"Hush! oh, hush!" whispered the steam, who, of course, had been to sea many times before. He used to spend his leisure ashore, in a cloud, or a gutter, or a flower-pot, or a thunder storm, or anywhere else where water was needed. "That's only a little priming, as they call it. It'll happen all night, on and off. I don't say it's nice, but it's the best we can do under the circumstances."

"What difference can circumstances make? I'm here to do my work—on clean, dry steam. Blow circumstances!" the cylinder roared.

"The circumstances will attend to the blowing. I've worked on the North Atlantic run a good many times—it's going to be rough before morning."

"It isn't distressingly calm now," said the extra strong frames, they were called web frames, in the engine room. "There's an upward thrust that we don't understand, and there's a twist that is very bad for our brackets and diamond plates, and there's a sort of northwestward pull that follows the twist, which seriously annoys us. We mention this because we happened to cost a great deal of money, and we feel sure that the owner would not approve of our being treated in this frivolous way."

"I'm afraid the matter's out of the owner's hands for the present," said the steam, slipping into the condenser. "You're left to your own devices till the weather betters."

"I wouldn't mind the weather," said a flat bass voice deep below; "it's this confounded cargo that's breaking my heart. I'm the garboard strake, and I'm twice as thick as most of the others, and I ought to know something."

The garboard strake is the very bottom-most plate in the bottom of a ship, and the "Dimbula's" garboard strake (she was a flat-bottomed boat) was nearly three-quarters of an inch mild steel.

"The sea pushes me up in a way I should never have expected," the strake went on, "and the cargo pushes me down, and between the two I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"When in doubt, hold on," rumbled the steam, making head in the boilers.

"Yes, but there's only dark and cold and hurry down here, and how do I know whether the other plates are doing their duty? Those bulwark plates up above, I've heard, aren't more than five-sixteenths of an inch thick—scandalous, I call it."

"I agree with you," said a huge web frame by the main cargo hatch. He was deeper and thicker than all the others, and curved half-way across the ship's side in the shape of half an arch, to support the deck where deck beams would have been in the way of cargo coming up and down. "I work entirely unsupported, and I observe that I am the sole strength of this vessel, so far as my vision extends. The responsibility, I assure you, is enormous. I believe the money value of the cargo is over one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Think of that!"

"And every pound of it dependent on my personal exertions." Here spoke a sea-valve that communicated directly with the water outside and was seated not very far from the garboard strake. "I rejoice to think that I am a Prince-Hyde valve, with best Para rubber facings. Five patents cover me—I mention this without pride—five separate and several patents, each one finer than the other. At present I am screwed fast. Should I open, you would immediately be swamped. This is incontrovertible!"

Patent things always use the longest words they can. It is a trick they pick up from their inventors.

"That's news," said a big centrifugal bilge pump. "I had an idea that you were employed to clean decks and things with. At least, I've used you for that more than once. I forget the precise number in thousands of gallons which I am guaranteed to pump in an hour; but I assure you, my complaining friends, that there is not the least danger. I alone am capable of clearing any water that may find its way here. By my biggest delivery, we pitched then!"

The sea was getting up in workmanlike style. It was a dead westerly gale, blown from under a ragged opening of green sky, narrowed on all sides by fat gray clouds; and the wind bit like pincers, as it fretted the spray into lace-work on the heads of the waves.

"I tell you what it is," the foremast telephoned down its wire stays. "I'm up here, and I can take a dispassionate view of things. There's an organized conspiracy against us. I'm sure of it, because every single one of these waves is heading directly for our bows. The whole sea is concerned in it—and so's the wind. It's awful!"

"What's awful?" said a wave, drowning the capstan for the hundredth time.

"This organized conspiracy on your part," the capstan gurgled, taking his cue from the mast.

"Organized bubbles and spindrift! There has been a depression in the Gulf of Mexico. Excuse me!" He leaped overside; but his friends took up the tale one after another.

"Which has advanced—" That wave threw green over the funnel.

"As far as Cape Hatteras—" He drenched the bridge.

"And is now going out to sea—to sea—to sea!" He went out in three surges, making a clean sweep of a boat, which turned bottom up and sank in the darkening troughs alongside.

"That's all there is to it," seethed the broken water, roaring through the scuppers. "There's no animus in our proceedings. We're a meteorological corollary."

"Is it going to get any worse?" said the bow anchor, chained down to the deck, where he could only breathe once in five minutes.

"Not knowing, can't say. Wind may blow a bit by midnight. Thanks awfully. Good-by."

The wave that spoke so politely had travelled some distance aft, and got itself all mixed up on the deck amidships, which was a well deck sunk between high bulwarks. One of the bulwark plates, which was hung on hinges to open outward, had swung out, and passed the bulk of the water back to the sea again with a wop.

"Evidently that's what I'm made for," said the plate, shutting up again with a sputter of pride. "Oh, no, you don't, my friend!"

The top of a wave was trying to get in from outside, but the plate did not open in that direction, and the defeated water spurted back.

"Not bad for five-sixteenths of an inch," said the bulwark plate. "My work, I see, is laid down for the night;" and it began opening and shutting, as it was designed to do, with the motion of the ship.

"We are not what you might call idle," groaned all the frames together, as the "Dimbula" climbed a big wave, lay on her side at the top, and shot into the next hollow, twisting as she descended. A huge swell pushed up exactly under her middle, and her bow and stern hung free, with nothing to support them, and then one joking wave caught her up at the bow, and another at the stern, while the rest of the water fell away from under her, just to see how she would like it, and she was held up at the two ends, and the weight of the cargo and the machinery fell on the groaning iron keels and bilge stringers.

"Ease off! Ease off there!" roared the garboard strake. "I want an eighth of an inch play. D'you hear me, you young rivets!"

"Ease off! ease off!" cried the bilge stringers. "Don't hold us so tight to the frames!"

"Ease off!" grunted the deck beams, as the "Dimbula" rolled fearfully. "You've cramped our knees into the stringers and we can't move. Ease off, you flat-headed little nuisances."



Then two converging seas hit the bows, one on each side, and fell away in torrents of streaming thunder.

"Ease off!" shouted the forward collision bulkhead. "I want to crumple up, but I'm stiffened in every direction. Ease off, you dirty little forge filings. Let me breathe!"

All the hundreds of plates that are riveted on to the frames, and make the outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted to shift and creep a little, and each plate, according to its position, complained against the rivets.

"We can't help it! We can't help it!" they murmured. "We're put here to hold you, and we're going to do it. You never pull us twice in the same direction. If you'd say what you were going to do next, we'd try to meet your views."

"As far as I could feel," said the upper-deck planking, and that was four inches thick, "every single iron near me was pushing or pulling in opposite directions. Now, what's the sense of that? My friends, let us all pull together."

"Pull any way you please." roared the funnel, "so long as you don't try your experiments on me. I need fourteen wire ropes, all pulling in opposite directions, to hold me steady. Isn't that so?"

"We believe you, my boy!" whistled the funnel stays through their clenched teeth, as they twanged in the wind from the top of the funnel to the deck.

"Nonsense! We must all pull together," the decks repeated. "Pull lengthways."

"Very good," said the stringers; "then stop pushing sideways when you get wet. Be content to run gracefully fore and aft, and curve in at the ends as we do."

"No, no curves at the end. A very slight workmanlike curve from side to side, with a good grip at each knee, and little pieces welded on," said the deck beams.

"Fiddle!" said the iron pillars of the deep, dark hold. "Who ever heard of curves? Stand up straight; be a perfectly round column, and carry tons of good solid weight. Like that! There!" A big sea smashed on to the deck above, and the pillars stiffened themselves to the load.

"Straight up and down is not bad," said the frames who run that way in the sides of the ship, "but you must also expand yourself sideways. Expansion is the law of life, children. Open out! Open out!"

"Come back!" said the deck beam, savagely, as the upward heave of the sea made the frames try to open. "Come back to your bearings, you slack-jawed irons!"

"Rigidity! Rigidity! Rigidity!" thumped the engines. "Absolute, unvarying rigidity—rigidity!"

"You see!" whined the rivets in chorus. "No two of you will ever pull alike, and—and you blame it all on us. We only know how to go through a plate and bite down on both sides so that it can't and mustn't and sha'n't move."

"I've got one-sixteenth of an inch play at any rate," said the garboard strake triumphantly; and so he had, and all the bottom of the ship felt a good deal easier for it.

"Then we're no good," sobbed the bottom rivets. "We were ordered—we were ordered—never to give, and we've given, and the sea will come in, and we'll all go to the bottom together! First we're blamed for everything unpleasant, and now we haven't the consolation of having done our work."

"Don't say I told you," whispered the steam consolingly; "but, between you and me and the cloud I last came from, it was bound to happen sooner or later. You had to give a fraction, and you've given without knowing it. Now hold on, as before."

"What's the use?" a few hundred rivets chattered. "We've given—we've given; and the sooner we confess that we can't keep the ship together and go off our little heads, the easier it will be. No rivet forged could stand this strain."

"No one rivet was ever meant to. Share it among you," the steam answered.

"The others can have my share. I'm going to pull out," said a rivet in one of the forward plates.

"If you go, others will follow," hissed the steam. "There's nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets going. Why, I knew a little chap like you—he was an eighth of an inch fatter, though—on a steamer—to be sure, she was only twelve tons, now I come to think of it—in exactly the same place as you are. He pulled out in a bit of a bobble of a sea, not half as bad as this, and he started all his friends on the same butt-strap, and the plate opened like a furnace door, and I had to climb into the nearest fog bank while the boat went down."

"Now that's peculiarly disgraceful," said the rivet. "Fatter than me, was he, and in a steamer not half our tonnage? Reedy little peg! I blush for the family, sir." He settled himself more firmly than ever in his place, and the steam chuckled.

"You see," he went on quite gravely, "a rivet, and especially a rivet in your position, is really the one indispensable part of the ship." The steam did not say that he had whispered the very same thing to every single piece of iron aboard. There is no sense in telling too much.

And all that while the little "Dimbula" pitched and chopped and swung and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as though she had been stung, and threw her nose round and round in circles half a dozen times as she dipped, for the gale was at its worst. It was inky black, in spite of the tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top everything, the rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could not see your hand before your face. This did not make much difference to the iron-work below, but it troubled the foremast a good deal.

"Now it's all finished," he said, dismally. "The conspiracy is too strong for us. There is nothing left but to—"

"Hurraar! Brrrraaah! Brrrrrrp!" roared the steam through the foghorn, till the decks quivered. "Don't be frightened below. It's only me, just throwing out a few words in case any one happens to be rolling round to-night,"

"You don't mean to say there's any one except us on the sea in such weather?" said the funnel, in a husky snuffle.

"Scores of 'em," said the steam, clearing its throat. "Rrrrrraaa! Brraaaaa! Prrrrp! It's a trifle windy up here; and, great boilers, how it rains!"

"We're drowning," said the scuppers. They had been doing nothing else all night, but this steady thresh of rain above them seemed to be the end of the world.

"That's all right. We'll be easier in an hour or two. First the wind and then the rain; soon you may make sail again! Grrraaaaah! Drrrraaaa! Drrrrrp! I have a notion that the sea is going down already. If it does you'll learn something about rolling. We've only pitched till now. By the way, aren't you chaps in the hold a little easier than you were?"

There was just as much groaning and straining as ever, but it was not so loud or squeaky in tone; and when the ship quivered she did not jar stiffly, like a poker hit on the floor, but gave a supple little waggle, like a perfectly balanced golf club.

"We have made a most amazing discovery," said the stringers, one after another; "a discovery that entirely changes the situation. We have found, for the first time in the history of shipbuilding, that the inward pull of the deck beams and the outward thrust of the frames locks us, as it were, more closely in our places, and enables us to endure a strain which is entirely without parallel in the records of marine architecture."

The steam turned a laugh quickly into a roar up the foghorn. "What massive intellects you great stringers have!" he said, softly, when he had finished.

"We, also," began the deck beams, "are discoverers and geniuses. We are of opinion that the support of the hold-pillars materially helps us. We find that we lock upon them when we are subjected to a heavy and singular weight of sea above."

Here the "Dimbula" shot down a hollow, lying almost on her side, and righting at the bottom with a wrench and a spasm.

"In these cases—are you aware of this, steam?—the plating at the bows, and particularly at the stern,—we would also mention the floors beneath us,—helps us to resist any tendency to spring." It was the frames who were speaking in the solemn and awed voice which people use when they have just come across something entirely new for the very first time.

"I'm only a poor, puffy little flutterer," said the steam, "but I have to stand a good deal of pressure in my business. It's all tremendously interesting. Tell us some more. You fellows are so strong."

"You'll see," said the bow plates proudly. "Ready behind there! Here's the father and mother of waves coming! Sit tight, rivets all!" The great sluicing comber thundered by, but through all the scuffle and confusion the steam could hear the low, quick cries of the iron-work as the various strains took them—cries like these: "Easy now, easy! Now push for all your strength! Hold out! Give a fraction! Hold up! Pull in! Shove crossways! Mind the strain at the ends! Grip now! Bite tight! Let the water get away from under, and there she goes."

The wave raced off into the darkness shouting, "Not bad that, if it's your first run!" and the drenched and ducked ship throbbed to the beat of the engines inside her. All three cylinders were wet and white with the salt spray that had come down through the engine-room hatch; there was white salt on the canvas-bound steam pipes, and even the bright work below was speckled and soiled; but the cylinders had learned to make the most of steam that was half water, and were pounding along cheerfully.

"How's the noblest outcome of human ingenuity hitting it?" said the steam, as he whirled through the engine room.

"Nothing for nothing in the world of woe," the cylinders answered, as if they had been working for centuries, "and precious little for seventy-five pounds head. We've made two knots this last hour and a quarter! Rather humiliating for eight hundred horse-power, isn't it?"

"Well, it's better than drifting astern, at any rate. You seem rather less—how shall I put it?—stiff in the back than you were."

"If you'd been hammered as we've been this night, you wouldn't be stiff—ffreff—ff—either. Theoreti—retti—retti—cally, of course, rigidity is the thing. Purr—purr—practically, there has to be a little give and take. We found that out by working on our sides for five minutes at a stretch—chch—chh. How's the weather?"

"Sea's going down fast," said the steam.

"Good business," said the high-pressure cylinder. "Whack her up along, boys. They've given us five pounds more steam;" and he began humming the first bars of "Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah," which, as you must have noticed, is a pet tune among engines not made for high speed. Racing liners with twin screws sing "The Turkish Patrol" and the overture to the "Bronze Horse" and "Madame Angot," till something goes wrong, and then they give Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette" with variations.

"You'll learn a song of your own some fine day," said the steam, as he flew up the foghorn for one last bellow.

Next day the sky cleared and the sea dropped a little, and the "Dimbula" began to roll from side to side till every inch of iron in her was sick and giddy. But, luckily, they did not all feel ill at the same time; otherwise she would have opened out like a wet paper box. The steam whistled warnings as he went about his business, for it is in this short, quick roll and tumble that follows a heavy sea that most of the accidents happen; because then everything thinks that the worst is over and goes off guard. So he orated and chattered till the beams and frames and floors and stringers and things had learned how to lock down and lock up on one another, and endure this new kind of strain.

They had ample time, for they were sixteen days at sea, and it was foul weather till within a hundred miles of New York. The "Dimbula" picked up her pilot, and came in covered with salt and red rust. Her funnel was dirty gray from top to bottom; two boats had been carried away; three copper ventilators looked like hats after a fight with the police; the bridge had a dimple in the middle of it; the house that covered the steam steering-gear was split as with hatchets; there was a bill for small repairs in the engine room almost as long as the screw-shaft; the forward cargo hatch fell into bucket staves when they raised the iron crossbars; and the steam capstan had been badly wrenched on its bed. Altogether, as the skipper said, it was "a pretty general average."

"But she's soupled," he said to Mr. Buchanan. "For all her dead weight, she rode like a yacht. Ye mind that last blow off the Banks? I was proud of her."

"It's vara good," said the chief engineer, looking along the dishevelled decks. "Now, a man judging superficially would say we were a wreck, but we know otherwise—by experience."

Naturally, everything in the "Dimbula" stiffened with pride, and the foremast and the forward collision bulkhead, who are pushing creatures, begged the steam to warn the port of New York of their arrival. "Tell those big boats all about us," they said. "They seem to take us quite as a matter of course."

It was a glorious, clear, dead calm morning, and in single file, with less than half a mile between each, their bands playing, and their tugboats shouting and waving handkerchiefs beneath, were the "Majestic," the "Paris," the "Touraine," the "Servia," the "Kaiser Wilhelm II." and the "Werkendam," all statelily going out to sea. As the "Dimbula" shifted her helm to give the great boats clear way, the steam (who knows far too much to mind making an exhibition of himself now and then) shouted:

"Oyez! oyez! oyez! Princes, Dukes, and Barons of the High Seas! Know ye by these presents we are the 'Dimbula,' fifteen days nine hours out from Liverpool, having crossed the Atlantic with four thousand ton of cargo for the first time in our career. We have not foundered! We are here! Eer! eer! We are not disabled. But we have had a time wholly unparalleled in the annals of shipbuilding. Our decks were swept. We pitched, we rolled! We thought we were going to die! Hi! hi! But we didn't! We wish to give notice that we have come to New York all the way across the Atlantic, through the worst weather in the world; and we are the 'Dimbula.' We are—arr—ha—ha—ha-r-r!"

The beautiful line of boats swept by as steadily as the procession of the seasons. The "Dimbula" heard the "Majestic" say "Humph!" and the "Paris" grunted "How!" and the "Touraine" said "Oui!" with a little coquettish flicker of steam; and the "Servia" said "Haw!" and the "Kaiser" and the "Werkendam" said "Hoch!" Dutch fashion—and that was absolutely all.

"I did my best," said the steam, gravely, "but I don't think they were much impressed with us, somehow. Do you?"

"It's simply disgusting," said the bow-plates. "They might have seen what we've been through. There isn't a ship on the sea that has suffered as we have—is there now?"

"Well, I wouldn't go so far as that," said the steam, "because I've worked on some of those boats, and put them through weather quite as bad as we've had in six days; and some of them are a little over ten thousand tons, I believe. Now, I've seen the 'Majestic,' for instance, ducked from her bows to her funnel, and I've helped the 'Arizona,' I think she was, to back off an iceberg she met with one dark night; and I had to run out of the 'Paris's' engine room one day because there was thirty foot of water in it. Of course, I don't deny—" The steam shut off suddenly as a tugboat, loaded with a political club and a brass band that had been to see a senator off to Europe, crossed the bows, going to Hoboken. There was a long silence, that reached without a break from the cut-water to the propeller blades of the "Dimbula."

Then one big voice said slowly and thickly, as though the owner had just waked up: "It's my conviction that I have made a fool of myself."

The steam knew what had happened at once; for when a ship finds herself, all the talking of the separate pieces ceases and melts into one deep voice, which is the soul of the ship.

"Who are you?" he said, with a laugh.

"I am the 'Dimbula,' of course. I've never been anything else except that—and a fool."

The tugboat, which was doing its very best to be run down, got away just in time, and its band was playing clashily and brassily a popular but impolite air:

In the days of old Rameses—are you on? In the days of old Rameses—are you on? In the days of old Rameses, That story had paresis— Are you on—are you on—are you on?

"Well, I'm glad you've found yourself," said the steam. "To tell the truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs of stringers. Here's quarantine. After that we'll go to our wharf and clean up a little, and next month we'll do it all over again."



A CENTURY OF PAINTING.

NOTES DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL.—GOYA AND HIS CAREER.—FOUR ENGLISH PAINTERS OF FAMILIAR LIFE.—GERICAULT, INGRES, AND DELACROIX.

BY WILL H. LOW.

Looking backward to the first quarter of this century, it is hardly too sweeping an assertion to say that, with a single exception, there was little that was important in the way of painting outside of France and England. There were local reputations in all the other countries, practitioners of the art who joined to a respectable proficiency in painting an adhesion to the traditions which had been handed down to them. These men, in their time and place, were notable; and in the museums of their respective countries their works remain of chronological interest to students of painting. But to the larger public which these papers address, they are of little importance, having exercised but slight influence on contemporaneous art.

The exception already noted was in Spain, and there only in the case of a single painter. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, "Pintor Espanol," as he delighted to call himself, would be, indeed has been, a fascinating subject for picturesque biography. Charles Yriarte, the well-known French art critic, has given the world a most interesting and complete story of Goya's life, which, though it is only separated from our own day by a span of seventy years, chronicles the exploits of one who in the history of art must hark back to Benvenuto Cellini in the sixteenth century to find his parallel.

Goya was born March 31, 1746, at Fuente de Todos, in the province of Aragon. The son of a small farmer, he was placed when very young in the local Academy of Fine Arts at Saragossa, where he received instruction from Bayen and Luzan, painters little known outside of Spain. The swashbuckler instincts which were to govern him through life manifested themselves here, where in a street brawl he laid low three of his adversaries. He found it prudent to evade both justice and the vengeance which followed swift and sure in those days in Spain, by flying to Madrid. Soon after his arrival in the capital, however, in continuation of his old mode of life, he was picked up for dead in one of the low quarters of the town. Surviving the poignard, but again threatened with arrest, he joined a quadrilla of bull-fighters, in whose company he went from town to town, giving exhibitions of his prowess in the national sport.



With all this, painting must have been somewhat of an interlude; but Goya had early shown signs of great talent, and before he left Saragossa, his master, Josepha Bayen, had confidence enough in his future to entrust the happiness of his daughter to his care by permitting his marriage to her. Goya's biographer notes that through all the various adventures of his career he had the utmost care for the material comfort of this lady. Her character must impress us to-day as charitable to excess; for, shortly after the bull-fighting episode, Goya found himself in Rome, where his next exploit was the abduction, from a convent, of a noble Roman girl. With the police once more on his track, he sought refuge at the Spanish Embassy, whence he was despatched home in disguise, probably to the relief of his country's representative in Rome. Before this adventure, which was only one of many which the charitable wife had to pardon, he had attracted the attention of David, who was then in Italy, and who, as his art differed in every way from that of Goya, must have been strongly impressed by his work to give it his approval.



On arriving home Goya was given employment in designing a series of tapestries for the royal palace; and from 1780, when he was made a member of the Spanish Royal Academy, ensues the period of his greatest artistic activity. Carrying into his art the same excess of temperament which marked his life, his execution was rapid and decisive. Rebellious to the ordinary means employed by painters, he used various mediums, some of which have ill withstood the ravages of time; and, disdaining brushes, he often employed sponges or bits of rag in their place. In the case of one of his pictures, a revolt of the Madrilenians against the French, it is said that he employed a spoon.

In 1799 Goya was made painter to the king, Charles III., whose successor, the fourth of his name, continued his favor. The time, which was that of the notorious "Prince of Peace," Godoy, was favorable for a character like that of Goya, whose eccentricities were looked upon with an indulgent eye by a court which must have felt that its function was hardly that of moral censor. At least Goya, the intimate of Maria Louisa and the court circle, by no means abandoned his friends the bull-fighters and tavern-keepers. Fresh from an altar-piece for a cathedral, or a royal portrait, his ready brush found employment in rapidly painting a street scene, or even a sign for a wine-shop. A whitewashed wall for canvas and mud from the gutter for pigment, were the means employed to embody a patriotic theme at the entrance of the French soldiers into Madrid—a popular masterpiece executed to the plaudits of the crowd.

All this would seem to denote a charlatan; yet withal, Goya has fairly won his place amid the great painters of the world. Perhaps no better example could be found of the essential difference between the outward and visible actions of a man and the inward and spiritual grace of an artist than in this instance; and the Latin standpoint, always more intellectually liberal than our own Anglo-Saxon appreciation of the same problem furnishes the reason why Goya was left free to pursue his artistic career instead of languishing in prison. His illogical brush filled the cathedrals of Saragossa, Seville, Toledo, and Valencia with masterly frescoes, while with the etching needle he produced many plates. Some of these, like the "Caprices," a series of eighty etchings, are filled with imagination alternately tragical and grotesque; while another series, representing bull-fights, throughout its thirty-three plates depicts the incidents of the game with intense realism. The "Disasters of War," another series of eighty, were inspired by the French invasion; and never, perhaps, were the cruelties of war more strenuously realized in art than in these. Probably these etchings, executed, like all his works, by methods peculiar to himself, constitute his best title to remembrance. But his painting, replete though it be with the defects of his qualities, stands as a precursor of the great coloristic school of which Delacroix was the head and front. This is notably to be felt in his portraits, and in some of the rapidly executed single figures of which the Louvre has a specimen and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, another—the latter, "A Jewess of Tangiers."



Before leaving Goya for men whose works are their only history, a characteristic incident, which caused his flight from Spain to Bordeaux in France, must be told. In 1814 Wellington was in Madrid and sat for his portrait to Goya. After the first sitting, the soldier presumed to criticise the work; whereat Goya, seizing a cutlass, attacked him, causing the future hero of Waterloo to flee for his life from the maniacal fury of the painter. It is said that, later, peace was made between the two men, and that the portrait was achieved; but for the moment Goya found safety in France, together with his long-suffering wife, who had incidentally borne him twenty children. At the green old age of eighty-two Goya died at Bordeaux, April 16, 1828.

[Illustration: ST. JUSTINA AND ST. RUFINA. FROM A PAINTING BY GOYA IN THE CATHEDRAL AT SEVILLE.

These are the patron saints of Seville. The legend has it that they were the daughters of a potter and followed their father's trade, giving away in charity, however, all that they earned more than was sufficient to supply their simple wants. At the time of a festival to Venus, they were requested to supply the vessels to be used in her worship, and on their refusing, they were dragged before the prefect, who condemned them to death, July 19, A.D. 304. They are generally represented with earthen vessels and the palms of martyrdom; in this case, the broken statue of Venus lies in the foreground. The Giralda tower, the chief ornament of Seville, and the prototype of the Madison Square tower in New York City, is their especial care, and it is believed that its preservation from lightning is due to them.]

No greater contrast could be devised than the four works which follow, either in the character of the art or in the uneventful respectability of the painters' lives. They are all typical of a class of pictures which has been popular in England, from the time of Hogarth to the present day. The earliest of them is the "Blind Fiddler" of Sir David Wilkie, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1807. The dates at which the others, by Mulready, Webster, and Leslie, were painted would preclude their appearance here, if strict chronological sequence were imposed, as they were painted about 1840. It is instructive, however, to group them together, to show that these artists and their followers, who were legion, thought at least as much of subject as of method. Not that the latter quality is lacking. On the contrary, it is only too evident; but it is a method of convention. No one would imagine for a moment, in looking at any one of these pictures, that he was admitted an unseen spectator to some scene of intimate family life. It is this quality which the great Dutchmen in all their scenes of familiar life preserved; and when we look at a Pieter de Hooge, for instance, there is no suspicion that the homely scene has been arranged for our delectation. In its transplantation from Holland, however, English art lost just this quality.

David Wilkie, born in Scotland, at Cults in Fifeshire, November 18, 1785, came to London in 1805 to enter the Royal Academy schools, after some preliminary training at Edinburgh. His first picture, in the exhibition of 1806, "The Village Politicians," attracted attention, and was followed the next year by "The Blind Fiddler." The work of a youth of twenty-two, it is remarkable for its close observation of character and the skilful use made of what may be termed the theatrical faculty of grouping the personages so that their action tells the story. This is not a merit, and there is little doubt that the scene would be greater as art were it more consistently human. Character is well and pictorially rendered; but by its insistence in every figure, we feel that it is but a moment since the curtain was withdrawn and the tableau vivant shown. This and the pictures following it met with the most unbounded popular approval, were reproduced by engraving, and exercised an influence increased by the honors and fortune which were showered on the painter.

In 1825 Wilkie made an extended continental tour, and three years later, after his return to England, changed his class of subjects for historical and portrait painting, bringing to these later themes the same ability and the same lack of naivete which characterized his former work. A Royal Academician since 1811, he was appointed first painter in ordinary to the king, on the death of Lawrence, in 1830. He was knighted in 1836, and died at sea on June 1, 1841, while returning from Egypt.



[Illustration: CHOOSING THE WEDDING GOWN. FROM A PAINTING BY WILLIAM MULREADY IN THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM, LONDON.

To the title of this picture, the painter himself added, as expository of his theme and the source of his inspiration, the following passage from Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield": "I had scarcely taken orders a year, before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but for such qualities as would wear well." The picture thus affords a good instance of the dependence on literature of the painters of Mulready's school. Its title alone would suffice, so well and simply is the story told; but, apparently, with the British public, and in the painter's mind, it gained an added grace by diverting the visual impression of the observer to the realm of literature. The picture is here reproduced from a copyrighted photograph by Frederick Hollyer, Kensington.]

William Mulready was of Irish birth, having come into the world at Ennis, in the County Clare, April 1, 1786. In 1809, after a period in the schools of the Royal Academy, he exhibited there a picture entitled "Fair Time," which gave him almost instant success; and until his death, July 7, 1863, though producing fewer pictures than Wilkie, he worked on very much the same class of subjects. His color is less agreeable than that of the Scot, and his execution very much more labored. His life was uneventful, occupied exclusively with his work, which he loved; so much so that two days before his death, an old man of seventy-seven, he sat drawing in the evening life class at the Royal Academy. He had been a member of the Academy since 1816. The picture here reproduced is (even without the quotation from the "Vicar of Wakefield" which accompanies it in the catalogue of the South Kensington Museum) a simple story simply told. It is free from the mannerisms which mar much of Mulready's work, especially in the portrayal of children, and in the original is more agreeable in color than are many of his pictures.



Thomas Webster, born March 20, 1800, in London, and dying at Cranbrook in Kent, September, 1886, was another painter whose work had enjoyed the full meed of popularity, from 1825 to the time of his retirement from the Royal Academy in 1877. Pictures like the one here reproduced (from the original in the South Kensington Museum, painted in 1843, and entitled "Contrary Winds"), pictures depicting homely rustic life, were his specialty. His work had gained him the title of Royal Academician in 1846.

Through all this time, and in the work of many painters unnoticed here, the qualities are evident of an honest endeavor to paint the simple life of the country. With a higher standard of taste, and better preliminary instruction, painting would have gained; and the defect with which British art has been so often reproached, of being too literary, might have been lessened. Charles Robert Leslie, whose works are almost uniformly inspired by literature, was born at Clerkenwell in England, of American parents, October 19, 1794. He was taken to Philadelphia when five years of age, but returned to England in 1811, to study at the Royal Academy. Washington Allston and Benjamin West, both Americans—the latter at the time President of the Royal Academy—aided Leslie by advice.

After a preliminary stage as a portrait painter, Leslie exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819 a picture of "Sir Roger de Coverley Going to Church," the first of a long series of pictures dependent on books for their subjects. In 1825 he painted "Sancho Panza and the Duchess," which procured him his election as an Academician the following year. The picture here reproduced is a repetition, with some slight changes, of the same subject, but was painted in 1844. Leslie may be said to have originated this style of subject in England, where he has had many followers; and, given the requisite knowledge of literature, his pictures tell their story with directness and humor. In painting, his work is rather hard; but in grace and style of drawing he was much superior to his contemporaries. Among his pictures are many suggested by Shakespeare, which have been popularized by engraving.



Leslie returned to this country in 1833 to accept the professorship of drawing at the West Point Military Academy, but remained only a few months. After returning to London, he enjoyed a successful career until his death, May 5, 1859. He was one of the first and most consistent admirers of Constable's work, and wrote his life. He also published lectures on painting, delivered at the Royal Academy, where he had been appointed lecturer in 1848.

The consideration of the two men whose portraits face each other here, and who stood thus opposed, during their lives, as the leaders of all that constituted art in their time and country, takes us back to France. Frequent returns of this character will be necessary in the course of these papers; for, without undue prejudice in favor of the French, it must be said that they alone have through the century maintained a consistent attitude in regard to art. Other countries have from time to time encouraged painting, with as frequent lapses of interest or lack of men who could legitimately inspire interest. Although transplanted bodily from Italy to France, in the time of Francis the First, art had taken so firm a root by the commencement of this century that, as we have seen, it grew and flourished though watered by the red blood of revolution. As a national institution, following the prescribed rules of the Academy, it has, of course, met with frequent assaults at the hands of men for whom prescribed academic law was as naught in comparison with the higher law of genius. In 1819 such a man appeared, with a picture which violated the unwritten law formulated by David: "Look in your Plutarch and paint!"

[Illustration: THE RAFT OF THE "MEDUSA." FROM A PAINTING BY GERICAULT IN THE LOUVRE.

The frigate "Medusa," accompanied by three other vessels, left France June 17, 1816, heading for Saint-Louis (Senegal), with the governor and principal officers of the colony as passengers. On July 2 the vessel stranded on a reef, and after five days of ineffectual effort to float her, was abandoned. A raft was constructed and one hundred and forty-nine men embarked on it, the remainder of the crew and passengers, four hundred all told, taking to the boats. For twelve days, the raft floated at the will of the waves and winds; then it was sighted by one of the convoys, the brig Argus. Only fifteen men survived. The picture represents the moment of their deliverance.]

Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault, born at Rouen, September 26, 1791, came to Paris in 1808, and entered the studio of Guerin, where his method of painting displeased his master to such a degree that he advised him to abandon the study of art. Guerin had thoroughly imbibed the defects of the David method; and the spectacle of a youth who obstinately persisted in trying to paint the model as he really appeared, instead of making a pink imitation of antique sculpture, seemed to him to be of little promise.

Gericault, however, persisted; and with the exception of about a year, when the halo of military glory seduced him from his work, he worked so well and earnestly that, after two years' sojourn in Italy, he returned to Paris, a few weeks before the Salon of 1819, equipped with the knowledge of a master.

Taking a canvas about fifteen feet high by twenty in length, using the green-room of a theatre for a studio, he set to work. Disdaining the prevailing taste for mythology and classic themes, he took from the journals of the time the moving recital of the sufferings of the crew of the frigate "Medusa," abandoned on a raft in mid-ocean. Choosing the moment when the fifteen survivors of the hundred and forty-nine men who had embarked on the raft sighted the sail in the offing which meant their deliverance, he worked with an energy and fire which have remained remarkable in the annals of art. Certain of the figures, all of which are more than life size, were painted in a day, and when the Salon of 1819 opened, the picture was finished.



Seen as it is to-day in the Louvre, blackened by time and the neglect from which it suffered for six or seven years before it was placed there, it remains one of the capital pages in the history of modern art. The effect on the younger generation who saw it fresh from the hand of the master, accustomed as they were to the lifeless effigies of the classic school, was puzzling, and none but the most revolutionary dared approve of it. With the older painters there was a similar distrust of the impression which it caused. Yet David—an artistic kernel encased in an academic husk—admired it; and so did a swarthy youth who was soon to make his mark and who was a friend and former comrade of Gericault in the atelier Guerin—Eugene Delacroix.



Gericault received a recompense of the fourth class, and, disgusted with his lot, took the immense canvas to London, where it was exhibited with success. During his sojourn in England he executed a number of pictures in oil and water color, and many lithographs, which are to-day eagerly sought by collectors. Returning to France full of projects for work, his health began to give way, and on the 18th of January, 1824, he died. The influence which he exercised had, however, borne its fruits. Already in the Salon of 1822 Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix, born at Charenton, near Paris, April 26, 1799, had shown his "Dante and Virgil."

Before considering Delacroix, however, it is best to return to the earlier years of the century, and give J. Dominique Auguste Ingres, whose stern face confronts Delacroix's portrait, the precedence to which his age entitles him.

"Monsieur" Ingres, as the iconoclastic leaders of the romantic school called him in mock deference, was born at Montauban, August 29, 1780. His life was fortunate, and his history, which is chiefly that of his works, can be told in few words. A pupil of David, he received the Prix de Rome in 1801. He remained in Rome much longer than the allotted four years to which his prize entitled him, and returned there often during his life as to the source of all art. By portraiture and the constant patronage of the government, the material conditions of his life, which was of a simple character, befitting a man who viewed his mission as that of an apostle preaching the doctrine of pure classicism, were made easy; and the official titles of Member of the Institute, Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, and Senator of the Empire all came to him with the lapse of years.

More royalist than the king, and the last of David's disciples, Ingres pursued throughout his life the even tenor of a man convinced that the source of all inspiration in art was Greek sculpture as amplified, transmuted, and translated to the realm of painting by Raphael. Painting in his hands became almost purely a matter of form. The element of color was virtually ignored, and form, chastened in contour and modelling, became through the magic of his genius the almost sufficient quality. The qualification is necessary. For though too great a man to lose, as too many of his master's pupils did, the grasp on nature; and while, therefore, his works, seen as they are through the glamour of the antique, never lack an intimate relation to existing life, it is impossible to resist the feeling before them that it is life beautified, of exquisite yet virile choice, but of life arrested. The reproach of his opponents of the romantic school that he was an "embalmer" has a foundation of truth.



[Illustration: THE SEIZURE OF CONSTANTINOPLE BY THE CRUSADERS. FROM A PAINTING BY EUGENE DELACROIX.

In 1203, through political intrigue, a French army, raised to take part in the fourth crusade for the rescue of Jerusalem from the Mohammedans, joined with a Venetian army in an attack on Constantinople, then a Christian city, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. The city fell, but later was recovered. Then, on April 12, 1204, the invaders secured it again, and subjected it to a despoilment without parallel. Delacroix's picture portrays a scene in this despoilment. One of the invading barons, attended by his escort, rides on to a terrace, and the citizens fall before him, praying his mercy. Behind lies the Bosphorous, and beyond it are the shores of Asia.]

For all this, it is hardly superlative to say that, since art began, no man has ever felt the exquisite and subtle harmony of line to the same degree as Ingres. Naturally the best examples of this, his greatest quality, are to be found in his rendering of the nude human form; and from the "Oedipus and the Sphinx," of 1808, to "La Source," of 1856, both of which are now in the Louvre, he returned again and again to its study, producing each time a masterpiece. His portraits, again, are most masterly, occasionally rising through sheer force of rendering each characteristic trait of his model (as in the portrait of M. Bertin, the editor of the "Debats"), to the extreme exactitude of Holbein, coupled with an allure so thoroughly modern that the whole epoch of Louis Philippe lives before us. In the slighter drawings of his earlier years in Rome, one of which is reproduced here, only the most typical details are chosen, and these are indicated with a delicacy of touch, a sureness of hand, that not only indicates the master, but lends a distinctive charm of truthful delicacy of which none but Ingres has known the secret. It is in such works that his influence will be felt the longest; for, as with his master, the great pictures in which he exemplified his principles remain cold and uninteresting. The "Homer Deified," reproduced here, was originally intended as a ceiling for the Louvre, and from a decorative point of view would excite a pitying smile from Veronese or Tiepolo. Taken bit by bit, as a beautiful exhibition of supreme knowledge, of the evasive quality of style in drawing, it is, however, admirable, and as a whole it has the merits of grave, balanced composition. It was the spirit of work like this which the master sought to force upon his epoch, rather than that of his portraits or of pictures like the "Source;" and the austerity of these principles met with more submission in the earlier years of the century than when later Gericault had shown the path in which the audacious Delacroix threw himself at the head of a band of romantic followers.



I have used the term audacious in speaking of Delacroix, and circumstances forced him to justify the epithet. Yet to a student of his work, and still more of his character as revealed in his writings (his recently published letters and the few articles published during his life in the "Revue des Deux-Mondes"), he would appear to have been by nature prepared to receive the full academic tradition, and only because of what appeared a violation of the tradition as he understood it, to have arrayed himself in violent opposition: a situation which rendered him in work and in life contradictory to his natural instinct. It is the old story of the defect of system. Even the most cunningly devised cannot make a place for all the many manifestations of temperamental activity. Like Gericault, a pupil of Guerin, Delacroix found in his master and in the general spirit of the school an insistence on the letter of the classic law to which his richly endowed nature could not bend, and was thus forced to rebel; whereas a more elastic application of received principles would have found him an enthusiastic adherent. In this way he missed acquiring the technical mastery over form, which proved a stumbling block to him through life. At times his drawing is possessed of a vigor and life which even Ingres never had; at others his work is almost lamentable in its lack of constructive form. In respect to color in its finest, most harmonic qualities, he is the greatest of French painters; and at all times he is master of an intense dramatic force. It was with a masterpiece—"Dante and Virgil"—that he made his first appearance at the Salon in 1822. At a bound he found himself famous. Guerin, who had counselled him against sending his picture to the Salon, grudgingly acknowledged that he was wrong. Gros told him that it was like Rubens, with more correctness of form—Rubens "chastened" was the word. The government bought the picture, paying the artist two hundred and forty dollars—twelve hundred francs—for it.

The same year Delacroix submissively made his final attempt for the Prix de Rome, but came out sixtieth in the competition. Thenceforward he was to be constantly before the public, constantly opposed, misunderstood, criticised; but nevertheless, with all the energy which shows in his portrait, constantly in the front. When his defenders had sufficient influence to force the hand of the ministry of fine arts, he was commissioned to paint for the state; and to this we owe the decorations in the gallery of Apollon in the Louvre, the decorations in the church of St. Sulpice, and others. When he received the order for the entrance of the Crusaders to Constantinople for the Gallery of Battles at Versailles, the good King Louis Philippe sent him word to make it as little like his usual style as possible!

Among Delacroix's critics Ingres, with all the force of his convictions, was the foremost. He to whom a sky had always served as a simple background was not created to understand the almost purple canopy of azure stretching far above the heads of the Crusaders; nor to find barbaric delight in the rich trappings of horses and men, since to him a drapery was simply a textureless covering adjusted to accentuate the form beneath. Delacroix, whose intelligence was of a higher order and who said of himself that he was "more rebellious than revolutionary," treated Ingres when they met on official occasions, as at the meetings of the Institute (where finally Delacroix had penetrated), with a high and distant courtesy which his sturdy adversary, strong in his pious devotion to classicism, hardly returned. Delacroix had by far the most brilliant following, reinforced as it was by the landscape painters, who from 1830 onwards gave to this century its most notable school of painting. Added to this was a fair measure of appreciation on the part of collectors.

Delacroix's genius found expression in many small pictures, all of them characterized by a gem-like coloration (which is more than mere color, however, for in it lies the secret of a powerful and direct expression of sentiment) and by a vivid realization of movement. Proud by nature, delicate in health, his life was far from happy; he never ceased to feel the sting of adverse criticism. "For more than thirty years I have been given over to the wild beasts," he said once. He had warm friends, who have left many records of his sweetness of disposition when the outer barrier of haughty reserve was broken through; but they were few in number. He never married; painting, he said, was his only mistress, and his passion for his art is felt through all his work. His death occurred at Champrosay near Paris, where he had a modest country house, on August 13, 1863; and four years later, January 14, 1867, his great adversary, Ingres, followed him.



CY AND I.

BY EUGENE FIELD.

As I went moseyin' down th' street, My Denver friend I chanced t' meet. "Hello!" says I, "Where have you been so long a time That we have missed your soothin' rhyme?" "New York," says Cy. "Gee whiz!" says I.

"You must have seen some wonders down In that historic, splendid town;" And then says I: "For bridges, parks, and crowded streets There is no other place that beats New York," says I. "Correct!" says Cy.

"The town is mighty big, but then It isn't in it with its men, Is it?" says I. "And tell me, Cyrus, if you can, Who is its biggest, brainiest man?" "Dana!" says Cy. "You bet!" says I.

"He's big of heart and big of brain, And he's been good unto us twain"— Choked up, says I. "I love him, and I pray God give Him many, many years to live! Eh, Cy?" says I. "Amen!" says Cy.



A YOUNG HERO

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF COLONEL E.E. ELLSWORTH.

BY JOHN HAY,

Author, with John G. Nicolay, of "Abraham Lincoln: a History."



It is in contemplating what the world loses in the deaths of brilliant young citizen soldiers that we appreciate most fully the waste of war and the priceless value of the cause for which such lives were sacrificed. When a man like Henri Regnault—the most substantial hope and promise of art in our century—is seen at the siege of Paris lingering behind his retreating comrades, "le temps de bruler une derniere cartouche" the last words he uttered; when a genius like Theodore Winthrop is extinguished in its ardent dawn on an obscure skirmish field; when a patriot and poet like Koerner dies in battle with his work hardly begun—we feel how inadequate are all the millions of the treasury to rival such offerings. We shall have no correct idea what our country is worth to us if we forget all the singing voices that were hushed, all the noble hearts that stopped beating, all the fiery energies that were quenched, that we might be citizens of the great and indivisible Republic of the Western world.

I believe that few men who fell in our civil conflict bore with them out of the world possibilities of fame and usefulness so bright or so important as Colonel Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth, who was killed at Alexandria, Virginia, on May 24, 1861—the first conspicuous victim of the war. The world can never compute, can hardly even guess, what was lost in his untimely end. He was killed by the first gun he ever heard fired in strife; and his friends, who believe him to have had in him the making of a great soldier, have nothing to support their opinion but the impression made upon them by his manly character, his winning and vigorous personality, and the extraordinary ardor and zest with which his powerful mind turned towards military affairs in the midst of circumstances of almost incredible difficulty and privation. He was one of the dearest of the friends of my youth. I cannot hope to enable the readers of this paper to see him as I saw him. No words can express the vivid brilliancy of his look and his speech, the swift and graceful energy of his bearing. He was not a scholar, yet his words were like martial music; in stature he was less than the medium size, yet his strength was extraordinary; he seemed made of tempered steel. His entire aspect breathed high ambition and daring. His jet-black curls, his open candid brow, his dark eyes, at once fiery and tender, his eagle profile, his mouth just shaded by the youthful growth that hid none of its powerful and delicate lines—the whole face, which seemed made for nothing less than the command of men, whether as general or as orator, comes before me as I write, with a look of indignant appeal to the future for the chance of fame which inexorable fate denied him. The appeal, of course, is in vain. Only a few men, now growing old, knew what he was and what he might have been if life had been spared him for a year or two. I will merely try to show in these few pages, mainly from his own words, how great a heart was broken by the slugs of the assassin at the Marshall House.

He was born in the village of Mechanicsville, Saratoga County, New York, on April 23, 1837. His parents were plain people, without culture or means; one cannot guess how this eaglet came into so lowly a nest. He went out into the world at the first opportunity, to seek his fortune; he turned his hand, like other American boys, to anything he could find to do. He lived a while in New York, and finally drifted to Chicago, where we find him, in the spring of 1859, a clerk and student in the law office of Mr. J.E. Cone. From his earliest boyhood he had a passionate love of the army. He learned as a child the manual of arms; he picked up instinctively a knowledge of the pistol and the rifle; he became, almost without instruction, a scientific fencer. But he was now of age, and determined to be a lawyer, since, to all appearance, there was no chance for him in the army. The way in which he pursued his legal studies he has set down in a diary which he kept for a little while. He began it on his twenty-second birthday. "I do this," he said, "because it seems pleasant to be able to look back upon our past lives and note the gradual change in our sentiments and views of life; and because my life has been, and bids fair to be, such a jumble of strange incidents that, should I become anybody or anything, this will be useful as a means of showing how much suffering and temptation a man may undergo and still keep clear of despair and vice."



He was neat, almost foppish, in his attire; not strictly fashionable, for he liked bright colors, flowing cravats, and hats that suggested the hunter or ranger rather than the law clerk; yet the pittance for which he worked was very small, and his poverty extreme. He therefore economized upon his food. He lived for months together upon dry biscuits and water. Here is a touching entry from his diary: "Had an opportunity to buy a desk to-day worth forty-five dollars, for fourteen dollars. It was just such a one as I needed, and I could sell at any time for more than was asked for it. I bought it at auction. I can now indulge my ideas of order in the arrangement of my papers to their fullest extent. Paid five dollars of my own money and borrowed ten dollars of James Clayburne; promised to return it next Tuesday. By the way, this was an instance in a small way of the importance of little things. Some two years since, when I was so poor, I went one day into an eating-house on an errand. While there, Clayburne and several friends came in.

"As I started to go out they stopped me and insisted upon my having an oyster stew. I refused, for I always made it a practice never to accept even an apple from any one, because I could not return like courtesies. While they were clamoring about the matter and I trying to get from them, the waiter brought on the oysters for the whole party, having taken it for granted that I was going to stay. So to escape making myself any more conspicuous by further refusal, I sat down. How gloriously every morsel tasted—the first food I had touched for three days and three nights. When I came to Chicago with a pocket full of money I sought James out and told him I owed him half a dollar. He said no, but I insisted my memory was better than his, and made him take it. Well, when I wanted ten dollars, I went to him, and he gave it to me freely, and would take no security. Have written four hours this evening; two pounds of crackers; sleep on office floor to-night."

The diary relates many incidents like this. He took a boyish pride in refusing offers of assistance, in resisting temptation to innocent indulgence, in passing most of his hours in study, earning only enough by his copying to keep body and soul together. One entry is, "Read one hundred and fifty pages of Blackstone—slept on floor." Such a regimen was not long in having its effect upon even his rugged health. He writes: "I tried to read, but could not. I am afraid my strength will not hold out. I have contracted a cold by sleeping on the floor, which has settled in my head, and nearly sets me crazy with catarrh. Then there is that gnawing, unsatisfied sensation which I begin to feel again, which prevents any long-continued application." About this time he was urged to take command of a company of cadets which, through mismanagement, had been reduced to a deplorable condition. He at first declined, but afterward consented if the company would accept certain rigorous conditions of discipline and obedience. He was as firm as granite to his company, and cheery and gay to the world, while in his private life he was subjecting himself to the cruel rigors described in his diary of April 21: "I am convinced that the course of reading which I am pursuing is not sufficiently thorough. Have commenced again at beginning of Blackstone. I now read a proposition or paragraph and reason upon it; try to get at the principle involved, in my own language; view it in every light till I think I understand it; then write it down in my commonplace book. My progress is, in consequence, very slow, as it takes on an average half an hour to each page. Attended meeting of cadets' committee on ways and means; all my propositions accepted. I spent my last ten cents for crackers to-day. Ten pages of Blackstone."

The next day he writes: "My mind was so occupied with obtaining money due to-morrow that I could not study. Five pages of Blackstone. Nothing whatever to eat. I am very tired and hungry to-night. Onward."



In these circumstances of hunger and toil, he took charge of the company of cadets, which was falling to pieces from neglect. There was no sign in his bearing of the poverty and famine which were consuming him. He told them roundly that if they elected him their captain they did so with their eyes open; that he should enforce the strictest discipline, and make their company second to none in the United States. His laws were Draconic in their severity. He forbade his cadets from entering a drinking or gambling saloon or any other disreputable place under penalty of expulsion, publication of the offender's name in the city papers, and forfeiture of uniform. He insisted on prompt obedience and unremitting drill. The company under his firm and inspiring command rapidly pulled itself together, and attracted all at once the notice and admiration of Chicago and northern Illinois. The young captain did not give up his law studies. He wrote and affixed to his desk a card which contained his own daily orders: "So aim to spend your time that at night, when looking back at the disposal of the day, you find no time misspent, no hour, no moment even, which has not resulted in some benefit, no action which had not a purpose in it. Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays: Rise at 5 o'clock; 5 to 10, study; 10 to 1, copy; 1 to 4, business; 4 to 7, study; 7 to 8, exercise; 8 to 10, study. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: Rise at 6; 6 to 10, study; 10 to 1, business; 1 to 7, study and copy; 7 to 11, drill."

Working faithfully as he did in the office, his whole heart was in his drill room. His fame as a fencer went abroad in the town, and he was challenged to a bout by the principal teacher of the art in Chicago. Ellsworth records the combat in his diary of May 24th: "This evening the fencer of whom I have heard so much came up to the armory to fence with me. He said to his pupils and several others that if I held to the low guard he would disarm me every time I raised my foil. He is a great gymnast, and I fully expected to be beaten. The result was: I disarmed him four times, hit him thirty times. He disarmed me once and hit me five times. At the touche-a-touche I touched him in two places at the same allonge, and threw his foil from him several feet. He was very angry, though he tried to conceal it."



Public interest constantly grew in the Zouaves and their young captain. Large crowds attended every drill. The newspapers began to report all their proceedings, and to comment upon them with more or less malevolence; for military companies were treated with scant respect in Western towns before the war. Ellsworth at last determined to confront hostile opinion by giving a public exhibition of the proficiency of his company on the Fourth of July. He was not without trepidation. The night before the Fourth he wrote: "To-morrow will be an eventful day to me; to-morrow I have to appear in a conspicuous position before thousands of citizens—an immense number of whom, without knowing me except by sight, are prejudiced against me. To-morrow will demonstrate the truth or falsity of my assertion that the citizens would encourage military companies if they were worthy of respect." The result was an overwhelming success; and the young soldier, after his feast of crackers the next night, wrote in exultation: "Victory! And thank God!"

The Chicago "Tribune," which had previously been unfriendly to the little company who were trying to make soldiers of themselves, gave a long and flattering account of the performance, and said: "We but express the opinion of all who saw the drill yesterday morning, when we say this company cannot be surpassed this side of West Point."

Encouraged by this public applause, he brought his company of Zouaves as near to absolute perfection of drill as was possible; and then, having tested them in as many competitive contests as were within reach, he challenged the militia companies of the United States, and set forth in the summer of 1860 on a tour of the country which was one unbroken succession of triumphs. He defeated the crack companies in all the principal Eastern cities, and went back to Chicago one of the most talked-of men in the country. Hundreds of Zouave companies started up in his wake, and a very considerable awakening of interest in military matters was the substantial result of his journey.



On his return to Illinois he made the acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln, and gained at once his friendship and esteem. He entered his office in Springfield ostensibly as a law student; but Mr. Lincoln was then a candidate for the Presidency, and Ellsworth read very little law that autumn. He made some Republican speeches in the country towns about Springfield, bright, witty, and good-natured. But his mind was full of a project which he hoped to accomplish by the aid of Mr. Lincoln—no less than the establishment in the War Department of a bureau of militia, by which the entire militia system of the United States should be concentrated, systematized, and made efficient: an enormous undertaking for a boy of twenty-three; but his plans were clear, definite, and comprehensive.



After Mr. Lincoln's election Ellsworth accompanied him to Washington. As a preliminary step towards placing him in charge of a bureau of militia, the President gave him a commission as a lieutenant in the army. Shortly afterward he fell seriously ill with the measles; and before he was thoroughly convalescent, the guns about Sumter opened the Civil War. There had been much doubt in many minds as to the loyalty of the people in case of actual war. Ellsworth never had doubted it. He said to me as I sat by his bedside: "You know I have a great work to do, to which my life is pledged; I am the only earthly stay of my parents; there is a young woman whose happiness I regard as dearer than my own; yet I could ask no better death than to fall next week before Sumter. I am not better than other men. You will find that patriotism is not dead, even if it sleeps." When the news came that South Carolina had begun the war, he did not wait an instant. He threw up his commission in the regulars, took all the money we both had, which was not much, and thus insufficiently equipped, started for New York, and raised, with incredible celerity, the New York Zouaves, a regiment eleven hundred strong.

This unique organization filled so large a space in the public mind while Ellsworth commanded it that it seems hard to realize that its history with him is only a matter of a few weeks. He brought his regiment down to Washington early in May, arriving thin as a greyhound, his voice hoarse with drilling; but flushed and happy to know he was busy and useful at last.

There was no limit to the hopes and the confidence of his friends. We had grown to admire and respect him for his high and honorable character, his thorough knowledge of his business, ardent zeal for the flag he followed, and his extraordinary courage and energy. We fully expected, relying upon his splendid talents and the President's affectionate regard, that his first battle would make him a brigadier-general, and that his second would give him a division. There was no limit to the glory and usefulness we anticipated for him. How soon all these hopes were dust and ashes!

[Illustration: COLONEL ELLSWORTH AND A GROUP OF MILITIA OFFICERS.

From a photograph taken by Colonel E.L. Brand, a member of Ellsworth's Chicago company, and reproduced by the courtesy of Mr. H.H. Miller, also a member of the company. The photograph was taken in New York City, July, 1860, on the occasion of an exhibition drill given there by Ellsworth's company. The persons shown in the picture are, beginning on the left, the Lieutenant-Colonel of the Sixth Regiment, New York Militia; E.E. Ellsworth, Captain of the United States Zouave Cadets (Ellsworth's Chicago company); Joseph C. Pinckney, Colonel of the Sixth Regiment, New York Militia; the Adjutant of the Sixth Regiment, New York Militia; H. Dwight Laflin, Second Lieutenant of the United States Zouave Cadets, and J.R. Scott, First Lieutenant of the United States Zouave Cadets. The colors shown in the picture were won by Ellsworth's company in a drill competition at the National Agricultural Fair, Chicago, September, 15, 1859, and were, by it, never lost. They are to-day in the custody of the company's color sergeant, B.B. Botteford, Chicago.]

On the evening of May 23d he received his orders to lead his regiment on the extreme left of the Union lines in the advance into Virginia. The part assigned him was the occupation of Alexandria. He worked almost all night in his tent, arranging the business of his regiment, and then wrote a touching letter of farewell to his parents. Anticipating an engagement, he said: "It may be my lot to be injured in some manner. Whatever may happen, cherish the consolation that I was engaged in the performance of a sacred duty; and to-night, thinking over the probabilities of the morrow and the occurrences of the past, I am perfectly content to accept whatever my fortune may be, confident that He who noteth even the fall of a sparrow will have some purpose even in the fate of one like me. My darling and ever-loved parents, good-by. God bless, protect, and care for you." These loving and filial words were the last that came from his pen.

The Zouaves were embarked before dawn the next morning. The celerity and order with which Ellsworth performed his work excited the admiration and surprise of Admiral Dahlgren, who commanded the navy yard.

The town of Alexandria was occupied without resistance; and Ellsworth, with a squad of Zouaves, hurried off to take possession of the telegraph office. On his way he caught sight of a Confederate flag floating from the summit of the Marshall House. He had often seen, from the window of the Executive Mansion in Washington, this self-same banner flaunting defiance; and the temptation to tear it down with his own hands was too much for his boyish patriotism. Accompanied by four soldiers only and several civilians, he ran into the hotel, up the stairs to the roof, and tore down the flag; but coming down was met on the stairs by the hotel-keeper and shot dead. His assassin perished at the same moment, killed by Frank E. Brownell.

Ellsworth was buried from the East Room of the White House by the special order of the President, who mourned him as a son. Many brave and able officers were to perish in the four years that followed that mournful day; but there was not one whose death was more sincerely lamented than that of this young soldier who had never seen a battle; and it is the belief of his friends that he had not his superior in natural capacity among all the most eminent heroes of the war. But who will care to hear this said? If Napoleon Bonaparte had been killed at the siege of Toulon, who would have listened to some grief-stricken comrade's assertion that this young Corsican was the greatest soldier since Caesar? I have written these lines merely to show how simple, kindly, and heroic a heart Colonel Ellsworth had—and not to claim for him what can never be proved.



CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

Author of "The Gates Ajar," "The Madonna of the Tubs," etc.

ANDOVER GIRLS AS STUDENTS OF THEOLOGY.—THE DARK DAYS OF THE WAR.—WRITING MAGAZINE STORIES AND SUNDAY-SCHOOL BOOKS.—THE DIFFICULTY AND UNCERTAINTY OF WRITING FOR A LIVING.

One study in our curriculum at the Andover School I have omitted to mention in its place; but, of them all, it was the most characteristic, and would be most interesting to an outsider. Where else but in Andover would a group of a dozen and a half girls be put to studying theology? Yet this is precisely what we did. Not that we called our short hour with Professor Park on Tuesday evenings by that long word; nor did he. It was understood that we had Bible lessons.

But the gist of the matter was, that we were taught Professor Park's theology.

We had our note-books, like the students in the chapel lecture-rooms, and we took docile notes of the great man's views on the attributes of the Deity, on election and probation, on atonement and sanctification, on eschatology, and the rest.

Girls' with pink ribbons at white throats, and girls with blue silk nets on their pretty hair, fluttered in like bees and butterflies, and settled about the long dining-room table, at whose end, with a shade over his eyes to shield them from the light, the professor sat in a dark corner.

Thence he promulgated stately doctrines to those soft and dreaming woman-creatures, who did not care a maple-leaf whether we sinned in Adam, or whether the Trinity were separate as persons or as attributes; but who drew little portraits of their dearest Academy boys on the margins of their lecture-books, and passed these to their particular intimates in surreptitious interludes between doctrines.

What must have been the professor's private speculations on those Tuesday evenings? I had a certain sense of their probable nature, even then; and glanced furtively into the dark corner for glimpses of the distant, sarcastic smile which I felt must be carving itself upon the lines of his strong face. But I never caught him at it; not once. With the gravity befitting his awful topics, and with the dignity belonging to his Chair and to his fame, the professor taught the butterflies, to the best of my knowledge and belief, as conscientiously as he did those black-coated beetles yonder, the theologues on the Seminary benches.

[Illustration: "THE OLD BRICK ACADEMY," PHILLIPS ACADEMY, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS, WITH THE CLASS OF 1861 IN FRONT.

Of the class of 1861 over twenty went into the war, and several died in battle or in war prisons. Lieutenant S.H. Thompson, son of the late Professor William Thompson of East Windsor Seminary, was among this number. Also, Sergeant J.H. Thompson, son of the late Dr. Joseph P. Thompson of New York City. President Ward of Franklin College, the Rev. Dr. Dougherty of Kansas City, and the Rev. Dr. Brand of Oberlin College, were members of the class, and their portraits appear in the picture. The valedictorian was Carlos F. Carter, brother of President Carter of Williams College. He was drowned in the Jordan a few months after graduation.]

I ought to say, just here, that, in a recent correspondence with Professor Park upon this matter, I found him more or less unconscious of having been so generous with his theology to the girls. I am giving the pupil's impressions, not the teacher's recollections, of that Bible-class; and I can give no other. Of course, I may be mistaken, and am liable to correction; but my impressions are, that he gave us his system of theology pretty straight and very faithfully.

I cannot deny that I enjoyed those stern lessons. Not that I had any marked predilections towards theology, but I liked the psychology of it. I experienced my first appreciation of the nature and value of logic in that class-room, and it did me good, and not evil altogether. There I learned to reason with more patience than a school-girl may always care to suffer; and there I observed that the mysteries of time and eternity, whatever one might personally conclude about them, were material of reason.

In many a mental upheaval of later life, the basis of that theological training has made itself felt to me, as one feels rocks or stumps or solid things underfoot in the sickly swaying of wet sands. I may not always believe all I was taught, but what I was taught has helped me to what I believe. I certainly think of those theological lectures with unqualified gratitude.

The Tuesday evenings grow warm and warmer. The butterflies hover about in white muslins, and pretty little bows of summer colors glisten on bright heads as they bend over the doctrines, around the long table. On the screens of the open windows the June beetles knock their heads, like theologues who wish they could get in. There is a moon without. Visions of possible forbidden ecstasies of strolls under the arches of the Seminary elms with the bravest boy in the Academy melt before the gentle minds, through which depravity, election, predestination, and justification are filing sternly. The professor's voice arises:

"A sin is a wrong committed against God. God is an Infinite Being; therefore sin against Him is an infinite wrong. An infinite wrong against an Infinite Being deserves an infinite punishment—"

Now, the professor says that he has no recollection of ever having said this in the Bible-class; but there is the note-book of the girl's brain, stamped with the sentence for these thirty years!

"I have sometimes quoted it at the Seminary," he writes, "for the purpose of exposing the impropriety of it. I do not think any professor ever quoted the statement, without adding that it is untenable. The Andover argument was ——"[5] He adds the proper controversial language, which, it seems, went solidly out of my head. Tenable or untenable, my memory has clutched the stately syllogism.

Sharp upon the doctrines there falls across the silence and the sweetness of the moonlit Hill a strange and sudden sound. It is louder than theology. It is more solemn than the professor's system. Insistent, urging everything before it—the toil of strenuous study, the fret of little trouble, and the dreams of dawning love—the call stirs on. It is the beat of a drum.

The boys of old Phillips, with the down on their faces, and that eternal fire in their hearts which has burned upon the youth of all the ages when their country has commanded: "Die for me!" are drilling by moonlight.

The Academy Company is out in force, passing up and down the quiet, studious streets. The marching of their feet beats solemnly at the meeting of the paths where (like the gardens of the professors) the long walks of the Seminary lawns form the shape of a mighty cross.

"An infinite wrong deserves an infinite punishment—" The theologian's voice falls solemnly. The girls turn their grave faces to the open windows. Silence helps the drum-beat, which lifts its cry to Heaven unimpeded; and the awful questions which it asks, what system of theology can answer?

* * * * *

Andover was no more loyal, probably, than other New England villages; but perhaps the presence of so many young men helped to make her seem so to those who passed the years from 1861 to 1865 upon the Hill.

Theology and church history and exegesis and sacred rhetoric retreated from the foreground of that scholastic drama. The great Presence that is called War swept up and filled the scene.

Gray-haired men went to their lecture-rooms with bowed heads, the morning papers shaking in their hands. The accuracy of the Hebrew verb did not matter so much as it did last term. The homiletic uses or abuses of an applied text, the soundness of the new school doctrine of free will, seemed less important to the universe than they were before the Flag went down on Sumter. Young eyes looked up at their instructors mistily, for the dawn of utter sacrifice was in them. He was only an Academy boy yesterday, or a theologue; unknown, unnoticed, saying his lesson in Xenophon, taking his notes on the Nicene Creed; blamed a little, possibly, by his teacher or by his professor, for inattention.

To-day he comes proudly to the desk. His step rings on the old, bare floors that he will never tread again. "Sir, my father gives his permission. I enlist at once."

To-day he is a hero, and the hero's light is glorious on his face. To-day he is the teacher, and the professor learns lessons in his turn now. The boy whom he has lectured and scolded towers above him suddenly, a sacred thing to see. The old man stands uncovered before his pupil as they clasp hands and part.

The drum calls on, and the boys drill bravely—no boys' parade this, but awful earnest now. The ladies of Andover sew red braid upon blue flannel shirts, with which the Academy Company make simple uniform.

Then comes a morning when the professors cannot read the papers for the news they bring; but cover streaming eyes with trembling hands, and turn their faces. For the black day of the defeat at Bull Run has darkened the summer sky.

Andover does not sew for the missionaries now. Her poor married theologues must wait a little for their babies' dresses. Even the blue flannel shirts for the drill are forgotten. The chapel is turned into sudden, awful uses, of which the "pious founders" in their comfortable graves did never dream. For there the women of the Hill, staying for no prayer-meeting, and delaying to sing no hymns, pick lint and roll bandages and pack supplies for the field; and there they sacrifice and suffer, like women who knew no theology at all; and since it was not theirs to offer life to the teeth of shot and shell, they "gave their happiness instead."