Another stock-piece in the repertoire consisted of attacks on Voltaire, Tom Paine, and other antiquated Deists or infidels. I had read with great contempt a copy of "The Rights of Man" belonging to my genial uncle Amos. I say with great contempt, for I always despised that kind of free thought which consisted chiefly of enmity to Christianity. Now I can see that Voltaire and his followers were quite in the right in warring on terrible and immediate abuses which oppressed mankind; but I had learned from Spinoza to believe that every form of faith was good in its way or according to its mission or time, and that it was silly to ridicule Christianity because the tale of Balaam's ass was incredible. Paine was to me just what a Positivist now is to a Darwinian or Agnostic, and such preaching against "infidels" seemed to me like pouring water on a drowned mouse. There had always been in Mr. Furness's teaching a very decided degree of Rationalism, and I had advanced far more boldly on the track. I remember reading translations from Schleiermacher and buying Strauss's "Life of Jesus" before I went to Princeton—I saw Strauss himself in after years at Weinsberg, in Germany—but at Princeton the slightest approach to explaining the most absurd story in the Old Testament was regarded as out-and-out atheism. It had all happened, we were told, just as it is described.

I may as well note here the fact that for many years in my early life such a thing as only reading a book through once rarely happened, when I could obtain it long enough. Even the translations of the Neo-Platonists, with Campanella, Vanini, or the Italian naturalists, were read and reread, while the principal English poets, and such books as I owned, were perused daily.

And here in this great infant arithmetic school I was in due time set down to study Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" and Locke on the Understanding—like Carlyle's young lion invited to a feast of chickweed. Apropos of the first, I have a droll reminiscence. There had been in Philadelphia two years before a sale of a fine library, and I had been heart-broken because my means had not permitted me to buy the works of Sir Kenelm Digby. However, I found them in the Princeton College Library. The first thing I came to in Paley was his famous simile of the watch—taken bodily and without acknowledgment from Digby. The theft disgusted me. "These be your Christian champions!" I thought—

"Would any of the stock of infidels Had been my evidence ere such a Christian!"

And, moreover, Paley forgets to inform us what conclusion the finder might draw if he had picked up a badly made watch which did not keep good time—like this our turnip of a world at times!

As we were obliged to attend divine service strictly on Sunday, I was allowed to go to the Episcopal church in the village, which agreed very well with my parents' views. I quite fell into the sentiment of the sect, and so went to Professor Dodd to ask for permission from the Faculty to change my religion. When he asked me how it was that I had renegaded into Trinitarianism, I replied that it was due to reflection on the perfectly obvious and usual road of the Platonic hypostases eked out with Gnosticism. I had found in the College Library, and read with great pleasure almost as soon as I got there, Cudworth's "Intellectual System" (I raided a copy as loot from a house in Tennessee in after years, during the war), and learned from it that "it was a religious instinct of man to begin with a Trinity, in which I was much aided by Schelling, and that there was no trace of a Trinity in the Bible, or rather the contrary, yet that it ought consistently to have been there"—a sentiment which provoked from Professor Dodd a long whistle like that of Uncle Toby with Lilliburlero. "For," as I ingeniously represented, "man or God consists of the Monad from which developed spirit or intellect and soul; for toto enim in mundo lucet Trias cujus Monas est princeps, as the creed of the Rosicrucians begins (which is taken from the Zoroastrian oracles)"—here there was another long subdued whistle—"and it is set forth on the face of every Egyptian temple as the ball, the wings of the spirit which rusheth into all worlds, and the serpent, which is the Logos." Here the whistle became more sympathetic, for Egypt was the professor's great point in his lectures on architecture. And having thus explained the true grounds of the Trinity to the most learned theologian of the Presbyterian sect, I took my leave, quite unconscious that I had said anything out of the common, for all I meant was to give my reasons for going back to the Episcopal Church. As for Professor Dodd, he had given me up from the very first interview to follow my idols as I pleased, only just throwing in argument enough to keep me well going. He would have been the last man on earth to throw down such a marvellous fairy castle, goblin-built and elfin-tenanted, from whose windows rang AEolian harps, and which was lit by night with undying Rosicrucian lamps, to erect on its ruin a plain brick, Old School Presbyterian slated chapel. I was far more amusing as I was, and so I was let alone.

I had passed my examination about the end of June, and I was to remain in Princeton until the autumn, reading under a tutor, in the hope of being able to join the Sophomore class when the college course should begin. There I was utterly alone, and rambled by myself in the woods. I believed myself to be a very good Christian in those days; but I was really as unaffected and sincere a Poly-Pantheist or Old Nature heathen as ever lived in Etrusco-Roman or early German days. A book very dear to my heart at that time was the Curiositez Inouyes of Gaffarel (Trollope was under the impression that he was the only man in Europe who ever read it), in which there is an exquisite theory that the stars of heaven in their courses and the lines of winding rivers and bending corn, the curves of shells and minerals, rocks and trees, yes, of all the shapes of all created things, form the trace and letters of a stupendous writing or characters spread all over the universe, which writing becomes little by little legible to the one who by communion with Nature and earnest faith seeks to penetrate the secret. I had found in the lonely woods a small pond by a high rock, where I often sat in order to attain this blessed illumination, and if I did not get quite so far as I hoped, I did in reality attain to a deep unconscious familiarity with birds and leafy shades, still waters, and high rising trees; in short, with all the sweet solemnity of sylvan nature, which has ever since influenced all my life. I mean this not in the second-hand way in which it is so generally understood, but as a real existence in itself, so earnestly felt that I was but little short of talking with elfin beings or seeing fairies flitting over flowers. Those who explain everything by "imagination" do not in the least understand how actual the life in Nature may become to us. Reflect for a minute, thou whose whole soul is in gossip and petty chronicles of fashion, and "sassiety," that in that life thou wert a million years ago, and in it thou wilt be a million years hence, ever going on in all forms, often enough in rivers, rock, and trees, and yet canst not realise with a sense of awe that there are in these forms, passing to others—ever, ever on—myriads of men and women, or at least their life—how we know not, as what we know not—only this, that the Will or creative force of the Creator or Creating is in it all. This was the serious yet unconscious inspiration of my young life in those days, in even more elaborate or artistic form, which all went very well hand in hand with the Euclid and Homer or Demosthenes and Livy with which my tutor Mr. Schenk (pronounce Skank) was coaching me.

My reading may seem to the reader to have been more limited than it was, because I have not mentioned the historians, essayists, or belletrists whose works are read more or less by "almost everybody." It is hardly worth while to say, what must be of course surmised, that Sterne, Addison, Goldsmith, Johnson, Swift, and Macaulay—in fine, the leading English classics—were really well read by me, my ambition being not to be ignorant of anything which a literary man should know. Macaulay was then new, and I devoured not only his works, but a vast amount by him suggested. I realised at an early age that there was a certain cycle of knowledge common to all really cultivated minds, and this I was determined to master. I had, however, little indeed of the vanity of erudition, having been deeply convinced and constantly depressed or shamed by the reflection that it was all worse than useless, and injurious to making my way in life. When I heard that Professor Dodd had said that at seventeen there were not ten men in America who had read so much, while Professor Joseph Henry often used words to this effect, and stern James Alexander in his lectures would make deeply learned allusions intended for me alone—as, for instance, to Kant's "AEsthetik"—I was anything but elated or vain in consequence. I had read in Sartor Resartus, "If a man reads, shall he not be learned?" and I knew too well that reading was with me an unprofitable, perhaps pitiable, incurable mania-amusement, which might ruin me for life, and which, as it was, was a daily source of apprehension between me and my good true friends, who feared wisely for my future.

I absolutely made James Alexander smile for once in his life—'twas sunshine on the grim Tarpeian rock. I had bought me a nice English large type Juvenal, and written on the outside in quaint Elizabethan character form—I forget now the name of the author—the following:—

"Ay, Juvenall, thy jerking hande is good, Not gently laying on, but bringing bloude. Oh, suffer me amonge so manye men To treade aright the traces of thy penne, And light my lamp at thy eternal flame!"

We students in the Latin class had left our books on a table, when I saw grim and dour James Alexander pick up my copy, read the inscription, when looking up at me he smiled; it was a kind of poetry which pleased him.

I remember, too, how one day, when in Professor Dodd's class of mathematics, I, instead of attending to the lecture, read surreptitiously Cardanus de Subtilitate in an old vellum binding, and carelessly laid it on the table afterwards, where Professor Dodd found it, and directed at me one of his half-laughing Mephistophelian glances. Reading of novels in lectures was not unknown; but for Dodd to find anything so caviare-like as Cardanus among our books was unusual. George Boker remarked once, that while Professor Dodd was a Greek, Professor James Alexander was an old Roman, which was indeed a good summary of the two.

I have and always had a bad memory, but I continued to retain what I read by repetition or reviewing and by collocation, which is a marvellous aid in retaining images. For, in the first place, I read entirely by GROUPS; and if I, for instance, attacked Blair's "Rhetoric," Longinus and Burke Promptly followed; and if I perused "Rambles in the Footsteps of Don Quixote," I at once, on principle, followed it up with "Spain in 1830," and a careful study of Ford's Guide-Book for Spain, and perhaps a score of similar books, till I had got Spain well into me. And as I have found by years of observation and much research, having written a book on Education partly based on this principle, ten books on any subject read together, profit more than a hundred at intervals. And I may here add, that if this record of what I read be dull, it is still that of my real youthful life, giving the clue to my mind as it was formed. Books in those days were the only events of my life.

Long before I went to college I had an attack of Irish antiquities, which I relieved by reading O'Brien, Vallancey, the more sensible Petrie, and O'Somebody's Irish grammar, aided by old Annie Mooney, who always remained by us. In after years I discovered an Ogham inscription and the famed Ogham tongue, or Shelta, "the lost language of the bards," according to Kuno Meyer and John Sampson.

During my first half-year a college magazine was published, and I, a Freshman, was requested to contribute to the first number. I sent in an article on the history of English poetry. Before I wrote it, the great man among the senior students asked leave to be allowed to write it with me. I did not quite like the idea, but reflecting that the association would give me a certain prestige, I accepted his aid. So it appeared; but it was regarded as mine. Professor Dodd said something to me about the inexpediency of so young a person appearing in print. I could have told him that I had already published several poems, &c., in Philadelphian newspapers, but reflecting that it was not kind to have the better of him, I said nothing. From that time I published something in every number. My second article was an essay on Spinoza, and I still think it was rather good for a boy of sixteen.

There was the College and also a Society library, out of which I picked a great deal of good reading. One day I asked Professor John MacLean, the college librarian, for the works of Condorcet. His reply was, "Vile book! vile book! can't have it." However, I found in the Society library Urquhart's translation of "Rabelais," which I read, I daresay, as often as any mortal ever did. And here I have a word to say to the wretched idiots who regard "the book called Rabelais" as "immoral" and unfit for youth. Many times did I try to induce my young friends to read "Rabelais," and some actually mastered the story of the goose as a torche-cul, and perhaps two or three chapters more; but as for reading through or enjoying it, "that was not in their minds." All complained, or at least showed, that they "did not understand it." It was to them an aggravating farrago of filth and oddity, under which they suspected some formal allegory or meaning which had perished, or was impenetrable. Learn this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet demoralised a dolt or ignoramus. Even the Old Testament, with all its stores of the "shocking," really does very little harm. It requires mind for mind in reading, and vice becomes unattractive even to the vicious when they cannot understand it. I did understand Rabelais, and the Moyen de Parvenir, and the Cymbalum Mundi, and Boccaccio (I owned these books), and laughed over them, yet was withal as pure-minded a youth as could well be imagined without being a simpleton. For, with all such reading, I best loved such a book as Bromley's "Sabbath of Rest," or sweet, strange works of ancient Mysticism, which bore the soul away to the stars or into Nature. Such a combination is perfectly possible when there is no stain of dishonesty or vulgarity in the character, and I had escaped such influences easily enough.

A droll event took place in the spring. It had been usual once a year—I forgot on what occasion—to give to all the classes a holiday. This year it was abolished, and the Sophomore, junior, and senior classes quietly acquiesced. But we, the Freshmen, albeit we had never been there before, rebelled at such infringement of "our rights," and absented ourselves from recitation. I confess that I was a leader in the movement, because I sincerely believed it to be a sin to "remove old landmarks," and that the students required more rest and holidays than were allowed them; in which I was absolutely in the right, for our whole life, except Saturday afternoons, was "one demnition grind."

The feeling which was excited by this "Freshman's rebellion" was one of utter amazement, or awful astonishment tempered with laughter, not unmingled with respect. It was the terrier flying at the lion, when the great mastiff, and bloodhound, and Danish dog had quietly slunk aside. There were in the class beside myself several youths of marked character, and collectively we had already made an impression, to which my intimacy with George Boker, and Professor Dodd, and the very elite of the seniors, added not a little force. We were mysterious. Hitherto a Freshman had been the greenest of the green, a creature created for ridicule, a sort of "leathery fox" or mere tyro (ty—not a ty-pographical error—pace my kind and courteous reviewer in the Saturday)—and here were Freshmen of a new kind rising in dignity above all others.

Which reminds me of a merry tale. It was usual for Freshmen to learn to smoke for the first time after coming to college, and for more advanced students to go to their rooms, or find them in others, and smoke them sick or into retreating. I, however, found a source of joy in this, that I could now sit almost from morning till night, and very often on to three in the morning, smoking all the time, being deeply learned in Varinas, Kanaster, and the like; for I smoked nothing but real Holland tobacco, while I could buy it. A party of Sophomores informed George Boker that they intended to smoke me out. "Smoke him out!" quoth George; "why, he'd smoke the whole of you dumb and blind." However, it came to pass that one evening several of them tried it on; and verily they might as well have tried it on to Niklas Henkerwyssel, who, as the legend goes, sold his soul to the devil for the ability to smoke all the time, to whom my father had once compared me. So the cigars and tobacco were burned, and I liked it extremely. Denser grew the smoke, and the windows were closed, to which I cheerfully assented, for I liked to have it thick; and still more smoke and more, and the young gentlemen who had come to smother me grew pale, even as the Porcupines grew pale when they tried to burn out the great Indian sorcerer, who burned them! But I, who was beginning to enjoy myself amazingly in such congenial society, only filled Boker's great meerschaum with Latakia, and puffed away. One by one the visitors also "puffed away," i.e., vanished through the door into the night.

"Shall I open the window?" asked George.

"Not on my account," I replied. "I rather enjoy it as it is."

"I begin to believe," replied my friend, "that you would like it in Dante's hell of clouds. Do you know what those men came here for? It was to smoke you out. And you smoked them out, and never knew it." Which was perfectly true. As for smoking, my only trouble was to be able to buy cigars and tobacco. These were incredibly cheap in those days, and I always dressed very respectably, but my smoking always cost me more than my clothing.

When we Freshmen had rebelled, we were punished by being rusticated or sent into the country to board. I went to Professor Dodd to receive my sentence, and in a grave voice, in which was a faint ring as of irony, and with the lurking devil which always played in his great marvellous mysterious black eyes, he said, "If you were any other student, I would not send you to the city, and so reward your rebellion with a holiday. But as I know perfectly well that you will go into the Philadelphia Library, and never stop reading till it is time to return, I will send you there."

My parents were then absent with my younger sisters in New England, but I had unlimited credit at Congress Hall Hotel, which was kept by a Mr. John Sturdevant, and where I was greatly respected as the son of the owner of the property. So I went there, and fared well, and, as Professor Dodd prophesied, read all the time. One night I went into an auction of delightful old books. My money had run low; there only remained to me one dollar and a half.

Now, of all books on earth, what I most yearned for in those days were the works of Jacob Behmen. And the auctioneer put up a copy containing "The Aurora or Morning Rednesse," English version (circa 1636), and I bid. One dollar—one dollar ten cents—twenty—twenty-five; my heart palpitated, and I half fainted for fear lest I should be outbid, when at the very last I got it with my last penny.

The black eyes of Professor Dodd twinkled more elfishly than ever when I exhibited to him my glorious treasure. He evidently thought that my exile had been to me anything but a punishment, and he was right. For a copy of Anthroposophos Theomagicus or the works of Robert Fludd I would have got up another rebellion.

It was quite against the college regulations for students to live in the town, but as I never touched a card, was totally abstemious and "moral," and moreover in rather delicate health, I was passed over as an odd exception. Once or twice it was proposed to bring me in, but Professor Dodd interfered and saved me. While in Princeton for more than four years, I never once touched a drop of anything stronger than coffee, which was a great pity! Exercise was not in those days encouraged in any way whatever—in fact, playing billiards and ten-pins was liable to be punished by expulsion; there was no gymnasium, no boating, and all physical games and manly exercises were sternly discouraged as leading to sin. Now, if I had drunk a pint of bitter ale every day, and played cricket or "gymnased," or rowed for two hours, it would have saved me much suffering, and to a great degree have relieved me from reading, romancing, reflecting, and smoking, all of which I carried to great excess, having an inborn impulse to be always doing something. That I did not grapple with life as a real thing, or with prosaic college studies or society, was, I can now see, a disease, for which, as my peculiar tastes had come upon me from nervous and Unitarian and Alcottian evil influences, I was not altogether responsible. I was a precocious boy, and I had fully developed extraordinary influences, which, like the seed of Scripture, had in my case fallen on more than fertile ground; it was like the soil of the Margariten Island, by Budapest, which is so permeated by hot springs in a rich soil that everything comes to maturity there in one-third of the time which it does elsewhere. I was the last child on earth who should ever have fallen into Alcott's hands, or listened to Dr. Channing or Furness, or have been interested in anything "ideal"; but fate willed that I should drink the elfin goblet to the dregs.

George H. Boker had a great influence on me. We were in a way connected, for my uncle Amos had married his aunt, and my cousin, Benjamin Godfrey, his cousin. He was exactly six feet high, with the form of an Apollo, and a head which was the very counterpart of the bust of Byron. A few years later N. P. Willis described him in the Home Journal as the handsomest man in America. He had been from boyhood as precociously a man of the world as I was the opposite. He was par eminence the poet of our college, and in a quiet, gentlemanly way its "swell." I passed a great deal of my time in his rooms reading Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron, the last named being his ideal. He ridiculed the Lakers, whom I loved; and when Southey's last poem, "On Gooseberry Pie," appeared, he declared that the poor old man was in his dotage, to which I assented with sorrow in my heart. Though only one year older than I, yet, as a Junior, and from his superior knowledge of life, I regarded him as being about thirty. He was quite familiar, in a refined and gentlemanly way, with all the dissipation of Philadelphia and New York; nor was the small circle of his friends, with whom I habitually associated, much behind him in this respect. Even during this Junior year he was offered the post of secretary to our Ambassador at Vienna. From him and the others I acquired a second-hand knowledge of life, which was sufficient to keep me from being regarded as a duffer or utterly "green," though in all such "life" I was practically as innocent as a young nun. Now, whatever I heard, as well as read, I always turned over and over in my mind, thoroughly digesting it to a most exceptional degree. So that I was somewhat like the young lady of whom I heard in Vienna in after years. She was brought up in the utmost moral and strict seclusion, but she found in her room an aperture through which she could witness all that took place in the neighbouring room of a maison de passe; but being a great philosopher, she in time regarded it all as the "butterfly passing show" of a theatre, the mere idle play of foolish mortal passions.

Even before I began my Freshman year there came into my life a slight but new and valuable influence. Professor Dodd, when I arrived, had just begun his course of lectures on architecture. To my great astonishment, but not at all to that of George Boker, I was invited to attend the course, Boker remarking dryly that he had no doubt that Dodd thanked God for having at last got an auditor who would appreciate him. Which I certainly did. I in after years listened to the great Thiersch, who trained Heine to art, and of whom I was a special protege, and many great teachers, but I never listened to any one like Albert Dodd. It was not with him the mere description of styles and dates; it was a deep and truly aesthetic feeling that every phase of architecture mirrors and reciprocally forms its age, and breathes its life and poetry and religion, which characterised all that he said. It was in nothing like the subjective rhapsodies of Ruskin, which bloomed out eight years later, but rather in the spirit of Vischer and Taine, which J. A. Symonds has so beautifully and clearly set forth in his Essays {98}—that is, the spirit of historical development. Here my German philosophy enabled me to grasp a subtle and delicate spirit of beauty, which passed, I fear, over the heads of the rest of the youthful audience. His ideas of the correspondence of Egyptian architecture to the stupendous massiveness of Pantheism and the appalling grandeur of its ideas, were clear enough to me, who had copied Hermes Trismegistus and read with deepest feeling the Orphic and Chaldean oracles. The ideas had not only been long familiar to me, but formed my very life and the subject of the most passionate study. To hear them clearly expressed with rare beauty, in the deep, strange voice of the professor, was joy beyond belief. And as it would not be in human nature for a lecturer not to note an admiring auditor, it happened often enough that something was often introduced for my special appreciation.

For I may here note—and it was a very natural thing—that just as Gypsy musicians always select in the audience some one who seems to be most appreciative, at whom they play (they call it de o kan), so Professors Dodd and James Alexander afterwards, in their aesthetic, or more erudite disquisitions, rarely failed to fiddle at me—Dodd looking right in my eyes, and Alexander at the ceiling, ending, however, with a very brief glance, as if for conscience' sake. I feel proud of this, and it affects me more now than it did then, when it produced no effect of vanity, and seemed to me to be perfectly natural.

I heard certain mutterings and hoots among the students as I went out of the lecture-room, but did not know what it meant. George Boker informed me afterwards that there had been great indignation expressed that "a green ignorant Freshman" had dared to intrude, as I had done, among his intellectual superiors and betters, but that he had at once explained that I was a great friend of Professor Dodd, and a kind of marvellous rara avis, not to be classed with common little Freshmen; so that in future I was allowed to go my way in peace.

A man of culture who had known Coleridge well, declared that as a conversationalist on varied topics Professor Albert Dodd was his superior. When in the pulpit, or in the lengthened "addresses" of lecturing, there was a marvellous fascination in his voice—an Italian witch, or red Indian, or a gypsy would have at once recognised in him a sorcerer. Yet his manner was subdued, his voice monotonous, never loud, a running stream without babbling stones or rapids; but when it came to a climax cataract he cleared it with grandeur, leaving a stupendous impression. In the ordinary monotony of that deep voice there was soon felt an indescribable charm. In saying this I only repeat what I have heard in more or less different phrase from others. There was always in his eyes (and in this as in other points he resembled Emerson) a strange indefinable suspicion of a smile, though he, like the Sage of Concord, rarely laughed. Owing to these black eyes, and his sallow complexion, his sobriquet among the students was "the royal Bengal tiger." He was not unlike Emerson as a lecturer. I heard the latter deliver his great course of lectures in London in 1848—including the famous one on Napoleon—but he had not to the same perfection the music of the voice, nor the indefinable mysterious charm which characterised the style of Professor Dodd, who played with emotion as if while feeling he was ever superior to it. He was a great actor, who had gone far beyond acting or art.

Owing, I suppose, to business losses, my father and family lived for two years either at Congress Hall Hotel or en pension. I spent my first vacation at the former place. There lived in the house a Colonel John Du Solle, the editor of a newspaper. He was a good-natured, rather dissipated man, who kept horses and had a fancy for me, and took me out "on drives," and once introduced me in the street to a great actress, Susan Cushman, {101} and very often to theatres and coffee-houses and reporters, and printed several of my lucubrations. Du Solle was in after years secretary to P. T. Barnum, whom I also knew well. He was kind to me, and I owe him this friendly mention. Some people thought him a rather dangerous companion for youth, but I was never taken by him into bad company or places, nor did I ever hear from him a word of which my parents would have disapproved. But I really believe that I could at that time, or any other, have kept company with the devil and not been much harmed: it was not in me. Edgar A. Poe was often in Du Solle's office and at Congress Hall.

In the summer we all went to Stonington, Connecticut, where we lived at a hotel called the Wadawanuc House. There I went out sailing—once on a clam-bake excursion in a yacht owned by Captain Nat. Palmer, who had discovered Palmer's Land—and sailed far and wide. That summer I also saw on his own deck the original old Vanderbilt himself, who was then the captain of a Sound steamboat; and I bathed every day in salt-water, and fished from the wharf, and smoked a great deal, and read French books; and after a while we went into Massachusetts and visited the dear old villages and Boston, and so on, till I had to return to Princeton. Soon after my father took another house in Walnut Street, the next door above the one where we had lived. This one was rather better, for though it had less garden, it had larger back-buildings.

Bon an, mal an, the time passed away at Princeton for four years. I was often very ill. In the last year the physician who tested my lungs declared they were unsound in two places; and about this time I was believed to have contracted an incurable stoop in the shoulders. One day I resolved that from that minute I would always hold myself straight upright; and I did so, and in the course of time became as straight as an arrow, and have continued so, I believe, ever since.

I discovered vast treasures of strange reading in the library of the Princeton Theological College. There was in one corner in a waste-room at least two cart-loads of old books in a cobwebbed dusty pile. Out of that pile I raked the thirteenth known copy of Blind Harry's famed poem, a black-letter Euphues Lely, an Erra Pater (a very weak-minded friend actually shamed me out of making a copy of this great curiosity, telling me it was silly and childish of me to be so pleased with old trash), and many more marvels, which were so little esteemed in Princeton, that one of the professors, seeing me daft with delight over my finds, told me I was quite welcome to keep them all; but I, who better knew their great value, would not avail myself of the offer, reflecting that a time would come when these treasures would be properly valued. God knows it was a terrible temptation to me, and such as I hope I may never have again—ne inducas nos in temptationem!

The time for my graduation was at hand. I had profited very much in the last year by the teaching and friendly counsel of Professor Joseph Henry, whose lectures on philosophy I diligently attended; also those on geology, chemistry and botany by Professor Torrey, and by the company of Professor Topping. I stood very high in Latin, and perhaps first in English branches. Yet, because I had fallen utterly short in mathematics, I was rated the lowest but one in the class—or, honestly speaking, the very last, for the one below me was an utterly reckless youth, who could hardly be said to have studied or graduated at all. There were two honours usually awarded for proficiency in study. One was the First Honour, and he who received it delivered the Valedictory Oration; the second was the Poem; and by an excess of kindness and justice for which I can never feel too grateful, and which was really an extraordinary stretch of their power under the circumstances, the Poem was awarded to me!

I was overwhelmed at the honour, but bitterly mortified and cut to my heart to think how little I had deserved it; for I had never done a thing save read and study that which pleased me and was easy. I wrote the poem (and I still think it was a good one, for I put all my soul into it), and sent it in to the Faculty, with a letter stating that I was deeply grateful for their extreme kindness, but that, feeling I had not deserved it, I must decline the honour. But I sent them my MS. as a proof that I did not do so because I felt myself incapable, and because I wished to give them some evidence that they had not erred in regarding me as a poet.

Very foolish and boyish, the reader may say, and yet I never regretted it. The Faculty were not to blame for the system pursued, and they did their utmost in every way for four years to make it easy and happy for one of the laziest and most objectionable students whom they had ever had. I have never been really able to decide whether I was right or wrong. At liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts, neither I nor the professors would ever have discovered a flaw in my industry. At the closely cramped, orthodox, hide-bound, mathematical Princeton, every weakness in me seemed to be developed. Thirty years later I read in the Nassau Monthly, which I had once edited, that if Boker and I and a few others had become known in literature, we had done so in spite of our education there. I do not know who wrote it; whoever he was, I am much obliged to him for a very comforting word. For, discipline apart, it was literally "in spite of our education" that we learned anything worth knowing at Princeton—as it then was.

* * * * *

From this point a new phase of life begins. Prominent in it and as its moving power was the great kindness of my father. That I had graduated at all under any conditions was gratifying, and so was the fact that it was not in reality without the so-called Second Honour, despite my low grade. And the pitiable condition of my health was considered. During the last year I had taken lessons in dancing and fencing, which helped me a little, and I looked as if I might become strong with a change of life. So my father took my mother and me on a grand excursion. We went to Stonington, New York, and Saratoga, where I attended a ball—my first—and then on to Niagara. On the way we stopped at Auburn, where there was a great State-prison, which I visited alone. There was among its attractions a noted murderer under sentence of death. There were two or three ladies and gentlemen who were shown by the warder with me over the building. He expressed some apprehension as to showing us the murderer, for he was a very desperate character. We entered a large room, and I saw a really gentlemanly-looking man heavily ironed, who was reading a newspaper. While the others conversed with him, I endeavoured to make unobserved a sketch of his face. The warder noticing this, called me to the front to make it boldly, and the prisoner, smiling, told me to go on with it; which I did, and that not so badly—at least, the sitter approved of it.

So we went up the beautiful Hudson, which far surpasses the Rhine, and yields the palm only to the Danube, stopping at Poughkeepsie and Albany, and so on to Niagara Falls. On the way we passed through a burning forest. My awe at this wonderful sight amused some one present to whom it was a familiar thing. Which reminds me that about the time when I first went to college, but while staying at Congress Hall, I there met a youth from Alabama or Mississippi, who was on his way to Princeton to join our ranks. To him I of course showed every attention, and by way of promoting his happiness took him to the top of the belfry of the State House, whence there is a fine view. While there I casually remarked what a number of ships there were in the river, whereupon he eagerly cried, "Oh, show me one! I never saw a ship in all my life!" I gazed at him in utter astonishment, as if I would say, "What manner of man art thou?" and then recalling myself, said, "Well, we are just equal, for you never saw a ship, and I never saw a cotton-field." The young man smiled incredulously, and replied, "Now I know that you are trying to humbug me, for how could you grow up without ever seeing cotton-fields?"

We arrived at Niagara about noon, and I at once went to see the Falls. There was a very respectable-looking old gentleman, evidently from the far South, with two young ladies, one a great beauty, advancing just before. I heard him say, "Now, keep your eyes closed, or look down till you can have a full view." I did the same, and when he cried "Look up!" did so. It was one of the great instants of my life.

I know not how it was, but that first glance suggested to me something chivalric. It may have been from Byron's simile of the tail of the white horse and the cataract, and the snow-white steed of that incarnation of nobility, Crescentius, and there rang in my memory a mystical verse—

"My eye bears a glance like the gleam of a lance When I hear the waters dash and dance; And I smile with glee, for I love to see The sight of anything that's free!"

But it was a mingled sense of nobility, and above all of freedom, which impressed me in that roaring mist of waters, in the wild river leaping as in reckless sport over the vast broad precipice. It is usual, especially for those who have no gift of description, to say that Niagara is "utterly indescribable," and the Visitors' Book has this opinion repeated by the American Philistine on every page. But that is because those who say so have no proper comprehension of facts stated, no poetic faculty, and no imagination. Of course no mere description, however perfect, would give the same conception of even a pen or a button as would the sight thereof; but it is absurd and illogical to speak as if this were peculiar to a great thing alone. For my part, I believe that the mere description to a poet, or to one who has dwelt by wood and wold and steeped his soul in Nature, of a tremendous cataract a mile in breadth and two hundred feet high, cleft by a wooded island, and rushing onward below in awful rocky rapids with a mighty roar, would, could, or should convey a very good idea of the great sight. For I found in after years, when I came to see Venice and the temples on the Nile, that they were picturesquely or practically precisely what I had expected to see, not one shade or nuance of an expression more or less. As regards Rome and all Gothic cathedrals, I had been assured so often, or so generally, by all "intelligent tourists," that they were all wretched rubbish, that I was amazed to find them so beautiful. And so much as to anticipations of Niagara, which I have thrice visited, and the constant assertion by cads unutterable that it is "indescribable."

While at Niagara for three days, I walked about a great deal with a young lady whose acquaintance we had made at the hotel. As she was, I verily believe, the very first, not a relative, with whom I had ever taken a walk, or, I may almost say, formed an acquaintance, it constituted an event in my life equal to Niagara itself in importance. I was at this time just twenty-one, and certain I am that among twenty-one thousand college graduates of my age in America, of the same condition of life, there was not another so inexperienced in worldly ways, or so far behind his age, or so "docile unto discipline." I was, in fact, morally where most boys in the United States are at twelve or thirteen; which is a very great mistake where there is a fixed determination that the youth shall make his own way in life. We cannot have boys good little angels at home and devils in business abroad.—Horum utrum magis velim, mihi incertum est.



III. UNIVERSITY LIFE AND TRAVEL IN EUROPE. 1845-1848.

Passage in a sailing ship—Gibraltar—Marseilles—Smugglers and a slaver—Italy—Life in Rome—Torlonia's balls and the last great Carnival of 1846—Navone, the chief of police—Florence—Venice—How I passed the Bridge of Sighs—The Black Bait—Slavery—Crossing the Simplon—Switzerland—Pleasing introduction to Germany—Student life at Heidelberg—Captain Medwin—Justinus Kerner—How I saw Jenny Lind—Munich—Lola Montez—Our house on fire—All over Germany—How I was turned out of Poland—Paris in 1847—The Revolution of 1848—I become conspirator and captain of barricades—Taking of the Tuileries—The police bow me out of Prance—A season in London—Return to America.

After our return to Philadelphia something of great importance to me began to be discussed. My cousin Samuel Godfrey, who was a few years older than I, finding himself threatened with consumption, of which all his family died, resolved to go to Marseilles on a voyage, and persuaded my father to let me accompany him. At this time I had, as indeed for many years before, such a desire to visit Europe that I might almost have died of it. So it was at last determined that I should go with "Sam," and after all due preparations and packing, I bade farewell to mother and Henry and the dear little twin sisters, and youngest Emily, our pet, and went with my father to New York, where I was the guest for a few days of my cousin, Mrs. Caroline Wight, whom the reader may recall as the one who used to correct my French exercises in Dedham.

We were to sail in a packet or ship for Marseilles. My father saw me off. He was wont to say in after years, that as I stood on the deck at the last moment and looked affectionately at him, there was in my eyes an expression of innocence or goodness and gentleness which he never saw again. Which was, I am sure, very true; the great pity being that that look had not utterly disappeared years before. If it only had vanished with boyhood, as it ought to have done, my father would have been spared much sorrow.

At this time I was a trifle over six feet two in height, and had then and for some time after so fair a red and white complexion, that the young ladies in Philadelphia four years later teased me by spreading the report that I used rouge and white paint! I was not as yet "filled out," but held myself straightly, and was fairly proportioned. I wore a cap a l'etudiant, very much over my left ear, and had very long, soft, straight, dark-brown hair; my dream and ideal being the German student. I was extremely shy of strangers, but when once acquainted soon became very friendly, and in most cases made a favourable impression. I was "neat and very clean-looking," as a lady described me, for the daily bath or sponge was universal in Philadelphia long ere it was even in England, and many a time when travelling soon after, I went without a meal in order to have my tub, when time did not permit of both. I was very sensitive, and my feelings were far too easily pained; on the other hand, I had no trace of the common New England youth's vulgar failing of nagging, teasing, or vexing others under colour of being "funny" or "cute." A very striking, and, all things considered, a remarkable characteristic was that I hated, as I still do, with all my soul, gossip about other people and their affairs; never read even a card not meant for my eyes, and detested curiosity, prying, and inquisitiveness as I did the devil. I owe a great development of this to a curious incident. It must have been about the time when I first went to college, that I met at Cape May a naval officer, who roomed with me in a cottage, a farm-house near a hotel, and whom I greatly admired as a man of the world and a model of good manners. To him one day I communicated some gossip about somebody, when he abruptly cut me short, and when I would go on informed me that he never listened to such talk. This made a very deep impression on me, which never disappeared; nay, it grew with my growth and strengthened with my strength. Now the New England people, especially Bostonians, are inordinately given to knowing everything about everybody, and to "tittle- tattle," while the Southerners are comparatively free from it and very incurious. Two-thirds of the students at Princeton were of the first families in the South, and there my indifference to what did not personally concern one was regarded as a virtue. But there is a spot in this sun—that he who never cares a straw to know about the affairs of other people, will, not only if he live in Boston, but almost anywhere else—Old England not at all excepted—be forced, in spite of himself, and though he were as meek and lowly as man may be, into looking down on and feeling himself superior unto those people who will read a letter not meant for their eyes, or eavesdrop, or talk in any way about anybody in a strain to which they would not have that person listen. Which reminds me that in after years I got some praise in the newspapers for the saying that a Yankee's idea of hell was a place where he must mind his own business. It came about in this way. In a letter to Charles Astor Bristed I made this remark, and illustrated it with a picture of Virgil taking a Yankee attired in a chimney-pot hat and long night-gown into the Inferno, over whose gate was written—

"Badate a vostri affari voi che intrate!" (Mind your own business ye who enter here!)

One day soon after my arrival at Princeton, George Boker laid on the table by me a paper or picture with its face down. I took no notice of it. After a time he said, "Why don't you look at that picture?" I replied simply, "If you wanted me to see it you would have turned it face up." To which he remarked, "I put it there to see whether you would look at it. I thought you would not." George was a "deep, sagacious file," who studied men like books.

My cousin who accompanied me had as a boy "run away and gone to sea" cod- fishing on the Grand Banks. If I had gone with him it would have done me good. Another cousin, Benjamin Stimson, did the same; he is the S. often mentioned in Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast." Dana and Stimson were friends, and ran away together. It was quite the rule for all my Yankee cousins to do this, and they all benefited by it. In consequence of his nautical experience Sam was soon at home among all sailors, and not having my scruples as to knowing who was who or their affairs, soon knew everything that was going on. Our captain was a handsome, dissipated, and "loud" young man, with rather more sail than ballast, but good-natured and obliging.

"Come day, go day," we passed the Gulf Stream and the Azores, and had long sunny calms, when we could not sail, and lay about on deck, warm and lazy, and saw the Azores, and so on, till we were near the Spanish coast. One evening there clipped right under our lee a fisherman's smack. "I say, Leland, hail that fellow!" said the captain. So I called in Spanish, "Adonde venga usted?"

"Da Algesiras," was the reply, which thrilled out of my heart the thought that, like the squire in Chaucer—

"He had been at the siege of Algecir."

So I called, in parting, "Dios vaya con usted!"

Sam informed me that the manner in which I hailed the fisherman had made a great impression on the captain, who lauded me highly. It also made one on me, because it was the first time I ever spoke to a European in Europe!

Anon we were boarded by an old weather-beaten seadog of a Spanish pilot, unto whom I felt a great attraction; and greeting him in Malagan Spanish, such as I had learned from Manuel Gori, as Hermano! and offering him with ceremonious politeness a good cigar, I also drew his regards; all Spaniards, as I well knew, being extremely fond, beyond all men on earth, of intimacy with gentlemen. We were delayed for two days at Gibraltar. I may here remark, by the way, that this voyage of our ship is described in a book by Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler, entitled "A Year of Consolation Abroad." She was on board, but never spoke to a soul among the passengers.

I was never acquainted with Mrs. Butler, as I easily might have been, for we had some very intimate friends in common; but as a boy I had been "frightened of her" by certain anecdotes as to her temper, and perhaps the influence lasted into later years. I have, however, heard her lecture. She was a very clever woman, and Mr. Henry James, in Temple Bar for March, 1893, thus does justice to her conversational power:

"Her talk reflected a thousand vanished and present things; but there were those of her friends for whom its value was, almost before any other, documentary. The generations move so fast and change so much, that Mrs. Kemble testified even more than she affected to do, which was much, to ancient manners and a close chapter of history. Her conversation swarmed with people and with criticism of people, with the ghosts of a dead society. She had, in two hemispheres, seen every one and known every one, had assisted at the social comedy of her age. Her own habits and traditions were in themselves a survival of an era less democratic and more mannered. I have no room for enumerations, which, moreover, would be invidious; but the old London of her talk—the direction I liked is best to take—was, in particular, a gallery of portraits. She made Count d'Orsay familiar, she made Charles Greville present; I thought it wonderful that she could be anecdotic about Miss Edgeworth. She reanimated the old drawing-rooms, relighted the old lamps, retuned the old pianos. The finest comedy of all, perhaps, was that of her own generous whimsicalities. She was superbly willing to amuse, and on any terms; and her temper could do it as well as her wit. If either of these had failed, her eccentricities were always there. She had more 'habits' than most people have room in life for, and a theory that to a person of her disposition they were as necessary as the close meshes of a strait- waistcoat. If she had not lived by rule (on her showing) she would have lived infallibly by riot. Her rules and her riots, her reservations and her concessions, all her luxuriant theory and all her extravagant practice; her drollery, that mocked at her melancholy; her imagination, that mocked at her drollery; and her wonderful manners, all her own, that mocked a little at everything: these were part of the constant freshness which made those who loved her love her so much. 'If my servants can live with me a week, they can live with me for ever,' she often said; 'but the first week sometimes kills them.' A domestic who had been long in her service quitted his foreign home the instant he heard of her death, and, travelling for thirty hours, arrived travel-stained and breathless, like a messenger in a romantic tale, just in time to drop a handful of flowers into her grave."

There came on board of our boat a fruit-dealer, and the old pilot, seeing that I was about to invest a real in grapes, said, "Let me buy them for you"; which he did, obtaining half-a-peck of exquisite large grapes of a beautiful purple colour.

There was a middle-aged lady among the passengers, of whom the least I can say was, that she had a great many little winning ways of making herself disagreeable. She imposed frightfully on me while on board, getting me to mark her trunks for her, and carry them into the hold, &c. (the sailors disliked her so much that they refused to touch them), and then cut me dead when on shore. This ancient horror, seeing me with so many grapes, and learning the price, concluded that if a mere boy like me could get so many, she, a lady, could for four reals lay in a stock which would last for life, more or less. So she obtained a bushel-basket, expecting to get it heaped full; but what was her wrath at only getting for her silver half-dollar just enough to hide the bottom thereof! Great was her rage, but rage availed her nought. She did not call old pilots "Brother," or give them cigars, or talk Malagano politely. She was not even "half-Spanish," and therefore, as we used to say at college of certain unpopular people, was "a bad smoke."

We went on shore on Sunday, which in those days always made Gibraltar literally like a fancy ball. The first person whom I met was a pretty young lady in full, antique, rich Castilian costume, followed by a servant bearing her book of devotion. Seeing my gaze of admiration, she smiled, at which I bowed, and she returned the salute and went her way. Such an event had never happened to me before in all my life. I accepted it philosophically as one of a new order of things into which I was destined to enter. Then I saw men from every part of Spain in quaint dresses, Castilians in cloaks, Andalusians in the jaunty majo rig, Gallegos, Moors from the Barbary coast, many Greeks, old Jews in gabardines, Scotch Highland soldiers, and endless more—concursus splendidus—non possum non mirari.

I felt myself very happy and very much at home in all this. I strolled about the streets talking Spanish to everybody. Then I met with a smuggler, who asked me if I wanted to buy cigars. I did. In New York my uncle George had given me a box of five hundred excellent Havanas, and these had lasted me exactly twenty days. I had smoked the last twenty- five on the last day. So I went and bought at a low enough figure a box of the worst cigars I had ever met with. But youth can smoke anything—except deceit.

Entrance to the galleries was strictly forbidden in those days, but an incorruptible British sergeant, for an incorruptible dollar or two, showed us over them. There was, too, a remarkable man, a ship-chandler named Felipe, to whom I was introduced. Felipe spoke twenty-four languages. He boarded every ship and knew everybody. Gibraltar was then a vast head-quarters of social evils, or blessings, and Felipe, who was a perfect Hercules, mentioned incidentally that he had had a new maja, or moza, or muger, or puta, every night for twenty years! which was confirmed by common report. It was a firm principle with him to always change. This extraordinary fact made me reflect deeply on it as a psychological phenomenon. This far surpassed anything I had ever heard at Princeton. Then this and that great English dignitary was pointed out to me—black eyes ogled me—everybody was polite, for I had a touch of the Spanish manner which I had observed in the ex-Capitan-General and others whom I had known in Philadelphia; and, in short, I saw more that was picturesque and congenial in that one day than I had ever beheld in all my life before. I had got into "my plate."

From Gibraltar our ship sailed on to Marseilles. The coasts were full of old ruins, which I sketched. We lay off Malaga for a day, but I could not go ashore, much as I longed to. At Marseilles, Sam and the captain and I went to a very good hotel.

Now it had happened that on the voyage before a certain French lady—the captain said she was a Baroness—having fallen in love with the said captain, had secreted herself on board the vessel, greatly to his horror, and reappeared when out at sea. Therefore, as soon as we arrived at Marseilles, the injured husband came raging on board and tried to shoot the captain, which made a great scandal. And, moved by this example, the coloured cook of our vessel, who had a wife, shot the head-waiter on the same day, being also instigated by jealousy. Sam Godfrey chaffed the captain for setting a bad moral example to the niggers—which was all quite a change from Princeton. Life was beginning to be lively.

There had come over on the vessel with us, in the cabin, a droll character, an actor in a Philadelphia theatre, who had promptly found a lodging in a kind of maritime boarding-house. Getting into some difficulty, as he could not speak French he came in a great hurry to beg me to go with him to his pension to act as interpreter, which I did. I found at once that it was a Spanish house, and the resort of smugglers. The landlady was a very pretty black-eyed woman, who played the guitar, and sang Spanish songs, and brought out Spanish wine, and was marvellously polite to me, to my astonishment, not unmingled with innocent gratitude.

There I was at home. At Princeton I had learned to play the guitar, and from Manuel Gori, who had during all his boyhood been familiar with low life and smugglers, I had learned many songs and some slang. And so, with a crowd of dark, fierce, astonished faces round me of men eagerly listening, I sang a smuggler's song—

"Yo que soy contrabandista, Y campo a me rispeto, A todos mi desafio, Quien me compra hilo negro? Ay jaleo! Muchachas jaleo! Quien me compra hilo negro!"

Great was the amazement and thundering the applause from my auditors. Let the reader imagine a nun of fourteen years asked to sing, and bursting out with "Go it while you're young!" Then I sang the Tragala, which coincided with the political views of my friends. But my grand coup was in reserve. I had learned from Borrow's "Gypsies in Spain" a long string of Gitano or Gypsy verses, such as—

"El eray guillabela, El eray obusno; Que avella romanella, No avella obusno!"

"Loud sang the gorgio to his fair, And thus his ditty ran:— 'Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come, And not the Gypsy man!'"

And yet again—

"Coruncho Lopez, gallant lad, A smuggling he would ride; So stole his father's ambling prad, And therefore to the galleys sad Coruncho now I guide."

This was a final coup. How the diabolo I, such an innocent stranger youth, had ever learned Spanish Gypsy—the least knowledge of which in Spain implies unfathomable iniquity and fastness—was beyond all comprehension. So I departed full of honour amid thunders of applause.

From the first day our room was the resort of all the American ship-captains in Marseilles. We kept a kind of social hall or exchange, with wine and cigars on the side-table, all of which dropping in and out rather reminded me of Princeton. My friend the actor had pitched upon a young English Jew, who seemed to me to be a doubtful character. He sang very well, and was full of local news and gossip. He, too, was at home among us. One evening our captain told us how he every day smuggled ashore fifty cigars in his hat. At hearing this, I saw a gleam in the eyes of the young man, which was a revelation to me. When he had gone, I said to the captain, "You had better not smuggle any cigars to-morrow. That fellow is a spy of the police."

The next day Captain Jack on leaving his ship was accosted by the douaniers, who politely requested him to take off his hat. He refused, and was then told that he must go before the prefet. There the request was renewed. He complied; but "forewarned, forearmed"—there was nothing in it.

Captain Jack complimented me on my sagacity, and scolded the actor for making such friends. But he had unconsciously made me familiar with one compared to whom the spy was a trifle. I have already fully and very truthfully described this remarkable man in an article in Temple Bar, but his proper place is here. He was a little modest-looking Englishman, who seemed to me rather to look up to the fast young American captains as types or models of more daring beings. Sometimes he would tell a mildly- naughty tale as if it were a wild thing. He consulted with me as to going to Paris and hearing lectures at the University, his education having been neglected. He had, I was told, experienced a sad loss, having just lost his ship on the Guinea coast. One day I condoled with him, saying that I heard he had been ruined.

"Yes," replied the captain, "I have. Something like this: My mother once had a very pretty housemaid who disappeared. Some time after I met her magnificently dressed, and I said, 'Sally, where do you live now?' She replied, 'Please, sir, I don't live anywhere now; I've been ruined.'"

Sam explained to me that the captain had a keg of gold-dust and many diamonds, and having wrecked his vessel intentionally, was going to London to get a heavy insurance. He had been "ruined" to his very great advantage. Then Sam remarked—

"You don't know the captain. I tell you, Charley, that man is an old slaver or pirate. See how I'll draw him out."

'The next day Sam began to talk. He remarked that he had been to sea and had some money which he wished to invest. His health required a warm climate, such as the African coast. We would both, in fact, like to go into the Guinea business. [Bozales—"sacks of charcoal," I remarked in Spanish slaver-slang.] The captain smiled. He had apparently heard the expression before. He considered it. He had a great liking for me, and thought that a trip or two under the black flag would do me a great deal of good. So he noted down our address, and promised that as soon as he should get a ship we should hear from him.

After that the captain, regarding me as enlisted in the fraternity, and only waiting till 'twas "time for us to go," had no secrets from me. He was very glad that I knew Spanish and French, and explained that if I would learn Coromantee or Ebo, it would aid us immensely in getting cargoes. By the way, I became very well acquainted in after years with King George of Bonney, and can remember entertaining him with a story how a friend of mine once (in Cuba) bought thirty Ebos, and on entering the barracoon the next morning, found them all hanging by the necks dead, like a row of possums in the Philadelphia market—they having, with magnificent pluck, and in glorious defiance of Buckra civilisation, resolved to go back to Africa. I have found other blacks who believed that all good darkies when they die go to Guinea, and one of these was very touching and strange. He had been brought as a slave-child to South Carolina, but was always haunted by the memory of a group of cocoa-palms by a place where the wild white surf of the ocean bounded up to the shore—a rock, sunshine, and sand. There he declared his soul would go. He was a Voodoo, and a man of marvellous strange mind.

Day by day my commander gave me, as I honestly believe, without a shadow of exaggeration, all the terrific details of a slaver's life, and his strange experiences in buying slaves in the interior. Compared to the awful massacres and cruelties inflicted by the blacks on one another, the white slave trade seemed to be philanthropic and humane. He had seen at the grand custom in Dahomey 2,500 men killed, and a pool made of their blood into which the king's wives threw themselves naked and wallowed. "One day fifteen were to be tortured to death for witchcraft. I bought them all for an old dress-coat," said the captain. "I didn't want them, for my cargo was made up; it was only to save the poor devils' lives."

If a slaver could not get a full cargo, and met with a weaker vessel which was full, it was at once attacked and plundered. Sometimes there would be desperate resistance, with the aid of the slaves. "I have seen the scuppers run with blood," said the captain. And so on, with much more of the same sort, all of which has since been recorded in the "Journal of Captain Canot," from which latter book I really learned nothing new. I might add the "Life of Hobart Pacha," whom I met many times in London. A real old-fashioned slaver was fully a hundred times worse than an average pirate, because he was the latter whenever he wished to rob, and in his business was the cause of far more suffering and death.

The captain was very fond of reading poetry, his favourite being Wordsworth. This formed quite a tie between us. He was always rather mild, quiet, and old-fashioned—in fact, muffish. Once only did I see a spark from him which showed what was latent. Captain Jack was describing a most extraordinary run which we had made before a gale from Gibraltar to Cape de Creux, which was, indeed, true enough, he having a very fast vessel. But the Guinea captain denied that such time had ever been made by any craft ever built. "And I have had to sail sometimes pretty fast in my time," he added with one sharp glance—no more—but, as Byron says of the look of Gulleyaz, 'twas like a short glimpse of hell. Pretty fast! I should think so—now and then from an English cruiser, all sails wetted down, with the gallows in the background. But as I had been on board with Sam, the question was settled. We had made a run which was beyond all precedent.

I fancy that the captain, if he escaped the halter or the wave, in after years settled down in some English coast-village, where he read Wordsworth, and attended church regularly, and was probably regarded as a gentle old duffer by the younger members of society. But take him for all in all, he was the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat, and he always behaved to me like a perfect gentleman, and never uttered an improper word.

We had to wait one month till my cousin could get certain news from America. We employed the time in travelling in the south, visiting Arles, Nismes, Montpellier, and other places. An English gentleman named Gordon, whom I had met in Marseilles, had given me a letter of introduction to M. Saint Rene Taillandier in the latter place. I knew nothing at all then about this great man, or that he was the first French critic of German literature, but I presented my letter, and he kindly went with me about the town to show me its antiquities. I can remember discussing Gothic tracery with him; also, that I told him I was deeply interested in the Troubadours. He recommended Raynouard and several other books, when finding that I was familiar with them all, he smiled, and said that he believed he could teach me nothing more. I did not know it then, but that word from him would have been as good as a diploma for me in Paris.

As for old Roman ruins and Gothic churches, and cloisters grey, and the arrowy Rhone, and castellated bridges—everything was in a more original moss-grown, picturesque condition then than it now is—I enjoyed them all with an intensity, a freshness or love, which passeth all belief. I had attended Professor Dodd's lectures more than once, and illuminated manuscripts, and had bought me in Marseilles Berty's "Dictionary of Gothic Architecture," and got it by heart, and began to think of making a profession of it, which, if I had known it, was the very wisest thing I could have done. And that this is no idle boast is clear from this, that I in after years made a design according to which a "store," which cost 30,000 pounds, was built, my plan being believed by another skilled architect to have been executed by a "professional." This was really the sad slip and escape of my lifetime.

In those days, really good red wine was given to every one at every table; savoury old-fashioned dishes, vegetables, and fruits were served far more freely and cheaply than they now are, when every dainty is sent by rail to Paris or London, and the drinking of Bordeaux and Burgundy did me much good. Blessed days of cheapness and good quality, before chicory, the accursed poison, had found its way into coffee, or oleomargarine was invented, or all things canned—the world will never see ye more! I have now lived for many months in a first-class Florence hotel, and in all the time have not tasted one fresh Italian mushroom, or truffle, or olive—nothing but tasteless abominations bottled in France!

It was settled that my cousin should return from Marseilles to the United States, while I was to go on alone to Italy. It was misgivingly predicted at home by divers friends that I would be as a lamb set loose among wolves, and lose all my money at the outstart. Could they have learned that within a week after my arrival I had been regarded by Spanish smugglers as a brother, and tripped up a spy of the police, and been promised a situation as a slaver's and pirate's assistant, they might have thought that I had begun to learn how to take care of myself in a hurry. As for losing my money, I, by a terrible accident, doubled it, as I will here describe.

Before leaving home, a lady cousin had made for Samuel and me each a purse, and they were exactly alike. Now by a purse I mean a real purse, and not a pocket-book, or a porte-monnaie, or a wallet—that is, I mean a long bag with a slit and two rings, and nothing else. And my cousin having often scolded me for leaving mine lying about in our room, I seeing it, as I thought, just a few minutes before my departure, lying on the table, pocketed it, thanking God that Sam had not found it, or scolded me.

I went on board the steamboat and set sail towards Italy. I was sea-sick all night, but felt better the next day. Then I had to pay out some money, and thought I would look over my gold. To my utter amazement, it was doubled! This I attributed to great generosity on Sam's part, and I blessed him.

But, merciful heavens! what were my sensations at finding in the lower depth of my pocket another purse also filled with Napoleons in rouleaux! Then it all flashed upon me. Samuel, the careful, had left his purse lying on the table, and I had supposed it was mine! I felt as wretched as if I had lost instead of won.

When I got to Naples I found a letter from my cousin bewailing his loss. He implored me, if I knew nothing about it, not to tell it to a human soul. There was a M. Duclaux in Marseilles, with whom we had had our business dealings, and from him Sam had borrowed what he needed. I at once requested Captain Olive, of the steamer, to convey the purse and its contents to M. Duclaux, which I suppose was done secundem ordinem.

Poor Sam! I never met him again. He died of consumption soon after returning home. He was one of whom I can say with truth that I never saw in him a fault, however trifling. He was honour itself in everything, as humane as was his grandfather before him, ever cheerful and kind, merry and quaint.

The programme of the steamboat declared that meals were included in the fare, "except while stopping at a port." But we stopped every day at Genoa or Leghorn, or somewhere, and stayed about fifteen hours, and as almost every passenger fell sea-sick after going ashore, the meals were not many. On board the first day, I made the acquaintance of Mr. James Temple Bowdoin, of Boston, and Mr. Mosely, of whom I had often heard as editor of the Richmond Whig. Mr. Bowdoin was a nephew of Lady Temple, and otherwise widely connected with English families. He is now living (1892), and I have seen a great deal of him of late years. With these two I joined company, and travelled with them over Italy. Both were much older than I, and experienced men of the world; therefore I was in good hands, and better guides, philosophers, mentors, pilots, and friends I could hardly have found. Left to myself, I should probably ere the winter was over have been the beloved chief of a gang of gypsies, or brigands, or witches, or careering the wild sea-wave as a daring smuggler, all in innocence and goodness of heart; for truly in Marseilles I had begun to put forth buds of such strange kind and promise as no friend of mine ever dreamed of. As it was, I got into better, if less picturesque, society.

We came to Naples, and went to a hotel, and visited everything. In those days the beggars and pimps and pickpockets were beyond all modern conception. The picturesqueness of the place and people were only equalled by the stinks. It was like a modern realistic novel. We went a great deal to the opera, also to the Blue Grotto of Capri, and ascended Mount Vesuvius, and sought Baiae, and made, in fact, all the excursions. As there were three, and sometimes half-a-dozen of our friends on these trips, we had, naturally, with us quite a cortege. Among these was an ill-favoured rascal called "John," who always received a dollar a day. One evening some one raised the question as to what the devil it was that John did. He did not carry anything, or work to any account, or guide, or inform, yet he was always there, and always in the way. So John, being called up, was asked what he did. Great was his indignation, for by this time he had got to consider himself indispensable. He declared that he "directed, and made himself generally useful." We informed him that we would do our own directing, and regarded him as generally useless. So John was discarded. Since then I have found that "John" is a very frequent ingredient in all societies and Government offices. There are Johns in Parliament, in the army, and in the Church. His children are pensioned into the third and fourth and fortieth generation. In fact, I am not sure that John is not the great social question of the age.

There was in Philadelphia an Academy of Fine Arts, or Gallery, of which my father had generously presented me with two shares, which gave me free entrance. There were in it many really excellent pictures, even a first- class Murillo, besides Wests and Allstons. Unto this I had, as was my wont, read up closely, and reflected much on what I read, so that I was to a certain degree prepared for the marvels of art which burst on me in Naples. And if I was, and always have been, rather insensible to the merits of Renaissance sculpture and architecture, I was not so to its painting, and not at all blind to the unsurpassed glories of its classic prototypes. Professor Dodd had indeed impressed it deeply and specially on my mind that the revival of a really pure Greek taste in England, or from the work of Stewart and Revett, was contemporary with that for Gothic architecture, and that the appreciation of one, if true, implies that of the other. As I was now fully inspired with my new resolution to become an architect, I read all that I could get on the subject, and naturally examined all remains of the past far more closely and critically than I should otherwise have done. And this again inspired in me (who always had a mania for bric-a-brac and antiquity, which is certainly hereditary) a great interest in the characteristic decoration of different ages, which thing is the soul and life of all aesthetic archaeology and the minor arts; which latter again I truly claim to have brought, I may say, into scientific form and made a branch of education in after years.

I think that we were a month in Naples. I kept a journal then, and indeed everywhere for three years after. The reader may be thankful that I have it not, for I foresee that I shall easily recall enough to fill ten folios of a thousand pages solid brevier each, at this rate of reminiscences. As my predilection for everything German and Gothic came out more strongly every day, Mr. Mosely called me familiarly Germanicus, a name which was indeed not ill-bestowed at that period.

From Naples we went to Rome by vettura, or in carriages. We were two days and two nights on the route. I remember that when we entered Rome, I saw the douanier who examined my trunk remove from it, as he thought unperceived, a hair-brush, book, &c., and slyly hide them behind another trunk. I calmly walked round, retook and replaced them in my trunk, to the discomfiture, but not in the least to the shame, of the thief, who only grinned.

And here I may say, once for all, that one can hardly fail to have a mean opinion of human common-sense in government, when we see this system of examining luggage still maintained. For all that any country could possibly lose by smuggling in trunks, &c., would be a hundred-fold recompensed by the increased amount of travel and money imported, should it be done away with, as has been perfectly and fully proved in France; the announcement a year ago that examination would be null or formal having had at once the effect of greatly increasing travel. And as there is not a custom-house in all Europe where a man who knows the trick cannot pull through his luggage by bribery—the exceptions being miraculously rare—the absurdity and folly of the system is apparent.

We went to the Hotel d'Allemagne, where I fell ill, either because I had a touch of Neapolitan malaria in me (in those days the stench of the city was perceptible three miles out at sea, and might have risen unto heaven above and been smelt by the angels, had they and their home been as near to earth as was believed by the schoolmen), or because the journey had been too much for me. However, an English physician set me up all right in two or three days (he wanted to sell us pictures which would have cured any one—of a love of art), and then there began indeed a glorious scampering and investigating, rooting and rummaging—

"'Mid deathless lairs in solemn Rome."

Galleries and gardens, ruins and palaces, Colosseum and temples, churches and museums—ye have had many a better informed and many a more inspired or gifted visitor than I, but whether from your first Sabine days you ever had a happier one, or one who enjoyed you more with the simple enjoyment of youth and hope gratified, I doubt. Sometimes among moss- grown arches on a sunny day, as the verd-antique lizards darted over the stones from dark to light, while far in the distance tinkled bells, either from cows or convents, and all was calm and sweet, I have often wondered if it could indeed be real and not a dream. Life often seemed to me then to be too good to be true. And there was this at least good in my Transcendentalism and Poly-Pantheism, that it quite unconsciously or silently gave me many such hours; for it had sunk so deeply into my soul, and was so much a real part thereof, that it inspired me when I never thought of it, in which I differed by a heaven's width from the professional Yankee Transcendentalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, AEsthetes, and other spiritualists or sorcerers, who always kept their blessed belief, as a holy fugleman, full in sight, to give them sacred straight tips, or as a Star-spangled Bannerman who waved exceedingly, while my spirit was a shy fairy, who dwelt far down in the depths of the all too green sea of my soul, where it seemed to me she had ever been, or ever a storm had raised a wave on the surface. Antiquely verdant green I was, no doubt. And even to this day the best hours of my life are when I hear her sweet voice 'mid ivy greens or ruins grey, in wise books, hoar traditions. Be it where it will, it is that, and not the world of men or books, which gives the charm.

It was usual for all who drew from Torlonia's bank not less than 20 pounds to be invited to his soirees. To ensure the expenses, the footman who brought the invitation called the day after for not less than five francs. But the entertainment was well worth the money, and more. There was a good supper—Thackeray has represented a character in "Vanity Fair" as devouring it—and much amusement.

Now I had written my name Chas., which being mistaken for Chev., I in due time, received an invitation addressed to M. le Chevalier Godfrey de Leland. And it befell that I once found a lost decoration of the Order of the Golden Spur, which in those days was actually sold to anybody who asked for it for ten pounds, and was worth "nothing to nobody." This caused much fun among my friends, and from that day I was known as the Chevalier Germanicus, or the Knight of the Golden Spur, to which I assented with very good grace as a joke. There were even a few who really believed that I had been decorated, though I never wore it, and one day I received quite a severe remonstrance from a very patriotic fellow-countryman against the impropriety of my thus risking my loss of citizenship. Which caused me to reflect how many there are in life who rise to such "honours," Heaven only knows how, in a back-stairs way. I know in London a very great man of science, nemini secundus, who has never been knighted, although the tradesman who makes for him his implements and instruments has received the title and the accolade. Fie at justitia!

I saw at one of the Torlonia entertainments a marvellously beautiful and strange thing, of which I had read an account in Mme. de Stael's Corinne. There was a stage, on which appeared a young girl, plainly dressed, and bearing a simple small scarf. She did not speak or dance, or even assume "artistic positions"; what she did was far more striking and wonderful. She merely sat or stood or reclined in many ways, every one of which seemed to be perfectly natural or habitual, and all of which were incredibly graceful. I have forgotten how such women were called in Italy. I am sure that this one had never been trained to it, for the absolute ease and naturalness with which she sat or stood could never have been taught. If it could, every woman in the world would learn it. Ristori was one of these instinctive Graces, and it constituted nearly all the art there was in her.

This was in 1846. The Carnival of that year in Rome was the last real one which Italy ever beheld. It was the very last, for which every soul saved up all his money for months, in order to make a wild display, and dance and revel and indulge in

"Eating, drinking, masking, And other things which could be had for asking."

Then all Rome ran mad, and rode in carriages full of flowers, or carts, or wheelbarrows, or triumphal chariots, or on camels, horses, asses, or rails—n'importe quoi—and merrily cast confetti of flour or lime at one another laughing, while grave English tourists on balconies laboriously poured the same by the peck from tin scoops on the heads of the multitude, under the delusion that they too were enjoying themselves and "doing" the Carnival properly. It was the one great rule among Italians that no man should in the Carnival, under any provocation whatever, lose his temper. And here John Bull often tripped up. On the last night of the last Carnival—that great night—there was the Senza Moccolo or extinguishment of lights, in which everybody bore a burning taper, and tried to blow or knock out the light of his neighbour. Now, being tall, I held my taper high with one hand, well out of danger, while with a broad felt hat in the other I extinguished the children of light like a priest. I threw myself into all the roaring fun like a wild boy, as I was, and was never so jolly. Observing a pretty young English lady in an open carriage, I thrice extinguished her light, at which she laughed, but at which her brother or beau did not, for he got into a great rage, even the first time, and bade me begone. Whereupon I promptly renewed the attack, and then repeated it, "according to the rules of the game," whereat he began to curse and swear, when I, in the Italian fashion of rebuke (to the delight of sundry Italians), pointed my finger at him and hissed; which constituted the winning point d'honneur in the game.