Chapter V (4)

Hal fell on his knees and recited most devoutly, "Now I lay me down," etc.

"Roll on! roll on! I say," and the giant seized poor Hal by the collar and set him on his feet.

He now selected a large ball, and poising it carefully in his hand, ran a few steps, and sent it whirling right in among the nine-pins; but what was his astonishment to behold them jump lightly aside, and permit the ball to pass in an avenue directly through the middle of the alley. Hal shuddered. The second and third ball met with no better success. Odin--for Hal said it was certainly he, as he had Mimir's head along--now grasped a ball and rolled it with all his might; but long before it reached the nine-pins, they had, every one of them, tumbled down, and lay sprawling on the alley.

"Two spares!" said the giant, as he grinned most gleefully at poor Hal. "Get up!" and up the pins all stood instantly. Taking another ball, he hurled it down the alley, and the same result followed. "Two more spares!" and Odin shook his gigantic sides with laughter.

"I give up the game," whined out Hal.

"Then you lose double," rejoined Odin.

Hal readily consented to pay two ounces, for he imagined, by yielding at once, he would so much the sooner get rid of his grim companion. As he said so, Odin pulled a pair of scales out of his coat pocket, made proportionably to his own size. He poised them upon a beam in the alley, and drew forth what he denominated two ounces, and put them in one scale. Each ounce was about the size of a twenty-eight pound weight, and was quite as heavy.

"Ha! ha! ha!! Ha! ha! ha!!! Ha! ha! ha!!!!" shouted the giant, as he grasped the gasping and terrified gambler. He soon rolled up his sleeves, and bound his arm with a pocket handkerchief. Next he drew forth a lancet as long as a sword, and drove the point into the biggest vein he could discover. Hal screamed and fainted. When he returned to consciousness, the sun was shining brightly in at the window, and the sweet rumbling of the balls assured him that he still lay where the giant left him. On rising to his feet he perceived that a large coagulum of blood had collected where his head rested all night, and that he could scarcely walk from the effects of his exhaustion. He returned immediately home and told his wife all that had occurred; and though, like some of the neighbors, she distrusted the tale, yet she never intimated her doubts to Black Hal himself. The alley-keeper assured me in a whisper, one day, that upon the very night fixed on by Hal for the adventure, he was beastly drunk, and had been engaged in a fight with one of his boon companions, who gave him a black eye and a bloody nose. But the alley-keeper was always jealous of Black Hal's superiority in story telling; besides, he often drank too much himself, and I suspect he originated the report he related to me in a fit of wounded pride, or drunken braggadocio. One thing is certain, he never ventured to repeat the story in the presence of Black Hal himself.

# # # # #

In spite of the attention I endeavored to bestow on the marvelous history of Black Hal and his grim companion, my mind occasionally wandered far away, and could only find repose in communing with her who I now discovered for the first time held in her own hands the thread of my destiny. Lucy was not blind to these fits of abstraction, and whenever they gained entire control of my attention, she would pause, lay down the manuscript, and threaten most seriously to discontinue the perusal, unless I proved a better listener. I ask no man's pardon for declaring that my sister was an excellent reader. Most brothers, perhaps think the same of most sisters; but there _was_ a charm in Lucy's accent and a distinctness in her enunciation I have never heard excelled. Owing to these qualities, as much, perhaps, as to the strangeness of the story, I became interested in the fate of the drunken gambler, and when Lucy concluded, I was ready to exclaim, "And pray where is Black Hal now?"

My thoughts took another direction, however, and I impatiently demanded whether or not the sample story had been imitated. A guilty blush assured me quite as satisfactorily as words could have done, that Miss Lucy had herself made an attempt, and I therefore insisted that as she had whetted and excited the appetite, it would be highly unfraternal--(particularly in my present very precarious condition)--that parenthesis settled the matter--to deny me the means of satisfying it.

"But you'll laugh at me," timidly whispered my sister.

"Of course I shall," said I, "if your catastrophe is half as melancholy as Black Hal's. But make haste, or I shall be off to St. Louis. But pray inform me, what is the subject of your composition?"

"The Origin of Marriage."

"I believe, on my soul," responded I, laughing outright, "you girls never think about anything else."

I provoked no reply, and the manuscript being unfolded, my sister thus attempted to elucidate

THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE.

Professor Williams having ceased his manipulations, my eyes involuntarily closed, and I became unconscious to everything occurring around me. There's truth in mesmerism, after all, thought I, and being in the clairvoyant state, I beheld a most beautiful comet at this moment emerging from the constellation Taurus, and describing a curve about the star Zeta, one of the Pleiades. Now for a trip through infinite space! and as this thought entered my brain, I grasped a hair in the tail of the comet as it whizzed by me.

I climbed up the glittering hair until I found myself seated very comfortably on the comet's back, and was beginning to enjoy my starlit ramble exceedingly, when I was suddenly aroused from my meditations by the song of a heavenly minstrel, who, wandering from star to star and system to system, sang the fate of other worlds and other beings to those who would listen to his strains and grant him the rites of hospitality. As I approached, his tones were suddenly changed, his voice lowered into a deeper key, and gazing intently at me, or at what evidenced my presence to his sight, thus began:

The flaming sword of the cherub, which had waved so frightfully above the gate of the garden of Eden, had disappeared; the angel himself was gone; and Adam, as he approached the spot where so lately he had enjoyed the delights of heaven, beheld with astonishment and regret that Paradise and all its splendors had departed from the earth forever. Where the garden lately bloomed, he could discover only the dark and smouldering embers of a conflagration; a hard lava had incrusted itself along the golden walks; the birds were flown, the flowers withered, the fountains dried up, and desolation brooded over the scene.

"Ah!" sighed the patriarch of men, "where are now the pleasures which I once enjoyed along these peaceful avenues? Where are all those beautiful spirits, given by Heaven to watch over and protect me? Each guardian angel has deserted me, and the rainbow glories of Paradise have flown. No more the sun shines out in undimmed splendor, for clouds array him in gloom; the earth, forgetful of her verdure and her flowers, produces thorns to wound and frosts to chill me. The very air, once all balm and zephyrs, now howls around me with the voice of the storm and the fury of the hurricane. No more the notes of peace and happiness greet my ears, but the harsh tones of strife and battle resound on every side. Nature has kindled the flames of discord in her own bosom, and universal war has begun his reign!"

And then the father of mankind hid his face in the bosom of his companion, and wept the bitter tears of contrition and repentance.

"Oh, do not weep so bitterly, my Adam," exclaimed his companion. "True, we are miserable, but all is not yet lost; we have forfeited the smiles of Heaven, but we may yet regain our lost place in its affections. Let us learn from our misfortunes the anguish of guilt, but let us learn also the mercy of redemption. We may yet be happy."

"Oh, talk not of happiness now," interrupted Adam; "that nymph who once wailed at our side, attentive to the beck, has disappeared, and fled from the companionship of such guilty, fallen beings as ourselves, forever."

"Not forever, Adam," kindly rejoined Eve; "she may yet be lurking among these groves, or lie hid behind yon hills."

"Then let us find her," quickly responded Adam; "you follow the sun, sweet Eve, to his resting-place, whilst I will trace these sparkling waters to their bourn. Let us ramble this whole creation o'er; and when we have found her, let us meet again on this very spot, and cling to her side, until the doom of death shall overtake us."

And the eye of Adam beamed with hope, then kindled for the first time on earth in the bosom of man; and he bade Eve his first farewell, and started eastward in his search.

Eve turned her face to the west, and set out on her allotted journey.

The sun had shone a hundred times in midsummer splendor, and a hundred times had hid himself in the clouds of winter, and yet no human foot had trod the spot where the garden of Eden once bloomed. Adam had in vain traced the Euphrates to the sea, and climbed the Himalaya Mountains. In vain had he endured the tropical heats on the Ganges, and the winter's cold in Siberia. He stood at last upon the borders of that narrow sea which separates Asia from America, and casting a wistful glance to the far-off continent, exclaimed: "In yon land, so deeply blue in the distance, that it looks like heaven, Happiness may have taken refuge. Alas! I cannot pursue her there. I will return to Eden, and learn if Eve, too, has been unsuccessful."

And then he took one more look at the distant land, sighed his adieu, and set out on his return.

Poor Eve! First child of misery, first daughter of despair! Poor Eve, with the blue of heaven in her eye, and the crimson of shame upon her lip! Poor Eve, arrayed in beauty, but hastening to decay--she, too, was unsuccessful.

Wandering in her westward way, the azure waters of the Mediterranean soon gleamed upon her sight. She stood at length upon the pebbly shore, and the glad waves, silent as death before, when they kissed her naked feet, commenced that song still heard in their eternal roar. A mermaid seemed to rise from the waters at her feet, and to imitate her every motion. Her long dark tresses, her deep blue eyes, her rosy cheek, her sorrowful look, all were reflected in the mermaid before her.

"Sweet spirit," said Eve, "canst thou inform me where the nymph Happiness lies concealed? She always stood beside us in the garden of Eden; but when we were driven from Paradise we beheld her no more."

The lips of the mermaid moved, but Eve could hear no reply.

Ah! mother of mankind, the crystal waters of every sea, reflecting thy lovely image, still faithful to their trust, conceal a mermaid in their bosom for every daughter of beauty who looks upon them!

Neither the orange groves of the Arno, nor the vineyards of France; neither the forests of Germania, nor the caves of Norway, concealed the sought-for nymph. Eve explored them all. Her track was imprinted in the sands of Sahara, by the banks of the Niger, on the rocks of Bengola, in the vales of Abyssinia--but all in vain.

"O Happiness! art thou indeed departed from our earth? How can we live without thee? Come, Death," cried Eve; "come now, and take me where thou wilt. This world is a desert, for Happiness has left it desolate."

A gentle slumber soon overcame the wearied child of sorrow, and in her sleep a vision came to comfort her. She dreamed that she stood before an aged man, whose hoary locks attested that the snows of many winters had whitened them, and in whose glance she recognized the spirit of Wisdom.

"Aged Father," said Eve, "where is Happiness?" and then she burst into a flood of tears.

"Comfort thyself, Daughter," mildly answered the old man; "Happiness yet dwells on earth, but she is no longer visible. A temple is built for her in every mortal's bosom, but she never ascends her throne until welcomed there by the child of Honor and Love."

The morning sun aroused Eve from her slumber, but did not dispel the memory of her dream. "I will return to Eden, and there await until the child of Honor and Love shall enthrone in my bosom the lost nymph Happiness;" and saying this, she turned her face to the eastward, and thinking of Adam and her vision, journeyed joyfully along.

The sun of Spring had opened the flowers and clothed the woods in verdure; had freed the streams from their icy fetters, and inspired the warbling world with harmony, when two forlorn and weary travelers approached the banks of the river Pison; that river which had flowed through the garden of Eden when the first sunshine broke upon the world. A hundred years had rolled away, and the echo of no human voice had resounded through the deserted groves. At length the dusky figures emerged from the overshadowing shrubbery, and raised their eyes into each other's faces. One bound--one cry--and they weep for joy in each other's arms.

Adam related his sad and melancholy story, and then Eve soon finished hers. But no sooner had she told her dream, than Adam, straining her to his bosom, exclaimed:

"There is no mystery here, my Eve. If Happiness on earth be indeed the child of Honor and Love, it must be in Matrimony alone. What else now left us on earth can lay claim to the precious boon? Approved by heaven, and cherished by man, in the holy bonds of Matrimony it must consist; and if this be all, we need seek no further; it is ours!"

They then knelt in prayer, and returned thanks to Heaven, that though the garden of Eden was a wild, and the nymph Happiness no longer an angel at their side, yet that her spirit was still present in every bosom where the heart is linked to Honor and Love by the sacred ties of Matrimony.

[Decoration]

[Decoration]

XIX.

_THE LAST OF HIS RACE._

No further can fate tempt or try me,
With guerdon of pleasure or pain;
Ere the noon of my life has sped by me,
The last of my race I remain.
To that home so long left I might journey;
But they for whose greeting I yearn,
Are launched on that shadowy ocean
Whence voyagers never return.

My life is a blank in creation,
My fortunes no kindred may share;
No brother to cheer desolation,
No sister to soften by prayer;
No father to gladden my triumphs,
No mother my sins to atone;
No children to lean on in dying--
I must finish my journey alone!

In that hall, where their feet tripp'd before me,
How lone would now echo my tread!
While each fading portrait threw o'er me
The chill, stony smile of the dead.
One sad thought bewilders my slumbers,
From eve till the coming of dawn:
I cry out in visions, "_Where are they_?"
And echo responds, "_They are gone_!"

But fain, ere the life-fount grows colder,
I'd wend to that lone, distant place,
That row of green hillocks, where moulder
The rest of my early doom'd race.
There slumber the true and the manly,
There slumber the spotless and fair;
And when my last journey is ended,
My place of repose be it there!

[Decoration]

[Decoration]

XX.

_THE TWO GEORGES._

Between the years of our Lord 1730 and 1740, two men were born on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, whose lives were destined to exert a commanding influence on the age in which they lived, as well as to control the fortunes of many succeeding generations.

One was by birth a plain peasant, the son of a Virginia farmer; the other an hereditary Prince, and the heir of an immense empire. It will be the main object of this sketch to trace the histories of these two individuals, so dissimilar in their origin, from birth to death, and show how it happened that one has left a name synonymous with tyranny, whilst the other will descend to the lowest posterity, radiant with immortal glory, and renowned the world over as the friend of virtue, the guardian of liberty, and the benefactor of his race.

Go with me for one moment to the crowded and splendid metropolis of England. It is the evening of the 4th of June 1734. Some joyful event must have occurred, for the bells are ringing merrily, and the inhabitants are dressed in holiday attire. Nor is the circumstance of a private nature, for banners are everywhere displayed, the vast city is illuminated, and a thousand cannon are proclaiming it from their iron throats. The population seem frantic with joy, and rush tumultuously into each other's arms, in token of a national jubilee. Tens of thousands are hurrying along toward a splendid marble pile, situated on a commanding eminence, near the river Thames, whilst from the loftiest towers of St. James's Palace the national ensigns of St. George and the Red Cross are seen floating on the breeze. Within one of the most gorgeously furnished apartments of that royal abode, the wife of Frederic, Prince of Wales, and heir apparent to the British Empire, has just been delivered of a son. The scions of royalty crowd into the bed-chamber, and solemnly attest the event as one on which the destiny of a great empire is suspended. The corridors are thronged with dukes, and nobles, and soldiers, and courtiers, all anxious to bend the supple knee, and bow the willing neck, to power just cradled into the world. A Royal Proclamation soon follows, commemorating the event, and commanding British subjects everywhere, who acknowledge the honor of Brunswick, to rejoice, and give thanks to God for safely ushering into existence George William Frederic, heir presumptive of the united crowns of Great Britain and Ireland. Just twenty-two years afterward that child ascended the throne of his ancestors as King George the Third.

Let us now turn our eyes to the Western Continent, and contemplate a scene of similar import, but under circumstances of a totally different character. It is the 22d February, 1732. The locality is a distant colony, the spot the verge of an immense, untrodden and unexplored wilderness, the habitation a log cabin, with its chinks filled in with clay, and its sloping roof patched over with clapboards. Snow covers the ground, and a chill wintery wind is drifting the flakes, and moaning through the forest. Two immense chimneys stand at either end of the house, and give promise of cheerful comfort and primitive hospitality within, totally in contrast with external nature. There are but four small rooms in the dwelling, in one of which Mary Ball, the wife of Augustine Washington, has just given birth to a son. No dukes or marquises or earls are there to attest the humble event. There are no princes of the blood to wrap the infant in the insignia of royalty, and fold about his limbs the tapestried escutcheon of a kingdom. His first breath is not drawn in the center of a mighty capitol, the air laden with perfume, and trembling to the tones of soft music and the "murmurs of low fountains." But the child is received from its Mother's womb by hands imbrowned with honest labor, and laid upon a lowly couch, indicative only of a backwoodsman's home and an American's inheritance. He, too, is christened George, and forty-three years afterward took command of the American forces assembled on the plains of old Cambridge.

But if their births were dissimilar, their rearing and education were still more unlike. From his earliest recollection the Prince heard only the language of flattery, moved about from palace to palace, just as caprice dictated, slept upon the cygnet's down, and grew up in indolence, self-will and vanity, a dictator from his cradle. The peasant boy, on the other hand, was taught from his infancy that labor was honorable, and hardships indispensable to vigorous health. He early learned to sleep alone amid the dangers of a boundless wilderness, a stone for his pillow, and the naked sod his bed; whilst the voices of untamed nature around him sang his morning and his evening hymns. Truth, courage and constancy were early implanted in his mind by a mother's counsels, and the important lesson of life was taught by a father's example, that when existence ceases to be useful it ceases to be happy.

Early manhood ushered them both into active life; the one as king over extensive dominions, the other as a modest, careful, and honest district surveyor.

Having traced the two Georges to the threshold of their career, let us now proceed one step further, and take note of the first great public event in the lives of either.

For a long time preceding the year 1753 the French had laid claim to all the North American continent west of the Alleghany Mountains, stretching in an unbroken line from Canada to Louisiana. The English strenuously denied this right, and when the French commandant on the Ohio, in 1753, commenced erecting a fort near where the present city of Pittsburg stands, and proceeded to capture certain English traders, and expel them from the country, Dinwiddie, Governor of Virginia, deemed it necessary to dispatch an agent on a diplomatic visit to the French commandant, and demand by what authority he acted, by what title he claimed the country, and order him immediately to evacuate the territory.

George Washington, then only in his twenty-second year, was selected by the Governor for this important mission.

It is unnecessary to follow him, in all his perils, during his wintery march through the wilderness. The historian of his life has painted in imperishable colors his courage, his sagacity, his wonderful coolness in the midst of danger, and the success which crowned his undertaking. The memory loves to follow him through the trackless wilds of the forest, accompanied by only a single companion, and making his way through wintery snows, in the midst of hostile savages and wild beasts for more than five hundred miles, to the residence of the French commander. How often do we not shudder, as we behold the treacherous Indian guide, on his return, deliberately raising his rifle, and leveling it at that majestic form; thus endeavoring, by an act of treachery and cowardice, to deprive Virginia of her young hero! And oh! with what fervent prayers do we not implore a kind Providence to watch over his desperate encounter with the floating ice, at midnight, in the swollen torrent of the Alleghany, and rescue him from the wave and the storm. Standing bareheaded on the frail raft, whilst in the act of dashing aside some floating ice that threatened to ingulf him, the treacherous oar was broken in his hand, and he is precipitated many feet into the boiling current. Save! oh, save him heaven! for the destinies of millions yet unborn hang upon that noble arm!

Let us now recross the ocean. In the early part of the year 1764 a ministerial crisis occurs in England, and Lord Bute, the favorite of the British monarch, is driven from the administration of the government. The troubles with the American colonists have also just commenced to excite attention, and the young King grows angry, perplexed, and greatly irritated. A few days after this, a rumor starts into circulation that the monarch is sick. His attendants look gloomy, his friends terrified, and even his physicians exhibit symptoms of doubt and danger. Yet he has no fever, and is daily observed walking with uncertain and agitated step along the corridors of the palace. His conduct becomes gradually more and more strange, until doubt gives place to certainty, and the royal medical staff report to a select committee of the House of Commons that the King is threatened with _insanity_. For six weeks the cloud obscures his mental faculties, depriving him of all interference with the administration of the government, and betokening a sad disaster in the future. His reason is finally restored, but frequent fits of passion, pride and obstinacy indicate but too surely that the disease is seated, and a radical cure impossible.

Possessed now of the chief characteristics of George Washington and George Guelph, we are prepared to review briefly their conduct during the struggle that ensued between the two countries they respectively represented.

Let us now refer to the first act of disloyalty of Washington, the first indignant spurn his high-toned spirit evinced under the oppressions of a king.

Not long after his return from the west, Washington was offered the chief command of the forces about to be raised in Virginia, to expel the French; but, with his usual modesty, he declined the appointment, on account of his extreme youth, but consented to take the post of lieutenant-colonel. Shortly afterward, on the death of Colonel Fry, he was promoted to the chief command, but through no solicitations of his own. Subsequently, when the war between France and England broke out in Europe, the principal seat of hostilities was transferred to America, and his Gracious Majesty George III sent over a large body of troops, _under the command of favorite officers_. But this was not enough. An edict soon followed, denominated an "Order to settle the rank of the officers of His Majesty's forces serving in America." By one of the articles of this order, it was provided "that all officers commissioned by the King, should take precedence of those of the same grade commissioned by the governors of the respective colonies, although their commissions might be of junior date;" and it was further provided, that "when the troops served together, the provincial officers should enjoy no rank at all." This order was scarcely promulgated--indeed, before the ink was dry--ere the Governor of Virginia received a communication informing him that _George Washington was no longer a soldier_. Entreaties, exhortations, and threats were all lavished upon him in vain; and to those who, in their expostulations, spoke of the defenseless frontiers of his native State, he patriotically but nobly replied: "I will serve my country when I can do so without dishonor."

In contrast with this attitude of Washington, look at the conduct of George the Third respecting the colonies, after the passage of the Stamp Act. This act was no sooner proclaimed in America, than the most violent opposition was manifested, and combinations for the purpose of effectual resistance were rapidly organized from Massachusetts to Georgia. The leading English patriots, among whom were Burke and Barré, protested against the folly of forcing the colonies into rebellion, and the city of London presented a petition to the King, praying him to dismiss the Granville ministry, and repeal the obnoxious act. "It is with the utmost astonishment," replied the King, "that I find any of my subjects capable of encouraging the rebellious disposition that unhappily exists in some of my North American colonies. Having entire confidence in the wisdom of my parliament, the great council of the realm, I will steadily pursue those measures which they have recommended for the support of the constitutional rights of Great Britain." He heeded not the memorable words of Burke, that afterward became prophetic. "There are moments," exclaimed this great statesman, "critical moments in the fortunes of all states when they who are too weak to contribute to your prosperity may yet be strong enough to complete your ruin." The Boston port bill passed, and the first blood was spilt at Lexington.

It is enough to say of the long and bloody war that followed, that George the Third, by his obstinacy, contributed more than any other man in his dominion to prolong the struggle, and affix to it the stigma of cruelty, inhumanity and vengeance; whilst Washington was equally the soul of the conflict on the other side, and by his imperturbable justice, moderation and firmness, did more than by his arms to convince England that her revolted colonists were invincible.

It is unnecessary to review in detail the old Revolution. Let us pass to the social position of the two Georges in after-life.

On the 2d August, 1786, as the King was alighting from his carriage at the gate of St. James, an attempt was made on his life by a woman named Margaret Nicholson, who, under pretense of presenting a petition, endeavored to stab him with a knife which was concealed in the paper. The weapon was an old one, and so rusty that, on striking the vest of the King, it bent double, and thus preserved his life. On the 29th October, 1795, whilst his majesty was proceeding to the House of Lords, a ball passed through both windows of the carriage. On his return to St. James the mob threw stones into the carriage, several of which struck the King, and one lodged in the cuff of his coat. The state carriage was completely demolished by the mob. But it was on the 15th May, 1800, that George the Third made his narrowest escapes. In the morning of that day, whilst attending the field exercise of a battalion of guards, one of the soldiers loaded his piece with a bullet and discharged it at the King. The ball fortunately missed its aim, and lodged in the thigh of a gentleman who was standing in the rear. In the evening of the same day a more alarming circumstance occurred at the Drury Lane Theatre. At the moment when the King entered the royal box, a man in the pit, on the right-hand side of the orchestra, suddenly stood up and discharged a large horse-pistol at him. The hand of the would-be assassin was thrown up by a bystander, and the ball entered the box just above the head of the King.

Such were the public manifestations of affection for this royal tyrant. He was finally attacked by an enemy that could not be thwarted, and on the 20th December, 1810, he became a confirmed lunatic. In this dreadful condition he lingered until January, 1820, when he died, having been the most unpopular, unwise and obstinate sovereign that ever disgraced the English throne. He was forgotten as soon as life left his body, and was hurriedly buried with that empty pomp which but too often attends a despot to the grave.

His whole career is well summed up by Allan Cunningham, his biographer, in few words: "Throughout his life he manifested a strong disposition to be his own minister, and occasionally placed the kingly prerogatives in perilous opposition to the resolutions of the nation's representatives. His interference with the deliberations of the upper house, as in the case of Fox's Indian bill, was equally ill-judged and dangerous. _The separation of America from the mother country, at the time it took place, was the result of the King's personal feelings and interference with the ministry._ The war with France was, in part at least, attributable to the views and wishes of the sovereign of England. His obstinate refusal to grant any concessions to his Catholic subjects, kept his cabinet perpetually hanging on the brink of dissolution, and threatened the dismemberment of the kingdom. He has been often praised for firmness, but it was in too many instances the firmness of obstinacy; a dogged adherence to an opinion once pronounced, or a resolution once formed."

The mind, in passing from the unhonored grave of the prince to the last resting-place of the peasant boy, leaps from a kingdom of darkness to one of light.

Let us now return to the career of Washington. Throughout the Revolutionary War he carried, like Atropos, in his hand the destinies of millions; he bore, like Atlas, on his shoulders the weight of a world. It is unnecessary to follow him throughout his subsequent career. Honored again and again by the people of the land he had redeemed from thraldom, he has taken his place in death by the side of the wisest and best of the world's benefactors. Assassins did not unglory him in life, nor has oblivion drawn her mantle over him in death. The names of his great battle-fields have become nursery words, and his principles have imbedded themselves forever in the national character. Every pulsation of our hearts beats true to his memory. His mementoes are everywhere around and about us. Distant as we are from the green fields of his native Westmoreland, the circle of his renown has spread far beyond our borders. In climes where the torch of science was never kindled; on shores still buried in primeval bloom; amongst barbarians where the face of liberty was never seen, the Christian missionary of America, roused perhaps from his holy duties by the distant echo of the national salute, this day thundering amidst the billows of every sea, or dazzled by the gleam of his country's banner, this day floating in every wind of heaven, pauses over his task as a Christian, and whilst memory kindles in his bosom the fires of patriotism, pronounced in the ear of the enslaved pagan the venerated name of WASHINGTON!

Nor are the sons of the companions of Washington alone in doing justice to his memory. Our sisters, wives and mothers compete with us in discharging this debt of national gratitude. With a delicacy that none but woman could exhibit, and with a devotion that none but a daughter could feel, they are now busy in executing the noble scheme of purchasing his tomb, in order for endless generations to stand sentinel over his remains. Take them! take them to your hearts, oh! ye daughters of America; enfold them closer to your bosom than your first-born offspring; build around them a mausoleum that neither time nor change can overthrow; for within them germinates the seeds of liberty for the benefit of millions yet unborn. Wherever tyranny shall lift its Medusan head, wherever treason shall plot its hellish schemes, wherever disunion shall unfurl its tattered ensign, there, oh there, sow them in the hearts of patriots and republicans! For from these pale ashes there shall spring, as from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus of old on the plains of Heber, vast armies of invincible heroes, sworn upon the altar and tomb at Mount Vernon, to live as freemen, or as such to die!

[Decoration]

XXI.

_MASONRY._

Oh, sacred spirit of Masonic love,
Offspring of Heaven, the angels' bond above,
Guardian of peace and every social tie,
How deep the sources of thy fountains lie!
How wide the realms that 'neath thy wings expand,
Embracing every clime, encircling every land!

Beneath the aurora of the Polar skies,
Where Greenland's everlasting glaciers rise,
The Lodge mysterious lifts its snow-built dome,
And points the brother to a sunnier home;
Where Nilus slays the sacrificial kid,
Beneath the shadow of her pyramid,
Where magian suns unclasp the gaping ground,
And far Australia's golden sands abound;
Where breakers thunder on the coral strand,
To guard the gates of Kamehameha's land;
Wherever man, in lambskin garb arrayed,
Strikes in defense of innocence betrayed;
Lifts the broad shield of charity to all,
And bends in anguish o'er a brother's fall;
Where the bright symbol of Masonic truth,
Alike for high and low, for age or youth,
Flames like yon sun at tropic midday's call,
And opes the universal eye on all!
What though in secret all your alms be done,
Your foes all vanquished and your trophies won?
What though a veil be o'er your Lodges thrown,
And brother only be to brother known?

In secret, God built up the rolling world;
In secret, morning's banners are unfurled;
In secret, spreads the leaf, unfolds the flower,
Revolve the spheres, and speeds the passing hour.
The day is noise, confusion, strife, turmoil,
Struggles for bread, and sweat beneath the toil.
The night is silence--progress without jars,
The rest of mortals and the march of stars!
The day for work to toiling man was given;
But night, to lead his erring steps to Heaven.
All hail! ye brethren of the mystic tie!
Who feed the hungry, heed the orphan's cry;
Who clothe the naked, dry the widow's tear,
Befriend the exile, bear the stranger's bier;
Stand round the bedside when the fluttering soul
Bursts her clay bonds and parteth for her goal;
God speed you in the noble path you tread,
Friends of the living, mourners o'er the dead.

May all your actions, measured on the square,
Be just and righteous, merciful and fair;
Your thoughts flow pure, in modesty of mind,
Along the equal level of mankind;
Your words be troweled to truth's perfect tone,
Your fame be chiseled in unblemished stone,
Your hearts be modeled on the plummet's line,
Your faith be guided by the Book divine;
And when at last the gavel's beat above
Calls you from labor to the feast of love,
May mighty Boaz, pillar'd at that gate
Which seraphs tyle and where archangels wait,
Unloose the bandage from your dazzled eyes,
Spell out the _Password_ to Arch-Royal skies;
Upon your bosom set the signet steel,
Help's sign disclose, and Friendship's grip reveal;
Place in your grasp the soul's unerring rod,
And light you to the Temple of your God!

[Decoration]

XXII.

_POLLOCK'S EUTHANASIA._

He is gone! the young, and gifted!
By his own strong pinions lifted
To the stars;

Where he strikes, with minstrels olden,
Choral harps, whose strings are golden,
Deathless bars.

There, with Homer's ghost all hoary,
Not with years, but fadeless glory,
Lo! he stands;

And through that open portal,
We behold the bards immortal
Clasping hands!

Hark! how Rome's great epic master
Sings, that death is no disaster
To the wise;

Fame on earth is but a menial,
But it reigns a king perennial
In the skies!

Albion's blind old bard heroic,
Statesman, sage, and Christian stoic,
Greets his son;

Whilst in pæans wild and glorious,
Like his "Paradise victorious,"
Sings, Well done!

Lo! a bard with forehead pendent,
But with glory's beams resplendent
As a star;

Slow descends from regions higher,
With a crown and golden lyre
In his car.

All around him, crowd as minions,
Thrones and sceptres, and dominions,
Kings and Queens;

Ages past and ages present,
Lord and dame, and prince and peasant,
His demesnes!

Approach! young bard hesperian,
Welcome to the heights empyrean,
Thou did'st sing,

Ere yet thy trembling fingers
Struck where fame immortal lingers,
In the string.

Kneel! I am the bard of Avon,
And the Realm of song in Heaven
Is my own;

Long thy verse shall live in story,
And thy Lyre I crown with glory,
And a throne!

[Decoration]

XXIII.

_SCIENCE, LITERATURE AND ART DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY._

Looking back into the past, and exploring by the light of authentic history, sacred as well as profane, the characteristics of former ages, the merest tyro in learning cannot fail to perceive that certain epochs stand prominently out on the "sands of time," and indicate vast activity and uncommon power in the human mind.

These epochs are so well marked that history has given them a designation, and to call them by their name, conjures up, as by the wand of an enchanter, the heroic representatives of our race.

If, for instance, we should speak of the era of Solomon, in sacred history, the memory would instantly picture forth the pinnacles of the Holy Temple, lifting themselves into the clouds; the ear would listen intently to catch the sweet intonations of the harp of David, vocal at once with the prophetic sorrows of his race, and swelling into sublime ecstasy at the final redemption of his people; the eye would glisten at the pomp and pageantry of the foreign potentates who thronged his court, and gloat with rapture over the beauty of the young Queen of Sheba, who journeyed from a distant land to seek wisdom at the feet of the wisest monarch that ever sat upon a throne. We should behold his ships traversing every sea, and pouring into the lap of Israel the gold of Ophir, the ivory of Senegambia, and the silks, myrrh, and spices of the East.

So, too, has profane history its golden ages, when men all seemed to be giants, and their minds inspired.

What is meant when we speak of the age of Pericles? We mean all that is glorious in the annals of Greece. We mean Apelles with his pencil, Phidias with his chisel, Alcibiades with his sword. We seem to be strolling arm-in-arm with Plato, into the academy, to listen to the divine teachings of Socrates, or hurrying along with the crowd toward the theatre, where Herodotus is reading his history, or Euripides is presenting his tragedies. Aspasia rises up like a beautiful apparition before us, and we follow willing slaves at the wheels of her victorious chariot. The whole of the Peloponnesus glows with intellect like a forge in blast, and scatters the trophies of Grecian civilization profusely around us. The Parthenon lifts its everlasting columns, and the Venus and Apollo are moulded into marble immortality.

Rome had her Augustan age, an era of poets, philosophers, soldiers, statesmen, and orators. Crowded into contemporary life, we recognize the greatest general of the heathen world, the greatest poet, the greatest orator, and the greatest statesman of Rome. Cæsar and Cicero, Virgil and Octavius, all trod the pavement of the capitol together, and lent their blended glory to immortalize the Augustan age.

Italy and Spain and France and England have had their golden age. The eras of Lorenzo the Magnificent, of Ferdinand and Isabella, of Louis Quatorze and of Elizabeth, can never be forgotten. They loom up from the surrounding gloom like the full moon bursting upon the sleeping seas; irradiating the night, clothing the meanest wave in sparkling silver, and dimming the lustre of the brightest stars. History has also left in its track mementoes of a different character. In sacred history we have the age of Herod; in profane, the age of Nero. We recognize at a glance the talismanic touch of the age of chivalry, and the era of the Crusades, and mope our way in darkness and gloom along that opaque track, stretching from the reign of Justinian, in the sixth century, to the reign of Edward the Third, in the fourteenth, and known throughout Christendom as the "Dark Ages." Let us now take a survey of the field we occupy, and ascertain, if possible, the category in which our age shall be ranked by our posterity.

But before proceeding to discuss the characteristics of our epoch, let us define more especially what that epoch embraces.

It does not embrace the American nor the French Revolution, nor does it include the acts or heroes of either. The impetus given to the human mind by the last half of the eighteenth century, must be carefully distinguished from the impulses of the first half of the nineteenth. The first was an era of almost universal war, the last of almost uninterrupted peace. The dying ground-swell of the waves after a storm belong to the tempest, not to the calm which succeeds. Hence the wars of Napoleon, the literature and art of his epoch, must be excluded from observation, in properly discussing the true characteristics of our era.

De Staël and Goethe and Schiller and Byron; Pitt and Nesselrode, Metternich and Hamilton; Fichte and Stewart and Brown and Cousin; Canova, Thorwaldsen and La Place, though all dying since the beginning of this century, belong essentially to a former era. They were the ripened fruits of that grand uprising of the human mind which first took form on the 4th day of July, 1776. Our era properly commences with the downfall of the first Napoleon, and none of the events connected therewith, either before or afterward, can be philosophically classed in the epoch we represent, but must be referred to a former period. Ages hence, then, the philosophic critic will thus describe the first half of the nineteenth century:

"The normal state of Christendom was peace. The age of steel that
immediately went before it had passed. It was the Iron age.

"Speculative philosophy fell asleep; literature declined;
Skepticism bore sway in religion, politics, and morals; Utility
became the universal standard of right and wrong, and the truths
of every science and the axioms of every art were ruthlessly
subjected to the _experimentum crucis_. Everything was liable to
revision. The verdicts pronounced in the olden time against
Mohammed and Mesmer and Robespierre were set aside, and a new
trial granted. The ghosts of Roger Bacon and Emanuel Swedenborg
were summoned from the Stygian shore to plead their causes anew
before the bar of public opinion. The head of Oliver Cromwell was
ordered down from the gibbet, the hump was smoothed down on the
back of Richard III, and the sentence pronounced by Urban VIII
against the 'starry Galileo' reversed forever. Aristotle was
decently interred beneath a modern monument inscribed thus: '_In
pace requiescat_;' whilst Francis Bacon was rescued from the
sacrilegious hands of kings and peers and parliament, and
canonized by the unanimous consent of Christendom. It was the age
of tests. Experiment governed the world. Germany led the van, and
Humboldt became the impersonation of his times."

Such unquestionably will be the verdict of the future, when the present time, with all its treasures and trash, its hopes and realizations, shall have been safely shelved and labeled amongst the musty records of bygone generations.

Let us now examine into the grounds of this verdict more minutely, and test its accuracy by exemplifications.

I. And first, who believes now in _innate ideas_? Locke has been completely superseded by the materialists of Germany and France, and all speculative moral philosophy exploded. The audiences of Edinburgh and Brown University interrupt Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Wayland in their discourses, and, stripping off the plumage from their theses, inquisitively demand, "_Cui bono_?" What is the use of all this? How can we apply it to the every-day concerns of life? We ask you for bread and you have given us a stone; and though that stone be a diamond, it is valueless, except for its glitter. No philosopher can speculate successfully or even satisfactorily to himself, when he is met at every turn by some vulgar intruder into the domains of Aristotle and Kant, who clips his wings just as he was prepared to soar into the heavens, by an offer of copartnership to "speculate," it may be, in the price of pork. Hence, no moral philosopher of our day has been enabled to erect any theory which will stand the assaults of logic for a moment. Each school rises for an instant to the surface, and sports out its little day in toss and tribulation, until the next wave rolls along, with foam on its crest and fury in its roar, and overwhelms it forever. As with its predecessor, so with itself.

"The eternal surge
Of Time and Tide rolls on and bears afar
Their bubbles: as the old burst, new emerge,
Lashed from the foam of ages."

II. But I have stated that this is an age of _literary decline_. It is true that more books are written and published, more newspapers and periodicals printed and circulated, more extensive libraries collected and incorporated, and more ink indiscriminately spilt, than at any former period of the world's history. In looking about us we are forcibly reminded of the sarcastic couplet of Pope, who complains--

"That those who cannot write, and those who can,
All scratch, all scrawl, and scribble to a man."

Had a modern gentleman all the eyes of Argus, all the hands of Briareus, all the wealth of Croesus, and lived to the age of Methuselah, his eyes would all fail, his fingers all tire, his money all give out, and his years come to an end, long before he perused one tenth of the annual product of the press of Christendom at the present day. It is no figure of rhetoric to say that the press groans beneath the burden of its labors. Could the types of Leipsic and London, Paris and New York, speak out, the Litany would have to be amended, and a new article added, to which they would solemnly respond: "Spare us, good Lord!"

A recent publication furnishes the following statistical facts relating to the book trade in our own country: "Books have multiplied to such an extent in the United States that it now takes 750 paper-mills, with 2000 engines in constant operation, to supply the printers, who work day and night, endeavoring to keep their engagements with publishers. These tireless mills produce 270,000,000 pounds of paper every year. It requires a pound and a quarter of old rags for one pound of paper, thus 340,000,000 pounds of rags were consumed in this way last year. There are about 300 publishers in the United States, and near 10,000 book-sellers who are engaged in the task of dispensing literary pabulum to the public."

It may appear somewhat paradoxical to assert that literature is declining whilst books and authors are multiplying to such a fearful extent. Byron wrote:

"'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print;
A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't."

True enough; but books are not always literature. A man may become an author without ceasing to be an ignoramus. His name may adorn a title-page without being recorded _in ære perenne_. He may attempt to write himself up a very "lion" in literature, whilst good master Slender may be busily engaged "in writing him down an ass."

Not one book in a thousand is a success; not one success in ten thousand wreathes the fortunate author with the laurel crown, and lifts him up into the region of the immortals. Tell me, ye who prate about the _literary glory_ of the nineteenth century, wherein it consists? Whose are

"The great, the immortal names
That were not born to die?"

I cast my eyes up the long vista toward the Temple of Fame, and I behold hundreds of thousands pressing on to reach the shining portals. They jostle each other by the way, they trip, they fall, they are overthrown and ruthlessly trampled into oblivion, by the giddy throng, as they rush onward and upward. One, it may be two, of the million who started out, stand trembling at the threshold, and with exultant voices cry aloud for admittance. One perishes before the summons can be answered; and the other, awed into immortality by the august presence into which he enters, is transformed into imperishable stone.

Let us carefully scan the rolls of the literature of our era, and select, if we can, poet, orator, or philosopher, whose fame will deepen as it runs, and brighten as it burns, until future generations shall drink at the fountain and be refreshed, and kindle their souls at the vestal flame and be purified, illuminated and ennobled.

In poetry, aye, in the crowded realms of song, who bears the sceptre?--who wears the crown? America, England, France and Germany can boast of bards _by the gross_, and rhyme _by the acre_, but not a single poet. The _poeta nascitur_ is not here. He may be on his way--and I have heard that he was--but this generation must pass before he arrives. Is he in America? If so, which is he? Is it Poe, croaking sorrowfully with his "Raven," or Willis, cooing sweetly with his "Dove"? Is it Bryant, with his "Thanatopsis," or Prentice, with his "Dirge to the Dead Year"? Perhaps it is Holmes, with his "Lyrics," or Longfellow, with his "Idyls." Alas! is it not self-evident that we have no poet, when it is utterly impossible to discover any two critics in the land who can find him?

True, we have lightning-bugs enough, but no star; foot-hills, it may be, in abundance, but no Mount Shasta, with its base built upon the everlasting granite, and its brow bathed in the eternal sunlight.

In England, Tennyson, the Laureate, is the spokesman of a clique, the pet poet of a princely circle, whose rhymes flow with the docility and harmony of a limpid brook, but never stun like Niagara, nor rise into sublimity like the storm-swept sea.

Béranger, the greatest poet of France of our era, was a mere song-writer; and Heine, the pride of young Germany, a mere satirist and lyrist. Freiligrath can never rank with Goethe or Schiller; and Victor Hugo never attain the heights trodden by Racine, Corneille, or Boileau.