumstance now remaining was that the day was rapidly drawing to a close. Gudbrand, who had started before dawn, now found himself fasting, at sundown, without a farthing in his pocket. He still had a long walk before him, and the good man felt that his legs were giving out and that his stomach craved refreshment. Some bold step must be taken; and so, at the first wayside tavern, Gudbrand sold his rooster for a shilling, and as he had a raging appetite, he spent the last doit of it for his supper.

'After all,' said he, the while, 'what use would a rooster be to me, if I had to die of hunger?'

As he, at length, drew near his own dwelling, however, Gudbrand began to meditate seriously on the curious turn things had taken with him, and, before entering his home, he stopped at the door of Peter the Gray beard, as a neighbor of his was called in the surrounding country.

'Well, neighbor,' said Peter, 'how have you prospered in the town?'

'Oh! so, so,' answered Gudbrand; 'I can't say that I've been very lucky, nor have I much to complain of either;' and he went on to tell all that had happened.

'Neighbor, you've made a pretty mess of it!' said Peter the Graybeard; 'you'll have a nice time of it when you get home. Heaven protect you from your dame! I wouldn't be in your shoes for ten crowns.'

'Good!' rejoined Gudbrand of the Hill; 'things might have turned out still worse for me; but, now, I'm quiet in my mind about it, for my wife is so clever that, right or wrong, no matter what I've done, well or ill, she'll not say one word about it.'

'I hear and admire your statement, neighbor,' retorted Peter, 'but, with all respect for you, I do not believe a word of it.'

'Will you lay a wager on it?' said Gudbrand. 'I have a hundred crowns in my drawer at home, and I'll bet twenty of them against as many from you.'

'Done, on the spot!' replied Peter. So, joining hands on it, the two friends entered Gudbrand's house. Peter stood back at the door to hear what the husband and wife would have to say.

'Good evening, wife!' said Gudbrand. 'Good evening, husband,' said the good woman; 'you've come back, then, God be praised! How did you fare all day?'

'Neither well nor ill,' replied Gudbrand. When I got to the town, I could find no one there to buy our cow, and so I traded her off for a horse.'

'For a horse!' said the wife. 'An excellent idea, and I thank you with all my heart. We can go to church, then, in a wagon, like plenty of other folks who look down upon us, but are no better than we. If we choose to keep a horse and can feed him, we have a right to do it, I suppose, for we ask no odds of anybody. Where is the horse? We must put him into the stable.'

'I did not bring him all the way home,' answered Gudbrand, 'for, on the road, I changed my mind; I exchanged the horse for a hog.'

'Come, now,' said the wife, 'that's just what I'd have done, in your place! Thanks, a hundred times over! Now, when my neighbors come to see me, I'll have, like everybody else, a bite of ham to offer them. What need had we of a horse? The folks around us would have said, "See the saucy things! they think it beneath them to walk to church." Let us put the hog in a pen!'

'I didn't bring him with me,' said Gudbrand, 'for on the way I exchanged him for a she-goat.'

'Bravo!' said the good wife. 'What a sensible man you are! When I come to think of it, what could I have done with a hog? The neighbors would have pointed us out and have said, "Look at those people—all they make they eat! But, with a she-goat, I shall have milk and cheese, not to speak of the little kids. Come, let us put her into the stable."

'I didn't bring the she-goat with me, either,' said Gudbrand; 'I traded her again, for a ewe.'

'There! That's just like you,' exclaimed the wife, with evident satisfaction. 'It was for my sake that you did that. Am I young enough to scamper, over hill and dale, after a she-goat? No, indeed. But, a ewe will yield me her wool as well as her milk; so let us get her housed at once.'

'I didn't bring the ewe home, either,' stammered Gudbrand, once more, 'but swapped her for a goose.'

'What? a goose! oh! thanks, thanks a thousand times, with all my heart—for, after all, how could I have got along with the ewe? I have neither card nor comb, and spinning is a heavy job, at best. When you've spun, too, you have to cut and fit and sew. It's far easier to buy our clothes ready-made, as we've always done. But a goose—a fat one, too, no doubt—why, that's the very thing I want! I've need of down for our quilt, and my mouth has watered this many a day for a bit of roast goose. Put the bird in the poultry-coop.'

'Ah! I've not brought the goose, for I took a rooster in his stead.'

'Good husband!' said the wife, 'you're wiser than I would have been. A rooster! splendid!—why, a rooster's better than an eight-day clock. The rooster will crow every morning, at four, and tell us when it is time to pray to God and set about our work. What would we have done with a goose? I don't know how to cook one, and as for the quilt, Heaven be praised, there's no lack of moss a great deal softer than down. So, let us put the rooster in the corn-yard!'

'I have not brought even the rooster,' murmured Gudbrand, 'for, at sundown, I felt very hungry, and had to sell my rooster for a shilling to buy something to eat. If it hadn't been for that I must have starved to death.'

'God be thanked for giving you that lucky thought,' replied the wife. 'All that you do, Gudbrand, is just after my own heart. What need we of a rooster? We are our own masters, I think; there is no one to give us orders, and we can stay in bed just as long as we please. Here you are, my dear husband, safe and sound. I am perfectly satisfied, and have need of nothing more than your presence to make me happy.'

Upon this, Gudbrand opened the door;—'Well! neighbor Peter, what do you say to that? Go, now, and bring me your twenty crowns!' So saying, Gudbrand hugged and kissed his wife with as much fervor and heartiness as though he and she had just been wedded, in the bloom of youth.

PART III.

But the narrative does not end with the events described in the last chapter. There is a reverse to every medal, and even daylight would not be so charming were it not followed by night. However good and perfect woman may, generally, be, there are some who by no means share the easy disposition of Gudbrand's better half. Need I say that the fault is, usually, in the husband? If he were only to yield, on all occasions, would he be troubled? Yield? exclaim some fierce moustachioed individuals. Yes, indeed, yield, or hear the penalty that awaits you.

PART IV.

PETER THE GRAYBEARD.

Peter the Graybeard did not at all resemble Gudbrand. He was self-willed, imperious, passionate, and had no more patience than a dog when you snatch away his bone or a cat when you're trying to strangle her. He would have been insufferable, had not Heaven, in its mercy, given him a wife who was a match for him. She was headstrong, quarrelsome, discontented and morose—always ready to keep quiet when her husband preserved silence, and just as ready to scream at the top of her voice the moment he opened his mouth.

It was great good fortune for Peter to have such a spouse. Without her, would he ever have known that patience is not the merit of fools?

One day, in the mowing Season, when he came home, after a fifteen hours' spell of hard work, in worse humor than usual, and was swearing, cursing and execrating all women and their laziness, because his soup was not yet ready for him, his wife exclaimed,—

'Good Lord! Peter, you talk away at a fine rate. Would you like to change places? To-morrow, I will mow, instead of you, and you stay at home here and play housekeeper. Then, we'll see which of us will have the hardest task and come out of it the best.'

'Agreed!' thundered Peter; 'you'll have a chance to find out, once for all, what a poor husband has to suffer. The trial will teach you a lesson of respect—something you greatly need.'

So, the next morning, at day-break, the wife set out afield with the rake over her shoulder and the sickle by her side, all joyous at the sight of the bright sunshine, and singing like a lark.

Now, who felt not a little surprised, and a little foolish too, to find himself shut up at home? Our friend Peter the Graybeard. Still, he wasn't going to own himself beaten, but fell to work churning butter, as though he had never done anything else all the days of his life.

It's no hard matter to get over-heated when one takes up a new trade, and Peter soon, feeling very dry, went down into the cellar to draw a mug of beer from the cask. He had just knocked out the bung and was applying the spigot, when he heard an ominous crunching and grunting overhead. It was the sow, devastating the kitchen.

'Oh Lord! my butter's lost!' yelled Peter the Graybeard, as he rushed pell-mell up the steps, with the spigot in his hand. What a spectacle was there! the churn upset, the cream spilt all over the floor, and the huge sow fairly wallowing in the rich and savory tide.

Now even a wiser man would have lost all patience; as for Peter, he rushed upon the brute, who, with piercing screams, strove to escape; but it was a hapless day to the thief, for her master caught her in the doorway and dealt her so well applied and vigorous a blow on the side of her skull with the spigot that the sow fell dead on the spot.

As he drew back his novel weapon, now covered with blood, Peter recollected that he had not closed the bung-hole of his cask, and that all this time his beer was running to waste. So down he rushed again to the cellar. Fortunately, the beer had ceased to run, but then that was because not a drop remained in the cask.

He had now to begin his morning's work again, and churn some more butter if he expected to see any dinner that day. So Peter visited the dairy-house, and there found enough cream to replaced what he had just lost. At it he goes again, and churns and churns away, more vigorously than ever. But, in the midst of his churning, he remembers—a little late to be sure, but better late than never—that the cow was still in the stable, and that she had neither food nor water, although the sun was now high above the horizon. Away he runs then to the stable. But experience has made him wise: 'I've my little child there rolling on the floor; now, if I leave the churn, the greedy scamp will turn it over, and something worse might easily happen!' Whereupon, he takes up the churn on his back and hastens to the well to draw water for the cow. The well was deep, and the buckets did not go down far enough. So Peter leans with all his might, in hot haste, on the rope, and away goes the cream out of the churn, over his head and shoulders, into the well!

'Confound it!' said Peter between his teeth, 'it's clear that I'm to have no butter to-day. Let's attend to the cow; it's too late to take her out to pasture, but there's a fine lot of hay on the house-thatch that hasn't been cut, and so she'll lose nothing by staying at home.' To get the cow out of the stable and to put her on the house-roof was no great trouble, for the dwelling was set in a hollow in the hill-side, so that the thatch was almost on a level with the ground. A plank served the purpose of a bridge, and behold the cow comfortably installed in her elevated pasture! Peter, of course, could not remain upon the roof to watch the animal; he had to make the mid-day porridge and take it to the mowers. But he was a prudent man, and did not want to leave his cow exposed to the risk of breaking her bones; so he tied a small rope around her neck, and this rope he passed carefully down the chimney of the cottage into the kitchen below. Having effected this, he descended himself, and, entering the kitchen, attached the other end of the rope to his own leg.

'In this way,' said he, 'I make sure that the cow will keep quiet, and that nothing bad can happen to her.'

He now filled the kettle, dropped into it a good 'lump' of lard, the necessary vegetables and condiments, placed it on the well-piled fagots, struck fire with flint and steel, and was applying the match to the wood, blowing it well the while, when, all at once, crish—crash! away goes the cow, slipping down over the roof, and dragging our good man, with one leg in the air and head downwards, clear up the chimney. What would have become of him, no one could tell, had not a thick bar of iron arrested his upward flight. And now there they are, both together, dangling in the air, the cow outside and Peter within; both, too, uttering the most frightful cries of distress.

As good luck would have it, the wife was just as impatient as her husband, and, when she had waited just three seconds to see whether Peter would bring her porridge at the stated time, she darted off for the house as though it were on fire. When she saw the cow swinging between heaven and earth, she drew her sickle and cut the rope, greatly to the delight of the poor brute, who now found herself safe again, on the only sort of floor she liked. It was a chance no less fortunate for Peter, who was not accustomed to gazing at the sky with his feet in the air. But he fell smack into the kettle, head foremost. It had been decreed, however, that all should come out right with him, that day; the fire had died out, the water was cold, and the kettle awry, so that he got off with nothing worse than a scratched forehead, a peeled nose, and two well scraped cheeks, and, thank Heaven! nothing was broken but the saucepan.

When his better half entered the kitchen, she found Master Graybeard looking very sheepish and bloody.

'Well! well!' said she, planting her arms akimbo and her two fists on her haunches: 'who's the best housekeeper, pray? I have mowed and reaped, and here I am as good as I was yesterday, while you, you, Mister Cook, Mister Stay-at-home, Mr. Nurse, where is the butter, where's the sow, where's the cow, and where's our dinner? If our little one's alive yet, no thanks to you. Poor little fellow!—what would become of it without kind and careful mamma?'

Whereupon, Mrs. Peter begins to snivel and sob. Indeed, she has need to, for is not sensibility woman's field of triumph, and are not tears the triumph of sensibility?

Peter bore the storm in silence, and did well, for resignation is the virtue of great souls!

PART V.

There, you have my story exactly as it is related, on winter evenings, to impress ideas of wisdom on the minds of the young Norwegians. Between the wife of Gudbrand and the wife of Peter the Graybeard they must choose, at their own risk and peril.

'The choice is an easy one,' says an amiable lady-friend of mine, who has just become a grandmother. 'Gudbrand's wife is the one to imitate, not only on account of her prudence, but for her worth. You men are much more amusing than you fancy: when your own self-esteem is at stake, you love truth and justice about as much as bats love a glare of light. The greatest enjoyment these gentlemen experience is in pardoning us when they are guilty, and in generously offering to overlook our errors when they alone are in the wrong. The wisest thing we can do is to let them talk, and to pretend to believe them. That is the way to tame these proud, magnificent creatures, and, by pursuing the plan perseveringly, one may lead them about by the nose, like Italian oxen.

'But, aunty,' says a fair young thing beside us, 'one can't keep quiet all the time. Not to yield when you're not in the wrong, is a right.'

'And when you're wrong, my dear niece, to yield is a royal pleasure. What woman ever abandoned this exalted privilege? We are all somewhat akin to that amiable lady who, when all other arguments had been exhausted, crushed her husband with a magnificent look, as she said,—

'"Sir, I give you my word of honor that I am in the right."

'What could he reply? Can one contradict the veracity of one's own wife? And what is strength fit for if not to yield to weakness? The poor husband hung his head, and did not utter another word. But to keep still is not to acknowledge defeat, and silence is not peace!'

'Madame,' says a young married woman, 'it seems to me that there is no choice left; when a woman loves her husband all is easy; it is a pleasure to think and act as he does.'

'Yes, my child, that is the secret of the comedy. Every one knows it, but no one avails herself of it. So long as even the last glow of the honey-moon illuminates the chamber of a young couple, all goes along of itself. So long as the husband hastens to anticipate every wish, we have merit and sense enough to let him do it. But at a later moment, the scene changes. How, then, are we to retain our sway? Youth and beauty decay, and the charm of wit and intelligence is not sufficient. In order to remain mistresses of our homes, we must practice the most divine of all the virtues—gentleness—a blind, dumb, deaf gentleness of demeanor, that pardons everything for the sake of pardoning.'

To love a great deal,—to love unconditionally, so as to be loved a little in return,—that is the whole moral of the story of Gudbrand.

* * * * *

THE HUGUENOT FAMILIES IN AMERICA.

II.

The brave Admiral Coligny first conceived the plan of a colony in America for the safety of his persecuted Huguenot brethren of France. Such an enterprise was undertaken as early as the year 1555, with two vessels, having on board mechanics, laborers, and gentlemen, and a few ministers of the Reformed faith. They entered the great river which the Portuguese had already named Rio Janeiro, and built a fort, calling it 'Coligny.' Here they sought a new country, where they might adore God in freedom. Unforeseen difficulties, however, discouraged these bold Frenchmen, and the pious expedition failed, some dispersing in different directions, while others regained the shores of France with great difficulty. A second attempt was also unsuccessful. Coligny, in 1562, obtained permission from Charles IX. to found a Protestant colony in Florida. Two ships left Dieppe with emigrants, and, reaching the American shores, entered a large, deep river called Port Royal, which name it still retains, and is, by coincidence, the spot recently captured by the United States forces.[F] Fort Charles, in honor of the reigning king of France, was built near by, and in a fertile land of flowers, fruits, and singing birds. The country itself was called Carolina. Reduced to the most cruel extremities of famine and death, the remaining colonists returned to Europe.

Still undismayed by these two disastrous attempts, Coligny, the Huguenot leader, dispatched a third expedition of three vessels to our shores, making another attempt near the mouth of the St. John's River (Fort Caroline). Philip II. was then on the throne, and would not brook the heresy of the Huguenots, or Calvinism, in his American provinces. Priests, soldiers, and Jesuits were dispatched to Florida, where the new settlers, 'Frenchmen and Lutherans,' were destroyed in blood. Such was the melancholy issue of the earliest attempts to establish a Huguenot or Protestant settlement in North America. And nearly one hundred years before it was occupied by the English, Carolina, for an instant, as it were, was occupied by a band of Christian colonists, but, through the remorseless spirit of religious persecution, again fell under the dominion of the uncivilized savages. We refer to these earliest efforts as proper to the general historical connection of our subject, although not absolutely necessary to its investigation.

At the commencement of the seventeenth century, England, on her own behalf, took up the generous plans of Coligny. Possessing twelve colonies in America, when the edict of Nantes was revoked, that nation resolved here to offer peaceful homes to persecuted Huguenots from France. This mercy she had extended to them in England and Ireland; now her inviting American colonies were thrown open for the same generous purpose. Even before that insane and fatal measure of Louis XIV., the Revocation, and especially after the fall of brave La Rochelle, numerous Protestant fugitives, mostly from the western provinces of France, had already emigrated, for safety, to British America. In 1662 the French government made it a crime for the ship-owners of Rochelle to convey emigrants to any country or dependency of Great Britain. The fine for such an offence was ten livres to the king, nine hundred for charitable objects, three hundred to the palace chapel, one hundred for prisoners, and five hundred to the mendicant monks. One sea-captain, Brunet, was accused of having favored the escape of thirty-six young men, and condemned to return them within a year, or to furnish a legal certificate of their death, on pain of one thousand livres, with exemplary punishment.[G] It is imagined that these young voluntary Huguenot exiles emigrated to Massachusetts, from the fact that the same year when this strange cause was tried in France, Jean Touton, a French doctor, requested from the authorities of that colony the privilege of sojourning there. This favor was immediately granted; and from that period Boston possessed establishments formed by Huguenots, which attracted new emigrants.

In 1679, Elie Nean, the head of an eminent family from the principality of Soubise, in Saintonge, reached that city. This refugee, sailing afterwards in his own merchant vessel for the island of Jamaica, was captured by a privateer, carried back to France, confined in the galleys, and only restored to his liberty through the intercession of Lord Portland.

One of the first acts of the Boston Huguenots was to settle a minister, giving him forty pounds a year, and increasing his salary afterwards. Surrounded by the savages on every side, they erected a fort, the traces of which, it is said, can still be seen, and now overgrown with roses, currant bushes, and other shrubbery. Mrs. Sigourney, herself the wife of a Huguenot descendant, during a visit to this time-honored spot, wrote the beautiful lines,—

'Green vine, that mantlest in thy fresh embrace Yon old gray rock, I hear that thou with them Didst brave the ocean surge. Say, drank thus from The dews of Languedoc? or slow uncoiled An infant fibre 'mid the faithful mold Of smiling Roussillon? Didst thou shrink From the fierce footsteps of fighting unto death At fair Rochelle? Hast thou no tale for me?'

Their fort did not render the French settlers safe from the murderous assaults of savage enemies. A.W. Johnson, with his three children, were massacred here by them; his wife was a sister of Mr. Andrew Sigourney, one of the earliest Huguenots. After this murderous attack the French Protestants deserted their forest home, repairing to Boston in 1696, where vestiges of their industry and agricultural taste long remained; to this day many of the pears retain their French names, and the region is celebrated for its excellence and variety of this delicious fruit. The Huguenots erected a church at Boston in 1686, and ten years afterwards received as pastor a refugee minister from France, named Diaille.[H] The Rev. M. Lawrie is also mentioned as one of their pastors. But from official records we learn more of the Rev. Daniel Boudet, A.M. He was a native of France, born in 1652, and studied theology at Geneva. On the revocation, he fled to England, receiving holy orders from the Lord Bishop of London. In the summer of 1686 he accompanied the Huguenot emigrants to Massachusetts; and Cotton Mather speaks of him as a faithful minister 'to the French congregation at New Oxford, in the Nipmog (Indian) counties.' This was New Oxford, near Boston. He labored for eight years, 'propagating the Christian faith,' both among the French and the Indians. He complains, as we do in our day, of the progress of the sale of rum among the savages,'without order or measure' (July 6, 1691). We shall learn more of him at New Rochelle, where he removed, probably, in 1695, and could preach to both English and French emigrants. Soon after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Joseph Dudley, with other proprietors, introduced into Massachusetts thirty French Protestant families, settling them on the easternmost part of the 'Oxford tract.'[I]

Massachusetts, peopled in part by the rigid Protestant Dissenters, naturally favored these new victims, persecuted by a church still more odious to them than that of England. Their sympathies were deeply excited by the arrival of the French exiles. The destitute were liberally relieved, the towns of Massachusetts making collections for this purpose, and also furnishing them with large tracts of land to cultivate. In 1686 the colony at Oxford thus received a noble grant of 11,000 acres; and other provinces followed the liberal example. Every traveler through New England has seen 'Faneuil Hall,' which has been called the 'Cradle of Liberty,' and where so many assemblages for the general good have been held. This noble edifice was presented to Boston, for patriotic purposes, by the son of a Huguenot.

Much of our knowledge concerning the Huguenots of New York has been obtained from the documentary papers at Albany. Some of the families, before the revocation, as early as the year 1625, reached the spot where the great metropolis now stands, then a Dutch settlement. The first birth in New Amsterdam, of European parents, was a daughter of George Jansen de Rapelje, of a Huguenot family which fled to Holland after the St. Bartholomew's massacre, and thence sailed for America. Her name was Sarah. Her father was a Walloon from the confines of France and Belgium, and settling on Long Island, at the Waal-bogt, or Walloon's Bay, became the father of that settlement. In 1639 his brother, Antonie Jansen de Rapelje, obtained a grant of one hundred 'morgens,' or nearly two hundred acres of land, opposite Coney Island, and commenced the settlement of Gravesend. Here most numerous and respectable descendants of this Walloon are met with to this day. Jansen de Rapelje, as he was called, was a man of gigantic strength and stature, and reputed to be a Moor by birth. This report, probably, arose from his adjunct of De Salee, the name under which his patent was granted; but it was a mistake; he was a native Walloon, and this suffix to his name, we doubt not, was derived from the river Saale, in France, and not Salee, or Fez, the old piratical town of Morocco. For many years after the Dutch dynasty, his farm at Gravesend continued to be known as Anthony Jansen's Bowery. The third brother of this family, William Jansen de Rapelje, was among the earliest settlers of Long Island and founders of Brooklyn. Singularly, the descendants of Antonie have dropped the Rapelje, and retained the name of Jansen, or Johnson, as they are more commonly called. On the contrary, George's family have left off Jansen, and are now known as Rapelje or Rapelyea.

Most of the Huguenots who went to Ulster, N.Y., at first sought deliverance from persecutions among the Germans, and thence sailed for America. Ascending the Hudson, these emigrants landed at Wiltonyck, now Kingston, and were welcomed by the Hollanders, who had prepared the way in this wilderness for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty. Here was a Reformed Dutch church, and Hermanus Blomm, its pastor, commissioned by the Classis of Amsterdam to preach 'both on water and on the land, and in all the neighborhood, but principally in Esopus.' This region, selected by the French Protestants for their future land, was like their own delightful native France for great natural beauties. Towards the east and west flowed the waters of the noble ever-rolling Hudson, while on the north the Shamangunk Mountains, the loftiest of our Fishkill monarchs, looked like pillars upon which the arch of heaven there rested. No streams can charm the eye more than those which enrich this region,—the Rosendale, far from the interior, the Walkill, with its rapid little falls, 'the foaming, rushing, warsteed-like' Esopus Creek, with the dashing, romantic Saugerties, fresh from the mountain-side. Both the Dutch and the French emigrants followed these beautiful rivers towards the south, and made their earliest settlements there. On these quiet and retired banks their ashes repose. Hallowed be their memories, virtues, and piety! In those regions thousands of their descendants now enjoy the rich and glorious patrimony which have followed their industry and frugality.

In the year 1663, the savages attacked Kingston and massacred a part of its inhabitants, slaying twenty-four, and took forty-five prisoners. The dominie, Blomin, escaped, and has left a description of the tragical event.[J] 'There lay,' he writes, 'the burnt and slaughtered bodies, together with those wounded by bullets and axes. The last agonies and the moans and lamentations were dreadful to hear.... The houses were converted into heaps of stones, so that I might say with Micah, "We are made desolate;" and with Jeremiah, "A piteous wail may go forth in his distress." With Paul I say, "Brothers, pray for us." I have every evening, during a whole month, offered up prayers with the congregation, on the four points of our fort, under the blue sky.... Many heathen have been slain, and full twenty-two of our people have been delivered out of their hands by our arms. The Lord our God will again bless our arms, and grant that the foxes who have endeavored to lay waste the vineyard of the Lord shall be destroyed.'

Among the prisoners were Catharine Le Fever, the wife of Louis Dubois, with three of their children. These were Huguenots; and a friendly Indian gave information where they could be found. The pursuers were directed to follow the Rondout, the Walkill, and then a third stream; and a small, bold band, with their knapsacks, rifles, and dogs, undertook the perilous journey. Towards evening, Dubois, in advance of the party, discovered the Indians within a few feet of him, and one was in the act of drawing his bow, but, missing its string, from fear or surprise, the Huguenot sprang forward and killed him with his sword, but without any alarm. The party then resolved to delay the attack until dark; at which hour the savages were preparing for slaughter one of their unfortunate captives, which was none other than the missing wife of Dubois himself. She had already been placed upon the funeral pile, and at this trying moment was singing a martyr's psalm, the strains of which had often cheered the pious Huguenots in days of the rack and bloody trials. The sacred notes moved the Indians, and they made signs to continue them, which she did, fortunately, until the approach of her deliverers. 'White man's dogs! white man's dogs!' was the first cry which alarmed the cruel foes. They fled instantly, taking their prisoners with them. Dubois calling his wife by name, she was soon restored to her anxious friends, with the other captives. At the moment of their rescue, the prisoners were preparing for the bloody sacrifice to savage cruelty, and singing the beautiful psalm of the 'Babylonish Captives.' Heaven heard those strains, and the deliverance came. During this fearful expedition the Ulster Huguenots first discovered the rich lowlands of Paltz.

This was the section which they selected for their homes, distant some eighty-five miles from New York, along the west shores of the Hudson, and extending from six to ten miles in the interior. It was called New Paltz, and its patent obtained from Gov. Andreas; twelve of their brethren were religiously selected by the emigrants as the Patentees, and known by the appellation of the 'Duzine,' or the twelve patentees, and these were regarded as the patriarchs in this little Christian community. A list of the original purchasers has been preserved, and were as follows: Louis Dubois, Christian Dian, since Walter Deyo, Abraham Asbroucq, now spelt Hasbrouck, Andros Le Fever, often Le Febre and Le Febore, John Brook, said to have been changed into Hasbrouck, Peter Dian, or Deyo, Louis Bevier, Anthony Cuspell, Abraham Du Bois, Hugo Freir, Isaac Dubois, Simon Le Fever.

A copy of this agreement with the Indians still exists, and the antiquarian may find it among the State records at Albany. It is a curious document, with the signatures of both parties, the patentees' written in the antique French character, with the hieroglyphic marks of the Indians. A few Indian goods—kettles, axes, beads, bars of lead, powder, casks of wine, blankets, needles, awls, and a 'clean pipe'—were the insignificant articles given, about two centuries ago, for these lands, now proverbially rich, and worth millions of dollars. The treaty was mutually executed, according to the records from which we quote, on the 20th of May, 1677.

The patentees immediately took possession of their newly-acquired property, their first conveyances being three wagons, which would be rare curiosities in our day. The wheels were very low, shaped like old-fashioned spinning-wheels, with short spokes, wide rim, and without any iron. The settlers were three days on their way from Kingston to New Paltz, a distance of only sixteen miles. The place of their first encampment is still known by the name of 'Tri Cor,' or three cars, in honor of these earliest conveyances. Soon, however, they selected a more elevated site, on the banks of the beautiful Walkill, where the village now stands. Log houses were erected not far apart, for mutual defence, and afterwards stone edifices, with port-holes, some of which still remain.

* * * * *

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

INTRODUCTION.

Rome is the cradle of art,—which accounts for its sleeping there.

Nature, however, is nowhere more wide awake than it is in and around this city: therefore, Mr. James Caper, animal painter, determined to repose there for several months.

The following sketches correctly describe his Roman life.

ARRIVAL IN ROME.

It was on an Autumn night that the traveling carriage in which sat James Caper arrived in Rome; and as he drove through that fine street, the Corso, he saw coming towards him a two-horse open carriage, filled with Roman girls of the working class (minenti). Dressed in their picturesque costumes, bonnetless, their black hair tressed with flowers, they stood up, waving torches, and singing in full voice one of those songs in which you can go but few feet, metrically speaking, without meeting amore. And then another and another carriage, with flashing torches and sparkling-eyed girls. It was one of the turnouts of the minenti; they had been to Monte Testaccio, had drank all the wine they could pay for; and, with a prudence our friend Caper could not sufficiently admire, he noticed that the women were in separate carriages from the men. It was the Feast Day of Saint Crispin, and all the cobblers, or artists in leather, as they call themselves, were keeping it up bravely.

'Eight days to make a pair of shoes?' he once asked a shoemaker. 'Si, Signore, there are three holidays in that time.' Argument unanswerable.

As the carriages rolled by, Caper determined to observe the festivals.

The next day our artist entered his name in his banker's register, and had the horror of seeing it mangled to 'Jams Scraper' in the list of arrivals published in the Giornale di Roma. For some time after his arrival in Rome, he was pained to receive cards, circulars, notices, letters, advertisements, etc., from divers tradesmen, all directed to the above name. In revenge, he here gives them a public airing. One firm announces,—

'Manafactury of Remain Seltings, Mosaiques, Cameas, Medalls, Erasofines, &c.' (Erasofines is the Roman-English for crucifixes.) And on a slip of paper, handsomely printed, is an announcement that they make 'Romain Perles of all Couloueurs'—there's color for you!

A tailor, under the head of 'Ici un parle Francais,' prints, 'Merchant and tailor. Cloths (clothes?) Reddy maid, Mercery Roman; Scarfs, etc.'

Another, 'Roman Artickles Manofactorer'—hopes to be 'honnoured with our Custom, (American?), and flaters himsself we will find things to our likings.' Everything but the English, you know—that is not exactly to our liking. Another, from a lady, reads,—

A VENTRE!

une Galerie decomposee de 300 d'Anciens Maitres, et de l'ecole romaine peintres sur bois, sur cuivre et sur toit, &c.

Ventre for Vendre is bad enough, but a 'gallery of decomposed old masters and of Roman school painters on wood and on the roof,' when it was intended to say 'A gallery composed of 300 of the old masters—' But let us leave it untranslated; it is already decomposee.

A SHORT WALK.

Mr. Caper having indignantly rejected the services of all professors of the guiding art or 'commissionaires,' slowly sauntered out of his hotel the morning after his arrival, and, map in hand, made his way to the tower on the Capitoline Hill. Threading several narrow, dirty streets, he at last went through one where in one spot there was such a heap of garbage and broccoli stumps that he raised his eyes to see how high up it reached against the walls of a palace; and there read, in black letters,

Immondezzaio;

literally translated, A Place for Dirt. On the opposite wall, which was the side of a church, he saw a number of black placards on which were large white skulls and crossbones, and while examining these, a bare-headed, brown-bearded, stout Franciscan monk passed him. From a passing glance, Caper saw he looked good-natured, and so, hailing him, asked why the skulls and bones were pasted there.

'Who knows?' answered the monk. 'I came this morning from the Campagna; this is the first time in all my life I have been in this magnificent city.'

'Can you tell me what that word means up there?' said Caper, pointing to immondezzaio.

'Signore, I can not read.'

'Perhaps it is the name of the street, maybe of the city?'

'It must be so,' answered the priest, 'unless it's a sign of a lottery office, or a caution against blasphemy up and down the pavement. Those are the only signs we have in the country, except the government salt and cigar shops.' ... He took a snuff-box from a pocket in his sleeve, and with a bow offered a pinch to Mr. Caper. This accepted, they bid each other profoundly farewell.

'There goes a brick!' remarked the traveler.

Arrived at the entrance-door to the tower of the Capitoline Hill, James Caper first felt in one pocket for a silver piece and in the other for a match-box, and finding them both there, rang the bell, and then mounted to the top of the tower. Lighting a zigarro scelto or papal cigar, he leaned on both elbows on the parapet, and gazed long and fixedly over the seven-hilled city.

'And this,' soliloquized he, is Rome. Many a day have I been kept in school without my dinner because I was not able to parse thee idly by, Roma—Rome—noun of the first declension, feminine gender, that a quarter of a century ago caused me punishment, I have thee now literally under foot, and (knocking his cigar) throw ashes on thy head.

'My mission in this great city is not that of a picture-peddler or art student. I come to investigate the eating, drinking, sleeping arrangements of the Eternal City—its wine more than its vinegar, its pretty girls more than its galleries, its cafes more than its churches. I see from here that I have a fine field to work in. Down there, clambering over the fallen ruins of the Palace of the Caesars, is a donkey. Could one have a finer opportunity to see in this a moral and twist a tail? From those fallen stones, Memory-glorious old architect—rears a fabric wondrously beautiful; peoples it with eidolons white and purple-robed, and gleaming jewel-gemmed; or, iron armed, glistening with flashing light from polished steel—heroes and slaves, conquerors and conquered; my blood no longer flows to the slow, jerking measure of a nineteenth-century piece of mechanism, but freely, fully, and completely. Hurrah, my blood is up! dark, liquid eyes; black, flowing locks; strange, pleasing perfumes are around me. There is a rush as of a strong south wind through a myriad of floating banners, and I am borne onward through triumphal arches, past pillared temples, under the walls of shining palaces, into the Coliseum....

'Pray, and can you tell me—if that pile of d——d old rubbish—down there, you know—is the Forum—for I do not—see it in Murray—though I'm sure—I have looked very clearly—and Murray you know—has everything down in him—that a traveler....

'A commercial traveler?' ... interrupted Mr. Caper, speaking slowly, and looking coolly into the eyes of the blackguard Bagman.... 'The ruins you see there are those of the Forum. Good morning.'

MODERN ART.

'Lucrezia Borgia at the Tomb of Don Giovanni! You see,' said the artist, 'I have chosen a good name for my painting, ... and it's a great point gained. Forty or fifty years ago, some of those fluffy old painters would have had Venus worshiping at the shrine of Bacchus.'

'Whereas, you think it would be more appropriate for her to worship Giove?' ... asked Capar.

'No sir!... I run dead against classic art: it's a drug. I tried my hand at it when I first came to Rome. Will you believe me, I never sold a picture. Why that very painting'—pointing to the Borgia—'is on a canvas on which I commenced The Subjugation of Adonis.'

'H'm! You find the class of Middle Age subjects most salable then?'

'I should think I did. Something with brilliant colors, stained glass windows, armor, and all that, sells well. The only trouble is, ultramarine costs dear, although Dovizzelli's is good and goes a great ways. I sold a picture to an Ohio man last week for two hundred dollars, and it is a positive fact there was twenty scudi (dollars) worth of blue in it. But the infernal Italians spoil trade here. Why, that fellow who paints Guide's Speranzas up there at San Pietro in Vineulo is as smart as a Yankee. He has found out that Americans from Rhode Island take to the Speranza, because Hope is the motto of their State, and he turns out copies hand over fist. He has a stencil plate of the face, and three or four fellows to paint for him; one does the features of the face, another the hand, and another rushes in the background. Why, sir, those paintings can be sold for five scudi, and money made on them at that. But then what are they? Wretched daubs not worth house-room. Have you any thoughts of purchasing paintings?'

Caper smiled gently.... 'I had not when I first came to Rome, but how long I may continue to think so is doubtful. The temptations' (glancing at the Borgia) 'are very great.' ...

'Rome,' ... interrupted the artist, ... 'is the cradle of art.'

A ROOM HUNT.

Caper, on his first arrival in Home, went to the Hotel Europe, in the Piazza di Spagna. There for two weeks he lived like a milordo. He formed many acquaintances among the resident colony of American artists, and was received by them with much kindness. Some of the mercenary ones of their number, having formed the opinion that he came there to buy paintings, ignorant of his profession, were excessively polite;—but their offers of services were declined. When Caper finally moved to private lodgings in Babuino Street and opened a studio, hope for a season bade these salesmen all farewell; they groaned, and owned that they had tried but could not sell.

Among the acquaintances formed by Caper, was a French artist named Rocjean. Born in France, he had passed eight or ten years in the United States, learned to speak English very well, and was residing in Rome 'to perfect himself as an artist.' He had, when Caper first met him, been there two years. In all this time he had never entered the Vatican, and having been told that Michael Angelo's Last Judgment was found to have a flaw in it, he had been waiting for repairs before passing his opinion thereon. On the other hand, he had studied the Roman plebe, the people, with all his might. He knew how they slept, eat, drank, loved, made their little economies, clothed themselves, and, above all, how they blackguarded each other. When Caper mentioned to him that he wished to leave his hotel, take a studio and private lodgings, then Rocjean expanded from an old owl into a spread eagle. Hurriedly taking Caper by the arm, he rushed him from one end of Rome to the other, up one staircase and down another; until, at last, finding out that Rocjean invariably presented him to fat, fair, jolly-looking landladies (padrone), with the remark, 'Signora, the Signor is an Englishman and very wealthy,' he began to believe that something was wrong. But Rocjean assured him that it was not—that, as in Paris, it was Madame who attended to renting rooms, so it was the padrona in Rome, and that the remark, 'he is an Englishman, and very wealthy,' were synonymous, and always went together. 'If I were to tell them you were an American it would do just as well—in fact, better, but for one thing, and that is, you would be swindled twice as much. The expression "and very wealthy," attached to the name of an Englishman, is only a delicate piece of flattery, for the majority of the present race of traveling English are by no means lavish in their expenditures or very wealthy. In taking you to see all these pretty women, I have undoubtedly given you pleasure, at the same time I have gratified a little innocent curiosity of mine:—but then the chance is such a good one! We will now visit the Countess ——, for she has a very desirable apartment to let; after which we will proceed seriously to take rooms with a home-ly view.'

The Countess —— was a very lovely woman, consequently Caper was fascinated with the apartment, and told her he would reflect over it.

'Right,' said Rocjean, after they had left; 'better reflect over it than in it—as the enormous draught up chimney would in a short time compel you to.'

'How so?'

'I have a German friend who has rooms there. He tells me that a cord of firewood lasts about long enough to warm one side of him; when he turns to warm the other it is gone. He has lived there three years reflecting over this; the Countess occasionally condoles with him over the draught of that chimney.'

'H'm! Let us go to the homely: better a drawn sword than a draught.'

They found a homely landlady with neat rooms in the via Babuino, and having bargained for them for twelve scudi a month, their labors were over.

MACCARONICAL.

There was, when Caper first came to Rome, an eating-house, nearly opposite the fountain Trevi, called the Gabioni. It was underground,—in fact, a series of cellars, popularly conjectured to have been part of the catacombs. In one of these cellars, resembling with its arched roof a tunnel, the ceiling so low that you could touch the apex of the round arch with your hand, every afternoon in autumn and winter, between the hours of five and six, there assembled, by mutual consent, eight or ten artists. The table at which they sat would hold no more, and they did not want it to. Two waiters attended them, Giovanni for food, Santi for wine and cigars. The long-stemmed Roman lamps of burnished brass, the bowl that held the oil and wicks resembling the united prows of four vessels, shedding their light on the white cloth and white walls, made the old place cheerful. The white and red wine in the thin glass flasks gleamed brightly, and the food was well cooked and wholesome. Here in early winter came the sellers of 'sweet olives,' as they called them, and for two or three cents (baiocchi) you could buy a plateful. These olives were green, and, having been soaked in lime-water, the bitter taste was taken from them, and they had the flavor of almonds.

But the maccaroni was the great dish in the Gabioni; a four-cent plate of it would take the sharp edge from a fierce appetite, assisted as it was by a large one-cent roll of bread. There was the white pipe-stem and the dark ribbon (fettucia) species; and it was cooked with sauce (al sugo), with cheese, Neapolitan, Roman and Milan fashion, and—otherways. Wild boar steaks came in winter, and were cheap. Veal never being sold in Rome until the calf is a two-year-old heifer, was no longer veal, but tender beef, and was eatable. Sardines fried in oil and batter were good. Game was plenty, and very reasonable in price, except venison, which was scarce. The average cost of a substantial dinner was from thirty to forty baiocchi, and said Rocjean, 'I can live like a prince—like the Prince B——, who dines here occasionally—for half that sum.'

The first day Caper dined in the Gabioni, what with a dog-fight under the table, cats jumping upon the table, a distressed marchioness (fact) begging him for a small sum, a beautiful girl from the Trastevere, shining like a patent-leather boot, with gold ear-rings, and brooch, and necklace, and coral beads, who sat at another table with a French soldier—these and those other little piquante things, that the traveler learns to smile at and endure, worried him. But the dinner was good, his companions at table were companionable, and as he finished an extra foglietta (pint) of wine, price eight cents, with Rocjean, he concluded to give it another trial. He kept at giving it trials until the old Gabioni was closed, and from it arose the Four Nations or Quattre Nazione in Turkey Cock Alley (viccolo Gallmaccio), which, as any one knows, is near Two Murderers' Street. (Via Due Macelli)

'Now that we have finished dinner,' spoke Rocjean, 'we will smoke: then to the Caffe or Cafe Greco and have our cup of black coffee.'

AMERICA IN ROME.

It may be a good thing to have the conceit taken out of us—but not by the corkscrew of ignorance; the operation is too painful. Caper, proud of his country, and believing her in the front rank of nations, was destined to learn, while in Rome and the Papal States, that America was geographically unknown.

He consoled himself for this with the fact that geography is not taught in the 'Elementary Schools' there;—and for the people there are no others.

The following translation of a notice advertising for a schoolmaster, copied from the walls of a palace where it was posted, shows the sum total taught in the common schools:—

The duties of the Master are to teach Reading, Writing, the First Four Rules of Arithmetic; to observe the duties prescribed in the law 'Quod divina sapientia;' and to be subject to the biennial committee like other salaried officers of the department; as an equivalent for which he shall enjoy (godra) an annual salary of $60, payable in monthly shares.

(Signed)

IL GONFALONIERE —— ——.

But what can you expect when one of the rulers of the land asserted to Caper that he knew that 'pop-corn grew in America on the banks of the Nile, after the water went down,—for it never rains in America'?

It was a handsome man, an advocate for Prince Doria, who, once traveling in a vetturo with Caper, asked him why he did not go to America by land, since he knew that it was in the south of England; and gently corrected a companion of his, who told Caper he had read and thought it strange that all Americans lived in holes in the ground, by saying to him that if such houses were agreeable to the Signori Americani they had every right to inhabit them.

The landlord of a hotel in a town about thirty miles from Rome asked Caper if, when he returned to New York, he would not some morning call and see his cousin—in Peru!

This same landlord once drew his knife on a man, when, accompanied by Caper, he went to observe a saint's day in a neighboring town. The cause of the quarrel was this—the landlord, having been asked by a man who Caper was, told him he was an American. The man asserted that Americans always wore long feathers in their hair, and that he did not see any on Caper's head. The landlord, determined to stand by Caper, swore by all the saints that they were under his hat. The man disbelieved it. Out came the 'hardware' with that jarring cr-r-r-rick the blade makes when the notched knife-back catches in the spring, but Caper jumped between them, and they put off stabbing one another—until the next saint's day.

It was with pleasure that Caper, passing down the Corso one morning, saw there was an Universal Panorama, including views of America, advertised to be exhibited in the Piazza Colonna. 'Here is an opportunity,' thought he, 'for the Romans to acquire some knowledge of a land touching which they are very much at sea. The views undoubtedly will do for them what the tabooed geographies are not allowed to do—give them a little education to slow music.'

Accompanied by Rocjean, he went one evening to see it, and found it on wheels in a traveling van, drawn up at one side of the Colonna Square.

'Hawks inspected it the other evening,' said Rocjean; 'and he describes it as well worth seeing. The explainer of the Universal Panorama resembles the wandering Jew, exactly, with perhaps a difference about the change in his pockets; and the paintings, comical enough in themselves, considering that they are supposed to be serious likenesses of the places represented, are made still funnier by the explanations of the manager.'

Securing tickets from a stout, showy ticket-seller, adorned with a stunning silk dress, crushing bracelets, and an overpowering bonnet, they subduedly entered a room twenty feet long by six or eight wide, illuminated with the mellow glow of what appeared to be about thirty moons. The first things that caught their eye were several French soldiers who were acting as inspection guard over several rooms, having stacked their muskets in one corner. Their exclamations of delight or sorrow, their criticisms of the art panoramic, in short, were full of humor and trenchant fun. But 'the explanator' was before them; where he came from they could not see, for his footsteps were light as velvet, evidently having 'gums' on his feet; his milk-white hair, parted in the middle of his forehead, hung down his back for a couple of feet, while his milk-white beard, hanging equally low in front, gave him the appearance of a venerable billy goat. He was an Albino, and his eyes kept blinking like a white owl's at mid-day. He had a voice slightly tremulous, and mild as a cat's in a dairy.

'Gen-till-men, do me the playshure to gaze within this first hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool land of Sweet-sir-land. Vi-yew from the some-mut of the Riggy Cool'm. Day break-in' in the dis-tant yeast. He has a blan-kit round him, sir; for it is cold upon the moun-tin tops at break of day. [Madame, the stupen-doss irrup-tion of Ve-soov-yus is two holes from the corner.]

'Gen-till-men, do me the play-zure to gaze upon the second hole. 'Tis Flor-renz the be-yu-ti-fool, be the bangs off the flowin' Arno. 'Twas here that—'

'No matter about all that,' said Caper; 'show off America to us.' He slipped a couple of pauls into his hand, and instantly the Venerable skipped four moons.

'Gen-till-men, do me the play-zure to gaze upon this hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of Nuova Jorck in Ay-mer-i-kay, with the flour-ish-ing cities of Brook-lyn, Nuova Jer-sais, and Long Is-lad. The impo-sing struc-ture of rotund form is the Gr-rand Coun-cill Hall con-tain-ing the coun-cill chamber of the Amer-i-can nations.... [You say it is the Bat-tai-ree? It may be the Bat-tai-ree.] What is that road in Broo-klin? that is the ra'l-road to Nuova Or-lins di-rect. What is that wash-tub? "Tis not a wash-tub—'tis a stim-boat. They make the stim out of coal, which is found on the ground. Is that the Ay-mer-i-cain eagill? 'Tis not; 'tis a hoarse-fly which has in-tro-doo-ced hisself behind the glass. Are those savages in Nuova Jer-sais? (New Jersey.) Those are trees.'

'Pass on, illustrious gen-till-men, to the next hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of Filadelfia. The houses here are all built of woo-ood. The two rivaires that cir-cum-vent the city are the Lavar (Delaware?) and the Hud-soon. I do not know what is "a pum-king cart," but the car-riage which you see before you is a fi-ah engine, be-cause the city is all built of woo-ood. The tall stee-ple belongs to the kay-ker (Quaker) temple of San Cristo.'

Rocjean now gave the Venerable a paul, requesting him to dwell at length upon these scenes, as he was a Frenchman in search of a little of geography.

'Excellencies, I will do my en-dea-vors. The gran-diose ship as lies in the Lavar (Delaware) riv-aire is fool of em-i-gr-rants. The signora de-scen-din' the side of the ship is in a dreadful sit-u-a-tion tru-ly. [Per-haps the artist was in a boat and de-scri-bed the scene as he saw it.] The elephant you see de-scen-din' the street is a nay-tive of this tropi-cal re-gion, and the cock-a-toos infest the sur-round-in' air. The Moors you see along the wharves are the spon-ta-ne-ous born of the soil. Those are kay-kers (Quakers?) on mules with broad-brimmed hats onto their heads; the sticks in their hands are to beat the Moors who live on their su-gar plan-tay-tions.... Music? did you ask, Madame? We have none in this establish-ment. Kone.

'Excellencies, the next hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of Bal-ti-mory. You behold in the be-fore ground a gr-rand feast day of Amer-i-cain peas-ants; they are be-hold-ing their noble Count re-pair-ring to the chase with a serf on a white hoarse-bag (horse-back?). The little joke of the cattle is a play-fool fan-cy of the jocose artiste as did the panorama. I am un-ac-count-able for veg-garies such as them. The riv-aire in the bag-ground is the Signora-pippi'....

'The what?' asked Caper, shaking with laughter.

'A gen-till-man the other day told me that only the peasants in Americay say Missus or Mis-triss, and that the riv-aire con-se-kwen-tilly was not Missus-pippi, but, as I have had the honor of saying, the Signora-pippi rivaire. The next hole, Excel-len-cies!—'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of Vaskmenton (Washington), also on the Signora-pippi riv-aire. The white balls on the trees is cot-ton. Those are not white balls on the ground, those are ship;—ships as have woolen growin' onto their sides (sheep?). 'Tis not a white bar-racks: 'tis the Palazzo di Vaskmenton, a nobil gen-e-ral woo lives there, and was for-mer-ly king of the A-mer-i-cain nations. What does that Moor, with the white lady in his arms? it is a negro peas-sant taking his mis-triss out to air,—'tis the customs in those land.... That negress or fe-mail Moor with some childs is also airring, and, the white 'ooman tyin' up her stockings is a sportive of the artiste. He is much for the hum-or-ous.

'Excellencies, the last hole A-mer-i-cain. 'Tis the stoo-pen-doss Signora-pippi rivaire in all its mag-gnif-fi-cent booty. What is that cockatoo doing there? He is taking a fly. You do not see the fly? I mean a flight. What is that bust to flin-ders? That is a stim-boat was carryin' on too much stim, and the stim, which is made of coal, goes, off like gun-pow-dair if you put lights onto it. This is a fir-ful and awe-fool sight. The other stim-boat is not bustin', it is sailin'. What is that man behind the whil-house with the cards while another signer kicks into him on his coat-tails, I do not know. It is steel the sportifs of the artiste.'

'Excel-len-cies, the last hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool bustin'—no, not bustin', but ex-plo-sion of Vee-soov-yus. You can see the sublime sight, un-terrupt-ted be me ex-play-nations. I thank you for your attentions auri-cu-lar and pe-coo-niar-ry. Adio, until I have the play-shure of seein' you oncet more.'

'I tell you what, Rocjean,' said Caper, as he came out from the panorama, 'America has but a POOR SHOW in the Papal dominions.'

* * * * *

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

Grand with all that the young earth had of vigorous and queenly to adorn her, rich with the spoils of victories not all bought with battle-axe and sword, stately with a pride that had won its just and inalienable majesty from elastic centuries of progress and culture, History, the muse to whom fewest songs were sung, yet whose march was music's sublimest voice, trembled upon the brink of the Dark Ages, and leaped, in her armor, into the abyss of ignorance before her. A poetry the purest, an art the noblest, a religion deeply symbolical, a freedom bold and magnificent, had given to the world-histories of those early days a melody varied and faultless, a form flowing yet well-defined, an earnestness that was sacred, a truth that was divine. A philosophy rich and largely suggestive had made the great men of Greece and Rome alert, vigilant, penetrating, before luxury and oppression had dragged them down to ruin and ignorance; and at last Ambition, splendid but destructive, becoming the world's artist, blended the midnight tints of decline and suffering with the carnation of triumph and liberty, and cast over the pictures of History the Rembrandt-like shadows, heavy and wavering, that add a fearful intensity to their charms.

To these eras, once splendid and promising, succeeded a night, long, hopeless, disastrous. Its hours were counted by contentions, its darkness was deepened by crime. The sun had set upon a mighty empire, regnant upon her seven hills, glorious with conquest, drunken with power: when the day dawned upon the thousandth year of the Christian era, its crumbled arches and moss-grown walls alone testified to the truth of History that had survived the universal destruction.

And now came the age of knight and paladin, of crusades and talismans. The rough, vigorous life that had been developing at the North, exuberant with a strength not yet so mature that it could be employed in the wise and practical pursuits of civilized life, burst forth into an enthusiasm half military, half religious, that pervaded all ranks, but was 'mightiest in the mighty.' The Saxons, fair-haired, with wild blue eyes, whence looked an inflexible perseverance, the dark-browed Normans, and the men of fair Bretagne, swooped down falcon-like from their nests among the rocks and by the seas of Northern Europe upon the impetuous Saracens, and fought brave poems that were written on sacred soil with their blood. From the strife of years the heroes returned, their flowing locks whitened by years and suffering, the fair Saxon faces browned by the fervent suns of the distant East. From hardship and imprisonment they marched with gay songs amid acclamations and welcome to their homes upon the Northern shores. Their once shining armor was dimmed and rusted with their own blood; but they bore upon their 'spears the light' of a culture more refined, a knowledge more subtle, than those high latitudes had ever before known.

From this marriage of the barbaric vigor of the North with the delicate and infinitely pliable sensuousness of the South, the classic union of Strength and Desire, Chivalry was born. Leaping forth to light and power, a majestic creation, glittering in the knightly panoply, noble by its knightly vows, it stood resplendent against the dark background of the past ages, the inevitable and legitimate offspring of the times and circumstances that gave it birth. The courtly baptism was eagerly sought, its requirements rigidly obeyed. The lands bristled with the lances of their valiant sons, and Quixotic expeditions were the order of the age. But not alone with sword and spear were gallant contests decided; the gauntlet thrown at the feet of a proud foe was not always of iron. El gai saber, the gaye science, held its august courts, where princesses entered the lists and vanquished gallant troubadours with the concord of their sweet measures. Slowly, yet with resistless strength, a new social world was rising upon the splendid ruins of the old. Its principles were just, if their garb was fantastical. It began with that almost superstitious reverence for woman, which had borrowed its religion from the Teuton, its romance from the Minnesinger and the Trouveur: it will end in the honesty and freedom of a world mature for its enjoyment.

Thus, while the kingdoms of Europe were rising to a height where to oppress, to torture, to fight, were to seem their sole aim and purpose, in a hitherto obscure corner of the great theatre of modern life an unknown element was developing itself, which was in time to shake the greatest nations with its power, to inflame all Europe with jealousy and cupidity, and to dictate to empires the very terms of their existence. And this element was LABOR. The rich lowlands of the 'double-armed' Rhine teemed with a busy life, that, king-like, demanded a tribute of the sea, and wrenched from the greedy waves a treasure that its industry made priceless. Each man became a prince in his own divine right, and every occupation had its lords and its lore, its 'mysteries,' and its social rights. The seamen, merchants, and artisans of the Netherlands had made their country the richest in Europe. They ranged the seas and learned the value of the land; and while they fed the great despot of the Middle Ages, the light of intelligence, born of energy and nurtured by activity, cast its benignant gleams from the central island of the Rhine, and drove from their mountain nooks the owls and bats of tyranny and superstition. They fought first, these lords of the soil, among themselves, for local privileges, advancing in their continuous struggles upon the very threshold of the church. By strong alliances they kept at bay their feudal lords, and fettered the ecclesiastical power with the yoke of a justice, meagre, indeed, and sadly unfruitful, but still ominous of a better day. Within the alabaster vase of despotism, frail, yet old as ambition, the lamp of freedom had long burned dimly: now its flames were licking, with serpent-like tongues, the enclosure so long deemed sacred, and threatened, as they dyed the air with their amber flood of light, to shiver their temple to fragments. The theory of the divine right of kings was but another 'Luck of Edenhall.' Its slender stem trembled now within the rough grasp of the sacrilegious and burly Netherlanders, who hesitated not long ere they dashed it with the old superstition to the ground, shaking the civilized world to its centre by the shock. But out of the ruins a statelier edifice was to rise, whose windows, like those of the old legend, were stained by the lifeblood of its architect.

The historian who would worthily depict such an age, such a people, such principles, must be an artist, but one in whom the creative faculty does not blind the moral obligations. He must bring to the work a republican sympathy, must be governed by a republican justice, and wear a character as noble as the struggle that he paints. And such an artist, such a historian, such a man, we have in JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

The honors of Harvard, early and nobly earned, had given to the boy at seventeen the privileges and dignity of manhood. He was destined to become a scholar, eminent, even among the rarely and richly cultured minds of his own New England, for his universal knowledge, clearness of intellect, prompt energy, and indomitable perseverance. Inspired by these gifts and attainments, it was only natural, almost inevitable, that his first appearance upon the literary stage should have been in the role of a novelist. The active young intellect was pliant and strong, but had not yet learned its power. Before him lay the broad fields of romance, fascinating with their royal fleurs de lis, rich with the contributions of every age, some quaint and laughter-moving, some pompous and exaggerated, some soul-stirring and grand. Impelled, perhaps, less by a thirst for fame than a desire to satisfy the resistless impulses of an energetic nature, and lay those fair ghosts of enterprises dimly recognized that beckoned him onward, he followed the first path that lay before him, and became a romance writer. His first work, Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial, was published in 1839, and subsequently appeared Merry Mount, a Romance of Massachusetts. It is curious to trace in these first flights of a genius that has since learned its legitimate field, a tendency to the breadth of Motley's later efforts, an instinctive and evidently unconscious passion for the descriptive, an admirably curbed yet still powerful impatience of the light fetters, the toy regulations of the realm of Fiction, and an earnestness that has since bloomed in the world of Fact and History. The very imperfections of the novelist have become the charms of the historian. His student-life in Germany, his after-plot in the stirring Revolutionary times, strongly as they are drawn, animated as they are with dashes of that vivid power that stamps every page of the histories of their author, yet lack the proof of that unquestioned yet unobtrusive consciousness of genius that harden the telling sentences of the Rise of the Dutch Republic and the United Netherlands into blocks of adamant, polished by friction with each other to a diamond brightness, and reflecting only the noblest sentiments, the most profound principles. The dice had been thrown a second time, and Motley had not won a victory. The applause of the press was insufficient to the man, who felt that he had not yet struck the key-note of his destiny. To be counted the follower of Cooper was not the meet guerdon of an intellect to which the shapely monuments of ancient literature yielded the clue to their hieroglyphic labyrinths of knowledge, and that pierced with lightning swiftness the shell of events, and possessed the latent principles of life in their warm hearts. He returned, therefore, to Europe, leaving behind him a reputation which at no distant day was destined to spring from a new and more noble foundation into a lasting and more stately pile.

To a mind like Motley's, the department of history presented the most attractive features. There could honestly be no dabbling with the specious and seductive alchemy of Fiction. Truth had molded every period of the world's life. Truth defied had tripped up nations in their headlong race after dominion and unrighteous power. Truth victorious had smiled upon their steady growth to greatness and honor. To write history was to write poetry, art, philosophy, religion, life. The pen that sketched the rise, the progress, and the fate of nations, was in fact the chisel of a sculptor, whose theme was humanity.

And what work so fitting for the American author as the record of a nation struggling away from the oppression of feudal institutions, which stifled all growth either towards knowledge or civil greatness, throwing off the trammels of religious intolerance, defying the most powerful nation of Christendom, which had breathed an air of bigotry in its long contest with the Moors, and waging an exhaustive war of nearly a century's duration against fearful odds, only to win an independent existence? We had treasured as rare heirlooms the Mechlin laces of our grandmothers, had our favorite sets of Tournay porcelain, awaited with curious and enthusiastic patience our shares in the floral exportations of Harlem, trodden daily the carpetings of Brussels, and esteemed ourselves rich with a fragment of its tapestry, or a rifle of Namur; we had honored the vast manufacturing interest of the Netherlands, their commercial prosperity and noble enterprise; but here all thought of them had ended. Schiller had not taught us that the ancestors of the miners of Mons, the artisans of Brussels, the seamen of Antwerp, the professors of Leyden, were heroes, worthy to stand beside Leonidas and Bozzaris; Strada had failed to rouse us to enthusiasm at the thought of their long, noble battle for life. Grotius had indeed painted for us with a very Flemish nicety of detail their manners and customs, but had forgotten to round his skeleton of a nation with the passions that animated every stage of its development. It remained for Motley, with all the quick sympathies of an American heart, to rouse our affections and to command our reverence for a people so unfortunate and so brave. It was reserved for him to teach us that William of Orange was not less a martyr to the truth than Huss or Latimer.

It was no common scholar who so worthily finished this task. It was not enough that the intellectual integrity of oar historian was unquestioned, his judgment mature, his knowledge vast and comprehensive. During the years of preparation he had become thoroughly cosmopolite; all the petty prejudices of country and blood had been swept away before the advancing dignity of a reason that became daily more truly and completely the master of itself. All the thousand minute refinements of an extensive and intimate association with the commanding and courtly minds of the age fitted him to cope more successfully with the spirit of subtle intrigue, the fox-like sagacity, the wolfish rapacity, the cruel lack of diplomatic honor, and the illimitable and terrible intolerance that distinguished in so wonderful a degree the historical era of Motley's choice. He came with all the zeal of a true lover of liberty, himself republican, as earth's most cultured sons have been in every age, in thought, habit, and sentiment, to trace for the future and for us the records of a people who were willing to suffer a master, but who revolted from a tyrant; who, with a rare but unappreciated and too nice honor, strove to keep to the yoke that their forefathers had worn, only asking from their ruler the respect and consideration due the faithful servants of his crown, who were no longer the abject slaves of a monarchy, and yet, through an inveterate habit of servitude, were scarcely prepared for the independence of a republic. How nobly he has fulfilled his mission, the hearty applause of two nations sufficiently testifies.

To the wide, comprehensive vision of Motley, history appears in its true light as a science, demanding the assistance of other sciences to the due and harmonious development of all its parts. It relies not more upon the correctness of the recorder's authorities and the profoundness of his researches in the mere region of the events and mutual relation of nations, than upon his universal acquaintance with general literature and the sister arts of politics and philosophy. It was for the treacherous and elegant Bolingbroke to reduce the noble art of Thucydides from the height of sublimity and grandeur to the parlor level of the conversations of the Hotel de Rambouillet, to introduce into the most serious political disquisitions, concerning perhaps the welfare of society, an imperceptible yet carefully elaborated and most effective tone of levity that speedily proved disastrous to their object. It was be who forced the vapid but imposing ceremonial of the bon ton into the records of church and state; who clothed his empty but pompous periods with the ermine of royalty, to ensure them the reverence of a deluded multitude; who stripped Virtue of her ancient prerogatives, and fed her with the crumbs from his table. His polished diction, undeniable talent and fine acquisitions served most unhappily to disguise his real poverty of sentiment, and for a time, at least, diverted the current of popular feeling from the true, beautiful, and reliable in early literature and art, no less than in history. With what success his faulty and imperfect theories were engrafted upon the literature of his nation, the learned and sagacious Schlosser conclusively proves in his History of the Eighteenth Century. Says this ripe scholar and deep thinker, 'All that Bolingbroke ridicules as tedious and without talent, all that he laughs at as useless and without taste, all that which, urged by his labors and those of his like-minded associates, had for eighty years disappeared from ancient history, is again brought back in our day. So short is the triumph of falsehood.' Well may we pervert the verses of Horace,—

'Nullae placere diu, nec vivere historiae possunt Quae scribuntur aquae potoribus.'

That was an ungenerous fountain whence Bolingbroke drank even his chilling draughts of inspiration. Splendid, in sooth, as the great Brunnen of the luckless Abderites of Wieland, with its sea-god of marble surrounded by a stately train of nymphs, tritons, and dolphins, from whose jets the water only dripped like tears, because, says the writer, with grave naivete, 'there was scarcely enough to moisten the lips of a single nymph.' Truly the purple wine of inspiration is as necessary to the historian as to the poet; and if the laughing Bacchus that holds the beaker to the student's eager lips be not clothed in the classic robes of the senate-chamber or the flowing garments of the professor, he wears at least the fawn's dappled hide, and in his hand

'His thyrsus holds—an ivy-crowned spear.'

Does not the gentle Euripides show us the god, 'his horned head with dragon wreath entwined?' And those two sacred horns point back to the dread mysteries of the Ogdoad sublime,

'The great Cabiri of earth's dawning prime.'

They trace with lines that never swerve from truth the history of the primeval world, the early days of Noah and his ark. They recall to us the old story of life and suffering, of deluge and salvation; on their crescent points hangs the eternal principle of the efficacy of sacrifice. They float with the moon-ark of Astarte Mylitta on hyacinthine seas of night-clouds, and their high import, dimmed and lost in the great stream of Time, rises again in the ages, uncrowned with the early luxuriance of symbol and mystery. The mystic horns appear over the brow of the queenly Sappho of Grillparzer, upon whose hair

'Rested the diadem, like the pale moon Upon the brow of night, a silver crest;'

and the white-robed Madonna, with child-like face upraised, and deep, tender eyes uplifted, yet rests her slender, sandaled foot upon the horned moon, floating below her in misty clouds.

A hiatus for which we crave indulgence; a dream, and yet not all a dream, for each of these old types encloses a living truth, and unfolds into a history, tangled, perhaps, and imperfect, but suggestive and reliable, of races and religions that had else passed away into oblivion. And the earnest student of the present, or the historian of the past, can never disregard these dim old treasures, but must draw from them a fresher faith in his own humanity and in the eternal laws of God, that are unchangeable as he is immortal.

The art of history advances with the art of poetry; both, and indeed all literature, correspond aesthetically with the manners, customs, theology, and politics of the nation of their birth. The severe grandeur of Thucydides, the invariable sweetness of Xenophon, and the cheerful elegance of Herodotus, recall, with their just conceptions of harmony, their noble and sustained flow of thought, and their freedom from the adventitious ornaments of an exaggerated rhetoric or a sentimental morality, the golden age of Greece. We seem to stand within the Parthenon, to gaze upon the Venus of Cnidus, to be jostled by the gay crowd at the Olympic games. It was indeed a golden age, when all that was beautiful in nature was reverently and assiduously nurtured, and all that was noble and natural in art was magnificently encouraged; an age in which refinement and nobility were not accidents, but necessities; when politics had reached the high grade of an art, and oratory attained a beauty and power beyond which no Pitt, Canning, or Brougham has ever yet aspired; an age when the gifted Aspasia held her splendid court, and Alcibiades and Socrates were proud to sit at the Milesian's feet; when Pericles, who 'well deserved the lofty title of Olympian,' lived and ruled: the golden age when Socrates thought and taught, bearing in its bosom the guilty day when Socrates died.

Not less faithful portraitures of the influences that formed them are the histories of Livy, of Sallust, and of Tacitus. They wrote in a language that had been sublimated into electric clouds by the warm and splendid diffuseness of Cicero, and reduced to a granite-like strength by the cold and exquisite simplicity of Terence. The amiable fustian, the Falstaffian bombast of Lucan and Ovid's brilliant imagination, all stamp their indelible seal upon the vivid coloring of Livy, the somewhat affected severity of Sallust, and the elegant morality of Tacitus. The banner of the monarchy flaunts across every page of these writers. They even bear the impress of an architecture whose splendor and strength did not atone for its disregard of the old Hellenic lines and rules. They bear the same relation to Thucydides and Herodotus that a pillar of the Roman Ionic order, with its angularly turned volutes and arbitrary perpendicularity of outline, does to its graceful Greek mother, with her primitive and expressive scrolls, and the slightly convex profile of her shaft. In more modern times, a black-letter, quaint sentence of Froissart or Monstrelet is like a knight in full armor, bristling with quaint, beautiful devices, golden dragons inlaid on Milan cuirasses, golden vines on broad Venetian blades, apes on the hilts of grooved-bladed, firm stilettoes, or the illuminated margins of old metrical romances. The pages of Strada are darkened by the stormy passions of a battling age, crossed with the lurid light of Moorish tragedies; an ay de mi Alhama moans under his pride and bigotry. Torquemadas grind each sentence into dullness and inquisitorial harmlessness, yet now and then sweeps by a trace of Lope de Vega, a word that reminds us of Calderon, while still oftener the euphuism of Gongora pervades the writer's mind and flows in platitudes from his guarded pen.

As we near our own day, history is invested with new dignities; its arms float, sea-weed like, on the raging waves of political life, as if to grasp from some fragment of shipwrecked treaties or some passing argosy of government a precious jewel to light its deep researches. It takes in with nervous grasp the tendencies of literature; its keen gaze drinks in the features of popular belief and searches out the fountains of popular error. Fully equal to the requirements of the exacting age, Motley has produced a work whose lightest merit is its equal conformity to the new rules of his art. He possesses in an eminent degree the first qualification which the old Abbe de Mably, in his Maniere d'ecrire l'histoire, insists upon for the historian. He recognizes the natural rights of man, those rights which are the same in every age, and as powerful in their demands in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth. His well-balanced mind acknowledges and respects the duties of man as citizen and magistrate, and the mutual rights of nations. No splendor, no power, no prejudice, has been able to seduce him from his high principles, neither does a warm and manifest sympathy with his subject delude him even into the passing extravagance of an undue praise. If he comprehends the greatness of the national character he almost flings upon the canvas before us, he appreciates as profoundly its weaknesses too. Strada's history is a poison, which strikes at the very roots of society, and would wither all the fresh young leaves of its vigorous spring. Motley's is its powerful antidote, which restores the juices of life to the brittle fibres, smooths out the shriveled leaves, and clothes them again with the fresh green of hope and promise. Strada is the slave of the victor; Motley is the champion of the vanquished. Strada bends the dignity of Justice before the painted sceptre of Despotism; Motley exalts the honest title of the man above the will of the perjured monarch. Strada gilds with the false gold of sophistry the very chains that gall his soul; Motley sharpens on the clear crystal of his unobtrusive logic, the two-handed sword of power, and cuts his way through an army of protocols and pacts to the fortress of Liberty.