"I say, Marianne," said Bob, "have we got fireplaces in our chambers?"

"Mamma took care of that," said Marianne.

"You may be quite sure," said I, "if your mother has had a hand in planning your house, that the ventilation is cared for."

It must be confessed that Bob's principal idea in a house had been a Gothic library, and his mind had labored more on the possibility of adapting some favorite bits from the baronial antiquities to modern needs than on anything so terrestrial as air. Therefore he awoke as from a dream, and taking two or three monstrous inhalations, he seized the plans and began looking over them with new energy. Meanwhile I went on with my prelection.

* * * * *

The second great vital element for which provision must be made in "our house" is FIRE. By which I do not mean merely artificial fire, but fire in all its extent and branches,—the heavenly fire which God sends us daily on the bright wings of sunbeams, as well as the mimic fires by which we warm our dwellings, cook our food, and light our nightly darkness.

To begin, then, with heavenly fire or sunshine. If God's gift of vital air is neglected and undervalued, His gift of sunshine appears to be hated. There are many houses where not a cent has been expended on ventilation, but where hundreds of dollars have been freely lavished to keep out the sunshine. The chamber, truly, is tight as a box,—it has no fireplace, not even a ventilator opening into the stove-flue; but, oh, joy and gladness! it has outside blinds and inside folding-shutters, so that in the brightest of days we may create there a darkness that may be felt. To observe the generality of New-England houses, a spectator might imagine that they were planned for the torrid zone, where the great object is to keep out a furnace-draught of burning air.

But let us look over the months of our calendar. In which of them do we not need fires on our hearths? We will venture to say that from October to June all families, whether they actually have it or not, would be the more comfortable for a morning and evening fire. For eight months in the year the weather varies on the scale of cool, cold, colder, and freezing; and for all the four other months what is the number of days that really require the torrid-zone system of shutting up houses? We all know that extreme heat is the exception, and not the rule.

Yet let anybody travel, as I did last year, through the valley of the Connecticut, and observe the houses. All clean and white and neat and well-to-do, with their turfy yards and their breezy great elms,—but all shut up from basement to attic, as if the inmates had all sold out and gone to China. Not a window-blind open above or below. Is the house inhabited? No,—yes,—there is a faint stream of blue smoke from the kitchen-chimney, and half a window-blind open in some distant back-part of the house. They are living there in the dim shadows, bleaching like potato-sprouts in the cellar.

* * * * *

"I can tell you why they do it, papa," said Jennie,—"it's the flies, and flies are certainly worthy to be one of the plagues of Egypt. I can't myself blame people that shut up their rooms and darken their houses in fly-time,—do you, mamma?"

"Not in extreme cases; though I think there is but a short season when this is necessary; yet the habit of shutting up lasts the year round, and gives to New-England villages that dead, silent, cold, uninhabited look which is so peculiar."

"The one fact that a traveller would gather in passing through our villages would be this," said I, "that the people live in their houses and in the dark. Rarely do you see doors and windows open, people sitting at them, chairs in the yard, and signs that the inhabitants are living out-of-doors."

"Well," said Jennie, "I have told you why, for I have been at Uncle Peter's in summer, and aunt does her spring-cleaning in May, and then she shuts all the blinds and drops all the curtains, and the house stays clean till October. That's the whole of it. If she had all her windows open, there would be paint and windows to be cleaned every week,—and who is to do it? For my part, I can't much blame her."

"Well," said I, "I have my doubts about the sovereign efficacy of living in the dark, even if the great object of existence were to be rid of flies. I remember, during this same journey, stopping for a day or two at a country boarding-house which was dark as Egypt from cellar to garret. The long, dim, gloomy dining-room was first closed by outside blinds, and then by impenetrable paper curtains, notwithstanding which it swarmed and buzzed like a beehive. You found where the cake-plate was by the buzz which your hand made, if you chanced to reach in that direction. It was disagreeable, because in the darkness flies could not always be distinguished from huckleberries; and I couldn't help wishing, that, since we must have the flies, we might at least have the light and air to console us under them. People darken their rooms and shut up every avenue of out-door enjoyment, and sit and think of nothing but flies; in fact, flies are all they have left. No wonder they become morbid on the subject."

"Well, now, papa talks just like a man,—doesn't he?" said Jennie. "He hasn't the responsibility of keeping things clean. I wonder what he would do, if he were a housekeeper."

"Do? I will tell you. I would do the best I could. I would shut my eyes on fly-specks, and open them on the beauties of Nature. I would let the cheerful sun in all day long, in all but the few summer days when coolness is the one thing needful: those days may be soon numbered every year. I would make a calculation in the spring how much it would cost to hire a woman to keep my windows and paint clean, and I would do with one less gown and have her; and when I had spent all I could afford on cleaning windows and paint, I would harden my heart and turn off my eyes, and enjoy my sunshine and my fresh air, my breezes, and all that can be seen through the picture-windows of an open, airy house, and snap my fingers at the flies. There you have it."

"Papa's hobby is sunshine," said Marianne.

"Why shouldn't it be? Was God mistaken, when He made the sun? Did He make him for us to hold a life's battle with? Is that vital power which reddens the cheek of the peach and pours sweetness through the fruits and flowers of no use to us? Look at plants that grow without sun,—wan, pale, long-visaged, holding feeble, imploring hands of supplication towards the light. Can human beings afford to throw away a vitalizing force so pungent, so exhilarating? You remember the experiment of a prison, where one row of cells had daily sunshine, and the others none. With the same regimen, the same cleanliness, the same care, the inmates of the sunless cells were visited with sickness and death in double measure. Our whole population in New England are groaning and suffering under afflictions, the result of a depressed vitality,—neuralgia, with a new ache for every day of the year, rheumatism, consumption, general debility; for all these a thousand nostrums are daily advertised, and money enough is spent on them to equip an army, while we are fighting against, wasting, and throwing away with both hands that blessed influence which comes nearest to pure vitality of anything God has given.

"Who is it that the Bible describes as a sun, arising with healing in his wings? Surely, that sunshine which is the chosen type and image of His love must be healing through all the recesses of our daily life, drying damp and mould, defending from moth and rust, sweetening ill smells, clearing from the nerves the vapors of melancholy, making life cheery. If I did not know Him, I should certainly adore and worship the sun, the most blessed and beautiful image of Him among things visible. In the land of Egypt, in the day of God's wrath, there was darkness, but in the land of Goshen there was light. I am a Goshenite, and mean to walk in the light, and forswear the works of darkness.—But to proceed with our reading."

* * * * *

"Our house" shall be set on a southeast line, so that there shall not be a sunless room in it, and windows shall be so arranged that it can be traversed and transpierced through and through with those bright shafts of life which come straight from God.

"Our house" shall not be blockaded with a dank, dripping mass of shrubbery set plumb against the windows, keeping out light and air. There shall be room all round it for breezes to sweep, and sunshine to sweeten and dry and vivify; and I would warn all good souls who begin life by setting out two little evergreen-trees within a foot of each of their front-windows, that these trees will grow and increase till their front-rooms will be brooded over by a sombre, stifling shadow fit only for ravens to croak in.

One would think, by the way some people hasten to convert a very narrow front-yard into a dismal jungle, that the only danger of our New-England climate was sunstroke. Ah, in those drizzling months which form at least one-half of our life here, what sullen, censorious, uncomfortable, unhealthy thoughts are bred of living in dark, chilly rooms, behind such dripping thickets! Our neighbors' faults assume a deeper hue,—life seems a dismal thing,—our very religion grows mouldy.

My idea of a house is, that, as far as is consistent with shelter and reasonable privacy, it should give you on first entering an open, breezy, out-door freshness of sensation. Every window should be a picture; sun and trees and clouds and green grass should seem never to be far from us. "Our house" may shade, but not darken us. "Our house" shall have bow-windows, many, sunny, and airy,—not for the purpose of being cleaned and shut up, but to be open and enjoyed. There shall be long verandas above and below, where invalids may walk dry-shod, and enjoy open-air recreation in wettest weather. In short, I will try to have "our house" combine as far as possible the sunny, joyous, fresh life of a gypsy in the fields and woods with the quiet and neatness and comfort and shelter of a roof, rooms, floors, and carpets.

After heavenly fire, I have a word to say of earthly, artificial fires. Furnaces, whether of hot water, steam, or hot air, are all healthy and admirable provisions for warming our houses during the eight or nine months of our year that we must have artificial heat, if only, as I have said, fireplaces keep up a current of ventilation.

The kitchen-range with its water-back I humbly salute. It is a great throbbing heart, and sends its warm tides of cleansing, comforting fluid all through the house. One could wish that this friendly dragon could be in some way moderated in his appetite for coal,—he does consume without mercy, it must be confessed,—but then, great is the work he has to do. At any hour of day or night in the most distant part of your house, you have but to turn a stop-cock and your red dragon sends you hot water for your needs; your washing-day becomes a mere play-day; your pantry has its ever-ready supply; and then, by a little judicious care in arranging apartments and economizing heat, a range may make two or three chambers comfortable in winter weather. A range with a water-back is among the must-bes in "our house."

Then, as to the evening light,—I know nothing as yet better than gas, where it can be had. I would certainly not have a house without it. The great objection to it is the danger of its escape through imperfect fixtures. But it must not do this: a fluid that kills a tree or a plant with one breath must certainly be a dangerous ingredient in the atmosphere, and if admitted into houses, must be introduced with every safeguard.

There are families living in the country who make their own gas by a very simple process. This is worth an inquiry from those who build. There are also contrivances now advertised, with good testimonials, of domestic machines for generating gas, said to be perfectly safe, simple to be managed, and producing a light superior to that of the city gas-works. This also is worth an inquiry, when "our house" is to be in the country.

* * * * *

And now I come to the next great vital element for which "our house" must provide,—WATER. "Water, water everywhere,"—it must be plentiful, it must be easy to get at, it must be pure. Our ancestors had some excellent ideas in home-living and house-building. Their houses were, generally speaking, very sensibly contrived,—roomy, airy, and comfortable; but in their water-arrangements they had little mercy on womankind. The well was out in the yard; and in winter one must flounder through snow and bring up the ice-bound bucket, before one could fill the tea-kettle for breakfast. For a sovereign princess of the republic this was hardly respectful or respectable. Wells have come somewhat nearer in modern times; but the idea of a constant supply of fresh water by the simple turning of a stop-cock has not yet visited the great body of our houses. Were we free to build "our house" just as we wish it, there should be a bath-room to every two or three inmates, and the hot and cold water should circulate to every chamber.

Among our must-bes, we would lay by a generous sum for plumbing. Let us have our bath-rooms, and our arrangements for cleanliness and health in kitchen and pantry; and afterwards let the quality of our lumber and the style of our finishings be according to the sum we have left. The power to command a warm bath in a house at any hour of day or night is better in bringing up a family of children than any amount of ready medicine. In three-quarters of childish ailments the warm bath is an almost immediate remedy. Bad colds, incipient fevers, rheumatisms, convulsions, neuralgias innumerable, are washed off in their first beginnings, and run down the lead pipes into oblivion. Have, then, O friend, all the water in your house that you can afford, and enlarge your ideas of the worth of it, that you may afford a great deal. A bathing-room is nothing to you that requires an hour of lifting and fire-making to prepare it for use. The apparatus is too cumbrous,—you do not turn to it. But when your chamber opens upon a neat, quiet little nook, and you have only to turn your stop-cocks and all is ready, your remedy is at hand,—you use it constantly. You are waked in the night by a scream, and find little Tom sitting up, wild with burning fever. In three minutes he is in the bath, quieted and comfortable; you get him back, cooled and tranquil, to his little crib, and in the morning he wakes as if nothing had happened.

Why should not so invaluable and simple a remedy for disease, such a preservative of health, such a comfort, such a stimulus, be considered as much a matter-of-course in a house as a kitchen-chimney? At least there should be one bath-room always in order, so arranged that all the family can have access to it, if one cannot afford the luxury of many.

A house in which water is universally and skilfully distributed is so much easier to take care of as almost to verify the saying of a friend, that his house was so contrived that it did its own work: one had better do without carpets on the floors, without stuffed sofas and rocking-chairs, and secure this.

* * * * *

"Well, papa," said Marianne, "you have made out all your four elements in your house except one. I can't imagine what you want of earth."

"I thought," said Jennie, "that the less of our common mother we had in our houses, the better housekeepers we were."

"My dears," said I, "we philosophers must give an occasional dip into the mystical, and say something apparently absurd for the purpose of explaining that we mean nothing in particular by it. It gives common people an idea of our sagacity, to find how clear we come out of our apparent contradictions and absurdities. Listen."

* * * * *

For the fourth requisite of "our house," EARTH, let me point you to your mother's plant-window, and beg you to remember the fact that through our long, dreary winters we are never a month without flowers, and the vivid interest which always attaches to growing things. The perfect house, as I conceive it, is to combine as many of the advantages of living out of doors as may be consistent with warmth and shelter, and one of these is the sympathy with green and growing things. Plants are nearer in their relations to human health and vigor than is often imagined. The cheerfulness that well-kept plants impart to a room comes not merely from gratification of the eye,—there is a healthful exhalation from them, they are a corrective of the impurities of the atmosphere. Plants, too, are valuable as tests of the vitality of the atmosphere; their drooping and failure convey to us information that something is amiss with it. A lady once told me that she could never raise plants in her parlors on account of the gas and anthracite coal. I answered, "Are you not afraid to live and bring up your children in an atmosphere which blights your plants?" If the gas escapes from the pipes, and the red-hot anthracite coal or the red-hot air-tight stove burns out all the vital part of the air, so that healthy plants in a few days wither and begin to drop their leaves, it is a sign that the air must be looked to and reformed. It is a fatal augury for a room that plants cannot be made to thrive in it. Plants should not turn pale, be long-jointed, long-leaved, and spindling; and where they grow in this way, we may be certain that there is a want of vitality for human beings. But where plants appear as they do in the open air, with vigorous, stocky growth, and short-stemmed, deep-green leaves, we may believe the conditions of that atmosphere are healthy for human lungs.

It is pleasant to see how the custom of plant-growing has spread through our country. In how many farm-house windows do we see petunias and nasturtiums vivid with bloom while snows are whirling without, and how much brightness have those cheap enjoyments shed on the lives of those who cared for them! We do not believe there is a human being who would not become a passionate lover of plants, if circumstances once made it imperative to tend upon, and watch the growth of one. The history of Picciola for substance has been lived over and over by many a man and woman who once did not know that there was a particle of plant-love in their souls. But to the proper care of plants in pots there are many hindrances and drawbacks. The dust chokes the little pores of their green lungs, and they require constant showering; and to carry all one's plants to a sink or porch for this purpose is a labor which many will not endure. Consequently plants often do not get a showering once a month. We should try to imitate more closely the action of Mother Nature, who washes every green child of hers nightly with dews, which lie glittering on its leaves till morning.

* * * * *

"Yes, there it is!" said Jennie. "I think I could manage with plants, if it were not for this eternal showering and washing they seem to require to keep them fresh. They are always tempting one to spatter the carpet and surrounding furniture, which are not equally benefited by the libation."

"It is partly for that very reason," I replied, "that the plan of 'our house' provides for the introduction of Mother Earth, as you will see."

* * * * *

A perfect house, according to my idea, should always include in it a little compartment where plants can be kept, can be watered, can be defended from the dust, and have the sunshine and all the conditions of growth.

People have generally supposed a conservatory to be one of the last trappings of wealth,—something not to be thought of for those in modest circumstances. But is this so? You have a bow-window in your parlor. Leave out the flooring, fill the space with rich earth, close it from the parlor by glass doors, and you have room for enough plants and flowers to keep you gay and happy all winter. If on the south side, where the sunbeams have power, it requires no heat but that which warms the parlor, and the comfort of it is incalculable, and the expense a mere trifle greater than that of the bow-window alone.

In larger houses a larger space might be appropriated in this way. We will not call it a conservatory, because that name suggests ideas of gardeners and mysteries of culture and rare plants which bring all sorts of care and expense in their train. We would rather call it a greenery, a room floored with earth, with glass sides to admit the sun,—and let it open on as many other rooms of the house as possible.

Why should not the dining-room and parlor be all winter connected by a spot of green and flowers, with plants, mosses, and ferns for the shadowy portions, and such simple blooms as petunias and nasturtiums garlanding the sunny portion near the windows? If near the waterworks, this greenery might be enlivened by the play of a fountain, whose constant spray would give that softness to the air which is so often burned away by the dry heat of the furnace.

* * * * *

"And do you really think, papa, that houses built in this way are a practical result to be aimed at?" said Jennie. "To me it seems like a dream of the Alhambra."

"Yet I happen to have seen real people in our day living in just such a house," said I. "I could point you, this very hour, to a cottage, which in style of building is the plainest possible, which unites many of the best ideas of a true house. My dear, can you sketch the ground-plan of that house we saw in Brighton?"

"Here it is," said my wife, after a few dashes with her pencil,—"an inexpensive house, yet one of the pleasantest I ever saw."



"This cottage, which might, at the rate of prices before the war, have been built for five thousand dollars, has many of the requirements which I seek for a house. It has two stories, and a tier of very pleasant attic-rooms, two bathing-rooms, and the water carried into each story. The parlor and dining-room both look into a little bower, where a fountain is ever playing into a little marble basin, and which all the year through has its green and bloom. It is heated simply from the furnace by a register, like any other room of the house, and requires no more care than a delicate woman could easily give. The brightness and cheerfulness it brings during our long, dreary winters is incredible."

* * * * *

But one caution is necessary in all such appendages. The earth must be thoroughly underdrained to prevent the vapors of stagnant water, and have a large admixture of broken charcoal to obviate the consequences of vegetable decomposition. Great care must be taken that there be no leaves left to fall and decay on the ground, since vegetable exhalations poison the air. With these precautions such a plot will soften and purify the air of a house.

Where the means do not allow even so small a conservatory, a recessed window might be fitted with a deep box, which should have a drain-pipe at the bottom, and a thick layer of broken charcoal and gravel, with a mixture of fine wood-soil and sand for the top stratum. Here ivies may be planted, which will run and twine and strike their little tendrils here and there, and give the room in time the aspect of a bower; the various greenhouse nasturtiums will make winter gorgeous with blossoms. In windows unblest by sunshine—and, alas, such are many!—one can cultivate ferns and mosses; the winter-growing ferns, of which there are many varieties, can be mixed with mosses and woodland flowers.

Early in February, when the cheerless frosts of winter seem most wearisome, the common blue violet, wood-anemone, hepatica, or rock-columbine, if planted in this way, will begin to bloom. The common partridge-berry, with its brilliant scarlet fruit and dark green leaves, will also grow finely in such situations, and have a beautiful effect. These things require daily showering to keep them fresh, and the moisture arising from them will soften and freshen the too dry air of heated winter rooms.

* * * * *

Thus I have been through my four essential elements in house-building,—air, fire, water, and earth. I would provide for these before anything else. After they are secured, I would gratify my taste and fancy as far as possible in other ways. I quite agree with Bob in hating commonplace houses, and longing for some little bit of architectural effect, and I grieve profoundly that every step in that direction must cost so much. I have also a taste for niceness of finish. I have no objection to silver-plated door-locks and hinges, none to windows which are an entire plate of clear glass; I congratulate neighbors who are so fortunate as to be able to get them, and after I had put all the essentials into a house, I would have these too, if I had the means.

But if all my wood-work were to be without groove or moulding, if my mantels were to be of simple wood, if my doors were all to be machine-made, and my lumber of the second quality, I would have my bath-rooms, my conservatory, my sunny bow-windows, and my perfect ventilation,—and my house would then be so pleasant, and every one in it in such a cheerful mood, that it would verily seem to be ceiled with cedar.

Speaking of ceiling with cedar, I have one thing more to say. We Americans have a country abounding in beautiful timber, of whose beauties we know nothing, on account of the pernicious and stupid habit of covering it with white paint.

The celebrated zebra-wood with its golden stripes cannot exceed in quaint beauty the grain of unpainted chestnut, prepared simply with a coat or two of oil. The butternut has a rich golden brown, the very darling color of painters,—a shade so rich, and grain so beautiful, that it is of itself as charming to look at as a rich picture. The black-walnut, with its heavy depth of tone, works in well as an adjunct; and as to oak, what can we say enough of its quaint and many shadings? Even common pine, which has been considered not decent to look upon till hastily shrouded in a friendly blanket of white paint, has, when oiled and varnished, the beauty of satin-wood. The second quality of pine, which has what are called shakes in it, under this mode of treatment often shows clouds and veins equal in beauty to the choicest woods. The cost of such a finish is greatly less than that of the old method, and it saves those days and weeks of cleaning which are demanded by white paint, while its general tone is softer and more harmonious. Experiments in color may be tried in the combination of these woods, which at small expense produce the most charming effects.

As to paper-hangings, we are proud to say that our American manufacturers now furnish all that can be desired. There are some branches of design where artistic, ingenious France must still excel us,—but whoso has a house to fit up, let him first look at what his own country has to show, and he will be astonished.

There is one topic in house-building on which I would add a few words. The difficulty of procuring and keeping good servants, which must long be one of our chief domestic troubles, warns us so to arrange our houses that we shall need as few as possible. There is the greatest conceivable difference in the planning and building of houses as to the amount of work which will be necessary to keep them in respectable condition. Some houses require a perfect staff of house-maids;—there are plated hinges to be rubbed, paint to be cleaned, with intricacies of moulding and carving which daily consume hours of dusting to preserve them from a slovenly look. Simple finish, unpainted wood, a general distribution of water through the dwelling, will enable a very large house to be cared for by one pair of hands, and yet maintain a creditable appearance.

In kitchens one servant may perform the work of two by a close packing of all the conveniences for cooking and such arrangements as shall save time and steps. Washing-day may be divested of its terrors by suitable provisions for water, hot and cold, by wringers, which save at once the strength of the linen and of the laundress, and by drying-closets connected with ranges, where articles can in a few moments be perfectly dried. These, with the use of a small mangle, such as is now common in America, reduce the labors of the laundry one-half.

There are many more things which might be said of "our house," and Christopher may, perhaps, find some other opportunity to say them. For the present his pen is tired and ceaseth.



THE NEW SCHOOL OF BIOGRAPHY.

Poor Rachel, passing slowly away from the world that had so applauded her hollow, but brilliant career, tasted the bitterness of death in reflecting that she should so soon be given over to the worms and the biographers. Fortunate Rachel, resting in serene confidence that the two would be fellow-laborers! It is the unhappy fate of her survivors to have reached a day in which biographers have grown impatient of the decorous delay which their lowly coadjutors demand. They can no longer wait for the lingering soul to yield up its title-deeds before they enter in and take possession; but, fired with an evil energy, they outstrip the worms and torment us before the time.

Curiosity is undoubtedly one of the heaven-appointed passions of the human animal. Dear to the heart of man has ever been his neighbor's business. Precious in the eyes of woman is the linen-closet of that neighbor's wife. During its tender teething infancy, the world's sobs could always be soothed into smiles by an open bureau with large liberty to upheave its contents from turret to foundation-stone. As the infant world ascended from cambric and dimity to broadcloth and crinoline, its propensity for investigation grew stronger. It loved not bureaus less, but a great many other things more. What sad consequences might have ensued, had this passion been left to forage for itself, no one can tell. But, by the wonderful principle of adaptation which obtains throughout the universe, the love of receiving information is met and mastered by the love of imparting information. As much pleasure as it gives Angelina to learn how many towels and table-cloths go into Seraphina's wedding-outfit, so much, yea, more, swells in Cherubella's bosom at being able to present to her friend this apple from the tree of knowledge. The worthy Muggins finds no small consolation for the loss of his overcoat and umbrella from the front entry in the exhilaration he experiences while relating to each member of his ever-revolving circle of friends the details of his loss,—the suspicion, the search, the certainty,—the conjectures, suggestions, and emotions of himself and his family.

Hence these tears which we are about to shed. For, betwixt the love of hearing on the one side, and the love of telling, on the other, small space remains on which one may adventure to set the sole of his foot and feel safe from the spoiler. There is of course a legitimate gratification for every legitimate desire,—the desire to know our neighbors' affairs among others. But there is a limit to this gratification, and it is hinted at by legal enactments. The law justly enough bounds a man's power over his possessions. For twenty-one years after his generation has passed away, his dead hand may rule the wealth which its living skill amassed. Then it dies another death, draws back into a deeper grave, and has henceforth no more power than any sister-clod. But, except as a penalty for crime, the law awards to a man right to his own possessions through life; and the personal facts and circumstances of his life have usually been considered among his closest, most inalienable possessions.

Alas, that the times are changed, and we be all dead men so far as concerns immunity from publication! There is no manner of advantage in being alive. The sole safety is to lie flat on the earth along with one's generation. The moment an audacious head is lifted one inch above the general level, pop! goes the unerring rifle of some biographical sharp-shooter, and it is all over with the unhappy owner. A perfectly respectable and well-meaning man, suffering under the accumulated pains of Presidentship, has the additional and entirely undeserved ignominy of being hawked about the country as the "Pioneer Boy." A statesman whose reputation for integrity has been worth millions to the land, and whose patriotism should have won him a better fate, is stigmatized in duodecimo as the "Ferry Boy." An innocent and popular Governor is fastened in the pillory under the thin disguise of the "Bobbin Boy." Every victorious advance of our grand army is followed by a long procession of biographical statistics. A brave man leading his troops to victory may escape the bullets and bayonets of the foe, but he is sure to be transfixed to the sides of a newspaper with the pen of some cannibal entomologist. We are thrilled to-day with the telegram announcing the brilliant and successful charge made by General Smith's command; and according to that inevitable law of succession by which the sun his daily round of duty runs, we shall be thrilled to-morrow with the startling announcement that "General Smith was born in ——," etc., etc., etc.

Unquestionably, there is somewhere in the land a regularly organized biographical bureau, by which every man, President or private, has his lot apportioned him,—one mulcted in a folio, the other in a paragraph. If we examine somewhat closely the features of this peculiar institution, we shall learn that a distinguishing characteristic of the new school of biography is the astonishing familiarity shown by the narrator with the circumstances, the conversations, and the very thoughts of remarkable boys in their early life. The incidents of childhood are usually forgotten before the man's renown has given them any importance; the few anecdotes which tradition has preserved are seized upon with the utmost avidity and placed in the most conspicuous position; but in these later books we have illustrious children portrayed with a Pre-Raphaelitic and most prodigal pencil.

Take the opening scene in a garden where "Nat"—we must protest against this irreverent abbreviation of the name of that honored Governor whose life in little we are about to behold—and his father are at work.

"'There, Nat, if you plant and hoe your squashes with care, you will raise a nice parcel of them on this piece of ground. It is good soil for squashes.'

"'How many seeds shall I put into a hill?' inquired Nat.

"'Seven or eight. It is well to put in enough, as some of them may not come up, and when they get to growing well, pull up all but four in a hill. You must not have your hills too near together,—they should be five feet apart, and then the vines will cover the ground all over. I should think there would be room for fifty hills on this patch of ground.'

"'How many squashes do you think I shall raise, father?'

"'Well,' said his father, smiling, 'that is hard telling. We won't count the chickens before they are hatched. But if you are industrious, and take very good care indeed of your vines, stir the ground often and keep out all the weeds and kill the bugs, I have little doubt that you will get well paid for your labor.'

"'If I have fifty hills,' said Nat, 'and four vines in each hill, I shall have two hundred vines in all; and if there is one squash on each vine, there will be two hundred squashes.'

"'Yes; but there are so many ifs about it, that you may be disappointed after all. Perhaps the bugs will destroy half your vines.'

"'I can kill the bugs,' said Nat.

"'Perhaps dry weather will wither them all up.'

"'I can water them every day, if they need it.'

"'That is certainly having good courage, Nat,' added his father; 'but if you conquer the bugs, and get around the dry weather, it may be too wet and blast your vines,—or there may be such a hail-storm as I have known several times in my life, and cut them to pieces.'

"'I don't think there will be such a hail-storm this year; there never was one like it since I can remember.'

"'I hope there won't be,' replied his father. 'It is well to look on the bright side, and hope for the best, for it keeps the courage up. It is also well to look out for disappointment. I know a gentleman who thought he would raise some ducks,'" etc., etc., etc.

We are told that this scene was enacted about thirty-five years ago, and, as if we should not be sufficiently lost in admiration of that wonderful memory which enabled somebody to retain so long, and restore so unimpaired, the words and deeds of that distant May morning, we are further informed that the author is "obliged to pass over much that belongs to the patch of squashes"! "Is it possible?" one is led to exclaim. We should certainly have supposed that this report was exhaustive. We can hardly conceive that any further interest should inhere in that patch of squashes; whereas it seems that the half was not told us. Nor is this the sole instance. Records equally minute of conversations equally brilliant are lavished on page after page with a recklessness of expenditure that argues unlimited wealth,—conversations between the Boy and his father, between the Boy and his mother, between the Boy's father and mother, between the Boy's neighbors about the Boy, in which his numerous excellences are set in the strongest light, exhortations of the Boy's teacher to his school, play-ground talk of the Boy and his fellow-boys,—among whom the Boy invariably stands head and shoulders higher than they. We fear the world of boys has hitherto been much demoralized by being informed that many distinguished men were but dull fellows in the school-house, or unnoticed on the play-ground. But we have changed all that. The Bobbin Boy was the most industrious, the most persevering, the most self-reliant, the most virtuous, the most exemplary of all the boys of his time. So was the Ferry Boy, and the Pioneer Boy so. "Nat"—we blame and protest, but we join in the plan of using this undignified sobriquet—Nat was the one that swam three rods under water; Nat astonished the school with the eloquence of his declamation; it was Nat that got all the glory of the games; it was of no use for any one to try for any prize where Nat was a competitor. And as Nat's neighbors thought of Nat, so thought Abe's—we shudder at the sound—Abe's neighbors of Abe, the Pioneer Boy. Of what Salmon's neighbors said about Salmon we are not so well informed; but we have no doubt they often exclaimed one to another,—

"Was never Salmon yet that shone so fair Among the stakes on Dee!"

Nor are the Boys backward in having a tolerably good opinion of their own goodness.

"Never swear, my son," says Abe's mother to the infant Abe.

"I never do," says Abraham.

"Boys are likely to want their own way, and spend their time in idleness," says the mother of a President, upon another occasion.

"I sha'n't," responds virtuous Abraham.

"Always speak the truth, my son."

"I do tell the truth," was "Abraham's usual reply."

"When a boy gets to going to the tavern to smoke and swear," says Nat's mother, "he is almost sure to drink, and become a ruined man."

"I never do smoke, mother," replies Nat, pouring cataracts of innocence. "I never go to the stable nor tavern. I don't associate with Sam and Ben Drake, nor with James Cole, nor with Oliver Fowle, more than I can help. For I know they are bad boys. I see that the worst scholars at school are those who are said to disobey their parents, and every one of them are poor scholars, and they use profane language."

Virtue so immaculate at so tender an age seems to us, we are forced to admit, unnatural. The boys that have fallen in our way have never been in the habit of making profound moral reflections, and we cannot resist the unpleasant suspicion that Nat had just been playing at marbles for "havings" with Cole, Fowle, and both the Drakes at the village-inn, and, having found this vegetable repast too strong for his digestion, went home to his mother and wreaked his discomfort on edifying moral maxims. Or else he was a prig.

The unusual and highly exciting nature of the incidents recorded in these biographies must be their excuse for a seeming violation of privacy. When a rare and precious gem is in question, one must not be over-scrupulous about breaking open the casket. What puerile prejudice in favor of privacy can rear its head in face of the statement which tells us that at the age of seven years our honored President—may he still continue such!—"devoted himself to learning to read with an energy and enthusiasm that insured success"?—such success that we learn "he could read some when he left school."

At the age of nine he shot a turkey!

Soon after,—for here we are involved in a chronological haze,—he began to "take lessons in penmanship with the most enthusiastic ardor."

Subsequently, "there, on the soil of Indiana, ABRAHAM LINCOLN WROTE HIS NAME, WITH A STICK, in large characters,—a sort of prophetic act, that students of history may love to ponder. For, since that day, he has 'gone up higher,' and written his name, by public acts, on the annals of every State in the Union."

He wrote a letter.

He rescued a toad from cruel boys,—for, though "he could kill game for food as a necessity, and dangerous wild animals, his soul shrunk from torturing even a fly." Dear heart, we can easily believe that!

He bought a Ramsay's "Life of Washington," and paid for it with the labor of his own hands.

He helped to save a drunkard's life. "He thought more of the drunkard's safety than he did of his own ease. And there are many of his personal acquaintances in our land who will bear witness, that, from that day to this, this amiable quality of heart has won him admiring friends."

He took a flat-boat to New Orleans, and defended her against the negroes, who, poor fellows, were not prophetic enough to see that they were plotting against their Deliverer.

He "always had much dry wit about him that kept oozing out"!

We have given a bird's-eye view of the main incidents of his boyhood, for we cannot quite agree with our author in thinking that his "old grammar laid the foundation, in part, of Abraham's future character," seeing we have previously been told that he had "become the most important man in the place," and we have the same writer's authority for believing that "the habits of life are usually fixed by the time a lad is fifteen years of age." Nor can we admit that his grammar even "taught him the rudiments of his native language," when we have been having proof upon proof, for two hundred and eighty-six pages, that he was already familiar with its rudiments. We are equally skeptical as to whether it really "opened the golden gate of knowledge" for him: we should certainty say that this gate had stood ajar, at least, for years. Indeed, that portion of his history which relates to grammar seems to us by far the most unsatisfactory of all. In his honesty, in his penmanship, in his kindness of heart, in his wit, dry or damp, we feel a confidence which not even the shock of political campaigns has been able to move. But in respect of grammar we find ourselves in a state of the most painful uncertainty. We have never regarded it as our beloved President's strong point, but we have considered any linguistic defect more than atoned for by the hearty, timely, sturdy, plain sense which appeals so directly and forcibly to the good sense of others. This book calls up a distressing doubt, and a doubt that strikes at vital interests. "Grammar," our President is reported to have said before he had cast the integuments of a grocer's clerk, "Grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety"! Is this a definition, we sorrowfully ask, becoming an American citizen? It has, indeed, in many respects the qualities of a perfect definition. It is deep; it is accurate; it is exhaustive; but it is not loyal. Coming from the lips of a subject of Great Britain, it would not surprise us. An Englishman undoubtedly believes that grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety. All the grammatical research that preceded the establishment of his mother-tongue was but the collection of fuel to feed the flame of its glory; all that follows will be to diffuse the light of that flame to the ends of the earth. Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, were but stepping-stones to the English language. Philology per se is a myth. The English language in its completeness is the completion of grammatical science. To that all knowledge tends; from that all honor radiates. So claims proud Britain's prouder son. But can an American tamely submit to such a monopoly? Is not grammar rather, or at least quite as much, the art of speaking and writing the American language correctly, and shall he sit calmly by and witness this gross outrage upon his dearest rights? But, as our author would say, we "must not dwell," and most gladly do we leave this unpleasant branch of a very pleasant subject, inwardly supplicating, that, whatever disaster is yet to befall us, we may be spared the pang of suspecting that our revered President, so stanch against the Rebels, so unflinching for the Slave, is in danger of lowering his lofty crest before the rampant British lion! In view of such a calamity, one can only say in the words of that distinguished British citizen who, living in England in the full light of the nineteenth century, must be supposed to have reached the summit of grammatical excellence,—

"Gin I mun doy I mun doy, an' loife they says is sweet, But gin I mun doy I mun doy, for I couldn' abear to see it."

The life of the Ferry Boy was scarcely less adventurous than that of the Pioneer Boy, and was, indeed, in some respects its counterpart. As the latter learned to write on the tops of stools, so the former learned to read on bits of birch-bark. At an early period of his existence he broke a capful of eggs. He owned a calf. He caught an eel. He put salt on a bird's tail and learned his first lesson of the deceitfulness of the human heart. He walked to Niagara Falls from Buffalo. He got lost in the woods. He went to live with his uncle in Ohio, where he displayed spirit and killed a pig. Here also occurred a "prophecy" almost as striking as the Pioneer Boy's writing his name with a stick. "Salmon" wished to go swimming. "The Bishop said, 'No!' adding, 'Why, Salmon, the country might lose its future President, if you should get drowned!' This was the first time his name had ever been mentioned in connection with that high office; and the remark, coming from the grave Bishop's lips, must have made a strong impression on him. Was it prophetic?" Let us assume that it was, although it must for the present be ranked with what is theologically called "unfulfilled prophecy." We cannot, at any rate, be too thankful that the only occasion on which it was ever hinted to an American boy that he might one day become President has not been suffered to pass into oblivion, but has found in this little volume a monument more durable than brass. To go on with our inventory. A whole flock of thirteen pigeons shot by the Ferry Boy answered through their misty shroud to the Pioneer Boy's turkey which called to them aloud. He taught school two weeks, and then had leave to resign. He went to Washington and said his prayers like a good boy: we trust he has kept up the practice ever since.

From such a record there is but one inference: if the man is not President, he ought to be!

One great element in the success which these little books have met, the one fact which, we are persuaded, accounts for the quiet, but significant "twenty-sixth thousand" that we find on the title-page of one of them, is the pains which their authors take to make their meaning clear. They do not, like too many of our modern authors, leave a book half written, forcing the reader to finish their work as he goes along. They are instant, in season and out of season, with explanation, illustration, reflection, until the idea is, so to speak, reduced to pulp, and the reader has nothing to perform save the act of deglutition.

"When he ['Nat'] was only four years old, and was learning to read little words of two letters, he came across one about which he had quite a dispute with his teacher. It was INN.

"'What is that?' asked his teacher.

"'I-double n,' he answered.

"'What does i-double n spell?'

"'Tavern,' was his quick reply.

"The teacher smiled, and said, 'No; it spells INN. Now read it again.'

"'I-double n—tavern,' said he.

"'I told you that it did not spell tavern, it spells INN. Now pronounce it correctly.'

"'It do spell tavern,' said he.

"The teacher was finally obliged to give it up, and let him enjoy his own opinion. She probably called him obstinate, although there was nothing of the kind about him, as we shall see. His mother took up the matter at home, but failed to convince him that i-double n did not spell tavern. It was not until some time after that he changed his opinion on this important subject.

"That this instance was no evidence of obstinacy in Nat, but only of a disposition to think 'on his own hook,' is evident from the following circumstances. There was a picture of a public-house in his book against the word INN, with the old-fashioned sign-post in front, on which a sign was swinging. Near his father's, also, stood a public-house, which everybody called a tavern, with a tall post and sign in front of it, exactly like that in his book; and Nat said within himself, 'If Mr. Morse's house [the landlord[G]] is a tavern, then this is a tavern in my book.' He cared little how it was spelled; if it did not spell tavern, 'it ought to,' he thought. Children believe what they see, more than what they hear. What they lack in reason and judgment they make up in eyes. So Nat had seen the tavern near his father's house again and again, and he had stopped to look at the sign in front of it a great many times, and his eyes told him it was just like that in the book; therefore it was his deliberate opinion that i-double n spelt tavern, and he was not to be beaten out of an opinion that was based on such clear evidence. It was a good sign in Nat. It was true of the three men to whom we have just referred,—Bowditch, Davy, and Buxton. From their childhood they thought for themselves, so that, when they became men, they defended their opinions against imposing opposition. True, a youth must not be too forward in advancing his ideas, especially if they do not harmonize with those of older persons. Self-esteem and self-confidence should be guarded against. Still, in avoiding these evils, he is not obliged to believe anything just because he is told so. It is better for him to understand the reason of things, and believe them on that account."

Would our Parks, our Palfreys, our Prescotts, our Emersons, have expounded this matter so clearly? Most assuredly not. They would have left us in the Cimmerian darkness of dreary conjecture regarding the causes of Nat's strange opinion, and the lessons to be drawn from it. Or if they had condescended to explanation, it would have been comprised in a curt phrase or two. No boundary-line between a virtue and its vice would have been drawn so that a wayfaring man, though a fool, should not err in following it. This author has struck the golden mean. There is just enough, and not too much.

Again,—

"'I should rather be in prison, than to sit up nights studying as you do.'

"'I really enjoy it, David.'

"'I can hardly credit it.'

"'Then you think I do not speak the truth?'

"'Oh, no!... I only meant to say that I cannot understand it.'

"Allusion is here made to an important fact. David could not understand how Abraham could possess such a love of knowledge as to lead him to forego all social pleasures, be willing to wear a threadbare coat, live on the coarsest fare, and labor hard all day, and sit up half the night, for the sake of learning. But there is just that power in the love of knowledge, and it was this that caused Lincoln to derive happiness from doing what would have been a source of misery to David. Some of the most marked instances of self-forgetfulness recorded are connected with the pursuit of knowledge. Archimedes was so much in love with the studies of his profession, that, etc., etc. Professor Heyne, of Goettingen," etc., etc., etc.—A clearer explanation than this we have rarely met with outside the realm of mathematical demonstration.

A shorter example of the same judicious oversight we have when "in rushed Nat, under great excitement, with his eyes 'as large as saucers,' to use a hyperbole, which means only that his eyes looked very large indeed." The impression which would have been made upon the rising generation, had the testimony been allowed to go forth without its corrective, that upon a certain occasion any Governor's eyes were really as large as saucers, even very small tea-saucers, is such as the imagination refuses to dwell on.

This exuberance of illustration increases the value of these books in another respect. To use a homely phrase, we get more than we bargained for. Ostensibly engaged with the life of the Bobbin Boy, we are covertly introduced to the majority of all the boys that ever were born and came to anything. The advertised story is a kind of mother-hen who gathers under her wings a numerous brood of biographical chicks. Quantities of recondite erudition are poured out on the slightest provocation. Nat's unquestioned superiority to his schoolmates evokes a disquisition for the encouragement of dull boys, in which we are told that "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the commentator, called his boy, etc. Cortina," (vernacular for Cortona, probably,) "a renowned painter, was nicknamed, etc., etc. When the mother of Sheridan once, etc., etc. One teacher sent Chatterton home, etc. Napoleon and Wellington, etc., etc. And Sir Walter Scott was named," etc., etc., etc. All of which makes very pleasantly diversified reading. Nat's kindness of heart paves the way to our learning, that, "at the age of ten or twelve years, John Howard, the philanthropist, was not distinguished above the mass of boys around him, except for the kindness of his heart, and boyish deeds of benevolence. It was so with Wilberforce, whose efforts, etc., etc., etc. And Buxton, whose self-sacrificing heart," etc., etc. While Nat is swimming four rods under water, we on shore are acquiring useful knowledge of the Rothschilds, of Samuel Budget, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Buxton again, Sir Walter Scott again, and the Duke of Wellington again. Nat walks to Prospect Hill, and is attended by a suite consisting of Sir Francis Chantrey, "the gifted poet Burns," "the late Hugh Miller," etc., who also loved to look at prospects. Nat organized a debating-society, (which by the way was, "in respect of unanimity of feeling and action, a lesson to most legislative bodies, and to the Congress of the United States in particular." Congress of the United States, are you listening?) and "such an organization has proved a valuable means of improvement to many persons." Witness "the Irish orator, Curran," with biography; "a living American statesman," with biography; the "highly distinguished statesman, Canning," more biography; "Henry Clay, the American orator," with autobiography; and a meteoric shower of lesser biographies emanating from Tremont Temple. Nat carried a book in his pocket, and "Pockets have been of great service to self-made men. A more useful invention was never known, and hundreds are now living who will have occasion to speak well of pockets till they die, because they were so handy to carry a book. Roger Sherman had one when he was a hard-working shoemaker, etc., etc., etc. Napoleon had one in which he carried the Iliad when, etc. etc., etc. Hugh Miller had one, etc., etc., etc. Elihu Burritt had one," etc., etc., for three pages, to which we might add, from the best authority, the striking fact which our author, notwithstanding the wide range of his reading, seems unaccountably to have missed,—

"Lyddy Locket lost her pocket, Lyddy Fisher found it, Lyddy Fisher gave it to Mr. Gaines, And Mr. Gaines ground it."

Allusion is here made to an important fact. Mr. Gaines was a miller!

Yet, with all this elucidation, we take shame to ourselves for admitting that there are points which, after all, we do not comprehend. They may be trivial; but in making up testimony, it is the little things which have weight. Trifles light as air are confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ, and confutation no less strong. When, as a proof of Nat's ardor in the pursuit of knowledge, we are told that he walked ten miles after a hard day's work to hear Daniel Webster, and then stood through the oration in front of the platform, because he could see the speaker better,—and when, turning to the next page, we are told that he was so much interested that he "would have sat entranced till morning, if the gifted orator had continued to pour forth his eloquence,"—what are we to believe? When we are bidden to "listen to the gifted orator, as the flowing periods come burning from his soul on fire, riveting the attention," etc., is it a river, or is it a fire, or is it a hammer and anvil, that we have in our mind's eye, Horatio? When Nat "waxed warmer and warmer, as he advanced, and spoke in a flow of eloquence and choice selection of words that was unusual for one of his age," did he come out dry-shod? We are told of his visit to the Boston bookstores,—that he examined the books "outside before he stepped in. He read the title of each volume upon the back, and some he took up and examined," but we have no explanation of this extraordinary behavior. "It was thus with" Abraham. "The manner in which Abraham made progress in penmanship, writing on slabs and trees, on the ground and in the snow, anywhere that he could find a place, reminds us forcibly of Pascal, who demonstrated the first thirty-two propositions of Euclid in his boyhood, without the aid of a teacher." We not only are not forcibly reminded of Pascal, but we are not reminded of Pascal at all. The boy who imitates on slabs mechanical lines which he has been taught, and he who originates mathematical problems and theorems, may be as like as my fingers to my fingers, but—alas, that it is forbidden to say—we do not see it. When Mr. Elkins told Abraham he would make a good pioneer boy, and "'What's a pioneer boy?' asked Abraham," why was Mr. Elkins "quite amused at this inquiry"? and why did he "exercise his risibles for a minute" before replying? When Mr. Stuart offered young Mr. Lincoln the use of his law-books, and young Mr. Lincoln answered,—very properly, we should say,—"You are very generous indeed. I could never repay you for such generosity," why did Mr. Stuart respond, "shaking his sides with laughter"? We do not wish to be too inquisitive, but few things are more trying to a sensitive person than to see others overwhelmed with merriment in which, from ignorance, he cannot share.

Want of space forbids us to do more than touch lightly upon the many excellences of these books. We have given extracts enough to enable our readers to see for themselves the severe elegance of style, the compactness and force of the narrative, the verisimilitude of the characters, the unity of plan, and the cogency of the reasoning. We trust they will also perceive the great moral effect that cannot fail to be produced. Such books are specially adapted to meet a daily increasing want. Our American youth are too apt to value virtue for its own sake. They are in imminent danger of giving themselves over to integrity, to industry, perseverance, and single-mindedness, without looking forward to those posts of usefulness for which these qualities eminently fit them. Fired with the love of learning, they are languid in claiming the honors which learning has to bestow. Eager to become worthy of the highest places, they make no effort to secure the places to which their worth points them. Political supineness is the bane of our society. The one great need is to rouse the ambition of boys, and wake them to political aspiration. To such objects such books tend; and who would hesitate at any sacrifice of his prejudices in favor of privacy, when such is the end to be obtained? Breathes there the man with soul so dead who would not lay upon the altar his father, his mother, his sisters, not to say his uncles and cousins, nay, the inmost sanctities of his home, to enable American boys to fasten their eyes upon the White House? Would he refuse, at the call of patriotism, to spread before the public the very secrets of his heart, the struggles of his closet, his communion with his God?

As a collateral result of this new school of biography, we can but admire the new form in which Nemesis appears. The day of rich relations is gone by. No longer can stern Uncle Bishops lord it over their obscure nephews, for ever before their eyes will flaunt the possible book which will one day lay open to a gazing world all their weakness and their evil behavior. Let not wicked or disagreeable relatives imagine henceforth that they may safely indulge in small tyrannies, neglects, or other peccadilloes; for no robin-redbreast will piously cover them with leaves, but that which is done in the ear shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops, nor can they tell from what quarter the trumpet shall sound. The unkempt boy, the sullen girl in the chimney-corner, may be the Narcissus or nymph in whose orisons all their sins shall be remembered.

"You that executors be made, And overseers eke Of children that be fatherless, And infants mild and meek, Take you example by this thing, And yield to each his right, Lest God with such like misery Your wicked minds requite."

In view of which benefits, and others "too numerous to mention," we humbly beg pardon for the petulance which disfigures the commencement of our paper, and desire to use all our influence to induce all persons of distinction meekly and humanely to lay open to the dear, curious world their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor.

But, however beneficial and delightful it is for a friend to impale a friend before the public gaze, we do not think that even Job himself would have desired that his adversary should write a book about him. In the motives that prompted, in the grace of the doing, in the good that will result, we can forgive the deed when friend portrays friend; but we cannot be lenient when a hostile hand exposes the life to which we have no right. We would fain borrow the type and the energy of Reginald Bazalgette to enforce our opinion that it is "ABBOMMANNABEL," and the innocence of Pet Marjorie to declare it "the most Devilish thing." Yet in a loyal, respectable, religious newspaper we lately saw a biography of Mr. Vallandigham which puts to the blush all previous achievements in the line of contemporary history. It is not so much that we are let into the family-secrets, but the family-secrets are spread out before us, as the fruits of that species of domestic taxation known as "the presents" are spread out on the piano at certain wedding-festivals. We are led back to first principles, to the early married life of the parent Vallandighams. The mother is portrayed with a vigorous feminine pencil, and certainly looks extremely well on canvas. Clement's relations to her are shown to be exemplary. There is excuse for this in the attacks which have been made upon him in the relation of son. But upon what grounds are Clement's sisters' homes invaded? Because a man is disloyal and craven, shall we inform the world that his brother was crossed in love? Still more shall his wife be taken in hand, and receive what even the late Mr. Smallweed would have considered a thorough "shaking-up"? "If they were all starving," declares the energetic narrator, "she could not earn a cent in any way whatever, so utterly helpless is this fine Southern lady. She will not sleep, unless the light is kept burning all night in her room, for fear 'something might happen'; and when a slight matter crosses her feelings, she lies in bed for several days." Tut, tut, dear lady! surely this once thy zeal hath outrun thy discretion. Clement L. Vallandigham's public course is a proper target for all loyal shafts, but prithee let the poor lady, his wife, remain in peace,—such peace as she can command. It is bad enough to be his wife, without being overborne with the additional burden of her own personal foibles. One can be daughter, sister, friend, without impeachment of one's sagacity or integrity; but it is such a dreadful indorsement of a man to marry him! Her own consciousness must be sufficiently grievous; pray do not irritate it into downright madness. Nay, what, after all, are the so heinous faults upon which you animadvert? She cannot earn a cent: that may be her misfortune, it need not be her fault. Perhaps Clement, like Albano, and all good husbands, "never loved to see the sweet form anywhere else than, like other butterflies, by his side among the flowers." She will keep a light burning in her room, forsooth. Have we not all our pet hobgoblins? We know an excellent woman who once sat curled up in an arm-chair all night for fear of a mouse! And is it not a well-understood thing that nothing so baffles midnight burglars as a burning candle? "When a light matter crosses her feelings, she lies in bed for several days." Infinitely better than to go sulking about the house with that "injured-innocence" air which makes a man feel as if he were an assaulter and batterer with intent to kill. Blessings rest upon those charming sensible women, who, when they feel cross, as we all do at times, will go to bed and sleep it away! No, let us everywhere put down treason and ostracize traitors. It is lawful to suspend "naso adunco" those whom we may not otherwise suspend. But even traitors have rights which white men and white women are bound to respect. We will crush them, if we can, but we will crush them in open field, by fair fight,—not by stealing into their bedchambers to stab them through the heart of a wife.

FOOTNOTES:

[G] The meaning of this is, that Mr. Morse was the landlord, not the house. Of course a house could not be a landlord; still less could it be a landlord to itself.—Note by Reviewer.



THE LAST RALLY.

NOVEMBER, 1864.

Rally! rally! rally! Arouse the slumbering land! Rally! rally! from mountain and valley, And up from the ocean-strand! Ye sons of the West, America's best! New Hampshire's men of might! From prairie and crag unfurl the flag, And rally to the fight!

Armies of untried heroes, Disguised in craftsman and clerk! Ye men of the coast, invincible host! Come, every one, to the work,— From the fisherman gray as the salt-sea spray That on Long Island breaks, To the youth who tills the uttermost hills By the blue northwestern lakes!

And ye Freedmen! rally, rally To the banners of the North! Through the shattered door of bondage pour Your swarthy legions forth! Kentuckians! ye of Tennessee Who scorned the despot's sway! To all, to all, the bugle-call Of Freedom sounds to-day!

Old men shall fight with the ballot, Weapon the last and best,— And the bayonet, with blood red-wet, Shall write the will of the rest; And the boys shall fill men's places, And the little maiden rock Her doll as she sits with her grandam and knits An unknown hero's sock.

And the hearts of heroic mothers, And the deeds of noble wives, With their power to bless shall aid no less Than the brave who give their lives. The rich their gold shall bring, and the old Shall help us with their prayers; While hovering hosts of pallid ghosts Attend us unawares.

From the ghastly fields of Shiloh Muster the phantom bands, From Virginia's swamps, and Death's white camps On Carolina sands; From Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg, I see them gathering fast; And up from Manassas, what is it that passes Like thin clouds in the blast?

From the Wilderness, where blanches The nameless skeleton; From Vicksburg's slaughter and red-streaked water, And the trenches of Donelson; From the cruel, cruel prisons, Where their bodies pined away, From groaning decks, from sunken wrecks, They gather with us to-day.

And they say to us, "Rally! rally! The work is almost done! Ye harvesters, sally from mountain and valley And reap the fields we won! We sowed for endless years of peace, We harrowed and watered well; Our dying deeds were the scattered seeds: Shall they perish where they fell?"

And their brothers, left behind them In the deadly roar and clash Of cannon and sword, by fort and ford, And the carbine's quivering flash,— Before the Rebel citadel Just trembling to its fall, From Georgia's glens, from Florida's fens, For us they call, they call!

The life-blood of the tyrant Is ebbing fast away; Victory waits at her opening gates, And smiles on our array; With solemn eyes the Centuries Before us watching stand, And Love lets down his starry crown To bless the future land.

One more sublime endeavor, And behold the dawn of Peace! One more endeavor, and war forever Throughout the land shall cease! For ever and ever the vanquished power Of Slavery shall be slain, And Freedom's stained and trampled flower Shall blossom white again!

Then rally! rally! rally! Make tumult in the land! Ye foresters, rally from mountain and valley! Ye fishermen, from the strand! Brave sons of the West, America's best! New England's men of might! From prairie and crag unfurl the flag, And rally to the fight!



FINANCES OF THE REVOLUTION.

In all historical studies we should still bear in mind the difference between the point of view from which one looks at events and that from which they were seen by the actors themselves. We all act under the influence of ideas. Even those who speak of theories with contempt are none the less the unconscious disciples of some theory, none the less busied in working out some problems of the great theory of life. Much as they fancy themselves to differ from the speculative man, they differ from him only in contenting themselves with seeing the path as it lies at their feet, while he strives to embrace it all, starting-point and end, in one comprehensive view. And thus in looking back upon the past we are irresistibly led to arrange the events of history, as we arrange the facts of a science, in their appropriate classes and under their respective laws. And thus, too, these events give us the true measure of the intellectual and moral culture of the times, the extent to which just ideas prevailed therein upon all the duties and functions of private and public life. Tried by the standard of absolute truth and right, grievously would they all fall short,—and we, too, with them. Judged by the human standard of progressive development and gradual growth,—the only standard to which the man of the beam can venture, unrebuked, to bring the man with the mote,—we shall find much in them all to sadden us, and much, also, in which we can all sincerely rejoice.

In judging, therefore, the political acts of our ancestors, we have a right to bring them to the standard of the political science of their age, but we have no right to bring them to the higher standard of our own. Montesquieu could give them but an imperfect clue to the labyrinth in which they found themselves involved; and yet no one had seen farther into the mysteries of social and political organization than Montesquieu. Hume had scattered brilliant rays on dark places, and started ideas which, once at work in the mind, would never rest till they had evolved momentous truths and overthrown long-standing errors. But no one had yet seen, with Adam Smith, that labor was the original source of every form of wealth,—that the farmer, the merchant, the manufacturer, were all equally the instruments of national prosperity,—or demonstrated as unanswerably as he did that nations grow rich and powerful by giving as they receive, and that the good of one is the good of all. The world had not yet seen that fierce conflict between antagonistic principles which she was soon to see in the French Revolution; nor had political science yet recorded those daring experiments in remoulding society, those constitutions framed in closets, discussed in clubs, accepted and overthrown with equal demonstrations of popular zeal, and which, expressing in their terrible energy the universal dissatisfaction with past and present, the universal grasping at a brighter future, have met and answered so many grave questions,—questions neither propounded nor solved in any of the two hundred constitutions which Aristotle studied in order to prepare himself for the composition of his "Politics." The world had not yet seen a powerful nation tottering on the brink of anarchy, with all the elements of prosperity in her bosom,—nor a bankrupt state sustaining a war that demanded annual millions, and growing daily in wealth and power,—nor the economical phenomena which followed the reopening of Continental commerce in 1814,—nor the still more startling phenomena which a few years later attended England's return to specie-payments and a specie-currency,—nor statesmen setting themselves gravely down with the map before them to the final settlement of Europe, and, while the ink was yet fresh on their protocols, seeing all the results of their combined wisdom set at nought by the inexorable development of the fundamental principle which they had refused to recognize.

But we have seen these things, and, having seen them, unconsciously apply the knowledge derived from them in our judgment of events to which we have no right to apply it. We condemn errors which we should never have detected without the aid of a light which was hidden from our fathers, and will still be dwelling upon shortcomings which nothing could have avoided but a general diffusion of that wisdom which Providence never vouchsafes except as a gift to a few exalted minds. Every school-boy has his text-book of political economy now: but many can remember when these books first made their appearance in schools; and so late as 1820 the Professor of History in English Cambridge publicly lamented that there was no work upon this vital subject which he could put into the hands of his classes.

When, therefore, our fathers found themselves face to face with the complex questions of finance, they naturally fell back upon the experience and devices of their past history: they did as in such emergencies men always do,—they tried to meet the present difficulty without weighing maturely the future difficulties. The present was at the door, palpable, stern, urgent, relentless; and as they looked at it, they could see nothing beyond half so full of perplexity and danger. They hoped, as in the face of all history and all experience men will ever hope, that out of those depths which their feeble eyes were unable to penetrate something would yet arise in their hour of need to avert the peril and snatch them from the precipice. Their past history had its lessons of encouragement, some thought, and, some thought, of warning. They seized the example, but the admonition passed by unheeded.

Short as the chronological record of American history then was, that exchange of the products of labor which so speedily grows up into commerce had already passed through all its phases, from direct barter to bank-notes and bills of exchange. Men gave what they wanted less to get what they wanted more, the products of industry without doors for the products of industry within doors; and it was only when they felt the necessity of adding to their stock of luxuries or conveniences from a distance that they experienced the want of money. Prices naturally found their own level,—were what, when left to themselves they always are, the natural expression of the relations between demand and supply. Tobacco stood the Virginian in stead of money long after money had become abundant; procuring him corn, meat, raiment. More than once, too, it procured him something better still. In the very same year in which the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, history tells us, ninety maidens of "virtuous education and demeanor" landed in Virginia; the next year brought sixty more; and, provident industry reaping its own reward, he whose busy hands had raised the largest crop of tobacco was enabled to make the first choice of a wife. And it must have been an edifying and pleasant spectacle to see each stalwart Virginian pressing on towards the landing with his bundle of tobacco on his back, and walking deliberately home again with an affectionate wife under his arm.

But already there was a pernicious principle at work,—protested against by experience wherever tried, and still repeatedly tried anew,—the assumption by Government of the power to regulate the prices of goods. The first instance carries us back to 1618, and thinking men still believed it possible in 1777. The right to regulate the prices of labor was its natural corollary, bringing with it the power of creating legal tenders and the various representatives of value, without any correspondent measures for creating the value itself, or, in simpler words, paper-money without capital. And thus, logically as well as historically, we reach the first issue of paper-money in 1690, that year so memorable as the year of the first Congress.

New England, encouraged by a successful expedition against Port Royal, made an attempt upon Quebec. Confident of success, she sent forth her little army without providing the means of paying it. The soldiers came back soured by disaster and fatigue, and, not yet up to the standard of '76, were upon the point of mutinying for their pay. To escape the immediate danger, Massachusetts bethought her of bills of credit. They were issued, accepted, and redeemed, although the first holders suffered great losses, and the last holders or the speculators were the only ones that found them faithful pledges. The flood-gates once opened, the water poured in amain. Every pressing emergency afforded a pretext for a new issue. Other Colonies followed the seductive example. Paper was soon issued to make money plenty. Men's minds became familiar with the idea, as they saw the convenient substitute passing freely from hand to hand. Accepted at market, accepted at the retail store, accepted in the counting-room, accepted for taxes, everywhere a legal tender, it seemed adequate to all the demands of domestic trade. But erelong came undue fluctuations of prices, depreciations, failures,—all the well-known indications of an unsound currency. England interposed to protect her own merchants, to whom American paper-money was utterly worthless; and Parliament stripped it of its value as a legal tender. Men's minds were divided. They had never before been called upon to discuss such questions upon such a scale or in such a form. They were at a loss for the principle, still enveloped in the multitude and variety of conflicting theories and obstinate facts.

One fact, however, was clearly established,—that a government could, in great needs, make paper fulfil, for a while, the office of money; and if a regular government, why not also a revolutionary government, sustained and accepted by the people? Here, then, begins the history of the Continental money,—the principal chapter in the financial history of the Revolution,—leading us, like all such histories, over ground thick-strown with unheeded admonitions and neglected warnings, through a round of constantly recurring phenomena, varied only here and there by modifications in the circumstances under which they appear.

It is much to be regretted that we have no record of the discussions through which Congress reached the resolves of June 22, 1775: "That a sum not exceeding two millions of Spanish milled dollars be emitted by the Congress in bills of credit for the defence of America. That the twelve confederated Colonies" (Georgia, it will be remembered, had not yet sent delegates) "be pledged for the redemption of the bills of credit now to be emitted." We do not even know positively that there was any discussion. If there was, it is not difficult to conceive how some of the reasoning ran,—how each had arguments and examples from his own Colony: how confidently Pennsylvanians would speak of the security which they had given to their paper; how confidently Virginians would assert that even the greatest straits might be passed without having recourse to so dangerous a medium; how all the facts in the history of paper-money would be brought forward to prove both sides of the question, but how the underlying principle, subtile, impalpable, might still elude them all, as for thirty-five years longer it still continued to elude wise statesmen and thoughtful economists; how, at last, some impatient spirit, breaking through the untimely delay, sternly asked them what else they proposed to do. By what alchemy would they create gold and silver? By what magic would they fill the coffers which their non-exportation resolutions had kept empty, or bring in the supplies which their non-importation resolutions had cut off? What arguments of their devising would induce a people in arms against taxation to submit to tenfold heavier taxes than those which they had indignantly repelled? Necessity, inexorable necessity, was now their lawgiver; they had adopted an army, they must support it; they had voted pay to their officers, they must devise the means of giving their vote effect; arms, ammunition, camp-equipage, everything was to be provided for. The people were full of ardor, glowing with fiery zeal; your promise to pay will be received like payment; your commands will be instantly obeyed. Every hour's delay imperils the sacred cause, chills the holy enthusiasm; action, prompt, energetic, resolute action, is what the crisis calls for. Men must see that we are in earnest; the enemy must see it; nothing else will bring them to terms; nothing else will give us a lasting peace: and in such a peace how easily, how cheerfully, shall we all unite in paying the debt which won for us so inestimable a blessing!

It would have been difficult to deny the force of such an appeal. There were doubtless men there who believed firmly in the virtue of the people,—who thought, that, after the proof which the people had given of their readiness to sacrifice the interests of the present moment to the interests of a day and a posterity that they might not live to see, it would be worse than skepticism to call it in question. But even these men might hesitate about the form of the sacrifice they called for, for they knew how often men are governed by names, and that their minds might revolt at the idea of a formal tax, although they would submit to pay it fifty-fold under the name of depreciation. Even at this day, with all our additional light,—the combined light of science and of experience,—it is difficult to see what else they could have done without strengthening dangerously the hands of their domestic enemies. Nor let this be taken as a proof that they engaged rashly in an unequal contest, even though it was necessarily in part a war of paper against gold. They have been accused of this by their friends as well as by their enemies: they have been accused of sacrificing a positive good to an uncertain hope,—of suffering their passions to hurry them into a war for which they had made no adequate preparation, and had not the means of making any,—that they wilfully, almost wantonly, incurred the fearful responsibility of staking the lives and fortunes of those who were looking to them for guidance upon the chances of a single cast. But the accusation is unjust. As far as human foresight could reach, they had calculated these chances carefully. They knew the tenure by which they held their authority, and that, if they ran counter to the popular will, the people would fall from them,—that, if they should fail in making their position good, they would be the first, almost the only victims,—that, then as ever, "the thunderbolts on highest mountains light." Charles Carroll added "of Carrollton" to his name, so that, if the Declaration he was setting it to should bring forfeiture and confiscation, there might be no mistake about the victim. Nor was it without a touch of sober earnestness that Harrison, bulky and fat, said to the lean and shadowy Gerry, as he laid down his pen,—"When hanging-time comes, I shall have the advantage of you. I shall be dead in a second, while you will be kicking in the air half an hour after I am gone." But they knew also, that, if there are dangers which we do not perceive till we come full upon them, there are likewise helps which we do not see till we find ourselves face to face with them,—and that in the life of nations, as in the life of individuals, there are moments when all that the wisest and most conscientious can do is to see that everything is in its place, every man at his post, and resolutely bide the shock.

While this subject was pressing upon Congress, it was occupying no less seriously leading minds in the different Colonies. All felt that the success of the experiment must chiefly depend upon the degree of security that could be given to the bills. But how to reach that necessary degree was a perplexing question. Three ways were suggested in the New-York Convention: that Congress should fix upon a sum, assign each Colony its proportion, and the issue be made by the Colony upon its own responsibility; or that the United Colonies should make the issue, each Colony pledging itself to redeem the part that fell to it; or, lastly, that, Congress issuing the sum, and each Colony assuming its proportionate responsibility, the Colonies should still be bound as a whole to make up for the failure of any individual Colony to redeem its share. The latter was proposed by the Convention as offering greater chances of security, and tending at the same time to strengthen the bond of union. It was in nearly this form, also, that it came from Congress.

No time was now lost in carrying the resolution into effect. The next day, Tuesday, June 23, the number, denomination, and form of the bills were decided in a Committee of the Whole. It was resolved to make bills of eight denominations, from one to eight, and issue forty-nine thousand of each, completing the two millions by eleven thousand eight hundred of twenty dollars each. The form of the bill was to be,—

Continental Currency.

No. Dollars.

This bill entitles the bearer to receive —— Spanish milled dollars or the value thereof in gold or silver, according to the resolutions of the Congress held at Philadelphia on the 10th day of May, A. D. 1775.

In the same sitting a committee of five was appointed "to get proper plates engraved, to provide paper, and to agree with printers to print the above bills." Both Franklin and John Adams were on this committee.

Had they lived in 1862 instead of 1775, how their doors would have been beset by engravers and paper-dealers and printers! What baskets of letters would have been poured upon their tables! How would they have dreaded the sound of the knocker or the cry of the postman! But, alas! paper was so far from abundant that generals were often reduced to hard straits for enough of it to write their reports and despatches on; and that Congressmen were not much better off will be believed when we find John Adams sending his wife a sheet or two at a time under the same envelope with his own letters. Printers there were, as many, perhaps, as the business of the country required, but not enough for the eager contention which the announcement of Government work to be done excites among us in these days. And of engravers there were but four between Maine and Georgia. Of these four, one was Paul Revere of the midnight ride, the Boston boy of Huguenot blood whose self-taught graver had celebrated the repeal of the Stamp Act, condemned to perpetual derision the rescinders of 1768, and told the story of the Boston Massacre,—who, when the first grand jury under the new organization was drawn, had met the judge with, "I refuse to sarve,"—a scientific mechanic,—a leader at the Tea-party,—a soldier of the old war,—prepared to serve in this war, too, with sword, or graver, or science,—fitting carriages, at Washington's command, to the cannon from which the retreating English had knocked off the trunnions, learning how to make powder at the command of the Provincial Congress, and setting up the first powder-mill ever built in Massachusetts.

No mere engraver's task for him, this engraving the first bill-plates of Continental Currency! How he must have warmed over the design! how carefully he must have chosen his copper! how buoyantly he must have plied his graver, harassed by no doubts, disturbed by no misgivings of the double mission which those little plates were to perform,—the good one first, thank God! but then how fatal a one afterward!—but resolved and hopeful as on that April night when he spurred his horse from cottage to hamlet, rousing the sleepers with the cry, long unheard in the sweet valleys of New England, "Up! up! the enemy is coming!"

The paper of these bills was thick, so thick that the enemy called it the paste-board money of the rebels. Plate, paper, and printing, all had little in common with the elaborate finish and delicate texture of a modern bank-note. To sign them was too hard a tax upon Congressmen already taxed to the full measure of their working-time by committees and protracted daily sessions; and so a committee of twenty-eight gentlemen not in Congress was employed to sign and number them, receiving in compensation one dollar and a third for every thousand bills.

Meanwhile loud calls for money were daily reaching the doors of Congress. Everywhere money was wanted,—money to buy guns, money to buy powder, money to buy provisions, money to send officers to their posts, money to march troops to their stations, money to speed messengers to and fro, money for the wants of to-day, money to pay for what had already been done, and still more money to insure the right doing of what was yet to do: Washington wanted it; Lee wanted it; Schuyler wanted it: from north to south, from seaboard to inland, one deep, monotonous, menacing cry,—"Money, or our hands are powerless!"

How long would these two millions stand such a drain? Spent before they were received, hardly touching the Treasury-chest as a starting-place before they flew on the wings of the morning to gladden thousands of expectant hearts with a brief respite from one of their many cares. Relief there certainly was,—neither long, indeed, nor lasting, but still relief. Good Whigs received the bills, as they did everything else that came from Congress, with unquestioning confidence. Tories turned from them in derision, and refused to give their goods for them. Whereupon Congress took the matter under consideration, and told them that they must. It was soon seen that another million would be wanted, and in July a second issue was resolved on. All-devouring war had soon swallowed these also. Three more millions were ordered in November. But the war was to end soon,—by June, '76, at the latest. All their expenditures were calculated upon this supposition; and wealth flowing in under the auspices of a just and equable accommodation with their reconciled mother, these millions which had served them so well in the hour of need would soon be paid by a happy and grateful people from an abundant treasury.

But early in 1776 reports came of English negotiations for foreign mercenaries to help put down the rebellion,—reports which soon took the shape of positive information. No immediate end of the war now: already, too, independence was looming up on the turbid horizon; already the current was bearing them onward, deep, swift, irresistible: and thus seizing still more eagerly upon the future, they poured out other four millions in February, five millions in May, five millions in July. The Confederacy was not yet formed; the Declaration of Independence had nothing yet to authenticate it but the signatures of John Hancock and Charles Thompson; and the republic that was to be was already solemnly pledged to the payment of twenty millions of dollars.

Thus far men's faith had not faltered. They saw the necessity and accepted it, giving their goods and their labor unhesitatingly for a slip of paper which derived all its value from the resolves of a body of men who might, upon a reverse, be thrown down as rapidly as they had been set up. And then whom were they to look to for indemnification? But now began a sensible depreciation,—slight, indeed, at first, but ominous. Congress took the alarm, and resolved upon a loan,—resolved to borrow directly what they had hitherto borrowed indirectly, the goods and the labor of their constituents. Accordingly, on the third of October, a resolve was passed for raising five millions of dollars at four per cent; and in order to make it convenient to lenders, loan-offices were established in every Colony with a commissioner for each.

Money came in slowly, but ran out so fast that in November Congress ordered weekly returns from the Treasury, not, of sums on hand, but of what parts of the last emission remained unexpended. The campaign of '77 was at hand; how the campaign of '76 would close was yet uncertain. The same impenetrable veil that hid Trenton and Princeton from their eyes concealed the disasters of Fort Washington and the Jerseys. They still looked hopefully to the lower line of the Hudson. They resolved, therefore, to make an immediate effort to supply the Treasury by a lottery to be drawn at Philadelphia.

A lottery,—does not the word carry one back, a great many years back, to other times and other manners? The Articles of War were now on the table of Congress for revision, and in the second and third of those articles officers and soldiers had been earnestly recommended to attend divine service diligently, and to refrain, under grave penalties, from profane cursing or swearing. And here legislators deliberately set themselves to raise money by means which we have deliberately condemned as gambling. But years were yet to pass before statesmen, or the people rather, were brought to feel that the lottery-office and gaming-table stand side by side on the same broad highway.

No such thoughts troubled the minds of our forefathers, well stored as those minds were with human and divine lore; but, going to work without a scruple, they prepared an elaborate scheme and fixed the first of March for the day of drawing,—"or sooner, if sooner full." It was not full, however, nor was it full when the subject next came up. Tickets were sold; committees sat; Congress returned to the subject from time to time: but what with the incipient depreciation of the bills of credit, the rising prices of goods and provisions, and the incessant calls upon every purse for public and private purposes, the lottery failed to commend itself either to speculators or to the bulk of the people. Some good Whigs bought tickets from principle, and, like many of the good Whigs who took the bills of credit for the same reason, lost their money.

In the same November the Treasury was ordered to make every preparation for a new issue; and to meet the wants of the retail trade, it was resolved at the same time to issue five hundred thousand dollars in bills of two-thirds, one-third, one-sixth, and one-ninth of a dollar. Evident as it ought now to have been that nothing but taxation could relieve them, they still shrank from it. "Do you think, Gentlemen," said a member, "that I will consent to load my constituents with taxes, when we can send to our printer and get a wagon-load of money, one quire of which will pay for the whole?" It was so easy a way of making money that men seemed to be getting into the humor of it.

The campaign of '77, like the campaign of '76, was fought upon paper-money without any material depreciation. The bills could never be signed as fast as they were called for. But this could not last. The public mind was growing anxious. Extensive interests, in some cases whole fortunes, were becoming involved in the question of ultimate payment. The alarm gained upon Congress. Burgoyne, indeed, was conquered; but a more powerful, more insidious enemy, one to whom they themselves had opened the gate, was already within their works and fast making his way to the heart of the citadel. The depreciation had reached four for one, and there was but one way to prevent it from going lower. Congress deliberated anxiously. Thus far the public faith had supported the war. But, they reasoned, the quantity of the money for which this faith stood pledged already exceeded the demands of commerce, and hence its value was proportionably reduced. Add to this the arts of open and secret enemies, the avidity of professed friends, and the scarcity of foreign commodities, and it is easy to account for the depreciation. "The consequences were equally obvious and alarming,"—"depravity of morals, decay of public virtue, a precarious supply for the war, debasement of the public faith, injustice to individuals, and the destruction of the safety, honor, and independence of the United States." But "a reasonable and effectual remedy" was still within their reach, and therefore, "with mature deliberation and the most earnest solicitude," they recommended the raising by taxes on the different States, in proportion to their population, five millions of dollars in quarterly payments, for the service of 1778.

But having explained, justified, and recommended, the power of Congress ceased. Like the Confederation, it had no right of coercion, no machinery of its own for acting upon the States. And, unhappily, the States, pressed by their individual wants, feeling keenly their individual sacrifices and dangers, failed to see that the nearest road to relief lay through the odious portal of taxation. Had the mysterious words that Dante read on the gates of Hell been written on it, they could not have shrunk from it with a more instinctive feeling:—