After much cogitation I complied with the wishes of my family, and selected a profession. I determined to study medicine at the New York Academy. This disposition of my future suited me. A removal from my relatives would enable me to dispose of my time as I pleased, without fear of detection. As long as I paid my Academy fees, I might shirk attending the lectures, if I chose; and as I never had the remotest intention of standing an examination, there was no danger of my being "plucked." Besides, a metropolis was the place for me. There I could obtain excellent instruments, the newest publications, intimacy with men of pursuits kindred to my own,—in short, all things necessary to insure a profitable devotion of my life to my beloved science. I had an abundance of money, few desires that were not bounded by my illuminating mirror on one side and my object-glass on the other; what, therefore, was to prevent my becoming an illustrious investigator of the veiled worlds? It was with the most buoyant hopes that I left my New England home and established myself in New York.



II.

THE LONGING OF A MAN OF SCIENCE.

My first step, of course, was to find suitable apartments. These I obtained, after a couple of days' search, in Fourth Avenue; a very pretty second-floor unfurnished, containing sitting-room, bedroom, and a smaller apartment which I intended to fit up as a laboratory. I furnished my lodgings simply, but rather elegantly, and then devoted all my energies to the adornment of the temple of my worship. I visited Pike, the celebrated optician, and passed in review his splendid collection of microscopes,—Field's Compound, Higham's, Spencer's, Nachet's Binocular, (that founded on the principles of the stereoscope,) and at length fixed upon that form known as Spencer's Trunnion Microscope, as combining the greatest number of improvements with an almost perfect freedom from tremor. Along with this I purchased every possible accessory,—drawtubes, micrometers, a camera-lucida, lever-stage, achromatic condensers, white cloud illuminators, prisms, parabolic condensers, polarizing apparatus, forceps, aquatic boxes, fishing-tubes, with a host of other articles, all of which would have been useful in the hands of an experienced microscopist, but, as I afterwards discovered, were not of the slightest present value to me. It takes years of practice to know how to use a complicated microscope. The optician looked suspiciously at me as I made these wholesale purchases. He evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific celebrity or a madman. I think he inclined to the latter belief. I suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which he is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced, and called a lunatic.

Mad or not, I set myself to work with a zeal which few scientific students have ever equalled. I had everything to learn relative to the delicate study upon which I had embarked,—a study involving the most earnest patience, the most rigid analytic powers, the steadiest hand, the most untiring eye, the most refined and subtile manipulation.

For a long time half my apparatus lay inactively on the shelves of my laboratory, which was now most amply furnished with every possible contrivance for facilitating my investigations. The fact was that I did not know how to use some of my scientific accessories,— never having been taught microscopies,—and those whose use I understood theoretically were of little avail, until by practice I could attain the necessary delicacy of handling. Still, such was the fury of my ambition, such the untiring perseverance of my experiments, that, difficult of credit as it may be, in the course of one year I became theoretically and practically an accomplished microscopist.

During this period of my labors, in which I submitted specimens of every substance that came under my observation to the action of my lenses, I became a discoverer,—in a small way, it is true, for I was very young, but still a discoverer. It was I who destroyed Ehrenberg's theory that the Volcox globator was an animal, and proved that his "monads" with stomachs and eyes were merely phases of the formation of a vegetable cell, and were, when they reached their mature state, incapable of the act of conjugation, or any true generative act, without which no organism rising to any stage of life higher than vegetable can be said to be complete. It was I who resolved the singular problem of rotation in the cells and hairs of plants into ciliary attraction, in spite of the assertions of Mr. Wenham and others, that my explanation was the result of an optical illusion.

But notwithstanding these discoveries, laboriously and painfully made as they were, I felt horribly dissatisfied. At every step I found myself stopped by the imperfections of my instruments. Like all active microscopists, I gave my imagination full play. Indeed, it is a common complaint against many such, that they supply the defects of their instruments with the creations of their brains. I imagined depths beyond depths in Nature which the limited power of my lenses prohibited me from exploring. I lay awake at night constructing imaginary microscopes of immeasurable power, with which I seemed to pierce through all the envelopes of matter down to its original atom. How I cursed those imperfect mediums which necessity through ignorance compelled me to use! How I longed to discover the secret of some perfect lens whose magnifying power should be limited only by the resolvability of the object, and which at the same time should be free from spherical and chromatic aberrations, in short from all the obstacles over which the poor microscopist finds himself continually stumbling! I felt convinced that the simple microscope, composed of a single lens of such vast yet perfect power, was possible of construction. To attempt to bring the compound microscope up to such a pitch would have been commencing at the wrong end; this latter being simply a partially successful endeavor to remedy those very defects of the simple instrument, which, if conquered, would leave nothing to be desired.

It was in this mood of mind that I became a constructive microscopist. After another year passed in this new pursuit, experimenting on every imaginable substance,—glass, gems, flints, crystals, artificial crystals formed of the alloy of various vitreous materials,— in short, having constructed as many varieties of lenses as Argus had eyes, I found myself precisely where I started, with nothing gained save an extensive knowledge of glass-making. I was almost dead with despair. My parents were surprised at my apparent want of progress in my medical studies, (I had not attended one lecture since my arrival in the city,) and the expenses of my mad pursuit had been so great as to embarrass me very seriously.

I was in this frame of mind one day, experimenting in my laboratory on a small diamond,—that stone, from its great refracting power, having always occupied my attention more than any other,—when a young Frenchman, who lived on the floor above me, and who was in the habit of occasionally visiting me, entered the room.

I think that Jules Simon was a Jew. He had many traits of the Hebrew character: a love of jewelry, of dress, and of good living. There was something mysterious about him. He always had something to sell, and yet went into excellent society. When I say sell, I should perhaps have said peddle; for his operations were generally confined to the disposal of single articles,—a picture, for instance, or a rare carving in ivory, or a pair of duelling-pistols, or the dress of a Mexican caballero. When I was first furnishing my rooms, he paid me a visit, which ended in my purchasing an antique silver lamp, which he assured me was a Cellini,—it was handsome enough even for that,—and some other knick-knacks for my sitting-room. Why Simon should pursue this petty trade I never could imagine. He apparently had plenty of money, and had the entre of the best houses in the city,—taking care, however, I suppose, to drive no bargains within the enchanted circle of the Upper Ten. I came at length to the conclusion that this peddling was but a mask to cover some greater object, and even went so far as to believe my young acquaintance to be implicated in the slave-trade. That, however, was none of my affair.

On the present occasion, Simon entered my room in a state of considerable excitement.

"Ah! mon ami!" he cried, before I could even offer him the ordinary salutation, "it has occurred to me to be the witness of the most astonishing things in the world. I promenade myself to the house of Madame ——-. How does the little animal—le renard—name himself in the Latin?"

"Vulpes," I answered.

"Ah! yes, Vulpes. I promenade myself to the house of Madame Vulpes."

"The spirit medium?"

"Yes, the great medium. Great Heavens! what a woman! I write on a slip of paper many of questions concerning affairs the most secret,— affairs that conceal themselves in the abysses of my heart the most profound; and behold! by example! what occurs? This devil of a woman makes me replies the most truthful to all of them. She talks to me of things that I do not love to talk of to myself. What am I to think? I am fixed to the earth!"

"Am I to understand you, M. Simon, that this Mrs. Vulpes replied to questions secretly written by you, which questions related to events known only to yourself?"

"Ah! more than that, more than that," he answered, with an air of some alarm. "She related to me things——But," he added, after a pause, and suddenly changing his manner, "why occupy ourselves with these follies? It was all the Biology, without doubt. It goes without saying that it has not my credence.—But why are we here, mon ami? It has occurred to me to discover the most beautiful thing as you can imagine.—a vase with green lizards on it composed by the great Bernard Palissy. It is in my apartment; let us mount. I go to show it to you."

I followed Simon mechanically; but my thoughts were far from Palissy and his enamelled ware, although I, like him, was seeking in the dark after a great discovery. This casual mention of the spiritualist, Madame Vulpes, set me on a new track. What if this spiritualism should be really a great fact? What if, through communication with subtiler organisms than my own, I could reach at a single bound the goal, which perhaps a life of agonizing mental toil would never enable me to attain?

While purchasing the Palissy vase from my friend Simon, I was mentally arranging a visit to Madame Vulpes.



III.

THE SPIRIT OF LEEUWENHOEK.

Two evenings after this, thanks to an arrangement by letter and the promise of an ample fee, I found Madame Vulpes awaiting me at her residence alone. She was a coarse-featured woman, with a keen and rather cruel dark eye, and an exceedingly sensual expression about her mouth and under jaw. She received me in perfect silence, in an apartment on the ground floor, very sparely furnished. In the centre of the room, close to where Mrs. Vulpes sat, there was a common round mahogany table. If I had come for the purpose of sweeping her chimney, the woman could not have looked more indifferent to my appearance. There was no attempt to inspire the visitor with any awe. Everything bore a simple and practical aspect. This intercourse with the spiritual world was evidently as familiar an occupation with Mrs. Vulpes as eating her dinner or riding in an omnibus.

"You come for a communication, Mr. Linley?" said the medium, in a dry, business-like tone of voice.

"By appointment,—yes."

"What sort of communication do you want?—a written one?"

"Yes,—I wish for a written one."

"From any particular spirit?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever known this spirit on this earth?"

"Never. He died long before I was born. I wish merely to obtain from him some information which he ought to be able to give better than any other."

"Will you seat yourself at the table, Mr. Linley," said the medium, "and place your hands upon it?"

I obeyed,—Mrs. Vulpes being seated opposite me, with her hands also on the table. We remained thus for about a minute and a half, when a violent succession of raps came on the table, on the back of my chair, on the floor immediately under my feet, and even on the window panes. Mrs. Vulpes smiled composedly.

"They are very strong to-night," she remarked. "You are fortunate." She then continued, "Will the spirits communicate with this gentleman?"

Vigorous affirmative.

"Will the particular spirit he desires to speak with communicate?"

A very confused rapping followed this question.

"I know what they mean," said Mrs. Vulpes, addressing herself to me; "they wish you to write down the name of the particular spirit that you desire to converse with. Is that so?" she added, speaking to her invisible guests.

That it was so was evident from the numerous affirmatory responses. While this was going on, I tore a slip from my pocket-book, and scribbled a name under the table.

"Will this spirit communicate in writing with this gentleman?" asked the medium once more.

After a moment's pause her hand seemed to be seized with a violent tremor, shaking so forcibly that the table vibrated. She said that a spirit had seized her hand and would write. I handed her some sheets of paper that were on the table, and a pencil. The latter she held loosely in her hand, which presently began to move over the paper with a singular and seemingly involuntary motion. After a few moments had elapsed she handed me the paper, on which I found written, in a large, uncultivated hand, the words, "He is not here, but has been sent for." A pause of a minute or so now ensued, during which Mrs. Vulpes remained perfectly silent, but the raps continued at regular intervals. When the short period I mention had elapsed, the hand of the medium was again seized with its convulsive tremor, and she wrote, under this strange influence, a few words on the paper, which she handed to me. They were as follows:

"I am here. Question me.

"LEEUWENHOEK."

I was, astounded. The name was identical with that I had written beneath the table, and carefully kept concealed. Neither was it at all probable that an uncultivated woman like Mrs. Vulpes should know even the name of the great father of microscopies. It may have been Biology; but this theory was soon doomed to be destroyed. I wrote on my slip—still concealing it from Mrs. Vulpes—a series of questions, which, to avoid tediousness, I shall place with the responses in the order in which they occurred.

I.—Can the microscope be brought to perfection?

SPIRIT.—Yes.

I.—Am I destined to accomplish this great task?

SPIRIT.—You are.

I.—I wish to know how to proceed to attain this end. For the love which you bear to science, help me!

SPIRIT.—A diamond of one hundred and forty carats, submitted to electro-magnetic currents for a long period, will experience a rearrangement of its atoms inter se, and from that stone you will form the universal lens.

I.—Will great discoveries result from the use of such a lens?

SPIRIT.—So great, that all that has gone before is as nothing.

I.—But the refractive power of the diamond is so immense, that the image will be formed within the lens. How is that difficulty to be surmounted?

SPIRIT.—Pierce the lens through its axis, and the difficulty is obviated. The image will be formed in the pierced space, which will itself serve as a tube to look through. Now I am called. Good night!

I cannot at all describe the effect that these extraordinary communications had upon me. I felt completely bewildered. No biological theory could account for the discovery of the lens. The medium might, by means of biological rapport with my mind, have gone so far as to read my questions, and reply to them coherently. But Biology could not enable her to discover that magnetic currents would so alter the crystals of the diamond as to remedy its previous defects, and admit of its being polished into a perfect lens. Some such theory may have passed through my head, it is true, but if so, I had forgotten it. In my excited condition of mind there was no course left but to become a convert, and it was in a state of the most painful nervous exultation that I left the medium's house that evening. She accompanied me to the door, hoping that I was satisfied. The raps followed us as we went through the hall, sounding on the balusters, the flooring, and even the lintels of the door. I hastily expressed my satisfaction, and escaped hurriedly into the cool night air. I walked home with but one thought possessing me,—how to obtain a diamond of the immense size required. My entire means multiplied a hundred times over would have been inadequate to its purchase. Besides, such stones are rare, and become historical. I could find such only in the regalia of Eastern or European monarchs.



IV.

THE EYE OF MORNING.

There was a light in Simon's room as I entered my house. A vague impulse urged me to visit him. As I opened the door of his sitting-room unannounced, he was bending, with his back toward me, over a carcel lamp, apparently engaged in minutely examining some object which he held in his hands. As I entered, he started suddenly, thrust his hand into his breast pocket, and turned to me with a face crimson with confusion.

"What!" I cried, "poring over the miniature of some fair lady? Well, don't blush so much; I won't ask to see it."

Simon laughed awkwardly enough, but made none of the negative protestations usual on such occasions. He asked me to take a seat.

"Simon," said I, "I have just come from Madame Vulpes."

This time Simon turned as white as a sheet, and seemed stupefied, as if a sudden electric shock had smitten him. He babbled some incoherent words, and went hastily to a small closet where he usually kept his liquors. Although astonished at his emotion, I was too preoccupied with my own idea to pay much attention to anything else.

"You say truly when you call Madame Vulpes a devil of a woman," I continued, "Simon, she told me wonderful things tonight, or rather was the means of telling me wonderful things. Ah! if I could only get a diamond that weighed one hundred and forty carats!"

Scarcely had the sigh with which I uttered this desire died upon my lips, when Simon, with the aspect of a wild beast, glared at me savagely, and rushing to the mantel-piece, where some foreign weapons hung on the wall, caught up a Malay creese, and brandished it furiously before him.

"No!" he cried in French, into which he always broke when excited. "No! you shall not have it! You are perfidious! You have consulted with that demon, and desire my treasure! But I will die first! Me! I am brave! You cannot make me fear!"

All this, uttered in a loud voice trembling with excitement, astounded me. I saw at a glance that I had accidentally trodden upon the edges of Simon's secret, whatever it was. It was necessary to reassure him.

"My dear Simon," I said, "I am entirely at a loss to know what you mean. I went to Madame Vulpes to consult with her on a scientific problem, to the solution of which I discovered that a diamond of the size I just mentioned was necessary. You were never alluded to during the evening, nor, so far as I was concerned, even thought of. What can be the meaning of this outburst? If you happen to have a set of valuable diamonds in your possession, you need fear nothing from me. The diamond which I require you could not possess; or if you did possess it, you would not be living here."

Something in my tone must have completely reassured him; for his expression immediately changed to a sort of constrained merriment, combined, however, with a certain suspicious attention to my movements. He laughed, and said that I must bear with him; that he was at certain moments subject to a species of vertigo, which betrayed itself in incoherent speeches, and that the attacks passed off as rapidly as they came. He put his weapon aside while making this explanation, and endeavored, with some success, to assume a more cheerful air.

All this did not impose on me in the least. I was too much accustomed to analytical labors to be baffled by so flimsy a veil. I determined to probe the mystery to the bottom.

"Simon," I said, gayly, "let us forget all this over a bottle of Burgundy. I have a case of Lausseure's Clos Vongeot down-stairs, fragrant with the odors and ruddy with the sunlight of the Cte d'Or. Let us have up a couple of bottles. What say you?"

"With all my heart," answered Simon, smilingly.

I produced the wine and we seated ourselves to drink. It was of a famous vintage, that of 1818, a year when war and wine throve together, and its pure, but powerful juice seemed to impart renewed vitality to the system. By the time we had half finished the second bottle, Simon's head, which I knew was a weak one, had begun to yield, while I remained calm as ever, only that every draught seemed to send a flush of vigor through my limbs. Simon's utterance became more and more indistinct. He took to singing French chansons of a not very moral tendency. I rose suddenly from the table just at the conclusion of one of those incoherent verses, and fixing my eyes on him with a quiet smile, said:

"Simon, I have deceived you. I learned your secret this evening. You may as well be frank with me. Mrs. Vulpes, or rather, one of her spirits, told me all."

He started with horror. His intoxication seemed for the moment to fade away, and he made a movement towards the weapon that he had a short time before laid down. I stopped him with my hand.

"Monster!" he cried, passionately, "I am ruined! What shall I do? You shall never have it! I swear by my mother!"

"I don't want it," I said; "rest secure, but be frank with me. Tell me all about it."

The drunkenness began to return. He protested with maudlin earnestness that I was entirely mistaken,—that I was intoxicated; then asked me to swear eternal secrecy, and promised to disclose the mystery to me. I pledged myself, of course, to all. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and hands unsteady with drink and nervousness, he drew a small case from his breast and opened it. Heavens! How the mild lamp-light was shivered into a thousand prismatic arrows, as it fell upon a vast rose-diamond that glittered in the case! I was no judge of diamonds, but I saw at a glance that this was a gem of rare size and purity. I looked at Simon with wonder, and—must I confess it?—with envy. How could he have obtained this treasure? In reply to my questions, I could just gather from his drunken statements (of which, I fancy, half the incoherence was affected) that he had been superintending a gang of slaves engaged in diamond-washing in Brazil; that he had seen one of them secrete a diamond, but, instead of informing his employers, had quietly watched the negro until he saw him bury his treasure; that he had dug it up, and fled with it, but that as yet he was afraid to attempt to dispose of it publicly,— so valuable a gem being almost certain to attract too much attention to its owner's antecedents,—and he had not been able to discover any of those obscure channels by which such matters are conveyed away safely. He added, that, in accordance with Oriental practice, he had named his diamond by the fanciful title of "The Eye of Morning."

While Simon was relating this to me, I regarded the great diamond attentively. Never had I beheld anything so beautiful. All the glories of light, ever imagined or described, seemed to pulsate in its crystalline chambers. Its weight, as I learned from Simon, was exactly one hundred and forty carats. Here was an amazing coincidence. The hand of Destiny seemed in it. On the very evening when the spirit of Leeuwenhoek communicates to me the great secret of the microscope, the priceless means which he directs me to employ start up within my easy reach! I determined, with the most perfect deliberation, to possess myself of Simon's diamond.

I sat opposite him while he nodded over his glass, and calmly revolved the whole affair. I did not for an instant contemplate so foolish an act as a common theft, which would of course be discovered, or at least necessitate flight and concealment, all of which must interfere with my scientific plans. There was but one step to be taken,—to kill Simon. After all, what was the life of a hide peddling Jew, in comparison with the interests of science? Human beings are taken every day from the condemned prisons to be experimented on by surgeons. This man, Simon, was by his own confession a criminal, a robber, and I believed on my soul a murderer. He deserved death quite as much as any felon condemned by the laws; why should I not, like government, contrive that his punishment should contribute to the progress of human knowledge?

The means for accomplishing everything I desired lay within my reach. There stood upon the mantel-piece a bottle half full of French laudanum. Simon was so occupied with his diamond, which I had just restored to him, that it was an affair of no difficulty to drug his glass. In a quarter of an hour he was in a profound sleep.

I now opened his waistcoat, took the diamond from the inner pocket in which he had placed it, and removed him to the bed, on which I laid him so that his feet hung down over the edge. I had possessed myself of the Malay creese, which I held in my right hand, while with the other I discovered as accurately as I could by pulsation the exact locality of the heart. It was essential that all the aspects of his death should lead to the surmise of self-murder. I calculated the exact angle at which it was probable that the weapon, if levelled by Simon's own hand, would enter his breast; then with one powerful blow I thrust it up to the hilt in the very spot which I desired to penetrate. A convulsive thrill ran through Simon's limbs. I heard a smothered sound issue from his throat, precisely like the bursting of a large air-bubble, sent up by a diver, when it reaches the surface of the water; he turned half round on his side, and as if to assist my plans more effectually, his right hand, moved by some more spasmodic impulse, clasped the handle of the creese, which it remained holding with extraordinary muscular tenacity. Beyond this there was no apparent struggle. The laudanum, I presume, paralyzed the usual nervous action. He must have died instantaneously.

There was yet something to be done. To make it certain that all suspicion of the act should be diverted from any inhabitant of the house to Simon himself, it was necessary that the door should be found in the morning locked on the inside. How to do this, and afterwards escape myself? Not by the window; that was a physical impossibility. Besides, I was determined that the windows also should he found bolted. The solution was simple enough. I descended softly to my own room for a peculiar instrument which I had used for holding small slippery substances, such as minute spheres of glass, etc. This instrument was nothing more than a long slender hand-vice, with a very powerful grip, and a considerable leverage, which last was accidentally owing to the shape of the handle. Nothing was simpler than, when the key was in the lock, to seize the end of its stem in this vice, through the keyhole, from the outside, and so lock the door. Previously, however, to doing this, I burned a number of papers on Simon's hearth. Suicides almost always burn papers before they destroy themselves. I also emptied some more laudanum into Simon's glass,—having first removed from it all traces of wine,— cleaned the other wine-glass, and brought the bottles away with me. If traces of two persons drinking had been found in the room, the question naturally would have arisen, Who was the second? Besides, the wine-bottles might have been identified as belonging to me. The laudanum I poured out to account for its presence in his stomach, in case of post-mortem examination. The theory naturally would be that he first intended to poison himself, but, after swallowing a little of the drug, was either disgusted with its taste, or changed his mind from other motives, and chose the dagger. These arrangements made, I walked out, leaving the gas burning, locked the door with my vice, and went to bed.

Simon's death was not discovered until nearly three in the afternoon. The servant, astonished at seeing the gas burning,—the light streaming on the dark landing from under the door, peeped through the keyhole and saw Simon on the bed. She gave the alarm. The door was burst open, and the neighborhood was in a fever of excitement.

Every one in the house was arrested, myself included. There was an inquest; but no clue to his death, beyond that of suicide, could be obtained. Curiously enough, he had made several speeches to his friends the preceding week, that seemed to point to self-destruction. One gentleman swore that Simon had said in his presence that "he was tired of life." His landlord affirmed, that Simon, when paying him his last month's rent, remarked that "he would not pay him rent much longer." All the other evidence corresponded, the door locked inside, the position of the corpse, the burnt papers. As I anticipated, no one knew of the possession of the diamond by Simon, so that no motive was suggested for his murder. The jury, after a prolonged examination, brought in the usual verdict, and the neighborhood once more settled down into its accustomed quiet.



V.

ANIMULA

The three months succeeding Simon's catastrophe I devoted night and day to my diamond lens. I had constructed a vast, galvanic battery, composed of nearly two thousand pairs of plates,—a higher power I dared not use, lest the diamond should be calcined. By means of this enormous engine I was enabled to send a powerful current of electricity continually through my great diamond, which it seemed to me gained in lustre every day. At the expiration of a month I commenced the grinding and polishing of the lens, a work of intense toil and exquisite delicacy. The great density of the stone, and the care required to be taken with the curvatures of the surfaces of the lens, rendered the labor the severest and most harassing that I had yet undergone.

At last the eventful moment came; the lens was completed. I stood trembling on the threshold of new worlds. I had the realization of Alexander's famous wish before me. The lens lay on the table, ready to be placed upon its platform, my hand fairly shook as I enveloped a drop of water with a thin coating of oil of turpentine, preparatory to its examination—a process necessary in order to prevent the rapid evaporation of the water. I now placed the drop on a thin slip of glass under the lens, and throwing upon it, by the combined aid of a prism and a mirror, a powerful stream of light, I approached my eye to the minute hole drilled through the axis of the lens. For an instant I saw nothing save what seemed to be an illuminated chaos, a vast luminous abyss. A pure white light, cloudless and serene, and seemingly limitless as space itself, was my first impression. Gently, and with the greatest care, I depressed the lens a few hairs' breadths. The wondrous illumination still continued, but as the lens approached the object, a scene of indescribable beauty was unfolded to my view.

I seemed to gaze upon a vast space, the limits of which extended far beyond my vision. An atmosphere of magical luminousness permeated the entire field of view. I was amazed to see no trace of animalculous life. Not a living thing, apparently, inhabited that dazzling expanse. I comprehended instantly, that, by the wondrous power of my lens, I had penetrated beyond the grosser particles of aqueous matter, beyond the realms of Infusoria and Protozoa, down to the original gaseous globule, into whose luminous interior I was gazing, as into an almost boundless dome filled with a supernatural radiance.

It was, however, no brilliant void into which I looked. On every side I beheld beautiful inorganic forms, of unknown texture, and colored with the most enchanting hues. These forms presented the appearance of what might be called, for want of a more specific definition, foliated clouds of the highest rarity; that is, they undulated and broke into vegetable formations, and were tinged with splendors compared with which the gilding of our autumn woodlands is as dross compared with gold. Far away into the illimitable distance stretched long avenues of these gaseous forests, dimly transparent, and painted with prismatic hues of unimaginable brilliancy. The pendent branches waved along the fluid glades until every vista seemed to break through half-lucent ranks of many-colored drooping silken pennons. What seemed to be either fruits or flowers, pied with a thousand hues lustrous and ever varying, bubbled from the crowns of this fairy foliage. No hills, no lakes, no rivers, no forms animate or inanimate were to be seen, save those vast auroral copses that floated serenely in the luminous stillness, with leaves and fruits and flowers gleaming with unknown fires, unrealizable by mere imagination.

How strange, I thought, that this sphere should be thus condemned to solitude! I had hoped, at least, to discover some new form of animal life,—perhaps of a lower class than any with which we are at present acquainted,—but still, some living organism. I find my newly discovered world, if I may so speak, a beautiful chromatic desert.

While I was speculating on the singular arrangements of the internal economy of Nature, with which she so frequently splinters into atoms our most compact theories, I thought I beheld a form moving slowly through the glades of one of the prismatic forests. I looked more at tentively, and found that I was not mistaken. Words cannot depict the anxiety with which I awaited the nearer approach of this mysterious object. Was it merely some inanimate substance, held in suspense in the attenuated atmosphere of the globule? or was it an animal endowed with vitality and motion? It approached, flitting behind the gauzy, colored veils of cloud-foliage, for seconds dimly revealed, then vanishing. At last the violet pennons that trailed nearest to me vibrated; they were gently pushed aside, and the form floated out into the broad light.

It was a female human shape. When I say "human," I mean it possessed the outlines of humanity,—but there the analogy ends. Its adorable beauty lifted it inimitable heights beyond the loveliest daughter of Adam.

I cannot, I dare not, attempt to inventory the charms of this divine revelation of perfect beauty. Those eyes of mystic violet, dewy and serene, evade my words. Her long lustrous hair following her glorious head in a golden wake, like the track sown in heaven by a falling star, seems to quench my most burning phrases with its splendors. If all the bees of Hybla nestled upon my lips, they would still sing but hoarsely the wondrous harmonies of outline that enclosed her form.

She swept out from between the rainbow-curtains of the cloud-trees into the broad sea of light that lay beyond. Her motions were those of some graceful Naiad, cleaving, by a mere effort of her will, the clear, unruffled waters that fill the chambers of the sea. She floated forth with the serene grace of a frail bubble ascending through the still atmosphere of a June day. The perfect roundness of her limbs formed suave and enchanting curves. It was like listening to the most spiritual symphony of Beethoven the divine, to watch the harmonious flow of lines. This, indeed, was a pleasure cheaply purchased at any price. What cared I, if I had waded to the portal of this wonder through another's blood? I would have given my own to enjoy one such moment of intoxication and delight.

Breathless with gazing on this lovely wonder, and forgetful for an instant of everything save her presence, I withdrew my eye from the microscope eagerly,—alas! As my gaze fell on the thin slide that lay beneath my instrument, the bright light from mirror and from prism sparkled on a colorless drop of water! There, in that tiny bead of dew, this beautiful being was forever imprisoned. The planet Neptune was not more distant from me than she. I hastened once more to apply my eye to the microscope.

Animula (let me now call her by that dear name which I subsequently bestowed on her) had changed her position. She had again approached the wondrous forest, and was gazing earnestly upwards. Presently one of the trees—as I must call them—unfolded a long ciliary process, with which it seized one of the gleaming fruits that glittered on its summit, and sweeping slowly down, held it within reach of Animula. The sylph took it in her delicate hand, and began to eat. My attention was so entirely absorbed by her, that I could not apply myself to the task of determining whether this singular plant was or was not instinct with volition.

I watched her, as she made her repast, with the most profound attention. The suppleness of her motions sent a thrill of delight through my frame; my heart beat madly as she turned her beautiful eyes in the direction of the spot in which I stood. What would I not have given to have had the power to precipitate myself into that luminous ocean, and float with her through those groves of purple and gold! While I was thus breathlessly following her every movement, she suddenly started, seemed to listen for a moment, and then cleaving the brilliant ether in which she was floating, like a flash of light, pierced through the opaline forest, and disappeared.

Instantly a series of the most singular sensations attacked me. It seemed as if I had suddenly gone blind. The luminous sphere was still before me, but my daylight had vanished. What caused this sudden disappearance? Had she a lover, or a husband? Yes, that was the solution! Some signal from a happy fellow-being had vibrated through the avenues of the forest, and she had obeyed the summons.

The agony of my sensations, as I arrived at this conclusion, startled me. I tried to reject the conviction that my reason forced upon me. I battled against the fatal conclusion—but in vain. It was so. I had no escape from it. I loved an animalcule!

It is true, that, thanks to the marvellous power of my microscope, she appeared of human proportions. Instead of presenting the revolting aspect of the coarser creatures, that live and struggle and die, in the more easily resolvable portions of the water-drop, she was fair and delicate and of surpassing beauty. But of what account was all that? Every time that my eye was withdrawn from the instrument, it fell on a miserable drop of water, within which, I must be content to know, dwelt all that could make my life lovely.

Could she but see me once! Could I for one moment pierce the mystical walls that so inexorably rose to separate us, and whisper all that filled my soul, I might consent to be satisfied for the rest of my life with the knowledge of her remote sympathy. It would be something to have established even the faintest personal link to bind us together—to know that at times, when roaming through those enchanted glades, she might think of the wonderful stranger, who had broken the monotony of her life with his presence, and left a gentle memory in her heart!

But it could not be. No invention, of which human intellect was capable, could break down the barriers that Nature had erected. I might feast my soul upon her wondrous beauty, yet she must always remain ignorant of the adoring eyes that day and night gazed upon her, and, even when closed, beheld her in dreams. With a bitter cry of anguish I fled from the room, and, flinging myself on my bed, sobbed myself to sleep like a child.



VI.

THE SPILLING OF THE CUP.

I arose the next morning almost at daybreak, and rushed to my microscope. I trembled as I sought the luminous world in miniature that contained my all. Animula was there. I had left the gas-lamp, surrounded by its moderator's, burning, when I went to bed the night before. I found the sylph bathing, as it were, with an expression of pleasure animating her features, in the brilliant light which surrounded her. She tossed her lustrous golden hair over her shoulders with innocent coquetry. She lay at full length in the transparent medium, in which she supported herself with ease, and gambolled with the enchanting grace that the Nymph Salmacis might have exhibited when she sought to conquer the modest Hermaphroditus. I tried an experiment to satisfy myself if her powers of reflection were developed. I lessened the lamp-light considerably. By the dim light that remained, I could see an expression of pain flit across her face. She looked upward suddenly, and her brows contracted. I flooded the stage of the microscope again with a full stream of light, and her whole expression changed. She sprang forward like some substance deprived of all weight. Her eyes sparkled, and her lips moved. Ah! if science had only the means of conducting and reduplicating sounds, as it does the rays of light, what carols of happiness would then have entranced my ears! What jubilant hymns to Adonas would have thrilled the illumined air!

I now comprehended how it was that the Count de Gabalis peopled his mystic world with sylphs,—beautiful beings whose breath of life was lambent fire, and who sported forever in regions of purest ether and purest light. The Rosicrucian had anticipated the wonder that I had practically realized.

How long this worship of my strange divinity went on thus I scarcely know. I lost all note of time. All day from early dawn, and far into the night, I was to be found peering through that wonderful lens. I saw no one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my meals. My whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form strengthened my passion,—a passion that was always overshadowed by the maddening conviction, that, although I could gaze on her at will, she never, never could behold me!

At length I grew so pale and emaciated, from want of rest, and continual brooding over my insane love and its cruel conditions, that I determined to make some effort to wean myself from it. "Come," I said, "this is at best but a fantasy. Your imagination has bestowed on Animula charms which in reality she does not possess. Seclusion from female society has produced this morbid condition of mind. Compare her with the beautiful women of your own world, and this false enchantment will vanish."

I looked over the newspapers by chance. There I beheld the advertisement of a celebrated danseuse who appeared nightly at Niblo's. The Signorina Caradolce had the reputation of being the most beautiful as well as the most graceful woman in the world. I instantly dressed and went to the theatre.

The curtain drew up. The usual semi-circle of fairies in white muslin were standing on the right toe around the enamelled flower-bank, of green canvas, on which the belated prince was sleeping. Suddenly a flute is heard. The fairies start. The trees open, the fairies all stand on the left toe, and the queen enters. It was the Signorina. She bounded forward amid thunders of applause, and lighting on one foot remained poised in air. Heavens! was this the great enchantress that had drawn monarchs at her chariot-wheels? Those heavy muscular limbs, those thick ankles, those cavernous eyes, that stereotyped smile, those crudely painted checks! Where were the vermeil blooms, the liquid expressive eyes, the harmonious limbs of Animula?

The Signorina danced. What gross, discordant movements! The play of her limbs was all false and artificial. Her bounds were painful athletic efforts; her poses were angular and distressed the eye. I could bear it no longer; with an exclamation of disgust that drew every eye upon me, I rose from my seat in the very middle of the Signorina's pas-de-fascination and abruptly quitted the house.

I hastened home to feast my eyes once more on the lovely form of my sylph. I felt that henceforth to combat this passion would be impossible. I applied my eye to the lens. Aninula was there,—but what could have happened? Some terrible change seemed to have taken place during my absence. Some secret grief seemed to cloud the lovely features of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She was ill!—ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I would have gladly forfeited all claims to my human birthright, if I could only have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console her from whom fate had forever divided me.

I racked my brain for the solution of this mystery. What was it that afflicted the sylph? She seemed to suffer intense pain. Her features contracted, and she even writhed, as if with some internal agony. The wondrous forests appeared also to have lost half their beauty. Their hues were dim and in some places faded away altogether. I watched Animula for hours with a breaking heart, and she seemed absolutely to wither away under my very eye. Suddenly I remembered that I had not looked at the water-drop for several days. In fact, I hated to see it; for it reminded me of the natural barrier between Animula and myself. I hurriedly looked down on the stage of the microscope. The slide was still there,—but, great heavens! the water-drop had vanished! The awful truth burst upon me; it had evaporated, until it had become so minute as to be invisible to the naked eye; I had been gazing on its last atom, the one that contained Animula,—and she was dying!

I rushed again to the front of the lens, and looked through. Alas! the last agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all melted away, and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot of dim light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely shrivelling up into nothings; the eyes—those eyes that shone like heaven—being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now lank and discolored. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle of the blackening form—and I fainted.

When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it. I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for months.

They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I have neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent, and I live on charity. Young men's associations that love a joke invite me to lecture on Optics before them, for which they pay me, and laugh at me while I lecture. "Linley, the mad microscopist," is the name I go by. I suppose that I talk incoherently while I lecture. Who could talk sense when his brain is haunted by such ghastly memories, while ever and anon among the shapes of death I behold the radiant form of my lost Animula!



THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL.

Amid the aisle, apart, there stood A mourner like the rest; And while the solemn rites were said, He fashioned into verse his mood, That would not be repressed.

Why did they bring him home, Bright jewel set in lead? Oh, bear the sculptor back to Rome, And lay him with the mighty dead,— With Adonais, and the rest Of all the young and good and fair, That drew the milk of English breast, And their last sigh in Latian air!

Lay him with Raphael, unto whom Was granted Rome's most lasting tomb; For many a lustre, many an aeon, He might sleep well in the Panthon, Deep in the sacred city's womb, The smoke and splendor and the stir of Rome.

Lay him 'neath Diocletian's dome, Blessed Saint Mary of the Angels, Near to that house in which he dwelt,— House that to many seemed a home, So much with him they loved and felt. We were his guests a hundred times; We loved him for his genial ways; He gave me credit for my rhymes, And made me blush with praise.

Ah! there be many histories That no historian writes, And friendship hath its mysteries And consecrated nights; Amid the busy days of pain, Wear of hand, and tear of brain, Weary midnight, weary morn, Years of struggle paid with scorn;— Yet oft amid all this despair, Long rambles in the Autumn days O'er Appian or Flaminian Ways, Bright moments snatched from care,

When loose as buffaloes on the wild Campagna We roved and dined on crust and curds, Olives, thin wine, and thinner birds, And woke the echoes of divine Romagna; And then returning late, After long knocking at the Lateran gate, Suppers and nights of gods; and then Mornings that made us new-born men; Rare nights at the Minerva tavern, With Orvieto from the Cardinal's cavern; Free nights, but fearless and without reproof,— For Bayard's word ruled Beppo's roof.

O Rome! what memories awake, When Crawford's name is said, Of days and friends for whose dear sake That path of Hades unto me Will have no more of dread Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice! O Crawford! husband, father, brother Are in that name, that little word! Let me no more my sorrow smother; Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred.

O Death, thou teacher true and rough! Full oft I fear that we have erred, And have not loved enough; But oh, ye friends, this side of Acheron, Who cling to me to-day, I shall not know my love till ye are gone And I am gray! Fair women with your loving eyes, Old men that once my footsteps led, Sweet children,—much as all I prize, Until the sacred dust of death be shed Upon each dear and venerable head, I cannot love you as I love the dead!

But now, the natural man being sown, We can more lucidly behold The spiritual one; For we, till time shall end, Full visibly shall see our friend In all his hand did mould,— That worn and patient hand that lies so cold!

When on some blessed studious day To my loved Library I wend my way, Amid the forms that give the Gallery grace His thought in that pale poet I shall trace,— Keen Orpheus with his eyes Fixed deep in ruddy hell,

Seeking amid those lurid skies The wife he loved so well,— And feel that still therein I see All that was in my Master's thought, And, in that constant hand wherewith he wrought, The eternal type of constancy. Thou marble husband! might there be More of flesh and blood like thee!

Or if, in Music's festive hall, I come to cheat me of my care, Amid the swell, the dying fall, His genius greets me there. O man of bronze! thy solemn air— Best soother of a troubled brain— Floods me with memories, and again As thou stand'st visibly to men, Beloved musician! so once more Crawford comes back that did thy form restore.

* * * * *

Well,—requiescat! let him pass!

Good mourners, go your several ways! He needs no further rite, nor mass, Nor eulogy, who best could praise Himself in marble and in brass; Yet his best monument did raise, Not in those perishable things That men eternal deem,— The pride of palaces and kings,— But in such works as must avail him there, With Him who, from the extreme Love that was in his breast, Said, "Come, all ye that heavy burdens bear, And I will give you rest!"



THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

As a mere literary production, the Message of Mr. Buchanan is so superior to any of the Messages of his immediate predecessor, that the reader naturally expects to find in it a corresponding superiority of sentiment and aim. When we meet a man who is well-dressed, and whose external demeanor is that of a gentleman, we are prone to infer that he is also a man of upright principles and honorable feelings. But we are very often mistaken in this inference; the nice garment proves to be little better than a nice disguise; and the robe of respectability may cover the heart of a very scurvy fellow.

Mr. Buchanan's sentences run smoothly enough; they are for the most part grammatical; the tone throughout is sedate, if not dignified; and the general spirit unambitious and moderate. But the doctrine, in our estimation, is, on the most essential point, atrocious, and the objects which are sought to be compassed are unworthy of the man, the office, the country, and the age. We refer, of course, to what is said of the one vital question with us now, the question of Slavery in Kansas; but before proceeding to a discussion of that, let us say a word or two of other parts of this important document.

The President introduces, as the first of his topics, the prevailing money pressure, which he treats at considerable length, with some degree of truth, but without originality or comprehensiveness of view. He profiles to inquire into the causes of the unfortunate disasters of trade, and into the remedies which may be devised against their recurrence; but on neither head is he remarkably profound or instructive. It is merely reiterating the commonplaces of the newspapers, to talk about "the excessive loans and issues of the banks," and to ring changes of phraseology on the vices of speculation, over-trading, and stock-jobbing. All the world is as familiar with all that as the President can be, and scarcely needed a reminder on either score; what we wanted of the head of the nation,— what a real statesman, who understood his subject, would have given us,—that is, if he had pretended to go at all beyond the simple statement of the fact of commercial revulsion, into a discussion of it,—was a comprehensive and philosophic analysis of all the causes of the phenomenon, a calm and careful review of all its circumstances, and a rigid deduction of broad general principles from an adequate study of the entire case. But this the President has not furnished. In connecting our commercial derangements with the disorders of the banking system he has unquestionably struck upon a great and fundamental truth; but it is merely a single truth, and he strikes it in rather a vague and random way. In considering these reverses, there are many things to be taken into account besides the constitution and customs, whether good or bad, of our American banks,— many things which do not even confine themselves to this continent, but are spread over the greater part of the civilized world.

Mr. Buchanan is still lamer in his suggestion of remedies than he is in his inquiry after causes. The Federal Government, he thinks, can do little or nothing in the premises,—a fatal admission at the outset,—and we are coolly turned over to the most unsubstantial and impracticable of all reliances, "the wisdom and patriotism of the State legislatures"! Why cannot the Federal Government do anything in the premises? The President tells us that the Constitution has conferred upon Congress the exclusive right "to coin money and regulate the value thereof," and that it has prohibited the States from "issuing bills of credit,"—which phrase, if it mean anything, means making paper-money; and the inference would seem to be inevitable that Congress has a sovereign authority and power over the whole matter. It may, moreover, touch the circulation of bills, by means of its indisputable right to lay a stamp-tax upon paper; and Mr. Gallatin long ago recommended the exercise of this power, as an effectual method of restraining the emission of small notes. Upon what principle, then, can the President assert so dictatorially as he does, that the Federal Government is concluded from action? If the excesses of the State Banks are so enormous as he represents, and so perpetually and so widely disastrous, why should it not interpose to avert the fearful evil? Why refer us for relief to the proceedings of thirty-one different legislative bodies, no three of which, probably, would agree upon any coherent system? We do not ourselves say that Congress ought to interfere and undertake by main force to regulate the currency, because we hold to other and, as we think, better methods of arriving at a sound and stable currency; but from the stand-point of the President, and with his views of the efficiency of legislative restrictions upon banks, we do not see how he could consistently avoid recommending the instant action of Congress. On the heel of his grandiloquent description of the evils of redundant paper money,—evils which are felt all over the country,— it is a lamentably impotent conclusion to say, "After all, we can't do much to help it! Yes, let us confide piously in 'the wisdom and patriotism of the State legislatures,'"—which are almost the last places in the world, as things go, where we should look for either quality.

Not being able to do anything himself, however, what does he urge upon the wise and patriotic State legislatures? Why, a series of flimsy restrictions, which would have about as much effect in preventing the tremendous abuses of banking which he himself depicts, as a bit of filigree iron-work would have in restraining the expansion of steam. Restrictions! restrictions! toujours restrictions!—as if that method of correcting the evil had not been utterly exploded by nearly two centuries of experience! Mr. Buchanan calls himself a Democrat; he is loud in his protestations of respect for the sagacity, the good-sense, and the virtue of the people; his political school takes for its motto the well-known adage, "That government is best which governs least"; his party, if he does not, purports to be a great advocate of the emancipation of trade from all the old-fashioned restraints which take the names of protections, tariffs, bounties, etc. etc.; and we wonder how it is, that, in his presumed excursions over the entire domain of free-trade, he should have got no inkling of a thought as to the benefits of free-trade in banking. We wonder that so great a subject could be dismissed with the suggestion of a few petty restraints.

"If the State legislatures," remarks the President, summing up his entire thought, "afford us a real specie basis for our circulation, by increasing the denomination of bank-notes, first to twenty, and afterwards to fifty dollars; if they will require that the banks shall at all times keep on hand at least one dollar of gold and silver for every three dollars of their circulation and deposits; and if they will provide, by a self-executing enactment, which nothing can arrest, that the moment they suspend they shall go into liquidation; I believe that such provisions, with a weekly publication by each bank of a statement of its condition, would go far to secure us against future suspensions of specie payments."

Singular blindness! Mr. Buchanan lived for several years, as American ambassador, in England. It is to be presumed that while there he used his eyes, and possibly his brains. He must have noticed occasionally, at least, in his walks through "the city," the immense marble structure in Threadneedle Street, known as the Bank of England. It is certain that he has read the history of that bank, inasmuch as it is twice or thrice alluded to in his Message; he cannot be ignorant, therefore, that the "circulation" of England has essentially "a specie basis"; that no bank-notes are issued there for less than the amount of twenty-five dollars; that the banks at all times keep on hand "one dollar of gold for every three dollars of their circulation and deposits"; and that the laws of bankruptcy are alike rigid in regard to institutions and individuals. These are precisely the provisions which he commends to the adoption of wise and patriotic State legislatures as an admirable corrective for suspensions; yet he forgets to explain to us how it happens that the Bank of England, to which they are all applied, has virtually suspended payment six times in the course of its existence, having been saved from open dishonor only by the timely assistance of the government,—while the trade of England, in spite of the staid and conservative habits of the people, is quite as liable to those terrific tarantula-dances, called revulsions, as our own. Before urging his "restraints," the President ought to have inquired a little into the history of such restraints; and he would then have saved himself from the absurdity of patronizing remedies which an actual trial had proved ludicrously inapt and inefficacious.

With regard to the second topic of the Message,—our foreign relations,—it may be said that the positions assumed are frank, manly, and explicit; unless we have reason to suspect, in the slightly belligerent attitude towards Spain, a return, on the part of the President, to one of his old and unlawful loves,—the acquisition of Cuba. In that case, we should deplore his language, and be inclined to doubt also the sincerity of his just denunciations of Walker's infamous schemes of piracy and brigandage. Until events, however, have developed the signs of a sinister policy of this sort, we must bestow an earnest plaudit upon his decided rebuke of the filibusters, coupling that praise with a wish that the "vigilance" of his subordinates may hereafter prove of a more wide-awake and energetic kind than has yet been manifested.

But for the terms in which the President has disposed of his third topic,—the Kansas difficulty,—we can scarcely characterize their disingenuousness and meanings. We have already spoken of the object of this part of the document as atrocious,—and we repeat the word, as the most befitting that could be used. That object is nothing less than an attempt to cover the enormous frauds which have marked the proceedings of the Pro-Slavery agents in Kansas, from their initiation, with a varnish of smooth and plausible pretexts. Adroitly taking up the question at the point which it had reached when his own administration began, he leaves out of view all the antecedent crimes, treacheries, and tricks by which the people of the Territory had been led into civil war, and thus assumes that the late Lecompton Convention was a legitimate Convention, and that the Constitution framed by it (or said to have been framed by it,—for there is no official report of the instrument as yet) was framed in pursuance of proper authority or law. He does not tell us that the Territorial legislature which called this Convention was a usurping legislature, brought together, as the Congressional records show, by an invading horde from a neighboring State; he does not tell us, that, even if it had been a properly constituted body in itself, it had no right to call a Convention for the purpose of superseding the Territorial organization; he does not tell us that the Convention, as assembled, represented but one-tenth of the legal voters of the Territory; nor does he seem to regard the fact, that the other nine-tenths of the people were virtually disfranchised by that Convention, so far as their right to determine the provisions of their organic law is concerned, as at all a vital and important fact. By a miserable juggle, worthy of the frequenters of the gambling-house or the race-course, the people of Kansas have been nominally allowed to decide the question of Slavery, and that permission, according to Mr. Buchanan, fulfils and completes all that he ever meant, or his associates ever meant, by the promise of popular sovereignty!

Now this may be all that the President and his party ever meant by that phrase, but it is not all that their words expressed or the country expected. In the course of the last three or four years, and by a series of high-handed measures, the established principles of the Federal Government, in regard to its management of the Territories,—principles sanctioned by every administration from Washington's down to Fillmore's,—have been overruled for the sake of a new doctrine, which goes by the name of Popular Sovereignty. The most sacred and binding compacts of former years were annulled to make way for it; and the judicial department of the government was violently hauled from its sacred retreat, into the political arena, to give a gratuitous coup-de-grace to the old opinions and the apparent sanction of law to the new dogma, so that Popular Sovereignty might reign triumphant in the Territories. At the convention of the party which nominated Mr. Buchanan as a candidate for his present office,—"a celebrated occasion," as he calls it,— the members affirmed in the most emphatic manner the right of the people of all the Territories, including Kansas, to form their own Constitutions as they pleased, under the single condition that it should be republican. Mr. Buchanan reiterated that assertion in his Inaugural address, and in subsequent communications. When he appointed Mr. Robert J. Walker Governor of the Territory, he instructed him to assure the people that they should be guarantied against all "fraud or violence" when they should be called upon "to vote for or against the Constitution which would be submitted to them," so that there might be "a fair expression of the popular will." Nothing, in short, could have been clearer, more direct, more frequently repeated, than the asseverations of the "Democratic Party," made through its official representatives, its newspapers, and its orators,—to the effect, that its only object, in its Kansas policy, was to secure "the great principle of Popular Sovereignty." On the strength of these assurances alone, it was enabled to achieve its hard-won victory in the last Presidential campaign. Mr. Buchanan owes his position to them, as is repeatedly admitted by Mr. Douglas in his speech of December 9th last,—and the whole nation, having discussed and battled and voted on the principle, acquiesced, as it is accustomed to do after an election, in the ascendency of the victors. It prepared itself to see the application of the principle which had been announced and defended as so important and wise.

Under these pledges and promises, what has been the performance? A Convention, for which, inasmuch as it was illegally called by an illegal body, a large proportion of the citizens of Kansas refused to vote, frames a Constitution, in the interest and according to the convictions of the slenderest minority of the people; it incorporates in that Constitution a recognition of old Territorial laws to the last degree offensive to the majority of the people; it incorporates in it a clause establishing slavery in perpetuity; it connects with it a Schedule perpetuating the existing slavery, whatever it may be, against all future remedy which has not the sanction of the slave-master; and then, by a miserable chicane, it submits the Constitution to a vote of the people, but it submits it under such terms, that the people, if they vote at all, must vote for it, whether they like it or not, while the only part in which they can exercise any choice is the clause which relates to future slavery. The other parts, especially the Schedule, which recognizes the existing slavery, and that almost irremediably, the people are not allowed to pronounce upon. They are not allowed to pronounce upon the thousand-and-one details of the State organization; they are fobbed off with a transparent cheat of "heads I win,—tails you lose";—and the whole game is denominated, Popular Sovereignty.

What is worse, the President of the United States argues that this would be a fair settlement of the question, and that in the exercise of such a choice, the glorious doctrine of Popular Sovereignty is amply applied and vindicated. He admits that "the correct principle," as in the case of Minnesota, is to refer the Constitution "to the approval and ratification of the people"; he admits that the only mode in which the will of the people can be "authentically ascertained is by a direct vote"; he admits that the "friends and supporters of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, when struggling to sustain its provisions before the great tribunal of the American people," "everywhere, throughout the Union, publicly pledged their faith and honor" to submit the question of their domestic institutions "to the decision of the bon-fide people of Kansas, without any qualification or restriction whatever"; but then,—and here is the subterfuge,—"domestic institutions" means only the single institution of slavery; and the Convention, in consenting to yield that (and this only in appearance) to the arbitrament of the people, has fully satisfied all the demands of the principle of Popular Sovereignty! Their other questions are all "political"; the questions as to the organization of their executive, legislative, and judicial departments, as to their elective franchise, their distribution of districts, their banks, their rates and modes of taxation, etc., etc., are not domestic questions, but political; and provided the people are suffered to vote on the future (not the existing) condition of slaves, faith has been sufficiently kept. Popular Sovereignty means "pertaining to negroes,"—not the negroes already in the Territory, but those who may be hereafter introduced; for the monopoly of that branch of trade and merchandise, which is already established, and the future growth and increase of it, must not be interfered with, even by Popular Sovereignty, because that would be "an act of gross injustice." In other words, Popular Sovereignty is merely designed to cover the right of the people to vote on a single question, specially presented by an illegal body, under electoral arrangements made by its new officers,—which officers not only receive, but count the votes, and make the returns,— while all the rest is merely unimportant and trivial. It is just the sort of sovereignty for which Louis Napoleon provided when he wished to procure a popular sanction for the numberless atrocities of the coup-d'tat of the 2d December.

An old authority tells us that "it is hard to kick against the pricks"; and the President appears to have experienced the difficulty, in kicking against the pricks of his conscience. He had committed himself to a principle which he is now compelled by the policy of his Southern masters to evade, and is painfully embarrassed as to how he shall hide his tracks. He knows, as all the world knows, that this jugglery in Kansas has been performed for no other purpose than to secure a foothold for Slavery there, against the demonstrated opinion of nine-tenths of the people; he knows, as all the world knows, that if the Convention had had the least desire to arrive at a fair expression of the popular will, on the question of Slavery or any other question, it was easy to make a candid and honorable submission of it to an election to be held honestly under the recognized officers of the Territory; but he knows, also, that under such circumstances the case would have been carried overwhelmingly against the "domestic institution," and thus have rebuked, with all the emphasis that an outraged community could give to the expression of its will, the nefarious conduct which "the party" has pursued from the beginning,—and this was a consummation not to be wished. He therefore wriggles and shuffles, with an absurd and transparent inconsistency, to defeat the popular will, and yet mouth it bravely about "the great principle of Popular Sovereignty."

The President thinks that it is time that these troubles in Kansas were at an end, and we cordially agree with him in the sentiment; but he needs scarcely to be reminded that they never will be at an end, until the wicked schemes, which have been so long persisted in, to override the convictions and hopes and interests of a large majority of the Kansas settlers, are utterly abandoned by those who are in power.

Of the remaining and mostly routine topics of the Message we have no occasion to speak; and we only regret that the deficiencies of the most important parts are so glaring as to oblige us to treat them with undisguised severity.

* * * * *



THE WEDDING VEIL.

Dear Anna, when I brought her veil, Her white veil, on her wedding-night, Threw o'er my thin brown hair its folds, And, laughing, turned me to the light.

"See, Bessie, see! you wear for once The bridal veil, forsworn for years!" She saw my face,—her laugh was hushed, Her happy eyes were filled with tears.

With kindly haste and trembling hand She drew away the gauzy mist; "Forgive, dear heart!"—her sweet voice said; Her loving lips my forehead kissed.

We passed from out the searching light; The summer night was calm and fair: I did not see her pitying eyes, I felt her soft hand smooth my hair.

Her tender love unlocked my heart; 'Mid falling tears, at last I said, "Forsworn indeed to me that veil, Because I only love the dead!"

She stood one moment statue-still, And, musing, spake in under-tone, "The living love may colder grow; The dead is safe with God alone!"



LITERARY NOTICES.

The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery and to the Government of Colonies. By ARTHUR HELPS. Vols. I. and II. London, 1855. Vol. III. London, 1857.

This work has a double claim to attention in America;—first, on account of its great intrinsic merit as a narrative of the beginnings of the European settlement of this continent; secondly, as containing a thorough and exceedingly able account of the planting of Slavery in America, and the origin of that system which has been and is the great blight of the civilization of the New World.

Mr. Helps is endowed in large measure with the qualities of an historian of the highest order. A clear and comprehensive vision, a wide knowledge and careful study of human nature, free and generous sympathies are united in him with a penetrative imagination which vivifies the life of past times, with a reverence for truth which excludes prejudice and prepossession, and with a profoundly religious spirit. The tone of his thought is manly and vigorous, and his style, with the beauty of which the readers of his essays have long been familiar, is marked by quiet grace and unpretending strength. There are many passages in these volumes of wise reflection and of pleasant humor. In the drawing of character and in the narration of events Mr. Helps is equally happy. The pages of his book are full of lifelike portraits of the great soldiers and great priests of the time, and of animated pictures of the scenes in which they were engaged.

Mr. Helps has investigated his subject with zeal, industry, and patience. He has sought out the original authorities, has brought to light many important facts, has redeemed some great memories from unjust oblivion, and has presented a new view of several of the chief features of the history. In a graceful advertisement to the third volume he says, "The reader will observe that there is scarcely any allusion in this work to the kindred works of modern writers on the same subject. This is not from any want of respect for the able historians who have written upon the discovery or the conquest of America. I felt, however, from the first, that my object in investigating this portion of history was different from theirs; and I wished to keep my mind clear from the influence which these eminent persons might have exercised upon it."

A considerable space in these volumes is devoted to an investigation of the character and condition of the native races of the continent at the period of the Spanish Conquest. This subject is treated with peculiar skill and learning, and with unusual power of sympathetic analysis and appreciation of remote and obscure developments of society. Another portion of the history, which his plan has led Mr. Helps to treat at length and with exhaustive thoroughness, is the early relations between the conquerors and the conquered, embracing the method of settlement of the different countries, the whole disastrous system of ripartimientos and encomiendas, which, in its full development, led to the destruction of the native population of Hispaniola, and to the introduction of negroes into this and the other West India islands to supply the demand for laborers.

Another most interesting portion of his subject, and one which has never till now been fairly exhibited, relates to the labors of the Dominican and Franciscan monks, and their admirable and unwearied efforts to counteract and to remedy some of the bitterest evils of the conquest. Theirs were the first protests that were raised against slavery in America, and their ranks afforded the first martyrs in the cause of the Indian and the Negro. Las Casas has found an eloquent and just biographer, and Mr. Helps has the satisfaction of having securely placed his name among the few that deserve the lasting honor and remembrance of the world. The narrative of Las Casas's life is one of strong dramatic interest. His life was a varied and remarkable one, even for those times of striking contrasts and varieties in the fortunes of men; and in Mr. Helps's pages one sees the man himself, with his simplicity and elevation of purpose, his honesty of motive, his energy, his impetuosity, his courage, and his faith.

The three volumes already published embrace the progress of Spanish conquest from the first discoveries of Columbus to Pizarro's incursion into Peru. It is sincerely to be hoped that Mr. Helps may continue his work, at least to the period when the Spanish conquest and colonization were met and limited by the conquest and the colonization of the other European nations. Its importance, as a wise, thoughtful, unpolemic investigation of the origin and the results of Slavery, is hardly to be overestimated. The space allowed to a critical notice does not permit us to render it full justice. We can do little more than recommend it warmly to the readers of history and to the students of the most difficult and the darkest social problem of the age.



Handbook of Railroad Construction, for the Use of American Engineers. Containing the Necessary Rules, Tables, and Formulae for the Location, Construction, Equipment, and Management of Railroads, as built in the United States. With 158 Illustrations. By GEORGE L. VOSE, Civil Engineer. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1857. 12 mo. pp. 480.

All who trust their persons to railroad cars, or their estates to railroad stocks, will welcome every effort to enlighten that irresponsible body of railroad builders and managers in whose wits we put our faith.

The work which we here notice is intended for uneducated American engineers, of whom there are unfortunately too many. The rapidity with which our railroads have been built, and the experimental character of this new branch of engineering, have obliged us to resort to such native ability and mother wit as our people could afford. The great body of our railroad engineers have had no training but the experience they have blundered through; and even our railroad financiers are men more distinguished for courage and energy than for experimental skill. Mr. Vose's book will doubtless be of great service in remedying these evils, by bringing within the reach of every intelligent man a valuable and very carefully prepared summary of such rules, formulas, and statistics as our railroad experiences have furnished and proved.

Railroad engineering and management have united almost every branch of mechanical and financial science, and have developed several new and peculiar arts; so that the successful construction, equipment, and management of a railroad require a rare combination of accomplishments. Managers hitherto have been too little acquainted with their business to settle many questions of economy, but they are now beginning to look upon their enterprises with cooler judgments.

The "Handbook" discusses several questions of economy, but seeks, especially in its rules and formulas, to avoid those risks by which economy has often been turned into the most ruinous extravagance. On the question of fuel, our author advocates the use of coke as the most economical and convenient, and every way preferable where it can be readily obtained. He also urges, on economical grounds, a more moderate rate of speed in railroad travel; thus showing that we may save our forests, our lives, and a considerable expense all at the same time.

The style is clear, and, for a work not professing to be a complete treatise, but only a manual of useful facts, the arrangement is admirable. The book is thoroughly practical, and touches upon such matters, and for the most part upon such matters only, as are likely to be of service to the practical man; yet it is quite elementary in its character, and free from unnecessary technicalities.

The book has, however, one great fault. It is full of errata. No carefully prepared table of corrections can make amends for such a fault in a book in which typographical correctness is of the greatest importance. To insert in their places with a pen more than two hundred published corrections is a labor which no reader would willingly undertake. We hope, therefore, that a new and correct edition will soon be published.



The Life of Handel. By VICTOR SCHOELCHER. Reprinted from the London Edition. New York: Mason, Brothers.

It is a remarkable fact, and one not very creditable to the musical public of England, that the works of Mainwaring, Hawkins, Barney, and Coxe should remain for almost an entire century after the death of Handel our main sources of information concerning his career, and that the first attempt to write a complete biography of that great composer, correcting the errors, reconciling the contradictions, and supplying the deficiencies of those authors, should be from the pen of a French exile. And yet during all this time materials have been accumulating, the fame of the composer has been extending, the demand for such a work increasing, and the number of intelligent and elegant English writers upon music growing greater.

M. Schoelcher's work, though perhaps the most valuable contribution to musical historical literature which has for many years appeared from the English press, leaves much to be desired. Excepting a correction of the chronology of Handel's visit to Italy, very little, if anything, of importance is added to what we already possessed in regard to the early history of the composer. We look in vain for the means of tracing the development of his genius. The impression left upon the mind of the reader is, that his powers showed themselves suddenly in full splendor, and that at a single bound he placed himself at the head of the dramatic composers of his age. This was not true of Hasse, Mozart, Gluck, Cherubini, Weber, in dramatic composition; nor of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, in other branches of the musical art. However great a man's genius may be, he must live and learn. To attain the highest excellence, long continued study is necessary; and Handel, as we believe, was no exception to the general law.

The list of works consulted by M. Schoelcher, prefixed to the biography, shows that he has by no means exhausted the German authorities which may be profitably used in writing upon the early history of Handel: indeed, the author, though of German descent, is unacquainted with the German language. We can learn from them the state of dramatic music at that time in Berlin, Leipsic, Brunswick, Hanover, Kthen; we can form from them some correct idea of the powers of Keiser, Steffani, Graupner, Schieferdecker, Telemann, Grnwald, and others, then in possession of the lyric stage; we can thus estimate the influences which led Handel from the path that Bach so successfully followed, into that which he pursued with equal success; and though the amount of matter relating to him personally be small, much that throws light upon his early life still remains inaccessible to the English reader.

The biography of a great creative artist must in great measure consist of a history of his works; and the great value of the book before us arises from the searching examination to which M. Schoelcher has subjected the several collections of Handel's manuscripts which are preserved in England, one of which, in some respects the most valuable, has fallen into his own possession. This examination, for the first time made, together with the first careful and thorough search for whatever might afford a ray of light in the various periodicals of Handel's time, has enabled the author to correct innumerable errors in previous writers, and trace step by step the rapid succession of opera, anthem, serenata, and oratorio, which filled the years of the composer's manhood. For the general reader, perhaps, M. Schoelcher has been drawn too far into detail, and some passages of his work might have been better reserved for his "Catalogue of Handel's Works"; but these details are of the highest value to the student of musical literature, and, indeed, form for him the principal charm of the work. The importance of the author's labors can be duly appreciated only by those who have had occasion to study somewhat extensively the musical history of the last century. For them the results of those labors as here presented are invaluable.



Sermons of the REV. C. H. SPURGEON, of London. Third Series. New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co.

There can be no doubt of the merit of these sermons, considered as examples of method and embodiments of character. Whatever elements of Christianity may be left unexpressed in them, it is certain that Mr. Spurgeon has succeeded in expressing himself. His discourses at least give us Christianity as he understands, feels, and lives it. They should be studied by all clergymen who desire to master the secret of influencing masses of men. They will afford valuable hints in respect to method, even when their spirit, tone, and teaching present no proper model for imitation. Mr. Spurgeon, we suppose, would be classed among Calvinists, but he is not merely that. Without any force, depth, amplitude, or originality of thought, he has considerable force and originality of nature. He detaches from their relations certain doctrines of Calvinism which especially interest him, and so emphasizes and intensifies them, so blends them with his personal being and experience, that the impression he stamps upon the mind is rather of Spurgeonism than Calvinism. He gives vivid reality to his doctrines, because they are incorporated with his nature,—and not merely with his spiritual, but with his animal nature. He is thoroughly in earnest from the fact that he preaches himself. His converts, therefore, are likely to mistake being Spurgeonized for being Christianized; for the Christianity he preaches is not so much vital Christianity as it is Christianity passed through the vitalities of his own nature, and essentially modified and lowered in the process. To understand, then, the kind of influence he exerts, we have simply to inquire, What kind of man is Mr. Spurgeon?

The answer to this question is given on every page of his sermons. He has no reserves, but lets his character transpire in every sentence. He is a bold, eager, earnest, devout, passionate, well-intentioned man, with considerable experience in the sphere of the religious emotions, full of sympathy with rough natures, full of mother wit and practical sagacity, but, as a theologian, coarse, ignorant, narrow-minded, and strikingly deficient in fine spiritual perceptions. These qualities inhere in a nature of singular vigor, intensity, and directness, that sends out words like bullets. Warmth of feeling combined with narrowness of mind makes him a bigot; but his bigotry is not the sour assertion of an opinion, but the racy utterance of a nature. He believes in Spurgeonism so thoroughly and so simply that toleration is out of the question, and doctrines opposed to his own he refers, with instantaneous and ingenuous dogmatism, to folly or wickedness. "I think," he says, in one of his sermons, "I have none here so profoundly stupid as to be Puseyites. I can scarcely believe that I have been the means of attracting one person here so utterly devoid of one remnant of brain as to believe the doctrine of baptismal regeneration." The doctrine, indeed, is so nonsensical to him, that, after some caricatures of it, he asserts that it would discredit Scripture with all sensible men, if it were taught in Scripture. God himself could not make Mr. Spurgeon believe it; and doubtless there are many High Churchmen who would retort, that nothing short of a miracle could make them assent to some of the dogmas of their assailant. Indeed, the incapacity of our preacher to discern, or mentally to reproduce, a religious character differing in creed from his own, makes him the most amusingly intolerant of Popes, not because he is malignant, but because he is Spurgeon. If he had learning or largeness of mind, he would probably lose the greater portion of his power. He gets his hearers into a corner, limits the range of their vision to the doctrine he is expounding, refuses to listen to any excuses or palliations, and then screams out to them, "Believe or be damned!" In his own mind he is sure they will be damned, if they do not believe. So far as regards his influence over those minds whose religious emotions are strong, but whose religious principles are weak, every limitation of his mind is an increase of his force.

This theological narrowness is unaccompanied with theological rancor. A rough but genuine benevolence is at the heart of Mr. Spurgeon's system. He wishes his opponents to be converted, not condemned. He very properly feels, that, with his ideas of the Divine Government, he would be the basest of criminals, if he spared himself, or spared either entreaty or denunciation, in the great work of saving souls. He throws himself with such passionate earnestness into his business, that his sermons boil over with the excitement of his feelings. Indeed, it is difficult to say whether our impressions of him, derived from the written page, come to us more from the eye than the ear. His very style foams, rages, prays, entreats, adjures, weeps, screams, warns, and execrates. His words are words that everybody understands,—bold, blunt, homely, quaint, level to his nature, all alive with passion, and directed with the single purpose of carrying the fortresses of sin by assault. The reader who contrives to preserve his calmness amid this storm of words cannot but be vexed that rhetoric so efficient should frequently be combined with notions so narrow, with bigotry so besotted, with religious principles so materialized; that the man who is loudly proclaimed as the greatest living orator of the pulpit should have so little of that Christian spirit which refines when it inflames, which exalts, enlarges, and purifies the natures it moves. For Mr. Spurgeon is, after all, little more than a theological stump-orator, a Protestant Dominican, easy of comprehension because he leaves out the higher elements of his themes, and not hesitating to vulgarize Christianity, if he may thereby extend it among the vulgar. It has been attempted to justify him by the examples of Luther and Bunyan, to neither of whom does he bear more than the most superficial resemblance. He is, to be sure, as natural as Luther, but then his nature happens to be a puny nature as compared with that of the great Reformer; and, not to insist on specific differences, it is certain that Luther, if alive, would have the same objection to Mr. Spurgeon's bringing down the doctrines of Christianity to the supposed mental condition of his hearers, as he had to the Romanists of his day, who corrupted religion in order that the public "might be more generally accommodated." Bunyan's phraseology is homely, but Bunyan's celestializing imagination kept his "familiar grasp of things divine" from being an irreverent pawing of things divine. Mr. Spurgeon's nature works on a low level of influence. Deficient in imagination, and with a mind coarse and unspiritualized, though religiously impressed, he animalizes his creed in attempting to give it sensuous reality and impressiveness. If it be said that by this process he feels his way into hearts which could not be affected by more spiritual means, the answer is, that the multitude who listened to the Sermon on the Mount were not of a more elevated cast of mind than the multitude who listened to Mr. Spurgeon's sermon on "Regeneration." But the truth is, that Mr. Spurgeon's preaching is liked, not simply because it rouses sinners to repentance, but because it gives sinners a certain enjoyment. It is racy, original, exciting, and comes directly from the character of the preacher. It is relished, as Mr. Spurgeon tells us in his Preface, by "princes of every nation and nobles of every rank," as well as by humbler people. But we doubt whether Christianity should be vulgarized to give jaded nobles a new "sensation," or in order to be made a fit "gospel for the poor."