Cooper's character as a man is the more admirable to us because it was marked by strong points which are not common in our country, and which the institutions of our country do not foster. He had the courage to defy the majority: he had the courage to confront the press: and not from the sting of ill-success, not from mortified vanity, not from wounded self-love, but from an heroic sense of duty. How easy a life might he have purchased by the cheap virtues of silence, submission, and acquiescence! Booksellers would have enriched him; society would have caressed him; political distinction would have crowned him: he had only to watch the course of public sentiment, and so dispose himself that he should seem to lead where he only followed, and all comfortable things would have been poured into his lap. But he preferred to breast the stream, to speak ungrateful truths. He set a wholesome example in this respect; none the less valuable because so few have had the manliness and self-reliance to imitate him. More than twenty years ago De Tocqueville said,—"I know of no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America": words which we fear are not less true to-day than when they were written. Cooper's dauntless courage would have been less admirable, had he been hard, cold, stern, and impassive: but he was none of these. He was full of warm affections, cordial, sympathetic, and genial; he had a woman's tenderness of heart; he was the most faithful of friends; and in his own home no man was ever more gentle, gracious, and sweet. The blows he received fell upon a heart that felt them keenly; but he bared his breast none the less resolutely to the contest because it was not protected by an armor of insensibility.

But we must bring this long paper to a close. We cannot give to it the interest which comes from personal recollections. We saw Cooper once, and but once. This was the very year before he died, in his own home, and amid the scenes which his genius has made immortal. It was a bright midsummer's day, and we walked together about the village, and around the shores of the lake over which the canoe of Indian John had glided. His own aspect was as sunny as that of the smiling heavens above us; age had not touched him with its paralyzing finger: his vigorous frame, elastic step, and animated glance gave promise of twenty years more of energetic life. His sturdy figure, healthy face, and a slight bluffness of manner reminded one more of his original profession than of the life and manners of a man of letters. He looked like a man who had lived much in the open air,—upon whom the rain had fallen, and against whom the wind had blown. His conversation was hearty, spontaneous, and delightful from its frankness and fulness, but it was not pointed or brilliant; you remembered the healthy ring of the words, but not the words themselves. We recollect, that, as we were standing together on the shores of the lake,—shores which are somewhat tame, and a lake which can claim no higher epithet than that of pretty,—he said: "I suppose it would be patriotic to say that this is finer than Como, but we know that it is not." We found a chord of sympathy in our common impressions of the beauty of Sorrento, about which, and his residence there, he spoke with contagious animation. Who could have thought that that rich and abundant life was so near its close? Nothing could be more thoroughly satisfying than the impression he left in this brief and solitary interview. His air and movement revealed the same manly, brave, true-hearted, warm-hearted man that is imaged in his books. Grateful are we for the privilege of having seen, spoken with, and taken by the hand the author of "The Pathfinder" and "The Pilot": "it is a pleasure to have seen a great man." Distinctly through the gathering mists of years do his face and form rise up before the mind's eye: an image of manly self-reliance, of frank courage, of generous impulse; a frank friend, an open enemy; a man whom many misunderstood, but whom no one could understand without honoring and loving.

* * * * *



PER TENEBRAS, LUMINA.

I know how, through the golden hours When summer sunlight floods the deep, The fairest stars of all the heaven Climb up, unseen, the effulgent steep.

Orion girds him with a flame; And, king-like, from the eastward seas, Comes Aldebaran, with his train Of Hyades and Pleiades.

In far meridian pride, the Twins Build, side by side, their luminous thrones; And Sirius and Procyon pour A splendor that the day disowns.

And stately Leo, undismayed, With fiery footstep tracks the Sun, To plunge adown the western blaze, Sublimely lost in glories won.

I know, if I were called to keep Pale morning watch with Grief and Pain, Mine eyes should see their gathering might Rise grandly through the gloom again.

And when the Winter Solstice holds In his diminished path the Sun,— When hope, and growth, and joy are o'er, And all our harvesting is done,—

When, stricken, like our mortal Life, Darkened and chill, the Year lays down The summer beauty that she wore, Her summer stars of Harp and Crown,—

Thick trooping with their golden tread They come, as nightfall fills the sky, Those strong and solemn sentinels, To hold their mightier watch on high.

Ah, who shall shrink from dark and cold, Or fear the sad and shortening days, Since God doth only so unfold The wider glory to his gaze?

Since loyal Truth, and holy Trust, And kingly Strength defying Pain, Stern Courage, and sure Brotherhood Are born from out the depths again?

Dear Country of our love and pride! So is thy stormy winter given! So, through the terrors that betide, Look up, and hail thy kindling heaven!

* * * * *



LOVE AND SKATES.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

A KNOT AND A MAN TO CUT IT.

Consternation! Consternation in the back office of Benjamin Brummage, Esq., banker in Wall Street.

Yesterday down came Mr. Superintendent Whiffler, from Dunderbunk, up the North River, to say, that, "unless something be done, at once, the Dunderbunk Foundry and Iron-Works must wind up." President Brummage forthwith convoked his Directors. And here they sat around the green table, forlorn as the guests at a Barmecide feast.

Well they might be forlorn! It was the rosy summer solstice, the longest and fairest day of all the year. But rose-color and sunshine had fled from Wall Street. Noisy Crisis towing black Panic, as a puffing steam-tug drags a three-decker cocked and primed for destruction, had suddenly sailed in upon Credit.

As all the green inch-worms vanish on the tenth of every June, so on the tenth of that June all the money in America had buried itself and was as if it were not. Everybody and everything was ready to fail. If the hindmost brick went, down would go the whole file.

There were ten Directors of the Dunderbunk Foundry.

Now, not seldom, of a Board of ten Directors, five are wise and five are foolish: five wise, who bag all the Company's funds in salaries and commissions for indorsing its paper; five foolish, who get no salaries, no commissions, no dividends,—nothing, indeed, but abuse from the stockholders, and the reputation of thieves. That is to say, five of the ten are pick-pockets; the other five, pockets to be picked.

It happened that the Dunderbunk Directors were all honest and foolish but one. He, John Churm, honest and wise, was off at the West, with his Herculean shoulders at the wheels of a dead-locked railroad. These honest fellows did not wish Dunderbunk to fail for several reasons. First, it was not pleasant to lose their investment. Second, one important failure might betray Credit to Crisis with Panic at its heels, whereupon every investment would be in danger. Third, what would become of their Directorial reputations? From President Brummage down, each of these gentlemen was one of the pockets to be picked in a great many companies. Each was of the first Wall-Street fashion, invited to lend his name and take stock in every new enterprise. Any one of them might have walked down town in a long patchwork toga made of the newspaper advertisements of boards in which his name proudly figured. If Dunderbunk failed, the toga was torn, and might presently go to rags beyond repair. The first rent would inaugurate universal rupture. How to avoid this disaster?—that was the question.

"State the case, Mr. Superintendent Whiffler," said President Brummage, in his pompous manner, with its pomp a little collapsed, pro tempore.

Inefficient Whiffler whimpered out his story.

The confessions of an impotent executive are sorry stuff to read. Whiffler's long, dismal complaint shall not be repeated. He had taken a prosperous concern, had carried on things in his own way, and now failure was inevitable. He had bought raw material lavishly, and worked it badly into half-ripe material, which nobody wanted to buy. He was in arrears to his hands. He had tried to bully them, when they asked for their money. They had insulted him, and threatened to knock off work, unless they were paid at once. "A set of horrid ruffians," Whiffler said,—"and his life wouldn't be safe many days among them."

"Withdraw, if you please, Mr. Superintendent," President Brummage requested. "The Board will discuss measures of relief."

The more they discussed, the more consternation. Nobody said anything to the purpose, except Mr. Sam Gwelp, his late father's lubberly son and successor.

"Blast!" said he; "we shall have to let it slide!"

Into this assembly of imbeciles unexpectedly entered Mr. John Churm. He had set his Western railroad trains rolling, and was just returned to town. Now he was ready to put those Herculean shoulders at any other bemired and rickety no-go-cart.

Mr. Churm was not accustomed to be a Director in feeble companies. He came into Dunderbunk recently as executor of his friend Damer, a year ago bored to death by a silly wife.

Churm's bristly aspect and incisive manner made him a sharp contrast to Brummage. The latter personage was flabby in flesh, and the oppressively civil counter-jumper style of his youth had grown naturally into a deportment of most imposing pomposity.

The Tenth Director listened to the President's recitative of their difficulties, chorused by the Board.

"Gentlemen," said Director Churm, "you want two things. The first is Money!"

He pronounced this cabalistic word with such magic power that all the air seemed instantly filled with a cheerful flight of gold American eagles, each carrying a double eagle on its back and a silver dollar in its claws; and all the soil of America seemed to sprout with coin, as after a shower a meadow sprouts with the yellow buds of the dandelion.

"Money! yes, Money!" murmured the Directors.

It seemed a word of good omen, now.

"The second thing," resumed the newcomer, "is a Man!"

The Directors looked at each other and did not see such a being.

"The actual Superintendent of Dunderbunk is a dunderhead," said Churm.

"Pun!" cried Sam Gwelp, waking up from a snooze.

Several of the Directors, thus instructed, started a complimentary laugh.

"Order, gentlemen! Orrderr!" said the President, severely, rapping with a paper-cutter.

"We must have a Man, not a Whiffler!" Churm continued. "And I have one in my eye."

Everybody examined his eye.

"Would you be so good as to name him?" said Old Brummage, timidly.

He wanted to see a Man, but feared the strange creature might be dangerous.

"Richard Wade," says Churm. They did not know him. The name sounded forcible.

"He has been in California," the nominator said.

A shudder ran around the green table. They seemed to see a frowzy desperado, shaggy as a bison, in a red shirt and jackboots, hung about the waist with an assortment of six-shooters and bowie-knives, and standing against a background of mustangs, monte-banks, and lynch-law.

"We must get Wade," Churm says, with authority. "He knows Iron by heart. He can handle Men. I will back him with my blank check, to any amount, to his order."

Here a murmur of applause, swelling to a cheer, burst from the Directors.

Everybody knew that the Geological Bank deemed Churm's deposits the fundamental stratum of its wealth. They lay there in the vaults, like underlying granite. When hot times came, they boiled up in a mountain to buttress the world.

Churm's blank check seemed to wave in the air like an oriflamme of victory. Its payee might come from Botany Bay; he might wear his beard to his knees, and his belt stuck full of howitzers and boomerangs; he might have been repeatedly hung by Vigilance Committees, and as often cut down and revived by galvanism; but brandishing that check, good for anything less than a million, every Director in Wall Street was his slave, his friend, and his brother.

"Let us vote Mr. Wade in by acclamation," cried the Directors.

"But, gentlemen," Churm interposed, "if I give him my blank check, he must have carte blanche, and no one to interfere in his management."

Every Director, from President Brummage down, drew a long face at this condition.

It was one of their great privileges to potter in the Dunderbunk affairs and propose ludicrous impossibilities.

"Just as you please," Churm continued. "I name a competent man, a gentleman and fine fellow. I back him with all the cash he wants. But he must have his own way. Now take him, or leave him!"

Such despotic talk had never been heard before in that Directors' Room. They relucted a moment. But they thought of their togas of advertisements in danger. The blank check shook its blandishments before their eyes.

"We take him," they said, and Richard Wade was the new Superintendent unanimously.

"He shall be at Dunderbunk to take hold to-morrow morning," said Churm, and went off to notify him.

Upon this, Consternation sailed out of the hearts of Brummage and associates.

They lunched with good appetites over the green table, and the President confidently remarked,—

"I don't believe there is going much of a crisis, after all."



CHAPTER II.

BARRACKS FOR THE HERO.

Wade packed his kit, and took the Hudson-River train for Dunderbunk the same afternoon.

He swallowed his dust, he gasped for his fresh air, he wept over his cinders, he refused his "lozengers," he was admired by all the pretty girls and detested by all the puny men in the train, and in good time got down at his station.

He stopped on the platform to survey the land—and water-privileges of his new abode.

"The June sunshine is unequalled," he soliloquized, "the river is splendid, the hills are pretty, and the Highlands, north, respectable; but the village has gone to seed. Place and people look lazy, vicious, and ashamed. I suppose those chimneys are my Foundry. The smoke rises as if the furnaces were ill-fed and weak in the lungs. Nothing, I can see, looks alive, except that queer little steamboat coming in,—the 'I. Ambuster,'—jolly name for a boat!"

Wade left his traps at the station, and walked through the village. All the gilding of a golden sunset of June could not make it anything but commonplace. It would be forlorn on a gray day, and utterly dismal in a storm.

"I must look up a civilized house to lodge in," thought the stranger. "I cannot possibly camp at the tavern. Its offence is rum, and smells to heaven."

Presently our explorer found a neat, white, two-story, home-like abode on the upper street, overlooking the river.

"This promises," he thought. "Here are roses on the porch, a piano, or at least a melodeon, by the parlor-window, and they are insured in the Mutual, as the Mutual's plate announces. Now, if that nice-looking person in black I see setting a table in the back-room is a widow, I will camp here."

Perry Purtett was the name on the door, and opposite the sign of an omnium-gatherum country-store hinted that Perry was deceased. The hint was a broad one. Wade read, "Ringdove, Successor to late P. Purtett."

"It's worth a try to get in here out of the pagan barbarism around. I'll propose—as a lodger—to the widow."

So said Wade, and rang the bell under the roses. A pretty, slim, delicate, fair-haired maiden answered.

"This explains the roses and the melodeon," thought Wade, and asked, "Can I see your mother?"

Mamma came. "Mild, timid, accustomed to depend on the late Perry, and wants a friend," Wade analyzed, while he bowed. He proposed himself as a lodger.

"I didn't know it was talked of generally," replied the widow, plaintively; "but I have said that we felt lonesome, Mr. Purtett bein' gone, and if the new minister"—

Here she paused. The cut of Wade's jib was unclerical. He did not stoop, like a new minister. He was not pallid, meagre, and clad in unwholesome black, like the same. His bronzed face was frank and bold and unfamiliar with speculations on Original Sin or Total Depravity.

"I am not the new minister," said Wade, smiling slightly over his moustache; "but a new Superintendent for the Foundry."

"Mr. Whiffler is goin'?" exclaimed Mrs. Purtett.

She looked at her daughter, who gave a little sob and ran out of the room.

"What makes my daughter Belle feel bad," says the widow, "is, that she had a friend,—well, it isn't too much to say that they was as good as engaged,—and he was foreman of the Foundry finishin'-shop. But somehow Whiffler spoilt him, just as he spoils everything he touches; and last winter, when Belle was away, William Tarbox—that's his name, and his head is runnin' over with inventions—took to spreein' and liquor, and got ashamed of himself, and let down from a foreman to a hand, and is all the while lettin' down lower."

The widow's heart thus opened, Wade walked in as consoler. This also opened the lodgings to him. He was presently installed in the large and small front-rooms up-stairs, unpacking his traps, and making himself permanently at home.

Superintendent Whiffler came over, by-and-by, to see his successor. He did not like his looks. The new man should have looked mean or weak or rascally, to suit the outgoer.

"How long do you expect to stay?" asks Whiffler, with a half-sneer, watching Wade hanging a map and a print vis-a-vis.

"Until the men and I, or the Company and I, cannot pull together."

"I'll give you a week to quarrel with both, and another to see the whole concern go to everlasting smash. And now, if you're ready, I'll go over the accounts with you and prove it."

Whiffler himself, insolent, cowardly, and a humbug, if not a swindler, was enough, Wade thought, to account for any failure. But he did not mention this conviction.



CHAPTER III.

HOW TO BEHEAD A HYDRA!

At ten next morning, Whiffler handed over the safe-key to Wade, and departed to ruin some other property, if he could get one to ruin. Wade walked with him to the gate.

"I'm glad to be out of a sinking ship," said the ex-boss. "The Works will go down, sure as shooting. And I think myself well out of the clutches of these men. They're a bullying, swearing, drinking set of infernal ruffians. Foremen are just as bad as hands. I never felt safe of my life with 'em."

"A bad lot, are they?" mused Wade, as he returned to the office. "I must give them a little sharp talk by way of Inaugural."

He had the bell tapped and the men called together in the main building.

Much work was still going on in an inefficient, unsystematic way.

While hot fires were roaring in the great furnaces, smoke rose from the dusty beds where Titanic castings were cooling. Great cranes, manacled with heavy chains, stood over the furnace-doors, ready to lift steaming jorums of melted metal, and pour out, hot and hot, for the moulds to swallow.

Raw material in big heaps lay about, waiting for the fire to ripen it. Here was a stack of long, rough, rusty pigs, clumsy as the shillelabs of the Anakim. There was a pile of short, thick masses, lying higgledy-piggledy, stuff from the neighboring mines, which needed to be crossed with foreign stock before it could be of much use in civilization.

Here, too, was raw material organized: a fly-wheel, large enough to keep the knobbiest of asteroids revolving without a wabble; a cross-head, cross-tail, and piston-rod, to help a great sea-going steamer breast the waves; a light walking-beam, to whirl the paddles of a fast boat on the river; and other members of machines, only asking to be put together and vivified by steam and they would go at their work with a will.

From the black rafters overhead hung the heavy folds of a dim atmosphere, half dust, half smoke. A dozen sunbeams, forcing their way through the grimy panes of the grimy upper windows, found this compound quite palpable and solid, and they moulded out of it a series of golden bars set side by side aloft, like the pipes of an organ out of its perpendicular.

Wade grew indignant, as he looked about him and saw so much good stuff and good force wasting for want of a little will and skill to train the force and manage the stuff. He abhorred bankruptcy and chaos.

"All they want here is a head," he thought.

He shook his own. The brain within was well developed with healthy exercise. It filled its case, and did not rattle like a withered kernel, or sound soft like a rotten one. It was a vigorous, muscular brain. The owner felt that he could trust it for an effort, as he could his lungs for a shout, his legs for a leap, or his fist for a knock-down argument.

At the tap of the bell, the "bad lot" of men came together. They numbered more than two hundred, though the Foundry was working short. They had been notified that "that gonoph of a Whiffler was kicked out, and a new feller was in, who looked cranky enough, and wanted to see 'em and tell 'em whether he was a damn' fool or not."

So all hands collected from the different parts of the Foundry to see the head.

They came up with easy and somewhat swaggering bearing,—a good many roughs, with here and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached, swung and tossed, for mere overplus of strength, the sledges with which they had been tapping at the bald shiny pates of their anvils. Several wielded their long pokers like lances.

Grimy chaps, all with their faces streaked, like Blackfeet in their warpaint. Their hairy chests showed, where some men parade elaborate shirt-bosoms. Some had their sleeves pushed up to the elbow to exhibit their compact flexors and extensors. Some had rolled their flannel up to the shoulder, above the bulging muscles of the upper arm. They wore aprons tied about the neck, like the bibs of our childhood,—or about the waist, like the coquettish articles which young housewives affect. But there was no coquetry in these great flaps of leather or canvas, and they were besmeared and rust-stained quite beyond any bib that ever suffered under bread-and-molasses or mud-pie treatment.

They lounged and swaggered up, and stood at ease, not without rough grace, in a sinuous line, coiled and knotted like a snake.

Ten feet back stood the new Hercules who was to take down that Hydra's two hundred crests of insubordination.

They inspected him, and he them as coolly. He read and ticketed each man, as he came up,—good, bad, or on the fence,—and marked each so that he would know him among a myriad.

The Hands faced the Head. It was a question whether the two hundred or the one would be master in Dunderbunk.

Which was boss? An old question.

It has to be settled whenever a new man claims power, and there is always a struggle until it is fought out by main force of brain or muscle.

Wade had made up his mind on this subject. He waited a moment until the men were still. He was a Saxon six-footer of thirty. He stood easily on his pins, as if he had eyed men and facts before. His mouth looked firm, his brow freighted, his nose clipper,—that the hands could see. But clipper noses are not always backed by a stout hull. Seemingly freighted brows sometimes carry nothing but ballast and dunnage. The firmness may be all in the moustache, while the mouth hides beneath, a mere silly slit. All which the hands knew.

Wade began, short and sharp as a trip-hammer, when it has a bar to shape.

"I'm the new Superintendent. Richard Wade is my name. I rang the bell because I wanted to see you and have you see me. You know as well as I do that these Works are in a bad way. They can't stay so. They must come up and pay you regular wages and the Company profits. Every man of you has got to be here on the spot when the bell strikes, and up to the mark in his work. You haven't been,—and you know it. You've turned out rotten iron,—stuff that any honest shop would be ashamed of. Now there's to be a new leaf turned over here. You're to be paid on the nail; but you've got to earn your money. I won't have any idlers or shirkers or rebels about me. I shall work hard myself, and every man of you will, or he leaves the shop. Now, if anybody has a complaint to make, I'll hear him before you all."

The men were evidently impressed with Wade's Inaugural. It meant something. But they were not to be put down so easily, after long misrule. There began to be a whisper,—

"B'il in, Bill Tarbox! and talk up to him!"

Presently Bill shouldered forward and faced the new ruler.

Since Bill took to drink and degradation, he had been the butt-end of riot and revolt at the Foundry. He had had his own way with Whiffler. He did not like to abdicate and give in to this new chap without testing him.

In a better mood, Bill would have liked Wade's looks and words; but today he had a sore head, a sour face, and a bitter heart from last night's spree. And then he had heard—it was as well known already in Dunderbunk as if the town-crier had cried it—that Wade was lodging at Mrs. Purtett's, where poor Bill was excluded. So Bill stepped forward as spokesman of the ruffianly element, and the immoral force gathered behind and backed him heavily.

Tarbox, too, was a Saxon six-footer of thirty. But he had sagged one inch for want of self-respect. He had spoilt his color and dyed his moustache. He wore foxy-black pantaloons tucked into red-topped boots, with the name of the maker on a gilt shield. His red flannel shirt was open at the neck and caught with a black handkerchief. His damaged tile was in permanent crape for the late lamented Poole.

"We allow," says Bill, in a tone halfway between Lablache's De profundis and a burglar's bull-dog's snarl, "that we've did our work as good as need to be did. We 'xpect we know our rights. We ha'n't ben treated fair, and I'm damned if we're go'n' to stan' it."

"Stop!" says Wade. "No swearing in this shop!"

"Who the Devil is go'n' to stop it?" growled Tarbox.

"I am. Do you step back now, and let some one come out who can talk like a gentleman!"

"I'm damned if I stir till I've had my say out," says Bill, shaking himself up and looking dangerous.

"Go back!"

Wade moved close to him, also looking dangerous.

"Don't tech me!" Bill threatened, squaring off.

He was not quick enough. Wade knocked him down flat on a heap of moulding-sand. The hat in mourning for Poole found its place in a puddle.

Bill did not like the new Emperor's method of compelling kotou. Round One of the mill had not given him enough.

He jumped up from his soft bed and made a vicious rush at Wade. But he was damaged by evil courses. He was fighting against law and order, on the side of wrong and bad manners.

The same fist met him again, and heavier.

Up went his heels! Down went his head! It struck the ragged edge of a fresh casting, and there he lay stunned and bleeding on his hard black pillow.

"Ring the bell to go to work!" said Wade, in a tone that made the ringer jump. "Now, men, take hold and do your duty and everything will go smooth!"

The bell clanged in. The line looked at its prostrate champion, then at the new boss standing there, cool and brave, and not afraid of a regiment of sledge-hammers.

They wanted an Executive. They wanted to be well governed, as all men do. They wanted disorder out and order in. The new man looked like a man, talked fair, hit hard. Why not all hands give in with a good grace and go to work like honest fellows?

The line broke up. The hands went off to their duty. And there was never any more insubordination at Dunderbunk.

This was June.

Skates in the next chapter.

Love in good time afterward shall glide upon the scene.



CHAPTER IV.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT.

The pioneer sunbeam of next Christmas morning rattled over the Dunderbunk hills, flashed into Richard Wade's eyes, waked him, and was off, ricochetting across the black ice of the river.

Wade jumped up, electrified and jubilant. He had gone to bed, feeling quite too despondent for so healthy a fellow. Christmas Eve, the time of family-meetings, reminded him how lonely he was. He had not a relative in the world, except two little nieces,—one as tall as his knee, the other almost up to his waist; and them he had safely bestowed in a nook of New England, to gain wit and virtues as they gained inches.

"I have had a stern and lonely life," thought Wade, as he blew out his candle last night, "and what has it profited me?"

Perhaps the pioneer sunbeam answered this question with a truism, not always as applicable as in this case,—"A brave, able, self-respecting manhood is fair profit for any man's first thirty years of life."

But, answered or not, the question troubled Wade no more. He shot out of bed in tip-top spirits; shouted "Merry Christmas!" at the rising disk of the sun; looked over the black ice; thrilled with the thought of a long holiday for skating; and proceeded to dress in a knowing suit of rough clothes, singing, "Ah, non giunge!" as he slid into them.

Presently, glancing from his south window, he observed several matinal smokes rising from the chimneys of a country-house a mile away, on a slope fronting the river.

"Peter Skerrett must be back from Europe at last," he thought. "I hope he is as fine a fellow as he was ten years ago. I hope marriage has not made him a muff, and wealth a weakling."

Wade went down to breakfast with an heroic appetite. His "Merry Christmas" to Mrs. Purtett was followed up by a ravished kiss and the gift of a silver butter-knife. The good widow did not know which to be most charmed with. The butter-knife was genuine, shining, solid silver, with her initials, M.B.P., Martha Bilsby Purtett, given in luxuriant flourishes; but then the kiss had such a fine twang, such an exhilarating titillation! The late Perry's kisses, from first to last, had wanted point. They were, as the Spanish proverb would put it, unsavory as unsalted eggs, for want of a moustache. The widow now perceived, with mild regret, how much she had missed when she married "a man all shaven and shorn." Her cheek, still fair, though forty, flushed with novel delight, and she appreciated her lodger more than ever.

Wade's salutation to Belle Purtett was more distant. There must be a little friendly reserve between a handsome young man and a pretty young woman several grades lower in the social scale, living in the same house. They were on the most cordial terms, however; and her gift—of course embroidered slippers—and his to her—of course "The Illustrated Poets," in Turkey morocco—were exchanged with tender good-will on both sides.

"We shall meet on the ice, Miss Belle," said Wade. "It is a day of a thousand for skating."

"Mr. Ringdove says you are a famous skater," Belle rejoined. "He saw you on the river yesterday evening."

"Yes; Tarbox and I were practising to exhibit to-day; but I could not do much with my dull old skates."

Wade breakfasted deliberately, as a holiday morning allowed, and then walked down to the Foundry. There would be no work done to-day, except by a small gang keeping up the fires. The Superintendent wished only to give his First Semi-Annual Report an hour's polishing, before he joined all Dunderbunk on the ice.

It was a halcyon day, worthy of its motto, "Peace on earth, good-will to men." The air was electric, the sun overflowing with jolly shine, the river smooth and sheeny from the hither bank to the snowy mountains opposite.

"I wish I were Rembrandt, to paint this grand shadowy interior," thought Wade, as he entered the silent, deserted Foundry. "With the gleam of the snow in my eyes, it looks deliciously warm and chiaroscuro. When the men are here and 'fervet opus,'—the pot boils,—I cannot stop to see the picturesque."

He opened his office, took his Report and began to complete it with ,s, ;s, and .s in the right places.

All at once the bell of the Works rang out loud and clear. Presently the Superintendent became aware of a tramp and a bustle in the building. By-and-by came a tap at the office-door.

"Come in," said Wade, and, enter young Perry Purtett.

Perry was a boy of fifteen, with hair the color of fresh sawdust, white eyebrows, and an uncommonly wide-awake look. Ringdove, his father's successor, could never teach Perry the smirk, the grace, and the seductiveness of the counter, so the boy had found his place in the finishing-shop of the Foundry.

"Some of the hands would like to see you for half a jiff, Mr. Wade," said he. "Will you come along, if you please?"

There was a good deal of easy swagger about Perry, as there is always in boys and men whose business is to watch the lunging of steam-engines. Wade followed him. Perry led the way with a jaunty air that said,—

"Room here! Out of the way, you lubberly bits of cast-iron! Be careful, now, you big derricks, or I'll walk right over you! Room now for Me and My suite!"

This pompous usher conducted the Superintendent to the very spot in the main room of the Works where, six months before, the Inaugural had been pronounced and the first Veto spoken and enacted.

And there, as six months before, stood the Hands awaiting their Head. But the aprons, the red shirts, and the grime of working-days were off, and the whole were in holiday rig,—as black and smooth and shiny from top to toe as the members of a Congress of Undertakers.

Wade, following in the wake of Perry, took his stand facing the rank, and waited to see what he was summoned for. He had not long to wait.

To the front stepped Mr. William Tarbox, foreman of the finishing-shop, no longer a boy, but an erect, fine-looking fellow, with no nitrate in his moustache, and his hat permanently out of mourning for the late Mr. Poole.

"Gentlemen," said Bill, "I move that this meeting organize by appointing Mr. Smith Wheelwright Chairman. As many as are in favor of this motion, please to say 'Aye.'"

"Aye!" said the crowd, very loud and big. And then every man looked at his neighbor, a little abashed, as if he himself had made all the noise.

"This is a free country," continues Bill. "Every woter has a right to a fair shake. Contrary minds, 'No.'"

No contrary minds. The crowd uttered a great silence. Every man looked at his neighbor, surprised to find how well they agreed.

"Unanimous!" Tarbox pronounced. "No fractious minorities here, to block the wheels of legislation!"

The crowd burst into a roar at this significant remark, and, again abashed, dropped portcullis on its laughter, cutting off the flanks and tail of the sound.

"Mr. Purtett, will you please conduct the Chairman to the Chair," says Bill, very stately.

"Make way here!" cried Perry, with the manner of a man seven feet high. "Step out now, Mr. Chairman!"

He took a big, grizzled, docile-looking fellow patronizingly by the arm, led him forward, and chaired him on a large cylinder-head, in the rough, just hatched out of its mould.

"Bang away with that, and sing out, 'Silence!'" says the knowing boy, handing Wheelwright an iron bolt, and taking his place beside him, as prompter.

The docile Chairman obeyed. At his breaking silence by hooting "Silence!" the audience had another mighty bob-tailed laugh.

"Say, 'Will some honorable member state the object of this meeting?'" whispered the prompter.

"Will some honorable mumbler state the subject of this 'ere meetin'?" says Chair, a little bashful and confused.

Bill Tarbox advanced, and, with a formal bow, began,—

"Mr. Chairman"—

"Say, 'Mr. Tarbox has the floor,'" piped Perry.

"Mr. Tarbox has the floor," diapasoned the Chair.

"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen"—Bill began, and stopped.

"Say, 'Proceed, Sir!'" suggested Perry, which the senior did, magnifying the boy's whisper a dozen times.

Again Bill began and stopped.

"Boys," said he, dropping grandiloquence, "when I accepted the office of Orator of the Day at our primary, and promised to bring forward our Resolutions in honor of Mr. Wade with my best speech, I didn't think I was going to have such a head of steam on that the walves would get stuck and the piston jammed and I couldn't say a word.

"But," he continued, warming up, "when I think of the Indian powwow we had in this very spot six months ago,—and what a mean bloat I was, going to the stub-tail dogs with my hat over my eyes,—and what a hard lot we were all round, livin' on nothing but argee whiskey, and rampin' off on benders, instead of makin' good iron,—and how the Works was flat broke,—and how Dunderbunk was full of women crying over their husbands and mothers ashamed of their sons,—boys, when I think how things was, and see how they are, and look at Mr. Wade standing there like a"—

Bill hesitated for a comparison.

"Like a thousand of brick," Perry Purtett suggested, sotto voce.

The Chairman took this as a hint to himself.

"Like a thousand of brick," he said, with the voice of a Stentor.

Here the audience roared and cheered, and the Orator got a fresh start.

"When you came, Mr. Wade," he resumed, "we was about sick of putty-heads and sneaks that didn't know enough or didn't dare to make us stand round and bone in. You walked in, b'ilin' over with grit. You took hold as if you belonged here. You made things jump like a two-headed tarrier. All we wanted was a live man, to say, 'Here, boys, all together now! You've got your stint, and I've got mine. I'm boss in this shop,—but I can't do the first thing, unless every man pulls his pound. Now, then, my hand is on the throttle, grease the wheels, oil the walves, poke the fires, hook on, and let's yank her through with a will!'"

At this figure the meeting showed a tendency to cheer. "Silence!" Perry sternly suggested. "Silence!" repeated the Chair.

"Then," continued the Orator, "you wasn't one of the uneasy kind, always fussin' and cussin' round. You wasn't always spyin' to see we didn't take home a cross-tail or a hundred-weight of cast-iron in our pants' pockets, or go to swiggin' hot metal out of the ladles on the sly."

Here an enormous laugh requited Bill's joke. Perry prompted, the Chair banged with his bolt and cried, "Order!"

"Well, now, boys," Tarbox went on, "what has come of having one of the right sort to be boss? Why, this. The Works go ahead, stiddy as the North River. We work full time and full-handed. We turn out stuff that no shop needs to be ashamed of. Wages is on the nail. We have a good time generally. How is that, boys,—Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen?"

"That's so!" from everybody.

"And there's something better yet," Bill resumed. "Dunderbunk used to be full of crying women. They've stopped crying now."

Here the whole assemblage, Chairman and all, burst into an irrepressible cheer.

"But I'm making my speech as long as a lightning-rod," said the speaker. "I'll put on the brakes, short. I guess Mr. Wade understands pretty well, now, how we feel; and if he don't, here it all is in shape, in this document, with 'Whereas' at the top and 'Resolved' entered along down in five places. Mr. Purtett, will you hand the Resolutions to the Superintendent?"

Perry advanced and did his office loftily, much to the amusement of Wade and the workmen.

"Now," Bill resumed, "we wanted, besides, to make you a little gift, Mr. Wade, to remember the day by. So we got up a subscription, and every man put in his dime. Here's the present,—hand 'em over, Perry!

"There, Sir, is THE BEST PAIR OF SKATES to be had in York City, made for work, and no nonsense about 'em. We Dunderbunk boys give 'em to you, one for all, and hope you'll like 'em and beat the world skating, as you do in all the things we've knowed you try.

"Now, boys," Bill perorated, "before I retire to the shades of private life, I motion we give Three Cheers—regular Toplifters—for Richard Wade!"

"Hurrah! Wade and Good Government!" "Hurrah! Wade and Prosperity!" "Hurrah! Wade and the Women's Tears Dry!"

Cheers like the shout of Achilles! Wielding sledges is good for the bellows, it appears. Toplifters! Why, the smoky black rafters overhead had to tug hard to hold the roof on. Hurrah! From every corner of the vast building came back rattling echoes. The Works, the machinery, the furnaces, the stuff, all had their voice to add to the verdict.

Magnificent music! and our Anglo-Saxon is the only race in the world civilized enough to join in singing it. We are the only hurrahing people,—the only brood hatched in a "Hurrah's nest."

Silence restored, the Chairman, prompted by Perry, said, "Gentlemen, Mr. Wade has the floor for a few remarks."

Of course Wade had to speak, and did. He would not have been an American in America else. But his heart was too full to say more than a few hearty and earnest words of good feeling.

"Now, men," he closed, "I want to get away on the river and see if my skates will go as they look; so I'll end by proposing three cheers for Smith Wheelwright, our Chairman, three for our Orator, Tarbox, three for Old Dunderbunk,—Works, Men, Women, and Children; and one big cheer for Old Father Iron, as rousing a cheer as ever was roared."

So they gave their three times three with enormous enthusiasm. The roof shook, the furnaces rattled, Perry Purtett banged with the Chairman's hammer, the great echoes thundered through the Foundry.

And when they ended with one gigantic cheer for IRON, tough and true, the weapon, the tool, and the engine of all civilization,—it seemed as if the uproar would never cease until Father Iron himself heard the call in his smithy away under the magnetic pole, and came clanking up, to return thanks in person.



CHAPTER V.

SKATING AS A FINE ART.

Of all the plays that are played by this playful world on its play-days, there is no play like Skating.

To prepare a board for the moves of this game of games, a panel for the drawings of this Fine Art, a stage for the entrechats and pirouettes of its graceful adepts, Zero, magical artificer, had been, for the last two nights, sliding at full speed up and down the North River.

We have heard of Midas, whose touch made gold, and of the virgin under whose feet sprang roses; but Zero's heels and toes were armed with more precious influences. They left a diamond way, where they slid,—a hundred and fifty miles of diamond, half a mile wide and six inches thick.

Diamond can only reflect sunlight; ice can contain it. Zero's product, finer even than diamond, was filled—at the rate of a million to the square foot—with bubbles immeasurably little, and yet every one big enough to comprise the entire sun in small, but without alteration or abridgment. When the sun rose, each of these wonderful cells was ready to catch the tip of a sunbeam and house it in a shining abode.

Besides this, Zero had inlaid its work, all along shore, with exquisite marquetry of leaves, brown and evergreen, of sprays and twigs, reeds and grasses. No parquet in any palace from Fontainebleau to St. Petersburg could show such delicate patterns, or could gleam so brightly, though polished with all the wax in Christendom.

On this fine pavement, all the way from Cohoes to Spuyten Duyvil, Jubilee was sliding without friction, the Christmas morning of these adventures.

Navigation was closed. Navigators had leisure. The sloops and schooners were frozen in along shore, the tugs and barges were laid up in basins, the floating palaces were down at New York, deodorizing their bar-rooms, regilding their bridal chambers, and enlarging their spittoon accommodations alow and aloft, for next summer. All the population was out on the ice, skating, sliding, sledding, slipping, tumbling, to its heart's content.

One person out of every Dunderbunk family was of course at home, roasting Christmas turkey. The rest were already at high jinks on Zero's Christmas present, when Wade and the men came down, from the meeting.

Wade buckled on his new skates in a jiffy. He stamped to settle himself, and then flung off half a dozen circles on the right leg, half a dozen with the left, and the same with either leg backwards.

The ice, traced with these white peripheries, showed like a blackboard where a school has been chalking diagrams of Euclid, to point at with the "slow unyielding finger" of demonstration.

"Hurrah!" cries Wade, halting in front of the men, who, some on the Foundry wharf, some on the deck of our first acquaintance at Dunderbunk, the tug "L Ambuster," were putting on their skates or watching him, "Hurrah! the skates are perfection! Are you ready, Bill?"

"Yes," says Tarbox, whizzing off rings, as exact as Giotto's autograph.

"Now, then," Wade said, "we'll give Dunderbunk a laugh, as we practised last night."

They got under full headway, Wade backwards, Bill forwards, holding hands. When they were near enough to the merry throng out in the stream, both dropped into a sitting posture, with the left knee bent, and each with his right leg stretched out parallel to the ice and fitting compactly by the other man's leg. In this queer figure they rushed through the laughing crowd.

Then all Dunderbunk formed a ring, agog for a grand show of

SKATING AS A FINE ART.

The world loves to see Great Artists, and expects them to do their duty.

It is hard to treat of this Fine Art by the Art of Fine Writing. Its eloquent motions must be seen.

To skate Fine Art, you must have a Body and a Soul, each of the First Order; otherwise you will never get out of coarse art and skating in one syllable. So much for yourself, the motive power. And your machinery,—your smooth-bottomed rockers, the same shape stem and stern,—this must be as perfect as the man it moves, and who moves it.

Now suppose you wish to skate so that the critics will say, "See! this athlete docs his work as Church paints, as Darley draws, as Palmer chisels, as Wittier strikes the lyre, and Longfellow the dulcimer; he is as terse as Emerson, as clever as Holmes, as graceful as Curtis; he is as calm as Seward, as keen as Phillips, as stalwart as Beecher; be is Garibaldi, he is Kit Carson, he is Blondin; he is as complete as the steamboat Metropolis, as Steers's yacht, as Singer's sewing-machine, as Colt's revolver, as the steam-plough, as Civilization." You wish to be so ranked among the people and things that lead the age;—consider the qualities you must have, and while you consider, keep your eye on Richard Wade, for he has them all in perfection.

First,—of your physical qualities. You must have lungs, not bellows; and an active heart, not an assortment of sluggish auricles and ventricles. You must have legs, not shanks. Their shape is unimportant, except that they must not interfere at the knee. You must have muscles, not flabbiness; sinews like wire; nerves like sunbeams; and a thin layer of flesh to cushion the gable-ends, where you will strike, if you tumble,—which, once for all be it said, you must never do. You must be all momentum, and no inertia. You must be one part grace, one force, one agility, and the rest caoutchouc, Manila hemp, and watch-spring. Your machine, your body, must be thoroughly obedient. It must go just so far and no farther. You have got to be as unerring as a planet holding its own, emphatically, between forces centripetal and centrifugal. Your aplomb must be as absolute as the pounce of a falcon.

So much for a few of the physical qualities necessary to be a Great Artist in Skating. See Wade, how be shows them!

Now for the moral and intellectual. Pluck is the first;—it always is the first quality. Then enthusiasm. Then patience. Then pertinacity. Then a fine aesthetic faculty,—in short, good taste. Then an orderly and submissive mind, that can consent to act in accordance with the laws of Art. Circumstances, too, must have been reasonably favorable. That well-known skeptic, the King of tropical Bantam, could not skate, because he had never seen ice and doubted even the existence of solid water. Widdrington, after the Battle of Chevy Chace, could not have skated, because he had no legs,—poor fellow!

But granted the ice and the legs, then if you begin in the elastic days of youth, when cold does not sting, tumbles do not bruise, and duckings do not wet; if you have pluck and ardor enough to try everything; if you work slowly ahead and stick to it; if you have good taste and a lively invention; if you are a man, and not a lubber;—then, in fine, you may become a Great Skater, just as with equal power and equal pains you may put your grip on any kind of Greatness.

The technology of skating is imperfect. Few of the great feats, the Big Things, have admitted names. If I attempted to catalogue Wade's achievements, this chapter might become an unintelligible rhapsody. A sheet of paper and a pen-point cannot supply the place of a sheet of ice and a skate-edge. Geometry must have its diagrams, Anatomy its corpus to carve. Skating also refuses to be spiritualized into a Science; it remains an Art, and cannot be expressed in a formula.

Skating has its Little Go, its Great Go, its Baccalaureate, its M.A., its F.S.D., (Doctor of Frantic Skipping,) its A.G.D., (Doctor of Airy Gliding,) its N.T.D., (Doctor of No Tumbles,) and finally its highest degree, U.P. (Unapproachable Podographer).

Wade was U.P.

There were a hundred of Dunderbunkers who had passed their Little Go and could skate forward and backward easily. A half-hundred, perhaps, were through the Great Go; these could do outer edge freely. A dozen had taken the Baccalaureate, and were proudly repeating the pirouettes and spread-eagles of that degree. A few could cross their feet, on the edge, forward and backward, and shift edge on the same foot, and so were Magistri Artis.

Wade, U.P., added to these an indefinite list of combinations and fresh contrivances. He spun spirals slow, and spirals neck or nothing. He pivoted on one toe, with the other foot cutting rings, inner and outer edge, forward and back, He skated on one foot better than the M.A.s could on both. He ran on his toes; he slid on his heels; he cut up shines like a sunbeam on a bender; he swung, light as if he could fly, if he pleased, like a wing-footed Mercury; he glided as if will, not muscle, moved him; he tore about in frenzies; his pivotal leg stood firm, his balance leg flapped like a graceful pinion; he turned somersets; he jumped, whirling backward as he went, over a platoon of boys laid flat on the ice;—the last boy winced, and thought he was amputated; but Wade flew over, and the boy still holds together as well as most boys. Besides this, he could write his name, with a flourish at the end, like the rubrica of a Spanish hidalgo. He could podograph any letter, and multitudes of ingenious curlicues which might pass for the alphabets of the unknown tongues. He could not tumble.

It was Fine Art.

Bill Tarbox sometimes pressed the champion hard. But Bill stopped just short of Fine Art, in High Artisanship.

How Dunderbunk cheered this wondrous display! How delighted the whole population was to believe they possessed the best skater on the North River! How they struggled to imitate! How they tumbled, some on their backs, some on their faces, some with dignity like the dying Caesar, some rebelliously like a cat thrown out of a garret, some limp as an ancient acrobate! How they laughed at themselves and at each other!

"It's all in the new skates," says Wade, apologizing for his unapproachable power and finish.

"It's suthin' in the man," says Smith Wheelwright.

"Now chase me, everybody," said Wade.

And, for a quarter of an hour, he dodged the merry crowd, until at last, breathless, he let himself be touched by pretty Belle Purtett, rosiest of all the Dunderbunk bevy of rosy maidens on the ice.

"He rayther beats Bosting," says Captain Isaac Ambuster to Smith Wheelwright. "It's so cold there that they can skate all the year round; but he beats them, all the same."

The Captain was sitting in a queer little bowl of a skiff on the deck of his tug, and rocking it like a cradle, as he talked.

"Bosting's always hard to beat in anything," rejoined the ex-Chairman. "But if Bosting is to be beat, here's the man to do it."

* * * * *

And now, perhaps, gentle reader, you think I have said enough in behalf of a limited fraternity, the Skaters.

The next chapter, then, shall take up the cause of the Lovers, a more numerous body, and we will see whether True Love, which never makes "smooth running," can help its progress by a skate-blade.



CHAPTER VI.

"GO NOT, HAPPY DAY, TILL THE MAIDEN YIELDS."

Christmas noon at Dunderbunk. Every skater was in galloping glee,—as the electric air, and the sparkling sun, and the glinting ice had a right to expect that they all should be.

Belle Purtett, skating simply and well, had never looked so pretty and graceful. So thought Bill Tarbox.

He had not spoken to her, nor she to him, for more than six months. The poor fellow was ashamed of himself and penitent for his past bad courses. And so, though he longed to have his old flame recognize him again, and though he was bitterly jealous and miserably afraid he should lose her, he had kept away and consumed his heart like a true despairing lover.

But to-day Bill was a lion, only second to Wade, the unapproachable lion-in-chief. Bill was reinstated in public esteem, and had won back his standing in the Foundry. He had to-day made a speech which Perry Purtett gave everybody to understand "none of Senator Bill Seward's could hold the tallow to." Getting up the meeting and presenting Wade with the skates was Bill's own scheme, and it had turned out an eminent success. Everything began to look bright to him. His past life drifted out of his mind like the rowdy tales he used to read in the Sunday newspapers.

He had watched Belle Purtett all the morning, and saw that she distinguished nobody with her smiles, not even that coq du village, Ringdove. He also observed that she was furtively watching him.

By-and-by she sailed out of the crowd, and went off a little way to practise.

"Now," said he to himself, "sail in, Bill Tarbox!"

Belle heard the sharp strokes of a powerful skater coming after her. Her heart divined who this might be. She sped away like the swift Camilla, and her modest drapery showed just enough and "ne quid nimis" of her ankles.

Bill admired the grace and the ankles immensely. But his hopes sank a little at the flight,—for he thought she perceived his chase and meant to drop him. Bill had not bad a classical education, and knew nothing of Galatea in the Eclogue,—how she did not hide, until she saw her swain was looking fondly after.

"She wants to get away," he thought "But she sha'n't,—no, not if I have to follow her to Albany."

He struck out mightily. Presently the swift Camilla let herself be overtaken.

"Good morning, Miss Purtett." (Dogged air.)

"Good morning, Mr. Tarbox." (Taken-by-surprise air.)

"I've been admiring your skating," says Bill, trying to be cool.

"Have you?" rejoins Belle, very cool and distant.

"Have you been long on the ice?" he inquired, hypocritically.

"I came on two hours ago with Mr. Ringdove and the girls," returned she, with a twinkle which said, "Take that, Sir, for pretending you did not see me."

"You've seen Mr. Wade skate, then," Bill said, ignoring Ringdove.

"Yes; isn't it splendid?" Belle replied, kindling.

"Tip-top!"

"But then he does everything better than anybody."

"So he does!" Bill said,—true to his friend, and yet beginning to be jealous of this enthusiasm. It was not the first time he had been jealous of Wade; but he had quelled his fears, like a good fellow.

Belle perceived Bill's jealousy, and could have cried for joy. She had known as little of her once lover's heart as he of hers. She only knew that he stopped coming to see her when he fell, and had not renewed his visits now that he was risen again. If she had not been charmingly ruddy with the brisk air and exercise, she would have betrayed her pleasure at Bill's jealousy with a fine blush.

The sense of recovered power made her wish to use it again. She must tease him a little. So she continued, as they skated on in good rhythm,—

"Mother and I wouldn't know what to do without Mr. Wade. We like him so much,"—said ardently.

What Bill feared was true, then, he thought. Wade, noble fellow, worthy to win any woman's heart, had fascinated his landlady's daughter.

"I don't wonder you like him," said he. "He deserves it."

Belle was touched by her old lover's forlorn tone.

"He does indeed," she said. "He has helped and taught us all so much. He has taken such good care of Perry. And then"—here she gave her companion a little look and a little smile—"he speaks so kindly of you, Mr. Tarbox."

Smile, look, and words electrified Bill. He gave such a spring on his skates that he shot far ahead of the lady. He brought himself back with a sharp turn.

"He has done kinder than he can speak," says Bill. "He has made a man of me again, Miss Belle."

"I know it. It makes me very happy to hear you able to say so of yourself." She spoke gravely.

"Very happy"—about anything that concerned him? Bill had to work off his overjoy at this by an exuberant flourish. He whisked about Belle,—outer edge backward. She stopped to admire. He finished by describing on the virgin ice, before her, the letters B.P., in his neatest style of podography,—easy letters to make, luckily.

"Beautiful!" exclaimed Belle. "What are those letters? Oh! B.P.! What do they stand for?"

"Guess!"

"I'm so dull," said she, looking bright as a diamond. "Let me think! B.P.? British Poets, perhaps."

"Try nearer home!"

"What are you likely to be thinking of that begins with B.P.?—Oh, I know! Boiler Plates!"

She looked at him,—innocent as a lamb. Bill looked at her, delighted with her little coquetry. A woman without coquetry is insipid as a rose without scent, as Champagne without bubbles, or as corned beef without mustard.

"It's something I'm thinking of most of the time," says he; "but I hope it's softer than Boiler Plates. B.P. stands for Miss Isabella Purtett."

"Oh!" says Belle, and she skated on in silence.

"You came down with Alonzo Ringdove?" Bill asked, suddenly, aware of another pang after a moment of peace.

"He came with me and his sisters," she replied.

Yes; poor Ringdove had dressed himself in his shiniest black, put on his brightest patent-leather boots, with his new swan-necked skates newly strapped over them, and wore his new dove-colored overcoat with the long skirts, on purpose to be lovely in the eyes of Belle on this occasion. Alas, in vain!

"Mr. Ringdove is a great friend of yours, isn't he?"

"If you ever came to see me now, you would know who my friends are, Mr. Tarbox."

"Would you be my friend again, if I came, Miss Belle?"

"Again? I have always been so,—always, Bill."

"Well, then, something more than my friend,—now that I am trying to be worthy of more, Belle?"

"What more can I be?" she said, softly.

"My wife."

She curved to the right. He followed. To the left. He was not to be shaken off.

"Will you promise me not to say walves instead of valves, Bill?" she said, looking pretty and saucy as could be. "I know, to say W for V is fashionable in the iron business; but I don't like it."

"What a thing a woman is to dodge!" says Bill. "Suppose I told you that men brought up inside of boilers, hammering on the inside against twenty hammering like Wulcans on the outside, get their ears so dumfounded that they can't tell whether they are saying valves or walves, wice or virtue,—suppose I told you that,—what would you say, Belle?"

"Perhaps I'd say that you pronounce virtue so well, and act it so sincerely, that I can't make any objection to your other words. If you'd asked me to be your vife, Bill, I might have said I didn't understand; but wife I do understand, and I say"—

She nodded, and tried to skate off. Bill stuck close to her side.

"Is this true, Belle?" he said, almost doubtfully.

"True as truth!"

She put out her hand. He took it, and they skated on together,—hearts beating to the rhythm of their movements. The uproar and merriment of the village came only faintly to them. It seemed as if all Nature was hushed to listen to their plighted troth, their words of love renewed, more earnest for long suppression. The beautiful ice spread before them, like their life to come, a pathway untouched by any sorrowful or weary footstep. The blue sky was cloudless. The keen air stirred the pulses like the vapor of frozen wine. The benignant mountains westward kindly surveyed the happy pair, and the sun seemed created to warm and cheer them.

"And you forgive me, Belle?" said the lover. "I feel as if I had only gone bad to make me know how much better going right is."

"I always knew you would find it out. I never stopped hoping and praying for it."

"That must have been what brought Mr. Wade here."

"Oh, I did hate him so, Bill, when I heard of something that happened between you and him! I thought him a brute and a tyrant. I never could get over it, until he told mother that you were the best machinist he ever knew, and would some time grow to be a great inventor."

"I'm glad you hated him. I suffered rattlesnakes and collapsed flues for fear you'd go and love him."

"My affections were engaged," she said, with simple seriousness.

"Oh, if I'd only thought so long ago! How lovely you are!" exclaims Bill, in an ecstasy. "And how refined! And how good! God bless you!"

He made up such a wishful mouth,—so wishful for one of the pleasurable duties of mouths, that Belle blushed, laughed, and looked down, and as she did so saw that one of her straps was trailing.

"Please fix it, Bill," she said, stopping and kneeling.

Bill also knelt, and his wishful mouth immediately took its chance.

A manly smack and sweet little feminine chirp sounded as their lips met.

Boom! twanging gay as the first tap of a marriage-bell, a loud crack in the ice rang musically for leagues up and down the river. "Bravo!" it seemed to say. "Well done, Bill Tarbox! Try again!" Which the happy fellow did, and the happy maiden permitted.

"Now," said Bill, "let us go and hug Mr. Wade!"

"What! Both of us?" Belle protested. "Mr. Tarbox, I am ashamed of you!"

* * * * *



LIGHT LITERATURE.

Though the smallest boulder is heavy, and even the merest pebble has a perceptible weight, yet the entire planet, toward which both gravitate, floats more lightly than any feather. In literature somewhat analogous may be observed. Here also are found the insignificant lightness of the pebble and the mighty lightness of the planet; while between them range the weighty masses, superior to the petty ponderability of the one, and unequal to the firmamental float of the other. Accordingly, setting out from the mote-and-pebble extreme, you find, that, up to a certain point, increasing values of thought are commonly indicated by increasing gravity, by more and more of state-paper weightiness; but beyond this the rule is reversed, and lightness becomes the sign and measure of excellence. Bishop Butler and Richard Hooker—especially the latter, the first book of whose "Ecclesiastical Polity" is a truly noble piece of writing—stand, perhaps, at the head of the weighty class of writers in our language; but going beyond these to the "Areopagitica" of Milton, or even to the powerful prose of Raleigh, you pass the boundary-line, and are touched with the buoyant influences of the Muse. Shakspeare and Plato are lighter than levity; they are lifting forces, and weigh less than nothing. The novelette of the season, or any finest and flimsiest gossamer that is fabricated in our literary looms, compares with "Lear," with "Prometheus Bound," with any supreme work, only as cobwebs and thistle-down, that are easily borne by the breeze, may compare with sparrows and thrushes, that can fly and withal sing.

There is a call for "light reading," and I for one applaud the demand. A lightening influence is the best that books or men can bestow upon us. Information is good, but invigoration is a thousand times better. Cheer, cheer and vigor for the world's heart! It is because man's hope is so low, and his imaginations so poor, that he is earthly and evil. Wings for these unfledged hearts! Transformation for these grubs! Give us animation, inspiration, joy, faith! Give us enlivening, lightsome airs, to which our souls shall, on a sudden, begin to dance, keeping step with the angels! What else is worth having? Each one of these sordid sons of men—is he not a new-born Apollo, who waits only for the ambrosia from Olympus, to spring forth in divineness of beauty and strength?

Nevertheless, I know not of any reading so hopelessly heavy as large portions of that which claims the name of light. Light writing it may be; but, considered as reading, one would be unjust to charge upon it any lack of avoirdupois. It is like the bran of wheat, which, though of little weight in the barrel, is heavy enough in the stomach,—Dr. Sylvester Graham to the contrary notwithstanding. It is related of an Italian culprit, that, being required, in punishment of his crime, to make choice between lying in prison for a term of years and reading the history of Guicciardini, he chose the latter, but, after a brief trial, petitioned for leave to reverse his election. I never attempted Guicciardini; but I did once attempt Pope's "Dunciad." And was it really the doom of a generation of readers to find delight in this book? One must suppose so. There are those in our day whose hard fate it is to read and to like James's and Bulwer's novels. But greatly mistaken is the scholar who, for relief from severe studies, goes to an empty or insincere book. It is like saying money, after large and worthy expenditures, by purchasing at a low price that which is worth nothing,—buying "gold" watches at a mock-auction room.

Indeed, no book, however witty, lively, saltatory, can have the volant effects we covet, if it want substance and seriousness. Substance, however, is to be widely distinguished from ponderability. Oxygen is not so ponderous as lead or granite, but it is far more substantial than either, and, as every one knows, infinitely more serviceable to life. The distinction is equally valid when applied to books and to men. The "airy nothings" of imagination prove to be the most enduring somethings of the world's literature; and the last lightness of heart may go with the purest truth of soul and the most precious virtue of intelligence. All expressions carry the perpetual savors of their origin; and as brooks that dance and frolic with the sunbeams and murmur to the birds, light-hearted forever, will yet bear sands of gold, if they flow from auriferous hills, so any bubble and purl of laughter, proceeding from a wise and wealthy soul, will bear a noble significance. In point of fact, some of the merriest books in the world are among the most richly freighted. And as airy and mirthful books may be substantial and serious, so it is an effect very similar to that of noble and significant mirth that is produced upon us by the grandest pieces of serious writing. Thus, he who rightly reads the "Phaedon" or "Phaedrus" of Plato smiles through all the depths of his brain, though no pronounced smile show on his face; and he who rightly reads the book of Cervantes, though the laughters plunge, as it were, in cascades from his lips, is earnest at heart, and full of sound and tender meditations.

If now, setting aside all books, whether pretending to gayety or gravity, that are simply empty and ineffectual, we inquire for the prime distinction between books light in a worthy and unworthy sense, it will appear to be the distinction between inspiration and alcohol,—between effects divinely real and effects illusory and momentary. The drunkard dreams of flying, and fancies the stars themselves left below him, while he is really lying in the gutter. There are those, and numbers of those, who in reading seek no more than to be cheated in a similar way. Indeed, to acknowledge a disagreeable fact, there is a very great deal of reading in our day that is simply a substitute for the potations and "heavy-handed revel" of our Saxon ancestors. In both cases it is a spurious exaltation of feeling that is sought; in both cases those who for a moment seem to themselves larks ascending to meet the sun are but worms eating earth.

This celestial lightness, which constitutes the last praise and causes the purest benefit of books, comes not of any manner of writing; no mere vivacity, though that of a French writer of memoirs, though that of Arsene Houssaye himself, can compass it; by no knack or talents is it to be attained. Perfect style has, indeed, many allurements, and is of exceeding price; but it is no chariot of Elijah, nevertheless. Was ever style more delightful, of its kind, than Dryden's? Was ever style more heavy and monotonous than that of Swedenborg in his theological works? But I have read Dryden, not indeed without pleasure in his masterly exquisite ease and sureness of statement and his occasional touches of admirable good sense, yet with no slightest liberation of spirit, with no degree, greater or less, of that magical and marvellous evocation, of inward resource, whose blessed surprise now and then in life makes for us angelic moments, and feelingly persuades us that our earth also is a star and in the sky. On the other hand, I once read Swedenborg's "Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom" with such enticement, such afflatus, such quickening and heightening of soul, as I cannot describe without seeming excessive. Until half through the book, I turned every page with the feeling that before another page I might see the chasm between the real and phenomenal worlds fairly bridged over. Of course, it disappointed me in the end; but what of that? To have kindled and for a time sustained the expectation which should render possible such disappointment was a benefit that a whole Bodleian Library might fail to confer. These benefits come to us not from the writer as such, but from the man behind the writer. He who dwells aloft amid the deathless orient imaginations of the human race, easily inhabiting their atmosphere as his native element,—about him, and him only, are the halos and dawns of immortal youth; and his speech, though with many babyish or barbarous fancies, many melancholies and vices of the blood compounded, carries nevertheless some refrain of divine hilarity, that beguiles men of their sordidness, their sullenness, and low cares, they know not how nor why.

* * * * *



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON.

We set out at a little past eleven, and made our first stage to Manchester. We were by this time sufficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright and sunny one; although the May sunshine was mingled with water, as it were, and distempered with a very bitter east-wind.

Lancashire is a dreary county, (all, at least, except its hilly portions,) and I have never passed through it without wishing myself anywhere but in that particular spot where I then happened to be. A few places along our route were historically interesting; as, for example, Bolton, which was the scene of many remarkable events in the Parliamentary War, and in the market-square of which one of the Earls of Derby was beheaded. We saw, along the way-side, the never-failing green fields, hedges, and other monotonous features of an ordinary English landscape. There were little factory villages, too, or larger towns, with their tall chimneys, and their pennons of black smoke, their uglinesses of brick-work, and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, which seems to be the only kind of stuff which Nature cannot take back to herself and resolve into the elements, when man has thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and effete mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of ironmongering towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are hardly made decent with a little grass.

At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Sheffield and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather better than that through which we had hitherto passed, though still by no means very striking; for (except in the show-districts, such as the Lake country, or Derbyshire) English scenery is not particularly well worth looking at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. It has a real, homely charm of its own, no doubt; and the rich verdure, and the thorough finish added by human, art, are perhaps as attractive to an American eye as any stronger feature could be. Our journey, however, between Manchester and Sheffield was not through a rich tract of country, but along a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending straight as a rampart, and across black moorlands with here and there a plantation of trees. Sometimes there were long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, and desolate, conveying the very impression which the reader gets from many passages of Miss Bronte's novels, and still more from those of her two sisters. Old stone or brick farm-houses, and, once in a while, an old church-tower, were visible: but these are almost too common objects to be noticed in an English landscape.

On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the country is seen quite amiss, because it was never intended to be looked at from any point of view in that straight line; so that it is like looking at the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and footpaths were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the physiognomy of the country; and, furthermore, every object within view of them had some subtile reference to their curves and undulations: but the line of a railway is perfectly artificial, and puts all precedent things at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the cause what it may, there is seldom anything worth seeing—within the scope of a railway traveller's eye; and if there were, it requires an alert marksman to take a flying shot at the picturesque.

At one of the stations, (it was near a village of ancient aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide Yorkshire moor,) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed to have just alighted from the train. She caught my attention by a singular movement of the head, not once only, but continually repeated, and at regular intervals, as if she were making a stern and solemn protest against some action that developed itself before her eyes, and were foreboding terrible disaster, if it should be persisted in. Of course, it was nothing more than a paralytic or nervous affection; yet one might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gentlewoman's presence, either against herself or somebody whom she loved still better. Her features had a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep them quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to paralytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexorable character of the motion,—her look of force and self-control, which had the appearance of rendering it voluntary, while yet it was so fateful,—have stamped this poor lady's face and gesture into my memory; so that, some dark day or other, I am afraid she will reproduce herself in a dismal romance.

The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous town of razors and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of its own diffusing. My impressions of it are extremely vague and misty,—or, rather, smoky: for Sheffield seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or Birmingham,—smokier than all England besides, unless Newcastle be the exception. It might have been Pluto's own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor; and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the Valley of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth of a mountainous hill.

After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sherwood Forest,—not consisting, however, of thousand-year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but of young and thriving plantations, which will require a century or two of slow English growth to give them much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property lies in this neighborhood, and probably his castle was hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off. Farther onward the country grew quite level around us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lincolnshire; and shortly after six o'clock we caught the first glimpse of the Cathedral towers, though they loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived idea of them. But, as we drew nearer, the great edifice began to assert itself, making us acknowledge it to be larger than our receptivity could take in.

At the railway-station we found no cab, (it being an unknown vehicle in Lincoln,) but only an omnibus belonging to the Saracen's Head, which the driver recommended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither accordingly. It received us hospitably, and looked comfortable enough; though, like the hotels of most old English towns, it had a musty fragrance of antiquity, such as I have smelt in a seldom-opened London church where the broad-aisle is paved with tombstones. The house was of an ancient fashion, the entrance into its interior court-yard being through an arch, in the side of which is the door of the hotel. There are long corridors, an intricate arrangement of passages, and an up-and-down meandering of staircases, amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who had gone astray a hundred years ago, and was still seeking for his bed-room while the rest of his generation were in their graves. There is no exaggerating the confusion of mind that seizes upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of a great old-fashioned English inn.

This hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln, and within a very short distance of one of the ancient city-gates, which is arched across the public way, with a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either side; the whole, a gray, time-gnawn, ponderous, shadowy structure, through the dark vista of which you look into the Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains many antique peculiarities; though, unquestionably, English domestic architecture has lost its most impressive features, in the course of the last century. In this respect, there are finer old towns than Lincoln: Chester, for instance, and Shrewsbury,—which last is unusually rich in those quaint and stately edifices where the gentry of the shire used to make their winter-abodes, in a provincial metropolis. Almost everywhere, nowadays, there is a monotony of modern brick or stuccoed fronts, hiding houses that are older than ever, but obliterating the picturesque antiquity of the street.

Between seven and eight o'clock (it being still broad daylight in these long English days) we set out to pay a preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathedral. Passing through the Stone Bow, as the city-gate close by is called, we ascended a street which grew steeper and narrower as we advanced, till at last it got to be the steepest street I ever climbed,—so steep that any carriage, if left to itself, would rattle downward much faster than it could possibly be drawn up. Being almost the only hill in Lincolnshire, the inhabitants seem disposed to make the most of it. The houses on each side had no very remarkable aspect, except one with a stone portal and carved ornaments, which is now a dwelling-place for poverty-stricken people, but may have been an aristocratic abode in the days of the Norman kings, to whom its style of architecture dates back. This is called the Jewess's House, having been inhabited by a woman of that faith who was hanged six hundred years ago.

And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Certainly, the Bishop and clergy of Lincoln ought not to be fat men, but of very spiritual, saint-like, almost angelic habit, if it be a frequent part of their ecclesiastical duty to climb this hill; for it is a real penance, and was probably performed as such, and groaned over accordingly, in monkish times. Formerly, on the day of his installation, the Bishop used to ascend the hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invigorated by looking upward to the grandeur that was to console him for the humility of his approach. We, likewise, were beckoned onward by glimpses of the Cathedral towers, and, finally, attaining an open square on the summit, we saw an old Gothic gateway to the left hand, and another to the right. The latter had apparently been a part of the exterior defences of the Cathedral, at a time when the edifice was fortified. The west front rose behind. We passed through one of the side-arches of the Gothic portal, and found ourselves in the Cathedral Close, a wide, level space, where the great old Minster has fair room to sit, looking down on the ancient structures that surround it, all of which, in former days, were the habitations of its dignitaries and officers. Some of them are still occupied as such, though others are in too neglected and dilapidated a state to seem worthy of so splendid an establishment. Unless it be Salisbury Close, however, (which is incomparably rich as regards the old residences that belong to it,) I remember no more comfortably picturesque precincts round any other cathedral. But, in, truth, almost every cathedral close, in turn, has seemed to me the loveliest, coziest, safest, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most enjoyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of mortal man contrived for himself. How delightful, to combine all this with the service of the temple!

Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown-stone, which appears either to have been largely restored, or else does not assume the hoary, crumbly surface that gives such a venerable aspect to most of the ancient churches and castles in England. In many parts, the recent restorations are quite evident; but other, and much the larger portions, can scarcely have been touched for centuries: for there are still the gargoyles, perfect, or with broken noses, as the case may be, but showing that variety and fertility of grotesque extravagance which no modern imitation can effect. There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all over the walls: most of them empty, but a few containing the lamentable remnants of headless saints and angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved images, insomuch that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads! In spite of all dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front of the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being covered from massive base to airy summit with the minutest details of sculpture and carving: at least, it was so once; and even now the spiritual impression of its beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have seen a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so minutely that it must have cost him half a lifetime of labor; and this cathedral front seems to have been elaborated in a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. Not that the result is in the least petty, but miraculously grand, and all the more so for the faithful beauty of the smallest details.

An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and called to inquire if we wished to go into the Cathedral; but as there would have been a dusky twilight beneath its roof, like the antiquity that has sheltered itself within, we declined for the present. So we merely walked round the exterior, and thought it more beautiful than that of York; though, on recollection, I hardly deem it so majestic and mighty as that. It is vain to attempt a description, or seek even to record the feeling which the edifice inspires. It does not impress the beholder as an inanimate object, but as something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring life of its own,—a creation which man did not build, though in some way or other it is connected with him, and kindred to human nature. In short, I fall straightway to talking nonsense, when I try to express my inner sense of this and other cathedrals.

While we stood in the close, at the eastern end of the Minster, the clock chimed the quarters; and then Great Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it was eight o'clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest accents that I ever heard from any bell,—slow, and solemn, and allowing the profound reverberations of each stroke to die away before the next one fell. It was still broad daylight in that upper region of the town, and would be so for some time longer; but the evening atmosphere was getting sharp and cool. We therefore descended the steep street,—our younger companion running before us, and gathering such headway that I fully expected him to break his head against some projecting wall.

In the morning we took a fly, (an English term for an exceedingly sluggish vehicle,) and drove up to the Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger; but, as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, especially beneath the great central tower of the latter. Unless a writer intends a professedly architectural description, there is but one set of phrases in which to talk of all the cathedrals in England, and elsewhere. They are alike in their great features: an acre or two of stone flags for a pavement; rows of vast columns supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky height; great windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with ancient or modern stained glass; an elaborately carved screen between the nave and chancel, breaking the vista that might else be of such glorious length, and which is further choked up by a massive organ,—in spite of which obstructions, you catch the broad, variegated glimmer of the painted east window, where a hundred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. Within the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop's throne, the pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out the Holy of Holies. Nor must we forget the range of chapels, (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which have now lost their individual consecration,) nor the old monuments of kings, warriors, and prelates, in the side-aisles of the chancel. In close contiguity to the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter-House, which, here at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is supported by one central pillar rising from the floor, and putting forth branches like a tree, to hold up the roof. Adjacent to the Chapter-House are the cloisters, extending round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered tombstones, the more antique of which have had their inscriptions half obliterated by the feet of monks taking their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, five hundred years ago. Some of these old burial-stones, although with ancient crosses engraved upon them, have been made to serve as memorials to dead people of very recent date.

In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bishops and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone purporting to be the monument of Catherine Swineferd, wife of John of Gaunt; also, here was the shrine of the little Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled to have been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The Cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments; for it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at the Reformation and in Cromwell's time. This latter iconoclast is in especially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of most of the old churches which I have visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures, and the ancestral memorials of great families, quite at their wicked and plebeian pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most exquisite and marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, and grape-vines, and miracles of stone-work twined about arches, as if the material had been as soft as wax in the cunning sculptor's hands,—the leaves being represented with all their veins, so that you would almost think it petrified Nature, for which he sought to steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were those grotesque faces which always grin at you from the projections of monkish architecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in something ineffably absurd.

Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to the utmost degree of lustre; nor is it unreasonable to think that the artists would have taken these further pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor in working out their conceptions to the extremest point. But, at present, the whole interior of the Cathedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the very meanest hue imaginable, and for which somebody's soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo.

In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which the cloisters perambulate is a small, mean, brick building, with a locked door. Our guide,—I forgot to say that we had been captured by a verger, in black, and with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect,—our guide unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of steps. At the bottom appeared what I should have taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded oil-carpeting, which might originally have been painted of a rather gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessellated pavement, made of small colored bricks, or pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered here, and has not been meddled with, further than by removing the superincumbent earth and rubbish.

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded about the interior of the Cathedral, except that we saw a place where the stone pavement had been worn away by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as they knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin.

Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of more venerable appearance than we had heretofore seen, bordered with houses, the high, peaked roofs of which were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us to a Roman arch, which was once the gateway of a fortification, and has been striding across the English street ever since the latter was a faint village-path, and for centuries before. The arch is about four hundred yards from the Cathedral; and it is to be noticed that there are Roman remains in all this neighborhood, some above ground, and doubtless innumerable more beneath it; for, as in ancient Rome itself, an inundation of accumulated soil seems to have swept over what was the surface of that earlier day. The gateway which I am speaking about is probably buried to a third of its height, and perhaps has as perfect a Roman pavement (if sought for at the original depth) as that which runs beneath the Arch of Titus. It is a rude and massive structure, and seems as stalwart now as it could have been two thousand years ago; and though Time has gnawed it externally, he has made what amends he could by crowning its rough and broken summit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts of yellow flowers on the projections up and down the sides.

There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the Conqueror, in pretty close proximity to the Cathedral; but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door of wood, and we were denied admittance because some part of the precincts are used as a prison. We now rambled about on the broad back of the hill, which, besides the Minster and ruined castle, is the site of some stately and queer old houses, and of many mean little hovels. I suspect that all or most of the life of the present day has subsided into the lower town, and that only priests, poor people, and prisoners dwell in these upper regions. In the wide, dry moat at the base of the castle-wall are clustered whole colonies of small houses, some of brick, but the larger portion built of old stones which once made part of the Norman keep, or of Roman structures that existed before the Conqueror's castle was ever dreamed about. They are like toadstools that spring up from the mould of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the scene, being quite as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other flowering-plants, in which its foundations were completely hidden.

After walking quite round the castle, I made an excursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleasant and level road bordered with dwellings of various character. One or two were houses of gentility, with delightful and shadowy lawns before them; many had those high, red-tiled roofs, ascending into acutely pointed gables, which seem to belong to the same epoch as some of the edifices in our own earlier towns; and there were pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and rural, with hedges so dense and high, fencing them in, as almost to hide them up to the eaves of their thatched roofs. In front of one of these I saw various images, crosses, and relics of antiquity, among which were fragments of old Catholic tombstones, disposed by way of ornament.

We now went home to the Saracen's Head; and as the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But it had taken possession of me, and would not let me be at rest; so at length I found myself compelled to climb the hill again, between daylight and dusk. A mist was now hovering about the upper height of the great central tower, so as to dim and half obliterate its battlements and pinnacles, even while I stood in the close beneath it. It was the most impressive view that I had had. The whole lower part of the structure was seen with perfect distinctness; but at the very summit the mist was so dense as to form an actual cloud, as well denned as ever I saw resting on a mountain-top. Really and literally, here was a "cloud-capt tower."

The entire Cathedral, too, transfigured itself into a richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever. The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exterior is certainly far more beautiful than that of York Minster; and its finer effect is due, I think, to the many peaks in which the structure ascends, and to the pinnacles which, as it were, repeat and re-echo them into the sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square and angular in its general effect; but here there is a continual mystery of variety, so that at every glance you are aware of a change, and a disclosure of something new, yet working an harmonious development of what you have heretofore seen. The west front is unspeakably grand, and may be read over and over again forever, and still show undetected meanings, like a great, broad page of marvellous writing in black-letter,—so many sculptured ornaments there are, blossoming out before your eyes, and gray statues that have grown there since you looked last, and empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies beneath which carved images used to be, and where they will show themselves again, if you gaze long enough.—But I will not say another word about the Cathedral.

We spent the rest of the day within the sombre precincts of the Saracen's Head, reading yesterday's "Times," "The Guide-Book of Lincoln," and "The Directory of the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the weather was, the street beneath our window was enlivened with a great bustle and turmoil of people all the evening, because it was Saturday night, and they had accomplished their week's toil, received their wages, and were making their small purchases against Sunday, and enjoying themselves as well as they knew how. A band of music passed to and fro several times, with the rain-drops falling into the mouth of the brazen trumpet and pattering on the bass-drum; a spirit-shop, opposite the hotel, had a vast run of custom; and a coffee-dealer, in the open air, found occasional vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold water that dripped into the cups. The whole breadth of the street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge across the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and humming with human life.