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long enough, he can trace a thing through | And every morning it was still one night the Circumlocution Office of Washington, and find out, after much labor and trouble and delay, that which he could have found out on the first day if the business of the Circumlocution Office were as ingeniously systematized as it would be if it were a great private mercantile institution.

S. L. CLEMENS.

LOSS OF THE ARCTIC.

In autumn, 1854, hundreds had wended their way from pilgrimages;-from Rome and its treasures of dead art, and its glory of living nature; from the sides of the Switzer's mountains, and from the capitals of various nations, all of them saying in their hearts, we will wait for the September gales to have done with their equinoctial fury, and then we will embark; we will slide across the appeased ocean, and in the gorgeous month of October we will greet our longed-for native land, and our heart-loved homes.

And so the throng streamed along from Berlin, from Paris, and from the Orient, converging upon London, still hastening toward the welcome ship, and narrowing every day the circle of engagements and preparations. They crowded aboard. Never had the Arctic borne such a host of passengers, nor passengers so nearly related to so many of us. The hour was come. The signal-ball fell at Greenwich. It was noon also at Liverpool. The anchors were weighed; the great hull swayed to the current; the national colors streamed abroad, as if themselves instinct with life and national sympathy. The bell strikes; the wheels revolve; the signal-gun beats its echoes in upon every structure along the shore, and the Arctic glides joyfully forth from the Mersey, and turns her prow to the winding channel, and begins her homeward run. The pilot stood at the wheel, and men saw him. Death sat upon the prow, and no eye beheld him. Whoever stood at the wheel in all the voyage, Death was the pilot that steered the craft, and none knew it. He neither revealed his presence nor whispered his errand.

And so hope was effulgent, and lithe gayety disported itself, and joy was with every guest. Amid all the inconveniences of the voyage, there was still that which hushed every murmur,-"Home is not far away."

nearer home! Eight days had passed. They beheld that distant bank of mist that forever haunts the vast shadows of Newfoundland. Boldly they made it; and plunging in, its pliant wreaths wrapped them about. They shall never emerge. The last sunlight has flashed from that deck. The last voyage is done to ship and passengers. At noon there came noiselessly stealing from the north that fated instrument of destruction. In that mysterious shroud, that vast atmosphere of mist, both steamers were holding their way with rushing prow and roaring wheels, but invisible.

At a league's distance, unconscious; and at nearer approach, unwarned; within hail, and bearing right toward each other, unseen, unfelt, till in a moment more, emerging from the gray mists, the ill-omened Vesta dealt her deadly stroke to the Arctic. The deathblow was scarcely felt along the mighty hull. She neither reeled nor shivered. Neither commander nor officers deemed that they had suffered harm. Prompt upon humanity, the brave Luce (let his name be ever spoken with admiration and respect) ordered away his boat with the first officer to inquire if the stranger had suffered harm. As Gourley went over the ship's side, oh, that some good angel had called to the brave commander in the words of Paul on a like occasion, "Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved."

They departed, and with them the hope of the ship, for now the waters gaining upon the hold, and rising upon the fires, revealed the mortal blow. Oh, had now that stern, brave mate, Gourley, been on deck, whom the sailors were wont to mind,-had he stood to execute sufficiently the commander's will, we may believe that we should not have had to blush for the cowardice and recreancy of the crew, nor weep for the untimely dead. But, apparently, each subor dinate officer lost all presence of mind, then courage, and so honor. In a wild scramble, that ignoble mob of firemen, engineers, waiters, and crew, rushed for the boats, and abandoned the helpless women, children, and men, to the mercy of the deep! Four hours there were from the catastrophe of collision to the catastrophe of SINKING!

Oh, what a burial was here! Not as when one is borne from his home, among weeping throngs, and gently carried to the green fields, and laid peacefully beneath the turf and flowers. No priest stood to pronounce

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"Rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed,"
Observes some solemn, sentimental owl;
Maxims like these are very cheaply said!
But, ere you make yourself a fool or fowl,
Pray just inquire about his rise and fall,
And whether larks have any beds at all!

"The time for honest folks to be abed

Is in the morning, if I reason right;
And he who cannot keep his precious head
Upon his pillow till it's fairly light,
And so enjoy his forty morning winks,
Is up to knavery, or else he drinks!

Thomson, who sung about the "Seasons," said
It was a glorious thing to rise in season;
But then he said it-lying-in his bed,

At ten o'clock A. M.,-the very reason
He wrote so charmingly. The simple fact is,
His preaching wasn't sanctioned by his practice.

Tis, doubtless, well to be sometimes awake,-
Awake to duty, and awake to truth,-
But when, alas! a nice review we take
Of our best deeds and days, we find, in sooth,
The hours that leave the slightest cause to weep
Are those we passed in childhood, or asleep!

'Tis beautiful to leave the world awhile

For the sweet visions of the gentle night; And free, at last, from mortal care or guile, To live as only in the angels' sight, In sleep's sweet realm so cosily shut in, Where, at the worst, we only dream of sin! VOL. III.

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY.

BY OBADIAH BIND-THEIR-KINGS-IN-CHAINS-AND-THEIR-N BLES-WITH-LINKS-OF-IRON, SERJEANT IN IRETON'S

REGIMENT.

Oh wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North,

With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red?

And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout?

And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?

Oh evil was the root, and bitter was the fruit,

And crimson was the juice of the vintage that we trod! For we trampled on the throng of the haughty and the strong,

Who sate in the high places, and slew the saints of God.

It was about the noon of a glorious day of June,

That we saw their banners dance, and their cuirasses shine,

And the Man of Blood was there, with his long essenced hair,

And Astley, and Sir Marmaduke, and Rupert of the Rhine.

Like a servant of the Lord, with his Bible and his sword,

The General rode along us to form us to the fight, When a murmuring sound broke out, and swelled into a shout,

Among the godless horsemen upon the tyrant's right,

And hark! like the roar of the billows on the shore,
The cry of battle rises along their charging line!
For God! for the Cause! for the Church! for the Laws!
For Charles King of England, and Rupert of the Rhine!

The furious German comes, with his clarions and his drums,

His bravoes of Alsatia, and pages of Whitehall: They are bursting on our flanks. Grasp your pikes, close your ranks;

For Rupert never comes but to conquer or to fall.

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They are here! They rush on! We are broken! We are gone!

Our left is borne before them like stubble on the blast, O Lord, put forth thy might! O Lord, defend the right!

Stand back to back, in God's name, and fight it to the last.

Stout Skippon hath a wound; the centre hath given ground:

Hark! hark!-What means the trampling of horsemen

on our rear?

And She of the seven hills shall mourn her children's ills,

And tremble when she thinks on the edge of England's sword;

And the kings of earth in fear shall shudder when they hear

What the hand of God hath wrought for the Houses and the Word.

LORD MACAULAY.

Whose banner do I see, boys? 'Tis he, thank God, 'tis JOHN ADAMS ON NATURAL AR

he, boys.

Bear up another minute: brave Oliver is here.

Their heads all stooping low, their points all in a row
Like a whirlwind on the trees, like a deluge on the
dykes,

Our cuirassiers have burst on the ranks of the Accurst,
And as a shock have scattered the forest of his pikes.

Fast, fast, the gallants ride, in some safe nook to hide
Their coward heads, predestined to rot on Temple Bar:
And he he turns, he flies;-shame on those cruel eyes
That bore to look on torture, and dare not look on war.

Ho! comrades, scour the plain; and, ere ye strip the slain,

First give another stab to make your search secure, Then shake from sleeves and pockets their broad-pieces and lockets,

The tokens of the wanton, the plunder of the poor.

ISTOCRACY.

(FROM A LETTER TO THOMAS JEFFERSON,

1813.)

[JOHN ADAMS (1735-1826), second President of the United States, was educated at Harvard College and admitted to the bar in 1758. Endowed with an acute mind, a clear and powerful voice, and ready eloquence, he became one of the most conspicuous and influential advocates of colonial independence. In the Continental Congress, he served from 1774 to 1778, when he was ap pointed commissioner to France, and afterward to Great Britain, where he negotiated the treaty of peace of 1782. His voluminous writings, now little read, were mainly on jurisprudence and the science of government. His private letters (from one of which we quote) are the most readable and interesting of his writings, and his correspondence with his wife, who was a woman of superior intelligence, has been recently reprinted.]

We are now explicitly agreed upon one

Fools! your doublets shone with gold, and your hearts important point, viz., that there is a natu

were gay and bold,

When you kissed your lily hands to your lemans today;

You very

ral aristocracy among men, the grounds of which are virtue and talents. justly indulge a little merriment upon this And to-morrow shall the fox, from her chambers in the solemn subject of aristocracy. I often

rocks,

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laugh at it too, for there is nothing in tnis laughable world more ridiculous than the management of it by all the nations of the earth; but while we smile, mankind have boys, what is sport to you is wounds and reason to say to us, as the frogs said to the death to us. When I consider the weakness, the folly, the pride, the vanity, the selfishness, the artifice, the low craft and mean cunning, the want of principle, the avarice, the unbounded ambition, the unfeeling cru elty of a majority of those (in all nations,) who are allowed an aristocratical influence, and on the other hand, the stupidity with which the more numerous multitude not only become their dupes, but even love to be ta ken in by their tricks, I feel a stronger dis position to weep at their destiny than to laugh at their folly. But though we have

agreed in one point, in words, it is not yet | certain that we are perfectly agreed in sense. Fashion has introduced an indeterminate use of the word talents. Education, wealth, strength, beauty, stature, birth, marriage, graceful attitudes and motions, gait, air, complexion, physiognomy are talents, as well as genius, science and learning. Any one of these talents that in fact commands or influences two votes in society, gives to the man who posesses it the character of an aristocrat, in any sense of the word. Pick up the first hundred men you meet, ana make a republic. Every man will have an equal vote; but when deliberations and discussions are opened, it will be found that twenty-five, by their talents, virtue being equal, will be able to carry fifty votes. Every one of these twenty-five is an aristocrat, in my sense of the word, whether he obtains his one vote in addition to his own, by his birth, fortune, figure, eloquence, science, learning, craft, cunning, or even his character for good fellowship, and a bon vivant.

What

Susanna, Abigail, Judith, Ruth, down to Helen, Mrs. de Maintenon and Mrs. Fitzherbert. For mercy's sake do not compel me to look to our chaste states and territo ries to find women, one of whom let go, would in the words of Holophernes' guards, deceive the whole earth.

as

The proverbs of Theognis, like those of Solomon, are observations on human nature, ordinary life, and civil society, with moral reflections on the facts. I quote him as a witness of the fact, that there was much difference in the races of men as in the breeds of sheep, and as a sharp reprover and censurer of the sordid, mercenary practice of disgracing birth by preferring gold to it. Surely no authority can be more expressly in point to prove the existence of inequalities, not of rights, but of moral, intellectual and physical inequalities in families, descents, and generations. If a descent from pious, virtuous, wealthy, literary or scientific ancestors, is a letter of recommendation or introduction in a man's favor, and enables him to influence only one vote What gave Sir William Wallace his in addition to his own, he is an aristocrat ; amazing aristocratical superiority? His for a democrat can have but one vote. strength. What gave Mrs. Clark her aris- Aaron Burr has 100,000 votes from the sintocratical influence to create generals, admi-gle circumstance of his descent from Presirals and bishops? Her beauty. dent Burr and President Edwards. gave Pompadour and Du Barry the power of making cardinals and popes? And I have lived for years in the hotel de Valentois with Franklin, who had as many virtues as any of them. In the investigation of the meaning of the word "talents," I could write 630 pages, as pertinent as John Taylor's of Hazlewood, but I will select a single example, for female aristocrats are nearly as formidable as males. A daughter of a green grocer walks the streets in London daily, with a basket of cabbage sprouts, dandelions, and spinage on her head. She is observed by the painters to have a beautiful face, an elegant figure, a graceful step, and a debonair. They hire her to sit. She complies, and is painted by forty artists in a circle round her. The scientific Dr. William Hamilton outbids the painters, sends her to school for a genteel education, and marries her. This lady not only causes the triumphs of the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar, but separates Naples from France, and finally banishes the king and queen from Sicily. Such is the aristocracy of the natural talent of beauty. Millions of examples might be quoted from history, sacred and profane, from Eve, Hannah, Deborah,

*** Take away appetite, and the present generation would not live a month, and no future generation would ever exist; and thus the exalted dignity of human nature would be annihilated and lost, and in my opinion the whole loss would be of no more importance than putting out a candle, quenching a torch, or crushing a fire-fly, if in this world only we have hope. Your distinction between natural and artificial aristocracy, does not appear to me founded. Birth and wealth are conferred upon some men as imperiously by nature as genius, strength, or beauty. The heir to honors, riches, and power, has often no more merit in procuring these advantages, than he has in obtaining a handsome face, or an elegant figure. When aristocracies are established by human laws, and honor, wealth and power are made hereditary by municipal laws and political institutions, then I acknowledge artificial aristocracy to commence; but this never commences, till corruption in elections becomes dominant and uncontrollable. But this artificial aristocracy can never last. The everlasting envies, jealousies, rivalries and quarrels among them; their cruel rapacity upon the poor ignorant people, their followers, compel them

to set up Cæsar, a demagogue, to be a mon- | arch, a master; pour mettre chacun a sa place. Here you have the origin of all artificial aristocracy, which is the origin of all monarchies. And both artificial aristocracy and monarchy, and civil, military, political, and hierarchical despotisms, have all grown out of the natural aristocracy of virtues and talents. We, to be sure, are far remote from this. Many hundred years must roll away, before we shall be corrupted. Our pure, virtuous, public-spirited, federative republic will last forever, govern the globe, and introduce the perfection of man; his perfectibility being already proved by Price, Priestley, Condorcet, Rousseau, Diderot, and Godwin. Mischief has been done by the Senate of the United States. I have known and felt more of this mischief, than Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, all together. But this has been all caused by the constitutional power of the Senate, in executive business, which ought to be immediately, totally and essentially abolished. Your distinction between the Apistol and Yeudo apistol will not help the matter. I would trust one as well as the other with unlimited power. The law wisely refuses an oath as a witness in his own case, to the saint as well as the sinner.

No romance would be more amusing than the history of your Virginian and our New England aristocratical families. Yet even in Rhode Island there has been no clergy, no church, and I had almost said no State, and some people say no religion. There has been a constant respect for certain old families. Fifty-seven or fifty-eight years ago, in company with Colonel, Counsellor, Judge John Chandler, whom I have quoted before, a newspaper was brought in. The old sage asked me to look for the news from Rhode Island, and see how the elections had gone there. I read the list of Waubuns, Watrous, Greens, Whipples, Malbones, &c. "I expected as much," said the aged gentleman for I have always been of the opinion that in the most popular governments, the elections will generally go in favor of the most ancient families." To this day, when any one of these tribes-and we may add Ellerys, Channings, Champlins, &c.,—are pleased to fall in with the popular current, they are sure to carry all before them.

You suppose a difference of opinion between you and me on the subject of aristocracy. I can find none. I dislike and detest hereditary honors, offices, emoluments, established by law. So do you. I am for ex

cluding legal, hereditary distinctions from the United States as long as possible. So are you. I only say that mankind have not yet discovered any remedy against irresistible corruption in elections to offices of great power and profit, but making them here. ditary.

But will you say our elections are pure ? Be it so, upon the whole; but do you recol. lect in history a more corrupt election than that of Aaron Burr to be President, or that of De Witt Clinton last year? By corruption here, I mean a sacrifice of every national in. terest and honor to private and party objects. I see the same spirit in Virginia that you and I see in Rhode Island, and the rest of New England. In New York it is a struggle of family feuds-a feudal aristocracy. Pennsylvania is a contest between German, Irish, and old England families. When Germans and Irish unite they give 30,000 majorities.

There is virtually a white rose and a red rose, a Cæsar and a Pompey, in every State in this Union, and contests and dissensions will be as lasting. The rivalry of Bourbons and Noailleses produced the French revolution, and a similar competition for conside ration and influence exists and prevails in every village in the world. Where will terminate the rabies agri? The continent will be scattered over with manors much larger than Livingston's, Van Rensselaer's, or Philips's; even our Deacon Strong will have a principality among you Southern folk. What inequality of talents will be produced by these land jobbers. Where tends the mania of banks? At my table in Philadelphia I once proposed to you to unite in endeavors to obtain an amendment of the constitution prohibiting to the separate States the power of creating banks; but giving Congress authority to establish one bank with a branch in each State, the whole limited to ten millions of dollars. Whether this project is wise or unwise, I know not, for I had deliberated little on it then and have never thought it worth thinking of since. But you spurned the proposition from you with disdain. This system of banks begotten, brooded and hatched by Duer, Robert and Gouverneur Morris, Hamilton and Washington, I have always considered as a system of national injustice. A sacrifice of public and private interest to a few aristocratical friends and favorites. My scheme could have had no such effect. Verres plundered temples and robbed a few rich men, but he never made such ravages among private property in gen.

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