This is a very meagre sketch of a great work. How inadequately it portrays it, none know so well as those who are immediately connected with it. Could you have been present at a dinner given a few months ago to the secretaries of the international committee, and heard each man describe his field and its needs; could you have seen the intensity with which each endeavored to make us feel what he himself realized, that his special field was the most important,—you would have come to our conclusion: that each field was all-important, and that each man was in his proper place, peculiarly fitted for it and assigned to it by the Master.

A prominent divine has lately said: "I believe the Young Men's Christian Association to be the greatest religious fact of the nineteenth century."

What has been effected by this fact? Thousands of young men in all parts of the world have been brought to Jesus Christ. It has been the training-school for Moody, Whittle, and hosts of laymen who are to-day proclaiming the simple Gospel. It has organized great evangelistic movements both here and abroad. It formed the Christian Commission, which not only relieved the wants of the body during our war, but sent hundreds of Christ's missionaries to the hospitals and battle-fields. It has gloriously manifested the unity of Christ's true church. It stands to-day an organic body, instinct with one life, spreading its limbs through the world, active, alert, ready at any moment to respond to the call of the church, and enables it to present an unbroken front to superstition and infidelity, which already rear their brazen heads against Christ and his church, and will soon be in open rebellion and actual warfare, and which Christ at his coming will forever destroy.

[NOTE.—Through the kindness of Messrs. Harper and Brothers, of New York, we present to our readers the two portraits in this article. For the cuts of the buildings we are indebted to the Chicago Watchman, mention of which is made above.—R.S., Jr.]

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GEORGE FULLER.

BY SIDNEY DICKINSON.

The death of George Fuller has removed a strong and original figure from the activity of American art, and added a weighty name to its history. To speak of him now, while his work is fresh in the public mind, is a labor of some peril; so easy is it, when the sense of loss is keen, to make mistakes in judgment, and to allow the friendly spirit to prevail over the judicial, in an estimation of him as a man and a painter. Yet he has gone in and out before us long enough to make a study of him profitable, and to give us, even now, some occasion for an opinion as to the place he is likely to occupy in the annals of our native art. Mr. Fuller held a peculiar position in American painting, and one which seems likely to remain hereafter unfilled. He followed no one, and had no followers; his art was the outgrowth of personal temperament and experience, rather than the result of teaching, and although he studied others, he was himself his only master. In other men whose names are prominent in our art, we seem to see the direction of an outside influence. Stuart and Copley confessed to the teaching of the English school of their day—a school brilliant but formal, and holding close guiding-reins over its disciples; Benjamin West became denationalized, so far as his art was concerned; Allston showed the impression of England, Italy, and Flanders, all at once, in his refined and thoughtful style, and Hunt manifested in every stroke of his brilliant brush the learned and facile methods that are in vogue in the leading ateliers of modern Paris. In these men, and in the followers whom their preeminent ability drew after them, we perceive the dominant impulse to be of alien origin; Fuller alone, of all the great ones in our art, was in thought and action purely and simply American. The influence that led others into the error of imitation, seems to have been exerted unavailingly upon his self-reliant mind. We shall search vainly if we look elsewhere than within himself for the suggestions upon which his art was established. Superficial resemblances to other painters are sometimes to be noted in his works, but in governing principle and habit of thought he was serenely and grandly alone.

We must regard him thus if we would study him understandingly, and gain from our observation a correct estimate of his power. We think of our other painters as in the crowd, and amid the affairs of men, and detect in their art a certain uneasiness which the bustle about them necessarily caused. We perceive this most in Hunt, who was emphatically a man of the world, and in Stuart, who shows in some of his later work that his position as the court painter of America, while it aided his purse and reputation, harmed his repose; least in Allston, whose tastes were literary, whose love was in retirement, and who would have been a poet had not circumstances first placed a brush and palette in his hands. Allston, however, enjoyed popularity, and was courted by the best society of his time, and was not permitted, although he doubtless longed for it, to indulge to its full extent his chaste and dreamy fancy. It may be said without disrespect to his undoubted powers, that he would have been less esteemed in his own day if his art had not been largely conventional, and thus easily understood by those who had studied the accepted masters of painting. He lacked positive force of idea, as his works clearly show,—that quality which was among the most characteristic traits of Fuller's method, and made him at once the greatest genius, and the man most misunderstood, among contemporary American painters.

Although men who have not had "advantages" in life are naturally prone to regret their deprivation, they frequently owe their success to this seeming bar against opportunity. We have often seen illustrated in our art the fact that favorable circumstances do not necessarily insure success, and now from the life of Fuller we gain the still more important truth, that power is never so well aroused as in the face of obstacles. Few men endured more for art than he; none have waited more uncomplainingly for a recognition that was sure to come by-and-by, or received with greater serenity the approbation which the dull world came at last to bestow. His history is most wholesome in its record of steadfast resting upon conviction, and teaches quite as strongly as his pictures do, the value of absorption in a lofty idea.

If the saying that those nations are the happiest that have no history is true of men, Mr. Fuller's life must be regarded as exceptionally fortunate. Considered by itself, it was quiet and uneventful, and had little to excite general interest; but when viewed in its relation to the practice of his art, it is found to be full of eloquent suggestions to all who, like him, have been appointed to win success through suffering. The narrative of his experience comprises two great periods—the preparation, which covered thirty-four years, and the achievement, to the enjoyment of which less than eight years were permitted. The first period is subdivided into two, of which one embraces eighteen years, from the time when, at the age of twenty, he entered upon the study of his art, to his retirement from the world to the exile of his Deerfield farm; the other including sixteen years of seclusion, until, at the age of fifty-four, he came forth again to proclaim a new revelation. The first part of his career may be dismissed without any extended consideration. Its record consists of an almost unrelieved account of struggle, indifferent success, and lack of appreciation and encouragement, in the cities of Boston and New York. In Boston he appeared as the student, rather than the producer of works, and laid the foundation of his style in observation of the paintings of Stuart, Copley, Allston, and Alexander,—all excellent models upon which to base a practice, although destined to show little of their influence upon the pictures which he painted in the maturity of his power. It is not to be doubted, however, that all these men, and particularly Stuart, made an impression upon him which he was never afterward wholly able to conceal. We may see even in some of his latest works, under his own peculiar manner, suggestions of Stuart, particularly in portraits of women, which in pose and expression, and to a considerable degree in color, show much of that dignity and composure which so distinguish the female heads of our greatest portrait-painter. He always admired Stuart, and in his later years spoke much of him, with strong appreciation for his skill in describing character, and the refined taste which is such a marked feature of his best manner.

His work in Boston made no particular impression upon the public mind, and after five years' trial of it he removed to New York, where he joined that brilliant circle of painters and sculptors which, with its followers, has made one of the strongest impressions, if not the most valuable or permanent, upon the art of America. During his residence in that city he devoted himself almost exclusively to portrait-painting, in which he developed a manner more distinguished for conventional excellence than any particular individuality. It was remarked of him, however, that he was disposed, even at this time, to seek to present the thought and disposition of his subjects more strongly than their merely physical features, and among his principal associates excited no little appreciative comment upon this tendency. In some of his portraits of women of that period, wherein he evidently attempted to present the superior fineness and sensibility of the feminine nature, this effort toward ideality is quite strongly indicated; they are painted with a more hesitating and lingering touch than his portraits of men, and with a certain seeming lack of confidence, which throws about them a thin fold of that veil of etherialism and mystery which so enwraps nearly all his pictures of the last eight years. This treatment, however, seems to have been at that time more the result of experiment than conviction; later in life he wrought its suggestions into a system, the principles of which we may study further on. His earlier work, as has been said, was chiefly confined to portrait-painting, although it is a significant fact that among his pictures of that time are two which show that the feeling for poetical and imaginative effort was working in him. At a comparatively early age he painted an impression of Coleridge's Genevieve, which showed marked evidence of power, and later, after seeing a picture of the school of Rubens, which was owned by one of his artist friends, produced a study which he afterward seems to have developed into his well-known Boy and Bird; a Cupid-like figure, holding a bird closely against its breast. These exercises, however, seem to have been, as it were, accidental, and had little or no effect in leading him to the practice in which he afterward became absorbed.

His life in New York, which was interrupted only by three winter trips to the South, whither he went in the hope of securing some commissions for portraits, was an uneventful experience of very modest pecuniary success, and brought him as the only official honor of his life an election as associate of the National Academy of Design. He then went to Europe, where, for eight months, he carefully studied the old masters in the principal galleries of England and the Continent. This visit to the Old World was of incalculable value to him in the method of painting which he afterward made his own, and, in point of fact, gave him his first decided inclination toward it. Its best influence, however, was in giving him confidence in himself, and assurance of the reasonableness of the views which he had already begun to entertain. He had been led before to regard the old masters as superior to rivalry and incapable of weakness, superhuman characters, indeed, whose works should discourage effort. Instead of this, however, he found them to be men like himself, with their share of defect and error, yet made grand by inspiration and idea, and this knowledge greatly encouraged him, a man who of all painters was at once the most modest and devoted. Most painters who resort to Europe to study the old art find there one or two men whose works make the strongest appeals to their liking, and, devoting their attention chiefly to these, they show ever after the marks of an influence that is easily traced to its source; Fuller, however, observed with broader and more penetrating view, and, as his works show, seems to have studied men less than principles, and to have been filled with admiration, not so much for particular practices as for the common and lofty spirit in which the greatest of the world's painters labored. The colorists and chiaroscurists, such as Titian on the one hand and Rembrandt on the other, seem to have impressed him particularly, and of all men Titian the most strongly, as many of his pictures testify, and as such glowing works as the Arethusa and the Boy and Bird unmistakably show. Yet it was not in matter or in manner, but in the expression of a great truth, that the old masters most strongly affected him. He felt at once, and grew to admire greatly, their repose and modesty, calm strength and undisturbed temper, and drew from them the important principle that true genius may be known by its confessing neither pride nor self-distrust. The serenity of their style he sought at once to appropriate, and thereafter worked as much as possible in imitation of their evident purpose, striving simply to do his best, without any question of whether the result would please, or another's effort be reckoned as greater than his own. It became a governing principle with him never to seek to outdo any one, or to feel anything but pleasure at another's success, for he was not a man who could fail to recognize the truth that envy is fatal to a fine mood in any labor. Few artists, we may well believe, study the great art of the world in this spirit, or derive from it such a lesson.

On his return to America, he betook himself to his native town of Deerfield, to assume for a time the care of the ancestral farm, which the death of his father had placed in his hands. He had returned from Europe full of inspired ideas, and was apparently ready to go on at once in new paths of labor; but the voice of duty seemed to him to call him away from his chosen life, and he obeyed its summons without hesitation. Moreover, he loved the country and the family homestead, and may have perceived, also, that the condition of art in Boston and New York was not such as to encourage an original purpose, and that, if he was ever to gain success, he must develop himself in quiet, and aloof from the distracting influences of other methods and men. It is easy to perceive, with the complete record of his life before us, that this experience of labor and thought upon the Deerfield farm, although at first sight forming an hiatus in his career, was really its most pregnant period, and that without it the Fuller who is now so much admired might have been lost to us, and the spirit that appears in his later works never have been awakened. It is, indeed, a spirit that can find no congenial dwelling-place in towns, but makes its home in the fields and on the hillsides, to which the poet-painter, depressed but not cast down by his experience of life, repaired to work and dream. For sixteen years, in the midst of the fairest pastoral valley of New England, he lived in the contemplation of the ideas that had passed across his mind in the quiet of European galleries, and now became more definite impressions. The secret of those years, with their deep, slow current of refined and melancholy thought, is now sealed with him in eternal sleep; but from the works that remain to us as the matured fruits of his life, we may gain some hint of his experiences. It is not to be questioned that he drew from the New-England soil that he tilled, and the air that he breathed, an inspiration which never failed him. The flavor of the quiet valley fills all his canvases. We see in them the spaciousness of its meadows, the inviting slope of its low hills, the calm grandeur of its encircling mountains, the mysterious gloom and wholesome brightness of its changing skies, the atmosphere of history and romance which is its breath and life. Song and story have found many incidents for treatment in this locality. Not far from the farm where Fuller's daily work was done, the tragedy of Bloody Brook was enacted; the fields which he tilled have their legend of Indian ambuscade and massacre; the soil is sown, as with dragon's teeth, with the arrow-heads and battle-axes of many bitter conflicts; even to the ancient house where, in recent years, the painter's summer easel was set up, a former owner was brought home with the red man's bullet in his breast. The menace of midnight attack seems even now to the wanderer in the darkness to burden the air of these mournful meadows, and tradition shows that here were felt the ripples of that tide of superstitious frenzy which flowed from Salem through all the early colonies. No place could have furnished more potent suggestions to the art-idealist than this, and although it did not lead him to paint its tragic history (for no man had less liking for violence and passion than he), it impressed him deeply with its concurrent records of endurance and devotion. Nor did it invite him, as it might have done in the case of a weaker man, into mere description, but having aroused his thought, it submitted itself wholly to the treatment of his strong and original genius. He approached his task with a broad and comprehensive vision, and a loving and inquiring soul. He was not satisfied with the revelation of his eyes alone, but sought earnestly for the secret of nature's life, and of its influence upon the sensitive mind of man. He perceived the truth that nature without man is naught, even as there is no color without light, and strove earnestly to show in his art the relations that they sustain to each other. He saw, also, that the material in each is nothing without the spirit which they share in common, and thus he painted not places, but the influence of places, even as he painted not persons merely, but their natures and minds. It is for this reason that, although we see in all his pictures where landscape finds a place the meadows, trees, and skies of Deerfield, we also see much more,—the general and unlocated spirit of New-England scenery.

This is the true impressionism—a system to which Fuller was always constant in later life, and which he developed grandly. He was, however, as far removed as possible from that cheap, shallow, and idealess school of French painters whose wrongful appropriation of the name "Impressionist" has prejudiced us against the principle that it involves. The inherent difference between them and Fuller lies in this—he exercised a choice, and thought the beautiful alone to be worthy of description, while they selected nothing, but painted indiscriminately all things, with whatever preference they indicated lying in the direction of the strong and ugly, as being most imperative in its demands for attention. Fuller's subjects were always sweet and noble, and it followed as a matter of course that his treatment of them was refined and strong. His idea was also broad; he sought for the typical in nature and life, and grew inevitably into a continually widening and more comprehensive style. He taught himself to lose the sense of detail, and to strike at once to the centre, presenting the vital idea with decision, and departing from it with increasing vagueness of treatment, until the whole area of his work was filled with a harmonious and carefully graduated sense of suggestion. He arrived at his method by an original way of studying the natural world. He did not, as most artists do, take his paint-box and easel and devote himself to description, and from his studies work out the finished picture. Instead, he disencumbered himself of all materials for making memoranda, and merely stood before the scene that impressed him, looking upon it for hours at a time. Then he betook himself to his studio, and there worked from the impression that his mind had formed under the guiding-hand of his fancy, the result being that nature and human thought appeared together upon the canvas, giving a double grace and power. The process was subtle, and not to be described clearly even by the painter himself, who found his work so largely a matter of inspiration that he was never able to make copies of his pictures. They grew out of his consciousness in a strange way whose secret he could not grasp; to the end of his life he was an inquirer, always hesitating, and never confident in anything except that art was truth, and that he who followed it must walk in modesty and humbleness of spirit before the greatness of its mystery. A man of ideas and sentiment, remote from the clamor of schools and the complaints of critics, with recollections of the grandest art of the world in his mind, and beautiful aspects of nature continually before his eyes, he could hardly fail to work out a style of marked originality. The effort, however, was slow; one does not erase on the instant the impressions that eighteen years of study and practice have made, and Fuller found his life at Deerfield none too long to rid him of his respect for formulas.

His experience there was a continuous round of study. He completed little, although he painted much, inexorably blotting out, no matter after what expenditure of labor, the work that failed to respond to his idea, and striving constantly to be simple, straightforward, and impressive, without being vapid, arrogant, or dogmatic. He possessed in large measure that rarest of gifts to genius—modesty—and approached the secrets of nature and life more tremblingly as he passed from their outer to their inner circles. It was a necessity of his peculiar feeling and manner of study that he should develop a lingering, hesitating, half-uncertain style of painting, which, however variously it may be viewed by different minds, is undoubtedly of the utmost effectiveness in describing the principles, rather than the facts, of nature and life. This way of presenting his idea, which some call a "mannerism,"—a term that has wrongly come to have a suggestion of contempt attached to it,—was with him a principle, and employed by him as the one in which he could best express truth. Art may justly claim great latitude in this endeavor, and schools and systems arrogate too much when they seek to define its limitations. Absolute truth to nature is impossible in art, which is constrained to lie to the eye in order to satisfy the mind, and continually transposes the harmonies of earth and sky into the minor key. Fuller offended the senses often, but he touched that nerve-centre in the heart, without which impressions are not truly recognized. He won liking, rather than startled men into it, and his art, instead of approaching, retired and beckoned. His figures never "came out of the frame at you," as is the common expression of admiration nowadays. He put everything at a distance, made it reposeful, and drew about figure and landscape an atmosphere which not only made them beautiful, but established a strange and reciprocal mood of sentiment between them. He alone of all American painters filled the whole of his canvas with air; others place a barrier to atmosphere in their middle distance, and it comes no farther, but he brought it over to the nearest inch of foreground. This treatment, while it aided the quietness and restful mystery of his pictures, also strengthened his constant effort to avoid marked contrasts. He sought always a general impression, and ruthlessly sacrificed everything that called attention to itself at the expense of the whole. Yet he was not a man of swift insight in comprehensive matters, nor one who could be called clever. Weighty in thought as in figure, he moved slowly and in long waves, and although of marked quickness in intuition, he seemed to distrust this quality in himself until he had proved it by reason. He received his motive as by a spark quicker than the lightning's, and when he began a work saw its intention clearly, although its form and details were wholly obscured. Out of a mist of darkness he saw a face shine dimly with some light of joy or sorrow that was in it, and at the moment caught its suggestion upon the waiting canvas. Then came inquiry, explanation, reasoning, the exercise of a manly and poetic sensibility, and endless experiment with lines and forms, of which the greater part were meaningless, until by unwearied searching, and constant trial and correction, the complete idea was expressed at last.

When a painter produces works in this strange fashion, an involved and confused manner of technical treatment becomes inevitable. The schools, which glorify manual skill and the swift and exhilarating production of effects, cannot appreciate it, for all their teaching is opposed to the principle that makes technique subordinate to idea, and they cannot look with favor upon a man who boldly reverses everything. The perfect art undoubtedly rests upon a combination of sublime thought and entire command of resources, but while we wait for this we shall not make mistake if we consider the effective, even if unlicensed, expression of idea superior to a facility that has become cheap from hundreds mastering it yearly. We cannot close our eyes to Fuller's technical faults and weaknesses, but his pictures would undeniably be a less precious heritage to American art than they now are, if he had not been great enough to perceive that academic skill becomes weak by just so much as it is magnified, and is strong only when viewed in its just relation, as the means to an end. We perplex and confuse ourselves in studying his work, and are naturally a little irritated that he keeps his secret of power so well; yet we cannot help feeling that his style is wonderfully adapted to the end in view, and perhaps the only appropriate medium for the expression of a habit of thought that is as peculiar as itself. Schools will insist, and with reason, upon working by rule; yet in art, as in other discipline of teaching, genius does not develop itself until it escapes from its instructors.

Mr. Fuller's life was constantly swayed by circumstances, and through it all he was impelled to steps which he might never have taken of his own accord. He was drawn by influences that he could not control into his fruitful course of study and experience at Deerfield, where his farm gave him support, and permitted him to indulge in an unembarrassed practice of his art; then, when his time was ripe, he was driven by the sharp lash of financial embarrassment into the world again. Eight years ago he reappeared in Boston, with about a dozen paintings of landscapes, ideal heads, and small figures, which were exhibited and promptly sold amid every expression of interest and favor. Confirmed and strengthened in his belief by this success, he again established his studio here, and began that series of remarkable works which have given him a place among the greatest of American painters. The touch of popular favor quickened him into a lofty and quiet enthusiasm, and stimulated both his imagination and his descriptive powers. During all his experience at Deerfield a certain lack of self-confidence seems to have prevented him from making any large endeavor, but with his convictions endorsed by the public, he attempted at once to labor on a more ambitious scale. He broadened his canvases, and increased the size of his figures and landscapes, and where he was before sweet and inviting, became strong and impressive, yet still holding all his former qualities. The first year of his new residence in Boston saw the production of The Dandelion Girl, a light-hearted, careless creature, full of a life that had no touch of responsibility, and descriptive of a joyous and ephemeral mood. A long step forward was taken in The Romany Girl, which immediately followed,—a work full of fire and freedom, strongly personal in suggestion, and marked by a wild and impatient individuality which revealed in the girl the impression of a lawless ancestry, that somehow and somewhere had felt the action of a finer strain of blood. The next year Fuller reached the highest point of his inspiration and power in The Quadroon, a work which is likely to be held for all time as his masterpiece, so far as strength of idea, importance of motive, and vivid force of description are concerned. Without violence, even without expression of action, but simply by a pair of haunting eyes, a beautiful, despairing face, and a form confessing utter weariness and abandonment of hope, he revealed all the national shame of slavery, and its degradation of body and soul. Every American cannot but blush to look upon it, so simple and dignified is its rebuke of the nation's long perversity and guilt. The artist's next important effort was the famous Winifred Dysart, as far removed in purpose from The Quadroon as it could well be, yet akin to it by its added testimony to the painter's constant sympathy with weak and beseeching things, and worthy to stand at an equal height with the picture of the slave by virtue of its beauty of conception, loveliness of character, and pathetic appeal to the interest. It was in all respects as typical and comprehensive as The Quadroon itself, holding within its face and figure all the sweetness and innocence of New-England girlhood, yet with the shadow of an uncongenial experience brooding over it, and perhaps of inherited weakness and early death. And the wonder of it all was that the girl had no sign about herself of longing or discontent; she was not of a nature to anticipate or dream, and the spectator's interest was intensified at seeing in her and before her what she herself did not perceive. That art can give such power of suggestion to its creations is a marvel and a delight.

Following these two works—and at some distance, although near enough to confirm and even increase the painter's fame—came the Priscilla, Evening; Lorette, Nydia, Boy and Bird, Hannah, Psyche, and others, ending this year with the Arethusa, whose glowing and chastened loveliness makes it his strongest purely artistic work, and confirms the technical value of his method as completely as The Quadroon and Winifred Dysart do his habit of thought. He painted innumerable landscapes, portraits, and ideal heads, and in figure compositions produced, among others, two works of great and permanent value, the And She Was a Witch, and The Gatherer of Simples, to whose absorbing interest all who have studied them closely will confess. The latter, particularly, is of importance as showing how carefully Fuller studied into the secret of expression, and of nature's sympathy with human moods. This poor, worn, sad, old face, in which beauty and hope shone once, and where resignation and memory now dwell; this trembling figure, to whose decrepitude the bending staff confesses as she totters down the hill; the gathering gloom of the sky, in which one ray of promise for a bright to-morrow shines from the setting sun; the mute witnessing of the trees upon the hill, which have seen her pass and repass from joyful youth to lonely age, and even her eager grasp upon the poor treasure of herbs that she bears,—all these items of the scene impress one with a sympathy whose keenness is even bitter, and excite a deep respect and love for the man who could paint with so much simplicity and power. It is not strange that when the news of his death became known, many who had never seen him, but had studied the pictures in his latest exhibition, should have come, with tears in their eyes, to the studios which neighbored his, to learn something of his history.

Such works are not struck out in a heat, but grow and develop like human lives, and it will not surprise many to know that most of them were labored on for years. With Fuller, a picture was never completed. His idea was constantly in advance of his work, and persisted in new suggestions, so that the Winifred Dysart was two years in the painting, the Arethusa five, and The Gatherer of Simples and the Witch, after an even longer course of labor, were held by him at his death as not yet satisfactory. The figures in the two works last mentioned have suffered almost no change since first put upon the canvas, but they have from time to time appeared in at least a dozen different landscapes, and would doubtless have been placed in as many more before he had satisfied his fastidious and exacting taste.

The artist found as much difficulty in naming his pictures when they were done as he did in painting them. It is a prevalent, but quite erroneous, impression that his habit was to select a subject from some literary work, and then attempt to paint it in the light of the author's ideas. His practice exactly reversed this method: he painted his picture first, and then tried to evolve or find a name that would fit it. The name Winifred Dysart, which is without literary origin or meaning, and yet in some strange way seems the only proper title for the work to which it is attached, came out of the artist's own mind. His Priscilla was started as an Elsie Venner, but he found it impossible to work upon the lines another had laid down without too much cramping his own fancy; when half done he thought of calling it Lady Wentworth, and at last gave it its present name by chance of having taken up The Blithedale Romance, and noting with pleased surprise how closely Hawthorne's account of his heroine fitted his own creation. The Nydia was started with the idea of presenting the helplessness of blindness, with a hint of the exaltation of the other senses that is consequent upon the loss of sight, and showed at first merely a girl groping along a wall in search of a door; and the Arethusa was the outgrowth of a general inspiration caused by a reading of Spenser's Faerie Queen, and did not receive its present very appropriate name until its exhibition made some designation necessary.

I have devoted this study on of Mr. Fuller to his quality as an artist rather than to his character as a man, but shall have written in vain if some hint has not been given of the loveliness of his disposition, the modesty of his spirit, the chaste force of his mind. A man inevitably paints as he himself is, and shows his nature in his works: Fuller's pictures are founded upon purity of thought, and painted with dignity and single-heartedness, and the grace of his life dwells in them.

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[GEORGE FULLER was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1822. He was descended from old Puritan stock, and his ancesters were among the early settlers of the Connecticut River valley. He inherited a taste for art, as an uncle and several other relatives of the previous generation were painters, although none of them attained any particular reputation. He began painting by himself at the age of about sixteen years, and at the age of twenty entered the studio of Henry K. Brown, of Albany, New York, where he received his first and only direct instruction. His work, until the age of about forty years, was almost entirely devoted to portraits; but he is best known, and will be longest remembered, for his ideal work in figure and landscape painting, which he entered upon about 1860, but did not make his distinctive field until 1876. From the latter date, to the time of his death, he painted many important works, and was pecuniarily successful. He received probably the largest prices ever paid to an American artist for single figures: $3,000 for the Winifred Dysart, and $4,000 each for the Priscilla and Evening; Lorette. He died in Boston on the twenty-first of March, 1884, leaving a widow, four sons, and a daughter. During May, a memorial exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Fine Arts.—EDITOR.]

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THE LOYALISTS OF LANCASTER.

By HENRY S. NOURSE.

The outburst of patriotic rebellion in 1775 throughout Massachusetts was so universal, and the controversy so hot with the wrath of a people politically wronged, as well as embittered by the hereditary rage of puritanism against prelacy, that the term tory comes down to us in history loaded with a weight of opprobrium not legitimately its own. After the lapse of a hundred years the word is perhaps no longer synonymous with everything traitorous and vile, but when it is desirable to suggest possible respectability and moral rectitude in any member of the conservative party of Revolutionary days, it must be done under the less historically disgraced title,—loyalist. In fact, then, as always, two parties stood contending for principles to which honest convictions made adherents. If among the conservatives were timid office-holders and corrupt self-seekers, there were also of the Revolutionary party blatant demagogues and bigoted partisans. The logic of success, though a success made possible at last only by exterior aid, justified the appeal to arms begun in Massachusetts before revolt was prepared or thought imminent elsewhere. Now, to the careful student of the situation, it seems among the most premature and rash of all the rebellions in history. But for the precipitancy of the uprising, and the patriotic frenzy that fired the public heart at news of the first bloodshed, many ripe scholars, many soldiers of experience, might have been saved to aid and honor the republic, instead of being driven into ignominious exile by fear of mob violence and imprisonment, and scourged through the century as enemies of their country. In and about Lancaster, then the largest town in Worcester County, the royalist party was an eminently respectable minority. At first, indeed, not only those naturally conservative by reason of wealth, or pride of birthright, but nearly all the intellectual leaders, both ecclesiastic and civilian, deprecated revolt as downright suicide. They denounced the Stamp Act as earnestly, they loved their country in which their all was at stake as sincerely, as did their radical neighbors. Some of them, after the bloody nineteenth of April, acquiesced with such grace as they could in what they now saw to be inevitable, and tempered with prudent counsel the blind zeal of partisanship: thus ably serving their country in her need. Others would have awaited the issue of events as neutrals; but such the committees of safety, or a mob, not unnaturally treated as enemies.

On the highest rounds of the social ladder stood the great-grandsons of Major Simon Willard, the Puritan commander in the war of 1675. These three gentlemen had large possessions in land, were widely known throughout the Province, and were held in deserved esteem for their probity and ability. They were all royalists at heart, and all connected by marriage with royalist families. Abijah Willard, the eldest, had just passed his fiftieth year. He had won a captaincy before Louisburg when but twenty-one, and was promoted to a colonelcy in active service against the French; was a thorough soldier, a gentleman of stately presence and dignified manners, and a skilful manager of affairs. For his first wife, he married Elizabeth, sister of Colonel William Prescott; for his second, Mrs. Anna Prentice, but had recently married a third partner, Mrs. Mary McKown, of Boston. He was the wealthiest citizen of Lancaster, kept six horses in his stables, and dispensed liberal hospitality in the mansion inherited from his father Colonel Samuel Willard. By accepting the appointment of councillor in 1774, he became at once obnoxious to the dominant party, and in August, when visiting Connecticut on business connected with his large landed interests there, he was arrested by the citizens of the town of Union, and a mob of five hundred persons accompanied him over the state line intending to convey him to the nearest jail. Whether their wrath became somewhat cooled by the colonel's bearing, or by a six-mile march, they released him upon his signing a paper dictated to him, of which the following is a copy, printed at the time in the Boston Gazette:—

STURBRIDGE, August 25, 1774.

Whereas I Abijah Willard, of Lancaster, have been appointed by mandamus Counselor for this province, and have without due Consideration taken the Oath, do now freely and solemnly and in good faith promise and engage that I will not set or act in said Council, nor in any other that shall be appointed in such manner and form, but that I will, as much as in me lies, maintain the Charter Rights and Liberties of the Province, and do hereby ask forgiveness of all the honest, worthy Gentlemen that I have offended by taking the abovesaid Oath, and desire this may be inserted in the public Prints. Witness my Hand

ABIJAH WILLARD.

From that time forward Colonel Willard lived quietly at home until the nineteenth of April, 1775; when, setting out in the morning on horseback to visit his farm in Beverly, where he had planned to spend some days in superintending the planting, he was turned from his course by the swarming out of minute-men at the summons of the couriers bringing the alarm from Lexington, and we next find him with the British in Boston. He never saw Lancaster again. It is related that, on the morning of the seventeenth of June, standing with Governor Gage, in Boston, reconnoitring the busy scene upon Bunker's Hill, he recognized with the glass his brother-in-law Colonel William Prescott, and pointed him out to the governor, who asked if he would fight. The answer was: "Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell!" or, as another historian more mildly puts it: "Ay, to the last drop of his blood." Colonel Willard knew whereof he testified, for the two colonels had earned their commissions together in the expeditions against Canada. An officer of so well-known skill and experience as Abijah Willard was deemed a valuable acquisition, and he was offered a colonel's commission in the British army, but refused to serve against his countrymen, and at the evacuation of Boston went to Halifax, having been joined by his own and his brother's family. In 1778, he was proscribed and banished. Later in the war he joined the royal army, at Long Island, and was appointed commissary; in which service it was afterwards claimed by his friends that his management saved the crown thousands of pounds. A malicious pamphleteer of the day, however, accused him of being no better than others, and alleging that whatever saving he effected went to swell his own coffers. Willard's name stands prominent among the "Fifty-five" who, in 1783, asked for large grants of land in Nova Scotia as compensation for their losses by the war. He chose a residence on the coast of New Brunswick, which he named Lancaster in remembrance of his beloved birthplace, and there died in May, 1789, having been for several years an influential member of the provincial council. His family returned to Lancaster, recovered the old homestead, and, aided by a small pension from the British government, lived in comparative prosperity. The son Samuel died on January 1, 1856, aged ninety-six years and four months. His widowed sister, Mrs. Anna Goodhue, died on August 2, 1858, at the age of ninety-five. Memories of their wholly pleasant and beneficent lives, abounding in social amenities and Christian graces, still linger about the old mansion.

Levi Willard was three years the junior of Abijah. He had been collector of excise for the county, held the military rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was justice of the peace. With his brother-in-law Captain Samuel Ward he conducted the largest mercantile establishment in Worcester County at that date. He had even made the voyage to England to purchase goods. Although not so wealthy as his brother, he might have rivaled him in any field of success but for his broken health; and he was as widely esteemed for his character and capacity. At the outbreak of hostilities he was too ill to take active part on either side, but his sympathies were with his loyalist kindred. He died on July 11, 1775. His partner in business, Captain Samuel Ward, cast his lot with the patriot party, but his son, Levi Willard, Jr., graduated at Harvard College in 1775, joined his uncle Abijah, and went to England and there remained until 1785, when he returned and died five years later.

Abel Willard, though equally graced by nature with the physical gifts that distinguished his brothers, unlike them chose the arts of peace rather than those of war. He was born at Lancaster on January 12, 1731-2, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1752, ranking third in the class. His wife was Elizabeth Rogers, daughter of the loyalist minister of Littleton. His name was affixed to the address to Governor Gage, June 21, 1774, and he was forced to sign, with the other justices, a recantation of the aspersions cast upon the people in that address. He has the distinction of being recorded by the leading statesman of the Revolution—John Adams—as his personal friend. So popular was Abel Willard and so well known his character as a peacemaker and well-wisher to his country, that he might have remained unmolested and respected among his neighbors in spite of his royalist opinions; but, whether led by family ties or natural timidity, he sought refuge in Boston, and quick-coming events made it impossible for him to return. At the departure of the British forces for Halifax, he accompanied them. A letter from Edmund Quincy to his daughter Mrs. Hancock, dated Lancaster, March 26, 1776, contains a reference to him: ... "Im sorry for poor Mrs Abel Willard your Sisters near neighbour & Friend. Shes gone we hear with her husband and Bro and sons to Nova Scotia P'haps in such a situation and under such circumstances of Offense respecting their Wors'r Neighbours as never to be in a political capacity of returning to their Houses unless w'th power & inimical views w'ch God forbid should ever be ye Case."

In 1778, the act of proscription and banishment included Abel Willard's name. His health gave way under accumulated trouble, and he died in England in 1781.

The estates of Abijah and Abel Willard were confiscated. In the Massachusetts Archives (cliv, 10) is preserved the anxious inquiry of the town authorities respecting the proper disposal of the wealth they abandoned.

To the Honourable Provincial Congress now holden at Watertown in the Proviance of the Massachusetts Bay.

We the subscribers do request and desire that you would be pleased to direct or Inform this proviance in General or the town of Lancaster in Partickeler what is best to be done with the Estates of those men which are Gone from their Estates to General Gage and to whose use they shall Improve them whether for the proviance or the town where s'd Estate is.

EBENEZER ALLEN, CYRUS FAIRBANK, SAMLL THURSTON, The Selectmen of Lancaster.

Lancaster June 7 day 1775.

The Provincial Congress placed the property in question in the hands of the selectmen and Committee of Safety to improve, and instructed them to report to future legislatures. Finally, Cyrus Fairbank is found acting as the local agent for confiscated estates of royalists in Lancaster, and his annual statements are among the archives of the State. His accounts embrace the estates of "Abijah Willard, Esq., Abel Willard, Esq., Solomon Houghton, Yeoman, and Joseph Moore Gent." The final settlement of Abel Willard's estate, October 26, 1785, netted his creditors but ten shillings, eleven pence to the pound. The claimants and improvers probably swallowed even the larger estate of Abijah Willard, leaving nothing to the Commonwealth.

Katherine, the wife of Levi Willard, was the sister, and Dorothy, wife of Captain Samuel Ward, the daughter, of Judge John Chandler, "the honest Refugee." These estimable and accomplished ladies lived but a stone's throw apart, and after the death of Levi Willard there came to reside with them an elder brother of Mrs. Ward, one of the most notable personages in Lancaster during the Revolution. Clark Chandler was a dapper little bachelor about thirty-two years of age, eccentric in person, habits, and dress. Among other oddities of apparel, he was partial to bright red small-clothes. His tory principles and singularities called down upon him the jibes of the patriots among whom his lot was temporarily cast, but his ready tongue and caustic wit were sufficient weapons of defence. In 1774, as town clerk of Worcester, he recorded a protest of forty-three royalist citizens against the resolutions of the patriotic majority. This record he was compelled in open town meeting to deface, and when he failed to render it sufficiently illegible with the pen, his tormentors dipped his fingers into the ink and used them to perfect the obliteration. He fled to Halifax, but after a few months returned, and was thrown into Worcester jail. The reply to his petition for release is in Massachusetts Archives (clxiv, 205).

Colony of the Massachusetts Bay. By the Major part of the Council of said Colony. Whereas Clark Chandler of Worcester has been Confined in the Common Prison at Worcester for holding Correspondence with the enemies of this Country and the said Clark having humbly petitioned for an enlargement and it having been made to appear that his health is greatly impaired & that the Publick will not be endangered by his having some enlargement, and Samuel Ward, John Sprague, & Ezekiel Hull having Given Bond to the Colony Treasurer in the penal sum of one thousand Pounds, for the said Clarks faithful performance of the order of Council for his said enlargement, the said Clark is hereby permitted to go to Lancaster when his health will permit, and there to continue and not go out of the Limits of that Town, he in all Respects Conforming himself to the Condition in said Bond contained, and the Sheriff of said County of Worcester and all others are hereby Directed to permit the said Clark to pass unmolested so long as he shall conform himself to the obligations aforementioned. Given under our Hands at ye Council Chambers in Watertown the 15 Day of Dec. Anno Domini 1775.

By their Honors Command,

James Prescott W'm Severs Cha Channey B. Greenleaf M. Farley W. Spooner Moses Gill Caleb Cushing J. Palmer J. Winthrop Eldad Taylor John Whitcomb B. White Jed'n Foster B. Lincoln Perez Morton Dp't Sec'ry.

The air of Lancaster, which proved so salubrious to the pensioners of the British government before named, grew oppressive to this tory bachelor, as we find by a lengthy petition in Massachusetts Archives (clxxiii, 546), wherein he begs for a wider range, and especially for leave to go to the sea-shore. A medical certificate accompanies it.

LANCASTER, OCT. 25. 1777

This is to inform whom it may Concern that Mr. Clark Chandler now residing in this Town is in such a Peculiar Bodily Indisposition as in my opinion renders it necessary for him to take a short Trip to the Salt Water in order to assist in recovering his Health.

JOSIAH WILDER Phn.

He was allowed to visit Boston, and to wander at will within the bounds of Worcester County. He returned to Worcester, and there died in 1804.

Joseph Wilder, Jr., colonel, and judge of the court of common pleas of Worcester County,—as his father had been before him,—was prominent among the signers of the address to General Gage. He apologized for this indiscretion, and seems to have received no further attention from the Committee of Safety. In the extent of his possessions he rivaled Abijah Willard, having increased a generous inheritance by the profits of very extensive manufacture and export of pearlash and potash: an industry which he and his brother Caleb were the first to introduce into America. He was now nearly seventy years of age, and died in the second year of the war.

Joseph House, at the evacuation of Boston, went with the army to Halifax. He was a householder, but possessed no considerable estate in Lancaster. In 1778, his name appears among the proscribed and banished.

The Lancaster committee of correspondence, July 17, 1775, published Nahum Houghton as "an unwearied pedlar of that baneful herb tea," and warned all patriots "to entirely shun his company and have no manner of dealings or connections with him except acts of common humanity." A special town meeting was called on June 30, 1777, chiefly "to act on a Resolve of the General Assembly Respecting and Securing this and the other United States against the Danger to which thay are Exposed by the Internal Enemies Thereof, and to Elect some proper person to Collect such evidence against such Persons as shall be demed by athority as Dangerous persons to this and the other United States of America." At this meeting Colonel Asa Whitcomb was chosen to collect evidence against suspected loyalists, and Moses Gerrish, Daniel Allen, Ezra Houghton, Joseph Moor, and Solomon Houghton, were voted "as Dangerous Persons and Internal Enemies to this State." On September 12 of the same year, apparently upon a report from Colonel Asa Whitcomb, it was voted that Thomas Grant, James Carter, and the Reverend Timothy Harrington, "Stand on the Black List." It was also ordered that the selectmen "Return a List of these Dangerous Persons to the Clerk, and he to the Justice of the Quorum as soon as may be." This action of the extremists seems to have aroused the more conservative citizens, and another meeting was called, on September 23, for the purpose of reconsidering this ill-advised and arbitrary proscription, at which meeting the clerk was instructed not to return the names of James Carter and the Reverend Timothy Harrington before the regular town meeting in November.

Thomas Grant was an old soldier, having served in the French and Indian War, and, if a loyalist, probably condoned the offence by enlisting in the patriot army; his name is on the muster-roll of the Rhode Island expedition in 1777, and in 1781 he was mustered into the service for three years. He was about fifty years of age, and a poor man, for the town paid bills presented "for providing for Tom Grant's Family."

Moses Gerrish was graduated at Harvard College in 1762, and reputed a man of considerable ability. Enoch Gerrish, perhaps a brother of Moses, was a farmer in Lancaster who left his home, was arrested and imprisoned in York County, and thence removed for trial to Worcester by order of the council, May 29, 1778. The following letter uncomplimentary to these two loyalists is found in Massachusetts Archives (cxcix, 278).

Sir. The two Gerrishes Moses & Enoch, that ware sometime since apprehended by warrant from the Council are now set at Libberty by reason of that Laws Expiring on which they were taken up. I would move to your Hon'rs a new warrant might Isue, Directed to Doc'r. Silas Hoges to apprehend & confine them as I look upon them to be Dangerous persons to go at large. I am with respect your Hon'rs. most obedient Hum. Ser't.

JAMES PRESCOTT.

Groton 12 of July 1778.

To the Hon'e Jereh. Powel Esq.

An order for their rearrest was voted by the council. Moses Gerrish finally received some position in the commissary department of the British army, and, when peace was declared, obtained a grant of free tenancy of the island of Grand Menan for seven years. At the expiration of that time, if a settlement of forty families with schoolmaster and minister should be established, the whole island was to become the freehold of the colonists. Associated with Gerrish in this project was Thomas Ross, of Lancaster. They failed in obtaining the requisite number of settlers, but continued to reside upon the island, and there Moses Gerrish died at an advanced age.

Solomon Houghton, a Lancaster farmer in comfortable circumstances, fearing the inquisition of the patriot committee, fled from his home. In 1779, the judge of probate for Worcester County appointed commissioners to care for his confiscated estate.

Ezra Houghton, a prosperous farmer, and recently appointed justice of the peace, affixed his name to the address to General Gage in 1775, and to the recantation. In May, 1777, he was imprisoned, under charge of counterfeiting the bills of public credit and aiding the enemy. In November following he petitioned to be admitted to bail (see Massachusetts Archives, ccxvi, 129) and his request was favorably received, his bail bond being set at two thousand pounds.

Joseph Moore was one of the six slave-owners of Lancaster in 1771, possessed a farm and a mill, and was ranked a "gentleman." On September 20, 1777, being confined in Worcester jail, he petitioned for enlargement, claiming his innocence of the charges for which his name had been put upon Lancaster's black list. His petition met no favor, and his estate was duly confiscated. (See Massachusetts Archives, clxxxiii, 160.)

At the town meeting on the first Monday in November, 1777, the names of James Carter and Daniel Allen were stricken from the black list, apparently without opposition. That the Reverend Timothy Harrington, Lancaster's prudent and much-beloved minister, should be denounced as an enemy of his country, and his name even placed temporarily among those of "dangerous persons," exhibits the bitterness of partisanship at that date. This town-meeting prosecution was ostensibly based upon certain incautious expressions of opinion, but appears really to have been inspired by the spite of the Whitcombs and others, whose enmity had been aroused by his conservative action several years before in the church troubles, known as "the Goss and Walley war," in the neighboring town of Bolton. The Reverend Thomas Goss, of Bolton, Ebenezer Morse, of Boylston, and Andrew Whitney, of Petersham, were classmates of Mr. Harrington in the Harvard class of 1737, and all of them were opposed to the revolution of the colonies. The disaffection, which, ignoring the action of an ecclesiastical council, pushed Mr. Goss from his pulpit, arose more from the political ferment of the day than from any advanced views of his opponents respecting the abuse of alcoholic stimulants. For nearly forty years Mr. Harrington had perhaps never omitted from his fervent prayers in public assemblies the form of supplication for divine blessing upon the sovereign ruler of Great Britain. It is not strange, although he had yielded reluctant submission to the new order of things, and was anxiously striving to perform his clerical duties without offense to any of his flock, that his lips should sometimes lapse into the wonted formula, "bless our good King George." It is related that on occasions of such inadvertence, he, without embarrassing pause, added: "Thou knowest, O Lord! we mean George Washington." In the records of the town clerk, nothing is told of the nature of the charges against Mr. Harrington, or of the manner of his defence. Two deacons were sent as messengers "to inform the Rev'd Timo'o Harrington that he has something in agitation Now to be Heard in this Meeting at which he has Liberty to attend." Joseph Willard, Esq., in 1826, recording probably the reminiscence of some one present at the dramatic scene, says that when the venerable clergyman confronted his accusers, baring his breast, he exclaimed with the language and feeling of outraged virtue: "Strike, strike here with your daggers! I am a true friend to my country!"

Among the manuscripts left by Mr. Harrington there is one prepared for, if not read at, this town meeting, containing the charges in detail, and his reply to each. It is headed: "Harrington's answers to ye Charges &c." It is a shrewd and eloquent defence, bearing evidence, so far as rhetoric can, that its author was in advance of his people and his times in respect of Christian charity, if not of political foresight. The charges were four in number: the first being that of the Bolton Walleyites alleging that his refusal to receive them as church members in regular standing brought him "under ye censure of shutting up ye Kingdom of Heaven against men." To this, calm answer is given by a review of the whole controversy in the Bolton Church, closing thus: "Mr. Moderator, as I esteemed the Proceedings of these Brethren at Bolton Disorderly and Schismatical, and as the Apostle hath given Direction to mark those who cause Divisions and Offences and avoid them, I thought it my Duty to bear Testimony against ye Conduct of both ye People at Bolton, and those who were active in settling a Pastor over them in the Manner Specified, and I still retain ye sentiment, and this not to shut the Kingdom of Heaven against them, but to recover them from their wanderings to the Order of the Gospel and to the direct way to the Kingdom of Heaven. And I still approve and think them just."

The second charge, in full, was as follows:—

"It appears to us that his conduct hath ye greatest Tendency to subvert our religious Constitution and ye Faith of these churches.—In his saying that the Quebeck Bill was just—and that he would have done the same had he been one of ye Parliament—and also saying that he was in charity with a professed Roman Catholick, whose Principles are so contrary to the Faith of these churches,—That for a man to be in charity with them we conceive that it is impossible that he should be in Charity with professed New England Churches. It therefore appears to us that it would be no better than mockery for him to pretend to stand as Pastor to one of these churches." To this Mr. Harrington first replies by the pointed question: "Is not Liberty of Conscience and ye right of judging for themselves in the matters of Religion, one grand professed Principle in ye New England Churches; and one Corner Stone in their Foundation?" He then explicitly states his abhorrence of "the anti-Christian tenets of Popery," adding: "However on the other hand they receive all the articles of the Athanasian Creed—and of consequence in their present Constitution they have some Gold, Silver, and precious stones as well as much wood, hay, and stubble." He characterizes the accusation in this pithy paragraph: "Too much Charity is the Charge here brought against me,—would to God I had still more of it in ye most important sense. Instead of a Disqualification, it would be a most enviable accomplishment in ye Pastor of a Protestant New England Church." A sharp argumentum ad hominem, for the benefit of the ultra-radical accuser closes this division of his defence. "But, Mr. Moderator, if my charity toward some Roman Catholicks disqualified me for a Protestant Minister, what, what must we think of ye honorable Congress attending Mass in a Body in ye Roman Catholic Chappel at Philadelphia? Must it not be equal mockery in them to pretend to represent and act for the United Protestant States?" ...

The third charge was that he had declared himself and one of the brethren to "be a major part of the Church." This, like the first charge, was a revival of an old personal grievance within the church, rehabilitated to give cumulative force to the political complaints. The accusation is summarily disposed of; the accused condemning the sentiment "as grossly Tyrannical, inconsistent with common sense and repugnant to good order"; and denying that he ever uttered it.

Lastly came the political charge pure and simple.

"His despising contemning and setting at naught and speaking Evil of all our Civil Rulers, Congress, Continental and Provincial, of all our Courts, Legislative and Executive, are not only subversive of good Order: But we apprehend come under Predicament of those spoken of in 2 Pet. II. 10, who despise government, presumptuous, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of Dignities &c."

Mr. Harrington acknowledges that he once uttered to a Mr. North this imprudent speech. "I disapprove abhor and detest the Results of Congress whether Continental or Provincial," but adds that he "took the first opportunity to inform Mr. North that I had respect only to two articles in said Results." He apologizes for the speech, but at the same time defends his criticism of the two articles as arbitrary measures. He also confesses saying that "General Court had no Business to direct Committees to seize on Estates before they had been Confiscated in a course of Law," and "that their Constituents never elected or sent them for that Purpose," but this sentiment he claimed that he had subsequently retracted as rash and improper to be spoken. These objectionable expressions of opinion, he asserts, were made "before ye 19th of April 1775."

It is needless to say that the Reverend Timothy Harrington's name was speedily erased from the black list, and, to the credit of his people be it said, he was treated with increased consideration and honor during the following eighteen years that he lived to serve them. In the deliberations of the Lancaster town meeting, as in those of the Continental Congress, broad views of National Independence based upon civil and religions liberty, finally prevailed over sectional prejudice and intolerance. The loyalist pastor was a far better republican than his radical inquisitors.

* * * * *

[Since the paper upon Lancaster and the Acadiens was published in The Bay State Monthly for April, I have been favored with the perusal of Captain Abijah Willard's "Orderly Book," through the courtesy of its possessor, Robert Willard, M.D., of Boston, who found it among the historical collections of his father, Joseph Willard, Esq. The volume contains, besides other interesting matter, a concise diary of experiences during the military expedition of 1755 in Nova Scotia; from which it appears that the Lancaster company was prominently engaged in the capture of Forts Lawrence and Beau Sejour. Captain Willard, though not at Grand Pre, was placed in command of a detachment which carried desolation through the villages to the westward of the Bay of Minas; and the diary affords evidence that this warfare against the defenceless peasantry was revolting to that gallant officer; and that, while obedient to his positive orders, he tempered the cruelty of military necessity with his own humanity.

The full names of his subalterns, not given in the list from General Winslow's Journal, are found to be

"Joshua Willard, Lieutenant, Moses Haskell, " Caleb Willard, Ensign."

Of the Lancaster men, Sergeant James Houghton died, and William Hudson was killed, in Nova Scotia.

The diary is well worthy of being printed complete.

H.S.M.]

* * * * *

LOUIS ANSART.

BY CLARA CLAYTON.

One of the notable citizens of Revolutionary times was Colonel Louis Ansart. He was a native of France, and came to America in 1776, while our country was engaged in war with England. He brought with him credentials from high officials in his native country, and was immediately appointed colonel of artillery and inspector-general of the foundries, and engaged in casting cannon in Massachusetts. Colonel Ansart understood the art to great perfection; and it is said that some of his cannon and mortars are still serviceable and valuable. Foundries were then in operation in Bridgewater and Titicut, of which he had charge until the close of the Revolutionary War.

Colonel Ansart was an educated man—a graduate of a college in France—and of a good family. It is said that he conversed well in seven different languages.

His father purchased him a commission of lieutenant at the age of fourteen years; and he was employed in military service by his native country and the United States, and held a commission until the close of the Revolutionary War, when he purchased a farm in Dracut and resided there until his death. He returned to France three times after he first came to this country, and was there at the time Louis XVI was arrested, in 1789.

Colonel Ansart married Catherine Wimble, an American lady, of Boston, and reared a large family in Dracut—in that portion of the town which was annexed to Lowell in 1874. Atis Ansart, who still resides there, in the eighty-seventh year of his age, is a son of Colonel Ansart; also Felix Ansart, late of New London, Connecticut, and for twenty-four years an officer of the regular army, at one time stationed at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, and afterwards at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he remained eight years, and died in January, 1874.

There were five boys and seven girls. The boys were those above named, and Robert, Abel, and Louis. The girls were Julia Ann, who married Bradley Varnum; Fanny, who died in childhood; Betsey, who married Jonathan Hildreth, moved to Ohio, and died in Dayton, in that State; Sophia, who married Peter Hazelton, who died some twenty years ago, after which she married a Mr. Spaulding; Harriet, who married Samuel N. Wood, late of Lowell; Catherine, who married Mr. Layton; and Aline, who died at the age of eighteen years.

Colonel Ansart was trained in that profession and in those times which had a tendency to develop the sterner qualities, and was what would be termed in these times a man of stern, rigid, and imperious nature. It is said he never retired at night without first loading his pistols and swinging them over the headboard of his bed.

After settling in Dracut,—and in his best days he lived in excellent style for the times, kept a span of fine horses, rode in a sulky, and "lived like a nabob,"—he always received a pension from the government; but his habits were such that he never acquired a fortune, but spent his money freely and enjoyed it as he went along.

Before he came to America he had traveled in different countries. On one occasion, in Italy, he was waylaid and robbed of all he had, and narrowly escaped with his life. He had been playing and had been very successful, winning money, gold watches, and diamonds. As he was riding back to his hotel his postilion was shot. He immediately seized his pistols to defend himself, when he was struck on the back of the head with a bludgeon and rendered insensible. He did not return to consciousness until the next morning, when he found himself by the side of the road, bleeding from a terrible wound in his side from a dirk-knife. He had strength to attract the attention of a man passing with a team, and was taken to his hotel. A surgeon was called, who pronounced the wound mortal. Mr. Ansart objected to that view of the case, and sent for another, and with skilful treatment he finally recovered.

It is said that he was a splendid swordsman. On a certain occasion he was insulted, and challenged his foe to step out and defend himself with his sword. His opponent declined, saying he never fought with girls, meaning that Mr. Ansart was delicate, with soft, white hands and fair complexion, and no match for him, whereupon the young Frenchman drew his sword to give him a taste of his quality. He flourished it around his opponent's head, occasionally stratching his face and hands, until he was covered with wounds and blood, but he could not provoke him to draw his weapon and defend himself. After complimenting him with the name of "coward," he told him to go about his business, advising him in future to be more careful of his conduct and less boastful of his courage.

During the inquisition in France, Colonel Ansart said that prisoners were sometimes executed in the presence of large audiences, in a sort of amphitheatre. People of means had boxes, as in our theatres of the present day. Colonel Ansart occupied one of these boxes on one occasion with his lady. Before the performance began, another gentleman with his lady presented himself in Colonel Ansart's box, and requested him to vacate. He was told that he was rather presuming in his conduct and had better go where he belonged. The man insisted upon crowding himself in, and was very insolent, when Colonel Ansart seized him and threw him over the front, when, of course, he went tumbling down among the audience below. Colonel Ansart was for this act afterward arrested and imprisoned for a short time, but was finally liberated without trial.

History informs us that a combined attack by D'Estaing and General Sullivan was planned, in 1778, for the expulsion of the British from Rhode Island, where, under General Pigot, they had established a military depot. Colonel Ansart was aide-de-camp to General Sullivan in this expedition, and was wounded in the engagement of August 29.

On a certain occasion he was taking a sleigh-ride with his family, and in one of the adjacent towns met a gentleman with his turn-out in a narrow and drifted part of the road, where some difficulty occurred in passing each other. Colonel Ansart suggested to him that he should not have driven into such a place when he saw him coming. The man denied that he saw the colonel, and told him he lied. Colonel Ansart seized his pistol to punish him for his insolence, when his wife interfered, an explanation followed, and it was ascertained that both gentlemen were from Dracut. One was deacon of the church, and the other "inspector-general of artillery." Of course the pistols were put up, as the deacon didn't wish to be shot, and the colonel wouldn't tell a lie.

In his prime, our hero stood six feet high in his boots, and weighed two hundred pounds. He died in Dracut, May 28, 1804, at the age of sixty-two years.

Mrs. Ansart was born in Boston, and witnessed the battle of Bunker Hill, and often described the appearance of the British soldiers as they marched along past her residence, both in going to the battle and in returning. She was thirteen years of age, and recollected it perfectly. She said they were grand as they passed along the streets of Boston toward Charlestown. The officers were elegantly dressed and were in great spirits, thinking it was only a pleasant little enterprise to go over to Charlestown and drive those Yankees out of their fort; but when they returned it was a sad sight. The dead and dying were carried through the streets pale and ghastly and covered with blood. She said the people witnessed the battle from the houses in Boston, and as regiment after regiment was swept down by the terrible fire of the Americans, they said that the British were feigning to be frightened and falling down for sport; but when they saw that they did not get up again, and when the dead and wounded were brought back to Boston, the reality began to be made known, and that little frolic of taking the fort was really an ugly job, and hard to accomplish.

Mrs. Ansart died in Dracut at the age of eighty-six years, January 27, 1849. She retained her mental and physical faculties to a great degree till within a short time before her death. She was accustomed to walk to church, a distance of one mile, when she was eighty years of age. Colonel and Mrs. Ansart were both buried in Woodbine Cemetery, in the part of Lowell which belonged to Dracut at the time of their interment.

* * * * *

BEACON HILL BEFORE THE HOUSES.

BY DAVID M. BALFOUR.

The visitor to the dome of the Capitol of the State, as he looks out from its lantern and beholds spread immediately beneath his feet a semi-circular space, whose radius does not exceed a quarter of a mile, covered with upward of two thousand dwelling-houses, churches, hotels, and other public edifices, does not in all probability ask himself the question: "What did this place look like before there was any house here?" When Lieutenant-Colonel George Washington visited Boston in 1756, on business connected with the French war, and lodged at the Cromwell's Head Tavern, a building which is still standing on the north side of School Street, upon the site of No. 13, where Mrs. Harrington now deals out coffee and "mince"-pie to her customers, Beacon Hill was a collection of pastures, owned by thirteen proprietors, in lots containing from a half to twenty acres each. The southwesterly slope of the prominence is designated upon the old maps as "Copley Hill."

We will now endeavor to describe the appearance of the hill, at the commencement of the American Revolution, with the beacon on its top, from which it took its name, consisting of a tall mast sixty feet in height, erected in 1635, with an iron crane projecting from its side, supporting an iron pot. The mast was placed on cross-timbers, with a stone foundation, supported by braces, and provided with cross-sticks serving as a ladder for ascending to the crane. It remained until 1776, when it was destroyed by the British; but was replaced in 1790 by a monument, inclosed in a space six rods square, where it remained until 1811. It was surmounted by an eagle, which now surmounts the speaker's desk in the hall of the House of Representatives, and had tablets upon its four sides with inscriptions commemorative of Revolutionary events. It stood nearly opposite the southeast corner of the reservoir lot, upon the site of No. 82 Temple Street, and its foundation was sixty feet higher up in the air than the present level of that street. The lot was sold, in 1811, for the miserable pittance of eighty cents per square foot!

Starting upon our pedestrian tour from the corner of Tremont and Beacon Streets, where now stands the Albion, was an acre lot owned by the heirs of James Penn, a selectman of the town, and a ruling elder in the First Church, which stood in State Street upon the site of Brazer's Building. The parsonage stood opposite, upon the site of the Merchants Bank Building, and extended with its garden to Dock Square, the water flowing up nearly to the base of the Samuel Adams statue. Next comes a half-acre lot owned by Samuel Eliot, grandfather of President Eliot of Harvard University. Then follows a second half-acre lot owned by the heirs of the Reverend James Allen, fifth minister of the First Church, who, in his day, as will be shown in the sequel, owned a larger portion of the surface of Boston than any other man, being owner of thirty-seven of the seven hundred acres which inclosed the territory of the town. His name is perpetuated in the street of that name bounding the Massachusetts General Hospital grounds. Somerset Street was laid out through it. The Congregational House, Jacob Sleeper Hall, and Boston University Building, which occupies the former site of the First Baptist Church, under the pastorship of the Reverend Rollin H. Neale, stand upon it. Next comes Governor James Bowdoin's two-acre pasture, extending from the last-named street to Mount Vernon Street, and northerly to Allston Street; the upper part of Bowdoin Street and Ashburton Place were laid out through it; the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires, formerly Freeman-place Chapel, built by the Second Church, under the pastoral care of the Reverend Chandler Robbins, and afterwards occupied by the First Presbyterian Church, the Church of the Disciples, the Brattle-square Church, the Old South Church, and the First Reformed Episcopal Church; so that the entire theological gamut has resounded from its walls; the Swedenborgian Church, over which the Reverend Thomas Worcester presided for a long series of years, also stands upon it. Having reached the summit of the hill, we come abreast of the five-and-a-half-acre pasture of Governor John Hancock, the first signer of the immortal Declaration of American Independence, extending from Mount Vernon Street to Joy Street, and northerly to Derne Street, embracing the Capitol lot, and also the reservoir lot, for which last two he paid, in 1752, the modest sum of eleven hundred dollars! It is now worth a thousand times as much. For the remainder of his possessions in that vicinity he paid nine hundred dollars more. The upper part of Mount Vernon Street, the upper part of Hancock Street, and Derne Street, were laid out through it. Then, descending the hill, comes Benjamin Joy's two-acre pasture, extending from Joy Street to Walnut Street, and extending northerly to Pinckney Street; forty-seven dwelling-houses now standing upon it. Mr. Joy paid two thousand dollars for it. At the time of its purchase he was desirous of getting a house in the country, as being more healthy than a town-residence, and he selected this localty as "being country enough for him." The upper part of Joy Street was laid out through it. Now follows the valuable twenty-acre pasture of John Singleton Copley, the eminent historical painter, one of whose productions (Charles the First demanding in the House of Commons the arrest of the five impeached members) is now in the art-room of the Public Library. It extended for a third of a mile on Beacon Street, from Walnut Street to Beaver Street, and northerly to Pinckney Street, which he purchased in lots at prices ranging from fifty to seventy dollars per acre. Walnut, Spruce, a part of Charles, River, Brimmer, Branch Avenue, Byron Avenue, Lime, and Chestnut Streets, Louisburg Square, the lower parts of Mount Vernon and Pinckney Streets, and the southerly part of West Cedar Street, have been laid out through it. Copley left Boston, in 1774, for England, and never returned to his native land. He wrote to his agent in Boston, Gardner Greene (whose mansion subsequently stood upon the enclosure in Pemberton Square, surrounded by a garden of two and a quarter acres, for which he paid thirty-three thousand dollars), to sell the twenty-acre pasture for the best price which could be obtained. After a delay of some time he sold it, in 1796, for eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty dollars; equivalent to nine hundred dollars per acre, or two cents per square foot. It is a singular fact that a record title to only two and a half of the twenty acres could be found. It was purchased by the Mount Vernon Proprietors, consisting of Jonathan Mason, three tenths; Harrison Gray Otis, three tenths; Benjamin Joy, two tenths; and Henry Jackson, two tenths. The barberry bushes speedily disappeared after the Copley sale. The southerly part of Charles Street was laid out through it. And the first railroad in the United States was here employed. It was gravitation in principle. An inclined plane was laid from the top of the hill, and the dirt-cars slid down, emptying their loads into the water at the foot and drawing the empty cars upward. The apex of the hill was in the rear of the Capitol near the junction of Mount Vernon and Temple Streets, and was about sixty feet above the present level of that locality, and about even with the roof of the Capitol. The level at the corner of Bowdoin Street and Ashburton Place has been reduced about thirty feet, and at the northeast corner of the reservoir lot about twenty feet, and Louisburg Square about fifteen feet. The contents of the excavations were used to fill up Charles Street as far north as Cambridge Street, the parade-ground on the Common, and the Leverett-street jail lands. The territory thus conveyed now embraces some of the finest residences in the city. The Somerset Club-house, the Church of the Advent, and the First African Church, built in 1807 by the congregation worshiping with the Reverend Daniel Sharp, stand upon it.