Chapter V: Part IV (3)

And what is the result? Just this; that every Legislative Hall in the land, from the least to the greatest, from the lowest to the highest, becomes a debating-school; and the business of the whole Country is postponed, month after month, and year after year, to the very last days of the session, and then hurried through—just a little too late, wherever the national honor is deeply concerned, as in the case of French spoliations, and other honest debts owed by the Government to the People—with a precipitation so hazardous and shameful, that much of the little time left in future sessions must be employed in correcting the blunders of the past: and all for what?—merely that the Lawyers may be heard month after month, and have long speeches that were never delivered, or when delivered, not heard, reported piecemeal, and paragraph by paragraph, in perhaps two or three thousand newspapers—that are forgotten before the next sun goes down, and literally “perish in the using.”

Nor does the mischief stop here. The whole business of the country is hung up—and sessions protracted for months—and millions upon millions wasted year after year, of the people’s money, upon what, after all, are nothing more—and there could not well be any thing less—than electioneering speeches.

And then just look at the character of our legislation. Was there ever any thing to be compared with it, for instability, for uncertainty, for inadequacy, for superabundance, and for what my Lord Coke would call a “tending to infiniteness!” I acknowledge, with pride, that our Revised Statutes, all circumstances taken into consideration, are often quite remarkable for the common sense of their language, and for clearness—wherever common sense and clearness were possible under the established rules of interpretation. But generally speaking, what is it? “Unstable as water—thou shall not excel!” is written upon the great body of our statute law, year after year, and generation after generation.

And what are the consequences? Nations are “perplexed by fear of change.” Better stick to a bad law, than keep changing a good. The clock that stands still (to borrow a happy illustration) is sure to be right twice every twenty-four hours; while that which is always going, may always be wrong.

Let us apply this. We are now waiting and hoping for a change of the tariff: and the more general and confident the expectation of a change among business-men, whatever that change may be—up or down—higher or lower—the more certainly will it put a stop, or greatly embarrass for a time, the whole business of the country. And why? If it be generally believed that the tariff is to be lowered, the dealers everywhere begin to run off their stocks, to offer longer credits and better terms; and however unwilling, shrewd cautious men may be about over-purchasing with such a prospect before them, there will be found others, commercial gamblers, or trading adventurers, who always profit by such occasions to go ahead of their fellows; for what they gain is their own, and what they lose, is their creditors’. And universal overtrading is the consequence here—and stoppages there—till the mischief corrects itself or dies out. Business no longer flows in its accustomed channels. It has fallen into the hands of comparative stock-jobbers and lottery-dealers: and a general bankruptcy often follows.

But suppose the tariff about to be raised—and the belief to be universal. The ultimate consequences are the same, so far as the regular business of the country is concerned. Manufacturers and jobbers hold back; they refuse to sell on six months—they shorten the period of credit—and require acceptances in town—as being, on the whole, better than to demand higher rates in advance of old customers. Purchasers may be eager—but what can they do. They are obliged to wait—and live on from hand to mouth—till the question has been settled. And so with every other great leading law, affecting any great commercial, farming, or manufacturing interest of the country. The legislation of a land is a type of itself. How can our other great institutions be safe and lasting if our legislation be unstable?

That our legislation is unstable and changing and fluctuating, who will deny? What great system of national policy have we ever pursued steadily beyond the terms of two or three of our political chief-magistrates—a paragraph at most, in the long History of the World?

And how should it be otherwise? Lawyers with us are Conveyancers and Notaries and Special-Pleaders: and Conveyancers and Notaries and Special-Pleaders over sea are always, and in our country, almost always paid by the page; and a certain number of words, you know, constitute a page at law. Again—so sure is it that a lawyer shall not only be heard, but paid for his “much speaking,” that I do believe people are often better satisfied to lose a case with a long speech, than to gain it by a short one. This may appear somewhat startling; but let us see if, on the whole, it be not substantially true and no paradox.

A man goes to consult a lawyer—you see how careful I am to distinguish between the two—and states his case. The lawyer hears him patiently through—having already touched the fee—and tells him, without opening a book, or lifting his spectacles, or moving from his chair, that the question lies in a nut-shell; and that if his view of the law should be sustained by the court, of which he cannot be sure, it may be settled easily and at once. Well—the case in due time goes up. The jury are empanneled; a great speech is brewing on the opposite side; you can hear the whiz of preparation in the very breathing of the Adversary; but up rises our friend—by the supposition a very clear-headed, able and honest lawyer—and so states the principle of law upon which he depends, that the court rules in his favor, no speeches are made, and the jury are discharged. And now comes the tug of war. The client begs a moment of the lawyer’s time, and asks what’s to pay: “Fifty dollars.” “_Fifty dollars!_—why, sir—pulling out his watch—you were not more than—” The lawyer bows, and on turning away with a stately air, as of one who truly respects himself, and will not suffer the dignity of the profession to be trifled with nor tarnished, is stopped by—“I beg your pardon, squire—there’s the money. Good morning.” And off goes the client, who has gained the cause, to complain of the lawyer for extravagance or extortion; saying that “the case was plain as a pike-staff—any body might have managed it—could have done it himself and without help—nothing but a word or two for the court—never opened his mouth to the jury—and then, whew! what do you think he had the conscience to charge? why, _fifty dollars!_—would you believe it! Very well—much good may the fifty dollars do him; it is the last he’ll ever see of my money, I promise you.”

And now let me suppose that, instead of going to the last mentioned, _honest_ lawyer, he had gone to some other. He is heard, to be sure, but with visible impatience: he is continually interrupted and questioned and cross-questioned, by the half hour. The learned gentleman has a very large snuff-box on the table before him—two or three very large portfolios, and at least a wheelbarrow load of papers tied with red tape. He takes off his spectacles and snuffs, and wipes them with his glove and snuffs, and replaces them and snuffs; now he lifts them and looks under them, and now he lowers them and looks over them steadfast and solemn, though troubled and perplexed, with his mouth screwed up, and making faces at his client all the time: he shakes his head and jumps up, and takes a pinch, and then shakes his head and sits down, and takes another pinch: with a huge pile of authorities before him, and ever so many lying open, and having secured a retainer, at last he tells his client to call on the morrow at 11¼ o’clock _precisely_. The client, awe-struck at the vastness of that legal erudition he has been favored with a few glimpses of, steals away on tip-toe, rubbing his hands with delight and astonishment, and talking to himself perhaps all the way down stairs and into the street. After three or four consultations the case comes on for trial. The Adversary goes at the jury head-first, with a speech varying from two hours to two days. Of course, it will require from two hours to two days to answer it—and every thing must be answered, you know, whether it has to do with the question or not—as in the passage between Tristram Bulges and John Randolph, about the buzzard, or bald-eagle, I forget which; for after all, there is no great difference between them, as I have heretofore found to my cost; or as in that between Webster and Hayne about poor Banquo’s ghost, in the Senate chamber. And now, having insulted the witnesses, and the court, and the opposite counsel, and tired the jury by an everlasting speech, when they were already more than half asleep; or by arguing questions of law and fact wholly supposititious, for the benefit of his younger brethren and the by-standers—the case goes to the jury, under the charge of the court perhaps, and is lost. But who cares?—not the client; for when told that he has a hundred dollars to pay, instead of fifty as before, he calls it dog-cheap, and insists upon paying more, and why? Because _that_ lawyer had made the case his own—and he goes about saying, “Didn’t he give it to ’em!—bench, bar and jury!—didn’t he acknowledge they were all a set of nincompoops!—and didn’t he lather my adversary and my adversary’s counsel, and all his witnesses, little and big, and especially the women and children, beautifully!—handsomely!—and isn’t he the man, therefore, not only for my money, but for the money of all my acquaintances who may ever want a zealous and _faithful_ lawyer to manage their business for them!”

This, though sufficiently absurd, I acknowledge, is nevertheless true: and happens continually at the bar. I do not say that in terms a client would prefer a long speech to a verdict; I only say that such is the fact, although he may not always know it himself, in many a troublesome case. And so with litigants generally; having once entered the “sacred precincts” of a law-temple, and breathed the fiery atmosphere, and had their names called over in a crowded court-room, and thereby having become famous in their own little neighborhoods, and in the judgment of their friends and witnesses, people of large experience and authority, how are they ever afterward to forego the pleasure? If they win the first throw, of course they can afford to throw again: if they lose, they must throw again, the blockheads! to get back what they have lost, when, like other gamblers, they promise to stop.

Can it be wondered after all this, that words are multiplied in our laws, from sheer habit, as well as from a sort of professional pride, until a mere English reader, however familiar with the spoken language and with the best writers of the language, both at home and abroad, such as Bacon and Bolingbroke and Hooker and Swift, or Edwards, or Channing, or the writers of the Federalist, or Franklin, and half a hundred more I might mention, would be unable to make head or tail of one paragraph in three; and few men of business would be willing to hazard any considerable investment upon his own understanding or interpretation of any passage in any new law.

Talk of the dead languages! The deadest of all the languages I know, or ever heard of, is the language of the law! Ask our friend, the learned blacksmith, and I will abide by the answer. Nobody, not trained to the business of interpretation—as a dragoman—or lawyer, would ever think of trying to understand a new law without help. And even with help—it is a plague and a mystery till the true meaning has been settled—_settled!_—by adjudication: that is, by others in authority, the priesthood and the patriarchs, who, under the name of judges, are paid for all the thinking, as lawyers are paid for all the talking to no purpose, permitted at law: for, be it known to all whom it may concern, that is, to all the non-lawyers of our land, that no private interpretation _of law_ is of any authority _at law_: nor is the right of private judgment recognized or allowed or tolerated or endured in courts of justice! You must believe at your peril. You must teach as you are taught; and grow to the opinions or moulds about you as a cucumber grows to a bottle; for such is the law, and with most of the profession, all the law, to say nothing of the Gospel; for that, perhaps, would be out of place here.

And now, inasmuch as almost every word of importance in our language has more than one meaning, it follows, that in proportion as you multiply words in a law, or in a legal instrument, you multiply the meanings, and the chances of mistake, and of course, I may as well say it, of litigation: and the mere habit of multiplying words as conveyancers and special-pleaders and speech-makers, being not only a professional habit, as every body knows, but characteristic of the profession, it may be, and often is, continued from habit, long and long after it may cease to appear advantageous or profitable; as in the business of legislation, or in dealing with a jury, where the lawyer is not paid by the page, but by the day or the trick. And why? Perhaps my friend Joe may be permitted to answer. A tailor, while cutting a coat for himself, was seen to slip a fragment of the cloth into his cabbage-drawer. Amazed at such a procedure, a new apprentice took the liberty of asking why he did it. “_To keep my hand in_,” was the answer.

Just so is it with the lawyer. He would use more words than are either necessary or safe, merely to keep his hand in, if for no other reason. Just compare a contract entered into between shipping-merchants for the sale of a cargo, or between other men of business, railroad contractors, or stock-dealers, involving the outlay of millions, perhaps, with a deed of trust drawn by a thoroughbred conveyancer, or with articles of co-partnership by any thing alive in the shape of an attorney-at-law, if you wish to see the difference between the language of lawyers, and men of business and common sense.

By this, I would not be understood to say that some lawyers are never needed for putting the language and meaning of parties into shape; nor that “I. O. U.” would be a model for a charter-party, or a church settlement; for I acknowledge that the chief business of the world cannot be carried on _safely_ without lawyers. I only say, that we have too many of them; and that they are encouraged to intermeddle more than is good for themselves, or us, with every sort of business and branch of the _Lex mercatoria_, and the _Lex non scripta_.

Another reason why the people are not allowed to have the laws of their own Country in their own language, but in that of the learned few—like the Bible for the Roman Catholics—notwithstanding the ridiculous parade of publishing all the laws in thousands of our newspapers in a year—a better hoax, and a better joke by far than the celebrated bequest of a guinea, toward paying off the national debt of our mother country—that mother of Nations, so cleverly represented by Victoria, just now—is, that we may _not_ be able to judge for ourselves; and that no _law_ shall be of any private interpretation; for if it did, the people would soon be independent of most lawyers; and then, what would become of the superannuated, and the helpless, the fledglings, and the understrappers? They would have to rely for support in their old age upon the interpretation of themselves, and of their own cramped penmanship, instead of the legislative enactments.

But, say certain of my brethren, the law, after all, is a great science, and the profession worthy of profound respect. It is over-crowded to be sure; and some, it must be acknowledged, do not succeed at the bar, and after trying it for a while are obliged to leave it, or starve. Granted—but what does that prove? Can those who do not succeed be greater blockheads, or greater knaves than many others that do? And may it not be just possible, if they, who do not succeed in the profession are otherwise distinguished, that they had too much self-respect, or conscientiousness, or what may be called _honesty_? Thus much by way of a protestanda—or the “exclusion of a conclusion,” according to my Lord Coke.

And now, with all seriousness, what more shall be said? I have shown: 1.—That my brethren of the bar enjoy a very dangerous and altogether very disproportionate power as the law-makers, the law interpreters, and the law enforcers. 2.—That however honest they may be _by nature_; and however honest in all the other relations of life; and that they are so, I acknowledge with pleasure; yet, as Lawyers, they have a code of morals peculiar to themselves, making it their duty to league with knaves, and cheats, and murderers, and house-breakers, and to furnish them with aid and comfort, _for pay_; in other words, for _a share in their profits_, and this _duty_ is of such a nature as to lead them continually astray, to blind their reasoning powers, to darken their consciences, until they are incapable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, or right and wrong in the defense of their clients; and that under pretense of being _faithful_ to them, they become after a while too unfaithful to everybody else, even to themselves, and to their Maker; and that _therefore_ they are not trustworthy as legislators. 3.—That in consequence of their position as the holders of political power, too large a portion of our young men—our intellectual strength and hope, is diverted into that particular profession, to the injury of every other, and especially to the business, and laboring, or productive professions. 4.—That another evil is our superabundant legislation—the instability of that legislation—the prodigious cost of so many debating societies maintained at the public charge, under pretence of law-making all over the land; whereby the public business of the whole country is delayed, month after month, and year after year; and sometimes never done—or if done at all, is done at last in such a hurry, and after such a slovenly fashion, that when the law-makers are called together again, a large portion of the little time they are enabled to set apart from electioneering, is spent in patching up and explaining the laws of a previous session; here, by taking a piece off the bottom and sewing it on the top, as the Irishman lengthens his blanket; and there, by taking out a piece of the same, to patch a hole with: and that _therefore_, notwithstanding a multitude of glorious exceptions to be found, year after year, in the senate chambers and representative chambers of our country, Lawyers are never to _be trusted in the making of laws_; and that, if it were not for the simple fact that, as judges, they are the only authorized expounders of the law, they ought not to be trusted even with the wording of a statute.

And now, what more? We are all ambitious—lawyers above all the rest of the world in this country. Not one but labors—if we may believe his mother and sister, or his betrothed—not one “but labors with the nightmare meanings of Ambition’s breast”—not one who does not feel—

“How hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar!”

and therefore it is, that the whole country is groaning under their oppression—over-burthened with law—and taxed, and trapped, and crushed, and trampled on by lawyers.

But, if instead of this unhealthy ambition—this boyish uneasiness and appetite for notoriety, which three times out of four will be satisfied with the title of esquire, there should arise the unconquerable spirit of one created for dominion, with the holy instincts of a reformer, and anxious from the first hour of his revealed strength, to be the friend of the Fatherless and the Widow, of the Wronged and the Suffering—the champion of the poor and the helpless—the refuge of the hunted and betrayed upon earth—let him devote himself to the study and practice of the law, and of nothing but the law, in its vast and magnificent comprehensiveness; let him consecrate himself with prayer, and praise, and thanksgiving and sacrifice—let him go up to the temple with humility and reverence, and godly fear; and let him take possession “of the purple robe and diadem of gold,” as of right, and though his life may be a continual warfare, and he may die in the harness at last, and upon the battle-field, as Pinkney and Emmett, and others have died before him—for

“He, who ascends to mountain-tops shall find
The loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow,
Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head.”

Yet will he die the death of the righteous, and never be forgotten: and whole communities will pass by his grave, generation after generation, saying to one another as if speaking of a personal friend, “that although he was a great man, and a great lawyer, and perhaps a statesman, he was a good neighbor, and a good citizen, a good husband and a good father; and _therefore_ a good Christian, doing justly, walking humbly, and loving mercy to the last.”

And would not such a death, my dear G——, be worth living for? And such a reputation worth dying for?

* * * * *

ELPHOLEN. A FRAGMENT.

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

Where many cedars shade Igondo’s shelf,
Like towering Dukes of Edom crowned with plumes;
Where seven rivers to an awful gulf
Fall, with much foam, from Himalaya’s flooms;
And where, from Baal-Phaxi’s caverned rooms,
Through ice-arched galleries pours tumultuous Ulf,
Are built across a swarthy savage glen,
The gates which bar the land of Elpholen.

Above all mountains, clouds, and smoking isles,
From one huge base three stately hills arise;
A wall extends from them a thousand miles,
Steep and unbroken, builded to the skies,
_Higher than even the gray-winged condor flies_;
And compasseth, with rocks and snowy piles
A table land, both wide and wonderful,
And only by that gated pass accessible—

Crossing a frightful plain which the sun scorches,
Which plain is full of chasms and trap-dykes,
Scoriæ, cinders, and dry river gorges,
With timber petrified, basaltic spikes,
And lava-ponds, with hard, black, stony surges
We reached the shaded pass below the peaks,
And paused to hear the roar of plunging Ulf,
And the seven rivers, far within the gulf.

Up that defile, with fear and silent wonder,
We rode; _our horses seemed but two small mice_.
The rivers in the gulf gave forth _large_ thunder,
And rocks, above the clouds, fell, bounding thrice,
With uproar, from the grim cliffs, cracked asunder.
Aloft, like Anakim, with helms of ice
The mountains raised their huge Plutonic shoulders,
Clothed in Titanic mail of ore and boulders.

Three Prophets of grand stature and bald brows
Sat by the gates. _They were much older than_
_The river Nile._ One of deep eyes arose
And said: “Speak unto us what manner of man
Thou art, O, hero; if of some fierce clan
Hyperborean, or of pagan Huns?”
He of the icebergs spoke with rhetoric fit
In words and figures following, to wit;
. . . . . .
The Prophet said, “Here shalt thou rest this night
While the sun sleeps in hollow Erebus;
And as the hours pass on in silent flight
All known philosophy will we discuss.
But thou, O wizard Etheuòlymus,
To Himmalaya’s broken pinnacle
Fly with this young esquire, that he may see
All kingdoms on the continent that be.”

Then, with the wizard in a flying mist,
I rose along the sides of that steep cone:
’Twas like an iron trunk of girdle vast;
The moon’s full globe upon all cities shone;
_Tyre_, by the waters; glimmering Ascalon;
The City of the Magians, girt with fire;
And in the East we saw those mountain ranges
Which separate the Nile from sacred Ganges.

Alas! all earthly things have been revised
Even Learning’s careful patron and Protector,
The Inquisition, is disorganized.
The world is round, and has a Radius Vector;
There’s not a ghost on duty, nor a spectre;
Sinbad is dead, and almost any loafer
Can go, in steamers, round Cape Horn to Ophir.

Then, on the blackness of the Night’s deep chasm,
The anchored earth lay, floating, like a floor:—
Beneath, the shadow and the veiled phantasm
Their local habitation had of yore;
But each veiled shadow, and each dreadful phasm
Rose with the night, above the western shore—
When, through the void, all flame and ruddy gold
The Day-god’s cavalcade, descending, rolled.

Without the continent, old Ocean’s torrent
Extended to the earth’s remotest verge:
Both jovial Tritons, and the Powers abhorrent,
Were seized of provinces upon the surge;
And from Arcturus to the Southern gorge
Black tempests bearing old Eolus’ warrant
Patrolled the seas in search of ships or steamers
Breaking the closes of the ocean emirs.

Through the dense night, archangels of strong wing,
From heaven roving, saw the earth’s vast plane—
The kingdoms of the Pole, all glimmering—
The twisted rivers, and the enfolding main—
The shining gulfs which dent the Indian chain,
And smiled to see the hollow planets swing
Above that dim abyss within whose core
Were hooked the world’s deep sunken anchors four.

Large breakers tumbling on the Arabian shoals,
With wooded regions by the Caucasian gaps—
The town of Ebony, the land of Gholes,
(Which are omitted in the modern maps)—
All these I saw; and hills with misty caps,
Where dwell the Glactophagi—blameless souls:
The wizard spoke—I was with awe oppressed:
_The words like ghosts rose from his sounding chest_—

“These mountains I have watched a thousand years;
And I _have writ one thousand solemn books:_
_Who reads them shall be wise!_ Hell’s fiercest Peers
Have oft essayed to burst these bolted rocks;
And, under Baal-Phaxi’s deepest blocks,
Mines they have digged, and loaded, and exploded.
Yea, Mogophur, the Lord of Babylon,
Came with his captains and a countless rabble on—

“Of spearmen, chariots, and Tartarian riders,
_Whose faces were the likeness of a flame_,
And elephants crept through the pass like spiders,
And the whole College of Magicians came,
Who caused sharp earthquakes and much whizzing flame
By means of diagrams, and long dividers,
And thus exclaimed each iron-harnessed savage,
‘The unseen land of Elpholen we’ll ravage.’

“I did but ope one solemn book, and say:
‘O, ye Hydraulic Goblins of the mountains,
At once your tunnels, pumps, and flooms let play;
And loose old Himmalah’s rock-bound fountains.’
Then rivers of cold foam and spouting spray,
And cataracts which broke the cliffs away,
Burst from the mountains’ inner reservoirs.
’Twas very good to see those watery Druids
Destroy that haughty host, with roaring fluids!”
. . . . . .
_But now, those noisy trumpeters, the Hours,_
_Blew the reveillé through the camps of morn:_
_Now storm-girt Taurus raised his icy horn,_
_Like blazing silver_, o’er the mists and showers;
And sunlight struck the unclouded mountain towers,
Which ranged the circuit of that snowy wall:
We then rode down a chasm from the gates,
And entered Elpholen’s enchanted states.

To a wild amphitheatre we rode,
Begirt with precipices. From an astounding
Cavern in the mountain-side, there flowed
A river deep and broad; but the surrounding
Dark hollows echoed not a single sounding;
For silently it moved—_we only heard_
_At times the plunging of some dull cascade_
_Far up the tunnel, like a cannonade._

Full many other rivers cross those lands,
Some, from the eternal snows come pouring;
Some, roll around the chasms, in foaming bends;
Some, through the hills, a ragged highway boring,
Rush to the valleys, with an angry roaring,
And hurry onward to the ocean sands;
But many a cataract and runlet trickles
Down from the glaciers, making huge icicles.

_We moved along by wooded peaks and crags,_
_Carvéd with images and hieroglyphs,_
_Ruffling their scales and quills like golden flags,_
_And, pawing their odd cubs, the hippogriffs_
_Rolled in their nests, upon the shady cliffs;_
_And in the glens, both bears and royal stags,_
_With lazy lions, goats, and yawning leopards_
_Like cattle lay, and children were their shepherds._

Along through ancient forests, vast, and slumbrous,
Roes, of the mountain, grazed beside the springs,
And often rose some bird of plumage cumbrous
Unto the branches, folding his wide wings.
There, too, were tombs of certain wizard-kings—
Antediluvians of visage sombrous—
_And holy men, before their moss-grown crypts,_
_Studied in awful Syriac manuscripts._

Beyond, there dwelleth an immortal folk,
About a stream, which to a lake enlarges:
Pine hills curve greenly round, and groves of oak,
Sometimes they rested on the river marges,
Sometimes they plowed the lake in hollow barges,
And sometimes, on the altars made _sweet_ smoke,
Some painted pictures in their pleasant tents,
And many played on all stringed instruments.

But some rode up unto the gorgeous clouds
_Around the necks of monstrous eagles clinging._
The people which do there have their abodes
Welcoméd them with flags, and wild bell-ringing;
With musical cannon from th’ embrasures flinging
Puffs of white vapor, bombs, and rattling grape:—
The Goblin-populace of Cloud-land we
Could well behold:—Ah, they a brisk folk be!

And caravans continually crossed the plains.
Camels and elephants innumerable—
With carriages, and pigmy oxen trains,
And scampering knights, in armor of black shell,
Lords, bearded patriarchs, and gay rabble,
And baggage-wagons full of chattering dames,
And mounted archers, shooting slender arrows,
Wound slowly round the curving river narrows.

But some came down the rivers on broad rafts;
_With shells, and bells, and crooked bugles, waking_
_Numberless echoes on the rocks_. The shafts
Of the forests stood, like champions unquaking,
Though many clamors, the old silence breaking,
Startled the musing Hermits. Now arose
The stars, and moon, and all the hosts of night:
We stood above a plain upon a height.

Three noble rivers, in the moonlight shining,
Sparkled from three defiles in East, and West,
And North—in silence to a blue gulf winding,
Which, by the distant mountains, lay at rest;
And there a city with a massive crest
Of turrets, overlooked that rock-bound sheet.
The rivers round it, in broad girdles pressed;
Bridges there were, and groves, and gardens meet;
And in the bay lay moored an idle fleet.

Unto that city did all people flow:
In the deep plain we saw their circular camps,
Like islands of an archipelago;
And as we looked, _a belt of fiery lamps_
_Was wound around the crowning citadel;_
Whereat each watching pilgrim said: “Full well
I know, that now within yon distant dell
The Lord of blessed Elpholen doth dwell.

“To him we will present our offering
Of fruits, and herds, and many precious ores,
Which rivers from the mountain-summits bring:—
Upon the gulf’s cool strand, and shady shores
Our ancient games we will perform long hours:
Then we will go again to our dear tribes,
And to our cattle in the pleasant meadows,
And dappled deer browsing in mountain shadows.”

That night we camped upon the sandy margent
Of an unknown sea; and when, behind sharp peaks,
The moon retired in her skiff of argent,
Then certain meteors filled the sky with streaks,
And diving, from the zenith-ridge divergent,
Through the purple heavens fell in flakes,
Which, as they struck the water, lost their light,
And grew a portion of its night.

Meanwhile we saw a corps of sentry ghosts,
Standing erect the farthest Eastern shore on,
And many thousand stars, above those coasts,
_Flashed like the Arabic of a fiery Koran;_
Then those great captains of the heavenly hosts,
Orion, Sirius, and Aldebóran,
On the dark field of Heaven took their stations;
And calmly wheeled the close-ranked constellations.

No outposts of the Morn marked the approach
Of the Hœlios’ chariot; no gleams, or tinges
Upon the tent of Darkness dared encroach;
But sudden brilliance pierced its dusky fringes;
Wide swung the Morning’s gates upon their hinges;
Those burning horses, and that flaming coach
Sprang out upon the ocean, through the gateway:
Night struck her tattered tent, and vanished straightway.

* * * * *

A LIFE OF VICISSITUDES.

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

[Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
George Payne Rainsford James, in the Clerk’s Office of the
District Court of the United States for the District of
Massachusetts.]

(_Continued from page 147._)

A YOUNG DREAM.

Memory is certainly a very strange gift, or quality of the mind—or whatever else it may be rightly termed; for I am no philosopher, and but little acquainted with the technology of metaphysics. It seems often a capricious faculty, selecting its own objects, and amusing itself with them to the rejection of others. But I am not quite sure that this imputation upon memory is justified. I must admit that with myself, as I suppose is the case with others, when I try to recall the past, the lady often proves restive with me, and without any apparent cause, recalls all the particulars of certain scenes, and omits other passages of life close by them. Nor is this to be attributed always to the particular interest of the scenes she recalls; for some of them are quite unimportant, light, and even ludicrous, while things affecting one’s whole destiny, if not utterly forgotten, are brought back but indistinctly. I suspect, however, that the fact is, memory is like a sentinel who will not let any one enter the treasury she guards without the countersign, even though it be the master of the treasure himself.

The objects and events that we remember best are, in fact, those for which we have learned the countersign by heart, and the moment that any accidental circumstance furnishes us with the pass-word, apparently forgotten, the door is thrown open, and we behold them again, somewhat dusty perhaps, but plain and distinct. Acts never die. They at least are immortal; and I do not think they ever die to memory either. They sleep within, and it only requires to have the key to waken them. The time will come when all shall be awakened: when every door of the heart shall be thrown open, and when the spirits of man’s deeds and thoughts will stand revealed to his own eyes at least—perhaps to be his bright companions in everlasting joy—perhaps his tormentors in the hell which he has dug for himself.

Often, often, as I look back in life, I see a cloud hanging over a particular spot in the prospect, which for days, sometimes for years, will hide all beyond. Then suddenly the lightest trifle—a casual word—a peculiar odor—the carol of a bird—the notes of some old melody, will, as with a charm, dispel that cloud—sometimes dissolving it in rain-drops—sometimes absorbing it in sunshine—and all that it concealed will burst upon the sight in horror or in loveliness. Even while I have been writing these few pages many things have thus been brought back to remembrance by the connection of one event with another, which seemed to have altogether passed away from memory when first I sat down to write. Now what is the next thing I remember; for the rest of our journey, after we left Juliers, has passed away from me?

I find myself on looking back, in a small, neat house, with a garden, and a little fountain in the garden, upon a sandy soil, and with a forest of long needle-leaved fir-trees stretching out to the westward. To the east there is a city of no very great extent, but still a capital, with a range of high hills running in a wavy line behind, and here and there an old ruined castle upon the lower points.

Before the city lies a wide plain, rich and smiling, full of corn-fields and vineyards, with here and there a curious-looking spire or a couple of dome-topped towers marking the place of a village or small town, and beyond the plain, glistening in a long, long wavy line of silver, glides a broad river—the mighty Rhine.

Oh! what sweet sunny lapses come cheering and softening the rapid course of life’s troubled stream. There are several of those green spots of memory, as the poet calls it—these oases in the midst of the desert, even within my own remembrance. But on few, if any of them can my heart rest with as much pleasure as on the months we passed in that little cottage. There were no events—there was no excitement—for me and Mariette, at least. I remember wandering with her about that sunny garden, playing with her in the cool, airy pleasure-house which stood in one corner, helping her to gather flowers to deck her mother’s table, wandering with her through the forest beneath the green shade, with the dry, brown filaments of the fir crackling under our young feet. Here and there we would come to a place where oaks and beeches mingled with the pine and a thick growth of underwood narrowed our path; but as compensation, we were there sure to find a rich treasure of wild-flowers, more beautiful in our eyes than all the garden bestowed. Very often, too, in the clear May evenings we would sit under the little shabby porch of the house—Mariette upon my knee, with her arms clasped round my neck—and as the sky grew gray, and the stars began to peer and glimmer up above, would listen to the notes of the nightingale as he prolonged his song after all the forest choir had fallen into silence; and when some of those peculiar notes were coming which we love the best to hear, and Mariette knew that the delicious cadence was nigh at hand, she would raise her beautiful liquid eyes to my face, and whisper “hark” and gaze at me still as if to share my enjoyment, and to make me share hers.

Oh! how that child twined herself round my boy’s heart. Dear, dear, dear Mariette. In all that I have seen in life, and strange and varied has that life been, I have never seen any thing that I loved as much as you. The first freshness of my thoughts—the first—the tenderest—the purest of my affections, were all yours!

But I took other tasks in hand. Good Father Bonneville resumed his lessons to me; but they were not very burdensome, and I began to teach Mariette. How this came about I must explain. Madame de Salins, who had borne up so well in times of danger and active exertion, became languid, inactive, sorrowful in the time of repose. She was evidently exceedingly anxious about something—often in tears—and often returned from the neighboring city where she went almost every day to seek for letters, with a look of gloom and disappointment. She began to teach Mariette something herself, however; for from various circumstances the dear child’s instruction had been neglected. It was always a task to her, however, and her mind seemed wandering away to other things, till at length good Father Bonneville suggested that I would teach Mariette, and Mariette was delighted, and I rejoiced; and Madame de Salins, too, was very well satisfied at heart, I believe. Every thing was speedily arranged, but Mariette and I set to work formally and in good order. The books, and the slate, and the pen and ink were produced at a fixed hour, and if it were fine weather, we sat in the little shabby porch—if it were raining, in the little room that looked upon it. Dear, stupid little thing! What a world of trouble she gave me. She did not half know her letters when I began to teach her, and was continually mistaking the P’s and B’s, and Q’s and D’s. R and S, too, were sad stumbling-blocks, and the putting letters together into syllables, together with pricking the page with a pin occupied a long time. Then she was so volatile too. When I was pouring forth my young philosophy upon her, and laboring hard to teach her the sounds produced by different combinations of letters, she would start up and dart out into the garden in chase of a butterfly, or tempted by a flower. Then, when she came back and was scolded, how she would coax and wheedle her soft young tutor, and kiss his cheek and pat his hair, and one way or another contrive to get the words “good Mariette” written at the end of every lesson to show her mother. I have got the book still, all full of pin holes, and strange figures scribbled on it with a pen; but not one lesson in it has not “good Mariette” written at the end, though Heaven knows she was often naughty enough to merit another comment. But I was a true lover even then, and perhaps loved the dear child’s faults.

Moreover, at the end of that book of little reading lessons there is a page which I have kissed a thousand times since. It represents—and not very badly—Mariette as she appeared then with a little spaniel dog looking up in her face. Oh! how well I recollect when it was drawn. I could always handle my pencil well, though I don’t know when I learnt to draw; but as we were coming near the end of the book, I promised Mariette if she would be a very good girl indeed, and get through the remaining lessons in a week, that I would draw her picture at the end with an imaginary dog which she was always to have at some indefinite period in the future; for she was exceedingly fond of dogs, and I believe the highest ambition of her heart at that moment was to have a spaniel of her own. Before Saturday night fell, the lessons were all done, and I was immediately reminded of my promise. We sat in the porch, with the western sky just growing purple, and I made her get up and stand at a little distance, and sketched her lightly with a pen and ink, and then at her feet, I drew from memory the best dog I could manufacture, with its ears falling back, and its face turned up toward her. How delighted she was when she saw it, and how she clapped her little hands! It was all charming, but the spaniel above all, and I doubt not she was convinced that she should soon have a dog exactly like that. She ran with it, first to Father Bonneville, who was in the next room, and then to her mother, who was very sad that evening; but she kissed her child, and looked at the drawing, and dropped some tears upon it—the traces are there still.

Then Mariette came back to me, and thanked and embraced me, and declared that I was the dearest, best boy that ever lived, and that when she was old enough, she would draw me at the end of one of my books, with a great big dog as big as a horse.

This is all very trifling perhaps, and not much worthy of record, but in those trifling times, and those trifling things lie the brightest and the sweetest memories of my life. It was all so pure, so artless, so innocent. We were there in that little garden, as in a Paradise, and the atmosphere of all our thoughts was the air of Eden.

Such things never last very long. I reached my thirteenth birth-day there, and it was kept with kindly cheerfulness by Father Bonneville and Madame de Salins. Mariette I remember wove me a wreath of flowers, and put it on my head after dinner; but that was her last happy day for a long while. The next day Madame de Salins walked to the city as usual, and Father Bonneville went with her. They were long in returning; but when they did come back there was a sparkling light in the eyes of Madame de Salins which I little fancied augured so much wo to me.

“Come, Louis, come,” said Father Bonneville. “Madame de Salins has heard good news at length. She must set out this very evening for England. The carriage and horses will be here in an hour, and we must all help her to get ready.”

“And Mariette?” I asked, with an indescribable feeling of alarm. “Does she stay here?”

“No, my son, no,” replied Father Bonneville, almost impatiently. “She goes with her mother of course.”

Grown people forget the feelings of childhood, especially old people, and appreciate too little either the pangs or joys of youth. Blessed is the man who bestows a happy childhood upon any one. We cannot shelter mature life from its pangs and sorrows, but we can insure, if we like, that the brightest portion of the allotted space—the portion where the heart is pure, and the thoughts unsullied—shall be exempt in those we love from the pangs, and cares, and sorrows which, so insignificant in our eyes, are full of bitter significance to a child.

Father Bonneville did not know how terribly his intelligence depressed my heart. He rejoiced in Madame de Salins’ brightening prospects, although they deprived him of society that cheered and comforted. I was more selfish; I thought only that I was again to lose Mariette, and I grieved from my very heart. I would not disgrace the first manhood of my teens by bursting into tears, though the inclination to do so was very strong, and I assisted in the preparations as much as I could. But oh how I wished that some accident might happen to the horses before they reached our door, or that the carriage might break down—that any thing might happen which would give me one—but one day more. It was not to be, however: the ugly brutes, and the little less ugly driver, appeared not more than half an hour behind their time, the baggage was put up, and Madame de Salins proceeded to the door of the house. She embraced Father Bonneville tenderly, and then me, and taking a little gold chain which she had in her hand, and spreading it out with her fingers, she placed it round my neck, and I saw a small ring hanging to it, which I found afterward contained her own hair and Mariette’s.

“Keep it, Louis, keep it always,” she said. “I do not know when we shall meet again; but I pray God to bless you, dear boy, and repay you for all you have done for me and mine.”

It was at that moment that the idea of a long separation seemed to strike Mariette for the first time. She burst into the most terrible fit of tears I ever saw, and when I took her in my arms she clung round my neck so tight that it was hardly possible to remove her. Madame de Salins wept too, but went slowly into the carriage, and Father Bonneville unclasping the dear child’s arms carried her away to her mother’s knee. I could bear no more, and running away to my own little room, gave way to all I felt; only lifting up my head to take one more look, when I heard the harsh grating of the carriage-wheels as they rolled away.

A SUMMARY.

I have often thought that it must be a curious, and by no means unimportant, or useless process, which the Roman Catholic is frequently called upon to go through, when preparing his mind for confession.

The above sentence may startle any one who reads these pages, and he may exclaim—

“The Roman Catholic!” Is not the writer—born in a Roman Catholic country, educated by a Roman Catholic priest, and with the force of his beautiful example to support all his precepts—is he not himself a Roman Catholic, or does he mean to say that he has never himself been to confession?

Never mind. That shall all be explained hereafter.

The process I allude to is that of making, as it were, a summary of all the acts and events, which have occurred within a certain period of the past, trying them by the test of reason and of conscience, and endeavoring to clear away all the mists of passion, prejudice, and error which crowd round man and obscure his sight in the moment of exertion or pursuit. Such is not exactly the task I propose to myself just now. All I propose to myself is to give a very brief and sketch-like view of the facts which occupied the next two or three years of my life. It will be faint enough. Rather a collection of reminiscences than of any thing else—often detached from each other, and never, I fear, very sharply defined. The truth is, events at that period were so hurried that they seemed to jostle each other in the memory, and often when I wish to render my own thoughts clear upon the particular events of the period, I am obliged to have recourse to the written or printed records of the events, where they lie chronicled in the regular order of occurrence.

I know that after Mariette’s departure, I was very sad and very melancholy for several weeks. Father Bonneville with all his kindness and tenderness, and with much greater consideration for the faults and weaknesses of others than for his own, did not seem to comprehend my sensations at all at first, and could not imagine—till he had turned it in his own mind a great many times, and painted a picture of it, as it were in imagination, that the society of a little girl of six years old could have become so nearly a necessity to a boy of thirteen. He became convinced, however, in the end that I was, what he called “pining after Mariette.” He strove then to amuse me in various ways—occupied my mind with fresh studies—procured for me many English books, and directed my attention to the study of German, which he himself spoke well, and which I mastered with the ready facility of youth. We all know how children imbibe a language, rather than learn it, and I had not at that time lost the blessed faculty of acquisition.

All this had its effect, while I was busying my mind with other things—for I pursued every object with earnestness, nay with eagerness—I thought little of my loneliness, but often when my lessons were done, and I was tired of reading, and indisposed to walk, I would sit in our little garden, and looking round upon the various objects about me, would recall the pretty figure of my dear little lost Mariette dancing in and out amongst the trees and shrubs, and almost fancy I heard her sweet voice, and the prattle which used so to delight me, strangely mingled as it was, of the innocent frankness of her nature, and a certain portion of shy reserve, which had been forced into her mind by the various painful scenes she had gone through.

One evening as I was thus seated and looking out upon the road, which ran between our small house and the forest, I saw an old woman coming down from the high road which led to the town with a slow and weary pace. I should not have taken much notice of her, perhaps, had not her dress been very different from that of the peasantry in the neighborhood. It was a dress which awakened old recollections—that of the Canton in which I had been brought up, if not born. There was the white cap, with the long ears flapping down almost to the shoulders, and the top running up and curling over into a sort of helmet shape—Heaven only knows how it was constructed; but it was a very complicated piece of architecture. Then again there was the neat little jacket of dull colored gingham, and beneath it the short petticoat of bright red cloth, with the blue stockings, and the red embroidered clocks, and the high-heeled shoes with the silver buckles in them. She carried a good sized bundle in her hand, and held her head upright, though she was evidently tired. But as she came nearer, I saw a round, dry, apple-like face, with two sparkling black eyes and a nose of extensive proportions. I was upon my feet in one moment, and the next, good old Jeanette was in my arms.