Chapter II: Part 2

It was now twelve o'clock, and the land seemed sunk in a sleep of death. There was no sound but our own echoes as we entered the dreary, dismal village, which, like all Italian villages, is merely a dirty street bordered with gloomy houses. They looked so hopeless with their grim stone fronts, high-barred windows out of reach, and huge gates, as if expecting nothing but hostility, that when we stopped before the inn we felt like the wretched wights who beheld the dungeons of an ogre; and when Edmund exclaimed in what seemed a terrible voice, so still was the night, "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" we started as if he had joked in church. Then the vision of a pleasant inn hung for a moment in our minds, and the sense of the preposterous contrast awakened a loud peal of laughter which died away echoing among those houses which were as hospitable as sea-crags. While we stood debating, a group of peasants, with their jackets slung over their shoulders, passed spectrally by, staring steadily at us, as if they would not be unwilling to strike a final blow for the kingdom of Italy.

They disappeared, and we struck a resounding blow upon the door of the albergo, and another and another. After a while there was a sound of stealthily unbarring window-shutters, followed by a voice demanding the reason of the tumult. We explained that we were friends who wanted beds for the night. No, that was impossible, "the voice replied far up the height;" there were no beds, and we had better push on to the next tavern. We expostulated in many tongues with the dimly-visioned head that now appeared, pleading that we were strangers from a far country who were very tired and sleepy. The head disappeared for a few moments and we heard a low colloquy. Then the great gate of the albergo swung sullenly open, and we stepped into a dim court, and the dimly-visioned face became a face like a dull razor, it was so thin-featured and stupid. The man asked us to stop, and, stepping aside, he called a woman's name, then stood waiting, his wretched dozing face illuminated by the weak lustre of a long-wicked tallow-candle which he held. Presently he moved on along the windows of the court conversing with an invisible within the house. When those murmuring arrangements were made, he led us up a dirty stone staircase, trying to open various doors with keys that did not fit the locks; and finally, after a desperate wrestle with one, he swore fiercely in a thin, wiry voice that made the blood run cold, and then smashed the door of the chamber, carrying away wood-work and lock together. It was a vast room of immense discomfort, and after barricading the disabled door with tables and chairs, we lay down and fell asleep upon beds which could furnish no dreams.

In the morning we ate grapes and peaches, and finding a wagon which we could hire, we bribed our pedestrian consciences and bowled over the beautiful road to Milan as republicans, reluctantly confessing that the imperial and royal post-roads were the best in the world.

"Yes--but not for the public benefit," said the mild Francis; "they are for the quicker transport of troops and artillery to oppress the people."

Silent, broken-hearted Milan! No, not yet visibly broken-hearted, for the Cathedral sparkled pure and lofty in the rare, blue summer air. It was the morning of the Feast of the Ascension of the Virgin Mary, to whom the Cathedral is dedicated, and was therefore high festival. But the people had little aspect of joy. We stopped at the gate, and sat in the steady glare of the sun while our passports were closely inspected. Outside the city wall lay a wilderness of tree trunks, which had been levelled in expectation of a siege by the Austrians. They were useless now; and groups of soldiers in gray slouched hats and black plumes--a kind of Robin Hood uniform--were clustered idly and curiously about the gate. They looked worn and red and wasted, and I fancied had taken part in the fight of the burning day which had made almost as many idiots as corpses in the Austrian army.

Within the city the streets were broken up, and the paving-stones designed for barricades were merely roughly laid back again in their places. In the long vista of the streets there was no shop open. The only signs of traffic were the stands of the fruit-merchants shaded by gayly-striped awnings, and covered with piles of glowing fruit. Multitudes of brightly-dressed people strolled idly and curiously up and down, and a company of sappers and miners marched by without music, but carrying their implements and their soiled accoutrements. They were dirty and draggled, like a corps marching across a battle-field to dig a hopeless ditch. There were no carriages moving; there was no noise, no hurry, no excitement, only that scuffling murmur which makes the silence of a great city spectral. The stately Milanese women walked finely by. Their long black hair was drawn away from the forehead and folded in massive plaits; and the black veil that hung from the back of the head was partly gathered over the arm. Queen-like they walked, carrying the bright-colored fan which was raised to shield their eyes from the sun, or languidly waved against their bosoms. Forms of the Orient or of Spain, the imagination touched them with pathetic dignity--matrons of a lost country.

HERBERT SPENCER ON THE YANKEE

It was a very distinguished and agreeable company that greeted Mr. Herbert Spencer at dinner, and the speaking was capital. His own address was an interesting paper, in which he preached "the gospel of relaxation." In an interview published some time before, he had made some incisive criticisms upon American life and character, and in his dinner address he said that he was going to find fault.

"The Redcoats all talk to us like uncles or pedagogues," exclaimed Americus, impatiently. "What business have they to lecture us in this style? We are quite old enough to take care of ourselves, and quite able to run this continent without any instruction from Englishmen. Suppose that some American guest in England should say to his hosts that he wanted to give them some good advice, and point out to them a few of their defects, and then proceed to pat them on the head with patronizing praise, don't you think there would be a storm? If strangers like us, very well; if they don't like us, very well. It is a matter of supreme indifference to us."

Why, then, Americus, do we ask them how they like us? And why should the people of one country scornfully decline to hear the comments of sensible people of other countries? Every man is, or ought to be, glad to receive intelligent counsel, and to see his life from other points of view than his own. Why should not the citizen be equally sensible? We did not ask De Tocqueville to come and see us and analyze our political institutions and their operations. We did not ask Von Holst to write our constitutional history. But De Tocqueville and Von Holst have laid us and all other lovers of popular constitutional liberty under great obligations. Both of them have written better books of their kind about us than any American has written.

It is absurd to snarl that we don't care what they say, and that they had better stay at home and not lecture us. When Dickens stung us with the satire of _Martin Chuzzlewit_, he was not only accused of ingratitude--as if a man were bound to find no fault with any abuse, and not to criticise any tendency, in a country where he had been kindly welcomed--but he was told to look at home, and assured that if he wanted to depict outrageous evils and ridiculous people he had only to portray his beloved England. That was said with a fine air of indignation. But what else was Dickens doing all his life? What are his books, in this point of view, but a prolonged arraignment of the abuses and of the absurd social types of his native England? But when Henry James, Jun., draws a good-natured and shrewd sketch of the American girl abroad in Daisy Miller, although it is plainly intended to show to conventional Europe that the American girl is misjudged, we petulantly wonder why he could not choose another type to illustrate.

The observations of intelligent foreign critics are no more hostile than the American criticisms which they confirm. When, for instance, after a very intelligent recognition of the material advantages of this country, Mr. Spencer says that if there had been another and higher progress commensurate with the material advance there would be nothing to wish, he says nothing which very many Americans have not felt and said, and he adds an improvement from history which had occurred to many Americans, and had been strongly stated by them, that while the republics of the Middle Ages surrounded themselves with material splendor, their liberty decayed. And what is this but a contemporary statement of the old truth which Goldsmith put into memorable verse a hundred years ago,

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay."

Mr. Spencer's further remarks that under the forms of freedom we may lose its substance, and that in some ways, which he points out, we are losing it, is the burden of the warning of many an intelligent American, which does not need the old illustration of Caesar's introduction of the empire under republican forms, nor the warning of Burke, that "ambition, though it has ever the same general views, has not at all times the same means nor the same particular objects." So when Mr. Spencer says that paper constitutions will not work as they are intended to work, and that the real basis and bulwark of national greatness and of progressive liberty is character and not education, he says what every thoughtful American perceives and believes. He does not say, indeed, what many Americans know, and what explains the emphasis with which we insist upon education, that the perception of the desirability of general education is in itself an evidence of character. Education alone may not save a people from political trouble, but constitutional liberty will not be maintained by an ignorant people.

That our good-nature is a kind of moral indifference which is really a defect of character is another of Mr. Spencer's observations which is a corroboration of much American comment upon American life. It has an explanation in the conditions of that life for which Mr. Spencer does not make allowance. But his remark is only that of the railroad traveller last summer which this Easy Chair recorded. In a new country--if an American without incurring the penalty of high-treason may call this a new country--everybody must good-humoredly help everybody else, and make the best of everything.

Perhaps Mr. Spencer has not heard the story of the American gentleman travelling in a certain part of the country, who was quartered in a hotel, in a room of which the window opened upon the piazza where his fellow-citizens sat tilted back in chairs, talking, reading the newspapers, and expectorating. There was no shade or shutter to the window. The traveller, desiring to change his dress, for want of any other curtain hung a shirt over the window to secure his seclusion. But a watchful fellow-citizen chanced to see the unwonted attempt to escape the public eye, and the traveller was surprised in the most intimate stage of his change of raiment to see the improvised curtain suddenly torn away, and a face thrust inquiringly into the window with the remark, "I jess wanted to see what you're so---- private about." The case was an extreme one, and a laugh was certainly a better recourse than a revolver.

In everything that involves a principle, as Mr. Spencer truly says, there is profound wisdom in Hamlet's phrase, "Greatly to find quarrel in a straw." But this again is only a new face of the old wisdom _obsta principiis_. For a straw shows which way the wind blows. How can a sensible American quarrel with the shrewd and kindly insight of a quiet Englishman who, when he is asked his opinion, shows that he agrees with the asker? At the dinner Mr. Spencer did not speak as an Englishman, or a critic, or a cynic, but as a philosopher. The end of all our study and endeavor, he said, should be complete living. We do not learn for learning's sake, we are not self-denying for the sake of self-denial, but all is for fuller and richer living. Intemperate devotion to work of any kind, like all intemperance, weakens the power of right living. In America, as in England, there is this absorbing passion for work. Therefore, in the interest of a better and more truly efficient life, let us heed the gospel of relaxation and recreation.

It was, as he said, an unconventional after-dinner speech, and Carl Schurz very happily cited the speaker himself as a striking illustration--as striking as any Yankee--of the consequences of disregarding his own doctrine of the desirability of recreation for a completer life. But it was not an English uncle "tipping" his bumptious American nephew with good advice, nor a pedagogue lecturing us upon our follies and defects, nor a supercilious foreigner condescending. It was a thoughtful guest of our own kindred, of the same high and generous purpose that we attribute to the best of our countrymen, comparing notes in the most friendly way, and speaking to us not distinctively as Americans so much as men living in America. If any American of corresponding standing with Mr. Spencer should go to England and speak to Englishmen after dinner in the same simple and friendly way, they would be very foolish fellows if they listened with any less courtesy and heed than we have listened to Mr. Spencer.

HONOR

These are very precious words of Lovelace:

"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."

And Francis First's message to his mother after Pavia, "All is lost but honor," is in the same key. Yet honor has been as much travestied as liberty, and the crimes committed in its name are as many. Falstaff's is a sharp antistrophe: "What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air." But for that whiff of air how many noble lives have been sacrificed!

Alexander Hamilton knew his own time, and he decided that his refusal of Burr's challenge would be regarded as cowardly, and destroy his prestige and influence. We may say that a morally greater man would nevertheless have dared to refuse it, but we must also consider that Hamilton knew the popular estimate of his own standard of life, and would naturally test his conduct by that standard. He was a soldier and a man of the world of the eighteenth century. Dr. Nott, the echoes of whose famous sermon on Hamilton's death still linger in tradition, might have declined to fight and been justified. He was a clergyman, and popular feeling excused him from resorting to the field of honor. But it is very doubtful if it would have excused Hamilton.

He might have urged that Burr had no right to make his demand. But Hamilton knew that he had spoken most strongly of Burr, and he knew that Burr knew it. He thought Burr an unprincipled and dangerous fellow, and he said so plainly. But there was the familiar preface to Hamilton's explanation of the charges against him as Secretary of the Treasury. Could he take the lofty height of moral principle? Or could he stand upon the technical punctilio of the duel? His honor, by which he meant the consistency of his life and the standards that he acknowledged, seemed to him to allow him no alternative, and he was slain by the necessity of what is unquestionably a false sense of honor.

A man's honor, in the sense that we may attribute to the lines of Lovelace, is his most precious possession. But it is something which is wholly in his own keeping, and is not at the mercy or whim of another. He can soil it, but except himself the whole world cannot smirch it. If a man had told Dr. Channing that he lied, or had dashed a glass of wine in his face, the honor of Dr. Channing would still have remained unsullied, not because he was a minister, but because of a reason which is equally applicable to all other men--because of his moral rectitude and courage. That a ribald tongue railed at him for lying when he had spoken the truth could not affect him except with pity or wonder. Even if the charge were true and he had told a lie, he would, indeed, have soiled his own honor, but the railer would not have touched it.

This view assumes that honor is something else than notoriety, which in turn is something very different from fame or character. Notoriety is current familiarity with a man's name, which is given by much mention of it arising from any kind of conduct. Reputation is favorable notoriety as distinguished from fame, which is permanent approval of great deeds or noble thoughts by the best intelligence of mankind. But honor is absolutely individual and personal. It is conscious and willing loyalty to the highest inward leading. It is that quality which cannot be insulted. This is the sublime instinct of which Lovelace sings. I could not so much love thee, Lucasta, purest of the pure, if I did not love purity more. _Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica veritas._

The ordinary talk about honor is a parody of this spiritual loyalty. A man seizes another by the nose at a public table, or he slaps his face in the street, or he tells him in the sacred precincts of the club that he lies, or he posts him as a coward, or he insults his wife or daughter--such a man invites summary retaliation, and he generally gets it. But there is no question of honor involved. "Suppose your nose pulled at the opera," said a gentleman at the club, discussing the ethics of honor--"your nose, you know," he said, with horror, and unconsciously holding his own forward--"what could be a more unspeakable insult?" "Yes," answered his protagonist; "but does a man carry his honor in his nose?" Nature has provided instincts and weapons for the defence of our noses. But she has not made the nose the citadel of honor, nor has she left honor at the mercy of a sot who may choose to drench it with wine.

There was a quarrel the other day between two men, one of whom had said that the way in which the other had done something was not the way of a gentleman; the other replied that he would not stand being called ungentlemanly. There was a closing and grappling, and then one whipped out a pistol and began firing at the other, who took to the street, and most naturally but inconsiderately dodged behind innocent citizens in the street to avoid the bullets. The pursuer fired as opportunity served, while the pursued dashed into a hotel to borrow a pistol to return the broadside. Stanley might have seen such a performance in the Mmjumbo regions on the shores of Lake Nyanza or the banks of the Zambesi, but what had it to do with honor? Is that what Lovelace loved more than Lucasta? Is that what King Francis--more's the pity if this were the thing--did not lose at Pavia!

Our honor is solely in our own keeping. To have your nose pulled is not to be dishonored, but so to behave that it deserves pulling. But, Alcibiades of the clubs, remember that it is not the pulling which makes the dishonor.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

And Cassius also says what bears a very different interpretation from that which he designed:

"Well, honor is the subject of my story.
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but, for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself."

Fear of yourself, fear of your own rebuke, fear of betraying your consciousness of your duty and not doing it--that is the fear which Lovelace loved better than Lucasta; that is the fear which Francis, having done his duty, saved, and justly called it honor.

JOSEPH WESLEY HARPER

Often during the long and sorrowful days of the war, as the Easy Chair wound its slow way to its corner, it heard a quiet greeting, and, looking up, saw a friend standing aside upon the steps, calm, unhurried, and the greeting was followed by the significant and challenging question, "Well?" The tone was tender and tranquil, and conveyed all the meaning of many words: "Where are we now? What will come of this last news? How, when, and where will the bitter struggle end?" Then stepping out upon one of the bridges that connect the tower of the staircase with the various floors of the huge buildings in which this MAGAZINE is prepared, the Easy Chair and its friend conversed. There was a singular sagacity and justice in all that the calm friend said, and the most truculent opponent of the cause to which his hopes and faith were given would have heard nothing acrid or exasperating from his lips, even in the darkest hour of the struggle. As they parted and the Easy Chair resumed its way, it was with a soothed and cheerful conviction that whatever might happen to states and nations, nothing could shake the power of steadfast, manly character.

During the same day or any other, if it chanced to move into some other part of the buildings, whether in the artists', the engravers', or the editor's room; in the bindery, the press-rooms, the folding-rooms, the composing-rooms, or in the counting-room, the Easy Chair encountered that same friendly, serene presence which had yet its voice of authority upon occasion, but which seemed to pervade all the rooms like sunshine. And upon all who met him that friend made the same impression. To every one, editor, printer, errand-boy, unknown visitor, or distinguished guest, he was so simply courteous and kind that he controlled without commanding; and in other days, when he had been the head of the most turbulent work-room, he had kept the peace without an oath or a blow. It was the man, not his clothes or his condition, that this man regarded. It was as natural for him to stop in the street and talk with an old black woman whom he knew as with the most renowned author whose works he published. When Oliver Goldsmith lay in his coffin the poor women who had known him sat weeping upon the stairs of the house. And so when this true gentleman died, even the old pie-woman who sells cakes and apples through the buildings left her traffic for a day, and, clad in her sad best, stood, tearful at his funeral.

It was not strange, therefore, that when the fire of twenty years ago seemed to have destroyed everything and to have ruined him and his partners, the quality of the man appeared reflectively in the feeling that was shown towards him by those who see us all without disguise. When the misfortune was supposed to be complete the domestics in his family assembled, apparently by a common feeling, to consider how they could express their sympathy; and as he returned home at evening he was met by one of them whom they had chosen, to tell him that they had all agreed to continue their service at reduced wages, or for no wages at all, until he should recover from the heavy loss. "I stood everything very well up to that time," he said to a friend who tells the story to the Easy Chair, and who had asked him if it were true, "but that broke me down." And the tears were in his eyes as he said it.

Of course every one who, during the last forty-five years, has been familiar with this publishing house, knows that the Easy Chair is speaking of Joseph Wesley Harper, the third of the four brothers by whom the house was founded, and who recently died in the sixty-ninth year of his age. He was so truly modest, he avoided publicity so unostentatiously, that the Easy Chair almost feels as if it were doing wrong to mention him here with praise; so hard is it to believe that his eyes will not rest upon these lines with all the old kind appreciation. But it is a sermon or a poem which none of us can spare, the life of a man who in very great prosperity kept not only the true heart of a child, but the humble heart that owned no inferior. We are judged usually by our public successes, by the esteem of distinguished persons. But the real test of character is the feeling of those before whom we play no part. What does the nurse in the nursery think of us, or the porter in the store, or the butcher-boy? If a man's children confide in him, if all whom he employs at home or in his business feel that he is full of thought and sympathy for them as for brethren, if those who meet him perceive the charm of his urbanity, and as they draw nearer and know him better, honor and love him more and more, we can be very sure that he has the noblest human qualities, whose influence will be a possession to us forever.

Such was the friend whom for so many years in its little labors upon these pages the Easy Chair has constantly seen, and whom it will see no more; and as it meditates, not sadly, but with the sober cheerfulness which his own serene faith in the divine order could not but inspire, upon that good life now peacefully ended, it feels how truly Wesley Harper will always be remembered by those who knew him well.

"The wise who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home."

REVIEW OF UNION TROOPS

1865

The victorious armies had marched home and into history. The two days of review at the end of May was a spectacle not likely to be forgotten by those who saw it or did not see it. It belonged to that series of events for which there is no precedence, because there never was before a continental republic. Like every remarkable occurrence in these remarkable days of ours, the disbanding of the armies of the East and West, and their quiet absorption into the mass of the people, is a spectacle which has another illustration to the extreme practicability of a popular government. Usually the return of the victorious army is dreaded by its country somewhat as its advance is by the enemy, and government provides other wars to employ it. But our men are citizens who have been defending their own rights. It is their own government they have been maintaining. The endeavor to represent the government as a power different from the people and dangerous to their liberty has failed several times during the war, and will always fail so long as the broadest base of the government is jealously guarded. And nothing is more honorable to human nature, nothing so truly vindicates the wisdom of our institutions and the faith that supports them, than that during the Civil War, of which the event seemed sometimes doubtful, there has not been even the suspicion of a desire upon the part of any popular general to seize power and dictate to the authorities. Indeed, in the only instance in which such a whisper was breathed the suggestion was known to come from the politicians who surrounded the general, and not from himself.

The review was, according to all reports, a noble sight. The Army of the Potomac, which, often baffled, at last struck the crowning blow of the war, and the Army of the West, whose history is immortal, poured through the capital amid the shouts and exultation of thousands of spectators, and marched, with the inspiring clash and peal of martial music, before the President, the Lieutenant-General, and the notable civilians all the day. The Western Army had with them the spoils of war: large red roosters and fighting-cocks, tied on to the backs of mules; cows, donkeys, and goats came also. The army moved as though Washington were but a village upon the road of its march through Georgia or the Carolinas. The critical spectators thought they observed the Western men were of a finer physique and more entirely American, and the Eastern of a stricter military drill. The slouched hat was worn by the officers and men of the West, the French kepi by the more showy Eastern officers. Sherman himself, the hero of the magnificent campaign which the Richmond papers said was merely the flight of an arrow through the air--but which literally pierced the rebellion to the heart--was saluted by the grandest acclamations. History will rank him with the really great soldiers. His men are very proud of him--how could they help it?--and if for a moment there was wonder at his arrangements with Johnson, there is no man now so poor as to doubt his sincerity or question his patriotism.

It would have been pleasant if, with the other heroes, the eager, proud crowd could have seen General Thomas, the soldier who, by indomitable tenacity, saved the day at Chickamauga and destroyed the rebel army before Nashville; but he was on duty elsewhere.

As the armies passed it must have been impossible to forget--as in reading of the spectacle we constantly remember--the disbanding of the army of the Revolution. The soldiers at the review are only a part of the men now in arms, yet they were about two hundred thousand. Since the war began there have been many more than a million in the armies. During the Revolution (as we learn from Professor G. W. Greene's very interesting volume on the Revolution), there were altogether in the service 239,791 regulars in the Continental army and 56,163 of the militia, and the sufferings of that early army are not to be described. "During the first winter soldiers thought it hard that they should have nothing to cook their food with; but they found, before the close, that it was harder still to have nothing to cook." Few Americans have ever known what it was to suffer for want of clothing; but thousands, as the war went on, saw their garments falling by piecemeal from around them, till scarce a shred remained to cover their nakedness. They made long marches without shoes, staining the frozen ground with the blood from their feet. They fought battles with guns which were hardly safe to bear half a charge of powder. They fought, or marched, or worked at the intrenchments all day, and laid them down at night with but one blanket to three men.

Mr. Greene tells us that the condition of the officers was hardly better than that of the men. They, too, had suffered cold and hunger; they, too, had been compelled to do duty without sufficient clothing, to march and watch and fight without sufficient food. We are told of a dinner where no officer was admitted who had a whole pair of pantaloons, and of all who were invited there was not one who did not establish his claims for admission.

The treatment of the army of the Revolution by the Continental Congress was unworthy the fame of that body which Lord Chatham so loftily praised to Dr. Franklin. The army was disbanded stealthily, "as if the nation were afraid to look their deliverers in the face; all through the summer of 1783 furloughs were granted freely, and the ranks gradually thinned. Then on the 18th of October a final proclamation was issued for their discharge. On the 2d of November Washington issued his final orders from Rocky Hill, near Princeton. On the 3d they were disbanded. There was no formal leave-taking. Each regiment, each company, went when it chose. Men who had stood side by side in battle, who had shared the same tent in summer, the same hut in winter, parted, never to meet again. Some still had homes, and, therefore, definite hopes. But hundreds knew not whither to go.... For a few days taverns and streets were crowded. For weeks soldiers were to be seen on every road, or lingering bewildered about public places, like men who were at a loss to know what to do with themselves. There were no ovations for them as they came back, toilworn before their time, to the places that had once known them; no ringing of bells; no eager opening of hospitable doors. The country was tired of the war, tired of the sound of the drum and fife; anxious to get back to sowing and reaping, to buying and selling, and town meetings, and general elections."

These were the veterans of one of the most glorious and important wars in the progress of the race. Yet the men who were so unhandsomely suffered to depart from the service were also grudgingly paid when they were released. "Their claims were disputed inch by inch. Money which should have been given cheerfully as a righteous debt was doled out with a reluctant hand as a degrading charity."

It is refreshing to turn from the page of this melancholy historian to the newspaper of to-day, and read that the men who have received the jubilant ovation of the review are not only to be paid in full and at once, as the most sacred of national debts, but that the most strenuous effort will be made to employ them by preference in the public offices to which they may be fitted, while private persons will bear in mind the same just and generous purpose. Indeed, there is no forgetfulness of the soldiers of to-day. The sense of their vital service to the country is universal and commanding. They will be honored heroes while they live, and our children shall be proud that we cherish them.

It is not easy even yet, although the victors have returned and are disbanded, fully to comprehend that the war is over and the country saved. But it is so, and the living and the dead are joined in a glorious remembrance. How many an eye must have grown dim, swimming in tears as it gazed on the splendid pageant because of the brave and beautiful who had shared the peril and the long, long doubt and struggle, but not the triumph of victory and return. The victory is won; the country is saved; but at what inestimable cost! Four years ago Theodore Winthrop fell at Great Bethel, on a summer morning, and those that loved him learned that the war had begun. Three years ago, on a winter evening, Joseph Curtis sank dead from his horse at Fredericksburg, and Theodore Parkman perished at Princeton on an autumn day. Two years ago, on a soft midsummer night, Robert Shaw fell upon the ramparts of Wagner, and was "buried with his niggers." Eight months ago, in the Shenandoah Valley, Charles Lowell died at Cedar Creek, in the very shock of victory. They were five only, all young, and they gave gladly for us all that makes life glad and beautiful. Yet how many as young and brave and beloved as they have died like them, and, like them, are remembered and mourned! They, too, let us believe, smile still above us, and bend over us with serene joy at this happy time. Let their sweet memory hallow our jubilee! Let us take care that our lives are worthy their glorious death.

APRIL, 1865

A most genial and friendly letter to the Easy Chair, dated simply "Home," and speaking tenderly of the late President, reminds us that our loss is a blow to every home in the country. This peculiar personal affection for Mr. Lincoln was so evident that every orator spoke of it, and with an emotion that attends a private sorrow. No tribute could be so pathetic and so suggestive of the character of the man who had more deeply endeared himself to the heart and fixed himself in the confidence of the American people than any man in our history. Among the inscriptions that were displayed during the days of mourning in the city there was one hung upon a shop that was touching in its very baldness: "Alas! alas! our father Abraham is dead." That was the feeling in all true hearts and homes. It was a feeling which no Caesar, no Charlemagne, no Napoleon ever inspired. The Netherlands wept with a sorrow as sore for the Prince of Orange, France bewailed with romantic grief the death of Henry IV. But the people of England and France were comparatively few, and the relation between the victims and the mourners was that of prince and subjects. Our leader was one of the poorest of the people. He was great in their greatness. They felt with him and for him as one of themselves, and in his fall, more truly than Rome in that of Caesar, we all fell down.

The month of April, 1865, was curiously eventful in the annals of this country. General Grant moved upon the enemy's works, and Petersburg and Richmond fell. He pursued and fought the retreating army, and the rebel commander-in-chief surrendered. In the very jubilee of a national joy the President was murdered. While yet his body was borne across the country by the reverent hands of a nation, his murderer was tracked, brought to bay, shot, and buried in a nameless spot to protect his corpse from wild popular fury. In the midst of the tragical days General Sherman, whom, only last month, the Easy Chair was celebrating as so skilful and resistless a soldier, instead of summoning Johnston to a surrender upon the terms granted to Lee, allowed himself to sign recognition of the rebel government and to open a future political discord, while he was yet able to prescribe the simple surrender of an army. The shock of disappointment and regret was universal. The authorities unanimously disapproved his convention. The Lieutenant-General went immediately to the front, and the month that had opened with President Lincoln trusted and beloved, with Davis defended by Lee and his army in the rebel capital, and Sherman confronted by Johnston, and Mobile holding out, closed with the rebel capital in possession of the government, Lee a paroled prisoner, his army disbanded, Davis a skulking fugitive, Johnston and his army paroled prisoners, Mobile captured, President Lincoln dead, President Johnson at the head of the government, and the assassin dead and buried.

Through such a succession of great events this country had never as rapidly passed. It swept the scale of emotion. From the height of joy triumphant it sank to the very depths of sorrow, from confidence and pride in a military leader it passed to humiliating amazement, yet not for a moment paused in its work or shook in its purpose, and was never so calm, so strong, so grand, as in that tumult of emotion.

Every man who has been proud of his country hitherto has now profounder cause for pride. Our system has been tried in every way; it rises purified from the fire. No one man is essential to her, however deeply beloved, however generously trusted. The history of the war from May, 1861, to May, 1865, proves that she cannot be hopelessly bereaved. The sceptics who have sneered, the timid who have feared, the shrewd who have doubted, must now see that the principles of popular government have been amply vindicated. We have only clearly to understand and fearlessly to trust these principles, and the future, like the past, is secure.

In the earlier days of the war a sagacious foreign observer, resident in the country, said that he feared we were making a mistake perilous to the American principle. The suspension of the habeas corpus he thought a very dangerous political, however necessary a military, experiment it might be. But he was answered by another European, who had been a political pupil of Cavour's, that, unlike such an act in other countries, it was here done by the people themselves, and they must be trusted in it, or else the whole American experiment failed. Such power must be used, he said; the crucial test is the way in which it is used. If the people cannot use it in a way which shall be permanently harmless, then they are not capable of self-government. Oh, wise young judge! In the whole world no heart will be more sincerely glad, no face more bright with joy, or sadder with sorrow, at the strange April news from America than yours!

What a May day! Stricken as all hearts are, what a May day! Budding and blooming on every hand, on every hill-side and meadow and wood, flushing and glittering with the lavish beauty of the spring softly gliding over grieving hearts, and with her royal touch healing our varied sorrow, came the Queen of May, for whom the people sighed and the land yearned, came the well-beloved, the long-desired, palms in her hand and doves flying before her; and the name of that May-day Queen was Peace.

WASHINGTON IN 1867

The gay young European diplomatist, accustomed to the charms of the great foreign capitals--London, Paris, Vienna, Rome, and the scores of small but delightful cities--probably regards an attachment to the embassy of his country in the United States as a Boeotian exile. But when, eagerly curious to see the capital of this remote region, he is dumped in the railroad-shed at Washington, and emerges upon the depthless mud or blinding dust of the city, upon its hackmen and porters, greedy of his last penny, and upon its general hopelessness of aspect, it is not difficult to imagine how his heart sinks and how bitter the exile seems.

To the independent native of the country, however, Washington as a city is simply exasperating and ridiculous. Its one truly magnificent building, the Capitol, seems to have absorbed everything else. Like a huge wen, it has apparently sucked up all the life of the other buildings. Feeble, shapeless, ineffective, they huddle along the sides of the vast avenues, and, however closely they stand, give nothing but the impression of a straggling and clumsy village. Then there is the eternal absurdity of the plan. It is not only a straggling and clumsy village, but it is utterly dislocated. Washington is laid out upon the plan of cart-wheels within cart-wheels. The stranger is always going wrong. You meet him, say, near the junction of some avenue with some Fourth and a Half Street north. He has the expression of a long-confirmed but mild lunatic; and after gazing at you blandly and inquiringly for a moment, he says, "I am trying to find the corner of Ninth and Fifteenth streets." Of course he is; we all are in Washington. The folly would be evident elsewhere, but in Washington it is the most natural effort possible. There is but one reply to the candid and inquiring fellow-maniac: "My dear sir, I have not the remotest conception where I am, or where anything is." There is a fond delusion that the city radiates from the Capitol. Nothing is more fallacious. Washington is a system of hubs, and a consequent combination of radiations.

The depression arising from arrival and the problem of streets is hardly relieved by arrival at Willard's. The entrance to that hotel is a cigar-shop, a newspaper-stand, and a loafing-room. You press through to the office. But what is man that an American landlord should regard him? The house is full, has been full, will be full. A few crisp words inform you that by-and-by, some time, perhaps, possibly, you may be stowed away in the seventh story, and allowed to pay four or five dollars a day. The moderation of the landlords is always a subject of wonder and gratitude. It seems a matter of mere grace and good-will that they do not charge twenty dollars a night, with the privilege of making your own bed.

"Whew!" cried Don Giovanni when, arriving at the capital of this country, he was made to undergo these initiatory steps, "will you please to tell me one single particular in which travel in Europe is not incomparably more agreeable and comfortable than in this country?" And he went on to compare the universal comfort and courtesy of foreign travel, sadly to the disadvantage of the home of the brave. "Certainly there is no country in which the guest upon reaching his hotel is treated with such laughable condescension as in this. A wretched hole of a room, shabbily furnished, the dirty walls and a suspicious bed, with a quart of water and a pocket-handkerchief of a towel, for which he is to pay four or five dollars or more daily, is awarded to the humbly expectant visitor as a high favor. A great American hotel is a penitentiary for travellers, and the gentlemen at the office are the lofty turnkeys and lord high-constables. A self-respecting man will travel here as little as possible."

"There is no doubt that much travel at home is a discipline," replied the Easy Chair.

"Yes," continued the indignant Don. "If you are known personally to the gentlemanly gentleman who dispenses chambers you may be tolerably quartered. But if you are merely one of the herd who have the temerity to arrive by steamer or car, you may thank your stars if you are graciously permitted to leave your luggage in the hall and to have a room by-and-by."

Now the Easy Chair humbly hopes that all gentlemanly gentlemen concerned will not understand him as making these remarks. They all proceeded from the person named, who is alone responsible. The Easy Chair has not quite come to the end of his travels; and would he malign the gentlemanly and accommodating? He desires to state distinctly that if he could not open the window of his room, it was merely because he had a foolish wish for fresh air; and if he could not turn round, it was because of the inordinate size of his trunk; and if his fingers went through the towel, it was because his manner was rude towards a chamber ornament so delicate and small; and if the sheets of the bed were not wholly fresh, it was because the gentlemanly and accomplished chamber-maiden lady was of a nobly economical turn of mind; and if the bell would not ring, it was because some former guest had been so little able to restrain himself as to pull it down. Indeed, there was nothing which did not admit of the fullest explanation. It is only the unreasonable who would complain of paying four or five dollars a day for such accommodations. "Let me tell you, sir," whispered the gentlemanly gentleman at a certain office to a bewildered person who had been ordered up to a burrow in the seventh story, "you are very lucky to get in at all." But the bewildered traveller's face, it is asserted, was not so humbly grateful as circumstances demanded.

Washington itself merely multiplies the impression of Willard's. Everything is feverish and transitory. The fine houses are rented by senators, by representatives, by foreign ministers, by army and navy officers, by families from other cities. They are taken for a season. Those who occupy them have no permanent interest in the city. The rule is almost universal. The Capitol, the White House, the departments, the public buildings are all full of men who came yesterday and are going to-morrow. Washington is a huge perch. All this tumult of twittering is from birds upon the wing, who have lighted for a moment only. Even the noisiest crows, the most solemn owls, are but for a day, or for two years, or four years, or for six years.

There is a certain permanent population of the military and naval bureaus, over whose heads the storms of fashion and politics roar and break like tempests that toss the surface of the sea far above the placid monsters and coral insects of the deep. And there are a few memorial office-holders--quiet men, who have grown old in certain ruts in which they can run with a facility that is absolutely essential. They feel that they have become part of the government. The very oldest senators and representatives excite in their breasts a kind of compassionate sympathy as mere boys and tyros. And like heirs of old royal lines long since superseded, who cherish a secret conviction that modern times are a mere delusion and progress an absurd infatuation, and who are sure that some day the world will discover what a huge mistake it made in not continuing to be governed by the extinct line, and so return to its allegiance, the faithful plodders in the official ruts do still believe that the party, whatever it was, which appointed them is the Heaven-appointed ruler of the country, and that when the froth of the present moment is blown away, the clear, deep, sound good old times will be again discerned. The droll old Jacobites! They drink to the king over the water. They might as well drink to the king with his head off!

RECEPTION TO THE JAPANESE AMBASSADORS AT THE WHITE HOUSE

Herr Teufelsdrockh informs those who read his famous book, the _Tailor Sewer Over; or, the Philosophy of Clothes_, that Mr. Pellum announces, among other canons regulating human apparel, that it is permitted to mankind, under certain conditions, to wear white waistcoats. But it now appears that, under certain conditions also, straw-colored gloves are not only permissible, but imperative. When a Japanese ambassador appears, and the white flag with the orb of day in its centre is unfurled, straw-color, as to the hands, is the only wear. Therefore, when the reception was to take place in Washington the deeply initiated held hands of that mystic color. The only chagrin was that nobody seemed to know the significant fact nor to care for it; and one honorable gentleman asked with interest whether it would not be extremely orthodox to wear a straw-hat. But these levities were ill becoming the august occasion.

The feast of the straw-colored gloves in honor of the Japanese ambassadors fell upon an evening when the poetic policeman thought of every belle who stepped from her carriage,

"The bleak winds of March
Made her tremble and shiver."

But he thought it only; he did not say it. Yet the bleak wind of the cold night had little chance at the guests, for a pavilion was laid to the very curb-stone, and everybody stepped out into friendly shelter. Then up the steep stairs, just as the illustrious guests were passing from the cloak-room to the hall. As they entered it the crowd, swelling upward from the door below, made for the ladies' room, or for the little hole in a corner into which the gentlemen were to thrust their coats, in the vague hope that they might be recovered. Some of the Japs who at a later hour were buffeting the crowd and struggling towards the aperture must have been impressed, if they were philosophers, with the fact that a nation of so many happy contrivances as they fondly believe us to be has not yet learned how to take charge of overcoats at public feasts. It would not be very difficult to avoid the fierce crush at the cloak-room; but it is not avoided, and it is as good-humored as it is disagreeable and unnecessary.

But who cared for the crush at the door of the opera-house on a Jenny Lind night, when coat skirts strewed the pavement, and the most elaborately tied cravats were undone? Not otherwise was this pressure when the door was passed and the pretty hall entered. Was this also an opera? And had the curtain risen? For the first impression of the brilliant scene was that of the trilling and warbling of canaries in clusters of cages hung high overhead, and for a moment giving a sense of enchanted gardens and rose bowers upon Bendermere's stream. Was this impression disturbed when from their tiring-room the nymphs and dames emerged powdered, beflowered, effulgent? There were toilets of all kinds. There were even ladies in bonnets, as if they had run in neighborly to hobnob an hour with Iwakura. There were others in the very extreme of fashion. There was every kind of tasteful and rich and beautiful and plain and grotesque attire. And now and then behold! the ineffable calm of the lady--not one, but many--of whom Mr. Emerson tells the excellent story that she said to feel herself perfectly well dressed imparted a tranquil happiness that religion itself could not bestow.