PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS. (1851.)

BERNARDIN ST. PIERRE, in his Wishes of a Solitary, asks for his country neither wealth, nor military glory, nor magnificent palaces and monuments, nor splendor of court nobility, nor clerical pomp. "Rather," he says, "O France, may no beggar tread thy plains, no sick or suffering man ask in vain for relief; in all thy hamlets may every young woman find a lover and every lover a true wife; may the young be trained arightly and guarded from evil; may the old close their days in the tranquil hope of those who love God and their fellow-men."

We are reminded of the amiable wish of the French essayist—a wish even yet very far from realization, we fear, in the empire of Napoleon III.— by the perusal of two documents recently submitted to the legislature of the State of Massachusetts. They indicate, in our view, the real glory of a state, and foreshadow the coming of that time when Milton's definition of a true commonwealth shall be no longer a prophecy, but the description of an existing fact,—"a huge Christian personage, a mighty growth and stature of an honest man, moved by the purpose of a love of God and of mankind."

Some years ago, the Legislature of Massachusetts, at the suggestion of several benevolent gentlemen whose attention had been turned to the subject, appointed a commission to inquire into the condition of the idiots of the Commonwealth, to ascertain their numbers, and whether anything could be done in their behalf.

The commissioners were Dr. Samuel G. Howe, so well and honorably known for his long and arduous labors in behalf of the blind, Judge Byington, and Dr. Gilman Kimball. The burden of the labor fell upon the chairman, who entered upon it with the enthusiasm, perseverance, and practical adaptation of means to ends which have made him so efficient in his varied schemes of benevolence. On the 26th of the second month, 1848, a full report of the results of this labor was made to the Governor, accompanied by statistical tables and minute details. One hundred towns had been visited by the chairman or his reliable agent, in which five hundred and seventy-five persons in a state of idiocy were discovered. These were examined carefully in respect to their physical as well as mental condition, no inquiry being omitted which was calculated to throw light upon the remote or immediate causes of this mournful imperfection in the creation of God. The proximate causes Dr. Howe mentions are to be found in the state of the bodily organization, deranged and disproportioned by some violation of natural law on the part of the parents or remoter ancestors of the sufferers. Out of 420 cases of idiocy, he had obtained information respecting the condition of the progenitors of 359; and in all but four of these eases he found that one or the other, or both, of their immediate progenitors had in some way departed widely from the condition of health; they were scrofulous, or predisposed to affections of the brain, and insanity, or had intermarried with blood-relations, or had been intemperate, or guilty of sensual excesses.

Of the 575 cases, 420 were those of idiocy from birth, and 155 of idiocy afterwards. Of the born idiots, 187 were under twenty-five years of age, and all but 13 seemed capable of improvement. Of those above twenty-five years of age, 73 appeared incapable of improvement in their mental condition, being helpless as children at seven years of age; 43 out of the 420 seemed as helpless as children at two years of age; 33 were in the condition of mere infants; and 220 were supported at the public charge in almshouses. A large proportion of them were found to be given over to filthy and loathsome habits, gluttony, and lust, and constantly sinking lower towards the condition of absolute brutishness.

Those in private houses were found, if possible, in a still more deplorable state. Their parents were generally poor, feeble in mind and body, and often of very intemperate habits. Many of them seemed scarcely able to take care of themselves, and totally unfit for the training of ordinary children. It was the blind leading the blind, imbecility teaching imbecility. Some instances of the experiments of parental ignorance upon idiotic offspring, which fell under the observation of Dr. Howe, are related in his report Idiotic children were found with their heads covered over with cold poultices of oak-bark, which the foolish parents supposed would tan the brain and harden it as the tanner does his ox-hides, and so make it capable of retaining impressions and remembering lessons. In other cases, finding that the child could not be made to comprehend anything, the sagacious heads of the household, on the supposition that its brain was too hard, tortured it with hot poultices of bread and milk to soften it. Others plastered over their children's heads with tar. Some administered strong doses of mercury, to "solder up the openings" in the head and make it tight and strong. Others encouraged the savage gluttony of their children, stimulating their unnatural and bestial appetites, on the ground that "the poor creatures had nothing else to enjoy but their food, and they should have enough of that!"

In consequence of this report, the legislature, in the spring of 1848, made an annual appropriation of twenty-five hundred dollars, for three years, for the purpose of training and teaching ten idiot children, to be selected by the Governor and Council. The trustees of the Asylum for the Blind, under the charge of Dr. Howe, made arrangements for receiving these pupils. The school was opened in the autumn of 1848; and its first annual report, addressed to the Governor and printed by order of the Senate, is now before us.

Of the ten pupils, it appears that not one had the usual command of muscular motion,—the languid body obeyed not the service of the imbecile will. Some could walk and use their limbs and hands in simple motions; others could make only make slight use of their muscles; and two were without any power of locomotion.

One of these last, a boy six years of age, who had been stupefied on the day of his birth by the application of hot rum to his head, could scarcely see or notice objects, and was almost destitute of the sense of touch. He could neither stand nor sit upright, nor even creep, but would lie on the floor in whatever position he was placed. He could not feed himself nor chew solid food, and had no more sense of decency than an infant. His intellect was a blank; he had no knowledge, no desires, no affections. A more hopeless object for experiment could scarcely have been selected.

A year of patient endeavor has nevertheless wrought a wonderful change in the condition of this miserable being. Cold bathing, rubbing of the limbs, exercise of the muscles, exposure to the air, and other appliances have enabled him to stand upright, to sit at table and feed himself, and chew his food, and to walk about with slight assistance. His habits are no longer those of a brute; he observes decency; his eye is brighter; his cheeks glow with health; his countenance, is more expressive of thought. He has learned many words and constructs simple sentences; his affections begin to develop; and there is every prospect that he will be so far renovated as to be able to provide for himself in manhood.

In the case of another boy, aged twelve years, the improvement has been equally remarkable. The gentleman who first called attention to him, in a recent note to Dr. Howe, published in the report, thus speaks of his present condition: "When I remember his former wild and almost frantic demeanor when approached by any one, and the apparent impossibility of communicating with him, and now see him standing in his class, playing with his fellows, and willingly and familiarly approaching me, examining what I gave him,—and when I see him already selecting articles named by his teacher, and even correctly pronouncing words printed on cards,— improvement does not convey the idea presented to my mind; it is creation; it is making him anew."

All the pupils have more or less advanced. Their health and habits have improved; and there is no reason to doubt that the experiment, at the close of its three years, will be found to have been quite as successful as its most sanguine projectors could have anticipated. Dr. Howe has been ably seconded by an accomplished teacher, James B. Richards, who has devoted his whole time to the pupils. Of the nature and magnitude of their task, an idea may be formed only by considering the utter listlessness of idiocy, the incapability of the poor pupil to fix his attention upon anything, and his general want of susceptibility to impressions. All his senses are dulled and perverted. Touch, hearing, sight, smell, are all more or less defective. His gluttony is unaccompanied with the gratification of taste,—the most savory viands and the offal which he shares with the pigs equally satisfy him. His mental state is still worse than his physical. Thought is painful and irksome to him.

His teacher can only engage his attention by strenuous efforts, loud, earnest tones, gesticulations and signs, and a constant presentation of some visible object of bright color and striking form. The eye wanders, and the spark of consciousness and intelligence which has been fanned into momentary brightness darkens at the slightest relaxation of the teacher's exertions. The names of objects presented to him must sometimes be repeated hundreds of times before he can learn them. Yet the patience and enthusiasm of the teacher are rewarded by a progress, slow and unequal, but still marked and manifest. Step by step, often compelled to turn back and go over the inch of ground he had gained, the idiot is still creeping forward; and by almost imperceptible degrees his sick, cramped, and prisoned spirit casts off the burden of its body of death, breath as from the Almighty—is breathed into him, and he becomes a living soul.

After the senses of the idiot are trained to take note of their appropriate objects, the various perceptive faculties are next to be exercised. The greatest possible number of facts are to be gathered up through the medium of these faculties into the storehouse of memory, from whence eventually the higher faculties of mind may draw the material of general ideas. It has been found difficult, if not impossible, to teach the idiot to read by the letters first, as in the ordinary method; but while the varied powers of the three letters, h, a, t, could not be understood by him, he could be made to comprehend the complex sign of the word hat, made by uniting the three.

The moral nature of the idiot needs training and development as well as his physical and mental. All that can be said of him is, that he has the latent capacity for moral development and culture. Uninstructed and left to himself, he has no ideas of regulated appetites and propensities, of decency and delicacy of affection and social relations. The germs of these ideas, which constitute the glory and beauty of humanity, undoubtedly exist in him; but there can be no growth without patient and persevering culture. Where this is afforded, to use the language of the report, "the idiot may learn what love is, though he may not know the word which expresses it; he may feel kindly affections while unable to understand the simplest virtuous principle; and he may begin to live acceptably to God before he has learned the name by which men call him."

In the facts and statistics presented in the report, light is shed upon some of the dark pages of God's providence, and it is seen that the suffering and shame of idiocy are the result of sin, of a violation of the merciful laws of God and of the harmonies of His benign order. The penalties which are ordained for the violators of natural laws are inexorable and certain. For the transgressor of the laws of life there is, as in the case of Esau, "no place for repentance, though he seek it earnestly and with tears." The curse cleaves to him and his children. In this view, how important becomes the subject of the hereditary transmission of moral and physical disease and debility! and how necessary it is that there should be a clearer understanding of, and a willing obedience, at any cost, to the eternal law which makes the parent the blessing or the curse of the child, giving strength and beauty, and the capacity to know and do the will of God, or bequeathing loathsomeness, deformity, and animal appetite, incapable of the restraints of the moral faculties! Even if the labors of Dr. Howe and his benevolent associates do not materially lessen the amount of present actual evil and suffering in this respect, they will not be put forth in vain if they have the effect of calling public attention to the great laws of our being, the violation of which has made this goodly earth a vast lazarhouse of pain and sorrow.

The late annual message of the Governor of Massachusetts invites our attention to a kindred institution of charity. The chief magistrate congratulates the legislature, in language creditable to his mind and heart, on the opening of the Reform School for Juvenile Criminals, established by an act of a previous legislature. The act provides that, when any boy under sixteen years of age shall be convicted of crime punishable by imprisonment other than such an offence as is punished by imprisonment for life, he may be, at the discretion of the court or justice, sent to the State Reform School, or sentenced to such imprisonment as the law now provides for his offence. The school is placed under the care of trustees, who may either refuse to receive a boy thus sent there, or, after he has been received, for reasons set forth in the act, may order him to be committed to prison under the previous penal law of the state. They are also authorized to apprentice the boys, at their discretion, to inhabitants of the Commonwealth. And whenever any boy shall be discharged, either as reformed or as having reached the age of twenty-one years, his discharge is a full release from his sentence.

It is made the duty of the trustees to cause the boys to be instructed in piety and morality, and in branches of useful knowledge, in some regular course of labor, mechanical, agricultural, or horticultural, and such other trades and arts as may be best adapted to secure the amendment, reformation, and future benefit of the boys. The class of offenders for whom this act provides are generally the offspring of parents depraved by crime or suffering from poverty and want,—the victims often of circumstances of evil which almost constitute a necessity,—issuing from homes polluted and miserable, from the sight and hearing of loathsome impurities and hideous discords, to avenge upon society the ignorance, and destitution, and neglect with which it is too often justly chargeable. In 1846 three hundred of these youthful violators of law were sentenced to jails and other places of punishment in Massachusetts, where they incurred the fearful liability of being still more thoroughly corrupted by contact with older criminals, familiar with atrocity, and rolling their loathsome vices "as a sweet morsel under the tongue." In view of this state of things the Reform School has been established, twenty-two thousand dollars having been contributed to the state for that purpose by an unknown benefactor of his race. The school is located in Westboro', on a fine farm of two hundred acres. The buildings are in the form of a square, with a court in the centre, three stories in front, with wings. They are constructed with a degree of architectural taste, and their site is happily chosen,—a gentle eminence, overlooking one of the loveliest of the small lakes which form a pleasing feature in New England scenery. From this place the atmosphere and associations of the prison are excluded. The discipline is strict, as a matter of course; but it is that of a well-regulated home or school-room,—order, neatness, and harmony within doors; and without, the beautiful 'sights and sounds and healthful influences of Nature. One would almost suppose that the poetical dream of Coleridge, in his tragedy of Remorse, had found its realization in the Westboro' School, and that, weary of the hopelessness and cruelty of the old penal system, our legislators had embodied in their statutes the idea of the poet:—

"With other ministrations thou, O Nature, Healest thy wandering and distempered child Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters, Till he relent, and can no more endure To be a jarring and a dissonant thing Amidst this general dance and minstrelsy."

Thus it is that the Christian idea of reformation, rather than revenge, is slowly but surely incorporating itself in our statute books. We have only to look back but a single century to be able to appreciate the immense gain for humanity in the treatment of criminals which has been secured in that space of time. Then the use of torture was common throughout Europe. Inability to comprehend and believe certain religious dogmas was a crime to be expiated by death, or confiscation of estate, or lingering imprisonment. Petty offences against property furnished subjects for the hangman. The stocks and the whipping-post stood by the side of the meeting-house. Tongues were bored with redhot irons and ears shorn off. The jails were loathsome dungeons, swarming with vermin, unventilated, unwarmed. A century and a half ago the populace of Massachusetts were convulsed with grim merriment at the writhings of a miserable woman scourged at the cart-tail or strangling in the ducking- stool; crowds hastened to enjoy the spectacle of an old man enduring the unutterable torment of the 'peine forte et dare,'—pressed slowly to death under planks,—for refusing to plead to an indictment for witchcraft. What a change from all this to the opening of the State Reform School, to the humane regulations of prisons and penitentiaries, to keen-eyed benevolence watching over the administration of justice, which, in securing society from lawless aggression, is not suffered to overlook the true interest and reformation of the criminal, nor to forget that the magistrate, in the words of the Apostle, is to be indeed "the minister of God to man for good!"



LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES.

"THEY that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," was the significant answer of our Lord to the self-righteous Pharisees who took offence at his companions,—the poor, the degraded, the weak, and the sinful. "Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."

The great lesson of duty inculcated by this answer of the Divine Teacher has been too long overlooked by individuals and communities professedly governed by His maxims. The phylacteries of our modern Pharisees are as broad as those of the old Jewish saints. The respectable Christian detests his vicious and ill-conditioned neighbors as heartily as the Israelite did the publicans and sinners of his day. He folds his robe of self-righteousness closely about him, and denounces as little better than sinful weakness all commiseration for the guilty; and all attempts to restore and reclaim the erring violators of human law otherwise than by pains and penalties as wicked collusion with crime, dangerous to the stability and safety of society, and offensive in the sight of God. And yet nothing is more certain than that, just in proportion as the example of our Lord has been followed in respect to the outcast and criminal, the effect has been to reform and elevate,—to snatch as brands from the burning souls not yet wholly given over to the service of evil. The wonderful influence for good exerted over the most degraded and reckless criminals of London by the excellent and self-denying Elizabeth Fry, the happy results of the establishment of houses of refuge, and reformation, and Magdalen asylums, all illustrate the wisdom of Him who went about doing good, in pointing out the morally diseased as the appropriate subjects of the benevolent labors of His disciples. No one is to be despaired of. We have no warrant to pass by any of our fellow-creatures as beyond the reach of God's grace and mercy; for, beneath the most repulsive and hateful outward manifestation, there is always a consciousness of the beauty of goodness and purity, and of the loathsomeness of sin,—one chamber of the heart as yet not wholly profaned, whence at times arises the prayer of a burdened and miserable spirit for deliverance. Deep down under the squalid exterior, unparticipative in the hideous merriment and recklessness of the criminal, there is another self,—a chained and suffering inner man,— crying out, in the intervals of intoxication and brutal excesses, like Jonah from the bosom of hell. To this lingering consciousness the sympathy and kindness of benevolent and humane spirits seldom appeal in vain; for, whatever may be outward appearances, it remains true that the way of the transgressor is hard, and that sin and suffering are inseparable. Crime is seldom loved or persevered in for its own sake; but, when once the evil path is entered upon, a return is in reality extremely difficult to the unhappy wanderer, and often seems as well nigh impossible. The laws of social life rise up like insurmountable barriers between him and escape. As he turns towards the society whose rights he has outraged, its frown settles upon him; the penalties of the laws he has violated await him; and he falls back despairing, and suffers the fetters of the evil habit to whose power he has yielded himself to be fastened closer and heavier upon him. O for some good angel, in the form of a brother-man and touched with a feeling of his sins and infirmities, to reassure his better nature and to point out a way of escape from its body of death!

We have been led into these remarks by an account, given in the London Weekly Chronicle, of a most remarkable interview between the professional thieves of London and Lord Ashley,—a gentleman whose best patent of nobility is to be found in his generous and untiring devotion to the interests of his fellow-men. It appears that a philanthropic gentleman in London had been applied to by two young thieves, who had relinquished their evil practices and were obtaining a precarious but honest livelihood by picking up bones and rags in the streets, their loss of character closing against them all other employments. He had just been reading an address of Lord Ashley's in favor of colonial emigration, and he was led to ask one of the young men how he would like to emigrate.

"I should jump at the chance!" was the reply. Not long after the gentleman was sent for to visit one of those obscure and ruinous courts of the great metropolis where crime and poverty lie down together,— localities which Dickens has pictured with such painful distinctness. Here, to his surprise, he met a number of thieves and outlaws, who declared themselves extremely anxious to know whether any hope could be held out to them of obtaining an honest living, however humble, in the colonies, as their only reason for continuing in their criminal course was the impossibility of extricating themselves. He gave them such advice and encouragement as he was able, and invited them to assemble again, with such of their companions as they could persuade to do so, at the room of the Irish Free School, for the purpose of meeting Lord Ashley. On the 27th of the seventh month last the meeting took place. At the hour appointed, Lord Ashley and five or six other benevolent gentlemen, interested in emigration as a means of relief and reformation to the criminal poor, entered the room, which was already well-nigh filled. Two hundred and seven professed thieves were present. "Several of the most experienced thieves were stationed at the door to prevent the admission of any but thieves. Some four or five individuals, who were not at first known, were subjected to examination, and only allowed to remain on stating that they were, and being recognized as, members of the dishonest fraternity; and before the proceedings of the evening commenced the question was very carefully put, and repeated several times, whether any one was in the room of whom others entertained doubts as to who he was. The object of this care was, as so many of them were in danger of 'getting into trouble,' or, in other words, of being taken up for their crimes, to ascertain if any who might betray them were present; and another intention of this scrutiny was, to give those assembled, who naturally would feel considerable fear, a fuller confidence in opening their minds."

What a novel conference between the extremes of modern society! All that is beautiful in refinement and education, moral symmetry and Christian grace, contrasting with the squalor, the ignorance, the lifelong depravity of men living "without God in the world,"—the pariahs of civilization,—the moral lepers, at the sight of whom decency covers its face, and cries out, "Unclean!" After a prayer had been offered, Lord Ashley spoke at considerable length, making a profound impression on his strange auditory as they listened to his plans of emigration, which offered them an opportunity to escape from their miserable condition and enter upon a respectable course of life. The hard heart melted and the cold and cruel eye moistened. With one accord the wretched felons responded to the language of Christian love and good-will, and declared their readiness to follow the advice of their true friend. They looked up to him as to an angel of mercy, and felt the malignant spirits which had so long tormented them disarmed of all power of evil in the presence of simple goodness. He stood in that felon audience like Spenser's Una amidst the satyrs; unassailable and secure in the "unresistible might of meekness," and panoplied in that "noble grace which dashed brute violence with sudden adoration and mute awe."

Twenty years ago, when Elizabeth Fry ventured to visit those "spirits in prison,"—the female tenants of Newgate,—her temerity was regarded with astonishment, and her hope of effecting a reformation in the miserable objects of her sympathy was held to be wholly visionary. Her personal safety and the blessed fruits of her labors, nevertheless, confirmed the language of her Divine Master to His disciples when He sent them forth as lambs among wolves: "Behold, I give unto you power over all the power of the enemy." The still more unpromising experiment of Lord Ashley, thus far, has been equally successful; and we hail it as the introduction of a new and more humane method of dealing with the victims of sin and ignorance, and the temptations growing out of the inequalities and vices of civilization.



WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

Letter to the Newport Convention.

AMESBURY, MASS., 12th, 8th Month, 1869.

I HAVE received thy letter inviting me to attend the Convention in behalf of Woman's Suffrage, at Newport, R. I., on the 25th inst. I do not see how it is possible for me to accept the invitation; and, were I to do so, the state of my health would prevent me from taking such a part in the meeting as would relieve me from the responsibility of seeming to sanction anything in its action which might conflict with my own views of duty or policy. Yet I should do myself great injustice if I did not embrace this occasion to express my general sympathy with the movement. I have seen no good reason why mothers, wives, and daughters should not have the same right of person, property, and citizenship which fathers, husbands, and brothers have.

The sacred memory of mother and sister; the wisdom and dignity of women of my own religious communion who have been accustomed to something like equality in rights as well as duties; my experience as a co-worker with noble and self-sacrificing women, as graceful and helpful in their household duties as firm and courageous in their public advocacy of unpopular truth; the steady friendships which have inspired and strengthened me, and the reverence and respect which I feel for human nature, irrespective of sex, compel me to look with something more than acquiescence on the efforts you are making. I frankly confess that I am not able to forsee all the consequences of the great social and political change proposed, but of this I am, at least, sure, it is always safe to do right, and the truest expediency is simple justice. I can understand, without sharing, the misgivings of those who fear that, when the vote drops from woman's hand into the ballot-box, the beauty and sentiment, the bloom and sweetness, of womankind will go with it. But in this matter it seems to me that we can trust Nature. Stronger than statutes or conventions, she will be conservative of all that the true man loves and honors in woman. Here and there may be found an equivocal, unsexed Chevalier D'Eon, but the eternal order and fitness of things will remain. I have no fear that man will be less manly or woman less womanly when they meet on terms of equality before the law.

On the other hand, I do not see that the exercise of the ballot by woman will prove a remedy for all the evils of which she justly complains. It is her right as truly as mine, and when she asks for it, it is something less than manhood to withhold it. But, unsupported by a more practical education, higher aims, and a deeper sense of the responsibilities of life and duty, it is not likely to prove a blessing in her hands any more than in man's.

With great respect and hearty sympathy, I am very truly thy friend.



ITALIAN UNITY

AMESBURY, MASS., 1st Mo., 4th, 1871.

Read at the great meeting in New York, January, 1871, in celebration of the freedom of Rome and complete unity of Italy.

IT would give me more than ordinary satisfaction to attend the meeting on the 12th instant for the celebration of Italian Unity, the emancipation of Rome, and its occupation as the permanent capital of the nation.

For many years I have watched with deep interest and sympathy the popular movement on the Italian peninsula, and especially every effort for the deliverance of Rome from a despotism counting its age by centuries. I looked at these struggles of the people with little reference to their ecclesiastical or sectarian bearings. Had I been a Catholic instead of a Protestant, I should have hailed every symptom of Roman deliverance from Papal rule, occupying, as I have, the standpoint of a republican radical, desirous that all men, of all creeds, should enjoy the civil liberty which I prized so highly for myself.

I lost all confidence in the French republic of 1849, when it forfeited its own right to exist by crushing out the newly formed Roman republic under Mazzini and Garibaldi. From that hour it was doomed, and the expiation of its monstrous crime is still going on. My sympathies are with Jules Favre and Leon Gambetta in their efforts to establish and sustain a republic in France, but I confess that the investment of Paris by King William seems to me the logical sequence of the bombardment of Rome by Oudinot. And is it not a significant fact that the terrible chassepot, which made its first bloody experiment upon the halfarmed Italian patriots without the walls of Rome, has failed in the hands of French republicans against the inferior needle-gun of Prussia? It was said of a fierce actor in the old French Revolution that he demoralized the guillotine. The massacre at Mentana demoralized the chassepot.

It is a matter of congratulation that the redemption of Rome has been effected so easily and bloodlessly. The despotism of a thousand years fell at a touch in noiseless rottenness. The people of Rome, fifty to one, cast their ballots of condemnation like so many shovelfuls of earth upon its grave. Outside of Rome there seems to be a very general acquiescence in its downfall. No Peter the Hermit preaches a crusade in its behalf. No one of the great Catholic powers of Europe lifts a finger for it. Whatever may be the feelings of Isabella of Spain and the fugitive son of King Bomba, they are in no condition to come to its rescue. It is reserved for American ecclesiastics, loud-mouthed in professions of democracy, to make solemn protest against what they call an "outrage," which gives the people of Rome the right of choosing their own government, and denies the divine right of kings in the person of Pio Nono.

The withdrawal of the temporal power of the Pope will prove a blessing to the Catholic Church, as well as to the world. Many of its most learned and devout priests and laymen have long seen the necessity of such a change, which takes from it a reproach and scandal that could no longer be excused or tolerated. A century hence it will have as few apologists as the Inquisition or the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

In this hour of congratulation let us not forget those whose suffering and self-sacrifice, in the inscrutable wisdom of Providence, prepared the way for the triumph which we celebrate. As we call the long, illustrious roll of Italian patriotism—the young, the brave, and beautiful; the gray-haired, saintly confessors; the scholars, poets, artists, who, shut out from human sympathy, gave their lives for God and country in the slow, dumb agony of prison martyrdom—let us hope that they also rejoice with us, and, inaudible to earthly ears, unite in our thanksgiving: "Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth! He hath avenged the blood of his servants!"

In the belief that the unity of Italy and the overthrow of Papal rule will strengthen the cause of liberty throughout the civilized' world, I am very truly thy friend.



INDIAN CIVILIZATION.

THE present condition and future prospects of the remnants of the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent can scarcely be a matter of indifference to any class of the people of the United States. Apart from all considerations of justice and duty, a purely selfish regard to our own well-being would compel attention to the subject. The irreversible laws of God's moral government, and the well-attested maxims of political and social economy, leave us in no doubt that the suffering, neglect, and wrong of one part of the community must affect all others. A common responsibility rests upon each and all to relieve suffering, enlighten ignorance, and redress wrong, and the penalty of neglect in this respect no nation has ever escaped.

It is only within a comparatively recent period that the term Indian Civilization could be appropriately used in this country. Very little real progress bad been made in this direction, up to the time when Commissioner Lang in 1844 visited the tribes now most advanced. So little had been done, that public opinion had acquiesced in the assumption that the Indians were not susceptible of civilization and progress. The few experiments had not been calculated to assure a superficial observer.

The unsupported efforts of Elliot in New England were counteracted by the imprisonment, and in some instances the massacre of his "praying Indians," by white men under the exasperation of war with hostile tribes. The salutary influence of the Moravians and Friends in Pennsylvania was greatly weakened by the dreadful massacre of the unarmed and blameless converts of Gnadenhutten. But since the first visit of Commissioner Lang, thirty-three years ago, the progress of education, civilization, and conversion to Christianity, has been of a most encouraging nature, and if Indian civilization was ever a doubtful problem, it has been practically solved.

The nomadic habits and warlike propensities of the native tribes are indeed formidable but not insuperable difficulties in the way of their elevation. The wildest of them may compare not unfavorably with those Northern barbarian hordes that swooped down upon Christian Europe, and who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had conquered. The Arapahoes and Camanches of our day are no further removed from the sweetness and light of Christian culture than were the Scandinavian Sea Kings of the middle centuries, whose gods were patrons of rapine and cruelty, their heaven a vast, cloud-built ale-house, where ghostly warriors drank from the skulls of their victims, and whose hell was a frozen horror of desolation and darkness, to be avoided only by diligence in robbery and courage in murder. The descendants of these human butchers are now among the best exponents of the humanizing influence of the gospel of Christ. The report of the Superintendent of the remnants of the once fierce and warlike Six Nations, now peaceable and prosperous in Canada, shows that the Indian is not inferior to the Norse ancestors of the Danes and Norwegians of our day in capability of improvement.

It is scarcely necessary to say, what is universally conceded, that the wars waged by the Indians against the whites have, in nearly every instance, been provoked by violations of solemn treaties and systematic disregard of their rights of person, property, and life. The letter of Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, to the New York Tribune of second month, 1877, calls attention to the emphatic language of Generals Sherman, Harney, Terry, and Augur, written after a full and searching investigation of the subject: "That the Indian goes to war is not astonishing: he is often compelled to do so: wrongs are borne by him in silence, which never fail to drive civilized men to deeds of violence. The best possible way to avoid war is to do no injustice."

It is not difficult to understand the feelings of the unfortunate pioneer settlers on the extreme borders of civilization, upon whom the blind vengeance of the wronged and hunted Indians falls oftener than upon the real wrong-doers. They point to terrible and revolting cruelties as proof that nothing short of the absolute extermination of the race can prevent their repetition. But a moment's consideration compels us to admit that atrocious cruelty is not peculiar to the red man. "All wars are cruel," said General Sherman, and for eighteen centuries Christendom has been a great battle-field. What Indian raid has been more dreadful than the sack of Magdeburg, the massacre of Glencoe, the nameless atrocities of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the murders of St. Bartholomew's day, the unspeakable agonies of the South of France under the demoniac rule of revolution! All history, black with crime and red with blood, is but an awful commentary upon "man's inhumanity to man," and it teaches us that there is nothing exceptional in the Indian's ferocity and vindictiveness, and that the alleged reasons for his extermination would, at one time or another, have applied with equal force to the whole family of man.

A late lecture of my friend, Stanley Pumphrey, comprises more of valuable information and pertinent suggestions on the Indian question than I have found in any equal space; and I am glad of the opportunity to add to it my hearty endorsement, and to express the conviction that its general circulation could not fail to awaken a deeper and more kindly interest in the condition of the red man, and greatly aid in leading the public mind to a fuller appreciation of the responsibility which rests upon us as a people to rectify, as far as possible, past abuses, and in our future relations to the native owners of the soil to "deal justly and love mercy."



READING FOR THE BLIND. (1880.)

To Mary C. Moore, teacher in the Perkins Asylum.

DEAR FRIEND,—It gives me great pleasure to know that the pupils in thy class at the Institution for the Blind have the opportunity afforded them to read through the sense of touch some of my writings, and thus hold what I hope will prove a pleasant communion with me. Very glad I shall be if the pen-pictures of nature, and homely country firesides, which I have tried to make, are understood and appreciated by those who cannot discern them by natural vision. I shall count it a great privilege to see for them, or rather to let them see through my eyes. It is the mind after all that really sees, shapes, and colors all things. What visions of beauty and sublimity passed before the inward and spiritual sight of blind Milton and Beethoven!

I have an esteemed friend, Morrison Hendy, of Kentucky, who is deaf and blind; yet under these circumstances he has cultivated his mind to a high degree, and has written poems of great beauty, and vivid descriptions of scenes which have been witnessed only by the "light within."

I thank thee for thy letter, and beg of thee to assure the students that I am deeply interested in their welfare and progress, and that my prayer is that their inward and spiritual eyes may become so clear that they can well dispense with the outward and material ones.



THE INDIAN QUESTION.

Read at the meeting in Boston, May, 1883, for the consideration of the condition of the Indians in the United States.

AMESBURY, 4th mo., 1883.

I REGRET that I cannot be present at the meeting called in reference to the pressing question of the day, the present condition and future prospects of the Indian race in the United States. The old policy, however well intended, of the government is no longer available. The westward setting tide of immigration is everywhere sweeping over the lines of the reservations. There would seem to be no power in the government to prevent the practical abrogation of its solemn treaties and the crowding out of the Indians from their guaranteed hunting grounds. Outbreaks of Indian ferocity and revenge, incited by wrong and robbery on the part of the whites, will increasingly be made the pretext of indiscriminate massacres. The entire question will soon resolve itself into the single alternative of education and civilization or extermination.

The school experiments at Hampton, Carlisle, and Forest Grove in Oregon have proved, if such proof were ever needed, that the roving Indian can be enlightened and civilized, taught to work and take interest and delight in the product of his industry, and settle down on his farm or in his workshop, as an American citizen, protected by and subject to the laws of the republic. What is needed is that not only these schools should be more liberally supported, but that new ones should be opened without delay. The matter does not admit of procrastination. The work of education and civilization must be done. The money needed must be contributed with no sparing hand. The laudable example set by the Friends and the American Missionary Association should be followed by other sects and philanthropic societies. Christianity, patriotism, and enlightened self interest have a common stake in the matter. Great and difficult as the work may be the country is strong enough, rich enough, wise enough, and, I believe, humane and Christian enough to do it.



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Read at a meeting of the Essex Club, in Boston, November, 1885.

AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 10, 1885.

I AM sorry that I cannot accept thy invitation to attend the meeting of the Essex Club on the 14th inst. I should be glad to meet my old Republican friends and congratulate them on the results of the election in Massachusetts, and especially in our good old county of Essex.

Some of our friends and neighbors, who have been with us heretofore, last year saw fit to vote with the opposite party. I would be the last to deny their perfect right to do so, or to impeach their motives, but I think they were mistaken in expecting that party to reform the abuses and evils which they complained of. President Cleveland has proved himself better than his party, and has done and said some good things which I give him full credit for, but the instincts of his party are against him, and must eventually prove too strong for him, and, instead of his carrying the party, it will be likely to carry him. It has already compelled him to put his hands in his pockets for electioneering purposes, and travel all the way from Washington to Buffalo to give his vote for a spoilsman and anti-civil service machine politician. I would not like to call it a case of "offensive partisanship," but it looks a good deal like it.

As a Republican from the outset, I am proud of the noble record of the party, but I should rejoice to see its beneficent work taken up by the Democratic party and so faithfully carried on as to make our organization no longer necessary. But, as far as we can see, the Republican party has still its mission and its future. When labor shall everywhere have its just reward, and the gains of it are made secure to the earners; when education shall be universal, and, North and South, all men shall have the free and full enjoyment of civil rights and privileges, irrespective of color or former condition; when every vice which debases the community shall be discouraged and prohibited, and every virtue which elevates it fostered and strengthened; when merit and fitness shall be the conditions of office; and when sectional distrust and prejudice shall give place to well-merited confidence in the loyalty and patriotism of all, then will the work of the Republican party, as a party, be ended, and all political rivalries be merged in the one great party of the people, with no other aim than the common welfare, and no other watchwords than peace, liberty, and union. Then may the language which Milton addressed to his countrymen two centuries ago be applied to the United States, "Go on, hand in hand, O peoples, never to be disunited; be the praise and heroic song of all posterity. Join your invincible might to do worthy and godlike deeds; and then he who seeks to break your Union, a cleaving curse be his inheritance."



OUR DUMB RELATIONS. (1886.)

IT was said of St. Francis of Assisi, that he had attained, through the fervor of his love, the secret of that deep amity with God and His creation which, in the language of inspiration, makes man to be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him. The world has never been without tender souls, with whom the golden rule has a broader application than its letter might seem to warrant. The ancient Eastern seers recognized the rights of the brute creation, and regarded the unnecessary taking of the life of the humblest and meanest as a sin; and in almost all the old religions of the world there are legends of saints, in the depth of whose peace with God and nature all life was sacredly regarded as the priceless gift of heaven, and who were thus enabled to dwell safely amidst lions and serpents.

It is creditable to human nature and its unperverted instincts that stories and anecdotes of reciprocal kindness and affection between men and animals are always listened to with interest and approval. How pleasant to think of the Arab and his horse, whose friendship has been celebrated in song and romance. Of Vogelwied, the Minnesinger, and his bequest to the birds. Of the English Quaker, visited, wherever he went, by flocks of birds, who with cries of joy alighted on his broad-brimmed hat and his drab coat-sleeves. Of old Samuel Johnson, when half-blind and infirm, groping abroad of an evening for oysters for his cat. Of Walter Scott and John Brown, of Edinburgh, and their dogs. Of our own Thoreau, instinctively recognized by bird and beast as a friend. Emerson says of him: "His intimacy with animals suggested what Thomas Fuller records of Butler, the apologist, that either he had told the bees things, or the bees had told him. Snakes coiled round his legs; the fishes swam into his hand; he pulled the woodchuck out of his hole by his tail, and took foxes under his protection from the hunters."

In the greatest of the ancient Hindu poems—the sacred book of the Mahabharata—there is a passage of exceptional beauty and tenderness, which records the reception of King Yudishthira at the gate of Paradise. A pilgrim to the heavenly city, the king had travelled over vast spaces, and, one by one, the loved ones, the companions of his journey, had all fallen and left him alone, save his faithful dog, which still followed. He was met by Indra, and invited to enter the holy city. But the king thinks of his friends who have fallen on the way, and declines to go in without them. The god tells him they are all within waiting for him. Joyful, he is about to seek them, when he looks upon the poor dog, who, weary and wasted, crouches at his feet, and asks that he, too, may enter the gate. Indra refuses, and thereupon the king declares that to abandon his faithful dumb friend would be as great a sin as to kill a Brahmin.

"Away with that felicity whose price is to abandon the faithful! Never, come weal or woe, will I leave my faithful dog. The poor creature, in fear and distress, has trusted in my power to save him; Not, therefore, for life itself, will I break my plighted word."

In full sight of heaven he chooses to go to hell with his dog, and straightway descends, as he supposes, thither. But his virtue and faithfulness change his destination to heaven, and he finds himself surrounded by his old friends, and in the presence of the gods, who thus honor and reward his humanity and unselfish love.



INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.

Read at the reception in Boston of the English delegation representing more than two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor international arbitration.

AMESBURY, 11th Mo., 9, 1887.

IT is a very serious disappointment to me not to be able to be present at the welcome of the American Peace Society to the delegation of more than two hundred members of the British Parliament who favor international arbitration. Few events have more profoundly impressed me than the presentation of this peaceful overture to the President of the United States. It seems to me that every true patriot who seeks the best interests of his country and every believer in the gospel of Christ must respond to the admirable address of Sir Lyon Playfair and that of his colleagues who represented the workingmen of England. We do not need to be told that war is always cruel, barbarous, and brutal; whether used by professed Christians with ball and bayonet, or by heathen with club and boomerang. We cannot be blind to its waste of life and treasure and the demoralization which follows in its train; nor cease to wonder at the spectacle of Christian nations exhausting all their resources in preparing to slaughter each other, with only here and there a voice, like Count Tolstoi's in the Russian wilderness, crying in heedless ears that the gospel of Christ is peace, not war, and love, not hatred.

The overture which comes to us from English advocates of arbitration is a cheering assurance that the tide of sentiment is turning in favor of peace among English speaking peoples. I cannot doubt that whatever stump orators and newspapers may say for party purposes, the heart of America will respond to the generous proposal of our kinsfolk across the water. No two nations could be more favorably conditioned than England and the United States for making the "holy experiment of arbitration."

In our associations and kinship, our aims and interests, our common claims in the great names and achievements of a common ancestry, we are essentially one people. Whatever other nations may do, we at least should be friends. God grant that the noble and generous attempt shall not be in vain! May it hasten the time when the only rivalry between us shall be the peaceful rivalry of progress and the gracious interchange of good.

"When closer strand shall lean to strand, Till meet beneath saluting flags, The eagle of our mountain crags, The lion of our mother land!"



SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN.

Read at the Woman's Convention at Washington.

OAK KNOLL, DANVERS, MASS., Third Mo., 8, 1888.

I THANK thee for thy kind letter. It would be a great satisfaction to be able to be present at the fortieth anniversary of the Woman's Suffrage Association. But, as that is not possible, I can only reiterate my hearty sympathy with the object of the association, and bid it take heart and assurance in view of all that has been accomplished. There is no easy royal road to a reform of this kind, but if the progress has been slow there has been no step backward. The barriers which at first seemed impregnable in the shape of custom and prejudice have been undermined and their fall is certain. A prophecy of your triumph at no distant day is in the air; your opponents feel it and believe it. They know that yours is a gaining and theirs a losing cause. The work still before you demands on your part great patience, steady perseverance, a firm, dignified, and self-respecting protest against the injustice of which you have so much reason to complain, and of serene confidence which is not discouraged by temporary checks, nor embittered by hostile criticism, nor provoked to use any weapons of retort, which, like the boomerang, fall back on the heads of those who use them. You can afford in your consciousness of right to be as calm and courteous as the archangel Michael, who, we are told in Scripture in his controversy with Satan himself, did not bring a railing accusation against him. A wise adaptation of means to ends is no yielding of principle, but care should be taken to avoid all such methods as have disgraced political and religious parties of the masculine sex. Continue to make it manifest that all which is pure and lovely and of good repute in womanhood is entirely compatible with the exercise of the rights of citizenship, and the performance of the duties which we all owe to our homes and our country. Confident that you will do this, and with no doubt or misgiving as to your success, I bid you Godspeed. I find I have written to the association rather than to thyself, but as one of the principal originators and most faithful supporters, it was very natural that I should identify thee with it.



THE INNER LIFE

THE AGENCY OF EVIL.

From the Supernaturalism of New England, in the Democratic Review for 1843.

IN this life of ours, so full of mystery, so hung about with wonders, so written over with dark riddles, where even the lights held by prophets and inspired ones only serve to disclose the solemn portals of a future state of being, leaving all beyond in shadow, perhaps the darkest and most difficult problem which presents itself is that of the origin of evil,—the source whence flow the black and bitter waters of sin and suffering and discord,—the wrong which all men see in others and feel in themselves,—the unmistakable facts of human depravity and misery. A superficial philosophy may attempt to refer all these dark phenomena of man's existence to his own passions, circumstances, and will; but the thoughtful observer cannot rest satisfied with secondary causes. The grossest materialism, at times, reveals something of that latent dread of an invisible and spiritual influence which is inseparable from our nature. Like Eliphaz the Temanite, it is conscious of a spirit passing before its face, the form whereof is not discerned.

It is indeed true that our modern divines and theologians, as if to atone for the too easy credulity of their order formerly, have unceremoniously consigned the old beliefs of Satanic agency, demoniacal possession, and witchcraft, to Milton's receptacle of exploded follies and detected impostures,

"Over the backside of the world far off, Into a limbo broad and large, and called The paradise of fools,"—

that indeed, out of their peculiar province, and apart from the routine of their vocation, they have become the most thorough sceptics and unbelievers among us. Yet it must be owned that, if they have not the marvellous themselves, they are the cause of it in others. In certain states of mind, the very sight of a clergyman in his sombre professional garb is sufficient to awaken all the wonderful within us. Imagination goes wandering back to the subtle priesthood of mysterious Egypt. We think of Jannes and Jambres; of the Persian magi; dim oak groves, with Druid altars, and priests, and victims, rise before us. For what is the priest even of our New England but a living testimony to the truth of the supernatural and the reality of the unseen,—a man of mystery, walking in the shadow of the ideal world,—by profession an expounder of spiritual wonders? Laugh he may at the old tales of astrology and witchcraft and demoniacal possession; but does he not believe and bear testimony to his faith in the reality of that dark essence which Scripture more than hints at, which has modified more or less all the religious systems and speculations of the heathen world,—the Ahriman of the Parsee, the Typhon of the Egyptian, the Pluto of the Roman mythology, the Devil of Jew, Christian, and Mussulman, the Machinito of the Indian,—evil in the universe of goodness, darkness in the light of divine intelligence,—in itself the great and crowning mystery from which by no unnatural process of imagination may be deduced everything which our forefathers believed of the spiritual world and supernatural agency? That fearful being with his tributaries and agents,—"the Devil and his angels,"—how awfully he rises before us in the brief outline limning of the sacred writers! How he glooms, "in shape and gesture proudly eminent," on the immortal canvas of Milton and Dante! What a note of horror does his name throw into the sweet Sabbath psalmody of our churches. What strange, dark fancies are connected with the very language of common-law indictments, when grand juries find under oath that the offence complained of has been committed "at the instigation of the Devil"!

How hardly effaced are the impressions of childhood! Even at this day, at the mention of the evil angel, an image rises before me like that with which I used especially to horrify myself in an old copy of Pilgrim's Progress. Horned, hoofed, scaly, and fire-breathing, his caudal extremity twisted tight with rage, I remember him, illustrating the tremendous encounter of Christian in the valley where "Apollyon straddled over the whole breadth of the way." There was another print of the enemy which made no slight impression upon me. It was the frontispiece of an old, smoked, snuff-stained pamphlet, the property of an elderly lady, (who had a fine collection of similar wonders, wherewith she was kind enough to edify her young visitors,) containing a solemn account of the fate of a wicked dancing-party in New Jersey, whose irreverent declaration, that they would have a fiddler if they had to send to the lower regions after him, called up the fiend himself, who forthwith commenced playing, while the company danced to the music incessantly, without the power to suspend their exercise, until their feet and legs were worn off to the knees! The rude wood-cut represented the demon fiddler and his agonized companions literally stumping it up and down in "cotillons, jigs, strathspeys, and reels." He would have answered very well to the description of the infernal piper in Tam O'Shanter.

To this popular notion of the impersonation of the principle of evil we are doubtless indebted for the whole dark legacy of witchcraft and possession. Failing in our efforts to solve the problem of the origin of evil, we fall back upon the idea of a malignant being,—the antagonism of good. Of this mysterious and dreadful personification we find ourselves constrained to speak with a degree of that awe and reverence which are always associated with undefined power and the ability to harm. "The Devil," says an old writer, "is a dignity, though his glory be somewhat faded and wan, and is to be spoken of accordingly."

The evil principle of Zoroaster was from eternity self-created and existent, and some of the early Christian sects held the same opinion. The gospel, however, affords no countenance to this notion of a divided sovereignty of the universe. The Divine Teacher, it is true, in discoursing of evil, made use of the language prevalent in His time, and which was adapted to the gross conceptions of His Jewish bearers; but He nowhere presents the embodiment of sin as an antagonism to the absolute power and perfect goodness of God, of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things. Pure himself, He can create nothing impure. Evil, therefore, has no eternity in the past. The fact of its present actual existence is indeed strongly stated; and it is not given us to understand the secret of that divine alchemy whereby pain, and sin, and discord become the means to beneficent ends worthy of the revealed attributes of the Infinite Parent. Unsolved by human reason or philosophy, the dark mystery remains to baffle the generations of men; and only to the eye of humble and childlike faith can it ever be reconciled to the purity, justice, and mercy of Him who is "light, and in whom is no darkness at all."

"Do you not believe in the Devil?" some one once asked the Non-conformist Robinson. "I believe in God," was the reply; "don't you?"

Henry of Nettesheim says "that it is unanimously maintained that devils do wander up and down in the earth; but what they are, or how they are, ecclesiasticals have not clearly expounded." Origen, in his Platonic speculations on this subject, supposed them to be spirits who, by repentance, might be restored, that in the end all knees might be bowed to the Father of spirits, and He become all in all. Justin Martyr was of the opinion that many of them still hoped for their salvation; and the Cabalists held that this hope of theirs was well founded. One is irresistibly reminded here of the closing verse of the Address to the Deil, by Burns:—

"But fare ye weel, Auld Nickie ben! Gin ye wad take a thought and mend, Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken— Still has a stake I'm was to think upon yon den Fen for your sake."

The old schoolmen and fathers seem to agree that the Devil and his ministers have bodies in some sort material, subject to passions and liable to injury and pain. Origen has a curious notion that any evil spirit who, in a contest with a human being, is defeated, loses from thenceforth all his power of mischief, and may be compared to a wasp who has lost his sting.

"The Devil," said Samson Occum, the famous Indian preacher, in a discourse on temperance, "is a gentleman, and never drinks." Nevertheless it is a remarkable fact, and worthy of the serious consideration of all who "tarry long at the wine," that, in that state of the drunkard's malady known as delirium tremens, the adversary, in some shape or other, is generally visible to the sufferers, or at least, as Winslow says of the Powahs, "he appeareth more familiarly to them than to others." I recollect a statement made to me by a gentleman who has had bitter experience of the evils of intemperance, and who is at this time devoting his fine talents to the cause of philanthropy and mercy, as the editor of one of our best temperance journals, which left a most vivid impression on my mind. He had just returned from a sea-voyage; and, for the sake of enjoying a debauch, unmolested by his friends, took up his abode in a rum-selling tavern in a somewhat lonely location on the seaboard. Here he drank for many days without stint, keeping himself the whole time in a state of semi-intoxication. One night he stood leaning against a tree, looking listlessly and vacantly out upon the ocean; the waves breaking on the beach, and the white sails of passing vessels vaguely impressing him like the pictures of a dream. He was startled by a voice whispering hoarsely in his ear, "You have murdered a man; the officers of justice are after you; you must fly for your life!" Every syllable was pronounced slowly and separately; and there was something in the hoarse, gasping sound of the whisper which was indescribably dreadful. He looked around him, and seeing nothing but the clear moonlight on the grass, became partially sensible that he was the victim of illusion, and a sudden fear of insanity thrilled him with a momentary horror. Rallying himself, he returned to the tavern, drank another glass of brandy, and retired to his chamber. He had scarcely lain his head on the pillow when he heard that hoarse, low, but terribly distinct whisper, repeating the same words. He describes his sensations at this time as inconceivably fearful. Reason was struggling with insanity; but amidst the confusion and mad disorder one terrible thought evolved itself. Had he not, in a moment of mad frenzy of which his memory made no record, actually murdered some one? And was not this a warning from Heaven? Leaving his bed and opening his door, he heard the words again repeated, with the addition, in a tone of intense earnestness, "Follow me!" He walked forward in the direction of the sound, through a long entry, to the head of the staircase, where he paused for a moment, when again he heard the whisper, half-way down the stairs, "Follow me!"

Trembling with terror, he passed down two flights of stairs, and found himself treading on the cold brick floor of a large room in the basement, or cellar, where he had never been before. The voice still beckoned him onward; and, groping after it, his hand touched an upright post, against which he leaned for a moment. He heard it again, apparently only two or three yards in front of him "You have murdered a man; the officers are close behind you; follow me!" Putting one foot forward while his hand still grasped the post, it fell upon empty air, and he with difficulty recovered himself. Stooping down and feeling with his hands, he found himself on the very edge of a large uncovered cistern, or tank, filled nearly to the top with water. The sudden shock of this discovery broke the horrible enchantment. The whisperer was silent. He believed, at the time, that he had been the subject, and well-nigh the victim, of a diabolical delusion; and he states that, even now, with the recollection of that strange whisper is always associated a thought of the universal tempter.

Our worthy ancestors were, in their own view of the matter, the advance guard and forlorn hope of Christendom in its contest with the bad angel. The New World, into which they had so valiantly pushed the outposts of the Church militant, was to them, not God's world, but the Devil's. They stood there on their little patch of sanctified territory like the gamekeeper of Der Freischutz in the charmed circle; within were prayer and fasting, unmelodious psalmody and solemn hewing of heretics, "before the Lord in Gilgal;" without were "dogs and sorcerers, red children of perdition, Powah wizards," and "the foul fiend." In their grand old wilderness, broken by fair, broad rivers and dotted with loveliest lakes, hanging with festoons of leaf, and vine, and flower, the steep sides of mountains whose naked tops rose over the surrounding verdure like altars of a giant world,—with its early summer greenness and the many-colored wonder of its autumn, all glowing as if the rainbows of a summer shower had fallen upon it, under the clear, rich light of a sun to which the misty day of their cold island was as moonlight,—they saw no beauty, they recognized no holy revelation. It was to them terrible as the forest which Dante traversed on his way to the world of pain. Every advance step they made was upon the enemy's territory. And one has only to read the writings of the two Mathers to perceive that that enemy was to them no metaphysical abstraction, no scholastic definition, no figment of a poetical fancy, but a living, active reality, alternating between the sublimest possibilities of evil and the lowest details of mean mischief; now a "tricksy spirit," disturbing the good-wife's platters or soiling her newwashed linen, and anon riding the storm-cloud and pointing its thunder-bolts; for, as the elder Mather pertinently inquires, "how else is it that our meeting-houses are burned by the lightning?" What was it, for instance, but his subtlety which, speaking through the lips of Madame Hutchinson, confuted the "judges of Israel" and put to their wits' end the godly ministers of the Puritan Zion? Was not his evil finger manifested in the contumacious heresy of Roger Williams? Who else gave the Jesuit missionaries—locusts from the pit as they were—such a hold on the affections of those very savages who would not have scrupled to hang the scalp of pious Father Wilson himself from their girdles? To the vigilant eye of Puritanism was he not alike discernible in the light wantonness of the May-pole revellers, beating time with the cloven foot to the vain music of obscene dances, and in the silent, hat-canopied gatherings of the Quakers, "the most melancholy of the sects," as Dr. Moore calls them? Perilous and glorious was it, under these circumstances, for such men as Mather and Stoughton to gird up their stout loins and do battle with the unmeasured, all-surrounding terror. Let no man lightly estimate their spiritual knight-errantry. The heroes of old romance, who went about smiting dragons, lopping giants' heads, and otherwise pleasantly diverting themselves, scarcely deserve mention in comparison with our New England champions, who, trusting not to carnal sword and lance, in a contest with principalities and powers, "spirits that live throughout, Vital in every part, not as frail man,"— encountered their enemies with weapons forged by the stern spiritual armorer of Geneva. The life of Cotton Mather is as full of romance as the legends of Ariosto or the tales of Beltenebros and Florisando in Amadis de Gaul. All about him was enchanted ground; devils glared on him in his "closet wrestlings;" portents blazed in the heavens above him; while he, commissioned and set apart as the watcher, and warder, and spiritual champion of "the chosen people," stood ever ready for battle, with open eye and quick ear for the detection of the subtle approaches of the enemy. No wonder is it that the spirits of evil combined against him; that they beset him as they did of old St. Anthony; that they shut up the bowels of the General Court against his long-cherished hope of the presidency of Old Harvard; that they even had the audacity to lay hands on his anti-diabolical manuscripts, or that "ye divil that was in ye girl flewe at and tore" his grand sermon against witches. How edifying is his account of the young bewitched maiden whom he kept in his house for the purpose of making experiments which should satisfy all "obstinate Sadducees"! How satisfactory to orthodoxy and confounding to heresy is the nice discrimination of "ye divil in ye girl," who was choked in attempting to read the Catechism, yet found no trouble with a pestilent Quaker pamphlet; who was quiet and good-humored when the worthy Doctor was idle, but went into paroxysms of rage when he sat down to indite his diatribes against witches and familiar spirits!

(The Quakers appear to have, at a comparatively early period, emancipated themselves in a great degree from the grosser superstitions of their times. William Penn, indeed, had a law in his colony against witchcraft; but the first trial of a person suspected of this offence seems to have opened his eyes to its absurdity. George Fox, judging from one or two passages in his journal, appears to have held the common opinions of the day on the subject; yet when confined in Doomsdale dungeon, on being told that the place was haunted and that the spirits of those who had died there still walked at night in his room, he replied, "that if all the spirits and devils in hell were there, he was over them in the power of God, and feared no such thing."

The enemies of the Quakers, in order to account for the power and influence of their first preachers, accused them of magic and sorcery. "The Priest of Wakefield," says George Fox (one trusts he does not allude to our old friend the Vicar), "raised many wicked slanders upon me, as that I carried bottles with me and made people drink, and that made them follow me; that I rode upon a great black horse, and was seen in one county upon my black horse in one hour, and in the same hour in another county fourscore miles off." In his account of the mob which beset him at Walney Island, he says: "When I came to myself I saw James Lancaster's wife throwing stones at my face, and her husband lying over me to keep off the blows and stones; for the people had persuaded her that I had bewitched her husband."

Cotton Mather attributes the plague of witchcraft in New England in about an equal degree to the Quakers and Indians. The first of the sect who visited Boston, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher,—the latter a young girl,—were seized upon by Deputy-Governor Bellingham, in the absence of Governor Endicott, and shamefully stripped naked for the purpose of ascertaining whether they were witches with the Devil's mark on them. In 1662 Elizabeth Horton and Joan Broksop, two venerable preachers of the sect, were arrested in Boston, charged by Governor Endicott with being witches, and carried two days' journey into the woods, and left to the tender mercies of Indians and wolves.)

All this is pleasant enough now; we can laugh at the Doctor and his demons; but little matter of laughter was it to the victims on Salem Hill; to the prisoners in the jails; to poor Giles Corey, tortured with planks upon his breast, which forced the tongue from his mouth and his life from his old, palsied body; to bereaved and quaking families; to a whole community, priest-ridden and spectresmitten, gasping in the sick dream of a spiritual nightmare and given over to believe a lie. We may laugh, for the grotesque is blended with the horrible; but we must also pity and shudder. The clear-sighted men who confronted that delusion in its own age, disenchanting, with strong good sense and sharp ridicule, their spell-bound generation,—the German Wierus, the Italian D'Apone, the English Scot, and the New England Calef,—deserve high honors as the benefactors of their race. It is true they were branded through life as infidels and "damnable Sadducees;" but the truth which they uttered lived after them, and wrought out its appointed work, for it had a Divine commission and Godspeed.

"The oracles are dumb; No voice nor hideous hum

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving;

Apollo from his shrine Can now no more divine,

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphus leaving."

Dimmer and dimmer, as the generations pass away, this tremendous terror, this all-pervading espionage of evil, this active incarnation of motiveless malignity, presents itself to the imagination. The once imposing and solemn rite of exorcism has become obsolete in the Church. Men are no longer, in any quarter of the world, racked or pressed under planks to extort a confession of diabolical alliance. The heretic now laughs to scorn the solemn farce of the Church which, in the name of the All-Merciful, formally delivers him over to Satan. And for the sake of abused and long-cheated humanity let us rejoice that it is so, when we consider how for long, weary centuries the millions of professed Christendom stooped, awestricken, under the yoke of spiritual and temporal despotism, grinding on from generation to generation in a despair which had passed complaining, because superstition, in alliance with tyranny, had filled their upward pathway to freedom with shapes of terror,—the spectres of God's wrath to the uttermost, the fiend, and that torment the smoke of which rises forever. Through fear of a Satan of the future,—a sort of ban-dog of priestcraft, held in its leash and ready to be let loose upon the disputers of its authority,—our toiling brothers of past ages have permitted their human taskmasters to convert God's beautiful world, so adorned and fitted for the peace and happiness of all, into a great prison-house of suffering, filled with the actual terrors which the imagination of the old poets gave to the realm of Rhadamanthus. And hence, while I would not weaken in the slightest degree the influence of that doctrine of future retribution,—the accountability of the spirit for the deeds done in the body,—the truth of which reason, revelation, and conscience unite in attesting as the necessary result of the preservation in another state of existence of the soul's individuality and identity, I must, nevertheless, rejoice that the many are no longer willing to permit the few, for their especial benefit, to convert our common Father's heritage into a present hell, where, in return for undeserved suffering and toil uncompensated, they can have gracious and comfortable assurance of release from a future one. Better is the fear of the Lord than the fear of the Devil; holier and more acceptable the obedience of love and reverence than the submission of slavish terror. The heart which has felt the "beauty of holiness," which has been in some measure attuned to the divine harmony which now, as of old in the angel-hymn of the Advent, breathes of "glory to God, peace on earth, and good-will to men," in the serene atmosphere of that "perfect love which casteth out fear," smiles at the terrors which throng the sick dreams of the sensual, which draw aside the nightcurtains of guilt, and startle with whispers of revenge the oppressor of the poor.

There is a beautiful moral in one of Fouque's miniature romances,—Die Kohlerfamilie. The fierce spectre, which rose giant-like, in its bloodred mantle, before the selfish and mercenary merchant, ever increasing in size and, terror with the growth of evil and impure thought in the mind of the latter, subdued by prayer, and penitence, and patient watchfulness over the heart's purity, became a loving and gentle visitation of soft light and meekest melody; "a beautiful radiance, at times hovering and flowing on before the traveller, illuminating the bushes and foliage of the mountain-forest; a lustre strange and lovely, such as the soul may conceive, but no words express. He felt its power in the depths of his being,—felt it like the mystic breathing of the Spirit of God."

The excellent Baxter and other pious men of his day deprecated in all sincerity and earnestness the growing disbelief in witchcraft and diabolical agency, fearing that mankind, losing faith in a visible Satan and in the supernatural powers of certain paralytic old women, would diverge into universal skepticism. It is one of the saddest of sights to see these good men standing sentry at the horn gate of dreams; attempting against the most discouraging odds to defend their poor fallacies from profane and irreverent investigation; painfully pleading doubtful Scripture and still more doubtful tradition in behalf of detected and convicted superstitions tossed on the sharp horns of ridicule, stretched on the rack of philosophy, or perishing under the exhausted receiver of science. A clearer knowledge of the aspirations, capacities, and necessities of the human soul, and of the revelations which the infinite Spirit makes to it, not only through the senses by the phenomena of outward nature, but by that inward and direct communion which, under different names, has been recognized by the devout and thoughtful of every religious sect and school of philosophy, would have saved them much anxious labor and a good deal of reproach withal in their hopeless championship of error. The witches of Baxter and "the black man" of Mather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of sane men. But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star worlds and thought-wearying spaces, remains. Nature's mighty miracle is still over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the inheritance of humanity; still are there beautiful repentances and holy deathbeds; and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises, starlike, the great idea of duty. By higher and better influences than the poor spectres of superstition, man must henceforth be taught to reverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness, and sin, and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy of an overruling Providence,—walking by faith through the shadow and mystery, and cheered by the remembrance that, whatever may be his apparent allotment,—

"God's greatness flows around our incompleteness; Round our restlessness His rest."

It is a sad spectacle to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith and its "reasonable service" of devotion transformed by fanaticism and credulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, if possible, there is one still sadder. It is that of men in our own time regarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, and professing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of a godless universe, and new occasion for sneering at sincere devotion as cant, and humble reverence as fanaticism. Alas! in comparison with such, the religious enthusiast, who in the midst of his delusion still feels that he is indeed a living soul and an heir of immortality, to whom God speaks from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man. Better is it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancing Shaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith, than to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look upon ourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization,—barnacles on a dead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earth gazing into earth, and saying to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to the worm, "Thou art my sister."



HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES. (1844.)

AN amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Paul and Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasures of Tombs,—a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek- spirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and eloquent language, its vindication. "There is," says he, "a voluptuous melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite principles,—from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind. A tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds. It first presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of everlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of a blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and stronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a virtuous character.

"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue, that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting. From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that have been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of love arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue. Hence it is that we are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of an infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we are melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to repose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason of her virtues. In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no need of bronzes, marbles, and gildings. The more simple they are, the more energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy. They produce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather than modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power. It is in the country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very lively manner. A simple, unornamented grave there causes more tears to flow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment. There it is that grief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard; it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with all the effects of Nature,—with the dawning of the morning, with the murmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of the night."

Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city. It is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead,"—a tract of some forty or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and covered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is conspicuous. The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family lots." It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills, its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a solitary farm-house attracts the eye. All is still and solemn, as befits the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the great lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted foliage of the autumnal forest.

Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting. The Lowell and Boston Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,—the young, the beautiful, the gay,—busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs, hurrying on, on,—car after car,—like the generations of man sweeping over the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.

It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite resort. The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in these leafy recesses. Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad, —a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow. How true is it, that, in the language of Wordsworth,—

"In youth we love the darkling lawn, Brushed by the owlet's wing; Then evening is preferred to dawn, And autumn to the spring. Sad fancies do we then affect, In luxury of disrespect To our own prodigal excess Of too familiar happiness."

The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated their grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popular resort. The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through which the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, and beneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse through the long days of summer, in all the luxurious quiet and happy indifference of the indolent East. Most of the visitors whom I met at the Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along, apparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full, perhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves the stern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlanded mounds. But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence of the dead. I cannot jest above the gravestone. My spirit is silenced and rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me, and involuntarily pays:

"The deep reverence taught of old, The homage of man's heart to death."

Even Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and birdvoices only serve to remind me that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leaves and sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listened to the same wild music of the woods for the last time. Then, too, comes the saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, that these trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fall upon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds and the ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes and ears have closed forever. It is hard for us to realize this. We are so accustomed to look upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seems strange that they should survive us. Tennyson, in his exquisite metaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to this sentiment:—

"Alas! though I should die, I know That all about the thorn will blow In tufts of rosy-tinted snow.

"Not less the bee will range her cells, The furzy prickle fire the dells, The foxglove cluster dappled bells."

"The pleasures of the tombs!" Undoubtedly, in the language of the Idumean, seer, there are many who "rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave;" who long for it "as the servant earnestly desireth the shadow." Rest, rest to the sick heart and the weary brain, to the long afflicted and the hopeless,—rest on the calm bosom of our common mother. Welcome to the tired ear, stunned and confused with life's jarring discords, the everlasting silence; grateful to the weary eyes which "have seen evil, and not good," the everlasting shadow.

Yet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery,—a curtain lifted only on one side by the hands of those who are passing under its solemn shadow. No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknown state; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal the mysteries towards which we are all moving. "Man giveth up the ghost; and where is he?"

Thanks to our Heavenly Father, He has not left us altogether without an answer to this momentous question. Over the blackness of darkness a light is shining. The valley of the shadow of death is no longer "a land of darkness and where the light is as darkness." The presence of a serene and holy life pervades it. Above its pale tombs and crowded burial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him who awakened life and beauty beneath the grave-clothes of the tomb at Bethany is heard proclaiming, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." We know not, it is true, the conditions of our future life; we know not what it is to pass fromm this state of being to another; but before us in that dark passage has gone the Man of Nazareth, and the light of His footsteps lingers in the path. Where He, our Brother in His humanity, our Redeemer in His divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to follow. He who ordereth all aright will uphold with His own great arm the frail spirit when its incarnation is ended; and it may be, that, in language which I have elsewhere used,

—when Time's veil shall fall asunder, The soul may know No fearful change nor sudden wonder, Nor sink the weight of mystery under, But with the upward rise and with the vastness grow.

And all we shrink from now may seem No new revealing; Familiar as our childhood's stream, Or pleasant memory of a dream, The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing.

Serene and mild the untried light May have its dawning; As meet in summer's northern night The evening gray and dawning white, The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.