At a distance, these considerations weighed with me. I heard them respectfully, was convinced, and silently resolved not to urge, indeed, so far as I properly might, to discourage, nearness of approach. But here all these convictions vanished away. I knew that some icebergs were treacherous, but they were others, not this! There it stood in such majesty and magnificence of marble strength, that all question of its soundness was shamed out of me,—or rather, would have been shamed, had it arisen. This was not sentiment,—it was judgment,—my judgment,—perhaps erroneous, yet a judgment formed from the facts as I saw them. Therefore I determined to launch the light skiff which Ph—— and I had bought at Sleupe Harbor, and row up to the berg, perhaps lay my hand upon it.

As the skiff went over the gunwale, the Parson cried,—

"Shall I go with you?"

"Yes, indeed, if you wish."

He seated himself in the stern; I assumed the oars, (I row cross-handed, with long oars, and among amateur oarsmen am a little vain of my skill) and pulled away. It was a longer pull than I had thought,—suggesting that our judgment of distances had been insufficient, and that the previous berg was higher than our measurement had made it.

Our approach was to rear of the berg,—that is, to the court or little bay before mentioned. The temptation to enter was great, but I dared not; for the long, deep ocean-swell over which the skiff skimmed like a duck, not only without danger, but without the smallest perturbation, broke in and out here with such force that I knew the boat would instantly be swept out of my possession. The Parson, however, always reckless of peril in his enthusiasm, and less experienced, cried,—

"In! in! Push the boat in!"

"No, the swell is too heavy; it will not do."

"Fie upon the swell! Never mind what will do! In!"

I sympathized too much with him to answer otherwise than by laying my weight upon the oars, and pushing silently past. The water in this bit of bay was some six or eight feet deep, and the ice beneath it—for the berg was all solid below—showed in perfection that crystalline tawny green which belongs to it under such circumstances. I pulled around the curving rear of the eastern church, with its surface of marble lace, such as we had seen before, gazing upward and upward at the towering awfulness and magnificence of edifice, myself frozen in admiration. The Parson, under high excitement, rained his hortative oratory upon me.

"Nearer! Nearer! Let's touch it! Let's lay our hands upon it! Don't be faint-hearted now. It's now or never!"

I heard him as one under the influence of chloroform hears his attendants. He exhorted a stone. His words only seemed to beat and flutter faintly against me, like storm-driven birds against a cliff at night. My brain was only in my eyeballs; and the arms that worked mechanically at the oars belonged rather to the boat than to me.

Saturated at last, if not satiated, with seeing, I glanced at the water-level, and said,—

"But see how the surge is heaving against it!"

But now it was I that spoke to stone, though not to a silent one.

"Hang the surge! I'm here for an iceberg, not to be balked by a bit of surf! It's not enough to see; I must have my hand on it! I wish to touch the veritable North Pole!"

It was pleasant to see the ever-genial Parson so peremptory; and I lingered half wilfully, not unwilling to mingle the relieving flavor of this pleasure with the more awful delight of other impressions: said, however, at length,—

"I intend to go up to it, when I have found a suitable place."

"Place! What better place do you desire than this?"

I could but smile and pull on.

Caution was not unnecessary. The sea rose and fell a number of feet beside the berg, beating heavily against it with boom and hiss; and I knew well, that, if our boat struck fairly, especially if it struck sidewise, it would be whirled over and over in two seconds. Besides, where we then were, there was a cut of a foot or more into the berg at the water-level,—or rather, it was excavated below, with this projection above; and had the skiff caught under that, we would drown. I had come there not to drown, nor to run any risk, but to get some more intimate acquaintance with an iceberg. Rowing along, therefore, despite the Parson's moving hortatives, I at length found a spot where this projection did not appear. Turning now the skiff head on, I drove it swiftly toward the berg; then, when its headway was sufficient, shipped the oars quickly, slipped into the bow, and, reaching forth my hand and striking the berg, sent the boat in the same instant back with all my force, not suffering it to touch.

"Now me! Now me!" shouted the Parson, brow hot, and eyes blazing. "You're going to give me a chance, too? I would not miss it for a kingdom!"

"Yes; wait, wait."

I took the oars, got sea-room, then turned its stern, where the Parson sat, toward the iceberg, and backed gently in.

"Put your hand behind you; reach out as far as you can; sit in the middle; keep cool, cool; don't turn your body."

"Cool, oh, yes! I'm cool as November," he said, with a face misty as a hot July morning with evaporating dew. As his hand struck the ice, I bent the oars, and we shot safely away.

"Hurrah! hurrah!" he shouted, making the little boat rock and tremble,—"hurrah! This, now, is the 'adventurous travel' we were promised. Now I am content, if we get no more."

"Cool; you'll have us over."

"Pooh! Who's cooler?"

We went leisurely around this glacial cathedral. The current set with force about it, running against us on the eastern side. At the front we found the "cornice" again, about twenty feet up, sloping to the water, and dipping beneath it on either side; below it, a crystal surface; above, marble fretwork. This cornice indicates a former sea-level, showing that the berg has risen or changed position. This must have taken place, probably, by the detachment of masses; so an occurrence of this kind was not wholly out of question, after all. There is always, however,—so I suspect,—some preliminary warning, some audible crack or visible vibration. I had kept in mind the possibility of such changes, and at the slightest intimation should have darted away,—a movement favored by the lightness of the skiff, and the extreme ease with which, under the advantage of a beautiful model, she was rowed.

A sense of awe, almost of fear, crept over me now that the adventure was over, and I looked up to the mighty towers of the facade with a somewhat humbled eye; and so, pulling slowly and respectfully along the western side, made away, solemn and satisfied, to the ship.

I expected a storm of criticism on our return, but found calm. The boat was hoisted in silently, and I hurried below, to lie down and enjoy the very peculiar entertainment which vigorous rowing was sure to afford me.

Released after a half-hour's toasting on the gridiron, I went on deck and found the Parson surrounded by a cloud of censure. The words "boyish foolhardiness," catching my ear, flushed me with some anger,—to which emotion I am not, perhaps, of all men least liable. So I stumped a little stiffly to the group, and said,—

"I don't feel myself altogether a boy, and foolhardiness is not my forte."

"Well, success is wisdom," said the Colonel, placably. "You have succeeded, and now have criticism at a disadvantage, I own."

Another, however,—not a braver man on board,—stood to his guns.

"Experienced men say that it is dangerous; I hear to them till I have experience myself."

"Right, if so it stands in your mind. You judge thus: you follow your judgment. I judge partly so, and partly otherwise, and I follow my judgment. Mere experience is but a purblind wisdom, after all. When I do not at all see my own way, I follow that, still aware of its imperfections; where eyes are of service, I use them, learning from experience caution, not submission. The real danger in this case was that of being dashed against the berg; with coolness and some skill" (was there a little emphasis on this word skill?) "that danger could be disarmed. For any other danger I was ready, but did not fear it. 'Boyish?' The boyish thing, I take it, is always to be a pendant upon other people's alarms. I prefer rather to be kite than its tail only."

"Well, each of us does follow his own judgment," replied Candor; "you act as you think; I think you are wrong. If it were shooting a Polar bear now,—there's pleasure in that, and it were worth the while to run some risk."

We had tried for a bear together. I seized my advantage.

"It is a pleasure to you to shoot a bear. So to me also. But I would rather get into intimacy with an iceberg than freight the ship with bears."

He smiled an end to the colloquy. As I went below, Captain Handy, the Arctic whaler, met me with,—

"I would as lief as not spend a week on that berg! I have made fast to such, and lain for days. All depends on the character of the berg. If it's rotting, look out! If it's sound as that one, you may go to sleep on it."

I hastened up to proclaim my new ally. "You heed experience; hear Captain Handy." And I launched his bolt at the head of Censure, and saw it duck, if no more.

We saw after this, going and returning, many bergs, hundreds in all. With one of the finest, a little more broken and varied than those previously described, we came up at a little past noon, and the schooner stood off and on while Bradford went in the boat to sketch it in color,—Captain Handy's steady and skilful hand upon the sculling-oar. Bradford worked at it like a beaver all the afternoon, and then directed the schooner to lie to through the night, that he might resume his task in the morning,—coveting especially the effects of early light The ardent man was off before three o'clock. Nature was kind to him; he sketched the berg under a dawn of amber and scarlet, followed by floods on floods of morning gold; and returned to breakfast, after five hours' work, half in rapture and half in despair. The colors, above all, the purples, were inconceivable, he said, and there was no use trying to render them. I reminded him of Ruskin's brave words:—"He that is not appalled by his tasks will do nothing great." But his was an April despair, after all, with rifted clouds and spring sunshine pouring through.

Another memorable one was seen outside while we were in harbor, storm-bound. A vast arch went through the very heart of it, while each end rose to a pinnacle,—the arch blue, blue! We were going out to it; but, during the second night of storm, its strength broke, and beneath blinding snow there remained only a mad dance of waves over the wreck of its majesty.

There was another, curiously striped with diagonal dirt-bands, whose fellowship, however, the greens and purples did not disdain.

Another had the shape of three immense towers, seeming to stand on the water, more than a hundred feet of sea rolling between. The tallest tower could not be much less than two hundred feet in height; the others slightly, just perceptibly, lower. This was seen in rain, and the purples here were more crystalline and shining than any others which I observed.

These towers were seen on our last day among the bergs. In my memory they are monumental. They stand there, a purple trinity, to commemorate the terrors and glories that I shall behold no more.



KALLUNDBORG CHURCH.

"Tie stille, barn min! Imorgen kommer Fin, Fa'er din, Og gi'er dig Esbern Snares oeine og hjerte at lege med!"

Zealand Rhyme.

"Build at Kallundborg by the sea A church as stately as church may be, And there shalt thou wed my daughter fair," Said the Lord of Nesvek to Esbern Snare.

And the Baron laughed. But Esbern said, "Though I lose my soul, I will Helva wed!" And off he strode, in his pride of will, To the Troll who dwelt in Ulshoi hill.

"Build, O Troll, a church for me At Kallundborg by the mighty sea; Build it stately, and build it fair, Build it quickly," said Esbern Snare.

But the sly Dwarf said, "No work is wrought By Trolls of the Hills, O man, for nought. What wilt thou give for thy church so fair?" "Set thy own price," quoth Esbern Snare.

"When Kallundborg church is builded well, Thou must the name of its builder tell, Or thy heart and thy eyes must be my boon." "Build," said Esbern, "and build it soon."

By night and by day the Troll wrought on; He hewed the timbers, he piled the stone; But day by day, as the walls rose fair, Darker and sadder grew Esbern Snare.

He listened by night, he watched by day, He sought and thought, but he dared not pray; In vain he called on the Elle-maids shy, And the Neck and the Nis gave no reply.

Of his evil bargain far and wide A rumor ran through the country-side; And Helva of Nesvek, young and fair, Prayed for the soul of Esbern Snare.

And now the church was wellnigh done; One pillar it lacked, and one alone; And the grim Troll muttered, "Fool thou art! To-morrow gives me thy eyes and heart!"

By Kallundborg in black despair, Through wood and meadow, walked Esbern Snare, Till, worn and weary, the strong man sank Under the birches on Ulshoi bank.

At his last day's work he heard the Troll Hammer and delve in the quarry's hole; Before him the church stood large and fair: "I have builded my tomb," said Esbern Snare.

And he closed his eyes the sight to hide, When he heard a light step at his side: "O Esbern Snare!" a sweet voice said, "Would I might die now in thy stead!"

With a grasp by love and by fear made strong, He held her fast, and he held her long; With the beating heart of a bird afeard, She hid her face in his flame-red beard.

"O love!" he cried, "let me look to-day In thine eyes ere mine are plucked away; Let me hold thee close, let me feel thy heart Ere mine by the Troll is torn apart!

"I sinned, O Helva, for love of thee! Pray that the Lord Christ pardon me!" But fast as she prayed, and faster still, Hammered the Troll in Ulshoi hill.

He knew, as he wrought, that a loving heart Was somehow baffling his evil art; For more than spell of Elf or Troll Is a maiden's prayer for her lover's soul.

And Esbern listened, and caught the sound Of a Troll-wife singing underground: "To-morrow comes Fine, father thine: Lie still and hush thee, baby mine!

"Lie still, my darling! next sunrise Thou'lt play with Esbern Snare's heart and eyes!" "Ho! ho!" quoth Esbern, "is that your game? Thanks to the Troll-wife, I know his name!"

The Troll he heard him, and hurried on To Kallundborg church with the lacking stone. "Too late, Gaffer Fine!" cried Esbern Snare; And Troll and pillar vanished in air!

That night the harvesters heard the sound Of a woman sobbing underground, And the voice of the Hill-Troll loud with blame Of the careless singer who told his name.

Of the Troll of the Church they sing the rune By the Northern Sea in the harvest moon; And the fishers of Zealand hear him still Scolding his wife in Ulshoi hill.

And seaward over its groves of birch Still looks the tower of Kallundborg church, Where, first at its altar, a wedded pair, Stood Helva of Nesvek and Esbern Snare!



GEORGE CRUIKSHANK IN MEXICO.

And first, let it be on record that his name is GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, and not CRUICKSHANK. The good old man is seventy years of age, if not more, (the earliest drawing I have seen of his bears the date of 1799, and he could scarcely have begun to limn in his long-clothes,) yet, with a persistence of perversity wellnigh astonishing,—although his name has been before the public for considerably more than half a century,—although he has published nothing anonymously, but has appended his familiar signature in full to the minutest scratchings of his etching-needle,—although he has been the conductor of two magazines, and of late years has been one of the foremost agitators and platform-orators in the English temperance movement,—the vast majority of his countrymen have always spelt his surname "Cruickshank," and will continue so to spell it, I suppose, even should he live as long as Cornaro. I hope he may, I am sure, with or without the additional c for his age and his country can ill spare him.

But George Cruikshank in Mexico! What on earth can the most stay-at-home of British artists have to do with that out-of-the-way old curiosity-shop of the American continent? One might fancy him now—but that it is growing late—in the United States. He might be invited to attend a Total Abstinence Convention. He might run Mr. J.B. Gough hard on his favorite stump. He might be tempted, perchance, to cross the ocean in the evening of his days, to note down, with his inimitable and still unfaltering pencil, some of the humors of Yankee-land. I am certain, that, were George Cruikshank or Dicky Doyle to come this way and give a pictorial history of a tour through the States, somewhat after the immortal Brown, Jones, and Robinson pattern, the Americans would be in a better temper with their brothers in Old England than after reading some long spun-out book of travels by brainless Cockneys or cynical dyspeptics. The laugh awakened by a droll picture hurts nobody. It is that ugly letter-press which smarts and rankles, and festers at last into a gangrene of hatred. The Patriarch of Uz wished that his enemy had written a book. He could have added ten thousand fold to the venom of the aspiration, had he likewise expressed a wish that the book had been printed.

You will be pleased to understand, then, that the name of the gentleman who serves as text for this essay is Cruikshank, and not Cruickshank. There is an old Scottish family, I believe, of that ilk, which spells its name with a c before the k. Perhaps the admirers of our George wished to give something like an aristocratic smack to his patronymic, and so interpolated the objectionable consonant. There is no Cruikshank to be found in the "Court Guide," but Cruickshanks abound. As for our artist, he is a burgess among burgesses,—a man of the people par excellence, and an Englishman above all. His travels have been of the most limited nature. Once, in the course of his long life, and with what intent you shall presently hear, he went to France, as Hogarth did; but France didn't please him, and he came home again, like Hogarth, with all convenient speed,—fortunately, without being clapped up in jail for sketching the gates of Calais. I believe that he has not crossed the Straits of Dover since George IV. was king. I have heard, on good authority, that he protested strongly, while in foreign parts, against the manner in which the French ate new-laid eggs, and against the custom, then common among the peasantry, of wearing wooden shoes. I am afraid even, that, were George hard pressed, he would own to a dim persuasion that all Frenchmen wear wooden shoes; also pigtails; likewise cocked hats. He does not say so in society; but those who have his private ear assert that his faith or his delusion goes even farther than this, and that he believes that all Frenchmen eat frogs,—that nine tenths of the population earn their living as dancing-masters, and that the late Napoleon Buonaparte (George Cruikshank always spells the Corsican Ogre's name with a u) was first cousin to Apollyon, and was not, upon occasion, averse to the consumption of human flesh,—-babies of British extraction preferred. Can you show me an oak that ever took so strong a root as prejudice?

Not that George Cruikshank belongs in any way to the species known as "Fossil Tories." He is rather a fossil Liberal. He was a Whig Radical, and more, when the slightest suspicion of Radicalism exposed an Englishman to contumely, to obloquy, to poverty, to fines, to stripes, to gyves, and to the jail. He was quite as advanced a politician as William Cobbett, and a great deal honester as a man. He was the fast friend of William Hone, who, for his famous "Political Catechism,"—a lampoon on the borough-mongers and their bloated king,—was tried three times on three successive days, before the cruel Ellenborough, but as many times acquitted. George Cruikshank inveighed ardently, earnestly, and at last successfully, with pencil and with etching-point, against the atrocious blood-thirstiness of the penal laws,—the laws that strung up from six to a dozen unfortunates on a gallows in front of Newgate every Monday morning, often for no direr offence than passing a counterfeit one-pound note. When the good old Tories wore top-boots and buckskins, George Cruikshank was conspicuous for a white hat and Hessians,—the distinguishing outward signs of ultra-liberalism. He was, of course, a Parliamentary Reformer in the year '30; and he has been a social reformer, and a most useful one, ever since. Still is there something about this brave old English worthy that approaches the fossil type. His droll dislike to the French—a hearty, good-humored disfavor, differing widely from the polished malevolence of Mr. John Leech, who never missed an opportunity to represent the airy Gaul as something repulsive, degraded, and ungentlemanly—I have already noticed. Then George Cruikshank has never been able to surmount a vague notion that steamboats and steam-engines are, generically speaking, a humbug, and that the old English sailing craft and the old English stage-coach are, after all, the only modes of conveyance worthy the patronage of Britons. Against exaggerated hoop-skirts he has all along set his face, and seldom, if ever, condescends to delineate a lady in crinoline. His beau-ideal of female beauty is comprised in an hour-glass waist, a skirt that fits close to the form, a sandalled shoe, and very long ringlets; whereas tight lacing, narrow skirts, sandalled shoes, and ringlets have been banished from the English modes any time these fifteen years. Those among George's critics, too, who are sticklers for exactitude in the "abstract and brief chronicle of the time" complain that his dandies always wear straps to their tight pantaloons in lieu of pegtops; that their vests are too short and their coat-collars too high; that they wear bell-crowned hats, and carry gold-knobbed canes with long tassels; and that they are dressed, in short, after the fashion of the year one, when Brummell or Pea-Green Haynes commanded the ton. It is obvious that the works of an artist who has refused to be indoctrinated with the perpetual changes of a capricious code of dress would never be very popular with the readers of "Punch,"—a periodical which, pictorially, owes its very existence to the readiness and skill displayed by its draughtsmen in shooting folly as it flies and catching the manners living as they rise, and pillorying the madness of the moment. Were George Cruikshank called upon, for instance, to depict a lady fording a puddle on a rainy day, and were he averse (for he is the modestest of artists) to displaying too much of her ankle, he would assuredly make manifest, beneath her upraised skirts, some antediluvian pantalet, bordered by a pre-Adamite frill. But the keen-eyed Mr. Leech would be guilty of no such anachronism. He would discover that the mysterious garments in question were ofttimes encircled by open-worked embroidery. He would find out that the ladies sometimes wore Knickerbockers. And this is what the ladies like. Exaggerate their follies as much as you please; but woe be to you, if you wrongfully accuse them! You may sneer at, you may censure, you may castigate them for what they really do, but beware of reprehending them for that which they have never done. Even Sir John Falstaff revolted at the imputation of having kissed the keeper's daughter. A sermon against crinoline, be it ever so fulminating, finds ever an attentive and smiling congregation; but venture to preach against coal-scuttle bonnets—until the ladies have really taken to wearing them—and your hearers would pull down the pulpit and hang the preacher.

Thus, although foreigners may express wonder that a designer, who for so many years has been in the front rank of English humorous artists, should never have contributed to the pages of our leading humorous periodical, astonishment may be abated, when the real state of the case, as I have endeavored to put it, is known. George Cruikshank is at once too good for, and not quite up to the mark of "Punch." His best works have always been his etchings on steel and copper; and wonderful examples of chalcographic brilliance and skill those etchings are,—many of them surpassing Callot, and not a few of them (notably the illustrations to Ainsworth's "Tower of London") rivalling Rembrandt. From the nature of these engravings, it would be impossible to print them at a machine-press for a weekly issue of fifty or sixty thousand copies. George has drawn much on wood, and his wondrous wood-cuts—xylographs, if you wish a more pretentious word—to "Three Courses and a Dessert," "The Odd Volume," "The Gentleman in Black," Grimm's "Fairy Tales," "Philosophy in Sport," and "The Table-Book," will be long remembered, and are now highly prized by amateurs; but his minute and delicate pencil-drawings have taxed the energies of the very best engravers of whom England can boast,—of Vizetelly, of Landells, of Jackson, of Thompson, and of Thurston. George Cruikshank would never suffer his drawings on wood to be slashed and chopped about by hasty or incompetent gravers; and although the ateliers of "Punch" are supplied with a first-rate staff of wood-cutters, very great haste and very little care must often be apparent in the weekly pabulum of cuts; nor should such an appearance excite surprise, when the exigencies of a weekly publication are remembered. The "Punch" artists, indeed, draw with a special reference to that which they know their engravers can or cannot do. Mr. Tenniel's cartoons are put on wood precisely as they are meant to be cut, in broad, firm, sweeping lines, and the wood-engraver has only to scoop out the white interstices between the network of lines; whereas Mr. Leech dashed in a bold pen-and-ink-like sketch and trusted to the xylographer, who knew his style well and of old, to produce an engraving, tant bien que mal, but as bold and as dashing as the original. The secession, for reasons theological, from "Punch" of Mr. Richard Doyle, an event which took place some fifteen years since, (how quickly time passes, to be sure!) was very bitterly regretted by his literary and artistic comrades; and the young man who calmly gave up something like a thousand pounds a year for conscience' sake lost nothing, but gained rather in the respect and admiration of society. But the wood-engravers must have held high carousal over the defection of Mr. Doyle. To cut one of his drawings was a crucial experiment. His hand was not sure in its touch; he always drew six lines instead of one; and in the portrait of a lady from his pencil, the agonized engraver had to hunt through a Cretan labyrinth of faces before he found the particular countenance which Mr. Doyle wished to be engraved.

I have strayed away, perhaps unpardonably, from George Cruikshank. To those whose only ludicrous prophet is "Punch" he may be comparatively little known. But in the great world of pictorial art, both in England and on the Continent, he worthily holds an illustrious place. His name is a household word with his countrymen; and whenever a young hopeful displays ever so crude an aptitude for caricaturing his schoolmaster, or giving with slate and pencil the facetious side of his grandmother's cap and spectacles, he is voted by the unanimous suffrage of fireside critics to be a "regular Cruikshank." In this connection I have heard him sometimes called "Crookshanks," which is taking, I apprehend, even a grosser liberty with his name than in the case of the additional c,—"Crookshanks" having seemingly a reference, and not a complimentary one, to George's legs.

This admirable artist and good man was the son of old Isaac Cruikshank, in his day a famous engraver of lottery-tickets, securities in which the British public are now no longer by law permitted to invest, but which, fifty years since, made as constant a demand on the engraver's art as, in our time and in America, is made by the thousand and one joint-stock banks whose pictorial promises-to-pay fill, or should properly fill, our pocket-books. The abilities of Isaac were not entirely devoted to the lottery; and I have at home, from his hand, a very rare and curious etching of the execution of Louis XVI., with an explanatory diagram beneath of the working of the guillotine. George Cruikshank's earliest pencil-drawings are dated, as I have remarked, before the present century drew breath; but he must have begun to gain reputation as a caricaturist upon copper towards the end of the career of Napoleon I.,—the "Boney" to whom he has adhered with such constant, albeit jocular, animosity. He was the natural successor of James Gillray, the renowned delineator of "Farmer George and Little Nap," and "Pitt and Boney at Dinner," and hundreds of political cartoons, eagerly bought in their day, but now to be found only in old print-shops. Gillray was a man of vast, but misapplied talents. Although he etched caricatures for a livelihood, his drawing was splendid,—wellnigh Michel-Angelesque,—but always careless and outre. He was continually betting crown-bowls of punch that he would design, etch, and bite in so many plates within a given time, and, with the assistance of a private bowl, he almost always won his bets; but the punch was too much for him in the long run. He went mad and died miserably. George Cruikshank was never his pupil; nor did he ever attain the freedom and mastery of outline which the crazy old reprobate, who made the fortune of Mr. Humphries, the St. James's Street print-seller, undeniably possessed; but his handling was grounded upon Gillray's style; and from early and attentive study of his works he must have acquired that boldness of treatment, that rotundity of light and shade, and that general "fatness," or morbidezza, of touch, which make the works of Gillray and Cruikshank stand out from the coarse scrawls of Rowlandson, and the bald and meagre scratches of Sir Charles Bunbury. Unless I am much mistaken, one of the first works that brought George into notice was an etching published in 1815, having reference to the exile of the detested Corsican to St. Helena. But it was in 1821 that he first made a decided mark. For William Hone—a man who was in perpetual opposition to the powers that were—he drew on wood a remarkable series of illustrations to the scurrilous, but perhaps not undeserved, satires against King George IV., called, "The Political House that Jack Built," "The Green Bag," "A Slap at Slop," and the like,—all of them having direct and most caustic reference to the scandalous prosecution instituted against a woman of whom it is difficult to say whether she was bad or mad or both, but who was assuredly most miserable,—the unhappy Caroline of Brunswick. George Cruikshank's sketch of the outraged husband, the finest and stoutest gentleman in Europe, being lowered by means of a crane into a pair of white kid pantaloons suspended between the posts of his bed, was inimitably droll, and clearly disloyal. But disloyalty was fashionable in the year '21.

For twenty years afterwards the history of the artist's career is but the history of his works, of his innumerable illustrations to books, and the sketchbooks, comic panoramas, and humorous cartoons he published on his own account. Besides, I am not writing a life of George Cruikshank, and all this time I have been keeping him on the threshold of the city of Mexico. Let it suffice to say, briefly, that in 1841 came a stand-point in his life, through the establishment of a monthly magazine entitled "George Cruikshank's Omnibus." Of this he was the sole illustrator. The literary editor was Laman Blanchard; and in the "Omnibus," William Makepeace Thackeray, then a gaunt young man, not much over thirty, and quite unknown to fame,—although he had published "Yellowplush" in "Fraser,"—wrote his quaint and touching ballad of "The King of Brentford's Testament." The "Omnibus" did not run long, nor was its running very prosperous. George Cruikshank seemed for a while wearied with the calling of a caricaturist; and the large etchings on steel, with which between '40 and '45 he illustrated Ainsworth's gory romances, indicated a power of grouping, a knowledge of composition, a familiarity with mediaeval costume, and a command over chiaroscuro, which astonished and delighted those who had been accustomed to regard him only as a funny fellow,—one of infinite whim, to be sure, but still a jester of jests, and nothing more. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case might be,—for the rumor ran that George intended to abandon caricaturing altogether, and to set up in earnest as an historical painter,—there came from beyond the sea, to assist in illustrating "Windsor Castle," a Frenchman named Tony Johannot. Who but he, in fact, was the famous master of the grotesque who illustrated "Don Quixote" and the "Diable Boiteux" of Le Sage? To his dismay, George Cruikshank found a competitor as eccentric as himself, as skilful a manipulator rem acu, the etching-point, and who drew incomparably better than he, George Cruikshank, did. He gave up the mediaeval in disgust; but he must have hugged himself with the thought that he had already illustrated Charles Dickens's "Oliver Twist," and that the Frenchman, powerful as he was, could never hope to come near him in that terrific etching of "Fagin in the Condemned Cell."

Again nearly twenty years have passed, and George Cruikshank still waves his Ithuriel's spear of well-ground steel, and still dabbles in aquafortis. An old, old man, he is still strong and hale. If you ask him a reason for his thus rivalling Fontenelle in his patriarchal greenness, for his being able at threescore and ten to paint pictures, (witness that colossal oil-painting of the "Triumph of Bacchus,") to make speeches, and to march at the head of his company as a captain of volunteers, he will give you at once the why and because. He is the most zealous, the most conscientious, and the most invulnerable of total abstainers. There were days when he took tobacco: witness that portrait of himself, smoking a very long meerschaum pipe in "Love's Triumph," etched about 1845. There were times when he heard the chimes at midnight, and partook of that "richt gude willie waucht" which tipsy Scotchmen, when they have formed in a ring, standing upon chairs, each with one foot on the table, hiccoughingly declare that we are bound to take for the sake of "auld lang syne." But George Cruikshank has done with willie wauchts as with bird's-eye and Killikinick. For many years he has neither drunk nor smoked. He is more than a confessor, he is an apostle of temperance. His strange, wild, grand performances, "The Bottle" and "The Drunkard's Children,"—the first quite Hogarthian in its force and pungency,—fell like thunderbolts among the gin-shops. I am afraid that George Cruikshank would not be a very welcome guest at Felix Booth's distillery, or at Barclay and Perkins's brewery. For, it must be granted, the sage is a little intolerant. "No peace with the Fiery Moloch!" "Ecrasons l'infame!" These are his mottoes. He would deprive the poor man of the scantiest drop of beer. You begin with a sip of "the right stuff," he teaches us in "The Bottle," and you end by swigging a gallon of vitriol, jumping on your wife, and dying in Bedlam of delirium tremens. I have not heard his opinions concerning cider, or root-beer, or effervescing sarsaparilla, or ginger-pop; but I imagine that each and every one of those reputed harmless beverages would enter into his Index Expurgatorius. "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop [of alcohol] to drink." 'Tis thus he would quote Coleridge. He is as furious against tobacco as ever was King James in his "Counterblast." He is of the mind of the old divine, that "he who plays with the Devil's rattles will soon learn to draw his sword." In his pious rage against intemperance, and with a view to the instruction of the rising generation, he has even published teetotal versions of "Cinderella" and "Jack the Giant-Killer,"—a proceeding which Charles Dickens indignantly reprobated in an article in "Household Words," called "Frauds upon the Fairies." Nearly the last time I met George Cruikshank in London was at a dinner given in honor of Washington's birthday. He had just been gazetted captain of his rifle company, and was good enough to ask me if I knew any genteel young men, of strictly temperance principles, who would like commissions in his corps. I replied, that, so far as principles were concerned, I could recommend him five hundred postulants; but that, as regarded practice, most of the young men of my acquaintance, who had manifested an ambition for a military career, drank hard.

The which, oddly enough, leads me at last to Mexico.—We had had, on the whole, rather a hard morning of it. The Don, who was my host in the siempre leal y insigne ciudad de Mejico,—and a most munificent and hospitable Don he was,—took me out one day in the month of March last to visit a hacienda or farm which he possessed, called, if I remember aright, La Escalera. I repeat, we had a hard morning of it. We rose at six,—and in mountainous Mexico the ground at early morn, even during summer, is often covered with a frosty rime. I looked out of the window, and when I saw the leaves of the trees glistening with something which was not dew, and Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl mantled with eternal snows in the distance, I shivered. A cup of chocolate, a tortilla or thin griddle-cake of Indian meal, and a paper cigar, just to break your fast, and then to horse. To horse! Do you know what it is, being a poor horseman, to bestride a full-blood, full-bred white Arab, worth ever so many hundred pesos de oro, and, with his flowing mane and tail, and small, womanly, vixenish head, beautiful to look upon, but which in temper, like many other beauteous creatures I have known, is an incarnate fiend? The Arab they gave me had been the property of a French general. I vehemently suspect that he had been dismissed from the Imperial army for biting a chef d'escadron through one of his jackboots, or kicking in three of the ribs of a marechal des logis. That was hard enough, to begin with. Then the streets of Mexico are execrably paved, and the roads leading out of the city are full of what in Ireland are termed "curiosities," to wit, holes; and my Arab had a habit, whenever he met an equine brother, and especially an equine sister, on the way, of screaming like a possessed Pythoness, and then of essaying to stand on his hind legs. However, with a Mexican saddle,—out of which you can scarcely fall, even though you had a mind to it,—and Mexican stirrups, and a pair of spurs nearly as big as Catharine-wheels, the Arab and I managed to reach the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, five miles out, and thence, over tolerably good roads, another five miles, to the Escalera. I wish they would make Mexican saddles of something else besides wood very thinly covered with leather. How devoutly did I long for the well-stuffed pig-skin of Hyde Park! We had an hour or two more hard work riding about the fields, when we reached the farm, watching the process of extracting pulque from the maguey or cactus,—and a very nasty process it is,—inspecting the granaries belonging to the hacienda, and dodging between the rows of Indian corn, which grows here to so prodigious a height as to rival the famous grain which is said to grow somewhere down South, and to attain such an altitude that a Comanche perched upon the head of a giraffe is invisible between the rows. About noon we had breakfast, and that was the hardest work of all. Item, we had mutton-chops, beefsteaks, veal cutlets, omelets, rice, hominy, fried tomatoes, and an infinity of Mexican hashes and stews seasoned with chiles or red-pepper pods. Item, we had a huge pavo, a turkey,—a wild turkey; and then, for the first time, did I understand that the bird we Englishmen consume only at Christmas, and then declare to be tough and flavorless, is to be eaten to perfection only in the central regions of the American continent. The flesh of this pavo was like softened ivory, and his fat like unto clotted cream. There were some pretty little tiny kickshaws in the way of pine-apples, musk-melons, bananas, papaws, and custard-apples, and many other tropical fruits whose names I have forgotten. I think, too, that we had some stewed iguana or lizard; but I remember, that, after inflicting exemplary punishment on a bowl of sour cream, we wound up by an attack on an albacor, a young kid roasted whole, or rather baked in a lump of clay with wood-ashes heaped over him, and brought to table on a tea-tray! Shade of Gargantua, how we ate! I blessed that fiery Arab for giving me such an appetite. There was a good deal of smoking going on at odd times during breakfast; but nobody ventured beyond a cigarro of paper and fine-cut before we attacked the albacor. When coffee was served, each man lighted a puro, one of the biggest of Cabana's Regalias; and serious and solemn puffing then set in. It was a memorable breakfast. The Administrador, or steward of the estate, had evidently done his best to entertain his patron the Don with becoming magnificence, nor were potables as dainty as the edibles wanting to furnish forth the feast. There was pulque for those who chose to drink it. I never could stomach that fermented milk of human unkindness, which combines the odor of a dairy that has been turned into a grogshop with the flavor of rotten eggs. There was wine of Burgundy and wine of Bordeaux; there was Champagne: these three from the Don's cellar in Mexico, and the last cooled, not with vulgar ice, but with snow from the summit of Popocatepetl,—snow that had been there from the days of Montezuma and Guatimozin; while as chasse and pousse to the exquisitely flavored Mexican coffee, grown, ground, and roasted on the hacienda, we had some very ripe old French Cognac, (1804, I think, was the brand,) and some Peruvian pisco, a strong white cordial, somewhat resembling kirsch-wasser, and exceeding toothsome. We talked and laughed till we grew sleepy, (the edibles and potables had of course nothing to do with our somnolence,) and then, the farm-house of the hacienda having seemingly as many rooms as the Vatican, each man hied him to a cool chamber, where he found a trundle-bed, or a hammock, or a sofa, and gravely laid himself out for an hour's siesta. Then the Administrador woke us all up, and gleefully presented us with an enormous bowl of sangaree, made of the remains of the Bordeaux and the brandy and the pisco, and plenty of ice,—ice this time,—and sugar, and limes, and slices of pineapple, Madam,—the which he had concocted during our slumber. We drained this,—one gets so thirsty after breakfast in Mexico,—and then to horse again for a twelve miles' ride back to the city. I omitted to mention two or three little circumstances which gave a zest and piquancy to the entertainment. When we arrived at the hacienda, although servitors were in plenty, each cavalier unsaddled and fed his own steed; and when we addressed ourselves to our siesta, every one who didn't find a double-barrelled gun at the head of his bed took care to place a loaded revolver under his pillow. For accidents will happen in the best-regulated families; and in Mexico you can never tell at what precise moment Cacus may be upon you.

Riding back to the siempre leal y insigne ciudad at about three o'clock in the afternoon, when the sun was at its hottest, was no joke. Baking is not precisely the word, nor boiling, nay, nor frying; something which is a compound of all these might express the sensation I, for one, felt. Fortunately, the Don had insisted on my assuming the orthodox Mexican riding-costume: cool linen drawers, cut Turkish fashion; over these, and with just sufficient buttons in their respective holes to swear by, the leathern chapareros or overalls; morocco slippers, to which were strapped the Catharine-wheel spurs; no vest; no neckerchief; a round jacket, with quarter doubloons for buttons; and a low-crowned felt hat, with an enormous brim, a brim which might have made a Quaker envious, and have stricken mortification to the soul of a Chinese mandarin. This brim kept the sun out of your eyes; and then, by way of hatband, there was a narrow, but thick turban or "pudding," which prevented the rays of Sol from piercing through your skull, and boiling your brains into batter. The fact of the whole of this costume, and the accoutrements of your horse to boot, being embroidered with silver and embellished with golden bosses, thus affording a thousand tangents for Phoebus to fly off from, rather detracted from the coolness of your array; but one must not expect perfection here below. In a stove-pipe hat, a shooting-coat, and riding-cords, I should have suffered much more from the heat. As it was, I confess, that, when I reached home, in the Calle San Francisco, Mexico, I was exceedingly thankful. I am not used to riding twenty-four miles in one day. I think I had a warm bath in the interval between doffing the chapareros and donning the pantaloons of every-day life. I think I went to sleep on a sofa for about an hour, and, waking up, called for a cocktail as a restorative. Yes, Madam, there are cocktails in Mexico, and our Don's body-servant made them most scientifically. I think also that I declined, with thanks, the Don's customary invitation to a drive before dinner in the Paseo. Nor barouche, nor mail-phaeton, nay, nor soft-cushioned brougham delighted me. I felt very lazy and thoroughly knocked up.

The Don, however, went out for his drive, smiling at my woful plight. Is it only after hard riding that remorse succeeds enjoyment? I was left alone in his great caravansary of a mansion. I wandered from room to room, from corridor to corridor,—now glancing through the window-jalousies, and peeping at the chinas in their ribosos, and the shovel-hatted priests in the street below creeping along on the shady side of the way,—now hanging over the gallery in the inner court-yard, listening to the horses stamping in their stables or rattling their tethers against the mangers, listening now to the English grooms as they whistled the familiar airs of home while they rubbed their charges down, and now to the sleepy, plaintive drone of the Indian servants loitering over their work in the kitchens. Then I wandered back again,—from drawing-room to dining-room, from bedchamber to boudoir. And at last I found that I had crossed a bridge over another court-yard, and gotten into another house, abutting on another street. The Don was still lord here, and I was free to ramble. More drawing-rooms, more bedchambers, more boudoirs, a chapel, and at last a library. Libraries are not plentiful in Mexico. Here, on many shelves, was a goodly store of standard literature in many languages. Here was Prescott's History of the Conquest, translated into choice Castilian, and Senor Ramirez his comments thereupon. Here was Don Lucas Alaman his History of Mexico, and works by Jesuit fathers innumerable. How ever did they get printed? Who ever bought, who ever read, those cloudy tomes in dog Latin? Here was Lord Kingsborough's vast work on Mexican Antiquities,—the work his Lordship is reported to have ruined himself in producing; and Macaulay, and Dickens, and Washington Irving, and the British Essayists, and the Waverley Novels, and Shakspeare, and Soyer's Cookery, and one little book of mine own writing: a very well-chosen library indeed.

What have we here? A fat, comely, gilt-lettered volume, bound in red morocco, and that might, externally, have passed for my grandmother's edition of Dr. Doddridge's Sermons. As I live, 't is a work illustrated by George Cruikshank,—a work hitherto unknown to me, albeit I fancied myself rich, even to millionnairism, in Cruikshankiana. It is a rare book, a precious book, a book that is not in the British Museum, a book for which collectors would gladly give more doubloons than I lost at monte last night; for here the most moral people play monte. It is un costumbre del pais,—a custom of the country; and, woe is me! I lost a pile 'twixt midnight and cock-crow.

"Life in Paris; or the Rambles, Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain O'Shuffleton, with the Whimsical Adventures of the Halibut Family, and Other Eccentric Characters in the French Metropolis. Embellished with Twenty-One Comic Vignettes and Twenty-One Colored Engravings of Scenes from Real Life, by George Cruikshank. London: Printed for John Cumberland. 1828." This "Life in Paris" was known to me by dim literary repute; but I had never seen, the actual volume before. Its publication was a disastrous failure. Emboldened by the prodigious success of "Life in London,"—the adventures in the Great Metropolis of Corinthian Tom and Jerry—Somebody—and Bob Logic, Esquire, written by Pierce Egan, once a notorious chronicler of the prize-ring, the compiler of a Slang Dictionary, and whose proficiency in argot and flash-patter was honored by poetic celebration from Byron, Moore, and Christopher North, but whom I remember, when I was first climbing into public life, a decrepit, broken-down old man,—Mr. John Cumberland, of Ludgate Hill, (the publisher, by the way, of that series of the "Acting Drama" to which, over the initials of D—G, and the figure of a hand pointing, some of the most remarkable dramatic criticisms in the English language are appended,) thought, not unreasonably, that "Life in Paris" might attain a vogue as extensive as that achieved by "Life in London." I don't know who wrote the French "Life." Pierce Egan could scarcely have been the author; for he was then at the height of a vicious and ephemeral popularity; and any book, however trashy, with his name to it, would have been sure to sell. This "Life in Paris" was very probably the work of some obscure hack, who, when he was describing the "eccentric characters in the French metropolis," may not impossibly have been vegetating in the Rules of the King's Bench Prison. But crafty Mr. Cumberland, to insure the success of his enterprise, secured the services of George Cruikshank as illustrator. George had a brother Robert, who had caught something of his touch and manner, but nothing of his humorous genius, and who assisted him in illustrating "Life in London"; but "Life in Paris" was to be all his own; and he undertook a journey to France in order to study Gallic life and make sketches. The results were now before me in twenty-one small vignettes on wood, (of not much account,) and of as many large aquatint engravings, (George can aquatint as well as etch,) crowded with figures, and displaying the unmistakable and inimitable Cruikshankian vim and point. There is Dick Wildfire being attired, with the aid of the friseur and the tailor, and under the sneering inspection of Sam Sharp, his Yorkshire valet, according to the latest Parisian fashions. Next we have Dick and Captain O'Shuffleton (an Irish adventurer) "promenading in the Gardens of the Tuileries"; next, "real life" in the galleries of the Palais Royal; next, Dick, the Captain, Lady Halibut, and Lydia "enjoying a lounge on the Italian Boulevard." To these succeed a representation of a dinner at Very's; Dick and his companions "smashing the glim on a spree by lamplight"; Dick and the Captain "paying their respects to the Fair Limonadiere at the Cafe des Mille Colonnes"; Dick introduced by the Captain to a Rouge et Noir table; the same and his valet "showing fight in a Caveau"; "Life behind the Curtain of the Grand Opera, or Dick and the Squire larking with the Figurantes"; Dick and the Squire "enjoying the sport at the Combat of Animals, or Duck Lane of Paris"; Dick and Jenkins "in a Theatrical Pandemonium, or the Cafe de la Paix in all its glory"; "Life among the Dead, or the Halibut Family in the Catacombs"; "Life among the Connoisseurs," or Dick and his friends "in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre"; "a Frolic in the Cafe d'Enfer, or Infernal Cellar"; "Life on Tiptoe, or Dick quadrilling it in the Salons de Mars in the Champs Elysees"; the "Entree to the Italian Opera"; the "Morning of the Fete of St. Louis"; the "Evening of the same, with Dick, Jenkins, and the Halibuts witnessing the Canaille in all their glory"; and, finally, "Life in a Billiard-Room, or Dick and the Squire au fait to the Parisian Sharpers."

I have said that these illustrations are full of point and drollery. They certainly lack that round, full touch so distinctive of George Cruikshank, and which he learned from Gillray; but such a touch can be given only when the shadows as well as the outlines of a plate are etched; and the intent of an aquatint engraving is, as the reader may or may not know, to produce the effect of a drawing in Indian ink.[C] Still there is much in these pictures to delight the Cruikshankian connoisseur,—infinite variety in physiognomy, wonderful minuteness and accuracy in detail, and here and there sparkles of the true Hogarthian satire.

But a banquet in which the plates only are good is but a Barmecide feast, after all. The letter-press to this "Life in Paris" is the vilest rubbish imaginable,—a farrago of St. Giles's slang, Tottenham Court Road doggerel, ignorance, lewdness, and downright dulness. Mr. John Cumberland, of Ludgate Hill, took, accordingly, very little by his motion. The "Life" fell almost stillborn from the press; and George Cruikshank must have regretted that he ever had anything to do with it. The major part of the impression must years ago have been used to line trunks, inwrap pies, and singe geese; but to our generation, and to those which are to come, this sorry volume will be more than a curiosity: it will be literarily and artistically an object of great and constantly increasing value. By the amateur of Cruikshankiana it will be prized for the reason that the celebrated Latin pamphlet proving that Edward VI. never had the toothache was prized, although the first and last leaves were wanting, by Theodore Hook's Tom Hill. It will be treasured for its scarcity. To the student of social history it will be of even greater value, as the record of a state of manners, both in England and France, which has wholly and forever passed away. The letter-press portraits, drawn by the hack author, of a party of English tourists are but foul and stupid libels; but their aquatint portraits, as bitten in by George Cruikshank, are, albeit exaggerated, true in many respects to Nature. In fact, we were used, when George IV. was king, to send abroad these overdressed and under-bred clowns and Mohawks,—whelps of the squirarchy and hobbledehoys of the universities,—Squire Gawkies and Squire Westerns and Tony Lumpkins, Mrs. Malaprops and Lydia Languishes, by the hundred and the thousand. "The Fudge Family in Paris" and the letters of Mrs. Ramsbotham read nowadays like the most outrageous of caricatures; but they failed not to hit many a blot in the times which gave them birth. It was really reckoned fashionable in 1828 to make a visit to Paris the occasion for the coarsest of "sprees,"—to get tipsy at Very's,—to "smash the glims,"—to parade those infamous Galeries de Bois in the Palais Royal which were the common haunt of abandoned women,—to beat the gendarmes, and, indeed, the first Frenchman who happened to turn up, merely on the ground that he was a Frenchman. But France and the French have changed since then, as well as England and the English. Are these the only countries in the world whose people and whose manners have turned volte-face within less than half a century? I declare that I read from beginning to end, the other day, a work called "Salmagundi," and that I could not recognize in one single page anything to remind me of the New York of the present day. Thus in the engravings to "Life in Paris" are there barely three which any modern Parisian would admit to possess any direct or truthful reference to Paris life as it is. People certainly continue to dine at Very's; but Englishmen no longer get tipsy there, no longer smash the plates or kick the waiters. In lieu of dusky billiard-rooms, the resort of duskier sharpers, there are magnificent saloons, containing five, ten, and sometimes twenty billiard-tables. The Galeries de Bois have been knocked to pieces these thirty years. The public gaming-houses have been shut up. There are no longer any brutal dog-and-bear-baitings at the Barriere du Combat. There is no longer a Belle Limonadiere at the Cafe des Mille Colonnes. Belles Limonadieres (if I may be permitted to use one of the most inelegant, but the most expressive, of American colloquialisms) are "played out." The Catacombs have long since been shut to strangers. The Caveau exists no more. Old reprobates scarcely remember the Cafe d'Enfer. The Fete of St. Louis is as dead as Louis XVIII., as dead as the Fetes of July, as the Fetes of the Republic. There is but one national festival now,—and that is on the 15th of August, and in honor of St. Napoleon. There are no more "glims" to smash; the old oil reverberes have been replaced by showy gas-lamps, and the sergents de ville would make short work of any roisterers who attempted to take liberties with them. The old Paris of the Restoration and the Monarchy is dead; but the Thane of Cawdor—I mean George Cruikshank—lives, a prosperous gentleman.

I brought the book away with me from Mexico, all the way down to Vera Cruz, and so on to Cuba, and thence to New York; and it is in Boston with me now. But it is not mine. The Don did not even lend it to me. I had only his permission to take it from the library to my room, and turn it over there; but when I was coming away, that same body-servant, thinking it was my property, carefully packed it among the clothes in my portmanteau; and I did not discover his mistake and my temporary gain until I was off. I mention this in all candor; for I am conscious that there never was a book-collector yet who did not, at some period or other of his life, at least meditate the commission of a felony. But the Don is coming to the States this autumn, and I must show him that I have not been a fraudulent bailee. I shall have taken, at all events, my fill of pleasure from the book; and I hope that George Cruikshank will live to read what I have written; and God bless his honest old heart, anyhow!

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Aquatint engraving in England is all but a dead art. It is now employed only in portraits of race-horses, which are never sold uncolored, and in plates of the fashions. The present writer had the honor, twelve years since, of producing the last "great" work (so far as size was concerned) undertaken in England. It was a monster panorama, some sixty feet long, representing the funeral procession of the Duke of Wellington. It was published by the well-known house of Ackermann, in the Strand; and the writer regrets to say that the house went bankrupt very shortly afterwards.



LEAVES FROM AN OFFICER'S JOURNAL.

III.

CAMP SAXTON, NEAR BEAUFORT, S. C. January 3, 1864.

Once, and once only, thus far, the water has frozen in my tent; and the next morning showed a dense white frost outside. We have still mocking-birds and crickets and rosebuds and occasional noonday baths in the river, though the butterflies have vanished, as I remember to have observed in Fayal, after December. I have been here nearly six weeks without a rainy day; one or two slight showers there have been, once interrupting a drill, but never dress parade. For climate, by day, we might be among the isles of Greece,—though it may be my constant familiarity with the names of her sages which suggests that impression. For instance, a voice just now called, near my tent,—"Cato, whar's Plato?"

The men have somehow got the impression that it is essential to the validity of a marriage that they should come to me for permission, just as they used to go to the master; and I rather encourage these little confidences, because it is so entertaining to hear them. "Now, Cunnel," said a faltering swain the other day, "I want for get me one good lady," which I approved, especially the limitation as to number. Afterwards I asked one of the bridegroom's friends whether he thought it a good match. "Oh, yes, Cunnel," said he, in all the cordiality of friendship, "John's gwine for marry Venus." I trust the goddess prove herself a better lady than she appeared during her previous career upon this planet. But this naturally suggests the isles of Greece again.

January 7.—On first arriving, I found a good deal of anxiety among the officers as to the increase of desertions, that being the rock on which the "Hunter Regiment" split. Now this evil is very nearly stopped, and we are every day recovering the older absentees. One of the very best things that have happened to us was a half-accidental shooting of a man who had escaped from the guard-house, and was wounded by a squad sent in pursuit. He has since died; and this very evening, another man, who escaped with him, came and opened the door of my tent, after being five days in the woods, almost without food. His clothes were in rags, and he was nearly starved, poor foolish fellow, so that we can almost dispense with further punishment. Severe penalties would be wasted on these people, accustomed as they have been to the most violent passions on the part of white men; but a mild inexorableness tells on them, just as it does on any other children. It is something utterly new to them, and it is thus far perfectly efficacious. They have a great deal of pride as soldiers, and a very little of severity goes a great way, if it be firm and consistent. This is very encouraging.

The single question which I asked of some of the plantation-superintendents, on the voyage, was, "Do these people appreciate justice?" If they did, it was evident that all the rest would be easy. When a race is degraded beyond that point, it must be very hard to deal with them; they must mistake all kindness for indulgence, all strictness for cruelty. With these freed slaves there is no such trouble, not a particle: let an officer be only just and firm, with a cordial, kindly nature, and he has no sort of difficulty. The plantation-superintendents and teachers have the same experience, they say; but we have an immense advantage in the military organization, which helps in two ways: it increases their self-respect, and it gives us an admirable machinery for discipline, thus improving both the fulcrum and the lever.

The wounded man died in the hospital, and the general verdict seemed to be, "Him brought it on heself." Another soldier died of pneumonia on the same day, and we had the funerals in the evening. It was very impressive. A dense mist came up, with a moon behind it, and we had only the light of pine-splinters, as the procession wound along beneath the mighty moss-hung branches of the ancient grove. The groups around the grave, the dark faces, the red garments, the scattered lights, the misty boughs, were weird and strange. The men sang one of their own wild chants. Two crickets sang also, one on either side, and did not cease their little monotone, even when the three volleys were fired above the graves. Just before the coffins were lowered, an old man whispered to me that I must have their position altered,—the heads must be towards the west; so it was done,—though they are in a place so veiled in woods that either rising or setting sun will find it hard to spy them.

We have now a good regimental hospital, admirably arranged in a deserted gin-house,—a fine well of our own within the camp-lines,—a ful-allowance of tents, all floored,—a wooden cook-house to every company, with sometimes a palmetto mess-house beside,—a substantial wooden guard-house, with a fireplace five feet "in de clar," where the men off duty can dry themselves and sleep comfortably in bunks afterwards. We have also a great circular school-tent, made of condemned canvas, thirty feet in diameter, and looking like some of the Indian lodges I saw in Kansas. We now meditate a regimental bakery. Our aggregate has increased from four hundred and ninety to seven hundred and forty, besides a hundred recruits now waiting at St. Augustine, and we have practised through all the main movements in battalion drill.

Affairs being thus prosperous, and yesterday having been six weeks since my last and only visit to Beaufort, I rode in, glanced at several camps, and dined with the General. It seemed absolutely like reentering the world; and I did not fully estimate my past seclusion till it occurred to me, as a strange and novel phenomenon, that the soldiers at the other camps were white.

January 8.—This morning I went to Beaufort again, on necessary business, and by good luck happened upon a review and drill of the white regiments. The thing that struck me most was that same absence of uniformity, in minor points, that I noticed at first in my own officers. The best regiments in the Department are represented among my captains and lieutenants, and very well represented, too; yet it has cost much labor to bring them to any uniformity in their drill. There is no need of this, for the prescribed "Tactics" approach perfection: it is never left discretionary in what place an officer shall stand, or in what words he shall give his order. All variation would seem to imply negligence. Yet even West Point occasionally varies from the "Tactics,"—as, for instance, in requiring the line officers to face down the line, when each is giving the order to his company. In our strictest Massachusetts regiments this is not done.

It needs an artist's eye to make a perfect drill-master. Yet the small points are not merely a matter of punctilio; for, the more perfectly a battalion is drilled on the parade-ground, the more quietly it can be handled in action. Moreover, the great need of uniformity is this: that, in the field, soldiers of different companies, and even of different regiments, are liable to be intermingled, and a diversity of orders may throw everything into confusion. Confusion means Bull Run.

I wished my men at the review to-day; for, amidst all the rattling and noise of artillery and the galloping of cavalry, there was only one infantry movement that we have not practised, and that was done by only one regiment, and apparently considered quite a novelty, though it is easily taught,—forming square by Casey's method: forward on centre.

It is really just as easy to drill a regiment as a company,—perhaps easier, because one has more time to think; but it is just as essential to be sharp and decisive, perfectly clear-headed, and to put life into the men. A regiment seems small when one has learned how to handle it, a mere handful of men; and I have no doubt that a brigade or a division would soon appear equally small. But to handle either judiciously,—ah, that is another affair!

So of governing: it is as easy to govern a regiment as a school or a factory, and needs like qualities,—system, promptness, patience, tact; moreover, in a regiment one has the aid of the admirable machinery of the army, so that I see very ordinary men who succeed very tolerably.

Reports of a six months' armistice are rife here, and the thought is deplored by all. I cannot believe it, yet sometimes one feels very anxious about the ultimate fate of these poor people. After the experience of Hungary, one sees that revolutions may go backward; and the habit of injustice seems so deeply impressed upon the whites, that it is hard to believe in the possibility of anything better. I dare not yet hope that the promise of the President's Proclamation will be kept. For myself I can be indifferent, for the experience here has been its own daily and hourly reward; and the adaptedness of the freed slaves for drill and discipline is now thoroughly demonstrated and must soon be universally acknowledged. But it would be terrible to see this regiment disbanded or defrauded.

January 12.—Many things glide by without time to narrate them. On Saturday we had a mail with the President's Second Message of Emancipation, and the next day it was read to the men. The words themselves did not stir them very much, because they have been often told that they were free, especially on New-Year's Day, and, being unversed in politics, they do not understand, as well as we do, the importance of each additional guaranty. But the chaplain spoke to them afterwards very effectively, as usual; and then I proposed to them to hold up their hands and pledge themselves to be faithful to those still in bondage. They entered heartily into this, and the scene was quite impressive, beneath the great oak-branches. I heard afterwards that only one man refused to raise his hand, saying bluntly that his wife was out of slavery with him, and he did not care to fight. The other soldiers of his company were very indignant, and shoved him about among them while marching back to their quarters, calling him "Coward." I was glad of their exhibition of feeling, though it is very possible that the one who had thus the moral courage to stand alone among his comrades might be more reliable, on a pinch, than some who yielded a more ready assent. But the whole response, on their part, was very hearty, and will be a good thing to which to hold them hereafter, at any time of discouragement or demoralization,—which was my chief reason for proposing it. With their simple natures, it is a great thing to tie them to some definite committal; they never forget a marked occurrence, and never seem disposed to evade a pledge.

It is this capacity of honor and fidelity which gives me such entire faith in them as soldiers. Without it, all their religious demonstration would be mere sentimentality. For instance, every one who visits the camp is struck with their bearing as sentinels. They exhibit, in this capacity, not an upstart conceit, but a steady, conscientious devotion to duty. They would stop their idolized General Saxton, if he attempted to cross their beat contrary to orders: I have seen them. No feeble or incompetent race could do this. The officers tell many amusing instances of this fidelity, but I think mine the best.

It was very dark the other night,—an unusual thing here,—and the rain fell in torrents; so I put on my India-rubber suit, and went the rounds of the sentinels, incognito, to test them. I can only say that I shall never try such an experiment again, and have cautioned my officers against it. 'T is a wonder I escaped with life and limb,—such a charging of bayonets and clicking of gun-locks. Sometimes I tempted them by refusing to give any countersign, but offering them a piece of tobacco, which they could not accept without allowing me nearer than the prescribed bayonet's distance. Tobacco is more than gold to them, and it was touching to watch the struggle in their minds; but they always did their duty at last, and I never could persuade them. One man, as if wishing to crush all his inward vacillations at one fell stroke, told me stoutly that he never used tobacco, though I found next day that he loved it as much as any one of them. It seemed wrong thus to tamper with their fidelity; yet it was a vital matter to me to know how far it could be trusted, out of my sight. It was so intensely dark that not more than one or two knew me, even after I had talked with the very next sentinel, especially as they had never seen me in India-rubber clothing, and I can always disguise my voice. It was easy to distinguish those who did make the discovery; they were always conscious and simpering when their turn came; while the others were stout and irreverent till I revealed myself, and then rather cowed and anxious, fearing to have offended.

It rained harder and harder, and when I had nearly made the rounds, I had had enough of it, and, simply giving the countersign to the challenging sentinel, undertook to pass within the lines.

"Halt!" exclaimed this dusky man and brother, bringing down his bayonet,—"de countersign not correck."

Now the magic word, in this case, was "Vicksburg," in honor of a rumored victory. But as I knew that these hard names became quite transformed upon their lips, "Carthage" being familiarized into Cartridge, and "Concord" into Corn-cob, how could I possibly tell what shade of pronunciation my friend might prefer for this particular proper name?

"Vicksburg," I repeated, blandly, but authoritatively, endeavoring, as zealously as one of Christy's Minstrels, to assimilate my speech to any supposed predilection of the Ethiop vocal organs.

"Halt dar! Countersign not correck," was the only answer.

The bayonet still maintained a position which, in a military point of view, was impressive.

I tried persuasion, orthography, threats, tobacco, all in vain. I could not pass in. Of course my pride was up; for was I to defer to an untutored African on a point of pronunciation? Classic shades of Harvard, forbid! Affecting scornful indifference, I tried to edge away, proposing to myself to enter the camp at some other point, where my elocution would be better appreciated. Not a step could I stir.

"Halt!" shouted my gentleman again, still holding me at his bayonet's point, and I wincing and halting.

I explained to him the extreme absurdity of this proceeding, called his attention to the state of the weather, which, indeed, spoke for itself so loudly that we could hardly hear each other speak, and requested permission to withdraw. The bayonet, with mute eloquence, refused the application.

There flashed into my mind, with more enjoyment in the retrospect than I had experienced at the time, an adventure on a lecturing tour in other years, when I had spent an hour in trying to scramble into a country tavern, after bed-time, on the coldest night of winter. On that occasion I ultimately found myself stuck midway in the window, with my head in a temperature of 80 deg., and my heels in a temperature of -10 deg., with a heavy window-sash pinioning the small of my back. However, I had got safe out of that dilemma, and it was time to put an end to this one.

"Call the corporal of the guard," said I, at last, with dignity, unwilling either to make a night of it or to yield my incognito.

"Corporal ob de guard!" he shouted, lustily,—"Post Number Two!" while I could hear another sentinel chuckling with laughter. This last was a special guard, placed over a tent, with a prisoner in charge. Presently he broke silence.

"Who am dat?" he asked, in a stage whisper. "Am he a buckra [white man]?"

"Dunno whether he been a buckra or not," responded, doggedly, my Cerberus in uniform; "but I's bound to keep him here till de corporal ob de guard come."

Yet, when that dignitary arrived, and I revealed myself, poor Number Two appeared utterly transfixed with terror, and seemed to look for nothing less than immediate execution. Of course I praised his fidelity, and the next day complimented him before the guard, and mentioned him to his captain; and the whole affair was very good for them all. Hereafter, if Satan himself should approach them in darkness and storm, they will take him for "de Cunnel," and treat him with special severity.

January 13.—In many ways the childish nature of this people shows itself. I have just had to make a change of officers in a company which has constantly complained, and with good reason, of neglect and improper treatment. Two excellent officers have been assigned to them; and yet they sent a deputation to me in the evening, in a state of utter wretchedness. "We's bery grieved dis evening, Cunnel; 'pears like we couldn't bear it, to lose de Cap'n and de Lieutenant, all two togeder." Argument was useless; and I could only fall back on the general theory, that I knew what was best for them, which had much more effect; and I also could cite the instance of another company, which had been much improved by a new captain, as they readily admitted. So with the promise that the new officers should not be "savage to we," which was the one thing they deprecated, I assuaged their woes. Twenty-four hours have passed, and I hear them singing most merrily all down that company-street.

I often notice how their griefs may be dispelled, like those of children, merely by permission to utter them: if they can tell their sorrows, they go away happy, even without asking to have anything done about them. I observe also a peculiar dislike of all intermediate control: they always wish to pass by the company officer, and deal with me personally for everything. General Saxton notices the same thing with the people on the plantations as regards himself. I suppose this proceeds partly from the old habit of appealing to the master against the overseer. Kind words would cost the master nothing, and he could easily put off any non-fulfilment upon the overseer. Moreover, the negroes have acquired such constitutional distrust of white people, that it is perhaps as much as they can do to trust more than one person at a time. Meanwhile this constant personal intercourse is out of the question in a well-ordered regiment; and the remedy for it is to introduce by degrees more and more of system, so that their immediate officers will become all-sufficient for the daily routine.

It is perfectly true (as I find everybody takes for granted) that the first essential for an officer of colored troops is to gain their confidence. But it is equally true, though many persons do not appreciate it, that the admirable methods and proprieties of the regular army are equally available for all troops, and that the sublimest philanthropist, if he does not appreciate this, is unfit to command them.

Another childlike attribute in these men, which is less agreeable, is a sort of blunt insensibility to giving physical pain. If they are cruel to animals, for instance, it always reminds me of children pulling off flies' legs, in a sort of pitiless, untaught, experimental way. Yet I should not fear any wanton outrage from them. After all their wrongs, they are not really revengeful; and I would far rather enter a captured city with them than with white troops, for they would be more subordinate. But for mere physical suffering they would have no fine sympathies. The cruel things they have seen and undergone have helped to blunt them; and if I ordered them to put to death a dozen prisoners, I think they would do it without remonstrance.

Yet their religious spirit grows more beautiful to me in living longer with them: it is certainly far more so than at first, when it seemed rather a matter of phrase and habit. It influences them both on the negative and the positive side. That is, it cultivates the feminine virtues first,—makes them patient, meek, resigned. This is very evident in the hospital; there is nothing of the restless, defiant habit of white invalids. Perhaps, if they had more of this, they would resist disease better. Imbued from childhood with the habit of submission, drinking in through every pore that other-world trust which is the one spirit of their songs, they can endure everything. This I expected; but I am relieved to find that their religion strengthens them on the positive side also,—gives zeal, energy, daring. They could easily be made fanatics, if I chose; but I do not choose. Their whole mood is essentially Mohammedan, perhaps, in its strength and its weakness; and I feel the same degree of sympathy that I should, if I had a Turkish command,—that is, a sort of sympathetic admiration, not tending towards agreement, but towards cooperation. Their philosophizing is often the highest form of mysticism; and our dear surgeon declares that they are all natural transcendentalists. The white camps seem rough and secular, after this; and I hear our men talk about "a religious army," "a Gospel army," in their prayer-meetings. They are certainly evangelizing the chaplain, who was rather a heretic at the beginning; at least, this is his own admission. We have recruits on their way from St. Augustine, where the negroes are chiefly Roman Catholics; and it will be interesting to see how their type of character combines with that elder creed.

It is time for rest; and I have just looked out into the night, where the eternal stars shut down, in concave protection, over the yet glimmering camp, and Orion hangs above my tent-door, giving to me the sense of strength and assurance which these simple children obtain from their Moses and the Prophets. Yet external Nature does its share in their training; witness that most poetic of all their songs, which always reminds me of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge" in the "Scottish Border Minstrelsy":—

"I know moon-rise, I know star-rise; Lay dis body down. I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight, To lay dis body down. I'll walk in de graveyard, I'll walk through the graveyard, To lay dis body down. I'll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms; Lay dis body down. I go to de Judgment in de evening ob de day When I lay dis body down; And my soul and your soul will meet in de day When I lay dis body down."

January 14.—In speaking of the military qualities of the blacks, I should add, that the only point where I am disappointed is one I have never seen raised by the most incredulous newspaper critics,—namely their physical condition. They often look magnificently to my gymnasium-trained eye; and I always like to observe them when bathing,—such splendid muscular development, set off by that smooth coating of adipose tissue which makes them, like the South-Sea Islanders, appear even more muscular than they are. Their skins are also of finer grain than those of whites, the surgeons say, and certainly are smoother and far more free from hair. Their weakness is pulmonary; pneumonia and pleurisy are their besetting ailments; they are easily made ill,—and easily cured, if promptly treated: childish organization again. Guard-duty injures them more than whites, apparently; and double-quick movements, in choking dust, set them coughing badly. But then it is to be remembered that this is their sickly season, from January to March, and that their healthy season will come in summer, when the whites break down. Still my conviction of the physical superiority of more highly civilized races is strengthened on the whole, not weakened, by observing them. As to availability for military drill and duty in other respects, the only question I ever hear debated among the officers is, whether they are equal or superior to whites. I have never heard it suggested that they were inferior, although I expected frequently to hear such complaints from hasty or unsuccessful officers.

Of one thing I am sure, that their best qualities will be wasted by merely keeping them for garrison duty. They seem peculiarly fitted for offensive operations, and especially for partisan warfare; they have so much dash and such abundant resources, combined with such an Indian-like knowledge of the country and its ways. These traits have been often illustrated in expeditions sent after deserters. For instance, I despatched one of my best lieutenants and my best sergeant with a squad of men to search a certain plantation, where there were two separate negro villages. They went by night, and the force was divided. The lieutenant took one set of huts, the sergeant the other. Before the lieutenant had reached his first house, every man in the village was in the woods, innocent and guilty alike. But the sergeant's mode of operation was thus described by a corporal from a white regiment who happened to be in one of the negro houses. He said that not a sound was heard until suddenly a red leg appeared in the open doorway, and a voice outside said, "Rally." Going to the door, he observed a similar pair of red legs before every hut, and not a person was allowed to go out, until the quarters had been thoroughly searched, and the three deserters found. This was managed by Sergeant Prince Rivers, our color-sergeant, who is provost-sergeant also, and has entire charge of the prisoners and of the daily policing of the camp. He is a man of distinguished appearance, and in old times was the crack coachman of Beaufort, in which capacity he once drove Beauregard from this plantation to Charleston, I believe. They tell me that he was once allowed to present a petition to the Governor of South Carolina in behalf of slaves, for the redress of certain grievances; and that a placard, offering two thousand dollars for his recapture, is still to be seen by the wayside between here and Charleston. He was a sergeant in the old "Hunter Regiment," and was taken by General Hunter to New York last spring, where the chevrons on his arm brought a mob upon him in Broadway, whom he kept off till the police interfered. There is not a white officer in this regiment who has more administrative ability, or more absolute authority over the men; they do not love him, but his mere presence has controlling power over them. He writes well enough to prepare for me a daily report of his duties in the camp: if his education reached a higher point, I see no reason why he should not command the Army of the Potomac. He is jet-black, or rather, I should say, wine-black; his complexion, like that of others of my darkest men, having a sort of rich, clear depth, without a trace of sootiness, and to my eye very handsome. His features are tolerably regular, and full of command, and his figure superior to that of any of our white officers,—being six feet high, perfectly proportioned, and of apparently inexhaustible strength and activity. His gait is like a panther's; I never saw such a tread. No anti-slavery novel has described a man of such marked ability. He makes Toussaint perfectly intelligible; and if there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king.

January 15.—This morning is like May. Yesterday I saw bluebirds and a butterfly; so this winter of a fortnight is over. I fancy a trifle less coughing in the camp. We hear of other stations in the Department where the mortality, chiefly from yellow fever, has been frightful. Dr. —— is rubbing his hands professionally over the fearful tales of the surgeon of a New York regiment, just from Key West, who has had two hundred cases of the fever. "I suppose he is a skilful, highly educated man," said I; "Yes," he responded with enthusiasm. "Why, he had seventy deaths!"—as if that proved his superiority past question.

January 19.

"And first, sitting proud as a king on his throne, At the head of them all rode Sir Richard Tyrone."

But I fancy that Sir Richard felt not much better satisfied with his following than I to-day. J. R. L. said once that nothing was quite so good as turtle-soup, except mock-turtle; and I have heard officers declare that nothing was so stirring as real war, except some exciting parade. To-day, for the first time, I marched the whole regiment through Beaufort and back,—the first appearance of such a novelty on any stage. They did march splendidly: this all admit. M——'s prediction was fulfilled:

"Will not —— be in bliss? A thousand men, every one black as a coal!" I confess it. To look back on twenty broad double-ranks of men, (for they marched by platoons,)—every polished musket having a black face beside it, and every face set steadily to the front,—a regiment of freed slaves marching on into the future,—it was something to remember; and when they returned through the same streets, marching by the flank, with guns at a "support," and each man covering his file-leader handsomely, the effect on the eye was almost as fine. The band of the Eighth Maine joined us at the entrance of the town, and escorted us in. Sergeant Rivers said ecstatically afterwards, in describing the affair,—"And when dat band wheel in before us, and march on,—my God! I quit dis world altogeder." I wonder if he pictured to himself the many dusky regiments, now unformed, which I seemed to see marching up behind us, gathering shape out of the dim air.